McKechnie and his number one man were on the steps outside the ARC club, lounging like lizards. Bassett Major, as I had started to think of him, showed me his teeth. They weren’t very good teeth. McKechnie smiled and said, ‘Hi,’ holding out his soft pink and brown hand for a shake. ‘I thought that maybe you weren’t coming back.’ There was a worry line behind the smile.
Bassett Major didn’t smile. There were bruises on his face: smiling probably hurt him.
‘Is it late?’ I asked him.
‘Chow’s long gone. But we didn’t set a time, did we?’
‘I didn’t think so. Does your man have anything for me?’
‘Search me, bud. The Lieutenant don’t tell the hired help nothing. Just to show you in when you gets here.’
My instinct was to make some excuse and walk away: I still wasn’t set up for verbal arm wrestling with an American intelligence officer. I needed a cup of char and a wad to set me up. Instead I followed the black policeman into the ARC, wondering when Emily Rea, the woman I knew, was due back.
The lobby was polished brown marble; as old as Napoleon and as big as the Albert Hall. A huge, wide staircase on my left spiralled flatly upwards to the next floors. Joe Loss walked down it, and past me. I think that my mouth must have dropped open. I asked, ‘Was that who I think it was?’
‘Yeah. His band is at the hop around the corner tomorrow. The tickets all went a month ago.’
‘I’m not surprised. We go up there?’
‘No: us nasties live beneath.’
He nodded to the right. The wide stair swung away, and down into the gloom of a false dusk. He led off, and I followed him after Bruised Bassett gave my elbow a little steer. He trundled behind us: presumably it took the pair of them to make sure I didn’t get lost. I’d noticed the music as I had stood in the hall; now it followed us down the stairs into a wide, badly lit corridor. Hutch was singing ‘Deep Purple’ on some old record from some radio station. I said, ‘That’s neat. How do you do that?’
‘Speakers every twenny feet. It’s a club, after all. Folks are supposed to enjoy themselves.’
‘That’s Emily’s speciality. She makes people forget the war for a couple of hours.’
‘Maybe she’s too good at that. The whole fucking American Army forgot the war on New Year’s Day, an’ the Kraut flung his whole fucking Army right back at us, didn’t he?’
‘Did he? I missed it. I was in a hospital bed counting my burns.’
‘The Battle of the Bulge. It was just a B feature, unless you happened to be in it. Don’t worry, Mr Bassett, you’ll still be in time for the main picture.’
‘You still think he’ll fight?’
‘Yeah. Don’t you?’
There were enough shadows for a Boris Karloff film. I didn’t like that. We were walking along a corridor of offices with steel doors. Most of the doors were open, but it still looked like a fucking prison. I didn’t like that either.
‘Kraut had it before we did,’ was the only thing McKechnie would tell me.
Kilduff had a small office. There was no window, and just enough room for a desk, two chairs and a tall filing cabinet with a combination lock. He’d tacked a Coca-Cola calendar on the wall. Rosie the Riveter was bursting out of an improbably clean boiler suit: she had muscles like Joe Louis. He must have only just moved in, because another officer’s name was on the door. The neat notice said Lt Vallance. You remember things like that. Kilduff was my size of officer – about five four. He pulled the door closed behind me to shut out the music.
The Intelligence Officer was one of those competent little men you take an instant dislike to and don’t know why. He looked you in the eye when he talked, and from time to time touched a small dark Führer moustache which hung below a broken nose. His hair was salt and pepper, and his eyes brown. Everything about him shouted Trust me! Even his handshake was firm and dry, the way a man’s is expected to be. Everything about me shouted back Like hell!
‘I’m Kilduff. The men call me Binkie behind my back, but I don’t mind that.’
‘Hello. It could be worse, I suppose.’
‘Yes. That’s the way I see it. You’re Charlie Bassett. Pilot Officer Charles Bassett of the RAF?’
‘Yes: pleased to meet you.’
‘The feeling’s mutual, you’re under arrest . . . although I fail to see why you’re being so fucking dumb, Charlie.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Granted. You’re under arrest. But I expect you knew that.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He uncapped a nice Swan pen – everyone seemed to have them – and pulled a several-leafed form to him. It had a lot of blanks waiting to be filled in. He sighed.
‘I hope that you’ve more than I beg your pardon in your vocabulary, Charlie, or it’s going to be a long day.’
‘I . . .’ I started, but then thought better of it. ‘What for?’ I asked him. I’ve told you about me and obvious questions before.
‘AWOL. You did a runner, Charlie. The RAF put you on the wires a couple of days ago. They want you back. They don’t like people borrowing seats on aeroplanes for free.’
‘That’s silly, Lieutenant.’
‘No. You’re silly, Charlie. You could have stayed out of sight until the war was over, instead of walking up to our policemen and giving yourself up. What’s the matter; war get too much for you?’
‘How could it? I wasn’t fighting it. I’d done my trips, and was in a training section.’
‘In Tempsford? Setting up the spooks and assassins for their flights into Europe?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Doesn’t sound to me as if your War had ended, Charlie: it was just a bit more sneaky than before. SOE and OSS and that sort of thing.’
‘What’s OSS?’
‘Like your SOE. Our agents instead of yours. You worked at Tempsford. The Funny Farm.’
‘How did you know that.’
‘I told you. The RAF told us. Look at this.’ He gave me a typed-out two-page flimsy from an American signal pad. I felt my face going red as I read it. It was headed up with my name, service number and date of birth. It asked for me to be apprehended on sight. Then it contained a précis of my training and service details, including the fact that I had witnessed our Polish gunner shoot someone dead, and that I had conspired to smuggle a woman onto an aircraft for flights over Germany. It also said that I was believed to be involved in the black market, politically unreliable – whatever that meant – and implicated in the theft of an aircraft: to whit, one Stirling bomber. The last paragraph but one described me as AWOL after discharge from hospital, having smuggled myself onto an aircraft at Croydon. I was now thought to be on the run in France. The last paragraph asked again for my detention and return to the UK, and warned that I could be dangerous.
‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ Kilduff asked me. ‘I can get a photograph brought over from your service police HQ.’
‘It’s me.’ I told him, ‘but I’m buggered if I understand it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m on a mission. Something special; it’s all been officially arranged.’
‘On a mission for whom? The Pope? Tell me please, Charlie.’
‘I don’t think I can. I’ve probably told too many people already.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That means I have a two-page signal from your people saying that you’re a really bad man, whilst you tell me it’s cool; you’re on a mission; but you can’t tell me anything about it. Right?’
‘I’m sorry. Yes. That’s about it. What are you going to do?’
‘Not waste any more time until you begin to whistle in tune, Charlie. Welcome to Paris.’
He must have had a method of signalling outside because the door opened behind me, and Bassett Major dragged me off my chair backwards by my collar, and tossed me into the corridor as if I was a bantamweight. He probably enjoyed doing that. He kicked and pushed me about two doors along, and through one of those open steel doors. I was right the first time: it was a bloody prison. The big bastard tripped me as he pushed me into the cell, and then set about me with his nightstick. He beat me carefully on my burned shoulders. He knew exactly what he was doing. Bastard. The pain was exquisite. My lights went out after about the fifth blow. The music from the speaker just outside my cell door was ‘You Are My Sunshine’. That was Harry Roy. What had the black, McKechnie, told me about the music? – ‘It’s a club, after all. People are supposed to enjoy themselves.’ Well, Bassett Major did.
When I opened my eyes again I was flat on my back on a thin pallet mattress on the raised concrete ledge that was the cell’s bed. A black man in a white coat was bending over me. He said, ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor.’
The wheels upstairs began moving. I tried the cynical grin (it probably looked like a rictus), and said, ‘McKechnie says that there aren’t any black doctors in the US.’
‘He tells lies. All coloureds do. You speak very good English.’
‘Of course I do, I am English. RAF.’
‘Lordy! In that ragtag mixture of a uniform you’re in I thought you were a Kraut stay-behind, trying to evade. What did you do to annoy Uncle Sam?’
‘I haven’t worked that out yet. I came in here to ask some questions about a missing Englishwoman, and your Lieutenant arrested me for things I hadn’t done.’ I looked instinctively at my watch, and saw the wrist where it usually lived. ‘What’s the time?’ I asked him.
‘ ’bout 1430.’
I was also missing my flying jacket, which contained my pay-book; and my ID tags. I was nobody.
‘I had a flying jacket on when they threw me in here.’
‘My watch . . .’
‘Nor that.’
‘Can I see the Lieutenant who arrested me?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I gave you a shot to knock you out, which you already can’t remember. It will keep those bastards off your back for a few hours, and give me the opportunity to examine those shoulders of yours. What did you do to them?’
‘Burned in an air crash. Your shot wasn’t much good,’ I told him.
‘How come, Mister?’
‘I don’t think it’s wor . . .’
There was a small piece of graffiti scratched into the plaster at my eye level. The initials read AGM, and a date which had been scratched out, but might have been January 1945. Maybe that was why I dreamed about a girl I had met in a post office in England. Don’t worry; you’ll work out the connection. She was still in my head when I opened my eyes.
They call it déjà vu, don’t they? I woke up in a bed in a hospital room. Now I was in pyjamas, and from shoulder level a faint smell of something aromatic was emanating. My shoulders tingled, but weren’t painful. I could move them about. Maybe the black man’s medicine worked after all. This differed from the hospital ward at Bedford in two ways: there were bars on the window, and I was handcuffed to the bed frame by my left wrist. Kilduff sat on a chair near the foot of the iron bed, reading a paperback novel. It was the same Zane Grey I had started out with. He put it down when he sensed me stir.
‘That doctor had me over. I brought him down to see that you weren’t dead, and he slips you something to buy you a few hours.’
‘Arrest him then.’ Whatever was in the shot had dried me out. My mouth was parched and stiff, like the first time.
‘I can’t. He’s a Captain. We’re very rank-conscious in the US Army. You gonna talk to me now?’
‘I always was. This wasn’t necessary. If I get out of here there’ll be an official complaint that will tie you up in paperwork until the day you draw your pension. I’ll have your arse. Bassett’s too.’
‘I’m very scared. Terrified. I guess Bassett will shit himself. Now; what was your mission again?’ He added, ‘What’s so funny?’ after I laughed. So I did it again, and then:
‘I was in an air smash last year; November, I think. I woke up in hospital, days later. One day I woke up and there was an RAF officer sitting in a chair where you’re sitting. He was a creep like you. He arranged all this, and now, before the ink’s dried on the orders he gave me, here I am back in hospital again and the job is all fucked up before it’s started.’
‘He gave you written orders then? This officer?’
‘No. It was just a figure of speech. Forget it. This is a cock-up: situation normal.’
‘Snafu.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We turn it into a noun in my army: a snafu. It says Situation Normal All Fucked Up. Who was this officer?’
I saw no reason not to tell him; after all the bastards had dropped me in it.
‘Clifford. David Clifford. He even looks like you, except he has a fiddly Douglas Fairbanks moustache.’
‘Never heard of him, but there’s no reason why I should. You told McKechnie that you were over here looking for some English girl who may have taken a Cook’s tour of the war zone. Is she important?’
‘To me, yes. I made her some promises once. To her folks, yes. They have influence. That’s why we’re trying to get her back.’
‘Who is she?’
‘I probably shouldn’t tell you any more. Not until I’ve spoken to the woman you were supposed to let me meet.’
‘Emily?’
‘Yes. I met her in Bedford. She knows the woman too.’
‘Emily’s further forward. I won’t bullshit you: I don’t know exactly where she is, or when she’s due back. She makes the arrangements for the visiting artists who entertain the grunts. Oils the wheels for them. Meets the generals, and kisses arse. We are all very fond of her.’
‘Does that mean you believe me?’
‘Nope. Jest keeping the conversation ticking over.’
I didn’t know what to say. Eventually I turned away from him, and said something like, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ and stared out of the window. The bars spoiled the view. I asked him, ‘Are we still at the ARC?’
‘No. I talked to someone who told me the same story about you that I already knew, so I moved you. We’re in a military hospital in the suburbs. This is the security wing where they keep the suicides, nutcases and murderers. They let me use two or three rooms here if my customers have accidents. They often have accidents. Sometimes they even have accidents after they arrive here. Now, tell me about Frank and Jesse – the two desperadoes you’re travelling with. There’s a tripartite agreement between the occupying forces that we tell each other whenever we deploy that sort of officer in the field. Your guys turned up a week early: kinda spooked us.’
There was something too casual about the way he slipped them into the conversation. I bought time with, ‘What does tri-partite mean?’
‘Three-way. Us, your people and the Frogs.’ After a respectable pause he prompted me again. ‘Major England and Private Finnigan. That’s not their real names, is it?’
‘I don’t know, Lieutenant, and I don’t care. The bastards have apparently abandoned me, haven’t they? Even so, I know hardly anything about them, and even if I did I wouldn’t feel inclined to tell you.’
‘That’s a pity, Mr Bassett. I might be instructed to send McKechnie and the Thing back to ask you the same questions. They can be particularly insistent.’
‘If my people have asked you to send me back to England, Lieutenant, then bloody do it. I’d be better off sorting this out with them, anyway.’
He got up; left me a deck of cheap Gauloises, and one of those French books of paper matches. He said, ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ and left me wondering how I was supposed to perform natural functions chained to the fucking bed.
There were white orderlies and black orderlies. I noticed the difference. The black ones were the ones who talked to me. Life wasn’t too bad for twenty-four hours if you call being chained to a bed not too bad. Then there was Kilduff peeking in through the wired glass window of the door periodically. I was an exhibit in a sodding zoo. Eventually he was there showing me to a tall, concerned-looking Bird Colonel with a sad face. I thought that I had seen him in the flicks. About fifteen minutes later McKechnie breezed in doing the Ostrich Walk, with my clothes over an arm. He was the all-over-happy man. He said, ‘Hi, Brother. You OK?’
‘Brother?’
‘Jive talk. All black folks talks jive talk.’
‘Stop taking the piss and talk normally, McKechnie, for God’s sake.’
‘Just trying to keep things light. It’s show time. Time to go visiting. I’ll get your cuffs; then you can get dressed. I threw that old shirt away. I got one of Binkie’s for you, from the laundry. He don’t know that yet.’
‘Can I get a wash?’
‘No time.’
He took the handcuff off. I rubbed my wrist where it had chafed. Although my clothes hadn’t been washed or pressed, my cap had been brushed: that was the American way.
‘Where’s my namesake?’
‘We gave him time off. Guessed it wouldn’t have been a fond farewell between you two.’
‘Right.’
McKechnie laughed.
‘I’m almost sorry to be giving you back.’
He left me to get dressed. The shirt was a good fit. In the institution’s main corridor I looked around for my minders. My legs didn’t feel too strong – but that was a combination of the beating, the dope and a day’s enforced bedrest. McKechnie was standing with Colonel Film Star and Kilduff, down by a set of double doors. Binkie’s lips were set hard and white: he no longer loved me.
McKechnie beckoned me to them using only his right forefinger. All he said to me was, ‘Walkies.’
They put me in the back of an olive drab Chevrolet staff car. I sat alongside the Bird Colonel, who offered me a cigar. Kilduff sat up front; McKechnie drove. The Colonel’s drawl was melodious and home-spun; just like he sounds in films.
‘Sometimes they pull me in when there’s a snafu to be sorted out. You jest sit there, son, and don’t worry; the Air Force is on your case now. The other fellahs . . . aargh, that is the United States Army, are mighty . . . sorry they made this mistake over you.’ Then he said, ‘Aargh’ again. It was a quiet, meditative sound. At first I thought that maybe he was in pain, then I worked out that that was the noise with which he finished most sentences. We both lit up. I asked, ‘Where are we going?’
‘You’re going back to your own people . . . and we’re getting one of our own back in return. I’ve done this sort of thing before; don’t worry.’
‘You keep saying that, sir. Don’t worry about what?’
‘Don’t worry about the fact that when your people found out you’d been arrested by mistake, they kidnapped an Army Colonel from out of an off-limits cat-house, and threatened to go international with the fool unless we produced you. The Army is very good at creating diplomatic incidents, you see . . . aargh . . . but never as creative about solving them.’ I found that his voice had a calming effect on me. I wanted to be his friend.
I asked him, ‘Haven’t I seen you in films?’
‘Might have done.’ He went on to tell me, ‘It helps with this sort of thing.’
‘What have you flown?’ That was me again.
‘B-17s and B-24s. Big bombers. Over Germany.’
‘Me too. Lancasters.’
‘Interesting, wasn’t it?’ That’s not how it sounded. It sounded like a sentence of twice that length.
‘What happens to me now?’ A thousand ideas were seething in my mind, but I was strangely unafraid. Gott mit uns, this time: definitely.
Kilduff said, ‘We get to give you back to your own people, and I hope they throw the fucking book at you.’
He was a bad loser. Real men are bad losers. That’s what they say, anyway.
‘When I walked into your place I had ID tags, and a pay-book.’
Kilduff said, ‘We’ll give them to the officers they send to collect you.’
‘. . . and my wristwatch and flying jacket. I’m not getting out of the car without them.’
‘You’re being very awkward, son,’ the Bird Colonel told me, but then he spoke to Kilduff. His voice was suddenly sharp and curt and commanding. Someone you didn’t fuck with. ‘Give him your watch, Lieutenant.’
I felt bold enough to break in with, ‘No. I’ll take the nigger’s watch. I’m already wearing one of the Lieutenant’s shirts. That just leaves my flying jacket. I was attached to that.’
McKechnie said, ‘I wondered when the N word was comin’. Someone always has to remind me. Sometimes I think that white folk are on a duty from God just to remind us blacks that we are black. In case we missed it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and, ‘What about my jacket?’
The Colonel said, ‘I don’t suppose you would consider accepting mine in exchange? I get them made privately, and flown over. Quality’s good.’
‘So’s the exchange,’ I told him, and shook hands on it.
You’ve seen the film. The two cars drawing up on the country road a hundred yards apart; the space between lit by their searching headlights. Part of me was asking, Haven’t they heard of the fucking blackout? There was a big black mass on the side of the road where the headlights met. After a few seconds I realized that I’d seen it before, and that there were the bodies of dead German soldiers in it, and maybe a couple of dozen rats. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when Cain and Abel stepped into the light alongside it. Cain had the Sten around his neck on its string, and his right arm was resting on top of it, as if it was a sling. The USAAF Colonel stepped out to meet them, handing his leather A1 jacket back in to me as he did so. He took McKechnie with him. I thought that that said something. I asked Kilduff what they were doing. He said, ‘Negotiating.’
‘Is there anything to negotiate?’
‘Nah.’ He was turned from the driving seat to look at me. There was less anger in him now. ‘It’s just form really. We been doing this a lot longer than you Brits. Capone an’ Legs an’ Lucky: they been doing it all the time till they got caught.’
‘Who’re they?’
‘Charlie,’ he asked me, ‘where you been all your fucking life?’ There was genuine pity in his voice.
The Chevy engine rumbled on, so I couldn’t catch what was being said: perhaps I wasn’t supposed to – you never know. Eventually the Bird Colonel came back to me and drawled, ‘It’s all right now. Just get out, and walk up to the light. You’ll find a US Colonel there. Stop, shake hands with him, then walk on by to your own folk.’
‘Why shake hands?’
‘We . . . ll.’ It sounded like waal. ‘I don’t know, rightly. Perhaps it’s just a matter of politeness, and no one will shoot you if you do that.’
‘I’d better do it then.’ Then I said, ‘Goodnight, Colonel,’ as I scrambled out into the night, and, ‘Thank you.’ Although I don’t know why.
He said, ‘You’re welcome, son,’ and, in a lower voice, ‘Why don’t you get away from these bums as soon as you can? They’re not your kind of people.’
‘I’ll remember that, sir,’ I told him. I had been right to say Thank you, after all.
‘If we meet again, you call me Jimmy, most everyone else does.’
‘Yes, Colonel.’
He was a big man, so his leather flying jacket fitted nicely over my battledress: I pulled it on as I walked. The man I shook hands with asked me, ‘Is that Jimmy Stewart back there?’
‘I think it was, sir. It is a film star, anyway. I’ve seen him.’
‘You don’t have to call me sir, boy: it seems to me that we’ve both been in the same boat.’
‘No, sir. Why are we having this conversation anyway, instead of just walking on?’
‘Just to irritate the mother-fuckers, son. I don’t suppose you know what the fuck this was all about?’
‘No; sorry.’
‘Thought not; me neither.’ He sighed, then he said, ‘Good luck, son,’ and walked on. I guessed that he’d be in trouble when they got him back, so I offered, ‘And you, Colonel.’
Out of the light was Kate, with a jeep parked up behind her. There were three men standing around her: England, Raffles and Cliff. Cliff moved out of the dark, and snarled, ‘Can’t you stay out of trouble for a minute?’ at me, before stalking off to the jeep without another word. He started it savagely, fucking up the gear change, and tearing off down the road behind the Americans, who had already turned the Chevy and powered away into Paris. I had to jump out of his way.
In the car I asked them, ‘Before I say thank you, would someone mind telling me what the fuck is going on?’
‘Say thank you first,’ Les advised me, ‘while we work out the rest. Nice jacket by the way.’
‘Was that bloody great charge sheet about me accurate? Kilduff said he got it from the RAF.’
‘I would imagine that the Yanks embroidered it a bit – just to make you talk. Did you, by the way?’
‘No. They gave me a bit of a beating first, just to encourage me. After that I found a stubborn streak I didn’t know I had. I told them Cliff’s name – I didn’t reckon I owed him any favours.’
‘He won’t like that if he finds out.’
‘He won’t find out.’ That was Major England taking part for the first time. ‘We won’t tell him, and neither will the Yanks. Who beat you up?’
‘Their thug Bassett, in the library, with a stick. He was careful to choose my shoulders.’
‘You need an MO?’ That was Raffles again.
‘No. Some American doctor at the hospital spread some jallop on them. They feel better than at any time since the accident. I must find out what it was.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m going to get a gun, go back and do the sadistic bastard in.’
‘No you’re not,’ the Major told me. ‘We’re off to Belgium before anything else goes wrong. Les and I have got to go back to work: the armies are on the move again. Let’s hope the Duke of York isn’t in charge this time.’
‘What about Bassett?’
‘We could always look in on the way back . . .’
‘And Grace Baker? I don’t suppose that Cliff would have left me here unless he expected me to finish the job.’
The road turned from cobbles to tarmac: the noise the Humber made on it changed from a rumble to a hiss. There was a gentle drizzle falling, which reminded me of Cambridgeshire. Les’s left hand lifted from the steering wheel from time to time to activate the screen wipers. The car lights showed against the straight tree-lined road like narrow pencil beams. Into the silence he said, ‘We asked around a bit. I don’t think she’s in Paris. The American bird you wanted to see about her certainly isn’t. I don’t even think the Yanks have told her that you’re here. That leaves the American tank crews you told us about. You said she might have contacted them again.’
‘Did I?’
‘Someone did,’ the Major told us. ‘Anyway. They took a bit of a hammering from the Jerry apparently, and they’re back in a rest area . . . and that rest area is directly on our route to catch up with Monty’s finest, who’re probably racing across Germany at this very moment. At about two miles an hour.’
‘Oh, what a coincidence!’ I told him.
‘ ’tis rather. Lucky. Maybe you’re a lucky soldier, Charlie.’
‘I’m not a soldier at all.’
‘I rather think that you are now, old son.’
I believed him. Bastard. I couldn’t see that he had any reason to lie about it.
‘Does that mean that the charges the RAF might be alleging against me can’t be proceeded with?’
‘I hadn’t thought about that.’
‘What’s this garbage about stealing a Stirling? I’ve only been in two. One crashed and burned, and the other was flown by Cliff: rather well, as it turned out.’
‘It was something to do with a bunch of conchies from Tempsford who nicked their aeroplane and pushed off out of the war. Clever sods.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Friends of yours, apparently. Your old CO, Goldilocks . . .’
‘Goldie.’
‘Goldie, then . . . he thought it must have been something to do with you because no one would tell him where you’d gone. He reported you. Cliff thought that it was very funny until you were lifted. So did we, afterwards.’
‘I really appreciate your worrying about me, you and Les. Do you know that?’
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘Anyway, if you hadn’t left me in that Yankee loony bin for twenty-four hours I don’t suppose that I would have got to meet James Stewart.’
The Major smiled. ‘Is that so? Pansy, was he? Most of them are, you know.’
‘No; he flew bombers. Probably with the 8th Air Force: that’s their Bomber Command.’
Les said, ‘I’d always wanted to know how to tell Pansies from other men. Now I know.’
I felt too tired to tell them to fuck off.
Les drove through the night. I slept. At one time I awoke as the car lurched, and found my discs and pay-book in my hand. One of them must have given them to me.
Les muttered, ‘Sorry. Shell hole, I think.’
I asked him, ‘What month is this?’
‘February, March or April. Does it matter?’
‘No. Do you want me to drive?’
‘No. I’m fine. I’ve got some blue peters to keep me up to the mark. When we reach our next stop I’ll bomb for twelve hours. Go back to sleep.’
‘Where are we?’
‘Still in France, heading for Belgium and Holland. You’ll be safe when we get you over the border.’
It hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t. The Major groaned and moved in the back seat,
‘Belt up, you fellows. Let the only brain the outfit possesses get some kip.’
‘You heard him, Les. Get some sleep.’
We both laughed. It was companionable. I slept again soon after that.