RUMBLED

1

When Germany surrendered, the US Government gave Silk a medal and the Embassy sent him back to England. He asked for immediate demobilisation and he got it. While he was at Air Ministry he called on Air Commodore Bletchley, to say goodbye.

“I hear you cracked up in California, Silk,” Bletchley said. “Good choice. I blew a gasket in Libya, poor choice, everyone was more or less batty in Libya, it helped to pass the time, you lost your friends in the morning and lost your marbles in the afternoon. Not important any more. How did you get on with the Americans?”

“They like to fly, sir, and so do I.”

“You’re wise to leave the Service. Britain can’t afford another war for ten years. Imagine spending ten years in clapped-out Lancs, dropping dummy bombs on the Suffolk ranges.”

“Done that, sir. I hit Norfolk once. Similar spelling.”

They shook hands. “Give my regards to your wife. She intends to enter Parliament in the coming elections, or so I read. Brave girl.”

It gave him something to think about, on the midday train back to Lincoln.

Zoë was waiting there, with the Frazer-Nash. After American roads, English lanes seemed dangerously narrow and twisting. This is worse than Bremen, he thought; but they arrived intact.

He dumped his suitcases in the middle of the living room. He had forgotten how small the place was, how low the ceiling. He went out and stood in the garden. Flowers everywhere, a riot of colour. Not like America. Zoë appeared, carrying two gin-and-tonics. “Bed,” she said.

“I was looking at the hollyhocks.”

“Awfully pretty.” They touched glasses and drank. “But non-starters in the bed stakes.”

In the bedroom, his fingers felt clumsy, fumbling with shirt buttons until Zoë, wearing nothing at all, told him to stand still and she rapidly stripped him. The bed felt pleasantly cool. Zoë felt blissfully warm. Silk had a brief memory of his sense of total relief and relaxation as the Lanc touched down after a long and dodgy op. Then he got down to business. After ten minutes it was obvious that business had shut down for the day.

“Buggeration. What a hell of a homecoming.”

“Don’t worry, darling. Not important.” She very nearly said It happened to Tony once, but she stopped herself in time. “Just one of those things.”

“Actually it’s two of those things,” Silk said, “Rumpty and Tumpty, remember? Each as useless as the other.” Then he remembered the day when Tony told him he had the same problem, he couldn’t keep pace with Zoë, the well had run dry. That was three years ago. In those days, Silk had lusted after her. Everyone had. But Tony had been his best friend, his only surviving friend. And sex was just an itch to be scratched, it was nothing compared with sudden death, three or four miles high, of which there was more than enough to grip the squadron’s attention. Tony had solved his sex difficulty with special bath salts, or so he said, but the bigger problem caught up with him over Osnabrück.

Now Silk was in his bed and he knew how Tony must have felt. Utterly bloody useless.

“Hey!” he said. “Just remembered. Got some Benzedrine tablets somewhere. We used to carry them. Keep us awake on ops.”

“Silko.” She threw back the sheet and sat astride him. “You’d have a heart attack. I look awful in black. Who on earth is going to vote for a widow?”

“I was going to ask you about that.” He linked his hands behind his head and enjoyed examining her breasts. “I had a joke about two upstanding members in one household, but it doesn’t seem so funny now.”

They got dressed, and had tea and toast in the kitchen. Zoë explained how she came to be a candidate.

She had gone to a party and met a major in the Education Corps, slightly drunk, offering odds of ten to one that Labour would win the General Election hands down. Most people were amused. Zoë asked why he was so sure. “Easy,” he said. “What was the British army doing between Dunkirk and D-Day? A few divisions slogged their guts out in North Africa and Italy and Burma. All the rest – trained. Troops got bored. War Office invented ABCA – Army Bureau of Current Affairs. Lectures, film shows, debates. What are we fighting for? Millions of troops had four years to think and what did they decide? They’d die for their country,” the major said. “They wouldn’t die for a load of Tory toffs.”

Next day Zoë registered as the independent candidate for Lincolnshire (South). She had a strong political base: she had run Salute For Stalin Week (socks for Red soldiers), followed by Wings Over Berlin Week (the county gave the RAF a Lancaster) and Build Our Destroyer Week (a shilling bought a rivet). She knew every club and society in the constituency and they knew her. “Good start,” Silk said. “Who are you up against?”

Zoë had four opponents but only two that mattered.

The sitting MP was 62, unmarried, a Tory backbencher for half his life. His fat majority convinced him that Lincoln (South) liked a steady hand on the tiller. His campaign slogan was Business As Usual. Nothing exciting. The country had had enough excitement.

The Labour candidate – also a local man – was an ex-soldier. France, Egypt, Italy. Invalided out in 1943; ran the family farm.

“He’ll slaughter you,” Silk said.

“He’s got a beard, he shouts a lot, he’s teetotal and he wants to nationalise the pubs.”

“All the pubs?”

“And the breweries.”

“Extraordinary... Who else?”

“A vegetarian and a nudist.”

“Too much for me.” Silk warmed his hands on the teapot. “I can’t take the hectic pace of English politics.”

“But you must. I need you to stand behind me at my rallies, Silko. In uniform. Don’t say a word. Just look staunch.”

He did his best. Her next rally was that same evening, on a piece of waste land in Lincoln. A couple of hundred turned up. Zoë stood on a barrel and used a megaphone. “Why are your pubs shut on a Saturday afternoon?” she asked. “Exactly when you want a drink? I’ll tell you why. 1916! Scandalous lack of shells! Drunken munition workers! Lies – but that’s who the government blamed and they shut the pubs! When the real blame lay with incompetent bosses! And that, my friends, is why, forty years on, you can’t enjoy a drink after two o’clock! What hypocrisy! What humbuggery!” It went down well. They cheered lustily.

Zoë struck left and right. She demanded that, for every new law which Parliament passed, it must abolish an old one (“Muck out the stables of democracy!”); that everybody’s wages should rise annually to compensate for inflation (“If you stand still, you fall back!”); that the Church of England must be separated from the State (“The prime minister – who might be an atheist – chooses the next Archbishop of Canterbury! Bishops pass laws in the House of Lords! Is that how we want to run the country today?”).

She spoke for twenty minutes, answered three questions, moved on to a village hall, repeated the formula, and did it again at a tennis club.

Next day she made five speeches, all in farming areas. After her last, and biggest, meeting of the day, she stayed to talk with voters. Silk’s calves ached from so much standing. His face was stiff with staunchness. He wanted to go home, he wanted a large drink, followed by another. Farmers kept talking to him about the warble fly. Silk didn’t give a flying fuck about the warble fly.

At last Zoë said goodbye. The night was moonless, and it was a bad road. Silk drove slowly, snaking around potholes. “That went rather well,” Zoë said.

“Okay. It’s not real politics, is it? Where’s your big election manifesto? Zoë Silk’s ten-point plan to save Britain. Everyone else has got one.”

“Not my style, darling. These people have just put in a hard day’s work. They don’t want to be lectured. They deserve some fun.”

“I see. What does that make me? The clown?”

The potholes ended. He got the Frazer-Nash up into second gear. With peace, all the dimmers had come off the headlights: now you could see oncoming traffic a mile away. There was no oncoming traffic. She tied a scarf around her hair. Thirty miles an hour. Silk thought he was just stooging along, not much above a stall. He turned onto a main road and let the car off the leash. It swept through fifty and hit sixty. He held the wheel lightly. He enjoyed feeling the vibrations, it was how he’d held the control column of the Lanc, at one with the machine yet totally in command of it. At seventy the car was no longer working hard, it was following its headlights as they swept the road clear. Eighty wasn’t too fast. The road was doing all the rushing. The car was untroubled, a rock in a torrent. Ninety would be nice. Ninety was take-off speed, when everything was roses. The engine died.

He groped for the ignition key and found nothing.

No headlights. Black night everywhere. The car slowed, and slowed more. Now the only sound was the wind, and it too was fading to a soft whistle. He put the gearstick into neutral. The wheels started to shudder on the grass verge. He used the brakes. The car stopped.

Silence, except for the faraway ping of the cooling engine.

“That was bloody silly,” he said. “No lights, we could have hit... hit anything.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” She sounded very quiet, very calm. “The way you were driving, we were bound to hit something. Tree, telephone pole, low-flying aircraft. Quick death. Lots of strawberry jam. Laura inherits everything, and her only two.”

“Give me the damn keys.”

“You’re a selfish bastard, Silko. Kill yourself, if you wish, that’s your privilege. You’re not going to kill me.”

“That wasn’t fast, for Christ’s sake. We were just cruising along.”

“Call it what you like. I’m driving now.”

He thought about it. “You’re a lousy driver. Slow as cold treacle.”

“And you’re ten years old.”

He got out, and she climbed over the gearstick and the handbrake and settled into his seat. He slammed the door.

“Kick the wheels,” she said. “Spit on the bonnet. Then get in and we’ll go home.”

“I’d sooner walk.”

“Five years old.” She started the car and he watched her drive away.

The RAF did not do much marching. Bomber crews rarely marched at all. Silk had been standing all evening. By the time he walked a mile his feet were beginning to ache. There was very little traffic on this road and none was willing to stop for him. After two miles his calves were weary. After three miles he felt crippled. The Frazer Nash was parked on the grass and Zoë was asleep at the wheel. He woke her up. They drove home.

2

They slept late.

The sun was up, the day was warm enough for breakfast in the garden. There was little conversation until Silk felt stronger now that he had some grub inside him and he said, “Sorry about last night.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not a bit sorry.” She wasn’t laughing at him, but she was definitely enjoying herself. “The only thing you’re sorry about is the fact that you got caught out. You got rumbled, Silko.”

“Nonsense.”

“You’re a terrible cheat. You couldn’t fool a flea.”

“Wrong. I’ve fooled dozens of fleas. Hundreds.”

“Oh yeah? Name three.”

“Hank. All called Hank. American fleas. Big, muscular specimens, very hard to fool.” He cleared his throat. “Foolhardy, in fact.”

She rested her elbow on the table and her head on her hand, and looked at him with some affection. “One person you can fool, and that’s you. You’re really sorry the war’s over, aren’t you?”

“Of course not. That’s ridiculous.” He ate some toast. “Maybe a little bit. It’s all I’ve ever done.” He put marmalade on the toast. “I suppose I miss the flying. Ops were a hell of a kick, can’t deny that.” He licked marmalade off his finger. “Provided you survived.”

“And you’d do it again,” she said. “In a flash.”

“Funny you should say that. Barney Knox wants me to join him.” He got up and strolled around the lawn. “He reckons there’s a big future in the airline business.”

“Then go, Silko. I’ll miss you. What I shan’t miss is you standing about, pretending to be a civilian. I didn’t marry a civilian.”

Silk was inspecting a rose bush. “Busy bees,” he said. “California has the most amazing hummingbirds. They hover and poke and –”

“I know. Seen them. Now let’s go back to bed and you can demonstrate your hummingbird technique.”

“Wizard prang,” he said. “Whatever that means.” It turned out to mean a lot of steamy, squeaky sex. So that was all right. In the afternoon he cabled Barney and took the job.

3

The end of the world war released tensions that set off small wars. There was already civil war in Greece. The Dutch were losing a colonial war in what would soon be Indonesia. There were uprisings in Poland, Palestine, Algeria and the Philippines. The French were determined to keep their possessions everywhere, and soon they were fighting in Syria, Lebanon, North Africa, and in what was then known as Indo-China. France bombarded Haiphong in 1946 and the Vietnam war began. Korea had civil war. India divided itself in a frenzy of killing. Malaya had civil war. China’s internal battles went on and bloody on. Latin America wasn’t at war, but nobody could say it was at peace. In the past fifteen years, governments had been overthrown by military coups in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Cuba and a few more. The world war had ceased, but local violence kept breaking out like forest fires. Barney Knox had considerable experience of war and of flying, and he told Silk that he saw a large business opportunity in servicing impromptu and irregular military requirements by air, in an informal global context.

“Gunrunning to civil wars,” Silk said.

“That’s about it, yes.”

“Why the bullshit?”

Knox massaged his eyes. “I’ve been up too late, talking to my backers, the guys putting money into the outfit. They like bullshit, it makes them feel smarter. More corporate.”

“But it still boils down to gunrunning.”

“Guns or medicine or radios or whatever’s in demand.”

“What happened to the airline business? Coast to coast in seven hours?”

“Couldn’t raise the big bucks. Couldn’t compete with Pan Am, TWA, the rest. Besides ... who wants to fly scheduled routes? Might as well drive a Greyhound bus.”

Knox’s outfit was called The Outfit, Inc. That was only in the United States. The company had different names in different regions. In the Orient it operated as Total Transit Ltd., in the Middle East as Complete Couriers Ltd., in South America as Rapid Action Consolidated. Knox bought some surplus transports from the Air Force and hired veteran crews. He ran The Outfit, made the deals, planned the flights. Silk did what he was told: flew here and picked up the goods, flew there and delivered them, usually at an isolated airstrip left over from World War Two. He had an Australian navigator and an American radio op. They never got excited if the aircraft got shot at from the ground or buzzed by fighters. Silk enjoyed the work. He travelled the world and earned ten times his RAF pay. Occasionally he flew home for a spell of leave.

The first time he returned, he met Zoë at the House of Commons.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am,” he said, as they embraced. “I honestly thought you were completely useless, and now look! I’m married to the next Prime Minister but three.”

“You’re very jolly, Silko.” She took his arm and steered him towards the bar. “I haven’t seen you so happy since you bombed Mozart’s grave. What have you been up to?”

“Oh... stooging around, making myself useful. Tell me about you. How did you get in here?”

She ordered drinks, and told him. First, the Tory MP had revealed that the Labour candidate spent the war in the Pay Corps, far from the fighting line, until invalided out with piles. Useful, yes. Gallant, no. Retaliation was fast. A Labour supporter who was a printer rushed out five hundred posters showing the familiar face of a Tory peer who had recently been found at night in Hyde Park, behind some bushes, with a corporal of the Coldstream Guards, both naked. The caption was: I’m buggered if I’ll vote Tory! The Tory MP was white with fury. The posters got ripped down, too late: the joke was all over Lincoln (South). The Labour-Tory fight turned ugly. At a Labour rally, a farmer asked a simple question about subsidies. The candidate stumbled, blustered and thoroughly cocked-up his answer. The farmer said, “You can’t fertilize a field by farting through a hole in the fence.” The candidate’s name was Carter. Now he was Farter Carter throughout Lincoln (South). Thereafter, Labour and Tory were so hellbent on savaging each other that they ignored Zoë. She went about her independent campaign, talking sense, entertaining the crowd, looking lovely, and winning with a majority of over four thousand votes. “Piece of cake,” she said.

The division bell rang. MPs hurried out of the bar. “Shouldn’t you be doing something?” Silk asked.

“No. It’s a debate about oil. Why bother? Shell and BP and Esso have got Iran and Iraq and Persia all sewn up, anyway.”

“Iran is Persia, darling.”

“Well, that’s their problem. Isn’t it lucky that I kept the apartment at Albany? So handy for the Commons. Shall we go there now?”

“Tempt me,” he said. “Has it got hot and cold running sex?”

As they left the building, the policemen saluted her. Years of habit made his saluting arm twitch. Peace still felt odd.