Angus MacGregor sought the sanctuary of his room in the Mess after that heady mixture of near-euphoria, sorrow, anger, frustration and accusation that had filled the debriefings.
He had never seen even Cavendish first so triumphant and then so angry, a dangerous and explosive combination, nor seen a young sprog pilot in tears.
All in all, they had triumphed, hadn’t they? Thirteen had completed a successful operation. MacGregor had seen it with his own eyes, the blazing roof, the tumbling walls, the weird pyrotechnics, the clouds of orange and black smoke.
And yet. And yet…
He had also seen Ashley and Simmonds slice into each other. He would remember that split-second for ever, remember yelling out a useless warning, remember himself and Ryan sitting for a moment totally frozen, while down those shattered fragments fell, twisting, spinning, bursting, disintegrating.
But the rest had survived, thank God, and all but the little clot had bombed the right target. Why so uneasy? he asked himself as he closed the door of his room behind him. Ashley and Simmonds had bought it. But they were not the first or the last. And this feeling wasn’t only because of them.
Wasn’t his uneasiness partly due to the fact that he’d heard that bloody dog again and it had presaged losses? It wasn’t just a farmyard dog as he’d told Ryan, it was that same retriever. He knew that howl, and yes, he had to admit it, he was afraid.
He was also afraid that morale, so dear to Cavendish’s heart, would really take a plunge, despite the mission’s success, and that Cavendish would have to take that out on someone. He’d already indicated to Maddox that he despised both him and his airmanship and was out for his blood. Not that MacGregor had any particular brief for Maddox, but he had a brief for justice, and to bomb the wrong target under those conditions was not unusual. Cavendish, being an operational virgin, couldn’t possibly understand that. MacGregor also felt sorry for Maddox’s crew. They had looked ready to murder each other.
It all added up to a bad night. He hardly slept and when he did doze off, he kept waking himself, screaming out to Ashley and Simmonds.
Then it was morning and it was Bronwen waking him. ‘Oh, sir! I wouldn’t have wakened you, but you was having such a bad dream! You was sitting up. Calling the dog, sir!’
‘Away with you, woman! I was doing no such thing. You’re a wee story-teller, Bronwen.’
‘Oh, sir. I swear!’
‘You just wanted a natter, Bronwen.’
‘No, sir. But I do want to say, I’m ever so glad to see you back. I was worried.’
‘You’re always worried, Bronwen. It’s on account of being Welsh instead of Scots.’
‘My friend Johnny was worried, too.’
‘Johnny being the Wingco’s batman no less.’
‘That’s right, sir. The Wingco thinks ever so highly of my Johnny. Says he’d make a good butler and maybe he might give him a job in civvy street. Johnny says the Wingco was in a terrible state last night, what with all that about Mr Maddox, and then someone mentioned the dog to him, and that really got up his nose!’
‘And what a nose for any dog to get up!’ MacGregor laughed. ‘Now be a good girl, Bronwen, and get me some toast and a wee spot of marmalade. I’m knackered. I’m going to lie in till lunch-time.’
‘I’ll bring you your lunch, too, if you like, sir.’
‘Och, no! But thanks. I’ll be human again by lunch-time.’
And so he was, more or less. The dark feeling of unease had left him. He showered and dressed. Bronwen had cleaned his buttons till they were like gold, and polished his shoes. He walked briskly down the corridor and was about to skirt the bar when he saw Maddox, sitting alone in a corner hunched over an untouched half pint. He walked over, snapping his fingers for the barman to draw another two pints and to bring them over.
Like a number of other people, he had sometimes hoped uncharitably that Maddox would get egg on his face, but when it happened it wasn’t a pretty sight.
‘Why, halloo, Peter! Bit early for serious drinking.’
‘Oh, sir.’ Maddox immediately flushed with abject guilt. ‘This is my first.’
‘I’ll believe it, laddie. Thousands wouldn’t.’
Maddox attempted a feeble smile. He had been over to Flights in the hope of seeing Pip, but she wasn’t on duty, and the RAF corporal who was exclaimed to him over the damage to Sugar’s airframe. ‘You collected a packet, sir!’ He didn’t add, ‘and all for nothing’. But that comment had seemed to Maddox to hang in the air.
‘So how are we this morning, Peter?’
‘Awful sir. I feel awful.’
‘You look a wee bit grey round the gills. Drink up!’
Maddox wet his lips with the beer and raised mournful eyes to MacGregor. ‘I’ve let everyone down. But I can explain…’
‘Ho’d your wheesht, man! Close the hangar doors! No shop in the Mess, remember!’
‘But now no one wants anything to do with me.’
‘That’s codswallop, Peter. Everyone knows you’re still learning. You’ll know next time.’
‘Will the Wingco court-martial me?’
‘Course not.’
‘But he has taken me off the Battle Order.’
‘You’ll be back on it in no time.’
‘I was so sure I was spot-on.’ Maddox dipped his face into his tankard, like a weeping girl into a handkerchief. He really was a case.
‘Bombing’s a very inaccurate science at the moment, Peter. The boffins need to work on it, and so do we crews. But you can’t cry over spilt milk. Just let it give more power to your elbow. Put it behind you, except to say that it’s a lesson learnt. That maybe you’re too ready to think you’re right.’
And that was the understatement of the year, MacGregor thought. The laddie was either up like a self-confident balloon or down like a deflated one. But after a couple more pints, Maddox looked almost cheerful and certainly drunk.
‘Now off you go, Peter! Lie down. Have a good sleep. Things will look a lot different in the morning.’
That was of course the usual remark you made to anyone whom you couldn’t really help in any other way, and there was no great originality, certainly no vision or perception, in that.
MacGregor continued on his way to the dining-room for his cottage pie and rice pudding. He had done his morale boosting for the day and he was not minded to talk shop, so when he had collected his plate of evil-looking cottage pie, he didn’t sit on the usual aircrew table but found himself a place among the penguins, the SHQ and other ground officers. One of the engineering officers had clearly been moaning about the loss of the two new aircraft, but at a frown from Pringle, he shut up.
Pringle passed him the salt and pepper. ‘You’ll need both, Angus! I suspect it’s horse-meat. I think they left the saddle on, too.’
He gave him a kindly smile, but his eyes were sombre. He’s as worried as I am, MacGregor thought, but doubted he was worried for the same reasons.
Pringle had finished his lunch and MacGregor was halfway through the gummy goo they called rice pudding when he heard sharp steps clicking on the polished floor behind him. A heavy hand descended on his shoulder.
Funny, MacGregor thought, how even a hand on the shoulder can convey volumes! No kindly hand-clap this. No prelude to come and have a brandy to finish off, old boy.
MacGregor turned and looked up.
He saw Wing Commander Cavendish’s face looking down in tautly concealed anger.
‘I’d like a word,’ he said without preamble. He scowled at the half-filled bowl of rice pudding. ‘Finished?’ he demanded.
There could only be one answer. ‘Yes, sir.’
MacGregor pushed back his chair and stood up, wondering what the hell it was all about.
‘Right, then!’
Cavendish turned smartly as if on the parade ground and marched towards the door. MacGregor had no idea where they were going. He had no choice but to follow. They marched out of the dining-room – the man of authority followed by a puzzled miscreant. For although there was no doubt Cavendish considered a crime had been committed, MacGregor had not yet guessed what it was, except that someone had to suffer for Maddox’s debacle. Down the corridor they continued, turning smartly into the Mess office.
The door was half-open. Sergeant Fowler was sitting at his desk. He looked up guiltily as if he was falsifying the accounts, which he probably was.
He too jumped to his feet, and when Cavendish told him brusquely, ‘I’d like the use of your office for a moment, sergeant,’ he backed out grovelling, as if from the presence of royalty.
Cavendish wasted no time. ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you, MacGregor.’
‘I kenned that by the way you brought me in, sir.’
‘Don’t be impertinent!’
‘Och, I was nae being that. I thought maybe it was a little drastic.’
‘You are being impertinent.’
‘No, sir. Maybe what you have to say is drastic.’
Cavendish’s nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed. ‘Serious is the word I would choose, MacGregor!’
MacGregor inclined his head.
‘For I am sure we both regard morale as serious!’
Oh, God, MacGregor thought, here we go again! This is where I came in and no doubt where I’ll go out. Morale! Aloud, he said, ‘Yes, sir! Very serious! But what exactly has it to do with me?’
‘A great deal, MacGregor.’
‘You’re not seriously holding me responsible for the collision, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Nor for young Maddox?’
‘I think his training could have been better.’
‘The training of us all could be better. But just let me wise you up on one thing. Three-quarters of the bombs dropped by our Command don’t land on the right target. I’ve dropped bombs in France on the wrong target. We all have! If we’ve operated at all.’
He paused to let that barb go home. Then he went on, ‘I’m no Maddox fan, but you can’t take it out on him for that! Nor can you try to come storming after me.’
‘I wasn’t storming, as you see fit to call it, for that.’
‘For what, then… sir?’
‘For morale in general. And your contribution to the lowering of it.’
‘My contribution to the lowering of morale! Christ almighty, how?’
‘By spreading foolish stories.’
‘About?’
‘About a howling dog which you,’ his voice became witheringly sarcastic, ‘with your special Highland gift, can hear.’
For a moment MacGregor was shaken, not because Cavendish was angry, but because he clearly took the matter seriously.
‘You’re surely not serious, sir?’
‘I am serious. Very serious.’ He paused. ‘I can quite see that when you spread these silly stories, you were not. That it was probably your idea of a joke. But surely you’re sorry you ever started this? Surely you could see how this would snowball? Surely you can see now the effect these stories have on the young and foolish?’
‘Sir, I didn’t spread stories. I said on the odd occasion that I heard a dog howl. Other people have made more of it.’
‘A good deal more,’ Cavendish said drily. ‘The whole Station appears to have heard of it. The gen now is that it’s a ghostly dog. And presages loss.’
‘I’ve always thought it was a real dog. I’ve actually looked for it. But there is a legend in Marshfield village about a howling dog. The pub has a photo of it.’
‘And you conveniently matched the two together! If you match that howling dog to casualties and botched targets, then it cannot but undermine morale! I prove my point, I think. You, MacGregor, have helped 13 to regard themselves as unlucky. You are clearly bad for morale!’
Bad for morale! God, MacGregor had heard that convenient condemnation before. For chaps who got their tail out of line or questioned Authority. Bad for morale. The rotten apple in the barrel. Get rid of him!
Stung by anxiety, he snapped back, ‘If anyone’s bad for morale, sir, it’s you!’
‘How dare you say that?’
‘Because it’s true! You don’t stick up for your squadron. You don’t bat for them with Group. We’ve got inadequate aircraft with inadequate bomb sights and armament.’
‘And when I manage to get us new ones, you let the youngsters write them off, MacGregor!’
‘And write themselves off, too, don’t forget! They don’t do it because they want to! And, Christ, you can’t blame me for that!’
‘No. But perhaps your leadership on the operation could have been better.’
‘Och, leadership! I’m glad you mentioned that, sir. Because,’ he thrust his face forward into Cavendish’s, ‘that’s where 13 is bloody unlucky! In its leadership. Your leadership! We’re led by an inadequate, operationally inexperienced Wing Commander, who has never,’ he separated each word to give it maximum velocity, ‘…done… a… single… op!’
That felled Cavendish like an ox, sliced him down the middle, unmanned him. The crimson glow of anger drained from his face, leaving it as white as a sprog pilot’s mopping up his gunner’s spattered brains.
‘A commander who has never once done what he’s asking his men to do. Who doesn’t know what it’s like to bomb in anger. In cloud! In opposition! Who doesn’t know how easy it is to miss. God in heaven, Maddox’s mistake was understandable! I hold no brief for Maddox. But it could happen to any crew. Experienced Wingcos know that! Chairborne sprogs don’t.’
Now he had plunged the fatal knife into his superior officer, MacGregor couldn’t help going on turning it. Partly because he couldn’t stop himself, partly because he was goaded by the Wing Commander’s manifest pain. There was another reason, too: besting Cavendish, getting him as it were on the floor, eased some of his deepest doubts about his own courage and manhood.
And yet when Cavendish turned and, without another word, opened the door and stalked out without bothering to close it behind him, MacGregor almost ran after him and apologised.
But he didn’t.
After a moment, Sergeant Fowler crept back in, eyes nervously darting all over as if he expected to see blood on the floor. ‘Is it all right if I come in now, sir?’ he asked a pale-faced MacGregor.
MacGregor nodded wordlessly.
Sergeant Fowler looked at him closely. ‘Are you OK, sir?’
‘Never better.’
He was thinking he had come to a pretty parlous state when he was actually sorry for Cavendish. But his common sense told him that he had merely downed him. That was always his fatal flaw, to wound but not to kill. He would probably regret this argument. The Wing Commander was in a far stronger position than he was, and infinitely more ruthless. Vengeance would be his.
But first, fate or the gods, or whatever myopic creatures were running the war, dealt Cavendish and 13 Squadron a strange card.
The following day, the AOC was on the scrambler telephone to Wing Commander Cavendish. His enthusiasm was clearly audible across the room. Cavendish had to hold the instrument away from his ear.
‘Just had the PRU reports in, Charles! On 13’s factory op! Bloody good show! Bloody marvellous! Hardly a stone standing!’
It took some little time to cut through that froth of exaggerated enthusiasm to discover that it was in fact Maddox’s target that had been the right one. The other, the one bombed by the rest of the squadron, was a decoy hastily erected by the Hun.
‘You have to hand it to them, Charles! Cunning bastards, the Hun! But luckily you and me and 13 Squadron are just that much more cunning than they are, eh, Charles?’
The AOC’s praises ran round the Station like reinvigorating wildfire. The last had become first again. A suitable sermon for Simon, Pringle thought, when he heard about it. Once again, Maddox was on top of the world and, in the light of his demolition of the target, the fact that the rest of them had bombed the decoy was no bad thing.
However, the day’s good news did not make MacGregor’s insolence any the less, nor did it change Wing Commander Cavendish’s view on MacGregor’s effect on squadron morale.
Although he was aware that no doubt MacGregor would feel that whatever action he took was prompted by the man’s taunts and the effect of those on his personal vanity, such was not the case.
Cavendish was a good deal more mature and observant than MacGregor realised. He studied his men more closely than anyone knew. MacGregor’s response to his squadron commander’s reproof had, in Cavendish’s opinion, been not only insolent but exaggerated and disturbingly over-emotional. It had shown signs of acute stress and anxiety.
So Cavendish, when he lifted the telephone and asked to be put through to the Medical Officer, had exonerated himself from any personal vindictiveness.
‘Lesley,’ he said when she answered, ‘I’d like a word.’
‘A word,’ she repeated, sounding wary. ‘What about? My replacement?’
‘Good heavens, no! Group have kept quite mum about that. And frankly, Marshfield isn’t going to jog their elbow.’
‘You surprise me, sir.’
‘I don’t see why. We don’t want to lose you. You’re fitting in.’
‘Am I?’
‘Indeed you are. You’re an asset. In fact, I’m ringing you now to ask for your help.’
‘Times are changing,’ she said and gave a little pleased laugh.
‘It’s about one of our pilots. I’d like you to run the ruler over him. If I could just fill you in with his background…’
She was remarkably co-operative. She still remembered Bates. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake, if mistake it was, twice.
As a result of their conversation, two days later, as MacGregor made his way to the Mess dining-room for a spot of lunch, checking the letter rack on the way, he found a note in the his pigeonhole. It bade him tersely to report immediately to Sick Quarters.
A wry smile spread over MacGregor’s face when he read it. A tete-a-tete with the Luscious Lesley, her of the dark, shiny bobbed hair and wide blue eyes, would have been welcomed by any red-blooded lad on the squadron. And yet…
As he walked the few hundred yards to Sick Quarters, MacGregor’s nostrils held a hint of rat smell.
Reaching Sick Quarters, he was immediately whisked inside her office.
‘VIP treatment,’ MacGregor said, making himself comfortable in the chair she waved him to, and giving her his best innocent smile.
She gave a nice enough, but slightly uncomfortable smile in return, took a packet of Gold Flake from her desk drawer and offered it to him.
He extracted one and brought out his lighter.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ he said, as she also helped herself from the packet.
‘I do. But just occasionally.’
He spun the wheel of his lighter. ‘This being an occasion?’
She laughed uncertainly, and when he leaned across the desk to light her cigarette, her fingers trembled.
She drew in a lungful of smoke as if it were oxygen, narrowed her eyes and began, ‘You’ve never reported sick, Flight Lieutenant?’
‘True. Ought I to have done?’
‘No, no! Of course not!’
She paused, made some vague remark about liking to keep an eye on everyone’s health, then continued. ‘Yet you went through the Battle of France.’
‘True.’
‘When 13 Squadron casualties were terrific.’
‘True.’
‘It must have been a shattering experience for you.’
There the penny finally dropped. The rat smell became unignorable. The poor lass was as good as reading off a check-list of questions. She’d been through this before with Cavendish, the bastard! Cavendish distrusted him. Worse still, he, MacGregor, had insulted Cavendish’s manhood. So Cavendish had decided there wasn’t room for both of them on the squadron. Therefore he was going to do what they did to Siegfried Sassoon in the last war. Mentally unstable. Flak-happy. Bordering on the deranged. The attitude was the same, only in this war the label was different – Lack of Moral Fibre this time round.
‘Not true!’ MacGregor answered loudly.
She frowned. ‘But you did a lot of ops.’
‘So?’
‘You must need a break.’
‘When I’ve finished the tour, I’ll get one. When. And not before.’
She ground out her cigarette.
‘Well, I do think you need a medical examination.’
‘If you say so, doctor.’ MacGregor took off his jacket with exaggerated alacrity and began unbelting his trousers.
She said hastily, ‘Waist upwards. Jacket and shirt will do.’
‘Och, lassie! That’s only half a job.’
She frowned. ‘On the couch, please.’
Now that he was sure of her complicity with Cavendish, he made it hard for her, watching her with exaggeratedly wide eyes as she went about her job with sphygmomanometer, stethoscope, thermometer, spatula and hammer. He saw an uncomfortable blush creep up under her pale, fine skin.
When she tested his reflexes, he gave great international footballer kicks, and when she took his blood pressure, he gazed soulfully up into her eyes and said hoarsely, ‘If it’s up, it’s because you…’
‘It’s not up,’ she snapped.
When she enquired about his bowels and waterworks, he so phrased his replies and assumed such facial expressions that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He held his hands out for her to see their steadiness, and then invited her to do the same to have a dekko at hers.
When she asked him if he ever suffered from headaches, he said, ‘I have this constant one.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘It’s called Cavendish.’
It was not very gallant of him, but he was pleased to see her flush.
She asked him how he felt about operational flying.
‘There’s only one thing I like better.’
And the silly lass fell into the elephant trap and asked him what that was.
‘Sex.’ He said loudly. ‘Sex and flying are very similar.’ Then he paused and, when she said nothing, went on, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about my sex life? Or didn’t Cavendish tell you to do that? Don’t you know that if you’d been a male doctor that would have been the first thing you’d have asked?’
And then, just as he was thinking those were unbecoming remarks for a MacGregor, the silly wee lass pinched the end of her pretty nose with her fingers in a vain attempt to stop her tears.
‘Oh, Christ!’ MacGregor let out his breath in a long exasperated sigh. ‘Oh, Christ!’
He felt an outsize heel. Come to that, he was an outsize heel.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and in his own defence, ‘it’s not fair posting women as MOs!’
But that made her weep all the more.
‘You sound like Cavendish,’ she said in muffled reproach.
‘Christ, now you are insulting me!’
She gave a tiny tearful laugh, and then he was up and out of his chair and round the desk and putting his arm round her shoulders.
His arm worked wonders. It was the first time in her life that she had felt a man’s comforting arm, and warmed by it, out came all her fears and frustrations, her feelings of guilt, how she felt she had been inadequate, especially with Bates.
‘Listen, lassie! We’re all inadequate,’ he said, smelling the sweetness of her newly washed hair. ‘We just don’t dare to admit it. We wouldn’t be able to go on if we did.’
He had always got on well with women, but today he was surprised at his own flow of easy wisdom and philosophy. In no time at all he had forgotten her collusion with Cavendish, or if he hadn’t forgotten, had made it understandable in the light of her guilt about Bates.
In another few minutes he was prescribing a drink and, to his surprise, she was accepting. Plans were forming in his head. Ryan had a part share in an old jalopy, which he would lend his Skipper.
By twenty hundred hours, they were rattling along the road to the village, and now darker, more delectable plans were forming in MacGregor’s mind.
They headed straight for the Stars and Stripes. Not that MacGregor thought much of the place, but there was nowhere else unless you went into Hythe, and Ryan hadn’t got much juice in the old jalopy.
The bar was only half full because most of the airmen came in later after they’d tanked up a bit at the Sergeants’ or Officers’ Messes or at the NAAFI.
There was quite a decent fire, and in the corner MacGregor found a rickety sofa just big enough for two, which he drew up beside it.
‘What are you drinking, Lesley?’
‘A brandy, if they’ve got any.’
‘Bad as that, is it?’
‘It’s been that sort of day,’ she agreed.
It struck him she was wondering what on earth Cavendish would say when she told him MacGregor was as fit as a flea.
‘Brandy’s under the counter,’ Wilf told him. ‘But,’ he winked, ‘seeing it’s you…’ He brought out a bottle and poured a generous tot. ‘Funny you knowing the name of the Yanks’ dog, sir. And do you see? I’ve pinned up their photo again.’
‘So you have! Good for you!’
‘D’you see, sir? Their names underneath. Each one signed. All of them, from Captain Shea to little Lieutenant Robinson.’
‘What was all that about?’ Lesley asked when he returned with the drinks and set them on another rickety piece of furniture, a small table with a tiled top.
‘Just the Yanks that used to be here.’
‘When?’
‘The last war.’
‘I must have a look.’
She got to her feet, walked over to the bar and peered up at the photograph above the hatch.
‘Nice-looking lads,’ she smiled, returning to sit down. ‘Plus dog. Is that where you got your story?’
‘My story? Which one?’
‘The one that the Wingco’s so browned off about.’
MacGregor frowned. ‘Jesus, he didn’t bat your ear with that as well, did he?’
‘It was peripheral.’ She smiled again.
‘Stupid bastard!’ MacGregor said with feeling, and took a long swig of his beer. ‘So what’s he going to say when you give him your verdict?’
‘Which one?’
‘On me.’
She pulled a wry face and shrugged.
A terrible thought struck him. Women were indeed the weaker sex. They had a built-in desire to please authority. ‘You’re not going to let me down, are you? You are going to tell him I’m A1.’
‘That’s an awful thing to suggest,’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course I’m going to tell him you’re A1. Why did you think I mightn’t? D’you reckon I’m frightened of him or something?’
‘You wouldn’t be the only one.’
‘Well, I’m not.’ She paused. ‘No, that’s not true. I am. But not enough to let him interfere with my medical opinion. He overpowers me, but not altogether. My father is exactly like him. My father’s a surgeon in the Navy. Very tight-lipped. Autocratic. Unapproachable. Distant. I always wanted to please him. But at the same time I always wanted to have the guts to stand up to him.’
‘And did you?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Do you love him? Your father.’
‘Of course.’
A wry thought occurred to him. ‘And how about Cavendish? D’you fancy him?’
Her reply was immediate. Too immediate. ‘I loathe him.’
‘The two can be confused sometimes, lassie. Attraction and repulsion.’
‘You being a bit of an expert?’ she laughed teasingly and, reaching out, lightly touched his hand as it rested on the table. ‘So why not tell me about your girlfriend? Seeing I didn’t ask you this afternoon.’
He told her as much as he considered it prudent to tell her. Yes, he’d met a girl when he was at agricultural college. He liked her, but everyone knew the war was coming. He’d had a brief affair with a young Frenchwoman. No one since he came to Marshfield.
‘That situation is vacant,’ he said, raising his eyebrows several times in humorous invitation.
In fact, he wouldn’t have minded offering her that vacant situation. Except that she was the serious kind and with life, his life, hanging on a thread, he wasn’t going to get serious with any girl. But as the evening wore on he liked her better and fancied her more, and he began to forge unworthy plans for bringing the evening to its triumphant conclusion.
She told him about her schooldays, her young brother, her family’s devastation when he was killed.
‘The flower of the flock, as they say. My father would much rather it had been me.’
‘That’s a silly thing to say!’
She shrugged. ‘You don’t know my father.’
‘True. But I know Cavendish and therefore you have my deepest sympathy.’
She smiled faintly. ‘Now you tell me about your family.’ So he told her about the farm, his walks in the mountains, his father, whom he had to confess he liked, their intense pride in their clan. He almost mentioned that intermittent, fleeting second sight, but he didn’t. To mention it was to admit it, so instead he told her about his younger sister, her pony, their dogs.
It was all very cosy, very encouraging. Some of the sergeants and the younger P/Os in the squadron came in. They eyed MacGregor enviously, but they played the game and kept their distance.
Wilf brought out the brandy bottle from under the counter whenever requested, and it wasn’t until Wilf called, ‘Time! Time, gentlemen, please!’ that MacGregor realised the evening was over.
And it wasn’t until the MO tried to rise to her feet that he realised she was pie-eyed.
MacGregor put his arm round her and they made a reasonably dignified exit. But the shock of cold moonlit air almost knocked her out.
In the car, he opened the window wide, saying her breath smelled like a distillery.
‘You bought me it,’ she pointed out.
‘So I did! Do I get anything in return?’
She clasped her hands on her knee and said nothing.
MacGregor had been considering stopping the car in a convenient field gateway. After all, she was very fanciable. A nice bit of crackling. But instead he drove straight and steady through the main gates of the camp and round to the Officers’ Mess. He stopped the car by the side entrance, the one that opened onto the corridor and which thereby bypassed the bar. It was frequently left unlocked.
Flying Officer Stamford’s head was sunk on her chest. He could hear by her regular breathing that trustingly she was asleep.
‘Lesley! Which is your room?’
She jerked awake, blinked, and then slowly, as if it was a difficult question to answer, ‘Upstairs. Room 7.’
MacGregor swore under his breath. Upstairs! Jesus! He glanced up at the blacked-out windows. God knew who was moving around in the corridors. Getting unobserved to Room 7 with one drunken MO in tow would have foxed an SOE agent, might well result in one not over-popular Flight Lieutenant being delivered for discipline to Cavendish.
Luck was with them. The door was unlocked, the downstairs corridor empty. MacGregor guided her towards the stairs. She kept catching her shoe on the treads, stumbling and giggling.
‘Ssh!’ he put his finger to his lips.
‘Ssh!’ she echoed twenty times louder.
They reached the first floor.
‘Left or right?’ he asked her.
‘Right.’
From behind a closed door, he could hear a radio playing, laughter, music.
‘Which is the Queen Bee’s room?’ he whispered.
‘That one.’
The next door was labelled ‘Bathroom’. Water gurgled and a sweet, overpowering scent of bath salts leaked out. Behind the next, a lavatory chain was pulled. And just as the bolt on the door was snapping back, he saw the blessed number seven.
He opened the door and shoved her inside.
‘You’d better go,’ she said, ‘you’d get shot if you were found here.’
‘Court-martialled,’ he replied cheerfully.
And then, as if her right hand didn’t know what her left hand was doing, she put her arms round him and held up her face for him to kiss her. ‘You’re a good man, Angus MacGregor.’
Then she began unbuttoning his jacket.
‘You’ve got it wrong, lassie! It’s you that needs to get undressed.’
He began unbuttoning hers.
After that, she unfastened the buckle of her skirt and let it swish down round her ankles. He stared wide-eyed for a moment at her black silk knickers, the dainty suspenders spanning the soft silky flesh above her stocking tops, and thought, This is it, after all. What the evening was all about!
Suddenly a voice deep inside MacGregor called, ‘Stop!’ Some ghostly chieftain intoned something bloody foolish about a MacGregor not taking advantage of an inebriated woman. So as she removed her shirt and disclosed a tiny bra half-cupping beautiful rounded breasts, MacGregor demanded sternly, ‘Lesley! Where is your nightie?’
Averting his eyes as she unclipped those tiny suspenders and rolled down her stockings, he repeated sternly, ‘Your nightie!’
When she appeared not to hear, he dived towards the bed, rolled back the white counterpane, lifted a pillow and found another froth of nonsense, this time in snowy white with blue ribbons, which made him feel sick with missing such a chance.
He dropped the thing over her head. ‘You’re a bonny wee lass,’ he said almost apologetically. ‘Pity you’re not sober!’
Then he pulled back the bedclothes. ‘Get in!’
She seemed at that point to sober. ‘I’m not going to bed with you.’
‘Of course you’re not!’
He pulled the covers up round her. He turned her head to one side.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Just in case you’re sick.’
She seemed to go to sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
But he doubted she was. He felt she was watching him through half-closed lids as he tiptoed to the door, opened it, made sure the corridor was still empty, and glided out.
What a missed opportunity, he told himself again. But he knew it wasn’t, not just because a MacGregor didn’t behave like that, but because she really was a poor lass.
Deep down she fancied Cavendish. There could be few worse fates for any woman than that.