Chief Technician Ernest ‘Baldy’ Hodge sat on the bus and watched the hedgerows pass in an unfocused blur. He was thinking grumpily that one day soon he would no longer be dependent on this uncomfortable and laborious mode of public transport, constantly stopping in the middle of nowhere to pick up elderly shoppers. This was one of his periodic trips to Grantham, a journey that involved changing buses in Market Tewsbury as well as a good deal of patience. He would usually make the trip on his day off; but since his personal Vulcan, XM580, was away being re-equipped and repainted he had some otherwise scarce time on his hands. He was not the sort of man to be reassigned to temporary duties elsewhere. Nothing you could put your finger on, exactly; just something about him that prevented even the engineer wing commander in charge of the maintenance unit from taking advantage of the fact that for a couple of weeks one of his chief technicians was severely underemployed.
A disgruntled, self-righteous man this Hodge, with his translucent red ears: a combative person, much given to sour rejoinders in sergeants’ mess and dispersal hut where, even among his peers and despite his gleaming scalp, he was considered the chief ‘hairy’. It was widely accepted that you didn’t tangle with Hodge. He had countersigned his cynical persona by having a blue sword tattooed inside one meaty forearm with the legend ‘Dishonour Before Death’ around the sword’s tip in Gothic script. Nobody had ever thought for a moment that this inversion of the traditional military motto had been a mistake on the part of the tattooist. Baldy was famous at Wearsby for having thrown an orderly officer into the frozen fishpond outside the sergeants’ mess one night for daring to try closing the bar at 23:00 as per standing orders. He was carpeted and fined, which only increased his perennial resentment over money, his pay being the same as that of a junior engineer officer ten years younger: some £1,218 per annum which, as a married man of thirty-four, Baldy Hodge considered wholly inadequate for an experienced aircraft servicing chief responsible for the proper functioning of one of Britain’s V-bombers. Money matters were seldom far from his calculations and conversation and, what with one thing and another, had he not been so competent and reliable in his work he would have been altogether intolerable. However, where his work was concerned C/T Hodge did things by the book; and although no-one – probably not even his wife – could honestly say they actively enjoyed his company, Amos and the rest of XM580’s crew were glad to have him aboard in a sixth seat on certain trips to foreign airfields where the ground crew’s standards might not be up to Baldy’s. If anyone could keep their aircraft going, he could.
At last they drew into Grantham bus station. Hodge hung his burly frame menacingly over two stout women with headscarves and creaking wicker baskets easing themselves arthritically down the bus’s steps. They both paused to call a thank-you to the driver.
‘Take your time, missus, I would,’ said Hodge witheringly as, released at last, he set off briskly up the High Street to Swinegate. It was a sunny day and he found his mood pleasantly expectant as he came in sight of the familiar corner shop. P. & S. Finstock was a typical tobacconist and newsagent: utterly unremarkable, in fact, with its worn lino and the smell of newsprint and paraffin. There was a large tabby cat asleep in the flyblown window beneath a copious display of handwritten cards advertising accommodation, lessons in book-keeping, secondhand cots, a breeding pair of pigeons. A decrepit old man with burst slippers and a walking stick clutching a packet of Woodbines was inching his way out as Hodge entered.
Inside, the shop was empty and silent save for a bluebottle that was probably destined to join the corpses on one or other of the yellowed scrolls of flypaper Sellotaped to the ceiling. The shelves behind the counter were lined with big, screw-topped sweet jars and stacked packets of cigarettes. Bottles of fizzy drinks stood on the floor in one corner. The counter was piled with neatly segregated newspapers. From somewhere in the interior came the whistle of a kettle and before long a man in a sagging cardigan appeared with a mug of tea in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the other. On seeing Baldy Hodge he set the mug down and parked the cigarette on the scorch-marked edge of the counter.
‘Morning, Mr Parsons,’ he said. ‘And not a bad one, either. Hope I didn’t keep you waiting? She’s out shopping so I have to make my own tea. Your post’s here. Arrived Thursday, it did. No, tell a lie, it was last Tuesday. Postman had to wait because the coalman was delivering and the cover was off the coal hole outside the door there. Half a ton of nutty slack, and more bloody slack than nuts, I can tell you. Had to stand over the bugger to make sure of a couple of hundredweight of lumps at least. And the price these days! Well, I told him, if that’s how you treat your customers I can always go back to Charringtons, can’t I? Thought I was doing you a favour, switching. You take your horse and cart and hop it back to the Co-op and tell them to pull their socks up. Who wants a great heap of coal dust in their cellar?’ He reached beneath the counter, squinting, before producing a large brown envelope bearing a row of the familiar blue French stamps. ‘All the way from gay Paree,’ he said, winking odiously. ‘Will there be anything else, then? Your usual mint humbugs?’
‘No, I’ll have a quarter of sherbet lemons today,’ said Baldy. ‘I feel like a change,’ he added with an effort at chattiness to match the shopkeeper’s while inwardly fuming with impatience.
‘Right you are, then.’ The man took down a jar and shook a rattling heap of yellow sweets into the brass scoop of a small pair of scales, then poured them neatly into a paper bag which he twirled expertly by the corners. ‘That’s two bob for the post and threepence for the sherbets. Half a crown? Ta.’ He rang up the till and handed Baldy his threepenny bit change. ‘Thanks very much, Mr Parsons. We’ll meet again, as Vera Lynn used to say.’
‘Yeah,’ said Baldy, stepping out into the sunshine of Swinegate with the envelope securely tucked under his arm. He made his way back towards the High Street before ducking into the saloon bar of a pub that hadn’t yet begun to fill up with lunchtime customers. Reassured to find he had the gloomy room to himself, he carried his Double Diamond to a distant corner table. He took a large gulp of the beer before setting the mug down and opening the envelope. He noted it was addressed to plain John Parsons. Had the name appeared with an initial he would have known he needed to arrange a new accommodation address. He wondered what the envelope contained this time. It was usually some general interest magazine all in French. Once it had been knitting patterns and the last time it had been about horses, so far as he could judge from the pictures. Baldy Hodge was not a linguist. On the contrary, he prided himself on not knowing a word of Froggish, as he called it. He had no time for all that parley-voo and owf veedersayn stuff. It didn’t seem to have done them much good in two world wars.
He drew out the magazine and immediately pushed it guiltily down beneath the table’s edge. The bastards! This time they’d sent him something typically French, all right, and it required no translation. He shot a glance at the room. There was nobody about. The barman was round the corner, dealing with customers in the public bar from which came voices and an eddy of smoke. He looked down again at his lap. Nudes on every page. And – good God! – not just women, either. This wasn’t Health & Efficiency by a long chalk: there were people actually, well, doing it. You could see everything. Baldy felt himself blush. He was, of course, a man of the world, as he often informed his subordinates at Wearsby; but really, there were limits. The dirty-minded so-and-sos! Still . . . With another furtive glance around he turned to the centre spread. At least the important thing was there. Under cover of the table he drew out a sheaf of dark blue five-pound notes – the new ones, he noted, with the Queen’s portrait. To think of sandwiching Her Majesty between pictures of that kind of filth! But what else could you expect from foreigners? He licked his fingers and surreptitiously counted the notes. Twenty, all right. That cheered things up. Another step towards the car of his dreams. He was buggered if he was going to settle for some dull runabout. He’d put that little toy Austin-Healey of young Rickards to shame. He couldn’t wait to see people’s faces at Wearsby when he burbled up in one of the new 4.2 E-Types. They’d be out in October for £2,100. Leather upholstery and that long, gleaming bonnet. One of those babies would release anybody’s inner James Bond and no mistake.
With another glance at the room Hodge swiftly tucked the money into his inside pocket, shoved the magazine back into its envelope and downed the rest of his beer. Just like the adverts claimed, he thought as he returned the empty mug to the counter: a Double Diamond works wonders. He went out into the sunshine with something of a spring in his step. He called in at the Post Office where he deposited eighty pounds in his account. He tucked the remaining fivers into his savings book and strolled back towards the bus station. He never noticed the young man with the blue windcheater and crisp haircut who kept pace with him, but always at a careful distance.