Moggerhanger

by Alan Sillitoe

  He seemed about to dispute my largesse. “I won’t fill up much on those skimpy airline meals. Perhaps Mrs Drudge will pack me a parcel of sandwiches. I have a liking for smoked ham, and cheese. And I’d like to take a little plastic bag of pickled onions.”

  Since she must have looked on him as having saved her from my wrath I said she would agree to that. “She’ll be happy to clean out the refrigerator as well, and all the cupboards.”

  “That won’t be necessary, sir,” he said, head tilted back to give a louche smile. “There is a luggage allowance, you know.”

  I called Mabel. “We have an emergency on our hands. I’ll explain all about it later, but in the meantime would you call London Airport and find the time of the next plane to Athens?”

  A smile lit her face like a lantern at All Souls. “Yes, Gilbert. I’ll do it immediately.”

  I barked at Straw, to show how serious the issue was. “Passport, sergeant? You have one?”

  “Never without it, sir. I’ve often had to get out of the country in the nick of time.”

  “You’re a man of resource. I like that.”

  “It pays to be, sir. I wouldn’t be alive if I wasn’t.”

  We opened the AA road atlas of Europe. “You’ll pick up a car—not a big one, understand?—at Athens airfield, then drive north towards Salonika, to intercept Michael. You can’t miss a Rolls Royce on the road in that country. When you make contact, put him in the picture, if he hasn’t been thrown through the frame already. Stay with him till he finishes with Greece. In other words, guard him with your life, and keep him safe from any misadventures. I leave the immediate tactical details to you. When we go out I’ll get some cash for your running expenses.”

  “I shan’t need all that much, sir.” A glisten of ferocity came and went over his face. “When I get there I’ll live off the land.”

  I feared to think what that might mean, after my experience with soldiers. “None of that,” I snapped. “Never forget that the gallant Greeks were our allies during both world wars.”

  “Oh, I know my history, sir. We had wonderful education sergeants in the army. I never missed a lecture. There was always tea and cakes after them.”

  “I’ll go with you to Heathrow, sergeant, draw some travellers’ cheques, pay your return fare, and book a car that you’ll collect in Athens.” What a divine invention was the credit card: spend now, and pay when you could.

  “Regarding a car, sir, I could always hotwire a reliable vehicle, and save the expense of hiring one.”

  “I can’t allow it. The British Army has a reputation to keep up.”

  “Oh yes, sir, I know all about that.”

  He put the fear of God into me, but he was all I had. At least Mabel was the perfect ATS office worker: “There’s a plane for Athens leaving in three hours, Gilbert.”

  I threw her my credit card. “Book a seat for Mr William Straw. Then bring out a suitcase.” I turned to him. “Now let’s get you properly dressed.”

  I’ve never seen such pleasure on an old sweat’s face: “You’re going to a lot of trouble for Michael, sir. He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

  “It’s two friends, with your good self. I’ll charge all expenses to his account so that he can reimburse me when he gets back.” I thought this a wise stricture, which might induce him to be more economical. “And if he’s out of funds he can write a Sidney Blood. Two, perhaps. Rescue expeditions like this cost the earth, and people need what Sidney Bloods they can get to lighten their dull lives. But keep an itemised account of all expenses, and bring back the receipts, for me to set against tax.”

  “Can I have a few splashes in the bathroom, sir, and a wet shave before I go? I do like to look spick and span when I travel, as befits a gentleman ranker.”

  I gave permission. “Don’t mind the blood all over the place. I had a little accident this morning.”

  “Looks like somebody’s killed a pig in there,” he called, coming back pink and clean. His clothes fitted well enough, my best navy blue suit with a white handkerchief in the lapel pocket, striped shirt with gold cufflinks, old school tie, elastic sided boots (long out of fashion, but he had taken a shine to them) my best fedora, a fortuitous transformation from a relative down-and-out to a well-dressed man of forceful character who would take no palaver from anyone. The British Army was a good finishing school for a willing learner from the slums.

  He ran my tortoiseshell comb through his hair, then packed the case with half a dozen of my shirts, three sets of underwear, socks, handkerchiefs, extra ties, and a silk dressing gown. I envisaged myself strolling along Piccadilly in brown paper. “You’re only going for a week at the most, Sergeant.”

  “I’m trying not to take too much, Major, but you just don’t know what the future holds, do you?” So in went an electric shaver, shoe polish and brush kit, and a handful of cigars. “A half-filled suitcase looks very suspicious at the customs,” he said. “But I’ll look after everything as if it was my own, and bring it all back. When I stood at your door half an hour ago I didn’t think I’d be sent on one of the most interesting operations of my life. You can be sure I’ll be a credit to you, and get Michael out of any dreck he might be in. If I can’t do it, nobody can.”

  I wondered if such a personable braggart could do all he claimed, but there was no one else to rely on. I’d seen so many meticulously concocted schemes go awry in the squalor of conflict, though the odd one now and again had come off well enough to make up for them. “I hope so. I shall want a full report from the field. Meanwhile I’ll draw up your operations sheet, then photocopy it, before taking you to the airport.”

  “There are a few other things I’d like before we go, sir, if you have them on the premises.”

  My patience wasn’t endless, but I said: “And what might they be?”

  “A pair of binoculars and a pocket compass, for a start. Then a length of twine, but not string, because it snaps too easily. Oh yes, some rubber gloves and a pair of strong pliers—rubber handled if possible.”

  My blood went down a few degrees. “You aren’t instructed to kill anyone, or go through barbed wire. It’s strictly against regulations.”

  “I realise that, sir, but every soldier knows something unexpected is always bound to happen, especially when he thinks it isn’t.”

  His attitude seemed appallingly realistic. “You would have done well in my platoon during the War, sergeant, except that you would have been dead in no time, and probably so would I.”

  I could only allow him to assemble what equipment he needed, while Mabel, looking on as if happy she wouldn’t have to give out white feathers today, seemed pleased to see me in contact with what she thought was the real world at last. Pulling the bloody rags from my head, and after cleaning up prior to getting dressed, I let her use half a lemon as antiseptic for my wound. It stung like a hot poker when the plaster fell in place as if magnetised, so painful I relished even more taking her to task, or to pieces, on my return from the airport.

  William Straw was smoothing another pair of trousers into the case. “Oh, and I’ll take a light mackintosh as well.”

  I did my best to put on a sombre expression. “What about a primus stove, to brew tea now and again?”

  Straightening, he showed an aspect of reliability no one could fault, marred only by my detection, from the army days, of a slight untrustworthiness. Yet I couldn’t complain, not having had such an interesting time since the War. I almost wished I was going with him, except that an author couldn’t allow himself to be endangered if he was to write about the experience afterwards. Though it was my duty to let others live for me, I was always willing to give them a little help.

  “I shan’t need a primus,” he said. “If I want a cup of tea by the roadside I can easily get a fire going.”

  Half the damned hillside as well, I shouldn’t wonder. Perhaps it w
as good I was staying behind. As the salt of the earth he would be uncontrollable, a type I’d met before, recalling how I’d once been told to take my platoon and deal with a machinegun in a house on the edge of a village. Unfortunately we couldn’t move an inch without being killed. My arm was hit by shrapnel, which so enraged Sergeant Cohen, a resourceful chap from the East End, that he dropped his rifle, took out a cutthroat razor, opened it, and zig-zagged into the house, standing at the door a few minutes later to present me with a bag of fingers, saying: “You can come in now, sir. They can’t shoot without these.”

  “Do you want a cutthroat razor then?” I said to the current specimen of the apocalypse.

  He took it with so much alacrity that I could in no way see him as a suitable emissary for a United Europe. “I work too stealthily to need one of these, but you’re right, sir. You never know, though I’ll try not to make a mess of your suit.” He went through the flat for a final look, as if in the house of an enemy. “I’ll chuck in a pair of these shorts, and this nice flowered shirt, if I may, and these sandals.”

  “You aren’t going for a holiday,” I said morosely.

  He was not a man for self-pity, only for looking pitiably on those who held views other than his own. “I know, sir, but I might allow myself an hour or two’s leave when the dirty work’s done.” He aimed a playful tap at my ribs. “If you see what I mean,” and gave that knowing, British infantryman’s lantern smile, as if to reassure me that he would survive at anyone’s expense except his own. “Mind you, sir, it’s a million to one against finding him.”

  “No it isn’t, Sergeant. All you have to do is get him out. You have your orders. Just think of the kudos when it’s all over.”

  “Will do, sir. You can rely on me.” He rubbed his hands with lunatic enthusiasm, “Zero hour, here I come!”

  Chapter Ten.

  While on the one hand I gloated at having let Bill Straw loose on the soft underbelly of Europe, on the other I was terrified at what the international repercussions might be. You can imagine my state of trepidation while waiting for news, and going through The Times every morning, which I sent Mabel out to buy not too long after dawn. “He won’t do it,” I wailed to her. “I just don’t see how someone like him can bring such a long shot off, at least not without another murder as at Sarajevo.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” Her cry went some way towards soothing my anxiety. She was more right than I was. Her lascivious glances of dumb admiration at William Straw when he was changing into decent clothes before departure told me that she trusted him absolutely, and might even be hankering after a touch of rough trade after too long enjoying, and becoming bored with—as was possible with any woman—my gentle and highborn ministrations.

  Be that as it may, a missive came at last from Greece, the stamps placed neatly upside down on the quarto brown envelope. I hadn’t imagined William Straw to be familiar with Attic script, but the school he had been to must have had excellent and dedicated teachers, because he could spell and punctuate to an extent that had he been in my battalion during the War he would have been recommended for Sandhurst. His dispatch was cleanly typed, though where he had found a secretary to do it wasn’t stated. I give the document exactly as laid out, with no words doctored:

  OPERATION ORDER, No. 1.

  DATE: As given.

  STRAWFORCE, Greece.

  ADVANCEGUARD: Sgt. W. Straw, late His Majesty’s Sherwood Foresters (known among the lads as the 1st Battalion Shooter and Looters).

  1. Beg to report to Major Blaskin the results of my expedition to Greece. I reached Athens according to plan, collected motor transport as arranged, and picked up as good a map of the terrain as could be obtained. Supplies of food for messing arrangements were amply available from Duty Free at London Heathrow, and the airport shop in Athens.

  2. I immediately set off West and then North in a probing operation. The reconnaissance was successful in that no enemy were sighted that day. My appreciation of the situation was that I must get as far North of Athens as possible in order to give myself plenty of time to examine all viable points of interception. I don’t like driving in cities, in any case, or in the dark, either, preferring to see the enemy at a distance, before closing in.

  3. A policeman in Athens waved me down, but I easily outpaced and then lost him in my powder blue Corsa snuffbox. Athens seemed to have had a bit of trouble in the War, because I saw lots of ruins on a hill. As usual the lads of the RAF did a very fair job. After skirting the bomb damage I had a right old time disentangling myself from the urban sprawl. Room for manoeuvre is more my ticket, mobile warfare much preferred.

  4. Beyond Athens I ran over a chicken, a dog, a snake, and a cardboard box, in that order, but the sight of the blue sea easily made up for it. Even a soldier appreciates inspiring scenery. The Greeks are dangerous drivers, by which I mean they are very good, because in spite of their insane method of skirmishing they never touched me.

  5. It was imperative that I toothcomb the region where Michael was likely to be encountered, so I did the hundred miles to Lamia in doublequick time, stopping only once to brew up some tea. I can’t give a six-figure map reference as to where Lamia is, because there’s no military grid on the map, but you’ll find it in your atlas I’m sure. I was too cautious to go beyond the place because it was getting dark. Straw may be reckless, but he doesn’t take risks.

  6. I sat in a café eating bread and sausage, and studying the map. An education sergeant in the army once told us that General Stonewall Jackson in the American Civil War—up to then I’d thought he was a sculptor carving statues—said that constant attention to the map saved a lot of blood and trouble in the end. Anyway, I noticed that two roads went North from Lamia, one through mountains, and a better one by the coast. I decided to take the latter.

  7. I reckoned up how many days Michael would need to reach approximately where I was. Knowing he left Milan yesterday—it don’t seem possible—the next morning he would be just inside Jugoslavia. I further calculated that after two more nightstops he would be approaching my ambush position about five in the afternoon. This gave time for me to think where he would go off the road on that day to find a quiet billet, which I knew he always liked to do. I doubted that he’d already been bumped off the road in Italy, because if the Green Toe Gang was on his track they would follow him all the way to the Athens area to find out who his contact was, then hit him over the head and take whatever look was being transferred. I’ve worked with such people now and again in the past so can read them like the Beano.

  8. I pulled off the highway beyond Lamia and slept in the car. Not that you could call it sleep, because the chocolate box vehicle was like a toy. My long legs got shocking stabs of the cramp, so I put your Burberry on the ground, and in spite of stones and tree roots I slept like a baby, until tinkling goat bells played wakey-wakey at dawn. I found a café-hotel at a little seaside settlement a mile away, ordered thimbles of sweet black coffee, and a few sheets of delicious honey cake, then spruced myself up as much as could be done in the toilet. It was the sort of place Michael might put up at, but I decided to check out a few others in the area first, and made up my mind which was the most likely, then hope it would turn out to be the right one.

  9. I spent that day driving between Lamia and Larissa, checking every byway from north to south, looking for any off shoots Michael might nip into if he was pursued, or if he felt too clapped out after a heavy day at the wheel to go any further. There were hardly any lanes fit for a Rolls Royce in such terrain, and I knew Michael wasn’t stupid enough to get stuck on a mule track.

  10. I thought myself into the sort of mind he would be in while driving south from Salonika and maybe nodding at the wheel when he got beyond Larissa. Michael and I have done so much dodgy work together that I knew him almost as well as he knows me. In any case we were both born north of the Trent, and had the same rough life as kids.

 
11. I would occasionally stop the car and climb a hill or spur—your field glasses are second to none, sir, and very sharp, worth their weight in gold on a stunt like this—to observe any exit road which would draw him by its width and possible convenience. Knowing he also would have paid attention to the map made it easier for me to figure things out. Imagine trying to get into the mind of somebody who didn’t know what a map was for! I knew that the more I worked my faculties to the bone the more likely I was to be right. Didn’t we used to say in the Army, when we had to dig in under artillery fire: ‘Sweat saves blood’?

  12. I have to admit that the next couple of days turned out to be a bit of a holiday for yours truly. I idled up and down that route, brewing tea every ten miles or so, without which refreshment no British soldier can be expected to retreat or advance, till I knew the area better than the back of my hand. No Green Toe Gang scum could know it nearly as well. Michael had been bred to take in landscape with his mother’s milk, so had grown up as English to the backbone as I was. He claims to be Irish, I know, but nobody can blame him for that.

  13. I was so much in my element on that recce I almost wished it could go on forever, with all that fresh air and interesting scenery. At every village I amused myself by laying out a scheme of attack, as a platoon exercise. You know what I mean: mortars here, machineguns there, noting dead ground, arranging covering fire, and selecting the best avenues of approach before the lads go in with the bayonet. That sort of skill never leaves one, does it, sir? The colonel once went on bended knees for me to take a commission, but I was too well off being a sergeant.

  14. I saw a young chap minding a gaggle of goats, and thought I might lure one away and strangle it. The old wire would come in handy there, but I fought off the temptation. Even so, it would have made a good supper to eat under an olive tree when the stars came out, and then leaning back to smoke one of your excellent cigars. I scrubbed the notion with tears in my eyes, because I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself. In any case, first I’d have to get the wire around the throat of the savage guard dog that threatened to rip my turn-ups on the two or three times I got too close.