‘I tried to get Mr Barnes to stop calling me sir. It didn’t work.’
‘It wouldn’t. He’s a bloody Red. He secretly hates you for selling out.’
I took in what he’d just said.
‘Have I sold out?’
‘Definitely.’ Cliff eased himself back into the panto. ‘Officer and a gentleman. I was just trying to explain.’
I took a deep breath, and told Cliff, ‘Then try again. I didn’t get it the first time round.’
‘First of all there’s Grace. Sir Peter’s daughter, and she’s had a good war. Probably get a medal for it, or something. A legend in her own lifetime.’
‘Bedtime,’ I corrected him. ‘A legend in her own bedtime. If she gets a medal it will be a Distinguished Service Medal.’
‘Unkind, Charlie,’ Sir Peter said. ‘Very unkind.’
‘Loving Grace doesn’t blind me to her eccentricities.’
He smiled when I used the word eccentricities.
‘You do love her, then?’
‘Of course I do. Why the fuck do you think I’m here?’ Sir Peter winced, so I hurried on. ‘And now she’s got herself pregnant and buggered off; leaving everyone worried sick about her.’
Cliff said, ‘Exactly. That brings us back to Sir Peter. Not only worried about his stepdaughter, but with enough clout to do something about it. We need his bullets, and his whisky is just about the only export currency the government has left. He has what others wish for: Winston’s ear. Sir Peter and Lady Adelaide want Grace back, and Winston expects that a grateful nation will do its best. You have no idea how many folk think that you’re just the man to find her.’ He paused, but couldn’t resist sticking on, ‘Alternatively, I can order you to.’
‘You’ll have to, Cliff. It’s a barmy idea.’
‘Then I just have. Go across the water, bloody find her. Bloody bring her back; kid too, if she bloody has one.’
‘Bloody stupid.’
‘Bloody way of the bloody world.’
Sir Peter sounded a bit tired. He said, ‘Shut up the pair of you. Pour another drink. Who’s going to find her is not the question; that’s decided. The how is the question.’
Just like that. I asked them why they thought I should do it. Sir Peter said, ‘Grace loves you.’
‘I’m not sure of that. No one could be, with Grace.’
‘Adelaide says so . . . and you don’t have the nerve to argue with her.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘There you are then. Grace told you something like she’d marry you if you could find her. We know that. All you have to do is find her.’
‘She said after this lot is over, meaning the war – and it isn’t, yet.’
‘In the West it will be in four months. Maybe sooner.’
That was Cliff sounding more sober than I felt.
‘How can you know that?’
Sir Peter looked away, and out of one of the library windows. Then he looked back at Cliff and nodded, as if he had just given an order.
Cliff said, ‘The war will be over in a couple of months, Charlie. Hitler’s dying. His doctor is slipping him a slow poison that will kill him in months.’
‘Why is his doctor doing that?’
‘His doctor wants the war to finish. Anyway he’s one of ours.’
‘Why is his doctor ours?’
‘Because Martin Bormann has told him to be.’
‘Why has Bormann done that?’
‘Because Bormann is ours. We bought him. The war will be over in months, and it won’t be anything to do with the military. The industrialists, the spies and the bloody doctors run the show now. Some Nazi bigwigs will get killed, some will do it themselves, and some will bloody swing for it. Brother Bormann will disappear with a big fat cheque in his pocket. Bloody way of the bloody world. We bought the end of the war a month ago, only Nazi Germany is a bit like a dinosaur: the brain is more or less dead, but the rest of its body doesn’t know yet.’
I thought about that, and I believed them. There was a weary authority underlying the way they spoke.
‘What if I said no?’
‘If you chose to disobey orders you’d get a few weeks of jankers that you won’t like, and then you’d be back on a squadron as a Sergeant again; blowing women and children to bits for the greater good. What’s more, it would probably be in some sort of death or glory mob where there’s a chance you’d get chopped before hostilities cease. Far safer to go to Europe and find Grace.’
‘I thought you said the war was going to end at any time.’
‘It will still have time to kill you, Charlie.’
‘You see his point, old man, don’t you?’ That was Baker. ‘Another snifter?’
Then I realized that they had told me Grace was already in Europe.
Bugger them. Bugger Europe. Bugger Grace.
I asked Cliff a couple of inconsequential questions.
‘I thought you once told me that the war wasn’t going to end so soon: that it was going to go on for years to come?’
Peter Baker cut in for him.
‘Different war, Charlie. Look at it this way. The first part of the Second World War is nearly over. We’ll still have to stop the Ivans if they get much closer.’
‘For God’s sake, doesn’t anyone up there know when it’s time to stop?’
‘Apparently not. Neither do the top Russians. It’s power, you see: the top dogs have never exercised so much of it before, and they’re loving every minute of it.’
‘You sound like Hitler.’
‘That’s why Hitler was so dangerous: he sounded just like us.’
‘. . . and like Stalin.’
‘Yes: and like Uncle Joe. Sad, isn’t it? Have another?’
I was ready for one. The New World Order was beginning to sound too bloody much like the old one.
The other inconsequential question was about Grace. Why did they think that she was in Europe?
‘I’ve spoken to her ATA people,’ Cliff told me, and asked, ‘You know that she couldn’t make up her mind whether or not to have the kiddie?’
‘She’d done it before, apparently,’ I said, and fixed Sir Peter with my best Iron John stare. Sir P wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘So, yes: I knew.’
‘She lay around here for a few days. Then she went to London for a break. Has some friends there; in all of the Services.’
‘I would never have guessed.’
Cliff gave me the look: something was hurting him.
‘Apparently she was driving a borrowed car down some street in West Ken when a building next to her was hit by an A4.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A rocket bomb fired from Germany: big things that arrive and explode before you hear them coming. The first you know of it is waking up dead. The Ministry of All-Things-to-All-Men is telling the people that they are gas boiler explosions, or some such nonsense, but the Daily Mirror knows what they are.’
‘I’ve heard of them: I just thought that they were called something else. We were supposed to smash them up at Peenemünde last year.’
‘Grace was OK, but she was either brave then, or disoriented, because when she climbed out of the car she walked towards the bomb site.’
‘Is this the bad bit?’ You sense some things coming.
‘I think so. It had been a primary school. There were bits of children everywhere. Someone saw her standing there with a child’s arm in her hand. Just the arm.’
None of us spoke for what seemed an age. Peter Baker splashed the last of the whisky into our tumblers. His hand shook. Finally I said, ‘Poor Grace.’
Baker finished the story.
‘It gets thinner from then on. She met some American tank crew men, who were in London for a few days’ leave after a bad patch in the Ardenne. She disappeared at the same time they returned to Belgium. She’s not in London with anyone she knew. There’s no evidence that she’s living down a hole somewhere with the rubble rats, and no dead body so far remot
ely matching her description . . . although that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She hasn’t contacted anyone in the ATA, and she hasn’t turned up at an airfield.’
‘Who told you this?’ I asked him.
‘A Sergeant Fabian. Metropolitan Police. He investigated it for us.’
‘Is he reliable?’
‘Very, we’re told. Hunts spies, murderers, that sort of thing. Very good at it. He says that his instinct tells him she’s not alive in London.’
‘You trust him?’
‘I trust you, Charlie. Enough to ask you to try to find her.’
I got up and walked over to one of the library windows. It looked out over a gently sculptured hill, lined by trees, which Crifton called the Long Ride. It was scarred where a B-17 had smacked it a year before.
I said, for no one in particular, ‘I hate my life at the moment.’
And Grace’s father said, ‘Thank you, Charlie.’
Four
I met the man Goldie had referred to as Driver Raffles for the first time in my room at Tempsford the day I returned from Crifton. When I walked in on him I thought I was being burgled. But he was sharp: he spoke first.
‘Mr Bassett, would it be, sir?’
That’s the first time I noticed his joint services uniform, tank jacket and the Sten gun on a piece of rope around his neck. By joint services uniform I mean that he had a Navy battledress blouse, Army trousers, a small black beret without a badge and the high lace-up boots with canvas tops that the Germans wore in the desert. I noticed the Sten first.
‘Yes. Who are you?’
‘Private Finnigan, sir: Major England’s man. I was taking the liberty of getting your things together, sir. We won’t have a lot of time.’
‘For what?’
‘Stowing your spare gear at the Major’s club, sir, getting you kitted out, and getting over to France.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Funny you should say that, sir. I saw a comedian just last week who used that as his new catchphrase.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Can’t make my mind up, sir. He’s either effing useless, or an effing genius: sometimes it’s hard to tell.’
Private Finnigan was a small man, in the vertical – like me – but he had a prize fighter’s shoulders and arms. His face was a bit bashed up, and topped by an unruly thatch of curly light brown hair. I thought I could place his accent within a few miles. I said, ‘You’re from somewhere south of London, say Morden or Sutton.’
‘Not bad, sir; you’ve obviously an ear for it. I was brought up at Belmont, like in The Merchant of Venice. That’s near Banstead, in Surrey.’
I said, ‘I come from Surrey myself. You don’t sound like a Finnigan to me.’
‘And you, sir, if you forgive my saying so, ask too many bleeding questions.’
‘Sorry, Private.’
Finnigan nodded, and carried on packing my gear. Everything I owned fitted into an RAF kitbag, and an old leather suitcase I’d inherited from Pete. Then there were the two US kitbags I was stashing for Tommo, the Yank. I pulled them from under the bed. Finnigan hefted one of them. He asked, ‘What’s in here, sir, War and Peace?’
‘Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know? I’m minding them for an American pal who has just been shipped back to the States, and has promised to get back to Germany before it’s all over. He says that Germany is where all the action will be when the shooting stops.’
‘He’d be some kind of businessman, then? This friend of yours.’
‘What was that you said earlier about people asking too many bleeding questions, Private?’
‘Just testing, sir,’ he told me, and grinned.
‘How are we travelling to your Major’s club?’
‘In your car, sir. Understand you have a little corker.’
Who had been talking?
‘Mr Clifford is a bit of a bastard, isn’t he?’
‘Not many would disagree with that, sir.’
‘The Squadron Leader led me to believe that you were already in France.’
‘So we were, sir. Now we ain’t.’
As we filled the small back seats of the car the Private looked up at the cloud base, licked his right forefinger and held it up. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Shall us have the hood up, sir? It’ll rain before we reach London.’
The little sod was right, too.
‘Are you driving, or am I?’
‘You, sir, if you don’t mind. I’ll keep an eye on your driving, if I may? The Major said to look you over.’
‘Oh he did, did he?’
‘Yes, sir. Definitely.’
After half an hour he said, ‘OK, sir. That’s enough. If you’d care to pull over I’ll drive the rest.’
I’d managed thirty-five miles without grinding a gear: no problem.
‘OK, am I?’
‘Frankly, sir, you’re effing useless, but nothing a bit o’ practice can’t cure.’
There endeth the First Lesson, and commenceth the Second. I studied him all the way to the big house in Highgate we were bound for. I hadn’t realized the little Singer was a racing car. From time to time he whistled as he drove. Always the same tune. ‘Lili Marleen’. Note perfect.
It was a huge old red-brick Victorian terraced house on Highgate Road, a wide, gently undulating road looking out into Highgate Woods. Through the trees I could see a late cricket match was under way, and hear Australian voices. A neatly painted sign on the door said, Officers’ Club. There was a threehouse gap in the terrace about a hundred yards further on. Finnigan told me, ‘That’s where the first bomb fell on London. Poor bugger was lost. I wonder if he got a medal for it?’
‘We staying here?’
‘Yes, sir. Don’t bother to unpack much. We’ll be moving on in the morning. There’s a big garage round the back: I’ll put your car up on blocks for when you come back, and stick the keys in the tail pipe, just in case you don’t.’
‘You’re very thorough.’
‘Smashing little car, sir. It would be a pity to waste it. It reminds me of a Clyno I had before the war. My missus sold it to some RAF bloke when she was short.’
I couldn’t stay angry at him for long. Not when I agreed with him. It was a smashing little car.
The airy front room of the house was a bar. There was only one person in it: a tall, round-shouldered soldier with blackrimmed spectacles, a thin dark moustache and a bit of a stoop. He was wedged into a utility armchair, and looked about 190 years old. He was probably one of the 1900 vintage. A uniform jacket with an Intelligence Corps shoulder flash was gracing the back of an upright chair. He was wearing a Fair Isle sleeveless cardie over his uniform shirt. I decided that I liked that. He looked up from a small notebook he was studying, and said, ‘Oh. Hello. You met Raffles then?’
Raffles? Private Finnigan said, ‘The Major doesn’t like Finnigan. He calls me Private Raffles, instead. Lots of other things as well.’
The big chap stood up, and held his hand out to me. He had to drop it a couple of feet before we could shake hands. He said, ‘You’re Bassett, and I’m England.’
I was quite glad that he’d got that right. I’d always heard you had to be quite sharp to get into I Corps. He’d caught my glance at his jacket and added, ‘Don’t let the badge fool you. I’m an agronomist: farming and nutrition. College lecturer before the war, and doing more or less the same now.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you about that when we get along.’
‘My last squadron were always telling me that.’
‘Maybe they wanted to get to know you first,’ Finnigan told me. Or was it Raffles?
He showed me where I could kip for the night, and where the kitchen was. We made a stack of sandwiches from tombstone-sized cuts of bread, and cut slices from the largest piece of cheese I had ever seen. Butter didn’t seem to be the usual problem, either. I had the weekly cheese ration for a family of fo
ur between two wads. The Private caught my look and said, ‘It’s a shitty war.’
‘Yeah, but the only one we got. I’ve heard that before. Do I call you Private Finnigan, or Private Raffles?’
‘Private anything.’ He shrugged. ‘Raffles: the Major rarely calls me the other.’
‘Why does he call you that?’
‘You’ll have to ask the Major that yourself, sir.’
There weren’t any other people in the place. We joined the Major back in the bar. The Private opened a couple of bottles of beer – drinking his own from the bottle, but pouring mine into a glass. The Major was on scotch and sodas: eventually he sighed and tucked his little notebook into a jacket pocket and buttoned it in. The conversation was a serious war conversation. Who was in what show at which theatre, and whether the Troc was worth what they were charging for it. Raffles excused himself after the one beer, and headed for his room. The Major held up his glass and asked, ‘Would you oblige? Get yourself one if you’d rather.’
Behind the small bar were a dozen bottles of the precious commodity, and a couple of lead-wrapped soda siphons, part full. I didn’t take a second asking.
‘Is anyone else living here, sir?’
He slurped the scotch and soda I gave him before replying.
‘No. It says Officers’ Club outside, but there are only two supply-side officers in the Corps in the European Theatre at present, and Willy – my opposite number – is away. Bandit country, I should think. So it’s our place really. We both have driver-batmen, and they lodge here with us: downstairs, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘And now there’s you. Another officer. At least we outnumber the bastards now.’
‘Why do you call your bastard Raffles, instead of his real name?’
‘Who, Les? Because I want to, I suppose. You don’t care for that?’
So: Raffles. Raffles or Les.
‘Not very much.’
‘Commie? Cliff did hint that you might be a bit of a freethinker.’
‘No, sir. I’m not a Commie yet.’
‘Forget the sir when Les is not here. I’m James.’
‘OK, James. Who am I?’
‘If you don’t know that by now, Charlie Bassett, I’m not going to tell you. Cheers. ’nother?’ This time he moved for the bar himself.
Charlie's War Page 5
