James Delingpole

by Coward on The Beach (epub)

'Darling, you're so very clever, I knew you'd do it,' she says.

  'I got one, then? An MC?'

  'Oh, please don't talk about that nonsense. I meant your recovery.'

  'From what?'

  'Darling, you nearly died.'

  'Oh my good God, no, of wounds?' Panic-stricken, I hoick up my bedclothes to check that the essentials are all present.

  'Some sort of brain fever. You've been in the most frightful state. Fever. Buckets of sweat. Hallucinations.'

  'Pity. Some of them were rather promising.'

  'Yes, darling, you rest yourself, that's the important thing, lot s and lots of rest. And when you've finished doing that you i an come home and rest some more. You've done your bit now. That's what the doctors are saying. It's over for you, now, my sweet. This whole ghastly war is over.'

  Hah! Now, Jack my lad, have you been sharp enough to spot my cunning ruse? I gave you a couple of clues: the tropical sun; the samurai sword — neither of them things you encounter all too often in Normandy. That's because what we have going on here, my dear fellow, is a flashback. A flashback to that period a month and a bit prior to D-Day, when I'm lying in bed in an officers' hospital on the South Devon coast, recov­ering from the bout of brain fever I contracted in Burma.

  It's the most idyllic place, this hospital, in a big old house at the head of a wooded valley running down to a private beach. It used to belong to a Victorian collector and the gardens are quite ravishing — formal borders by the big house; ferns and exotic specimen trees bordering the gravel path leading to the sea. Across the croquet lawn there's a monkey-puzzle tree, beneath which I'm sheltering from the late April sun with my two new chums, known to all the patients — though not to the some­what disapproving nurses and doctors — as Ginger and Fred.

  Fred, a dark-haired naval sub-lieutenant, is so called not because of his matinee-idol looks — though he has those, too — but because of the wobbling gait that tends to ensue when you've left your legs behind after your ship has been shot up off Gibraltar. Ginger, meanwhile, is mainly called Ginger because it goes with Fred — though an alternative theory has it that if you were to remove the bandages covering more or less every inch of his skin, this would be the colour of the crispy burnt flesh underneath.

  'My flaming ace in Magnolia ward bought it last night,' declares Fred, a plume of smoke drifting from his cigarette towards Ginger.

  Ginger begins hacking horribly. His burns are not merely external.

  Fred considerately bum-shuffles downwind of him, drag­ging his stumps behind him.

  So that'll be another five shillings you owe me,' he says to Ginger.

  Ginger mumbles something decipherable only by Fred, his official interpreter.

  'Yes, well, it's not as though I haven't told you before. There are only two certain things in this world: nurses and the inevitable demise of 90-per-cent-burn victims.'

  From beneath Ginger's bandages come sounds of protest.

  'Yes I take your point. Consider yourself the exception that proves the rule,' says Fred airily.

  I've been trying to keep my expression neutral, but Fred must have detected my discomfort because suddenly he fixes me with a long, hard look, at once defiant and amused.

  I think Niagara thinks I'm in poor taste,' he confides to Ginger. 'So perhaps we oughtn't to mention the wager we had when he arrived.'

  From Ginger's throat comes an awful rattle, which I think might possibly be laughter.

  Niagara?'

  Sweat pouring off you like nobody's business. Certainly fooled me. Half a crown you cost me before the terrible news came through: it seemed that you were on the mend.'

  'Charmed, I'm sure.'

  Dear boy, you mustn't take things personally. It's what it does to you, this bloody awful place.'

  Out at sea a fisherman is pulling in his net and just beyond Ins boat, dark shapes - a school of dolphins? porpoises? - are using and falling in the blue. I hesitate to use the cliché but at a moment like this it's inescapable: today the war seems a very long way away.

  I think I've been in worse,' I say.

  My point precisely,' says Fred. 'Only a fool would deny that this is as lovely a spot as a man could ever dream of being billeted. But you don't honestly think it was just a matter of good luck that we were sent here?'

  'Well, no. It'll be the restorative powers of the sea air, won't it?'

  'Sea air, my Aunt Millie. The only chaps they send to this place are the ones they think are never coming back. It's our treat, don't you see? Our last taste of paradise before we head off God knows where — the Other Place, in my case, no doubt.'

  No one says anything for a while. Ginger, for fairly obvious reasons. Me, because whatever I say will only give him fuel. Such darkness. Such bitterness. Such an intense conviction of doom. I've interrogated kamikaze pilots with less of a death wish than this poor fellow.

  'Bloody shame, though, all things considered,' Fred says, after a time, striking up another cigarette. 'I mean, if a man's going to go to the Other Place, at least he ought to do some proper sinning first.'

  'Was there anyone you had in mind?' I ask, sensing a way out of the gloom.

  'We'll say, eh Ginge?'

  A horrible rattle from Ginger.

  'The night nurse,' sighs Fred, dragging the back of his hand with a histrionic flick across his forehead. 'Not the new one, God, talk about the Angel of Death. I mean the one just before, pity you missed her. A face that made the Madonna look like a raddled tart; a body, by comparison with which Botticelli's Venus emerging from her seashell is as but a bloated fishwife - tell him, Ginge.'

  Ginger mumbles his agreement.

  'Such a marvellous liar too. Had me quite convinced it would be wedding bells just as soon as my feet grew back. Got poor Ginger going, too, didn't she? Such a beautiful soul, that was her line, as she gazed adoringly through the crack in his bandages. Though you'd sell it pretty sharpish for a decent set of skin, wouldn't you, old man?'

  'Can you remember her name?'

  'Oh, no use crying over spilt milk. Should never have brought it up, really. In fact I didn't. It was you who raised the subject, you bloody man.'

  'It's just that I think I might know her.'

  'And I'm the bastard son of Winston Churchill and Gracie Fields.'

  No, really, I think I might. I thought at first it was some sort of hallucination. That it was too good to be true.'

  Too good to be true? Now, that does sound about right,' says Fred. He glances anxiously across at Ginger, who has become unusually animated, waving his bandaged arms and nodding his mummified head. 'But perhaps we'd better change the subject before Ginger does himself an injury.'

  'I have to ask though. Was her name by any chance -'

  'Hello, boys,' chimes a melodic voice behind Fred and me. I trust you've all been behaving in my absence.'

  I look over my shoulder, open-mouthed. Fred wheels round in such frenzied haste, he damn near topples backwards. Ginger gurgles.

  Even if Lady Georgina Hermione St Clair Devereux Nevill Herbert had a face like the arse end of a plucked broiler — which, you'll have gathered, she doesn't - she would still be the most eligible girl in the land for at least three excellent reasons. Her American mother — my great-aunt, which makes Gina and I distant cousins - owns half of Manhattan; her father, most of Monmouthshire; her parents are agreeable; she's an only child.

  There, that's four already, and I haven't even mentioned the really important details. Like the curve of the alabaster breasts I glimpsed at the water mill; and the ambrosial breath I last properly imbibed at the age of thirteen during a game of sardines after which her father the earl had me beaten by his gamekeeper for having broken the door handle on his second-best Chippendale wardrobe; and that way she has of fixing her attention on you as if you are the only person in the world who truly matters to her; and the way, when she's dazzling someone else instead, you suddenly know just how it feels to be 'hurled headlong flaming from the eth
ereal sky/With hideous ruin and combustion down/To bottomless perdition . . .'

  You'll say I'm exaggerating. But I'm doing no more than present the facts as I saw them at the time, which were these: I had adored Gina Herbert since my earliest childhood; I would happily have died for her; no need would have seemed too extravagant to secure her affection, no enterprise too suicidal to gain at least the remote possibility of her hand in marriage. The result of this stupidity you will shortly see.

  But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Join me, for a moment, in my brief sojourn in paradise before the Fall. Gina and I, as has become our daily custom, are taking our evening consti­tutional together down the zigzag gravel path that winds past tree ferns, mossy banks and dripping arbours — a little more redolent of the Burmese jungle than I might have preferred, but still — to the shingle cove and the pirates' cave where I like to tease out our moments alone together for as long as I possibly can. Naturally I am still far too weak to walk unaided, which means that our passage is languorously slow and my Gina has to take gentle hold of my arm every step of the way.

  And of course, in my Scheherazade-like need to maintain her interest, I have told her everything. Dunkirk. The Battle of Britain. My sudden exit in disgrace from the RAF. Thence to North Africa and Crete.

  'So terribly brave,' she says.

  'The brave ones are all underground,' I say, as is the accepted custom, while racking my brain for anecdotes in which I come across as braver still.

  'If you ask me it's too unfair. Here you, after all that trouble, with not a gong to show for it while your little brother —'

  'Ah. You heard?'

  'Impossible not to. He telegrammed me. Once for his MC. Then once again for his bar.'

  'Good God, he didn't? So what did you do?'

  'Fucked him, of course. What else could a girl do? Poor chap was so clearly desperate.'

  I was smacked in the shoulder once by a Moisin-Nagant round on the Eastern Front and let me tell you it had not half the impact of that single, unheralded expletive. Fucked! It just wasn't a word you heard used in those days. In the heat of battle possibly, but often not even then. Certainly not from the lips of pretty young girls as nicely brought up as Gina Herbert.

  Fucked. Do you know, I think it might have been that single word - more specifically, the thrillingly evocative way she said it that landed poor Pricey and me in that whole damned mess at Normandy.

  For the briefest of moments it raised my hopes, the thought that this remote beauty was capable of thoughts as earthbound as mine.

  Hut joy quickly gave way to abject despair. Not only, it seemed, was my perfect maiden princess not a virgin — and by the sounds of it, quite a few times not a virgin. But at least one of the myriad jammy buggers to have beaten me to the punch, apparently, was my stinking brother.

  I'm staring numbly into the depths of the cave, debating how best to volunteer for the surest suicide mission, when I feel my cheek being pinched, really quite hard.

  'Oh, you silly chump,' she says, bringing her face up close to mine, the better to be amused by my mournful expression. 'Do you honestly think I'm that kind of a girl?'

  'No, of course not.'

  'And even if I were, surely you don't have so low opinion of me as to imagine that your brother is my type.'

  'I ... I wouldn't presume to know what your type is.'

  'Heavens, Dickie, you look awfully pale.' She feels my damp forehead. 'Perhaps we should be getting you back to bed. Sister would never forgive me if you had a relapse.'

  'Not yet. Please, I . . . need to recover my breath.'

  'All right. Five minutes and then I must take you back. Now, where were we?'

  'You were about to tell me what qualities you looked for in your ideal man,' I'm about to say.

  Before I can spit it out though, she says: 'Ah yes. Your brother.'

  'Must we?'

  'Oh Dickie, I'm sorry. You must feel terribly sore.'

  'About the medals? No. Really I'm not. You know what they say: the only person who knows what a medal's worth is the man who has won it.'

  'Which, in your brother's case, wasn't that much?'

  'I can't speak for the second one because I wasn't there. But the first - no, I've said too much already.'

  'Oh but you can't leave me hanging like that, not now you've whetted my appetite . . .' Whetting Gina Herbert's appetite. There's a thought on which to linger.

  ' . . . anyway, being secretive doesn't suit you. It's one of the things I so like about you. Your American side. Your openness.'

  'My American side? Oh dear. Do you think? I was rather hoping I'd kept that under control.'

  'Why would you want to do that?'

  Well, it's just not the way we do things here, is it? Speaking your mind, opening your heart, it can get a chap into all kinds of trouble,' I say. 'But you're right. There are times when I do feel like a stranger in my own country. Maybe it's the American thing. Maybe I was just born in the wrong age. Have you read Boswell's diaries? Quite extraordinary, entering the mind of someone who's been dead near two centuries yet speaks to you with more freshness, honesty and intimacy than your dearest chum. And as you're reading it you're thinking to yourself: 'Good Lord. Underneath we're all just the same. Same hopes. Same fears. Same desires. So why can't we just jolly well admit it instead of going round keeping it all buttoned up?'"

  You can tell me.'

  'What?'

  I he secret thing, whatever it is.'

  Lucky it's quite dark in our cavern or she'd see me reddening.

  I wasn't thinking of anything specific,' I say. Then, worrying she might find out - that she might guess what I'm really saying is: 'God, Gina, I don't half fancy you' and promptly reject me with a 'But, Dickie, I've always thought of you as an old friend. Never like that' — I decide a quick change of subject is called for.

  'Oh well, all right, take poor Fred. Seventeen years old, never known what it's like to, ahem, go with a woman - nor even what it's like to drink in a pub. And perhaps now he never will.'

  'But of course he'll pull through. He's young, he's strong.'

  Physically, yes. Mentally, I'm not so sure. I get the impres­sion that he's made up his mind that there's really nothing left worth living for.'

  Then I shall make it my mission to show him there is.'

  I low do you plan to do that?' I say, a mite nervous, given what she claimed to have done with my brother.

  'You're his friend. Don't you have any idea?'

  'Well, I know it's his eighteenth birthday next week.'

  'Perfect. We can make all his dreams come true.'

  'All of them?'

  'Leave it to me, Dickie,' she says, tapping the side of her nose. Her smile gives way to a concerned frown. 'But now look at you, you're shivering, I was meant to look after you and you've led me astray.'

  If only.

  As his birthday approaches Fred and I are pretty much on non- speakers. He, of course, is riven with jealousy over the time I've spent hogging Gina. I in turn have begun to feel quite sick with dread as to what exactly Gina might be planning for his birthday treat.

  She won't tell me of course. Whenever I try raising the subject, I find the conversation gently being steered back to me, my bravery, my wit, my charm, my extraordinary adven­tures, my general suitability as future husband to a madden­ingly unpredictable, utterly adorable blonde-haired earl's daughter whose name begins with G. At least that's what I want to believe.

  Then on the eve of Fred's birthday, she bowls me her most fiendish googly yet.

  'Gina, I have to know what you're planning. It's going to be a tough enough operation as it is. I can't let you take all the responsibility.'

  'Dickie, darling, I promise you, it's all going to run like clockwork.'

  'Oh good, that's a relief, so you'll have arranged us all leave passes from the Colonel? And a driver? And a fighter escort just in case?'

  'Now, don't be silly, you know as well as I do that a
lcohol is strictly off limits. The Colonel would no more let a man in Fred's state near a pub than he would - well, any of the other treats I have planned for the lucky birthday boy.'

  'You're tormenting me, Gina, and I won't have it!'

  'I say, is this you when you're cross? How exciting!'

  Don't you see I'm worried, that's all. About you. If anyone finds out, as they surely must — the duty nurse, what about her?'

  'Patricia's on board.'

  And the MO?'

  'Tell me about your tattoo.'

  'What tattoo?'

  You know,' she says, with a simper and a furtive nod towards my buttock region.

  'Humph!'

  'Dickie, you were delirious for a fortnight. Someone had to bath you.'

  'A professional nurse would have averted her gaze.'

  'Just like you did that time by the water mill?'

  'When?'

  'Don't play the innocent. I saw you perfectly clearly. Lurking under the willow.'

  Well - I don't remember you being in any hurry to cover yourself up.'

  Now, that would have been churlish. Poor chap, you seemed so touchingly grateful for what little I could offer.'

  'I was.'

  So now you can give me a belated thank-you by telling me about your tattoo.'

  'Gina, you know I'm happy to tell you most things. But not that.'

  Leck Mich Am Arsch - I think I can guess what that means. Is it quite rude?'

  'It's a quotation from Goethe.'

  'But the bit underneath. The skull and crossbones. And those letters that look a bit like German regimental insignia. Very like, in fact.'

  'Has anyone else seen them?'

  'I think Patricia would have mentioned if she had. You wouldn't think it to look at her — not when she's on duty, anyway - but she's quite a girl.'

  'You know what her nickname is?'

  'I do and it's so terribly unfair. If she found out it would break her heart. I know she can seem a bit severe when she's doing the rounds. But that's just the way she was taught. She takes her duties very seriously.'

  'So how on earth did you manage to persuade her to let us bunk off tomorrow night?'

  'You're very clever, I must say. A moment ago we were talking about your tattoo.'