James Delingpole

by Coward on The Beach (epub)

  'The best blow job?' I'll reply, stroking my furrowed brow at length.

  'Oh, get away with you,' someone will eventually chip in. 'You've probably never had one.'

  'Well, I'm not sure I can immediately call to mind the best,' I'll say. 'But I can certainly tell you the most interesting.'

  'What. Not the old pinkie-up-the-shitter method?' one of my dissolute companions will invariably observe and the barman, Parkes, will set about restacking the shelves or polishing ashtrays and generally making himself scarce because they're very discreet in the Special Forces Club. Besides he's heard the story so often he could probably tell it better than I can.

  But it is such a bloody good story.

  Now, you'll probably assume that the woman responsible for this memorable experience is the one in white who is sitting at the linen-draped table set for two on the clipped verdant lawns of the magnificent white chateau through whose gates my horse and I stumble after our terrifying bolt through the Norman hedgerows. At this stage I'm keeping mum. All I will say is that, if it is the same woman, I'm going to be a very lucky boy, for this girl — I say girl, though she's prob­ably a bit older than me. Twenty-six, maybe? Twenty-seven? - is an absolute knock-out, the stuff of fairy-tales, almost.

  You've read Le Grand Meaulnes? Well, if you haven't, you should, and do it while you're young, when it makes the strongest impression, as it did on me. The key scene is the one where our scruffy, low-born hero bunks off school and goes for a wander, and finds himself quite by chance at the most extraordinary party held for a beautiful young girl in a magical domain which he spends the rest of his brief life trying desper­ately, unsuccessfully to regain.

  Yvonne de Galais is the girl's name in the Alain-Fournier book.

  Virginie is her name in my story and though it's quite likely she does have a surname beginning 'de' it's not something I ever managed to ascertain, for reasons which will shortly become clear. She's just as lovely to look at, though, that I know. Creamy skin you can't look at without wanting to lick and nibble. Hair dark as Snow White's. And best of all, these big, green, almond-shaped eyes, such as you might imagine belonging to the choicest courtesan in a sultan's harem.

  First thing I notice, though, as I ride through the gate, is not her fantastical beauty but her expression of absolute horror. And no wonder, really, given we're not five or six miles from an Allied battle fleet which has been thrashing the Norman coastline to within an inch of its life. Even if you're not a direct target, the cacophony and relentlessness of a bombard­ment like that could drive you half mad. And if it's had that effect on you, just imagine what it will have done to your hated Boche occupiers. Like wasps from a nest that has just been splattered by an urchin's catapult, they'll be swarming round with vengeance on their minds, not caring who they hurt, so long as it's someone. The beautiful vulnerable chate­laine they've spent four years lusting after but never till now dared touch for fear of facing Nazi Germany's especially strin­gent brand of military discipline? Why not?

  'Ne vous inquietez pas, Mademoiselle,' I call as my horse, suddenly pliable, draws to a halt on the edge of her lawn. 'Je ne suis pas allemand. Je suis soldat anglais.'

  The woman, who has risen from her seat and was probably on the verge of fleeing, now manages an awkward smile.

  'But, Monsieur, you frightened me. Your coat —'

  'Ah, pardonnez-moi,' I say unbuttoning the coat and flinging it contemptuously to the ground. 'Un officier allemand me l'a prete.'

  A German officer lent it to me. Just the sort of manly under­statement a girl likes to hear, I'm thinking. But not this one. She's after the full gory details.

  'The German is dead?' she asks, her voice quavering with bitterness and hatred.

  'But of course,' I reply, dismounting now. I tether the horse to a nearby tree.

  'You are sure?' she calls after me.

  I turn round to flash her a piratical grin. 'I killed him myself.'

  Well, a little poetic licence never did a chap any harm, did it? And, you know, contrary to popular myth, we gallant Allied liberators needed all the help we could get. This idea that the Liberation largely consisted of boundlessly grateful, sex-starved French minxes sticking flowers in our rifles as a prelude to letting us stick our whatnots any damn place we pleased simply isn't true. Not in my case, anyway. Not in the case of many frontline troops, I don't imagine - we simply didn't have the time, we were too busy pressing on with the advance, not to mention far too exhausted.

  But naturally there were exceptions. Such as this one. And if there's one thing you learn as an infantryman, it's to press an advantage, using every means at your disposal.

  My little porkie pie smooths the path, clearly, because after a shudder of vindictive satisfaction which I can't pretend doesn't put the willies up me ever so slightly, her mood changes completely. Suddenly, she's all floaty grace and manners — breeding will out, don't you know — and won't you join me, Monsieur, and please, enough of this formal 'vousing', my name is Virginie.

  'Enchante, Virginie,' I say, rolling the name round my tongue and thinking 'Well, not for much longer, I hope' as you do when you meet a beautiful girl with a name like that. Well, you do, don't you? 'Et je m'appelle Dick.'

  'Deek,' she says, nodding towards the seat next to her. 'Assieds-toi.'

  And here you're about to learn the true meaning of self- discipline because, instead of taking up her kind offer, I say politely but firmly: 'You're very kind, Virginie, but I'm afraid I must rejoin my comrades. We have an urgent mission to fulfil.'

  'Quand meme,' she interjects, 'I cannot imagine there is any mission so important for an Englishman that it cannot wait for a small cup of tea.'

  And, do you know, she has a point there. I do deserve some kind of breather after my narrow escape from death on Pegasus just now; and I'm bound to have the very devil of a job relo­cating my troop. The very least I owe myself, surely, while I collect myself and plan my next move, is a nice cup of tea.

  Not, of course, that it will be nice. Tea in France, tea abroad generally, never is - except when it has been brewed by an Englishman. Or possibly an Indian servant. Foreigners, on the whole, just don't understand the importance of using freshly drawn, freshly boiled water; the milk's never up to the stan­dards of English milk; and nor, most of the time, is the tea. But I think under these particular circumstances, we can afford to let our standards lapse, don't you?

  Virginie insists that I should rest while she goes to make the tea. Normally her staff would take care of such matters, she explains apologetically, but they have all been lost to the war: some have been deported to labour camps, some have joined the Resistance, others the Milice. Such bitterness and division there will be in France, once the war is over. Life will never be the same.

  She's right, of course. About France, certainly. But about England, too. It happened after the First War. And it will happen after this one. Men will come home and ask them­selves why, when they've given so much for their country, their country shouldn't now give back at least as much to them. The old order will slowly wither. Good manners and defer­ence will fall into abeyance. It will be impossible to get proper service in shops and restaurants, let alone staff prepared to work for an affordable wage. Perhaps, all things considered, it will be better for me if I don't end up burdened with the family estate; at least then I won't spend the rest of my life running myself into the ground trying to sustain a cause that was already half moribund by the end of 1914.

  And yet, and yet, I think, as I sprawl in my chair and cast a lazy eye over the high walls and clipped hedges, there really is an awful lot to be said for the country house, French or English. I'm sure if push came to shove, I could eke out a bearable existence at a place like this, maybe tinkering away at the odd novel — wartime potboilers? God knows, I've done the research - until such time as my green-eyed wife appears in the doorway, yawning in a nightdress which leaves nothing to the imagination, saying huskily: 'Tu viens, cheri? Tu travai
lles trop dur. Viens coucher avec moi un tout petit peu . . .'

  God, will you just listen to me? All this bromide they supposedly shove in our rations to stop us being distracted from the main event, it doesn't seem to be having much of an effect. And me an engaged man, too. Well, semi-engaged. Not, of course, that if I do get up to anything, Gina is going to be any the wiser. Carpe diem and all that. I could be dead by tomorrow. By this evening, even.

  'Le voila, Monsieur!' she announces, setting down the teapot as elegantly as any maid in a grand hotel.

  'Merci, Mademoiselle,' I reply, and smile as she makes a dainty little curtsy.

  Her face is flushed, I later remember having half-noticed, and there's a redness about her eyes, as if she might have been crying. But at the time her sadness, if it is sadness — maybe it's nerves, or excitement, or merely the frustration of having had to perform a task she was once used to having done by servants — doesn't much register, for I'm far too busy enjoying our little game.

  'Shall I be mother?'

  'Pardon?'

  'An English joke.'

  She laughs prettily and we could be in quite another time and another age, the war a distant nightmare.

  The tea, which I pour into the china cups before the milk, looks and smells like real tea. Tastes remarkably fresh, too, and I'm about to ask how on earth she managed to get hold of it when I'm transfixed by a pair of bewitching green eyes peering at me over the lip of some expensive-looking eigh­teenth-century porcelain. Then a voice saying: 'Eh bien, Deek. Now that you are here, you must tell me everything.'

  'Everything?' I repeat, with a slight gulp, because, with the best will in the world, I'm not sure there's quite the time.

  'Your vital mission, perhaps?'

  'Bof. Ca,' I say with my best dismissive Gallic shrug. 'Ce n'est rien.'

  'Nothing, Deek? Mais non. You are a commando. You are being too modest. Or perhaps is it that you think that I am

  a spy?'

  Well, of course it's not that. Spies don't sit around in beau­tiful country houses, waiting for informants to drop into their laps. Rather it's just that, well, frankly I can think of far far better things to do with a beautiful woman than sit around talking military planning.

  When I tell her as much — and I promise you, it isn't normally my style to be so blunt in matters sexual, I fully expect to be rewarded with a sharp slap. Instead, what I get rather to my surprise is a delicious blush and a decidedly naughty smirk, before she recovers her composure and says in a tone of great formality: 'Mais, Monsieur. Forgive me, you must be very tired. Would you perhaps like to lie down for a while?'

  Certainly I should like to lie down, if only you would care to join me, is what I'm tempted to reply. But you don't want to push your luck, do you? The wheels are in motion. From now on, I'm quite happy to let fate — or rather the libido of a French girl who has likely been starved of eligible male company for a good four years now — take its delicious course. In fact I'm enjoying it all so much, I think I might just tease out the moment that little bit longer.

  'Une bonne idee, Virginie,' I say. 'Mais d'abord, ton the est excellent.'

  And by God it really is excellent tea. I doubt, even in the Georges V or the Ritz, you'd get a better cup this side of the Channel.

  'Tu l'aimes?' she asks.

  'Mais oui. C'est formidable.'

  'I was keeping it for a friend,' she says.

  Of course. The friend she was expecting. I'd quite forgotten.

  'Oh dear, what will your friend think?'

  'Nothing, I imagine,' she says, with a trace of wistfulness. 'Don't worry. He has probably been held up by the war.' She gazes in the direction of the distant gunfire.

  'La guerre. La sale guerre,' I say.

  'But there are ways of forgetting all about it,' she says, rising from the table. 'Tu viens, Deek?'

  A standing prick knows no conscience, they say. Well, quite. And no brain either.

  Time and again since that day, I've cursed my idiocy in having failed to pick up so many of the tell-tale signs.

  The tea - there was a pretty obvious one. You'd need pretty astounding connections, in Occupied France, to get hold of something as rare as that.

  Her studied indifference to the absence of her tea-time guest, there was another.

  The fact that she was sitting in the middle of her lawn in a war zone - there's a sign of madness or a death wish if ever there was one.

  And what of the behaviour of my horse - the way, having gone completely barmy, it suddenly became all docile on passing through her gates? Or the fact that her lawns and shrubs - despite the apparent absence of her domestic staff - were yet so well tended? Or her unsettling eagerness to learn every detail about the fate of my SS greatcoat's previous owner?

  Were I Miss Marple, I would no doubt have twigged instantly. But then, were I Miss Marple, I probably wouldn't have had my analytical powers muddled by the thrilling thought that in two or three minutes I stood an odds-on chance of enjoyingrampant, unbridled, possibly-my-last-fuck-before-dying sex with a ravishing, green-eyed Frenchwoman.

  I follow Virginie (Virginie? How cruelly disappointed your parents would be, if only they knew!) into a lofty hallway, still resplendent with unlooted portraiture, up a curving flight of stone stairs and along a broad corridor.

  We enter a large room containing a writing-desk, an elab­orate dresser and a huge four-poster bed.

  'You had better take off your clothes,' she suggests in a matter-of-fact voice which even at this stage has me guessing as to her intent.

  'Tu crois?'

  'Mais bien sur. Your clothes are damp,' she says.

  'Comme tu veux,' I say, unbuttoning my blouson. It does feel awkward, I must say, the way she's staring at me like that. Voluptuous hunger? Or merely the interest a conscientious nurse might show in a needy patient?

  I'm about to slip the jacket of my battledress on to the back of a chair when a better idea occurs. Beyond the tall, half-open French windows there's a balcony. I step outside — overcast and dampish, but you never know, a hint of watery sun might yet break through - and drape my blouson over the cast-iron balustrade so as to give it a bit of air. It occurs that I'm prob­ably committing some terrible faux pas- like carefully folding your clothes before sex, rather than tossing them around the room with wild abandon — but as it turns out this fastidious­ness will serve me well.

  Virginie joins me briefly on the balcony and surveys her domain. Then she returns to the bedroom. 'Too much light,' she decides, making to shut the shutters. I follow her back inside.

  Promising.

  Before she shuts the final shutter, Virginie crosses the room to light a bedside gas lamp. As she passes me, she brushes my arm gently with the back of her hand, gives me a quick, cheeky look and says: 'Tu as quelque chose de dur, dans tes pantalons, Monsieur Deek?'

  Tally-ho, chaps! Here we go!

  'Peut-etre,' I agree, grateful suddenly for the dark, because it hides my blushes. I'm not complaining, obviously. But I've always found it a mite daunting, this manner so many of the French girls I’ve encountered seem to have: at once icily distant and ball-breakingly direct.

  'Puis-je voir?' she asks, once she has shut the last shutter. The room is dark save for the gas lamp's orange glow.

  'Comme tu veux,' I say, dry-throated.

  She kneels in front of me.

  But she doesn't head straight where I was rather hoping she might head.

  'Your boots,' she says. 'You haven't taken them off.'

  'I'm a soldier,' I say.

  'Commando, meme,' she says, approvingly.

  'Commando,' I agree.

  She begins unlacing my boots. Fine - if lingeringly and teasingly is how she wants to play it — I shall not object too violently.

  'It is the battery, n'est-ce pas?'

  'Comment?'

  'You have come to destroy the battery at Longues-sur-Mer?'

  'Is it near here?'

  'Mais, Deek. Yo
u know very well. It is not more than a kilometre away.'

  'No, really, I didn't. When my horse bolted . . .'

  'Ah yes, I understand.'

  'But it's damn good news to hear I'm so close. The battery's right on our route.'

  'I am glad to be able to help you, Deek. Un vrai commando.'

  She pauses for a moment to examine the dagger she has pulled from my unlaced boot. She feels the edge. Then looks up at me. 'Do you like killing les allemands, Deek?'

  'Not especially,' I say, with a shrug.

  'But you are a commando.'

  'Even so. The Germans are soldiers just like us.'

  'But is it not true that commandos never take prisoners?'

  'Non. It's not.'

  'That's a shame.'

  'Do you think so?'

  She has been working her way slowly up my trouser legs, like a sexier version of those ghastly body searches you have to endure at airports nowadays. I'm wondering what the Germans could have done to give her such macabre interest in the thought of their deaths.

  'Maintenant, tes pantalons,' she says, making for the buckle of my belt.

  'Mes pantalons,' I agree.

  'Well, then, if you have not come for the Longues battery, then you must have come for — what?'

  'Can you not guess?'

  'I don't know. Bayeux?'

  'Yes, that's it. We've come to destroy the Tapestry of Shame. Hastings revenged at last!'

  'Le sens de l'humour anglais,' she says, unamused.

  'Sorry. Can't help it.'

  'Non, it's not that,' she says crossly. 'It's because you don't trust me.'

  Hell's teeth, what kind of a mess have I made of things now? Chocks away. Engines roaring. And suddenly, the very real and exceedingly ghastly prospect of a last-second mission abort. French girls, really. Talk about walking on eggshells!

  'Mais non!' I say - or rather squawk desperately because if ever there was a sexual encounter that stood on a knife-edge balance this is it.

  'Si,' she says, a slight sob in her voice. 'Yes!' And I fully expect her at this point to pick herself up off her knees, perhaps to flee tearfully, perhaps to find some suitable vase to chuck at me — you never quite know with these crazy Frenchwomen.