A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  The Black Cat was comfortably full and most of its customers were in uniform. Conversation made a steady roar, and steel-blue cigarette smoke rose to the sky like heat made visible. Lampard stopped and looked around. “Can’t say I fancy drinking standing up,” he said.

  “Maybe someone will leave,” Dunn said.

  No one left. A hostess, not young and not pretty, walked by and smiled. Lampard smiled back. At a nearby table a large and drunk pilot officer said: “Bet you she’s got legs like bloody nutcrackers.” Some of his friends laughed. One said: “Give her fifty ackers, she’ll squeeze the milk out of your coconuts.” The pilot officer said: “Fifty? Don’t I get any change?”

  Lampard kicked his chair. “Get up,” he said.

  The pilot officer turned and looked. “Did you kick my chair?” he asked. He was a very large young man. The rest of the patrol hung about in the background. “A bloody pongo!” the pilot officer said. “All boots and no brain.” Someone chuckled, which pleased him.

  “Get up now,” Lampard ordered. The pilot officer made a sad-clown’s face. “Oh dear,” he said. “Pongo wants to tango.” Everyone at the table laughed.

  “Get up and apologize to that lady,” Lampard said. His voice was bleak as midwinter. The pilot officer blinked. “What lady?” he asked. The hostess had long since disappeared.

  “The lady about whom you made a foul and offensive remark.”

  The pilot officer thought, and remembered, “Oh, her. The one with legs like nutcrackers. That’s no lady, that’s just a buckshee bint.”

  Lampard took him by the ears and lifted. The chair toppled, the pilot officer howled, his knee hit the table and all the drinks fell over. Lampard released his ears and punched him three times, left-right-left, on and about the heart, so fast that it sounded like one blow. When the bouncers arrived, Lampard was holding him by the collar. His face was the color of raw pastry. “This officer is unwell,” Lampard said. “His friends will take him home.”

  The table emptied. The patrol moved into the seats. The Arab band finished playing “Yes Sir That’s My Baby” and began “Stormy Weather,” charging into it at double-time.

  “Somewhat extreme, Jack,” Corky Gibbon said. It was his MC, so in a sense it was his party. “He was only a Brylcreem Boy. They can’t bloody march, let alone fight.”

  “He holds the king’s commission,” Lampard said. “He should behave like a gentleman. I gave him the opportunity to apologize. That’s why we’re fighting this war: for the sake of decency and chivalry and the sanctity of womanhood.”

  “I must remember that,” Sergeant Davis said. “Next time I blow some bugger’s brains out.”

  “Please do,” Lampard said. He was serious.

  “Right now I’d kill for a plate of egg and chips,” Corporal Pocock said. Everyone laughed except Sandiman and Peck. “Family joke,” Pocock told them. “Explain later.” Bottles of champagne—Egyptian champagne—were arriving. A smiling hostess, not young and not pretty, joined them.

  “Good evening, madam,” Lampard said. “I apologize for the brutish behavior of my fellow-officer. I can assure you that he now regrets it as much as I do. We in the British Army have the utmost respect for decency, chivalry and the sanctity of womanhood.”

  She heard this with widening eyes. “No shit,” she said. Lampard looked away. The band finished “Stormy Weather” and without pause played “Yes Sir That’s My Baby” again.

  “They get it from the Americans,” Mike Dunn told him. “Damn Yanks are all over town.”

  “I suppose one shouldn’t expect gratitude,” Lampard said.

  “Not in her case. This isn’t the same woman as before.”

  “You like more champagne?” she decided, signaling to a waiter.

  The band abruptly dropped “Yes Sir That’s My Baby” in mid-bar. The lights dimmed. A drum roll grew big and faded to a whisper, a spotlight picked out the tiny stage, and the band slipped into the more comfortable world of Arab music. The belly-dancer appeared, and got on with her job of feeding the sexual fantasies of men who would soon be living in the desert on bully-beef and erotic memories for weeks or months on end.

  Three minutes was enough for them. She was a veteran, and hardworking, but the lissom slither of the true dancer was missing. “Ars est celare ass,” Corky Gibbon murmured to Dunn. The rough soldiery didn’t know much about the art of the dance, but they knew when their desires were not being aroused. The roar of conversation returned. Soon bottles and glasses and ashtrays began to crash against the wire barrier protecting the band. Lampard yawned, and as his head went back he caught a glimpse of a white beret at the back of the upper floor. “Hello!” he said. “Snowdrops. What luck.”

  Upstairs, Henry Lester was talking to a soldier with a white beret tucked under his left shoulder-strap. He was writing down what the man said. The American was too drunk to see straight, but not so drunk that he couldn’t use his shorthand. “Okay,” he said. “I got the bit where you blew up all the Stukas. Then what?” His shorthand was fuzzy. He held the notebook at arm’s length. Everything separated into two wandering images. “Ralph, does this look okay to you?” he asked. “Lovely, lovely,” Malplacket said, not looking. He had his own conversation going. Another man with a white beret and SAS shoulder flashes was telling Malplacket about the time his raiding party had run out of food so they joined an Italian brigade of infantry that was queuing up for dinner and they got hot pasta and fresh bread and oranges and red wine, and then they beat it into the desert.

  “After the Stukas,” the first soldier told Lester, “we got chased by Messerschmitt 109s, so the next night we went back and found what airfield they were at and we sneaked in and we blew them up.” He finished his drink and gestured with the glass to make his point. “And that’s not all, believe me.”

  “Bartender! Same again,” Lester said. “What next?”

  “Tell him about Kufra,” Lampard said.

  The soldier half-turned. He was in truth a lance-corporal in the Pioneer Corps. When he saw Lampard looking down at him, his bladder clenched and a single squirt of urine wet his left thigh. He tugged the white beret from his shoulder strap and stuffed it in a pocket. “Time we got back to camp, sir,” he muttered. “Come on, Tom.”

  “You’ve been to Kufra, of course,” Lampard said. “Every SAS patrol goes through Kufra.”

  “Sir.” He was trying to stand at attention, but one knee kept defaulting.

  “Remember the lakes at Kufra? Amazing color, weren’t they?” Lampard put his arm around the man’s shoulders. “Emerald green, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And delicious! Sweet as milk, that water! I bet you always filled your jerricans at the lakes.”

  “Yessir.”

  “No. The lakes at Kufra are blue as sapphire and bitter as sin.” Lampard cuffed him lightly and knocked him into the next table, which capsized with a crash.

  Lester was outraged. “You just hit my exclusive,” he said. Malplacket too was upset. “No way to treat a comrade in arms,” he reproached. The second soldier was encouraged by their support. “I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” he warned Lampard.

  “Wrong,” Lampard said. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He seized the other soldier by the lapels and threw him away. Another table went over.

  “What’s the matter? You crazy?” Lester yelled.

  “Subjunctive mood follows a conditional clause,” Lampard informed him.

  “Correct,” Malplacket said grudgingly. It was the last coherent word spoken for a long time. Men whose drinks had been spilled began throwing chairs at Lampard. The rest of the patrol arrived in a rush and the fighting spread. Malplacket and Lester found safety on the other side of the bar. They saw Lampard grab the first bogus SAS man, heave his dazed body off its feet and toss it over the balcony. It bounced on the screen of wire netting and rolled to the center. The other man tried to crawl away, but Lampard found him and threw him after his friend. M
ike Dunn and Corporal Pocock got a glimpse of this as they beat back various attackers. They picked up a stunned sailor and flung him over the edge. The netting split beneath the weight. Bodies began to drop onto the loaded, crowded tables below. The bouncers who had been heading for the upstairs fight turned and hurried toward the greater uproar downstairs. A manager hustled the belly-dancer offstage. The band struck up “Yes Sir That’s My Baby.” “Time to go!” Lampard shouted.

  Malplacket watched the patrol disappear through the exit, the crowd falling back to let them through. “My stars!” he said. “What was that all about?” Lester didn’t answer. Lester had gone too.

  * * *

  The door to the penthouse flat was unlocked. Very little had changed inside. Mrs. Joan d’Armytage was still drinking sidecars and she was still wearing only her pajama top. There were more broken gramophone records on the floor. “Well, Jack,” she said. “Have you tidied up your silly war?”

  “Slight misunderstanding, that’s all. I got Rommel on the phone. We soon straightened things out.”

  “Really.” She walked into the bedroom. Bits of records crunched beneath her bare feet.

  “No, not really. That was all lies. I couldn’t get Rommel. Line engaged.” He followed her. “I’ll try again tomorrow and—”

  “Never mind, I don’t care. I really don’t. I cared about the war when Desmond was alive, but now it’s not important who wins. He was a nice man, Desmond, not much good in bed and absolutely no sense of humor, but kind, very, very kind. Men don’t understand kindness, do they?”

  “Don’t they?” Lampard smiled, but he was impatient. He didn’t want to talk about the late Desmond d’Armytage. He didn’t really want to talk at all, he wanted to get on with it. If he’d come all the way back here for nothing, that would be a very poor show. “I do my best,” he said.

  “I suppose you do.” She began unbuttoning his shirt. “Anyway, who cares?” She punched him in the stomach, and her fist bounced off the ridged muscle. “Sex comes first. Also fifth, second, fourth, third and ninety-ninth.” He got rid of his clothes. She turned off the lights.

  Sex was easy for Lampard: once given permission to carry on, his body simply followed the standard operating procedure while he enjoyed the heady pleasure which it brought. Sometimes sex led to a slight sense of abandon, and this disturbed him. He liked to be in total control. Yet good sex required a degree of surrender. Some instinct told him so. His mind had conjured up a curious way to discipline this abandon. It led him through the stations on the Central Line of the London Underground. When he was only fifteen and staying with an aunt at Holland Park, he had often visited a wonderful redheaded girl who lived far away at Woodford. She had kissed him a few times and then dropped him. Now the names of the Underground stations between Holland Park and Woodford surged through his mind in proper sequence as the slim fingers of Mrs. Joan d’Armytage gripped his buttocks and controlled his tempo. Holland Park, Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Lancaster Gate, Marble Arch: he was bucketing along, deep in a warm tunnel. Bond Street, Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road. Long way yet. Plenty of time. Cairo, Khashab, Bawiti, Ain Dalla, Kufra . . . Damn. That wasn’t the Central Line. Mrs. d’Armytage did something exciting with her loins. St. Pauls, Bank, Liverpool Street. Better. Bethnal Green, Mile End, Stratford. Not far now. Get your ticket ready, Jack.

  The lights blazed. “Charming!” an angry man shouted. “Fucking charming!”

  “Oh, God damn it all to hell,” Mrs. d’Armytage said wearily.

  Lampard glanced over his shoulder. An Australian major was glaring down at them. He was as square as a brick and he looked as hard. “Get your bloody clobber on and get out!” he shouted. He kicked Lampard’s clothes across the floor.

  “Do you know this man?” Lampard asked. Mrs. d’Armytage sighed and wriggled out of bed. “What a bore you are, Freddy,” she said, crisply, as if the major were a dull housemaid. “And so loud. You’re not in the Outback now.” She went into the bathroom. The lock clicked shut.

  “Shift your ass,” the major ordered.

  “Not the behavior of a gentleman,” Lampard said. He was sitting on the side of the bed. “Barging into a lady’s bedroom. Using foul language.”

  “Listen, you yellow streak of Pommy piss. I’ve just had two months up the blue. If you don’t shift your ass and fast, I’ll kick it through that door.” Rage was making the major blink. A pulse in his neck was pounding furiously.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lampard said. He stood up. “I think the proper thing is for you to go away now. It’s quite plain that Mrs. d’Armytage doesn’t want to see you, Freddy.”

  The use of his name detonated the Australian major’s fury. He charged at Lampard, roaring obscenities. Lampard did what he was trained to do: he hit the most vulnerable part of the attacker’s body as hard as possible. The edge of his right hand scythed through the air and whacked the major’s throat just below his Adam’s apple. It smashed his windpipe. That was that. The windpipe, being a collection of bits of cartilage held together by tissue and muscle, is far from indestructible, but it is vital. The crushed cartilage blocked the airways to the major’s lungs. As he fell, pain flashed its emergency message to his brain, and his brain stimulated his adrenal glands, and those glands rushed adrenalin to his bloodstream, and it was all for nothing. The last thing he knew was that he was being strangled; but even that mistake lasted only a few seconds. No air to the lungs meant no oxygen in the blood. The brain must have oxygen. Quite quickly, the brain died.

  Lampard stood for a long time with his arms folded, watching the sprawled body. He was naked and his skin was chilled, yet he had no wish to dress. When one of the major’s feet twitched and surprised him, he cleared his throat. The noise made him realize how quiet the flat was. Mrs. d’Armytage was silent in the bathroom. The silence began to bother him, and to break it he said the first thing that came into his head: “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.”

  A few seconds later a man in the next room said, “No sir, don’t mean maybe.” He came and stood in the doorway. It was Henry Lester. “Don’t explain,” he said. “I saw it all.”

  Lampard put on his trousers. “Why should I explain anything?” he asked.

  “I’m a newspaperman. This looks like news.”

  “Excuse me.” Lampard went past him and searched the rest of the flat. The outside door was open; he closed it. When he came back, Lester was testing the major’s breath with a small silver mirror from Mrs. d’Armytage’s dressing table. “No soap,” Lester said. “They do this all the time in the movies and it never makes a damn bit of difference. Same here. There’s nothing stiffer than a stiff, is there?”

  Lampard put his shirt on. “You were at the Black Cat Club,” he said.

  “I followed you here. You’re SAS, aren’t you? And those guys in the white berets were phonies . Am I right?”

  “The brigade abandoned the white beret some time ago. Too conspicuous.” Lampard found his shoes and socks. “Word got around Cairo that wearing a white beret and SAS shoulder badges was a quick way to a free drink. Imitation warriors appeared on the scene. We discourage imitations.” Using his foot he nudged the major’s limbs straight. “You appreciate I had no choice whatsoever.”

  “This place Kufra,” Lester said. “That’s the big oasis, right? I guess you guys use it a lot.”

  “I have nothing to say about Kufra.”

  “No, sure, I understand. You said it all, back there at the club.” Lester glanced toward the bathroom. “She okay?”

  “Probably taking a bath. Don’t disturb her. I’ve got to get this thing out of here.” They were standing by the body, the American at its head, the Englishman at its feet. “Any suggestions?” Lampard asked.

  “What d’you usually do?”

  “Dig a hole in the sand.”

  “Back in Chicago they dig a hole in the lake.”

  They looked like a pair of removal men, patiently working out how to get a big sofa through a sm
all door.

  “I don’t suppose anyone saw him arrive,” Lampard said.

  “Only me.” They looked at each other. “Sure, you could kill me too,” Lester said, “but that would only double your problem. Why don’t you just airmail this one?”

  “Airmail?”

  Lester got a grip of the major’s armpits. “Take his feet,” he said.

  They carried the dead major through to the rear balcony. It overlooked a garden, six flights down. “Plenty of back-swing,” Lester said. “On the count of three.” The body went sailing into the night. They waited, and heard a brief, crunching thud. “It’s all roses and grass down there,” Lester said. “Chances are he broke his neck.”

  The cocktail shaker held the makings of one last sidecar. Lampard split it between two glasses, and they drank. He looked about the flat. “Hard to believe,” he said.

  “Guy was drunk. Leaned too far. Lost his balance.”

  “Why did you follow me?”

  “I’m interested in Kufra. Seems to me there’s a helluva story in what you’re doing.”

  Lampard thought about it. “Pity,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful. Awfully sorry, old chap, but that’s the way it has to be. Now: can you find yourself a taxi?”

  “Why don’t we share one?”

  “I feel I ought to stay here a little longer. One doesn’t like to leave a job half-done, does one?”

  “One certainly doesn’t,” Lester said, “and I guess two don’t like it twice as much.”

  When Lester had gone, Lampard tapped on the bathroom door. “Bedtime,” he said. Mrs. d’Armytage came out wearing a red silk nightdress that clung to her like a frightened child. “Good God, you’ve got your clothes on again,” she said.

  * * *

  Major Jakowski’s column kept radio silence, but his signals unit listened out at regular times for messages. He was hoping that Luftwaffe Intelligence would discover the location of the landing-ground used by the ground-strafing Tomahawks. That would be perfect—a long dash; a dawn assault; blazing aircraft and pillars of smoke; then a swift return to the patrol area, poised for more action.