The Forgotten War

by David Fiddimore

  The single woman I shared a bathroom with was called Wendy. She’d got through the war, and now she was an exotic dancer. She told me this over strong tea and wonderful home-baked bread in the huge kitchen.

  ‘What’s an exotic dancer?’

  ‘Like the Windmill Girls.’

  ‘You mean you take your clothes off? Striptease?’

  ‘Yes, silly . . . I know that I don’t look like much in the morning, but you should see me in the spotlights! Harry said that you’d give me a hand painting my room. That OK?’

  ‘Sure. When?’

  ‘How about now?’

  I’d been in women’s rooms before: you’ve probably realized that. Each one has its own characteristic smell. Sometimes it’s the perfume she wears, or the make-up – nail varnish, powder or lipstick. Sometimes it’s simply sheets that should have been changed a fortnight ago. Wendy’s room was one of a kind: it stank of paraffin.

  I threw the windows open, and said something like phew – you know, one of those strange noises they like in boys’ comics.

  Wendy said, ‘Sorry. I don’t notice it any more.’

  ‘What happened? Did you have a big spill, or something?’

  ‘Nah: it’s the exotic part of the dancing I told you about. I’m a fire-eater.’

  ‘Fire-eater? Like at the circus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You eat fire and take your clothes off? At the same time?’

  ‘You got it. Wanna watch some day? It’s very artistic.’

  I shook my head: I’d been too close to a fire before, and it hadn’t done me any good. Wendy’s room was like mine, but bigger. Three windows and all of the panes were intact. As I looked around I noticed scorch and soot marks on the walls and ceiling.

  ‘Harry says I can’t practise in here any more. I have to do it in the garden. Just in case I burn the place down.’

  Seemed fair enough to me. We were grinning at each other before we had finished shrouding her few sticks of furniture with borrowed paint-splattered sheets: she had as little as I. The paint was Ministry of Pensions puke green. Even its thin green label said M of P, and had the secret government mark, so it was the genuine article all right.

  Wendy left me to push a light plywood chest of drawers over to the centre of the room and tuck it under the sheets. I had to pick up a framed photograph from its top, and glanced at it as I turned it over. And stopped. It was the photograph that Piers had hidden in my car. I still had it in my hand, and my heart had started beating again, when Wendy waltzed back in with a bottle of beer and two half-pint glasses: this girl knew how to paint a room. I looked up and asked, ‘Party to remember?’

  She took the photo from me and smiled. It had been a memory worth framing. A small modern wireless set on the floor in a corner was bashing out ‘Storyville Blues’ behind me somewhere. Time stopped, and Wendy remembered. ‘That wasn’t so long ago. It was the first real fun I’d had in a long time; I danced with all the men in that picture, and then that one asked me out.’ She laid her finger on a face with a massive moustache.

  I tried to sound disinterested. ‘Who’s the girl? The one who didn’t smile?’

  Wendy’s smile stretched out. ‘She won’t tell us. She has no name.’

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘She said that we could call her Carla, but that it wasn’t her real name.’

  Carla. She had named her small boy Carlo, after the Eyetie she had been knocking around with when he was born. I tried to keep it casual. ‘Does she stay here too?’

  ‘No – why? Do you know her?’

  Back off, Charlie. ‘No. I rather fancied the look of her, that’s all.’

  Wendy laughed. ‘So did all the other guys. Queuing up like for ration books at the butcher’s shop. I don’t know what she’s got, but I wouldn’t mind some of it. I don’t think that one often has a quiet bed.’

  ‘Don’t you like her?’

  ‘No. And I don’t know why – isn’t that odd? She’s in one of the houses around here; I don’t know which one.’

  ‘I’ll keep my eye out for her.’

  ‘You’re a fly waiting for the spider, then: poor sod. Do you want the walls or the ceiling?’

  ‘Ceiling. I was in the RAF once; I’m supposed to be good at heights.’

  I finished my glass of beer. The band on the radio switched to ‘No-name Rag’. If God existed somewhere, He was sending me a message. I’d caught the signal, but as with most of His messages it was the usual fucking gibberish.

  I told Harry James that I needed to make a few phone calls if I was to stay in business. He cautioned me again about making my business too local. Then he told me where the nearest phone box was, and offered me change for it. The Bishops Avenue would have been called Mile End Road if someone else hadn’t got there first. Even in a half-hearted smog you can stand at one end and not see the other. It took me ten minutes to reach the telephone, and I was sweating by the time I got there, so I propped the door open to cool down while I spoke to Piers. The other reason to prop the door open was to stop me retching: someone had crapped and pissed in the phone box the night before.

  ‘You’re still alive, then?’ Piers said. ‘Well done.’

  ‘I’m learning a useful trade; I painted a ceiling this morning.’

  ‘Don’t tell the RAF; they’ll want you to stay on even longer – or are we talking Michelangelo here? In which case don’t tell the Pope, either. Have you found anything yet? I can’t wait for ever.’

  ‘Hang on a tick; I’ve only been here a day! I think that I’ve seen a couple of your faces – I’ll need another shufti at your photographs sometime.’

  ‘What about your woman?’

  ‘I saw the same photograph of her in another woman’s room. Apparently Grace is in one of the houses, but I don’t know which one yet. God knows what I’m going to say if I bump into her by chance.’

  ‘Do the same as any decent actor: rehearse it beforehand. And don’t use names on the telephone, dear boy. You never know who’s listening. Walls still have ears, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘These people are somehow under the impression that I pursue the honourable profession of thief: I didn’t plan it that way, but it means that I can sod off for a week’s thieving whenever I like without anyone being that worried – except that when I come back I will have to display a few examples of my ill-gotten gains.’

  ‘Swag, you mean? That’s colourful! Do you expect me to provide it?’

  ‘If you would. I think that I’m just your everyday burglar: robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’m going to stay tonight, then go back down to the girls’ flat and clean up, and then go back to Cheltenham. I never did wholly trust you, so I want to see if I still have a job there.’

  ‘Getting to like it there, were we?’

  ‘Sod off, Piers.’

  It was just as well that my money ran out then.

  Supper was a big affair in the kitchen large enough to house an aircraft. When you counted the kids there were probably twenty of us. Mountains of salty scrambled egg – the real thing, not powdered – chips, and fried slices of Spam. There were three bottles of HP Sauce, and five newly baked loaves on the long table. Back to wartime food, except for the eggs. This lot had probably never moved away from it.

  ‘We’ve nearly a hundred chickens in the gardens here,’ James told me. ‘That’s why I’m determined to hang on to the houses until the government gives these families somewhere decent to live. I can not only house them but feed them, and there’s a school for the kids less than a mile away.’

  I nodded. I’d seen more than enough eggs recently to last a lifetime, but in the Forties you never pushed your plate away with anything left on it.

  ‘I’ve got to go away for a few days to do a bit of business. I’d like to contribute what I can, if you don’t mind; otherwise I’m just stealing the food out of someone else’s mouth.’

  He shook his head. ‘I told you. Money’s not exactly a problem. I might
even be able to lay my hands on enough to buy homes for everyone here, if only there were the houses to buy.’ That ‘country fit for heroes’ the old man had moaned on about was still further away than before. ‘Occupying the big empty houses encourages the government to fill up all those holes in the ground, and to start building decent homes on them. Building more houses means more jobs for more builders, of course, and “the music goes round and round”.’ He sang the last phrase: it was the title of a Tommy Dorsey number. ‘You can have the room as long as you like because you’re striking a blow for the workers by living in it. Get yourself a girl, and a proper job one day – it beats getting arrested for larceny.’ James was a big innocent slob, and if I hung around there for too long I would begin to like him enormously.

  ‘How about my contributing to some sort of political fund, then? Helping out in another way,’ I offered.

  He beamed. It was as if I’d switched a light on. ‘That would be a fine thing to do, Charlie.’

  ‘How much . . .?’

  ‘A couple of quid a week is just about right for those who can afford it. You won’t regret this, Charlie, I promise you.’ Don’t you hate it whenever anyone says that? ‘You’ll tell your kids about this one day.’

  I handed over a few grubby pound notes. You would have thought that I’d handed him the Crown Jewels. He finished by telling me that my card would take a couple of weeks to come through, and I realized that I’d just joined the Party. Call me Red Charlie. My friend Pete, the Pink Pole, would have been very amused.

  I finished my James Hadley Chase novel just before midnight, and banged my head six times against the mattress to remind me to get up early. It also reminded me to get a pillow from somewhere next time. My last memory before I slept was of the paraffin smell in Wendy’s room, but eventually I drifted off. That’s probably why I dreamed I was over Germany in a Lancaster again. Germany was burning. So was the Lancaster. It never quite leaves you.

  Den was in the mews flat next morning: she gave me a key. Before I went I telephoned Piers.

  ‘How did that woman get a copy of Grace’s photograph? Who did she get it from? Your guy?’

  ‘You forgot to ask her, didn’t you?’

  Wise after the event; sod him. Den helped me bundle up my old clothes, pack them into a battered RN kitbag that she had, and stow them behind one of her two overflowing wardrobes. I kept hold of my battered American flying jacket to wear while I was driving. I pulled the hood of the car down, and wondered how far I’d get before it started to rain.

  15. Once in a While

  I got almost as far as Oxford before I introduced a three-inch nail to the front nearside tyre with sad consequences: they didn’t get on, and the tyre deflated just as I reached a pub with a car park and beer garden. The beer garden was full of students, most of whom were ex-Servicemen toying with maths, science and engineering degrees. I know that because they did their best to help me to change the car’s wheel, telling me that it was a simple matter of maths, science and engineering. You probably guessed that they hadn’t a fucking clue.

  Half an hour later a girl smaller than me – height-wise only – pushed through the crowd, explaining that changing a wheel on a Singer was more of an art than a science. She showed me how to do it. It took her less than five minutes. I hadn’t looked at the spare since 1944 so the fact that it was still inflated, if a trifle soft, showed that someone up there was looking after me. We actually finished the job before we introduced ourselves.

  ‘I’m Charlie Bassett, and that was very kind of you. Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘Madeleine, and yes, you can.’

  Her brother had a garage, and he liked working on Singers: she helped him out sometimes. The party in the pub wound up out of nowhere: the best ones always do. It was like one of our parties in ’44. I remember looking up suddenly, and asking where the boys were – my old bomber crew: that never quite leaves you either.

  Rain. We had to hold my jacket over our heads to keep dry as we staggered to the car. The rooms she lived in were above her brother’s workshop, and smelled vaguely of engine oil, petrol and exhaust fumes. I’ve always loved those homely smells. They remind me of my dad.

  ‘We’re home,’ I told her, ‘and you have triffic tits.’

  ‘Triffic?’ She laughed at me, and I didn’t mind.

  ‘That’s what I said, wasn’t it? Triffic. ’Xtremely triffic.’ We were leaning against each other, holding each other upright. ‘Christ; did I drive here without hitting anything?’

  The god who loves radio operators had punched my ticket again, and lent me the goodwill of a good woman. I kissed her mouth for the first time at the foot of the stairs leading up to her room. In bed she made me use a French letter. That was probably the first time that I didn’t mind about that. Afterwards I kissed her lightly on her nose. Innocent as babies. In the morning she asked me to give her my old leather jacket, which I did without a thought. Easy come, easy go.

  The next day was my special saint’s day: Hangover Sunday. We made plans to meet again. She was going to call me, but deep in our hearts we both knew that would only spoil it. She didn’t call. We didn’t meet, and sixty years later I can write about her now, with a smile still on my face. I hope that she is still around, and smiling somewhere too.

  The first thing that Miller said to me on Monday morning was, ‘Where’s your old flying jacket?’

  I usually hung it on the nail in the back of my office door. Women are like that; they notice bloody everything. If you plucked a hair from one of your eyebrows they’d comment on it the next time they saw you.

  ‘I don’t need it now that you’ve given me a new raincoat.’

  ‘That’s sweet, Charlie; did you leave your old jacket in your rooms?’ She wasn’t going to let it go.

  ‘I gave it to someone I met yesterday. They needed it more than I did. Why?’

  She stuck out her lower lip. ‘I rather liked it; that’s all.’

  ‘It once belonged to James Stewart, the film star. Did I ever tell you that?’

  ‘No; that only makes it worse.’ Then she smiled and said, ‘A few days off have done you good: it’s brought the colour back to your cheeks.’ I’ll swear that she was a bloody mind-reader.

  I didn’t like to tell her that I’d decided it was time to go to war: so I just called a meeting. The others filtered in shortly after that, at my request. Four sat on chairs, but Jane sat on the end of my desk and flashed her stocking tops at me. Miller didn’t like that. I did.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about those two Jedburghs,’ I told them. ‘How long have you been trying to pin them down?’

  ‘About eight months so far.’ Jane produced one of those odd-shaped stilettos and began to file her nails, but it was just displacement activity. She uncrossed her legs, then crossed them the other way. Miller frowned. No one likes discussing their failures. Perhaps no one was supposed to tell me anything. After all, I was only supposed to be in charge, and I’d spent the last four years keeping as much as possible from my bosses.

  ‘Well, I reckon they’ve got our measure, don’t you?’ No one would meet my eye, so I went on, ‘And I don’t want you to get all down in the mouth about that. I just want us to put them on their back foot for a min.’

  Liz made a sound that came out halfway between a raspberry and a giggle, and then said, ‘Sorry. I mean, how?’ What she meant was ‘Better men than you have tried, Charlie Bassett.’

  ‘Work out their schedules and probable frequencies, and keep jumping in first before they broadcast. Let’s really piss them off.’

  ‘Rattle their cages?’ That was Weronka. ‘Isn’t that what the Yanks say?’

  I just waited for Boulder. She said, ‘I think I need a cup of coffee. Anyone else?’

  Now that might not sound like much, but they were all in the same conversation at the same time, you see. For the first time they began to sound to me something like a team. Boulder came back with three cups of uncut Camp. One of th
em was for me. I said, ‘Thanks,’ and got a little twitch around her lips back for it. That was good, but she hadn’t quite finished. Boulder looked at me. ‘We’re supposed just to monitor the frequencies that London gives us, but not supposed to keep notes of anything we do, other than any we hand in to Mrs Miller at the end of each shift. It’s security; London says so.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Miller said. ‘I have to give them a certificate every month.’

  ‘I lie to you,’ Boulder told her nervously. She sat with her knees pressed tight together and looked down. It was as if she had tossed a hand grenade into the room. ‘I’ve a bad memory . . . so I need to keep some things written down if I’m to remember them an hour later. I have a small notebook. I think I’ve got a record of each of the frequencies I’ve heard the Jedburghs on.’

  I was grinning fit to split my face. If Boulder had looked up she would have seen that the others were, too. All except Miller: you could see the battle between keeping the rules and making a match of it all over her face. The match won: thank God for that. She gave in. ‘If you tied that into my book you’ve probably got close to what you want.’

  ‘What book?’ I asked.

  ‘The logbook: our legal one.’ That was a bit mean. ‘Every time I send off a flimsy I keep a numbered record. When the call was intercepted, call sign – and which of our operators copied it. One signal for every line in the log. The Commander calls it our defensive record. It means that London can’t deny they received a signal copy from us. Periodically an independent officer arrives to compare my log with a list of signals that London says they’ve analysed.’

  ‘But not the frequencies or the radio profiles?’

  ‘No. I’m not allowed to keep that. Standing orders.’ Miller looked pointedly at Boulder.

  I said, ‘I’d better read those SOs one day.’

  ‘I don’t think you can, sir. I don’t think that your clearance goes that high.’