The Forgotten War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘But yours does? Even if you’re technically my number two?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In that case stop calling me sir,’ I snapped. ‘It’s bloody insulting.’

  Miller coloured. Two bright pink patches just below her cheekbones. I’d never spoken to her like that before, and now I’d done it in front of the others. Bugger – that wasn’t going to get her on her back, was it?

  Liz didn’t help. She said cheerfully, ‘It’s confusing, isn’t it? I think that they do it on purpose.’

  So I turned on her. ‘Who’s they?’

  She was made of stronger stuff so she just shrugged and said, ‘The toerags running this operation. They were born with silver spoons up their arses, I guess. Are you going to fire me for saying that?’

  I had to laugh. ‘No. Don’t you mean silver spoons in their mouths?’

  ‘No, Charlie. I know the difference between a mouth and an arsehole: it’s something most girls learn quite quickly, if they don’t want contradictory sex lives. What I mean is that we got the runts of the litter for our bosses. They can’t fight, and they can’t think; so they wangle their way into an Intelligence manager’s chair because they haven’t any. It’s always been that way: Intelligence’ll still be like it in fifty years’ time.’

  ‘You don’t really like it here all that much, do you?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t mind me – I just had a touch of BTD.’

  ‘Bored to death,’ Jane explained. ‘It’s like flu: we all get from time to time.’

  ‘Then why do you stay?’ I asked Liz.

  ‘I made a mistake a few years ago, and this is my punishment. Piers says that I’ve got to stay here until they’ve forgiven me.’

  ‘You know Piers, then?’

  ‘Everyone knows Piers.’

  ‘What was your mistake?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you, sir.’ It was the first time Liz had used the word, and she was using it to tell me where to get off. ‘What was yours?’

  The silence that followed that wasn’t an uncomfortable one. Honours even; but nobody was going to help me out. Eventually I said, ‘We can’t all have fucked something up?’

  Jane sniffed and looked out of the window. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she said.

  We were on the verge of playing that childhood game of you show me yours, I’ll show you mine, but I could see that Boulder and Ronka weren’t comfortable and wanted nothing to do with it. Time to settle for what I had, and draw the threads together. Even better: Miller got there first. She said to Mrs Boulder, ‘If you’re not booked for anything this morning, Jean, I’ll bring my log over and we’ll see if we can slot something together for Mr Bassett.’ Jean.

  Boulder glanced up and looked her squarely in the eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Mrs Miller, call him Charlie – the same as the rest of us.’ And that was how Boulder began to call me Charlie. Then she looked at me and winked. It nearly knocked me over. I’d thought it before, and I had been right the first time: there was something the matter with the women that week.

  Miller hung back as the meeting broke up. Unfinished business.

  I started with, ‘I want to ask you something.’ She glanced at the open office door. ‘No, it’s all right. I wanted to know if you could use one of those chitties of yours to get me another flying jacket. A decent lined one to keep out the weather?’

  ‘You’ll miss your old one.’

  ‘I know I will. That was a mistake. A spur-of-the-moment thing.’ Then I said, ‘And I also wanted to apologize to you for snapping at you in front of the others. Even more than that; it was ill-mannered. I’m very sorry.’

  Pause. Eye lock. Smile. I liked that smile.

  ‘That’s all right, Charlie. Boss’s prerogative.’

  ‘Does the boss have other prerogatives?’

  Miller shook her head. She had this way of shaking her head and continuing to smile, which confused me.

  ‘Sorry again,’ I told her. ‘I’m not much good at this sort of stuff. Put it down to bad breeding.’

  Miller spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear her. ‘I think that your breeding will probably be just fine, Charlie.’

  ‘But not at work?’

  She nodded, and blinked her eyes. It’s not so much that I’m so stupid that I can’t understand women: it’s more that I’m too bleeding clever to try in the first place.

  That was Monday. They thought the signal schedule they prepared for me was a bit iffy. It ran like this: If the northern Jed call sign initiates signals on, say, a Tuesday, it will use this profile, or that profile, and will probably be active between this hour and that. It was actually a lot better than I had anticipated, but I didn’t tell them that. I’d let them sweat it out for a few days.

  Miller came back late afternoon. She had a signals flimsy in her hand, but it wasn’t one of ours. I asked her, ‘What’s up? We flying?’

  ‘No – it’s from London, Ming brought it over. Piers wants you up there for a few days – to work on a new signals manual for the service, apparently. There’s a travel warrant waiting for you at the guardroom.’ She looked puzzled.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s not happened before; that’s all. I don’t like surprises – that’s part of my character.’

  ‘Inflexible, you mean?’

  ‘If you like.’ Miller’s bottom lip went out. It was one of her things. I don’t think that anyone had ever told her not to sulk. I would have to work on that. I gently punted my office door shut with my toe.

  ‘I like; very much indeed.’ At least I got a grin for my efforts.

  But all she said was, ‘Not now, Charlie. Do you want me to pick you up in the morning and take you to the station?’

  ‘That would be good. Thank you. I’ll phone Piers and find out what the score is.’

  I asked for a number that Piers had given me weeks ago. The woman who answered said there was no one of that name working there, but asked me to wait anyway. That had happened before. When Piers came on the line I asked him, ‘Why don’t you use the same phone all the time? It would make things easier for the rest of us.’

  ‘Need-to-know, old boy.’

  ‘You lot are away with the fairies, you know that? The sooner I get away from you the better. That clock is running now, isn’t it?’

  ‘ ’Course it is old son. Ticking away like a time bomb.’

  ‘What’s this nonsense about a manual? I’m not a signals clerk.’

  ‘Gives you an excuse for being away, old son. Your coven will soon rumble that you’re up to something if you keep slipping away from them, won’t they? There isn’t a dud one among them, you know. I picked ’em myself.’

  ‘I know you did; they told me earlier.’

  ‘So: there you are. I’ve given you a decent alibi. Say thank you.’

  ‘Thank you, Piers. But why now? I’ve only just got back. I’m spending half my life up and down the sodding Great West Road – it’s getting tedious.’

  ‘That’s why I wired you a rail warrant. Sympathetic beggar, ain’t I?’

  I asked it again. ‘Why now?’

  ‘Because your landlord was back at his pub last night.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘And he took a khaki lady with him this time.’

  I paused. ‘You mean . . .?’

  ‘Yes, Charlie. I mean her.’

  ‘Balls.’

  ‘Yes, Charlie. Frequently a common denominator. Wayne will meet you at the station and bring you here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have some trinkets for you. Props. I adore them already – it’s going to be difficult to surrender them to you.’

  ‘I’m not happy about this, Piers.’

  ‘Don’t ever mistake me for someone who gives a fuck whether you’re happy or not, old boy. Needs must; needs must.’

  I didn’t like him. All over again. Right first time.

  One last thing that Monday. The projected schedule for Jedburgh broadca
sts gave us a window that very day. Boulder wanted to launch immediately, so we all waited to listen in to the fun. They had anticipated a broadcast at eighteen thirty-eight our time. I was surprised that it was the first time they had tried to predict a Jedburgh. We sat around Boulder’s radio rigs and watched the second hand on the big clock on the wall above her sweeping round. At eighteen thirty-seven and fifteen seconds Boulder started to give them brands of English beers on a frequency they had used before . . .

  Bass, Worthington, Flowers, Ind-Coope . . . as soon as she broke off a station was snapping back at her: ‘Who is this? PI?’

  ‘PI?’ Miller queried with me.

  ‘Please identify yourself. That’s a very old short code. Prewar.’ Then I told Boulder, ‘Send Charlie.’ She did.

  ‘Leave us alone, Charlie. Fuck off.’ This all came back in clear; as indeed it had to if they wanted us to read it immediately. Then they were gone.

  ‘I lost him,’ Boulder said. She quickly switched to the other profile, but there was nothing there either.

  ‘That’ll give them something to think about,’ I told them. ‘Well done, everyone. Now they know we can really mess them about.’ Smiles all round. I asked, ‘Are there any orders for tonight, or is that it?’

  ‘No.’ That was Miller. ‘That’s a stand-down. Do I log that call, by the way?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I could see from the upside-down smile that she didn’t like that, so I jumped in with, ‘Anyone fancy a pint on the way home? I won’t see you for a few days; I’m off to London again.’ They surprised me by running for their coats. I wish those magic words had occurred to me weeks before.

  Jane looked at me over a half-pint of cider. ‘I was a WAAF teleprinter operator on a station,’ she explained. ‘I used to see the target list about four hours before your lot did. You heard of the Le Panioque mutiny – October 1943?’

  ‘No, that was before my time. I was still training then.’

  ‘Le Panioque was a factory in France – your blokes used to call it “Panic Stations”. There was a call for a daylight early-evening low-level raid by Halifaxes. Suicide job. I warned my boyfriend, who didn’t fancy the trip; so he reported sick. The problem was that he didn’t keep his trap shut, and half the squadron agreed with him. They also went sick. There was a secret inquiry, of course – closed-doors job – and it led back to me. So here I am: serving my time. What about you?’

  ‘I forgot to come home when the war finished,’ I admitted. ‘I was a little late.’

  ‘How late?’

  ‘Earlier this year.’

  That made Jane laugh and spill her drink. ‘Christ, Charlie – that’s nearly two years. What were you doing?’

  ‘Driving around Europe mostly; looking for someone, and seeing what was left. Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers. Was there much left?’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  ‘That’s why they gave you a team monitoring a couple of lost Jedburghs.’

  ‘That’s what I think, too. There must be a line in my file that says “good at finding lost people”. Set a thief to catch one: I can’t seem to get away from it.’ I switched my focus. ‘What did you do, Ronka?’

  She said, ‘I killed someone. You killed people, Charlie?’

  ‘You’re the second person to ask me that recently. Yes. Loads, I suppose, and I killed two German soldiers about a week before the war ended. That was different.’

  ‘I killed a Lithuanian SS man about six months after that. I recognized him. He was living in London as free as a bird – working in a butcher’s shop. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Yes. I can believe it.’

  ‘Ronka strangled him with her stocking,’ Liz offered. ‘I always thought that was kinda classy.’

  I looked at Boulder, who shook her head and looked down. Liz just looked away. They would have to wait for later.

  Miller came back from the bar with a tray of drinks. When I looked up at her Liz snorted, and said, ‘No; not Gloria; she’s the jailer. She has an untarnished record, don’t you, dear?’

  Miller’s smile didn’t dip for an instant, but something happened behind her eyes. I’d have to watch her, but I didn’t mind that: she wasn’t exactly hard to look at.

  PART FOUR

  Last Orders, Please

  16. Temptation Rag

  When she met me Dolly was wearing a light linen dress, a wedding ring, and a small cardy over her shoulders to fend off the breezy wind around the station. She gave me a peck on the cheek and fiddled ostentatiously with the ring; we must have looked like a couple of newly-weds. She had one of those new upright nippy black Fords.

  ‘Piers is getting twitchy,’ she said. ‘You never know who’s watching.’

  ‘Would you like to be married?’ I asked her.

  ‘Mmm . . . eventually. Not at the moment – I’m enjoying myself too much. It would be nice to have a couple of children in a few years’ time, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so. I never give it much thought. Where to next?’

  ‘Round to the flat so that you can change. Piers is coming round to see you there. I’m not staying, I’m afraid: work to do.’

  ‘Anything to do with me?’

  ‘No. De Gaulle’s coming over in a few days; his first visit since he forgot to say thank you to us for getting his country back for him. We want to get a calculated insult to his pride properly rehearsed.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He wanted to bring six beefy bodyguards. Legionnaires. We’ve vetoed that, and said that we’ll provide for his security ourselves. What he doesn’t know yet is that the bodyguard we’ll provide him with will be one unarmed WAAF. Me.’

  ‘And that’s a calculated insult?’

  ‘It tells the world that one unarmed Englishwoman is more than a match for six heavily armed Frogs. I think he’ll get the message, don’t you? So will the newspapers – they’ll love it.’

  ‘Piers’s idea?’

  ‘Of course; he really knows how to get under someone’s skin.’

  Dolly didn’t even get out of the car in the little mews. I didn’t get another kiss, either.

  Den wasn’t at the flat. In fact, the place had that indefinable sense of having been abandoned for a few days. There was a sort of staleness in the air, so I opened the kitchen windows and let the zephyrs in. I recovered my old clothes from Den’s room and changed back into them. I suddenly missed my old leather jacket and hoped that Miller would hurry up a new one for me.

  Piers let himself in an hour later. I wondered just how many folk had keys to this place. He was carrying a bottle of wine that still had beads of moisture on it, and he even knew which drawer to find the corkscrew in without searching. It was delicious: white and slightly sparkling – like champagne without that awful bite at your tonsils that the cheap ones have.

  ‘Cava from España; it’s all the thing with the county set. Like it?’

  ‘Delicious. It really hits the spot.’

  Piers snorted. ‘No flash words about bouquet or colour from you, eh, Charlie? Just “it really hits the spot”.’ Then he told me, ‘It comes from Catalonia. If they send us this you can almost forgive the dagos for being a load of sad old fascisti, can’t you?’

  He gave me a battered old music case that he’d carried in.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Greeks bearing gifts. Your swag. Will it do?’

  Inside there was a mixture of jewellery and valuables, wrapped in a large piece of grubby brown velvet. There were gold and silver bracelets, pendants on chains, rings and watches. I was particularly struck by one woman’s ring, although it probably wasn’t all that valuable. The ring was fine, and gold. Its large oval green stone had been polished flat, and was flecked with other colours, pink and blue hues which seemed to gather and then scatter the light. The stone had a number of small chips around the rim – it had been worn and loved by somebody.

  ‘These will do fine,’ I said. ‘Where did you get them
?’

  ‘Someone bought them in Rotterdam yesterday, and had them flown over for me. Probably stolen from the Jews five years ago.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Do you need to know?’

  ‘I think that if push comes to shove I’ll be expected to know what the stuff I’m stealing is worth.’

  ‘About two hundred pounds.’ Piers’s bottom lip was out; he hadn’t liked telling me that.

  ‘Thank you, Piers. I’ll try to look after them, but if I have to lose any I’ll account to you for them afterwards. I’ll complete all the right paperwork.’

  ‘Sometimes I forget precisely how much of a beginner you are, old boy: a paper trail leading back to you is precisely what we don’t want.’

  After we’d finished the wine Piers asked me, ‘When are you getting away?’

  ‘As soon as I can; don’t want to keep the Party waiting, do I?’

  ‘Where’s your old jacket?’

  ‘I gave it away.’

  ‘Pity; I rather liked it.’

  Bollocks.

  Matesy was in the kitchen listening to a piece of classical music on the radio. Whatever else the Party was short of it wasn’t radios: they were everywhere. There was even one in my bathroom. The music was sombre and chilling – spectral, almost.

  It suited my mood; I don’t know why.

  ‘Char?’ Matesy asked as if I hadn’t been away. Cups of tea were the new currency; it must have happened while I was AWOL.

  ‘Thanks. Ta. Milk and two, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Like music, do you?’

  ‘Yeah. How did you guess?’

  ‘Your face changed as you came through the door. You play anything?’

  I laughed.

  ‘Me? No. Tone-deaf.’

  ‘Can’t be; not if you like music. I used to play my uncle’s squeeze-box when I was a kid. I often wonder where that got to.’

  I sat a while with him and let the music wash over me. It helped me become someone else. Matesy said, ‘Gary’s been asking for you. You know: the kid who left his dad at Alamein. He’s looking for another one, and his mother’s rather pretty too, so you’d better watch your step.’ Matesy obviously found it a bit amusing, because he was smiling in a gentle sort of way.