The Hidden War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Go and get her out. Tell her it’s the Chief of Air Staff.’ I had to wait about four minutes, and feed the telephone’s gob with a tanner and press Button A again . . . that was the problem with this new technology: it wasn’t cheap. I heard her pick up the telephone.

  ‘This had better be good, Charlie.’

  ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘The Chief of Air Staff wouldn’t speak to me: I’m in purdah.’

  ‘Because Angus McDoom, or whatever his name was, got himself killed? He was supposed to be looking after you, not the other way round. He was trying to show off, and must have stuck his neck out . . .’

  ‘Can’t talk about it, Charlie. Certainly not on a telephone.’

  ‘Come to supper then. I’ve been asked out, and need a date with me.’

  ‘Have you just come in from somewhere?’

  ‘Can’t talk about it. Certainly not on a telephone.’

  ‘You’re not funny, Charlie: not funny at all.’

  The pips went again, and I shoved more money in, and punched the button. The hollow rattle in the black box told me that it had recently been emptied.

  ‘Please. Come and meet my boss. You’ll like him, he’s a millionaire.’

  She hit that straight for the boundary.

  ‘Where and when, and what do you want me to wear?’

  ‘Something summery and dressy at the same time. The restaurant is called Bill O’Neal’s and it’s on Purley Way in Croydon, so you’ll have to get your skates on. Take a cab and I’ll pay for it.’ I heard Stephen’s voice in the background, and Dolly giggled. I asked, ‘What was that?’

  ‘Stephen told me to put some clothes on; I’m making him feel hungry.’ Then she put the phone down. She hadn’t said Yes, but I thought that it was implied.

  Dolly looked the million dollars that Old Man Halton was probably worth. When she stepped out of the cab she knew it, and threw me the Betty Grable smile and a bit of leg. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know if Halton was married. We walked in at twenty twenty-nine, and either we were in the wrong place or the Old Man was going to be late. I wasn’t sure whether that was one up to us, or not. The place had about ten tables, including one in an alcove that could be screened with a curtain. That’s where the waiter showed us when I dropped the old guy’s name. The food was Italian. The waiter said his name was Dominici. His accent was as Sheffield as a Fairbairn dagger. He gave us a handwritten menu and asked, ‘Will you need help with the menu?’

  He seemed to be addressing his question to Dolly’s lower neckline. If I had been a ventriloquist I would have thrown my reply back to him from between her breasts. I would have liked to have seen his face. My lack of reply made him look at me instead. He wasn’t good at it. Then I said, ‘No. Thanks. I know a bit. I was in Italy a few years ago.’

  ‘During the war?’ His lip definitely curled.

  ‘No. Not long after. When they were putting things back together again.’

  ‘I never been to Italy.’

  Dolly tried to ease the tension. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been to the Isle of Man for six bloody years. My father came to England when he was six years old, you know that?’

  How could I? I hadn’t seen the bleeder before, had I?

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘I was born and bred in Doncaster, never left England in me life, and they locked me up on the Isle of bloody Man for six bloody years because I got an Italian bloody name.’

  I was fed up with this, but when the Eyetie suddenly said something like, ‘Pah!’ it was all right, because it was a laugh, or that’s what his noises degenerated to.

  I heard Halton’s cough coming along the road outside. When it reached the door a dog came in instead. It was a liver-coloured poodle that needed a haircut. It pulled a vivacious dark-haired beauty into the restaurant behind it, and the Old Man followed them. The woman’s dress was dark blue but covered in white polka dots. She was smaller than I first thought, because I could have played billiards with the high heels of her shoes. The dog sat beside me, and lolled its fat grey tongue. And dribbled. I stood anyway, to meet the lady, who wasn’t Freda, of course – she was Frieda. She spoke English like Lili Marlene.

  Halton asked, ‘Did you order, Charlie?’

  ‘He ordered nothing,’ the waiter said. ‘I give orders around here.’

  ‘Bugger off and bring us a bottle, Dom, before we send you back to the island.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Halton. You wanna eat tonight?’

  ‘Of course we do. Just start serving and I’ll tell you when to stop.’

  He waved Dominici away. They were both smiling smiles of men who had known each other years.

  ‘I knew his father before the war,’ Halton said, and then told me, ‘Don’t tell him you bombed Italy or he’ll spit in your soup.’

  ‘I didn’t bomb Italy,’ I grumbled. ‘I only bombed Germany.’

  Frieda spoke up for herself uninvited for the first time, ‘Did you bomb Hamm?’

  ‘If I did, ma’am, it was only by accident.’

  ‘Good. I came from Hamm. Now I won’t have to spit either.’

  The waiter put a basket of odd lumpy grey bread on the table. I had eaten something like that in Siena, and had liked it. Halton helped himself, and passed it round.

  ‘She would too, you know,’ he said.

  ‘No she wouldn’t, boss. Dolly wouldn’t let her. Dolly’s been trained to suppress all opposition with a single look.’

  That entertaining thought brought him a small hurricane of coughing. The neighbours turned away.

  ‘Gas!’ He shouted at them. ‘Aren’t you used to gassed soldiers by now?’ Then he apologized in time for the waiter to appear with two bottles.

  I asked, ‘Wine’s appearing in all the restaurants again. Where are they getting it from?’

  ‘Never asked them. Let’s have a drink and relax, and you can tell me why you were a day late getting to Celle . . .’ He never missed a bloody trick, did he?

  He liked the story of the Battle of the Flour Warehouse. He clapped his hands, and laughed, and coughed. Frieda forced a smile, and looked away. I thought she was the most exotic creature I had ever seen. Dolly saw me thinking it, and aimed a kick at me under the table. Unfortunately she hit the dog instead, which yelped, bit its tongue, and skulked around the other tables dripping blood. I thought that it was quite funny, but the animal clearly terrified the other customers. The wine kept on coming, and I wondered if the Old Man was getting us drunk for a purpose. The food was superb, as long as you like spaghetti. I do. And creamed semolina. I do. And cake soaked in wine and spirits. I do. After three decadent courses, and small cups of black coffee you could strip paint with, he came across with a cigar whilst the women went off to do what they always seem to need to do together.

  ‘Frieda’s my ward, Charlie.’

  ‘Is that all I need to know, boss?’

  ‘I’m glad that you’ve understood that. She speaks very good German.’

  ‘Most Germans do, boss. I noticed that a couple of days ago.’

  He just watched me smoke. He stopped coughing as soon as I lit up. Funny that.

  ‘You’re going back to Germany, Charlie, and you’re going to stay for a little while . . . until things are running smoothly, OK? I don’t want any bad surprises.’

  ‘I guessed. When?’

  ‘As soon as you have the show at Lympne properly organized. Say in about a week, if you take a couple of days off with your boys. By the time you fly back to Berlin I want an operation in place where the aircrew, ground crews and stores match the aircraft we have in the places we have them. The aircraft will be routed to match the contracts, and the whole set-up is to be flexible enough to respond to rapid changes in those contracts. Capisce?’ Italian restaurants lend themselves to murderous attempts on the language – have you noticed that? The truth is that Caruso and Valentino had a lot to answer for.

  ‘Understood. Anything else?�
�� I probably glanced at the door the girls had disappeared through. I meant Anything else before they come back?

  ‘Yes. When you go back to Germany base yourself at Berlin.’ Perhaps he thought I missed that the first time, ‘. . . and fly only as often as you need to keep the operation ticking over smoothly . . .’

  ‘OK. I can do that.’

  ‘I know you can, Charlie . . . and to help you . . .’ he looked briefly away for a moment and then drilled me with his fierce little eyes again, ‘. . . you will take Frieda with you. She has family and friends she wishes to find, and I expect you to look after her.’ What I thought was, Fuck that for a game of soldiers. What I said was, ‘Sure, boss. No sweat.’

  He screwed his mouth into a smile. Alice used to smile like that.

  I stayed with Dolly. Looking down at her later I thought it was good to have her back where she belonged. You can sing along with that if you like.

  In the morning we had mugs of tea and freshly baked bread rolls in one of those new Daisy-boy cafes that were springing up all over West Ken. I felt comfortable with Dolly. In the morning she always had an appetite for three – almost greedy. I loved watching her demolish a breakfast. Women have memories like elephants and they keep our moments of weakness in them, so the conversation, after she’d polished the crumbs from her plate, went something like this. She remembered, ‘Some time ago – it seems like years, but it probably wasn’t – you asked me if I’d ever want to settle down and have children. I formed the idea that maybe you were talking about you and me.’

  ‘Maybe I was. I can’t remember how the subject came up. You said something like Eventually, but not at the moment. I got the impression that you were talking about us as well.’

  She stared out of the window at red buses full of people going to work. She had a dreamy look on her face that disturbed me. It was not a Dolly look.

  ‘Maybe I was. Would you want me to tell you if I’d changed my mind? If the calendar had moved on?’

  ‘If you wanted me to sod off you mean?’

  I can be slow on the uptake sometimes, and her face showed that now.

  ‘No. The other thing, silly: marriage and babies.’

  ‘You’re not kidding me?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Let me think about it for a second. You know that I’ve already got two kids, more or less?’

  ‘Yes. OK. While you think about it I’ll order us up another pot of tea. The tea here is really jolly good.’

  I thought about it, and told her, ‘Yes, Dolly; I would want you to tell me . . . but you ought to know that I’ve had a very similar conversation with another woman recently. The one we met in Germany: Marthe. She has a little girl of her own. They may need rescuing if Berlin collapses around our ears.’

  Dolly was nothing if not practical. She asked, ‘Do you like her more than you like me?’

  ‘No. I more or less like you equally. That is, I like you more when I’m with you and her more when I’m with her.’

  ‘Not an easy choice then. What do you think might swing it?’

  ‘It could well come down to who actually jumps in with a proper offer first I suppose . . .’

  ‘Mmm . . . Thank you, Charlie, I’ll remember that.’

  ‘. . . Or there again I might just panic, run away from you both, and marry someone else on the rebound.’

  ‘. . . And I’ll remember that too. Would you like me to drive you to Victoria?’

  ‘Yes please, Dolly. You know I love you.’

  ‘I believe that you believe you do. Sometimes.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Not what you think it does, Charlie. Which train did you want to catch?’

  Dolly was often hard to read. I loved that about her too.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We had three new pilots. I didn’t think that was enough. The Old Man did. I’d met one of them, a Leither named Hardisty, at a session at the Lympne pub one night. I liked what I remembered of him. He drank large whiskies with half-pint chasers, but never mixed his drink and his flying: one of these solid Scots you could depend on until the end.

  Hardisty had volunteered to drive down to the station in the Passion Wagon, to pick me up. I guess that the Wagon had been having a bit of a pounding, because her passenger seat was now as uncomfortable as the squab in the back.

  ‘It seems very quiet at the moment. Odd. It’s like a church down here.’

  ‘You go to church?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sometimes. I’m a son of the manse. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My father is a church minister. Church of Scotland . . . that’s a bit like your Church of England without the frills.’

  ‘Fire and brimstone?’

  ‘Only occasionally. Peace and brotherly love most of the time. He says that Switzerland and Iceland are the only two countries who know what they’re doing – they never declare war on anyone.’

  I laughed, but I told him, ‘I’d like to meet your old man.’ And I meant it.

  ‘It was difficult when I joined the RAF. We didn’t speak for two years.’

  I didn’t want to go there, so I asked him, ‘What were you on?’

  ‘Wimpies mainly, and Marylands: I flew in India and over the hump into Burma. What about you, sir?’

  It took a second or two for that to sink in. Sir? I decided to ignore it until I knew how to deal with it. I’d ask Elaine.

  ‘Lancasters out of Bawne in Cambridgeshire, then I made a mistake and ended up in Germany for the last few weeks. I picked up a bit of Jerry lingo whilst I was there, which is why the Old Man has picked me for this job I think.’

  Airworks had just converted Hardisty on to Lancastrians for us, and in a couple of days he was flying the Tin Man out to Wunstorf with a gash engineer.

  ‘. . . and after that?’

  ‘I’m to crew up with her regular engineer and sparks, fly on to Celle for a load of flour, and then make my first home run.’

  ‘Windy?’

  He definitely didn’t want to answer that. Eventually he said, ‘I suppose that I am. A bit.’

  ‘Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. That way you’ll stay in one piece, and more important, you’ll keep my aircraft and my crew in one piece too.’ I caught myself. When had I started thinking of them as my aircraft? He was grinning when I glanced at him, which is how I wanted it. All three of our new boys had passed their conversion to the Lancastrian so they were partying in the pub that night. Hardisty invited me to join them. I thought it would give me a chance to give them the once-over.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll see what’s waiting for me in the office. I’ll see you later.’

  What was waiting for me in the office was a stack of bills to authorize, and crew and maintenance schedules to agree. I was inclined to just bang my moniker on the bottom of each one and bugger off . . . until I realized that if anything went wrong because I’d missed something, and people were killed, then it would be my fault. I’d never had to think about that before, so I found myself studying fuel and lubricant records for individual aircraft, trying to work out if there was anything to worry about. Elaine came through to my office with a cup of tea for me, and looked over my shoulder.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Trying to justify the fuel consumptions . . .’

  ‘. . . leave that to Chiefy and the engineers if I was you. They’ll soon flag up any rogue to us – that’s their job. I’m always checking them anyway. I’ll let you know if anything out of the ordinary crops up.’

  ‘You’re a gem. Thanks. Why didn’t I think of that?’

  She flushed, and I wanted to kiss her. I didn’t. She said, ‘I don’t know. My Terry was a driver during the war. He says that officers had their brains scraped out.’

  ‘We used to say that as well. Am I an officer again?’

  ‘That’s what it says on your door. Didn’t you notice?’

  She’d been walking around w
ith that I know something that you don’t look on her face since I arrived. I walked out to her office to look back at the door I still thought of as Brunton’s. A new painted notice on it read General Manager. Underneath that in smaller letters was Lt. C. Bassett. Bugger me!

  ‘Who did that?’

  ‘One of the fitters. He’s a trained sign writer. I think he’s called Jim.’ She’d told me more than I needed to know, and not enough.

  ‘Who told him to?’

  ‘I did; after the Old Man told me. Pleased?’

  ‘Shocked, I think, but I was never a lieutenant you know. What happened to Brunton?’

  ‘He’s out of hospital, but won’t come back in case he runs into Terry again. He resigned . . . he’s going to train to be a school teacher.’

  ‘What did Halton think?’

  ‘Halton was quite pleased, actually.’ The Old Man’s voice preceded him into the room . . . ‘Squadron Leader Brunton is a very brave man, and all that, but when you get down to it, it takes more than bravery to run a commercial airline, doesn’t it?’

  I turned quickly and said, ‘You’ll have to stop moving so quietly, boss. How do you expect me to talk about you behind your back if you keep on creeping up on us like this?’ I don’t know how it had happened, but I had developed the knack of making him laugh. I suppose that it was something he needed.

  He laughed and coughed a bit. Then he straightened up and said, ‘Now stop messing about, tell me where my aircraft are, and what they’re doing.’

  I hadn’t got that far yet, but I looked up at the operations board above Elaine’s desk, and prayed that it was up to date. She smiled. I was OK.

  A few hours after that, torpor lay over Lympne like a hot blanket. I looked out of the office window and nothing was moving, not even the windsock. Like a Barcelona brothel on a Wednesday afternoon. Elaine came into my office, came around the desk to stand beside me, yawned and stretched. I do so love the way women’s bodies move under their clothes. I ran my hand lightly up the back of her leg until it reached her stocking top, which, for the hedonists among you, is as far as it got. She leaned a hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘Terry’s home this week. He’s got a week’s holiday.’