‘No, James. I’m glad you’re watching out for him.’ It wasn’t the first time I’d slipped up with the boys, and I was sure that it wasn’t to be the last.
Maggs and the Major had built me a prefab alongside their pub in Bosham while we were still blessed by a Labour government. The boys lived there with me when I was away from where I worked – Lympne in Kent, a couple of hours along the coast. I managed a small commercial airline. Well, that’s stretching the truth actually – it more or less managed itself these days.
I had formally adopted Dieter with the help of the Chichester WVS. I think it went through because it was the easiest way out for the authorities.
But Carlo was another matter. I was his legal guardian for the time being.
His father was certainly dead because a mate of mine had shot him. His mother might have been still alive – nobody knew for certain – but if she was dead it was because I had killed her. Grace and I had exchanged loving gunshots with each other in a small town in Turkey in 1953. She had hit me twice, but was unable to make it stick. I thought I had hit her once – I saw her stagger – but no body had turned up. So you never know, do you?
The matter had become less pressing the next time I got down to see them – about a fortnight later – because James, the Major, was living in the bungalow with the boys. Usually they stayed in the pub with him and Maggs when I was away. We sat round the kitchen table just after I arrived, with plates of beans on toast. Carlo had a glass of Tizer, James and I pints of beer, and Dieter’s half-pint was out in the open. He sipped it thoughtfully.
I asked James, ‘What happened to you?’
Dieter didn’t give him a chance. He said, ‘Mrs Maggs threw him out. She caught him with Mrs Valentine on Mr Valentine’s boat.’
Ho-hum. What goes around comes around. Mrs Valentine was a willing workhorse: I knew, because I’d taken a few equestrian lessons myself. I asked them, ‘What does Mr Valentine think about it?’
‘I don’t know,’ James muttered scornfully. ‘We haven’t seen him for months; he’s resigned from the yacht club. Maybe they’ve separated: she didn’t give me time to ask.’
‘So Maggs, to whom you’re not married, is living in your pub, and you are living in my house?’
‘It’s just a temporary arrangement . . .’ I hadn’t seen James look so uncomfortable for years. ‘Just until she cools down.’
‘She’ll get over it,’ Carlo told us, and belched. He still sang soprano, and had a squeaky voice. ‘Women usually do.’
We all turned to look at him. The little sod was only eleven years old. Dieter was right in one way: someone had to take Carly in hand.
‘Don’t talk about your elders that way,’ I told him – probably too tamely.
‘Anyone who’s not a friend of the Major’s is not a friend of mine, Dad.’
‘You’d better move in for good,’ I said to James, ‘and teach these wee buggers some manners.’
Mrs Valentine’s front end was Evelyn. Eve. You should never name girl children Eve, Bathsheba or Salome: it puts ideas in their heads. I’m sure that James had known of my previous engagements with her. Later on we sat on either side of the fire, and toasted each other in Red Label Johnnie Walker.
‘What was she like?’ I asked him. ‘Any good?’
‘Very energetic. I thought we’d go through the bottom of the boat. It didn’t occur to me that Maggs would be offended.’
‘Why? Because of that brothel she kept in France?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘That was stupid, James. The brothel was business; you’re personal as far as Maggs is concerned. How do you feel about her?’
‘Haven’t got a clue, old boy: I never think about it.’
‘Then you’d better bloody start. Cheers.’ I raised my glass to him. It was the first time in ten years I’d ever given him any advice – it was usually the other way round. I’ve said it before, haven’t I? What goes around comes around. ‘Do you think she’ll forgive you?’
‘She’s told me she will; after a fortnight. How can she know that?’
‘I dunno. It’s a mystery – that’s a phrase I learned in Egypt.’ An Egyptian pal used it to block any question he didn’t want to answer.
‘When,’ he asked me, ‘are you going to open that bloody envelope?’
The envelope in question was brown manila, and bore those magic letters OHMS. It must have come from the place we were beginning to call Fairyland on account of all the southpaws that were floating to the top in the Home Civil Service. The postman had delivered it earlier in the week, and Dieter had put it on the mantelpiece above the fire for me. The microscopic RTS address on the reverse directed it back to the Foreign Office in London. I opened it, and read the two terse lines on the letter it contained.
‘They want me to go up for some kind of interview next week,’ I told James. ‘And Old Man Halton wants to see me as well. What do you think?’
James held his glass towards the fire, and squinted at the flames through the whisky. After a big swallow he said, ‘I think you’re in the shit again, old son.’
Just like Dieter, my old Major was rarely wrong about these things.
There are two impressive things about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office building in London: they are size and scale. Absolute and comparative. The room I was escorted to was large enough to keep one of Halton Air’s Avros in, and still have room for a tennis court. Halton Air was my employer, and the Avro was the York –
