gabby affability was a moral compass that was broken. The arrow pointed in one direction only, toward Reggie Saunders. He always felt the world owed him for his existence, and his successful navigation of the World War with eyes, limbs, and genitals intact was a sign to him that a grateful nation should continue to provide for his needs be they financial or sensual. Laws of the Crown and societal mores were approximate guide posts in his world, things to consider perhaps, then ignore.
His army war service started nasty and inconvenient as a staff sergeant in Montgomery’s Eighth Army trying to dislodge Rommel from Tobruk. After too long in the desert, he wheedled a transfer in 1944 from North Africa to liberated France to a regiment tasked with recovering and cataloguing Nazi art loot.
His boss was the nicest gentleman he had ever met, a Cambridge don whose idea of commanding men was to ask them politely whether they might be able to help him with this or that. Incredibly, the army had gotten it right with Major Geoffrey Atwood, finding a job for the Professor of Archaeology and Antiquities that actually suited his skills rather than dangerously and ineffectively sticking him somewhere with a map, field glasses, and large guns.
Saunders’s job mainly consisted of ordering a squad of lads to shift heavy wooden crates out of basements and transport them to other basements. He never shared a sense of moral outrage at the Germans’ takings. He found their thievery quite understandable under the circumstances. In fact, under his watch a knickknack or two made it through his hands in exchange for a few quid, and why not? Postwar, he wandered from job to job, doing a bit of construction here and there, absconding when necessary from romantic entanglements. When Atwood rang to see if he’d be interested in a little adventure on the Isle of Wight, he was in between engagements and replied, “Blow in my ear, boss, and I’ll follow you anywhere.”
Now, Reggie was pounding away, pleasantly lost in a sea of pink flesh that smelled of talc and lavender. The lady of the house was making little cooing sounds that sent him drifting to the aviary at Kew Gardens where he was brought as a young boy for a bit of natural culture. He soon reeled his mind back to the moment. The vinegar stroke was coming, and a job worth doing was a job worth doing well, his granddad had always said. Then he heard something mechanical, a throaty rumble.
Years of night patrol in the Libyan and Moroccan deserts had trained his ears, a survival skill he was drawing on one more time.
“Don’t stop, Reggie!” Mrs. Barnes moaned.
“Hang on a sec, petal. Ya hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“The motor.” It wasn’t a servant’s car, not this one. He could tell it was a thoroughbred. “You sure hubby’s not due?”
“I told you. He’s in London.” She grabbed his buttocks and tried to get him going again.
“Someone’s coming, luv, and it’s not the bloody postman.”
He left the bed naked and parted the nearest curtains. A pair of headlights pierced the darkness.
Rolling up to the front, crunching the gravel drive, was a cherry Invicta, a rare beauty so distinctive, he recognized it as soon as the entryway lanterns hit it.
“Who d’ya know drives a red Invicta?” he asked.
He might as well have asked, Did you hear that Satan was at the front door?
She leapt out of bed, grabbing at her underthings, making high-pitched sounds of fear and alarm.
“That would be the wing commander’s vehicle,” Reggie said fatalistically, shrugging his big shoulders. “I’ll be off now, luv. Ta-ta.”
He hopped into his trousers and gathered his other clothes to his chest as he flew down the rear stairs into the kitchen. He was through the servants’ back door just as the wing commander was entering the reception hall, merrily calling out to his wife, “Hi ho! Guess who’s home a day early!”
Reggie finished dressing in the garden and started to shiver straightaway. While the previous week had been unseasonably warm, a mass of cold air from the north was hammering the thermometer. He had met up with the missus outside the pub and she had driven them to the house. Now he was stranded at least six miles from the camp and there was no flippin’ way, he thought, he was going to hoof it.
He tiptoed around to the front. The 1930 Invicta was radiating heat. Its cabin was deep, like a bathtub with fluted red-leather seats. The keys were dangling in the ignition. His analytical process was uncomplicated: I’m cold, the automobile is warm, I’ll just borrow it to nip down the road. He hopped in and turned the key. The 140- horsepower Lagonda engine roared to life, too loud. A second later he panicked. Where the hell was the gear lever? He moved his hands all over, feeling for it. The front door of the house flew open.
Then he remembered: it was a bleeding automatic transmission, the first one in Britain! He pushed the accelerator and the transmission performed smoothly. The car sped forward, spraying gravel. In the rearview mirror he caught sight of an angry middle-aged man pumping his balled-up fists into the air. The engine drowned out whatever he was shouting.
“Same to you, mate,” Reggie called out. “Thanks for your motor and thanks for your missus.”
He ditched the Invicta at the pub in Fishbourne and fast-walked the final mile, whistling in the dark and rubbing his hands for warmth. A log fire supercharged with paraffin was blazing at the camp and it helped him find his way. A dense cloud cover diffused the moonlight, turning the night sky the color of gray flannel. The vapors from the fire hurtled upward thick and black like depraved harpies, and Reginald followed their ascendancy until he lost them against the looming spire of the cathedral of Vectis Abbey.
A door to one of the dilapidated caravans opened as Reggie was nearing the fire to warm himself. A lanky young man called out, “Gawd! Will you look who’s come back! Reg’s been booted!”
“I left of my own bloody accord, mate,” Reggie replied curtly. “Any food about?”
“Tin of beans I should think.”
“Well, toss one out then, I’m famished after me shag.”
The young man guffawed but the word had a magical quality because every one of the four caravan doors opened and their inhabitants spilled out to hear more. Even Geoffrey Atwood emerged from the boss’s caravan, wearing a heavy woolen turtleneck, thoughtfully puffing on a pipe. “Did someone say shag?”
“You lot aren’t expecting me to kiss and tell?”
“Yes please,” the lanky young man, Dennis Spencer, said salaciously. He was a pimply first-year at Cambridge, young enough to have skirted national service.
There were four others, three men and a woman, all of them from Atwood’s department. Martin Bancroft and Timothy Brown, like Spencer, were undergraduates, albeit mature students who had returned from the war to complete their tolled degrees. Martin had never left England. He had been stationed in London as an intelligence officer. Timothy had been a radar man on a naval frigate operating mainly in the Baltic. Both of them were giddy to be back at Cambridge and over-the-moon at the prospect of a bit of fieldwork.
Ernest Murray was older, in his thirties, currently wrapping up his D. Phil. in Antiquities, which he hurriedly abandoned when the Germans invaded Poland. He had seen heavy action in Indochina, which left him painfully diffident. Somehow, Anglo-Saxon archaeology didn’t seem as relevant to him anymore, and he couldn’t fathom what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
The only woman in the party was Beatrice Slade, a lecturer in Medieval History and Atwood’s academic confidante who had pretty much run his department during the war. She was a tough wisecracking fireplug of a lady, openly lesbian, famously so. She and Reggie were essentially incompatible human beings. When her back was turned he crudely mocked her sexuality, and when his was turned she did the same to him.
“Ah, we’re all up and about,” Atwood said, blinking at the stinging fire. “Shall we have a coffee while Reg tells us his tale?”
“I’ll brew a pot, Prof,” Timothy offered.
“So what happened then, Reg?” Martin asked. “Figured you’d be kippin’ in a feather bed tonight, not back here in the rust bucket.”
“Had a spot of bother, mate,” he replied. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” He rolled a cigarette and licked the paper.
“Nothing you couldn’t handle?” Beatrice asked mockingly. “Stymied because she wanted to go again?” At that she swung her hips like a burlesque queen and all of them, even Atwood, began to howl at his expense.
“Very funny, very amusing,” Reggie said. “Her husband came home on the early side and I had to remove my person from the premises forthwith to avoid an unpleasant encounter.”
