‘I am one.’
‘But not a Sergeant any more. Cheers.’
We echoed him, and swilled down some of the whisky. It was fiery and over proof.
‘Anyway, everyone expected you to die. That’s why no one came to see you. Too depressing.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. Cheers.’
We did it again. Baker topped up our glasses, and I rounded mine off with water. Then Baker said, ‘They do that in the distilleries, you know: top off their whisky with water. They wouldn’t dream of swigging it down neat, English fashion.’
‘How did you learn that, sir?’
‘I think we can dispense with the sir, Charlie; you’re almost one of the family now. I have a small island and its own distillery. It’s why I chucked my lot in with Winston at the start. Couldn’t bear the thought of Jerry getting his hands on it, you see.’
‘I tried to get Mr Barnes to stop calling me sir. It didn’t work.’
‘It wouldn’t. He’s a bloody Red. He secretly hates you for selling out.’
I took in what he’d just said.
‘Have I sold out?’
‘Definitely.’ Cliff eased himself back into the panto. ‘Officer and a gentleman. I was just trying to explain.’
I took a deep breath, and told Cliff, ‘Then try again. I didn’t get it the first time round.’
‘First of all there’s Grace. Sir Peter’s daughter, and she’s had a good war. Probably get a medal for it, or something. A legend in her own lifetime.’
‘Bedtime,’ I corrected him. ‘A legend in her own bedtime. If she gets a medal it will be a Distinguished Service Medal.’
‘Unkind, Charlie,’ Sir Peter said. ‘Very unkind.’
‘Loving Grace doesn’t blind me to her eccentricities.’
He smiled when I used the word eccentricities.
‘You do love her, then?’
‘Of course I do. Why the fuck do you think I’m here?’ Sir Peter winced, so I hurried on. ‘And now she’s got herself pregnant and buggered off; leaving everyone worried sick about her.’
Cliff said, ‘Exactly. That brings us back to Sir Peter. Not only worried about his stepdaughter, but with enough clout to do something about it. We need his bullets, and his whisky is just about the only export currency the government has left. He has what others wish for: Winston’s ear. Sir Peter and Lady Adelaide want Grace back, and Winston expects that a grateful nation will do its best. You have no idea how many folk think that you’re just the man to find her.’ He paused, but couldn’t resist sticking on, ‘Alternatively, I can order you to.’
‘You’ll have to, Cliff. It’s a barmy idea.’
‘Then I just have. Go across the water, bloody find her. Bloody bring her back; kid too, if she bloody has one.’
‘Bloody stupid.’
‘Bloody way of the bloody world.’
Sir Peter sounded a bit tired. He said, ‘Shut up the pair of you. Pour another drink. Who’s going to find her is not the question; that’s decided. The how is the question.’
Just like that. I asked them why they thought I should do it. Sir Peter said, ‘Grace loves you.’
‘I’m not sure of that. No one could be, with Grace.’
‘Adelaide says so . . . and you don’t have the nerve to argue with her.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘There you are then. Grace told you something like she’d marry you if you could find her. We know that. All you have to do is find her.’
‘She said after this lot is over, meaning the war – and it isn’t, yet.’
‘In the West it will be in four months. Maybe sooner.’
That was Cliff sounding more sober than I felt.
‘How can you know that?’
Sir Peter looked away, and out of one of the library windows. Then he looked back at Cliff and nodded, as if he had just given an order.
Cliff said, ‘The war will be over in a couple of months, Charlie. Hitler’s dying. His doctor is slipping him a slow poison that will kill him in months.’
‘Why is his doctor doing that?’
‘His doctor wants the war to finish. Anyway he’s one of ours.’
‘Why is his doctor ours?’
‘Because Martin Bormann has told him to be.’
‘Why has Bormann done that?’
‘Because Bormann is ours. We bought him. The war will be over in months, and it won’t be anything to do with the military. The industrialists, the spies and the bloody doctors run the show now. Some Nazi bigwigs will get killed, some will do it themselves, and some will bloody swing for it. Brother Bormann will disappear with a big fat cheque in his pocket. Bloody way of the bloody world. We bought the end of the war a month ago, only Nazi Germany is a bit like a dinosaur: the brain is more or less dead, but the rest of its body doesn’t know yet.’
I thought about that, and I believed them. There was a weary authority underlying the way they spoke.
‘What if I said no?’
‘If you chose to disobey orders you’d get a few weeks of jankers that you won’t like, and then you’d be back on a squadron as a Sergeant again; blowing women and children to bits for the greater good. What’s more, it would probably be in some sort of death or glory mob where there’s a chance you’d get chopped before hostilities cease. Far safer to go to Europe and find Grace.’
‘I thought you said the war was going to end at any time.’
‘It will still have time to kill you, Charlie.’
‘You see his point, old man, don’t you?’ That was Baker. ‘Another snifter?’
Then I realized that they had told me Grace was already in Europe.
Bugger them. Bugger Europe. Bugger Grace.
I asked Cliff a couple of inconsequential questions.
‘I thought you once told me that the war wasn’t going to end so soon: that it was going to go on for years to come?’
Peter Baker cut in for him.
‘Different war, Charlie. Look at it this way. The first part of the Second World War is nearly over. We’ll still have to stop the Ivans if they get much closer.’
‘For God’s sake,
