From outside the door Bernard coughed once.
I said, ‘It’s OK, Bernard. I want to hear this.’
Cliff said, ‘I can’t get over the way your face has healed. You don’t look burned too much.’
‘Frau Doktor says that I was lucky. My shoulders are worse. When I move you can see exactly the way the muscles expand and contract: I can make them dance to Dorsey Brothers tunes. Want me to show you?’
‘No thanks, old boy. Sounds ghastly; sorry.’
‘She tells me that the greatest effect on my face will be to the hair follicles: something goes wrong with them when they’re burned up. I won’t ever have a moustache or beard: probably won’t have to shave again.’
‘Handy.’
‘Yes. I thought so. Why did you call your Boss the Colonel?’
‘Sometimes I think you radio ops can’t take anything in unless it’s coming through a pair of headphones. I told you before that the people down there are more flexible than your usual service wallah. My boss is a Colonel because the brown jobs run the security. They run the security because they run the operations out there that we deliver to. We’re only delivery boys: don’t forget that.’
‘Seems odd.’
‘I’ll tell you something odder: they want you back for something when you’re ready. They must be even stupider than we are.’
‘Your Army takes itself too bloody seriously. Can Frohlich visit me?’
‘No. He’s gone.’
‘Where?’
Cliff shrugged. I pushed him.
‘What happened to them?’
‘You don’t need to know,’ he told me. And that was that. Funnily enough I felt better after that. I’d always thought that Frohlich would visit, and I was miffed that his people had forgotten me so quickly. I wondered if they were lying in a prison camp, hospitals or deep in Mother Earth. I turned away from it: Cliff would never tell me.
‘That Yank,’ Bernard told me a day later. ‘He’s back, sir.’
‘Then let him in.’
I felt better. They let me wear my RAF jacket over my pyjamas: it made me feel as if I was still part of something.
‘He hasn’t got a pass.’
‘Sell him one.’
Tommo slouched in a couple of minutes later, and crash-landed on the upright chair.
He said, ‘Your guard made me pay him for the privilege of visiting. I thought that I was supposed to be the gangster back here. Not for long, though.’
‘Thank you for coming to see me, Dave, and what does that mean?’
He tossed a carton of Luckies and a package of pipe tobacco on the bed, and told me, ‘Shipping me home. I been here since 1943, and now we’re winning they’re shipping me home.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing: they say I’ve done my bit. Uncle Sam says, Thanks; but you can go home now.’
‘That’s great.’
‘No it ain’t. What about my business?’
‘Being a gangster?’
‘Don’t be funny. I’ve a good number here. Back at Fort Nowhere I’ll be up to my arse in non-com officers who spend their time in the john reading the rule book. Then they’ll pull up their pants, pull the chain, and throw the goddam thing at me.’
‘They’ll wipe their arses first,’ I told him.
‘What with? I just arranged the whole year’s sanitation paper allocation shipped over here to fill your needs.’
‘I’ll phone Winston, and tell him there was a mistake. Get him to send some back again.’
‘Truly?’
‘He wouldn’t know what it is. He has aides-de-camp to wipe for him.’
‘Yeah, we got those in the US too.’
This took about thirty seconds it seemed, and then we were both grinning. I could grin now without my face cracking in half. Dave said, ‘You’re looking almost human. Time you got a nice English girl.’
‘I had one, thanks, Tommo. Are you serious about leaving?’
He sighed as if he meant it, and looked at his funny peaked olive cap, as he twisted it in his hands.
‘Yeah. It’s a shit; so I came to ask a favour. There were some things I couldn’t arrange to sell off or move: they don’t give you all that much notice – they’re in two kitbags outside with your mastiff. Will you stash them for me until I come back for them?’
‘Is that likely?’
‘Christ, yes: I’ll find someone’s palm to cross with silver once I’m back over there; I’ll try for a posting in Germany – that’s where the money will be when it’s all over.’
‘It’s not knocked-off gear that I’ll go to prison for if I’m caught with it?’
‘Christ, no. I wouldn’t do that to you. Not without telling you. We’re buddies, ain’t we?’
‘We’re buddies,’ I confirmed. It made me feel very old. ‘Of course I’ll keep it for you. How long have you got?’
‘A few days. Then they’re flying me out to Ireland – Nutts Corner or the Lodge – then a big boat home from Belfast Loch.’
‘I always thought that an appropriate name for an airfield – Nutts Corner. Can you make a few telephone calls for me before you go? See if you can find out where Grace is; I can’t ask the people here – they don’t know her.’
Tommo Thomsett knew Grace – a girl I knew. She’d known me, and a lot of other men that I knew, if you get my drift. She was an ATA pilot I’d last seen about six weeks before my accident. At that time she was pregnant and deciding what to do about it. I’d asked her to marry me a few times: at that time it was a compulsion I had every time a pair of knickers hit the deck. The point is that Grace was the only one to have said Yes so far; albeit in a vague sort of way.
I’d asked her, ‘Marry me?’
She had said something like, ‘OK. Yes. Once the war is over.’
‘OK.’
‘. . . if you can find me.’
That was the nearest I got.
The American said, ‘Amazing! You still hankering after her?’
‘Yes; stupid, isn’t it? I’m going to miss you too, Tommo.’ I meant it.
‘Not for long you won’t.’ I could take that two ways, couldn’t I?
He
