She replied, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why ever should I want to do that?’
‘Because I love you.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it. All men fall in love with their nurses. You go to bed with Florence Nightingale, but wake up with someone like me. It never lasts.’
‘Didn’t a film star say something like that?’
‘Rita Hayworth. I suspect she knew what she was talking about.’
She was sitting on the edge of my bed where Daisy had sat. There was probably a regulation against that.
I said, ‘You’re the only girl I’ve proposed to, who I haven’t first slept with.’
‘So I’m the first girl you haven’t slept with to say no. Let that be a lesson to you.’
I grabbed her hand, and laid it on my chest. ‘Feel my heart beat: then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.’
She laughed. ‘Can’t feel it. You don’t have one.’
‘Can I feel yours? It’s underneath your left tit, isn’t it? I’m sure I’d be able to find it there.’
Now she really laughed, but moved well out of reach. ‘I thought we’d resolved to be a little more mature in our relationships with women, Charlie? Wasn’t it something to do with showing a little more understanding, and respect?’
‘. . . and look where it got me. A woman put two bullets in me!’
‘Serves you right. I bet you deserved it.’ That was me told, wasn’t it?
Haye with an e was definitely not going to be the one.
Four weeks later I was at the school gates in Chichester waiting for the boys to come out. Randall, our Halton Air journeyman, had flown me the last leg from Beauvais to our airfield at Lympne. I phoned Flaming June from there.
‘I know I should have called you earlier, but I was in hospital, and it was difficult.’ She didn’t ask why. Her voice came back flat, as if she was talking to the dead. ‘You’ll want your car back.’
‘No. I wanted to hear you again. I’ve just landed, and want to see you.’
‘You’ll have to let me think about that . . . I’ve begun seeing someone else.’ Bugger it! ‘I’ll call you; one way or the other.’ She promised. I knew she’d keep her word, and I only had myself to blame, after all.
I had completed the rest of the trip on the rattler. I had last-minute presents from Egypt in my kitbag, and had filled in an hour with a couple of drinks at the station bar. The sun was shining, and it looked like a half-decent summer was on its way for a change. I was even home in time for the Coronation.
I met another father there: waiting for his children. He worked in the boat yard at Bosham.
He smiled and said, ‘Long time no see: you caught the sun, Charlie. Where’ve you been?’
‘Abroad. I was called up.’
‘You missed the gales and the floods then?’
‘When were they?’
‘February.’
‘Yes. I was in the Land of the Pharaohs . . .’ I told him.
‘Some people have all the luck.’
Yeah; my leg hurt, my arm hurt and I’d probably shot and killed the most wonderful person I was ever likely to meet. Like the man said, some people have all the bloody luck.
Last words
I saw David Watson not so long ago. He isn’t one of those friendly spectres who increasingly inhabit my world. He’s still real, but thin and bent these days – being at least ten years further along the line than me. It was at a squadron reunion dance in Edinburgh and, because I live so near, I couldn’t find an excuse to get out of it.
After we’d swallowed too many drams he said, ‘There’s something I always wanted to ask you, Charlie.’
‘OK.’
‘What really happened to the money? Did you and that dreadful fellow Hudd make off with it?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘But you knew where it was . . .’
‘I think so. Probably.’
‘Satisfy my curiosity. Tell me.’
‘That’s what Hudd said. But first I need another drink.’
He brought me a large single malt, and watched me top it off with water. ‘Tell me.’ His wife was at the table with us. So was mine, come to that.
Mrs Watson said, ‘Yes, come on, Charlie. Tell us. David has dined off this story for forty years, and we’ve never known the end of it.’
I took a hefty swig of Glenmorangie.
‘That bloody old Stirling had four extra bomb cells in her wings, didn’t she? Two under each – and we never looked in them. I don’t think anyone else did either. If you find out their dimensions, and work out the space needed for that amount of paper money in parachute containers, I think you’ll find they just about fit.’
Watson went very red. When old men flush they really flush. I think it’s something to do with the booze.
‘But we bombed the bugger! Burned her out of existence.’
‘Precisely. Bloody good job too!’ I told him. It was nice to be one up at last.
I rounded off the night by copping a dance off his missus, which was more than I ever did before. We must have looked comical: me so small, and she’s still tall and graceful. She wore a long, off-the-shoulder silver-grey silk dress, and could still turn heads. As the evening wound down she opened the massive handbag she invariably carries, pulled out her silver cornet, and strolled over to the small band.
Minutes later she was blowing her heart out – not bad for someone our age. It was ‘Stardust’.
I danced with my old lady, and the ghosts started to move in. I saw Emily Rea, a Red Cross girl I’d once known, dancing with Glenn Miller. They looked absolutely perfect together. Funny; they’d bought it over fifty years ago. It won’t be bad if this is what it’s going to be like from now on.
Afterword
Dancing at the Blue Kettle, cures for hangovers, and other stories . .
