‘Sure you can drive it, Corporal . . . ?’
‘Baxter, sir . . . and yes, I can drive it. Drove three-tonners in the war.’ That was hardly reassuring, but you never know when you’ll need someone on your side, so I said, ‘Baxter and Bassett. Sounds like a couple of sand dancers, doesn’t it? We’d better watch out for each other.’
I thought for a moment he was going to laugh, but he said, ‘I’ll think about that, sir,’ and put my little car into gear. I stood there and watched him dwindle into nothing as he drove away towards the shadowy buildings in the mist at the end of the causeway. They looked miles away.
They were, and it started to rain before I was halfway there. My last RAF posting had been to a listening station like this one, and I’d had a few mad moments of mad passion with a mad Wren there, so you can see that my interest was engaged by the time I walked through the gate of a proper barbed-wire enclosure.
The guard didn’t salute because I wasn’t properly dressed – Salute the uniform, son, not the man: I can still hear my first drill sergeant barking that in my face. This guy had the face of a twelve-year-old; I guessed he only shaved weekly – and, oh yeah, he had a Stirling sub-machine gun looped casually over his shoulder like a girl’s handbag. He probably scared the Russians half to death.
The concrete block was enormous: much bigger than I had imagined. Three storeys and the only windows I could see were long narrow slits near the top: it wasn’t a building designed for beauty. The discipline there was my sort of discipline – casual – or so it seemed at first. People saying hello, smiling and shaking your hand. I didn’t get to meet the CO immediately: she was away at a meeting in the WD bunker at Hythe. When we collided in the afternoon her sailor suit looked familiar – a Wren – but that’s where hope died: I’d never met her before. She was small; smaller than me. Very smart and with short black hair. I reckoned she was about forty.
It’s funny how your values change: in those days I thought a woman in her forties was old. Now I look at a woman of fifty and think she’s just approaching her prime – a perspective of age you see. What I mean is that I didn’t fancy her. I know you don’t like it, but that’s what I was like in my twenties: the first good look I had at a woman was generally an estimate of her sexual potential. It got the decision to chance my arm out of the way. Just get used to it, and accept that most men are like that, even if we don’t admit it all that often.
She probably knew this because she didn’t ask me to sit. She had a metal desk and metal furniture inside a concrete office. It looked just like a place that people could run wars from. I hated it instantly. The atmosphere had the romantic charm of a pub’s outside urinal. An educated voice: ‘Welcome,’ but not to where, or to whom. Then, ‘I’ll be your CO for two or three weeks – until we come to a decision about you. Call it an assessment if you like, or a judgement.’
‘What kind of judgement, ma’am?’ She smiled at the ma’am. Maybe I’d got it right first time for a change.
‘Whether you’re any good as you are, need retraining, or are no damned good at all.’ She had a tight little smile that meant precisely nothing. It irritated me.
‘. . . And if I’m no damned good at all, ma’am?’
‘Back to Civvy Street as sharp as you like.’
‘. . . Then can’t you send me back right away, ma’am? I’ll be no damned good at all – I promise you, ma’am.’
She leaned back in her state-of-the art CO’s chair, smiled at me and fiddled with a pencil.
‘Too many ma’ams, Bassett.’ A week ago I had managed an airline; now I was back to being just bloody Bassett again. ‘You’re trying too hard. I spoke to a warrant officer in the RAF Police about you last week. He called you a comedian who couldn’t keep his hands off women, and had an interesting but fatal disregard for Queen’s Regs. He said that your next permanent address will probably be a prison somewhere.’ Bloody Alex.
‘There you are, then. Get rid of me while you can.’
She smiled again. Maybe I’d been shipped in to provide the entertainment. She said, ‘You’ll work four-hour shifts, one on three off, with a regular operator on your elbow all the time. Your first shift starts in’ – she consulted a man’s wristwatch that looked as if it had been liberated a few years ago – ‘about three quarters of an hour. Just time for you to stow your gear. By the way, what happened to your uniform?’
‘Not issued, ma’am. Maybe they are waiting for the results of my assessment.’
‘We’ll see about that.’ I was sure she would. ‘We’re a Joint Services establishment here – you probably realized that – and there are a few civvies around as well, so we lack some of the service formality you’re used to. Keep your paws off the ladies, though, do your job and we’ll all get on.’
I didn’t ask what would happen if I didn’t; it was written all over her face. My first more or less normal CO in eight years was the Angel of Death, and she
