‘Whatever you do, Charlie, don’t talk like this once you get overseas. They’ll think you’re a Conchie an’ lock you up.’
‘I promise to take care, Maggs.’ That’s not the same thing, is it?
Three more days at Lympne. Elaine was more than capable by now – she probably had been from the very start – so I took the opportunity to give her a few days off: she’d get precious little leave once I was away. Then I overnighted with Les and his family in Banstead, on the way to Abingdon. I loved spending time with Les and Kate and their boys – and there always seemed to be another one each time I visited. I liked the way their family seemed to interlock with each other, and doubted that I’d ever be as good, no matter how hard I worked at it. We went down to Les’s local after supper, and talked about it.
‘Being a dad is like swimming,’ Les told me. ‘All the time you worry about it, you can’t do it properly. Then you wake up one morning, and the first thing you think about is yer wife an’ kids . . . an’ all of a sudden you’re good at it. It’s suddenly like you’ve been doing it all yer life.’
‘How does it work?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’
‘I say the wrong things all the time: to the boys, to my girlfriends – even to friends like you.’
‘You’re much better than you were.’
‘Thanks. You think so?’
‘Yeah; you’re more than halfway there. All you need is a decent woman to complete the picture. Was that June any good?’ Les would have been an ace interrogator: he always slipped in the crucial question before you saw it coming.
‘I’m in love with her, I think. She fits me like a glove.’
‘Told ’er so?’
‘Yes.’
‘What d’she say? . . . This is like drawing teeth, Charlie.’
‘Nothing much. I think she was already pissed off with me by then.’
‘See ’er before you go. After all, you got nothin’ to lose.’
Straight for the bleeding jugular. Don’t worry about the pun.
I took a chance and drove out to Halton Transport’s office and shed, at Heathrow’s Cargo Side. Everything was fogged in and there was no flying. The warehouse was shut down; no one was there. Except June, that is. She looked neither pleased nor displeased to see me. Unmoved.
I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came in to check the mail – I live nearer than anyone else – and maybe type up the delivery chits for the start of the year.’ She sounded as happy as an undertaker when the doctors announce a miracle cure, but I was determined to try.
‘I’m sorry I sounded less than enthusiastic about you when we were in bed that morning. I was just trying to be funny, that was all.’
‘I worked that out eventually.’
‘I think you’re fantastic; the best.’
‘You could have told me that, couldn’t you?’
‘Yes, but you didn’t try to contact me either.’
‘Your job.’
‘I didn’t have your parents’ telephone number.’
‘I worked that out eventually . . . as well.’
This was like a duel.
‘Will saying sorry, and asking if we can start again, work?’
‘I doubt it. I’ve never done that before.’
Most of the other unforgiving people I’d met before had been NCOs with parade-ground manners.
‘Look, I’m sorry I upset you. It wasn’t my intention.’ That sounded stilted, even to me. ‘I didn’t mean to. Sometimes I’m clumsy with words. Now it’s your turn.’
‘I’m glad you’re sorry. I’m glad it wasn’t your intention, and I’m sorry that you’re clumsy with words.’ That was it. Somewhere along the line I’d ended up with the losing cards again. If this was Thermopylae, I was one of the six hundred Spartans waiting for the sword. I didn’t know what to say next because she was being too guarded to get close to.
I asked her, ‘Can you drive?’
‘Pardon?’ At least that got a reaction.
‘Can you drive a car?’
‘Yes, of course. Daddy taught me.’
‘But you don’t have one?’
‘No. Where’s this leading us, Charlie?’
‘I can’t take my car to Cyprus, can I? If I leave it with you, you can have the use of it. I’ll get the insurance switched over, and it’s been taxed for a year.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d like to think of you driving it while I’m away.’
‘Try again. Another reason?’
‘Sitting unused for a year will do it no good at all.’
‘Better. Will you be away for a whole year then?’
‘I have no way of knowing. I’m the last person they’ll tell.’ At least that pulled a small grin from her. ‘So, will you look after my car for me?’
She thought for a few seconds. She looked just as desirable in town-and-country civvies as in her Halton outfit, but this definitely wasn’t the time to say it. She had a flat brown spot, like a large freckle, in the small of her back, but this wasn’t the time to remember it, either.
Then she said, ‘Yes; you can leave your car with me. But it doesn’t mean anything.’
My turn to think. I ran the first few bars of Cole’s ‘Ev’ry time we say goodbye’ in my head. It seemed appropriate at the time.
Then I said, ‘OK, I’ll show you how to start her. She can be a bit of a bitch – sorry – in cold weather. Then you can run me to the station.’
What I couldn’t understand – even if I had been less than sensitive a few days earlier – is why she shied away from me so absolutely now. I was Charlie Bassett, not Albert Pierrepoint, the government’s hangman. I looked into her eyes, and there was nothing there for me at all. I wanted to shout, What was it, exactly, that I did so wrong? But all I could think was that I’d let Carlo down. That was interesting.
She continued to look steadily at me from behind her desk. There was something
