‘Mr Bassett and Mr Macdonaldsmith, sirs?’
Both of us said, ‘Yes,’ simultaneously. It was nice to be wanted.
‘Just some bumf for your attention, sirs, and then I can serve you a drink.’ Bollocks.
‘Where’s everyone else?’
He looked on me with the benevolence of a father to his youngest son. ‘Asleep, sir. It’s half past three.’
So it was. I walked back to the door, opened it and listened to the sounds of a working airfield: absolutely fuck-all. When I shut the heat out again all I could hear was the slow beats of an overhead fan. Yeah, you guessed it. I could cope with this. I initialled the forms the barman put in front of me – I could have signed away my pay for the next three months for all I knew.
When he took them back from us he wished us very gravely, ‘Welcome to Cyprus, gentlemen.’ Then said, ‘The bar is now open.’
If you haven’t noticed it by now, I should probably make it plain that drink has a moderately prominent role in my story. You meet a nice class of person in a bar. Two long glasses of Stella, produced now, without a fuss, confirmed in me the opinion that bar staff are God’s real representatives on Earth; bugger the Pope.
‘When will everyone get up from being asleep?’ I asked the steward.
‘When it’s time to eat usually, sir – about seven.’
‘I could get to like Cyprus.’
‘It’s a fine island when the Greeks aren’t shooting at us. They don’t want us here any more.’
‘Cyprus too? Something has gone terribly wrong with the world,’ M’smith remarked. ‘I’ll have another please.’ He pushed his glass forward. The foam clung around the inside in discrete rings. Something else had been bothering me.
‘Any idea how long we’re likely to be here before we move on?’
‘Two days, I believe, sir. The SWO says to tell you he’ll touch base with you this evening, and the Adjutant asks that Pilot Officer Bassett presents himself at Hut 7 tomorrow morning; after breakfast. You’ll find we’re quite relaxed here, sir.’
‘What’s in hut number seven?’
‘They don’t tell me that sort of thing, sir.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Alongside Hut 6 I’d imagine,’ said M’smith. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll find it.’
‘You can take me to supper in the Mess tonight,’ I told him, ‘and teach me how to eat like an officer.’
‘Easy, dear chap. Just grab everything in sight, spill grub all down your shirt, throw up when you’ve drunk too much, and don’t pay for a damned thing. No one will notice.’
Promotion was a bit like being mentally raped; it corrupted you utterly. I never forgot that, or M’smith’s advice.
After he left the bar, I sat down for half an hour with the January Picturegoer magazine. There was a girl called Monica Lewis on the front cover. I’d never heard of her, but she was showing bags of leg. She had a nervous smile, and I hoped she hadn’t given away too much to get a front cover. I took it to my cabin, which was a room in a square building like an electricity substation, with four bedrooms and a large sitting room. It was where the RAF parked their transiting officers. There were snores coming from three of the rooms – one would be M’smith, I supposed.
I couldn’t settle, and found it was pleasantly cool on the shaded veranda. I smoked my pipe, drank water from a new cooler inside, and watched a Varsity arrive. One engine sounded horribly rough to my tutored ear. The troops who trooped off it looked around as if they didn’t know what was going on. They had pale skins, and carried their gear awkwardly. I was glad that I wasn’t a national serviceman and knew more or less what was expected of me, and how to avoid it most of the time – which was the important thing. There was a big black Bakelite telephone clinging to the wall of the common room. I decided to try it out.
I told the base operator who I was, and where. He sounded pretty cheerful; I was beginning to suspect that Cyprus was the place to be . . . when the Greeks weren’t shooting at you, of course.
‘Can you give me your service number, please sir.’
‘22602108. Bassett C.’
‘Have you a mess number yet, sir?’ I gave him that as well.
‘Can I make a call back to Blighty?’
‘Not a personal one?’
‘No, a WD number in London.’ I gave him Dolly’s number. If I didn’t make it plain before, I will now. Dolly worked with RAF Intelligence. When I met her she had been a driver in the car pool. Then she worked her way up. Then she worked her way back down to the car pool again. I didn’t know what ebb her career was at now, but from the way she’d treated me earlier I guessed that she would be bossing people around again. I had to wait for five minutes for the call to go through, and then another five for someone to run her down. When she spoke, she sounded as if her mouth was full. I asked, ‘Why are you stuffing your face in the middle of the afternoon?’
‘Because it’s not. It’s lunchtime over here, and that means you’re no longer in the country.’
‘That’s very clever Dolly; you should be in Intelligence.’ Dolly didn’t like me talking about her job on the telephone. She liked me taking the piss out of her even less. I waited while she decided whether or not to hang up. ‘. . . Dolly?’
‘Yes, I’m still here. What do you want?’
‘Something odd happened to me in Malta yesterday. I told a whitetop
