‘Can I take any of the lockers?’
‘As many as you want, dearie, but if I was you I’d only put in them what you need day to day . . . anything else will get nicked. Pat will rent you out a locked cupboard in the MT section for your decent stuff. Only an acker a week.’
‘An acker?’
‘Local currency: worth bugger-all.’
‘I’m Charlie Bassett.’
‘I know: the bad news preceded you. Oliver Nansen: Olive or Nancy – I answer to both. I sleep naked; I hope you don’t mind.’
Nansen reminded me of a pilot I’d known on my squadron at Bawne during the war; but at least Quelch could fly. I wondered what this limp-wristed nitwit could possibly have going for him. You probably don’t realize how prejudiced my generation was – I would have happily flown with Quelch, you see, because he was bloody A1 at his job . . . but I’m buggered if I would have slept in the next bed. Forgive the pun. It’s just the way we were. That’s why I didn’t even bother to unpack.
‘I am not living in a fucking tent!’
‘. . . tent, sir.’ Watson corrected me. He didn’t seem particularly worried by the omission, but he waited for my acknowledgement.
‘Sorry; sir. Your driver dropped me off outside a tent with a queer in it, and said it was where I lived. I am not a fucking Arab, sir, and I won’t live in a tent in the desert with a queer. My mother wouldn’t like it.’
Watson sighed. ‘Your mother’s dead, Charlie. Which is it that offends you, the tent or the queer?’
‘The tent.’
‘This is Lawrence of Arabia country, son. Half the world lives in tents here, and thinks it the fashionable thing to do. You too. We haven’t any hard billets to spare; in any case my small mob comes right at the bottom of the pecking order. Even I haven’t a separate cabin – I live here.’ Here was a wooden shack that looked like a small cricket pavilion of bleached wood. That was odd: the last time I worked with him at Cheltenham in 1947, he operated out of a virtually identical building. I now suspected that he moved it with him wherever he went. Like a tortoise.
‘I’ll swap you, sir. You can have my tent.’
‘No I can’t. Make do with what you’ve got. Stop bloody bellyaching, and get yourself sorted out. You’ll be going out in a few days’ time.’
‘. . . the queer then? I’m objecting to sharing a tent with a homo. He says his name’s Nancy, which figures, and he’s cut his shorts back so far that the cheeks of his arse are showing. His hair reaches his shoulders, and he’s draped across his camp bed like Jane Russell saying Come up and see me sometime. He’s a bloody monstrosity.’
‘That was Mae West, actually . . . but I think you must have him wrong. He can’t be a homo. Homosexuality is illegal in the armed forces: he’d be cashiered for it. He is in the armed forces; therefore he cannot be a homosexual. QED; you must be wrong. Anyway his name’s not Nancy, it’s Nansen, like the explorer; you shouldn’t jump to conclusions.’
‘The tent smells like a Berlin brothel: he has incense burning.’
‘Good idea: keeps the flies down. I saw one the size of a golf ball once. Don’t worry about Nancy. He has a useful function in the RAF, or he wouldn’t be here. Get used to him, get unpacked, and get yourself ready for the blue. Find out which vehicle you’re going out in – the Army leaves the radio vehicles here for us to maintain. Make sure the radios are OK, and that you have sufficient spares for a long trip. Ask Tobin to get you anything you need, but don’t give him money for bribes or he’ll have the shirt off your back.’
‘What about the little things, sir? Like food, fuel and water?’
‘Leave that to the Brown Jobs; they’ll be conducting you, doing all the rough stuff and carrying the cargo. All you have to do is listen. You’ll get bored, so take a book. Piece of piss.’
I hate it when people say something like that. It’s almost an invitation for the shit to begin flying. OK, time to eat humble pie, and make peace with my new room mate. Maybe he could give me enough tips to get me safely through my first patrol.
‘I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?’ Those were the words Nansen re-greeted me with. ‘The old man wouldn’t let you move on. That’s because everyone else who fetches up here asks to move, and there’s nowhere left to move you to.’
‘How many others?’
‘In the last few months? Four.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Johnson lost his head; you’ve been told about clearing your throat with a line of telephone wire?’
‘Yes: someone tried it on me on the way here.’
‘Then there was Johnson Two . . . that’s Johnston with a t . . . he got VD from a girl he met in the Blue Kettle and is still hors de combat. A cultured Scotch git named Donnie something broke his arm and leg out in the blue, and was shipped out . . . and Denny is still here, but got himself shifted to a tent near the wire . . . no one else wanted it.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Why was what?’
‘Why did no one else want his tent?’
‘. . . because, dearie, when your wog comes through the wire, looking for something to steal and a nice white boy to slice up, he makes for the nearest tent, doesn’t he? Just don’t go visiting Denny after dark – he sleeps with a loaded revolver in his hand. You don’t come from the
