The desert stove is a small, cut-down oil drum full of sand, doused with petrol and oil and allowed to burn: you can boil a billycan on it in minutes. Desert rations were eight tins of bully chopped fine, with an onion, and dropped in a saucepan with eight tins of baked beans . . . and each plate accompanied by a couple of doorsteps of bread without butter. All washed down with a bottle of warm Stella we weren’t supposed to have. We sat around the stove as the air cooled. I hadn’t expected such a wide variation in temperatures, and was now glad of the sweater that Nansen had told me to take along.
One of the squaddies remarked, ‘Roll on tomorrer. I can’t wait for me egg.’ This seemed odd, because I knew that we had none.
The sky went black, and you could see a billion billion stars. A tall, thin 24-monther picked out the constellations we were not familiar with – he was going back to be an astronomer – and Clare eventually chipped in to explain how to use some for desert navigation. Rogers sang a folk song called ‘The Lincolnshire poacher’, and revealed he had a singing voice as pure as a choirboy’s. A couple of guys told bad jokes; another described his home town in Devon on market day. Clare was going to have us away early the next day; not long after sun-up, so we soon began to get our heads down. The Sergeant was the only one to sleep in the open, under the sky. The rest of us split for our transport. Rogers slept in the K5’s cab, and I bunked down in the radio shack.
I was one of the last to leave the warm shroud of the stove. As I did, Clare looked up, gave a twitchy little smile and said, ‘You did all right, Mr Bassett. I think you have the makings of a soldier.’
All I did was wave back to show I’d heard him . . . and I had one of those odd moments when your brain suddenly notices I’m happy here, and says, Don’t forget this.
I was awoken the next morning by a persistent buzzing noise. When I opened my eyes I registered that I was bunked on the floor of the radio room, and that half a dozen flies were formation-flying close to its roof. They were noisy little buggers. I watched them doing half-rolls to land upside down on the ceiling near the ventilator. The laws of physics tell us that is an impossible manoeuvre, but flies never study physics, do they? They only fly.
Then I remembered something Roy had told me, yawned, stood up and hammered on the wall of my shack, which was also the back of his cab. He opened the sliding window between us and yawned back at me.
‘Yeah, what is it?’
‘You asked me to tell you when I saw any flies. There are some in here with me now.’
I have to admit old Roy could move when he had to. By the time I had climbed down, he was standing stark-naked, Sten in hand, at the wire between the K5 and the next truck in the circle – one of the QLs as it happened. His bottom was absurdly white. He was studying the progress of an Arab leading a donkey, who was approaching us along the valley floor.
‘You can cover your cock up, Roy.’ That was the Sergeant’s voice. ‘. . . I’ve watched him coming. I’m sure he’s on his own.’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’
‘And hurry it up, there’s a good lad. That big black bag on the back of the ass probably contains his woman.’
I’d been sleeping in my shorts anyway, so it was less of a problem to me. I joined Clare at the wire to greet our visitor. He was a tall, thin million-year-old Arab man in an unusually immaculate djellaba.
He smiled at Clare and said, ‘Salaam aleikum, Sergeant.’ He had a wonderfully modulated English drawl: right out of the top drawer. Wherever you go, they speak better English than you do. George Sanders sounded like him.
‘Salaam, Abdul. You are well?’
‘I am well, Sergeant. You want my eggs?’
Clare laughed. It was then that I noticed that though bare-chested, he was still wearing his pistol belt, and that the flap of its canvas holster was undone. His right hand didn’t stray far from it. Trigger had left me the Sten. My hands holding it were suddenly sweaty. The old man’s black eyes glanced at me from above his hawk nose – almost as if he knew what I was thinking and didn’t care. He smiled. His teeth were stained.
Clare asked, ‘How many?’
‘Two dozen; English measure. All fresh. Young hens. Grade one.’
‘How much?’
‘Twenty-five ackers.’
‘Twelve.’
The Arab shrugged, and turned
