‘What did you study?’
‘I read English Literature and Divinity, sir.’
We all read English Literature, you prat, but what did you study? Then I remembered that read and studied meant the same thing to these educated types. I was surprised he’d lasted out here so long.
‘What are you going to do with it when you get home?’
‘I want to be a novelist, sir.’
‘No money in it,’ I grunted, ‘. . . and one sir every ten minutes will do, if that’s all right with you. I’d join an advertising agency if I was you, and write advertising copy for them. It’s the future of literature.’
‘Does it pay better, sir?’
‘Not necessarily, but you do get to look at pictures of naked girls a lot of the time.’ I was thinking of the calendar hanging in our tent. The only thing the girl was wearing was a sailor’s cap. Hoskins seemed to brighten up a bit after that. I didn’t. I turned away from him, and made a job of filling my pipe and lighting it. I’d need some tobacco from the NAAFI before long.
The reason I was suddenly a little downcast was that it had occurred to me to set what I’d just said to Hoskins alongside what had happened to Daisy. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t as easy as cause and effect; at least, I hoped not. But there was something there. Some connection that made me uncomfortable. Something to do with the way we talked about women, and our attitude, and what sometimes happened afterwards. I decided to talk to Haye with an e about it the next time I met her. I remembered the old-stager at Padgate who had taught us how to take care of our kit. Attitude, he’d say, holding up a shining pair of boots. Attitude, gentlemen, is everything. Attitude makes things happen. Maybe he was right. But that went for bad things, as well as good things. Maybe that was it.
I asked Hoskins, ‘Did I get you into a spot of bother with the SWO?’
‘No, sir. It’s just that I’ve never been able to stop myself noticing the absurd side of service life. Some of the things we say and do are just plain silly, but we are expected to stand there, and not even smile. Even with two years in, I can’t do that. The NCOs hate me; I’m always getting caned for it.’ Not literally I hoped; they’d been supposed to stop flogging soldiers years ago.
‘Can you drive, Hoskins?’
‘Yes, sir. Do you want me to drive you?’
‘No. I want you to drive yourself.’
A cloud drifted across his face as he adopted the expression that clever people use to disguise the fact that they haven’t a bleeding clue.
‘I don’t understand, sir.’
‘I want to make good this shit-heap of a telephone they’ve left us with. That will take me about twenty minutes, once I’ve got the stuff I need. During those twenty minutes the telephones won’t work. It means that our patrols and the blokes on stag won’t be able to call up help if there’s an emergency. So I want you to drive up and down between them, keeping the comms open in the old-fashioned way – word of mouth. Do you understand?’
He gave me a sudden bright grin. ‘Like Leonidas at Thermopylae, sir. He used runners to stay in touch with Sparta.’
He might have come up with a more encouraging simile.
‘Wasn’t he killed; and all his army with him?’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘So where can I find a pair of scissors, a small screwdriver and some insulating tape?’
It took us longer to find the kit than for me to do the job itself. Once I’d scraped the wires back I could see that they’d been insulated before but that the tape had dried out, cracked into pieces and fallen away. I taped a hand-printed note to the back for good measure, advising them to replace the insulation every three months. It was nice to feel useful for once.
When I lifted the handset and threw the small toggle that connected me to the water tower, the loud and clear response I got from the other end was, ‘Christ, who’s that?’
‘Guard commander, you fool.’
‘But I can hear you, sir.’
‘Of course you can sodding hear me; I’ve repaired your sodding telephone.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
That is the ultimate tragedy of other ranks: they spend half their time apologizing for something they haven’t done.
‘Can you see the jeep?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Flag it down with your signal lamp, then climb down and tell Hoskins to come back; all is forgiven.’
When Hoskins came back in, bringing the smell of the desert with him, the first thing he asked was, ‘Forgiven for what, sir?’ One of these literally literary types.
We were sipping char from big ally mugs when the telephone jangled at me. It was the furthest patrol. Whenever anything goes wrong on a stag it’s always at the place furthest from you. I flipped the right toggle and lifted the handset, but before I could hear anything being said we could both hear the man screaming at the other end. There were no actual words. Just screams. Fuck it. Hoskins grabbed the Stirling and ran for the door. He used the words that had just crossed my mind.
‘Fuck it! C’mon, sir. Let’s go . . .’ Then he shouted back to an open door behind me in the office, ‘Mind the phone, Toby.’ It was the first time I realized that there had been anyone else there; he must have had his head down all along.
I let Hoskins drive. He wasn’t all that good, but he was fast, and that’s what we needed. The only thing he said on the drive was, ‘Fucking wogs!’ He’d obviously been in this movie before.
At one point he clipped a guy-rope of a tent at the end of the tent lines, and
