‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes . . . something like that?’
‘Exactly like that sir. Macbeth. Now would you mind telling me what the hell’s going on . . . sir?’ I loved that pause he put before the sir; I’ve used it so many times myself.
‘Certainly, Mr Cox, but first I want a cup of tea.’
I told him about Daniel in the lions’ den. I told him that the guard had seen something that had spooked them. Something they thought was a full-grown lion.
He said, ‘I don’t think there are any lions left in Egypt. I haven’t heard of any, sir.’
‘That’s what I was told when I saw one in Ismailia a few days ago.’
‘Seriously, sir?’
‘Seriously. The Army says that there have been no free-roaming lions in Egypt for at least a hundred years, and that I must have been seeing things. The Army is always right.’
‘Yes, sir, it is.’
I could see something was eating him.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘If our boys spend half the night looking over their shoulders for lions, sir, they won’t see the wogs when they come creeping up on them . . . and the wogs are much more likely to do them harm.’
‘So it would be better if they never found out about the lion our two chaps thought they saw. So it wasn’t a lion: just like mine. They probably mistook it for a cover flapping in the wind, some loose paper and a feral cat. Something like that?’
‘Thank you, Mr Bassett.’ I could almost see the little wheels churning inside his head as he turned the implication over. ‘The two lads will keep their traps shut, if they think their pals will laugh at them for being frightened into the ditch by a cat. ’Specially if I tell them.’
‘Least said, soonest mended.’
‘My thoughts exactly, sir.’
‘Your man Hoskins was pretty useful tonight,’ I told him. ‘He thinks pretty quickly, you know.’ I might as well try to get him off whatever Cox had planned for him. I needn’t have bothered.
‘He’s the makings of a fine airman, sir, although he doesn’t know it yet. It wouldn’t be a bad thing for the service if he opted to stay. Maybe in the Regiment. I intended to speak to him about it in the morning.’ I’ve already told you about these SWOs: you can never bloody tell.
‘I’m going to step outside for a minute to have a smoke, SWO. You might want to inspect the telephone while I’m away.’
‘I told you it was a useless piece of kit, sir.’
‘Not any more, it isn’t. I repaired the bloody thing in fifteen minutes . . . and I’d like you to make sure it never gets into that state again.’ The boot never feels better than when it is on the other foot.
He grinned, and said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He even saluted.
I wasn’t sure any more whether he was supposed to. Maybe he was just taking the mick. Was I still in the RAF? And, if so, what the bloody hell was it up to? Because there wasn’t much bloody flying going on.
Late the next morning I cycled out to the ditch we’d pulled our bold boyos from, but SWO Cox had beaten me to it. I was there to see if I could find any lion tracks: I reckoned a ghost lion wouldn’t leave any. He was already there with a broom in his hand.
I asked, ‘I don’t suppose that there were any big-cat footprints in the sand, Mr Cox?’
‘Not one, sir.’ He sounded very cheerful. ‘You were right; must have been all in their imagination.’ But I could see his brush marks; they stretched for at least twenty-five yards. I wonder if anyone had seen the SWO personally sweeping up sand in the corner of a camp that was full of the bloody stuff and, if so, what they’d made of it.
I didn’t tell him what I’d found outside my tent when I crawled out of my pit at 1100. There in the dust was a perfect cat’s imprint: four toes and a big central pad. When I bent down to it I found it was as large as my spread hand.
We sipped tea on the veranda of the Men’s Ward just like old friends. Haye with an e and me.
Daisy had reappeared at Deversoir and taken up her duties, but not quite as if nothing had happened. She was still subdued; nothing like her old self. Watson was also back, and we’d both carefully avoided a showdown. I was tossing up whether to mention the Stirling bomber or not. Maybe if I ignored it, it would go away. He said he worried that Daisy’s women’s trouble might be some form of tumour – apparently a woman in his family had died from one. As far as I knew no one had told him the truth, but he could also be double-bluffing me, couldn’t he? When I was around them it felt as if there was a fragile sort of equilibrium which might blow up in our faces at any moment – so I stayed away as much as I could. I got a chit for a day off from him, and bummed a lift up to see Susan.
I told her about my old man, and his three types of sexual relationships.
She said, ‘My mother told me nothing about men at all. My father tried to, the pet, just before I went away, but I don’t actually think he knows very much.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That I would meet nice men and nasty men, good-looking men and ugly ones, young ones and old ones, rich ones and poor ones . . . but that, no matter who, most of the time all they’d be thinking about was how to get my
