‘I’ll remember that, thanks. I’ve only been out here a few weeks.’
‘Most of our casualties have been out here less than three months when they cop it. If you concentrate on getting through that period, you should be OK.’ He touched his cap peak with his swagger stick. ‘See you later.’ He didn’t though, even though he meant well.
Nancy was reading a copy of Picture Post that had a photograph of Marilyn on its cover. No one from my generation would ever ask you Marilyn who? He half rolled over when I ducked under the canvas. ‘Where’ve you been? Old Bugger-Lugs is getting ready to send out a search party.’
‘I’ve already reported, and given him his car back. I had a flat, and when I went to change the wheel found some bastard had nicked the jack. That’s the last time I take out a car without looking first. Have you got anything to drink?’
‘Water. I finished the Stella yesterday. We’ll need to get in some more.’
Beggars can’t be choosers: water it was. I looked over his shoulder. Marilyn smiled back at me from a picture spread. Most of her clothes were still on.
‘I saw some original photographs of her that some tankies had taken from a German spy in France.’
‘When?’
‘In 1945. She was stretched stark-naked on a red velvet curtain, but still looked like the girl next-door. She’s one of those people you don’t begrudge being famous.’
‘She is going to have an interesting life,’ he told me. ‘That’s written all over her face . . . and when she’s eighty she’ll write a book that will lift the lid on what all those film stars and producers really get up to.’
‘I’ll be first in line to buy a copy. Can I have her after you?’
He flung the magazine at me, but in a good-natured way. ‘Help yourself. I have to go and clean up anyway. Watson has insisted that I look more soldierly. I respectfully observed that RAF officers weren’t supposed to look soldierly; that was for soldiers . . . and then he exploded. I don’t know what he expects me to do – I can’t help it you know.’
‘Help what?’
‘Looking like this.’
‘Yes you can, Oliver. You can get your hair cut the same length as the rest of us for a start . . . or at least have a decent DA.’ That’s a haircut shaped like the feathers on a duck’s arse, for those of you too young to know better. My generation were good, but crude, when it came to making up metaphors. ‘Then you could stop using perfume, and get yourself a bigger pair of shorts.’
‘Do you think the Old Man would notice?’
‘No, Oliver. But you would then conform, and he would stop noticing. That’s the point.’
‘I’m glad you’re back, Charlie: you understand these things. You can take the flak for a while. I don’t know why he’s in such a foul mood.’
‘Nor do I; but I’m going to have a shower, and clean up, then go back up there and find out.’
Watson was limping. I hadn’t noticed that before. He moved around the room like a hungry wolf.
‘What happened, sir?’
‘What happened when?’
‘Apart from me, what happened last night or this morning to make you so damned angry? We’re a small team, so it’s not as if you can’t find someone to let off steam to if you want. What happened?’
He flung himself into his chair, and then he laughed, ‘Napoleon would have loved you, Charlie.’
‘I don’t think I would have liked him, sir: he was a fat French git with piles . . . but why?’
‘He always advised his officers, If in doubt, march your men towards the sound of gunfire. That’s what you do. Everyone else has been tiptoeing around me all morning, whereas you blast in here and demand to know what’s going on at the top of your voice. What am I going to do with you?’
‘Send me home to Blighty?’ That was the title of another music hall song my old man used to sing when he was drunk.
‘Not a chance. Rather find you something else to do. Apparently you made a half-decent fist of the guard the other night, so it’s been suggested that I supply a bit more manpower. M’smith and Nansen will be pretty teed off with you, when they find out. If you had made a complete cobblers of it nobody would have asked us again.’
‘But that isn’t what’s pissed you off, sir?’
‘No. If you must know, someone with more bars on his shoulders than common sense has suggested I use an intelligence source to find out what’s been happening to all this kit that’s being whipped off the Brown Jobs. He wants to impress them with our intelligence-gathering capabilities, and go one up on their CO . . . but I didn’t join up to become a bloody policeman.’
‘Ours not to reason why, sir. Couldn’t Yassine give us a hint?’ It wasn’t the first time I’d acknowledged that we had, in the Fat Man, a genuinely mutual acquaintance. I was interested to see his reaction. He gave none at all.
‘He could if I knew where the beggar was. He’s not answering the phone in the Kettle, and his staff just say he’s out.’
‘I could go up there and find out?’
‘Yes, Charlie, you could . . . but whenever you actually volunteer for something, I begin to get the willies. Let me think about it. What did you want anyway? There must be another reason for you presenting yourself so reasonably turned out for once.’
‘Can I sit down, sir?’
‘If you must.’ Then he bawled at her open door, ‘Dais-ee: two mugs of tea, please.’
Her response was to laugh, and then
