If the letters from home got you down because you weren’t there, the biggest problem for the serviceman in Egypt was that if you weren’t working, and the alert was high enough for you not to be able to go visiting, then there was damn-all else to do. The camp cinemas tried their best, but there was a difference between the films the troops wanted to see, and the films the powers-that-be thought were good for us. I wanted to see Macao, not Groucho Marx. Bugger them. So I hung around Watson’s office, and sometimes he threw me a bone, by giving me something to do. Pat Tobin ran a card school. Nancy learned to ride a motorbike rather well, and scraped both his knees. M’smith had cocked up somewhere and drew ten days’ stag down at Fayid, so we never saw him.
Eventually I sat down, and answered my mail. The letter to the boys was the longest, and I learned that I’d found out more about Egypt than I’d realized. I embellished it with drawings of the pyramids I’d never seen, me being sick over the side of the corvette, and trudging out into the desert with a spade to do what a man’s gotta do. You can’t go wrong writing to kids about vomit and crap; they like that sort of stuff.
I wrote asking Elaine to tell Old Man Halton to start pulling strings to get me out of this madhouse, and wrote to Flaming June that I might love her too, but we’d have to wait for me to get back before we knew . . . never give a girl a complete knock-back, as you never know when you might want them again. That was another of my dad’s rules, but one that I didn’t share with anyone.
The truth was, as Watson had indicated, that the Charlie I knew in his twenties could have been mistaken for a pretty shallow person. That’s as much as I’m willing to admit. I sent one of the dirty postcards to Bozey, and one to Dolly at her mews flat. After I dropped them in the postbox I realized that I no longer knew if she lived there. It was things like that which stopped you short. Then I wondered if the postcards would get past the BFPO censors, or would I get a couple of hefty service coppers knocking on the office door one day soon? I suppose the more likely scenario was that the censors would simply nick them, and stick them in their pockets.
I asked Daisy, ‘When’s this bloody trip back out into the blue supposed to come off? I don’t want to do it, but I do want to get it over with.’
‘Like a visit to the dentist?’
‘Exactly like that.’
‘I don’t know. It’s something to do with fixing up the transport. Do you want some of David’s gin? He’s away at GHQ for the day.’
‘Yes please . . . and don’t get cross at me for saying that you’re looking better, and it shows.’
‘No. I won’t, and I am. The thought of those two bastards having to stand all the way home, and then having to explain away their tattoos, really bucked me up no end, although I’ve given up sunbathing except down at the Beach Club. I still don’t know who – you or David – I have to thank for the dark pleasure of revenge; both of you deny it.’
‘Maybe neither of us.’
‘Or both?’
‘Anyway, you realize now that you weren’t to blame. That’s the important thing.’
‘I was to blame for being dumb, Charlie; but that was all. What did you come in for, anyway?’
‘To shoot the breeze . . . isn’t that what the Yanks say? I was bored, and didn’t know what to do with myself. I was never any good at lying around doing nothing. I just begin to think too much.’
Daisy sat on Watson’s desk, and swung her legs. She had a long G and T in her hand; tonic water is something we were never short of. I had a sudden vision of my kid sister Francie, who died when she was fourteen or fifteen. Would she have looked like this if she had reached her twenties?
‘What do you think about?’
I found myself saying, ‘You, sometimes. What happened to you changed how I felt around women – as a bunch, I mean – almost overnight.’
‘In what way?’
‘Less aggressive and more protective. Sometimes it feels a bit soft, but I think I can live with that.’
‘Do you like women, Charlie? Outside the sexual thing I mean.’
I sensed that it was a serious question, and gave myself the time to think about the women I’d known. ‘Yes; very much.’
‘Well, maybe something good has come out of this after all. That’s worth thinking about, too. Fancy the camp cinema tonight? Groucho Marx is in a film with Frank Sinatra.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘And Jane Russell.’
‘OK.’
The grin she gave me told me that she thought I still had some way to go.
‘Who got the tank away?’ I asked Watson. ‘It must have taken them hours to dismantle that bloody house.’
‘A little Scots tank driver called Fotheringham. It’s one of those names you remember. He made a hole for the gun barrel to go through – like threading a needle – then he simply drove the thing out. He left them with only a pile of rubble where their new house had been.’
‘When you said little, you meant my size, sir?’
‘I meant smaller than you, Charlie: almost a dwarf, but much wittier. Explain to me why we always start off talking about anything except the reason I send for you in the first place.’
‘I’d love to know, sir.’
‘Then shut up and listen. You’re going out tomorrow.’ That had the effect
