‘Some Americans were looking for you last week,’ Bozey told me.
I pretended that I hadn’t already heard. ‘What for?’
‘They want to employ you, apparently. I knew you’d have a quiet couple of months, and thought you might be interested.’
First the buggers at the Foreign Office; now Bozey. How come everyone was so keen to find me something to do all of a sudden?
‘Pete mentioned them,’ I admitted. ‘Why didn’t you just give them the bum’s rush?’
‘I couldn’t get my mind off the woman for a couple of days, and wanted another reason to see her.’
‘What did Irma think of that?’
‘I didn’t tell her. She’d kill me if I laid a paw on another woman . . . But when you see what this dame puts in the field, you sort of forget about what’s in the stable at home.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Doris. Like one of the Waters sisters. She’s married to the other one. He never lets her out of his sight, and I’m not surprised.’
‘Any idea what they want?’
‘They want you to take them to Scotland.’
‘Can’t they find it on their own? It’s big enough.’
‘You’ve climbed up a mountain to an American aircraft crash, they said – someone in the consulate in London told them that. They want you to climb up to another one, and take them with you.’ There was just a chance this was on the level. I had climbed up to the site of Tommo’s air crash in the Scottish Highlands. Call it a personal pilgrimage if you like. One of the locals had given me Tommo’s Swiss wristwatch, and like a sentimental fool I had handed it in at the US Consulate in London later, and asked them to pass it back to his parents. There had been a problem because the US Army didn’t know for certain that he’d been on the plane anyway – but let’s not go into that.
‘Why? What do they want to go up there for?’ I asked. ‘All they’ll see is an aircraft reduced to its component parts.’
‘Her brother was flying the kite. They want to lay flowers where he died.’
‘That’s got to be crap, Bozey.’
‘That’s what I thought. I knew you’d be interested . . . and it pays well.’
Ten yards away the kite seller stood very still whilst Spartacus tried to piss on his feet – not easy for a three-legged dog which instinctively lifted his back leg. He fell over. Then he set up an angry yapping, chased his tail in circles and sprayed urine over anything within a yard of him. The kite seller got it over his feet. That’s when I noticed his shoes: they were very expensive and highly polished.
‘Is he one of yours, Bozey?’ I asked.
‘No. He must be one of theirs.’
‘When do you want me to see them?’
‘In a few minutes. They’re waiting at that little bar alongside the bandstand.’
I looked fifty yards, and there, sure enough, was a pre-war bandstand and a small bar with several tables in the sun. One of them even had a couple at it.
I suppose it took us little more than a minute to stroll over. Don’t ask me my first impressions of the bloke, because I can’t remember. What I can remember is that he stood as we approached. The dame looked up, crossed her legs and smiled . . . and somewhere in my head the Mormon Tabernacle Choir began to sing ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’. The guy stuck out his hand to me, smiled a wide smile, and said, ‘Hi, I’m George Handel.’ It could only happen to me.
The woman stood up, straightened her dress, and held her hand out in turn.
‘Hello. I’m Doris. When I married George I wanted to change my first name to Door, but George has no latent sense of humour.’
George scowled as if to prove it. It was my turn to open my mouth.
‘I’m Charlie Bassett.’
Doris said, ‘We know. You’re the fellow who’s going to help us find my baby brother’s aeroplane.’
‘He hasn’t agreed yet, Doris,’ her husband warned.
‘He will, though – won’t ya, Charlie?’
Although my libido was screaming Yes please my tongue managed to get out, ‘Maybe,’ and, ‘It all depends.’
Spartacus ran up. Then he wagged his arse all over the place – the dynamics of a dog that’s short one of his rear legs wagging his tail, is that the whole back end wags. Doris said, ‘Aw! A three-legged dawg, how sweet.’
I wanted to have her until the friction ignited us, and we burned to death still going at it. It was a very good reason to turn down the proposal and walk away. From the corner of my eye I could see Bozey smirk.
‘OK,’ I told them. ‘I’ll probably take the job.’
‘Thanks, Mr Bassett,’ George said. ‘You won’t regret it.’
I already bloody well was. I looked down at my trousers and thought, Another fine mess you’ve got us into. It was at that moment I decided to call my left nut Laurel, and the right, Hardy. When I looked up again I must have been smiling. So was Doris. George looked worried, and Bozey looked as if someone had just told him a very good joke. Spartacus sat on his balls, and gave out a mournful howl like a wolf. Doris lit one of those new long cigarettes, and turned her head to one side to blow the smoke away. Then she shook her head and said, ‘Your dog needs to get a sex life.’ And wondered why we all turned to look at her.
We had them over to the Leihhaus for the evening to show them a bit of gay old Berlin.
You noticed the small g. There weren’t all that many bits left actually: we’d dropped bombs all over the best bits in the forties. The buildings we hadn’t
