The desk in the middle was so old it was probably made from Armada timbers. The man sitting behind it didn’t look much younger. He didn’t rise to greet me: I don’t think he could. They call things like him Whitehall ‘Mandarins’ these days, and he looked as if he was welded to his seat. He smiled a thin smile that somehow conveyed the fact that it pained him to have to do so, and indicated an upright chair opposite him. I’d seen photographs of chairs like that in America – they wire them up to the mains, and kill people in them.
He said, ‘Mr Bassett?’
‘That’s the name I write on my shirt tabs.’ It didn’t work. The smile became thinner. If I had had a violin bow I could have played a tune on it.
‘Thank you for coming to see us.’
I quickly looked around. I couldn’t see any us, only him.
‘That’s all right, squire. I had to come up to town to see my boss anyway.’
At the word squire he winced. One to me.
‘Do you know why we’ve asked to see you?’
‘Haven’t a clue. Sorry. If that’s all, can I go now?’ I don’t know why I was being such a tit: there was just something about this specimen that immediately annoyed me. I wanted to punch his lights out. I half rose to make my point.
‘No. Sit down. The Foreign Secretary has asked us to discuss your record with you.’
‘Which record?’
I actually had a point. There were two card files on the desk; one under his right hand and one under the left. The one under his left hand was my old blue RAF personal file. It was about three times as thick as the last time I had seen it: that seemed hardly fair. The one under his right hand had a buff card cover, and was slimmer. That would have been a relief if the hand over it hadn’t been trembling, as if the file contained a violent animal straining to get out. He calmed his hand with an effort, and spread his fingers out, pinning the papers to the desk.
‘This one: you’re a damned disgrace.’
We went mano-a-mano – the old eye lock – and I said, ‘Oh, that. I wouldn’t worry about that. There’s bound to have been a misunderstanding.’
He didn’t fall for it. He didn’t say, ‘Pull the other one.’ They don’t say that in Eton and Oxford.
They say things like, ‘Sit up, and damned well pay attention. This file contains letters to the Foreign Secretary from our embassies all over the world, concerning your behaviour in other sovereign countries. To be specific, it comprises a list of countries who don’t ever want you back.’ He flipped the file open, and lifted a number of sheets of paper one by one. ‘France. The Netherlands. Belgium. France again. Germany. Germany again . . .’ He lifted a further three sheets of paper, and added, ‘Especially Germany. East Germany. Egypt. Iraq. Persia . . . Need I go on?’
‘If you like.’ I was, I admit, a little taken aback. I didn’t think I’d pissed folk off that badly.
‘America . . . What have you done to the Americans? They’re supposed to be our allies.’
‘Nothing: I’ve never met an American I didn’t like. They must be mixing me up with someone else.’
‘Not a chance, Mr Bassett – the FBI has labelled you “an undesirable alien” who consorts with terrorists, spies, black marketeers, smugglers and career criminals.’
I shrugged.
‘I seriously haven’t a clue. I don’t know what you’re talking about. They must mean someone else.’
He allowed himself his first proper smile of the morning. ‘For your sake, I truly bloody well hope so. Would you like a cup of coffee?’
When had we swapped from mid-morning tea to coffee?
‘Why not? Then you can tell me what you want.’
Mrs Bassett, you see, didn’t have any stupid sons, and I wouldn’t have been sitting there unless the spiny bastard wanted something.
Coffee came in a tall Georgian silver pot. The china cups and saucers were as fine as knife blades, and probably worth a king’s ransom: these civil servants did all right for themselves. He played mother. The biscuits were sweet Abernethy. That was a social gaffe: you should always serve Abernethies with cheese. I think I read that in a John Buchan novel.
‘I want you to go back to the RAF, as a civilian consultant, and do some radio work on Cyprus for them,’ he told me.
I blew half an Abernethy biscuit all over him as I spluttered.
‘And you can go and take a running jump.’
At least we understood each other from more or less the word go.
He smiled as he brushed his jacket down. It wasn’t a smile I liked.
He said, ‘Most men would be grateful of an offer of employment these days, even if it is temporary.’
‘I already have a job. I run a perfectly respectable small airline from a perfectly respectable small airfield in Kent. Thank you for the offer, and I’ll be going now.’ Again I tried to move from my seat.
He waved me down. ‘You haven’t finished your coffee. I always think the coffee’s rather good here, don’t you?’ Then he added, ‘Your perfectly respectable airline is on the move – to Panshanger, I hear – where most of your kit will be put into mothballs. I expect that’s what Halton wants to see you about. He indicated that you might be kicking your heels for a couple of months, and we thought you’d be pleased
