What else is she teaching you? I thought, but all I said was, ‘Hmm.’ He knew that I wouldn’t have him lose face by delivering a bollocking in front of his passenger, even though he deserved one.
‘Where did you get the cash?’
‘Working in the bar, washing glasses for the Major.’ He wasn’t officially old enough to do that either.
I obviously had a few more fences to jump before I left.
Eve said, ‘Hello, Charlie,’ and didn’t look embarrassed. Neither did Dieter. So I suppose that was all right then.
He asked me, ‘Do you want to drive, Dad?’
‘You drove her here, you might as well drive back.’ Yeah; his bloody face lit up. I scrambled in behind them, and wondered where I’d hide if the local traffic cops stopped us. He whistled as he drove. Eve leaned back to me, and brought me up to date on the Bosham scandals: if things carried on at this rate the News of the World would appoint a special correspondent for our little port. Maybe there was something in the water.
Dieter’s driving abilities? You guessed it: better than mine already. He was a bloody natural. I’d have to watch the little bugger. And not so much of the little, either: when we tumbled out of the car alongside our prefab I realized for the first time that he was already taller than me. Ten minutes later Carly sat me down at the kitchen table and produced a cardboard box containing six roughly shaped pieces of solid balsa wood, a tube of glue, a piece of sandpaper and a plan drawing of a Lysander aircraft. We’d called them Lizzies in my day, and some of the guys I knew had flown them out of Tempsford. What with helping Carly with his new hobby of modelling aircraft, and Dieter’s driving lessons, I could see that I’d have my work cut out for the next few days. Carly was eleven going on twelve. He worked on shaping the oddly angled wing leading edges while I concentrated on the fuselage. We soon had balsa dust all over the kitchen table, and smiles on our faces. He asked me, ‘Are you still in the RAF, Dad?’ They both called me Dad now; Carly had copied Dieter.
‘No. Too many people to boss me about.’
‘Would you mind if I was? When I was old enough, I mean?’
‘No, son. I’d probably be very proud. Why don’t you come back to my company with me as soon as I get another few days off, and have a closer look at our aircraft?’
‘I’d like that.’ So would I, I realized. Times change. You get older. It looked as if both my boys were being drawn to proper men’s jobs: I could live with that.
After the boys had turned in I wandered across to the bar to give James a hand. Eve was propping up the customer side. Before I asked she told me, ‘I’m not a cradle snatcher, Charlie. Give me some credit.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m worried.’ She smiled and raised her glass to me.
‘Where are you going this time?’
‘Cyprus, they tell me. How did you guess?’
‘You’re down here for a week, and making a fuss of the boys. That usually means you’re going away.’
‘For the last time.’
‘Famous last words.’
‘Trust me.’
‘Why?’
I didn’t have an answer for that one.
When I looked at the bundle that Doris had pushed in my pocket I was ashamed I’d turned her in. I gave five hundred to Maggs for safekeeping. She was safer than the Bank of England. Safer than the Bank of Scotland as well. But it was one of the things I still liked about Britain: nothing would ever go wrong with the banks.
I phoned the Foreign Office and told my new boss, ‘OK. I settled my affairs as best I could. The police didn’t arrest me, and I’m ready to go when you are.’
‘Good. I’ll cut the arrangements for you. Give me your telephone number . . . And for Christ’s sake remember to take a warm coat – it can be bloody chilly up there at this time of year, old boy.’
‘In Cyprus?’
‘In Loughborough, old boy, Loughborough. Recovery training – you won’t have seen the kit you’re working with before. New stuff, I understand.’
‘Better range?’
‘How the hell would I know, old son? I’m just the office boy.’ He could have fooled me. In fact, come to think about it, he did.
Where the hell is Loughborough? It happens every bleeding time, I thought. Three years earlier the RAF had signed me up for Egypt, but as soon as I’d broken out my tropical kit they sent me to Dungeness for training instead. Dungeness is one of life’s great disappointments: even Egypt was a relief after that. I decided to spend a few days in London before I took off.
Loughborough is in Leicestershire, a county that has nothing going for it except the death of Richard III at Bosworth Field. Even that is debatable – the historians can never seem to make up their minds whether that was a good or a bad thing. It was never a problem for me; he was a king, wasn’t he? The country’s had far too many of those, and none of them much good. The weary, skinny man behind the St Pancras ticket office counter shrugged when I told him I wanted to go to a village named Woodhouse, near Loughborough.
‘Where’s the nearest railway station?’
He consulted a
