‘My turn,’ he snarled, and pulled his boot back for strike one.
‘No,’ the Tyke told him. ‘I give up. The ten bob’s yours – you keep it.’ He turned away, and broke the silence that enveloped the room by telling another civvy alongside him, ‘That’ll be a quid, Artie.’ Then he looked across the ring at me, and said, ‘I bet Artie a quid I’d get one of these dumb buggers to stand there and let me kick him in the goolies.’ His tanner piece was weighted, of course.
After that we civvies sat together at a separate table: it was the only way we felt safe. I didn’t know it, but our bold kicker’s course was finished. He left later that night; away on the last train. When he wasn’t kicking folk in the balls he seemed like a mild-mannered little guy. But you never can tell.
His pal Artie told me, ‘’E only came out six months ago. These Brown Jobs think they know it all, but they never learn.’
‘Came out?’
‘Fra’ Armley Gaol – Leeds Prison. He was in for bashing a copper, an’ breaking his jaw.’
I had another week to do; at least it broke the monotony.
Before the week was up the Yanks were telling the Brits and the French to fuck off out of Egypt again, and not to come back. I’d met Nasser once – by accident, mind you – and I think he was canny enough to have provoked us into it, knowing the Yanks would ride to his rescue, and that we wouldn’t have the stomach to deny them. There would be no second chance. It was just too much of a coincidence, wasn’t it?
Suez in 1956 was the shortest-lived, least-effective, successful invasion the British Army has ever carried out. The Americans and the UN had taken a tough line with Russia over what it was doing in Hungary; so they could hardly turn a blind eye to us doing exactly the same in Egypt. Within five days of our successful invasion of Suez they were threatening to sell up all of the UK loan stock they had acquired (which would have bankrupted us), and in the shadow of Big Ben people were shouting for the Prime Minister’s head. If Eden had waited until after the Hungarian affair was over before we went in we would probably have got away with it. I wonder why he didn’t. Anyway, the poor old sod was gone by January – ill health, they said – but he was visited by the American ambassador just before the announcement was made, so you can draw your own conclusions.
The army, meanwhile – that November – didn’t give me much time to think about it: they did exactly what the corporal had told me they would do with me. They set fire to an old airframe and made me put it out. It had once been a Sikorsky helicopter belonging to the Army Air Corps. It stood alongside another, with about ten yards separating them, but when you’re splashing it about, a few gallons of aviation spirit go a long way.
A lance jack with a fancy badge underneath his Signal Corps flash drove me up to it in one of those new Austin Champ heavy jeeps. We parked up about thirty yards from the aircraft corpses, but I could smell the fuel in the air as soon as I got out. There was a foam bowser parked up much closer. The lance jack’s name was Ryan. He said he’d show me the ropes. He fired up a generator motor on the bowser, unhooked a wide flexible hose, and pulled an asbestos hood with a clear screen over his head. It covered his shoulders. Then he fired a flare pistol into one wreck, but I think that was for effect: a box of Swan would have done the job as well. The fuel ignited with a soft ‘whoo-o-of’, and I felt the wall of heat immediately.
I may have told you already, or I may not, but I have a pathological fear of fire. It’s what happens to your brain when you survive being in an aircraft which decides to sacrifice itself to the Fire God. It happened to me in 1944, and the explosion that followed threw me into a nearby cemetery, and burned my shoulders and face. The face was only lightly grilled and came back to me – but my shoulders still carry the scars.
Ryan advanced on the heli frame carrying the foam hose, spraying great gouts of fire suppressant foam ahead of him. It seemed to be over in seconds.
‘We suppress the fire, guv’nor,’ he explained to me after he’d dragged his hood off. ‘We deprive it of air. You aim at the base of the fire, and advance on it as you suppress it. It will seem to move away from you. All you’ve got to do is follow up, and smother it until it’s dead.’
He showed me the simple on/off lever for the hose, and then turned to light my wreck up.
I said, ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? Can I have the hood, please?’
‘You won’t need it, sir; you’re going to extinguish the fire, aren’t you?’ Then the airframe went up with another gentle whoo-o-ooshing noise, and the flames reached towards us. What I can remember now is that nasty little bastard of a lance driving and pushing me towards the fire with phrases like, ‘Get in CLOSER – the trouble with you, Mr Bassett, is that you have no fucking guts, sir – closer, sir – get your fucking act together, sir, there’s men dyin’ in there!’ and so on. He called me every name I knew, and a few I
