He toasted me, and I said, ‘It’s nice of you to see me off, sir, but you didn’t do it last time, so you have me a little worried.’
He had a twinkly little smile which was always hard to resist.
‘You weren’t my co-director then, now you are – everything was written up in Companies House last week. I decided it was my duty to make sure you leave the kingdom safely—’
‘And to lock the door behind you, I should think. I shouldn’t trust him an inch if I was you, old boy – look what he did to me!’ That was CB; he must have thought life was pretty dandy. They both found this uproariously funny, which was brought to a close with one of Halton’s coughing fits, of course. I just had this feeling that I was being had, as the actress said to the bishop.
‘Did you hear what happened to my quiet Americans?’ I asked him.
CB shrugged.
‘Gone, but not my department, so I don’t know what it cost them.’
The old man touched my shoulder and said, ‘Make the most of this, Charlie, take care and safe return. There’s so much work coming in you won’t get another holiday for years.’ Then he gave me a bottle of Scotch as a going-away present. He hadn’t done that before either; maybe he was going soft.
An RCAF corporal chose that moment to intrude. He shook the rain from his khaki cape, and asked, ‘A Mr Bassett here?’
‘That’s me,’ I told him.
‘Your carriage awaits, sir. I was sent to find you – everyone else has boarded, and they’re waiting for you.’
‘Good show,’ Browne said. Then, ‘Toodle-oo.’
Old Man Halton nodded. He was holding a handkerchief to his mouth, and I could see it was speckled with blood. Whenever I left him I wondered if I would see him alive again. I nodded back: I liked the tough old stick really. The last thing that Halton said was, ‘June sends her love . . . says she’ll write.’ I nodded, but in my heart I doubted that. Then I turned away to follow my conductor: off into the wide blue yonder.
Only it was grey, and still bloody raining. The oddest thing about the English, I thought as I climbed the steps into one of Eagle’s shagged-out old DCs, is that despite the weather and our damn awful governments, most of us still choose to live in England. It momentarily brought Bosham to mind again.
It may have looked sky weary on the outside, but the DC-6 was the plushest transport the government had yet provided for me, and because it was a contracted privateer, Eagle Airways had thoughtfully provided in-flight refreshments – excluding alcohol – and a couple of pretty stewardesses. There was a smattering of banter, but it was quickly blanketed by the two NCOs conducting the draft to the land of sunshine.
One of the pilots walked through the cabin before we moved out onto the taxiway. He had the word Pilot on the front of his cap, in place of a house badge or crest. I wasn’t so sure of flying with an outfit that needed to give its people hat badges so they knew what job to do. What if he’d picked up the wrong cap?
I was the only civvy on the flight, and was given a row to myself at the back – I felt good about that. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in most news photographs of air smashes, the few recognizable parts of what was once an aircraft tend to be the rear fuselage and the tail. About half an hour into the flight a young woman in an Eagle Airways uniform slid into the seat alongside me, crossed her legs with a whisper of nylon that gave me goose pimples, and lit a Rothmans. She exhaled its fine blue smoke, and said, ‘Hello, Charlie. I love these troop flights – we’re not leaping up and down after the pax all the time, and the company doesn’t mind if we sit down, and get to know the boys.’
Alison. When I had last seen her in 1947 she had been sixteen, and I had been all of about twenty-three, I think. She had been the daughter of my landlady, on a chicken farm just outside Cheltenham. I had danced with her once at a jazz club down by the river, and my last clear memory of her was leaning against my bedroom door frame in a Jane Russell pose, asking me to marry her. When I’d laughed and turned her down, she had told me, You don’t know what you’re missing.
I said, ‘Alison.’
‘Yes. Good memory.’
‘I do now.’
She screwed up her nose a little as her brain processed my words and couldn’t work out where they fitted. ‘Do what?’
‘Know what I was missing. You were right, and I was wrong – I should have married you.’ I thought I’d surrender completely: ‘You look like a film star, simply wonderful.’ She laughed. It was a nice gurgling sound. A couple of the squaddies turned to look back at us. I hoped that they were jealous.
‘You remember that? I’m embarrassed. What must you have thought?’
‘I’m embarrassed now – I must have been blind as well as stupid. I thought you were going to go to university to shame the lot of us?’
‘I did. I did that for Mum – she didn’t want me to end up on the farm. The week after I graduated I signed up for the BOAC trainee scheme. I’d wanted to be an air hostess for ages. What about you?’
‘Was I just about to be
