Fiona had a bit of a lisp, but I suppose that God had to handicap her after all the height advantage he’d given her.
‘How did you get tied up with this unit?’
‘I was at Cardington, and Mr Watson saw me. He asked my boss to transfer me – I think she was rather keen on him at the time.’
I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine anyone being keen on Watson.
‘You didn’t get a say in it?’
‘Do we ever?’
‘Do you get on with him?’
‘He tried it on early on, but I thumped him for it, and knocked him over. I thought he’d get rid of me after that, but he didn’t.’
I think I chuckled.
‘You and I are going to be friends, Fiona.’
‘I hope so.’
I wasn’t so sure I liked the sound of that. About half an hour into the journey and the sun beginning to show behind us, Fiona said, ‘Your pal Pat can be a bit fast, can’t he?’
‘In what way?’
‘Come out for a drink, and take your clothes off while I’m up at the bar – that sort of way.’
‘I don’t know. He’s never asked me. I think he goes for blondes like you.’ She had short-cut blonde hair. I thought that was her best point.
We slowed for a small flock of goats. The sheepskin-clad thing driving them raised his hand in greeting as we passed.
She grunted and said, ‘Probably one of the friendlies, not a churchgoer.’
‘What d’ye mean?’
‘The churchgoers are the real bastards. The Orthodox priests encourage them to discourage us. It’s not unusual for an EOKA man to get a blessing from a priest before he stabs a civilian in the market, or tosses a grenade into a bus.’
‘How’s this all going to end?’ I asked her.
‘With us leaving. That’s how it always ends. We don’t have the stomach for wars any more. Eventually all the colonial Brits will be forced back to our crowded little island and the colonies will take their revenge.’
‘How?’
‘They’ll all come and live with us. Probably until we’ve nothing left to eat, no room to move, nowhere to live and no jobs.’
‘In the 1940s we bombed the hell out of the Germans for thinking like that,’ I told her. ‘They said they needed Lebens-raum.’ If I thought that would shut her up I was wrong.
After a thinking break she said, ‘I wonder who’ll bomb the hell out of us?’ Then she started whistling the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ just to make sure I got the point.
She skirted north of Nicosia onto the roads across the plain which led up to Kyrenia, and we could see the tented airfield long before we reached it. The trip had taken nearly two hours, and the sun was full up. Fiona knew the form – waved through by the RAF regiment guys in charge of security, and driving me right on to the flight line.
I asked her, ‘Do you go back, now?’
‘No, I’ll drive down to Wayne’s Keep. I didn’t mind driving you, to get a few hours with my boyfriend. He’s a medical orderly at the stockade.’ I thought that for an overlarge, unfriendly-looking woman she had a very successful social life. I guess that my face must be easy to read, because people have done it all my life.
Before I had a chance to get out, she said, ‘Give us a kiss,’ and grabbed me.
It was like being seized by a python. It took me minutes to break free, though to be honest by the end I wasn’t trying all that hard. She actually pushed me out, saying, ‘Good luck, Charlie. Get you later.’
I found myself standing alongside an Auster AOP bearing the fuselage code letter L, watching Fiona’s departure. A sergeant my size in KD lights walked around it.
‘Hello, squire. Is she your bird?’ he asked me. Stiff fair hair and a smooth face. His face, arms and knees were browned by overenthusiastic exposure to the sun. His flying jacket was draped over one of the long bracing struts which supported the high wing.
‘No, she works for my boss.’ I stuck out my paw. ‘Charlie Bassett.’ Then I nodded at the green and brown aircraft. ‘I’m looking for a driver.’
He had a decent handshake. A lot of pilots have good hands, have you noticed that? He sported a set of wings of course: a sergeant pilot. Always get an NCO if you can.
‘You’ve got one, squire. Wilf Pickles, but without the Mabel.’ Wilfred Pickles and Mabel were a couple of comedians on the radio. Who remembers them now? ‘A chappie named de Whitt was here yesterday, and wired your radio into the back – bit of a big heavy bastard, isn’t it?’
‘It’s supposed to have a long reach, just like Freddie Mills. Do we get a briefing for this mission?’ The word mission slipped out by mistake. That’s what we called the trips we made over Germany in 1944.
‘Yeah, and the CO wants to see you before we go. He’ll brief you for the army’s end of this jaunt.’ He picked up his jacket, pointed out a big open-faced tent to me, and casually asked, ‘Weren’t you in Lancasters in the war?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Like it? The Lanc, I mean.’
‘Yes, why?’
He kicked one of the Auster’s small main wheels, saying, ‘You won’t like this.’
At least he was upfront about it. I shrugged, and said, ‘Take me to your leader.’
There is less room in an Auster than in a Morris Minor, even for men my size. I want you to get that into your head right away. I was used to aircraft you could get up and walk around in, and not at all keen on tiddlers. I looked aft, from my rear-facing seat – I have a natural prejudice for facing the direction of travel, but nobody had asked me – the fuselage dimensions behind my newly rigged receiver were barely sufficient to slot a coffin into. Maybe that’s a
