I was just working out whether Brunton would leave us alone long enough for me to ask Elaine for a date when the Old Man looked into the office. He coughed, beckoned to me, and asked, ‘A minute, Mr Bassett.’
Old Man Halton knew how to do it right. He had the biggest office in the building, which was kitted out to double as a boardroom . . . even although, as far as I knew, we didn’t have a Board. Perhaps he was just aiming high. He had his desk, a couple of leather armchairs, and his cupboards at one end of the room . . . and a table for twelve at the other. It was to the table he waved me, and we sat at adjacent seats. He coughed, and wiped his mouth with one of his big red handkerchiefs. I’d never asked him about his cough but he told me anyway.
‘I was gassed in 1915. At Loos. They told me I had ten years if I was lucky. I’ve had more than thirty.’
‘Then you were lucky, sir.’
‘Luck’s got nothing to do with it, boy; it’s sheer cussedness, and we both know it.’ I’m glad that we’d got that out of the way. He muttered, ‘If you want to stay with me in the long run you’re going to have to do something other than swan around in my aeroplanes, talking to bods on the radio. Wireless operators are for the dark, apart from the long-haul jobs – and we do precious few of them.’ I was glad we’d got that out of the way as well. I couldn’t fault him for straight talking, could I?
‘Well? Do you want to? Stay here, I mean?’
‘I rather think that I do,’ I told him, and forgot the sir.
He didn’t seem to notice. He grunted, ‘Good,’ coughed, and wiped again. The cough went on a bit.
‘So what do you want me to do, sir?’
‘Stay on as a radio officer in the short term, until we don’t need those any more: I’ve already told you I can see that coming. Once the aircraft captains are running their own communications you can run the radio base station from here: it will be crucial to my operation – you can supervise that. You’ll still be required in the aircraft for particular occasional flights of course, but I’m not looking for that sort of business at the moment . . .’
‘OK.’
‘. . . and I hear that you have an ear for languages, and seem to be able to handle the police and the Customs pretty well wherever you go. So whenever we set up a new office you’ll be the first person in. It means you’ll be away from home for a few weeks every now and again. Is that a problem?’
I thought about Dieter. He could come with me in his school holidays.
‘No, none at all.’
The old man sighed.
‘You’re being promoted, Charlie: you’re allowed to say thank you.’
I had a history of not being much good at being promoted. I probably grinned.
‘Thank you sir. Sorry. I was thinking.’
‘That’s one of the few things I like about you, Charlie; you never seem to stop. How many radio officers have we?’
I could count to three.
‘Three including me,’ I told him.
‘You can call yourself Senior Radio Officer from now on, and tell Mr Brunton to give you another fiver a week. You’re going to earn it.’
Twenty quid a month is another two hundred and forty pounds a year. Rolling in it. This time I came in on cue. ‘Thank you, sir.’
He waved a hand as if weary. ‘You can start tomorrow by driving me to Fairleigh.’ Fairleigh was another Battle of Britain station about twenty miles away – but still in RAF hands, I thought. ‘My driver, Perry, has got to take his little boy into hospital: appendix. Get to know him; you’ll find him useful. Zero nine thirty here. OK?’
So, for another two hundred and forty pounds a year I got to be a chauffeur. I wondered if I got the grey uniform and silly hat to go with it.
‘Fine, sir.’
I don’t know whether she’d planned it that way, but when I walked back into the general office Elaine was bending down, facing away from me, picking up something from the floor. She might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on her derriere. At least it made me make up my mind quickly. I asked her, ‘Where’s Dick Barton?’
‘Cycling home to mummy.’
‘Isn’t he married?’
‘Same thing.’
She looked away as soon as she said it, and started to lock the office down for the night. She had a ring on her finger too. Just my luck. One of the boys working with the airfield crew came in to hand over his keys. The bunch was large enough to have a ceremony with. I finished the sandwich I had started before the Old Man grabbed me, and a half cup of coffee that Brunton had left. It was tepid, and too sweet. Elaine asked, ‘Are you hungry?’
‘No, not really. I was in Germany at the end of the war. Grabbing it while you can is a habit I got into.’ I helped her on with her light coat, and waited until she’d locked the office door behind us. She had a cycle, like Brunton, because she only lived in the village. She asked me, ‘What are you going to do tonight? Go to the pub?’
‘First I’m going to walk down to Whisky, and make sure she’s tucked up for the night.’
Actually, that was Crazy Eddie’s job. I wanted to make sure that our two Joes were no longer in the hedge. Elaine leaned her bike back against the office wall.
‘It’s a lovely night for this early in the year. I think I’ll come with you; all right?’
‘Smashing. I’ll be pleased if you do.’ Actually no; that could be a problem.
Bad decision, Charlie: possibly dangerous. After five minutes I grabbed her hand when she stumbled on one of the small potholes in the peritrack, and I didn’t let go again. I liked the feeling of her fingers curled about mine. There was no moon, but billions of stars. We didn’t say much, and at one point I heard a huge sigh go out of her.
‘Anything the matter?’
‘No, I’m happy that’s all.’ It sounded like sitting at a traffic light and getting a green.
I could see that the hedge looked disturbed where the Joes had scrambled through it, but you would have to know it was there to spot it. We walked on down to Whisky. She looked a bit sinister by night; bloody old witch. I’ll put a spell on you. I wandered around her with Elaine, touching the things I’d seen Scroton touch on his walk-rounds, but not knowing what the hell I was doing. That bloody navigation light was missing again. Finally we were at the cargo door, and I tried the handle.
Then I pushed Elaine against Whisky’s flank, kissed her, and inched her dress up. She was a great, soft kisser.
I said, ‘I thought you were supposed to be married,’ between hazy damp kisses.
I bloody knew she was, but I always liked to get them to say it if I could. That’s a bad one, Charlie. She nipped my lower lip in revenge, and then sucked on it to take away the pain.
‘So what?’ It wasn’t much more than a breathy whisper. ‘I was here at the end of the war too. Grabbing it while I can is a habit I got into too.’
When we came up for breath again she still whispered.
‘I always wanted to do it in an aeroplane, but never have until now.’
‘I’m sorry love, we can’t. Not inside. It’s bad form. Shagging in aeroplanes makes people die in them. I saw that too often on the squadron.’
She bit my ear, gently,
‘The only way you’re going to get inside my knickers tonight, Charlie Bassett, is if I get inside your smelly old aeroplane. Capisce?’
Second bad decision, Charlie. I opened the hold door, and helped her to scramble over the sill, hoping that she wouldn’t ladder her stockings. Inside in the dark we must have reached out for each other simultaneously, because I found myself, ludicrously, holding on to her thumb. Elaine giggled, found my neck and my ear, cuddled into me and whispered into them, ‘This old man, he played one, he played nick nack on my thumb . . .’
We explored every verse of the old song, and then some more. It’s remarkable just how many words more or less rhyme with one. It was the first time I realized what the rhyme was really about. Every filthy verse of it. It’s lovely: you try it.
> Chapter Six
Driving the Roller was easier than I’d imagined. I suppose that if you pay that much for a car you wouldn’t expect it to be impossible to drive. The only things that worried me were the narrow country lanes around Fairleigh. There was no room for a slow waltz if a maniac with a horse and cart came tearing round some of the corners at you. I couldn’t communicate with the Old Man because he sat twenty yards away, in the back, with a briefcase full of papers. From time to time he rattled away with a small wooden abacus – it was the first time I’d seen one since primary school. I’d checked the route on an old Bartholomew’s map I’d found in the office, and was pleased to get us there in under the hour. If he was pleased to see me wearing a smart grey suit, polished brown brogues and an RAF tie, he didn’t say so.
There were cars parked everywhere along the lane leading to the Fairleigh gate. Halton urged me forward, and the RAF policeman on the barrier gave him a great salute as he waved us through. There was a big empty parking space in front of the Officers’ Quarters. I had the feeling it had been left for us. The problem, of course, was the aircraft – there were bloody hundreds of them. I’d never seen anything like it before.
Fairleigh had been a fighter section station until 1943, when they’d built a 4,000-foot concrete runway across it. After that it was an emergency landfall for wounded bombers coming back from the Fatherland. Later still it became an invasion springboard for D-Day. Now it was full of aircraft again. I didn’t open the door for Old Man Halton – I wasn’t that sort of chauffeur. He frowned, but quickly worked out how to do it for himself.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ I asked him. He frowned again. Don’t swear, Charlie, and remember the sir . . . ‘Sir.’
‘It’s an aircraft sale, Charlie. Hosted by our good friends the RAF, because, coincidentally, most of the aircraft for sale happen to be theirs. War surplus.’
‘And we . . . ?’
‘. . . are going to buy some aeroplanes. Yes.’ He gave me a handful of his business cards. ‘Wander off, and pick me out some good ones: make yourself useful. I’m going inside to meet my good friend Reg Waite.’
‘What do you want, sir?’
‘Two heavy-lift cargo-carriers and one or two smaller ones. Brunton talked me into our last buy, Dorothy, and she’s proved a bit of a disaster. See if you can do any better.’
It was as crowded as Brighton beach out there, but it didn’t take me long to work out that most of the potential purchasers were scrap metal merchants. A tired old Mk II Lancaster with Hercules engines had more than a hundred mission markings painted under her cockpit, poor cow. I watched a scrappy buy her. After all that they’d been through these wonderful old ladies were going to be cut up and melted down. Wandering among them was like walking around a graveyard where the corpses have been left to rot above the ground. I hadn’t bought an aircraft before, and under these circumstances found it a vaguely distressing experience. I suppose I twigged that when a country dumps its war materials it has also dumped the men who used them.
I picked him out two Lancastrians, and put a marker on them – that was giving the RAF corporal in charge a couple of Halton’s cards. The corporal chalked Halton Air above their fuselage doors with heavy red crayon, and locked them up. That was two I’d saved from the knacker’s yard, anyway. Lancastrians were civilianized Lancaster bombers, which had been converted in the factory by Avro before being supplied to the RAF. They could haul people or things. The RAF was switching to Avro Yorks for its transport needs. With Dorothy in mind, I came to the conclusion that the RAF had made a mistake. The Lancastrians’ light grey paint was worn from standing outside for all their brief lives, but inside they looked almost unflown, and they were going for not much more than the cost of a new family car. There’s nothing much peaceful you can do with a Spit, a Tiffie or a Beau, and there were plenty of those as well, but finding him something smaller was not going to be as easy. Not until I met Randall, that is.
Randall was sitting on the wing root of an olive drab Airspeed Oxford. An Oxford was like a scaled-down version of Whisky. Two engines, but still pretty small all the same. And actually, not very pretty either. We used Oxfords to train bomber pilots and crews when we still had Germany to bomb. But they could also be cheaply converted to haul a few passengers, or small amounts of freight.
Randall was a competent American who had flown, mysteriously, for our government – very important people in a hurry, he used to say – and his first love was this battered old aircraft. He’d flown me in it a few times in the last few years, although I could fairly be described as neither. Physically Randall was one of the largest men I’d ever met. Shaking his hand was like doing one-arm press-ups. Usually he looked happier than this.
I said, ‘Hi, Randall. What ho.’
He must have seen me coming because he didn’t even look up.
‘Fuck off, Charlie.’
‘Nice to see you too, sir. What are you here to buy? One of these?’
‘Nope.’
‘Don’t tell me they’re flogging you along with the aircraft?’
‘Don’t try to be funny. I came along to see her go to a good home.’
He’d always been a stronger man than me, in every sense, until then. Now there was something hollow and hurt in him. He must have known that chances were that his aircraft would be going for scrap, so I spoke quietly.
‘Sorry, Randall. You know what I’m like, don’t you?’
‘Yes. You’re an arsehole. You’re an arsehole who always needs me to fly you out of trouble . . . which won’t happen any more.’
Randall was another non-swearer so he must have been letting the pressure get to him.
People just hate it when I come up with ideas of my own. ‘Won’t it just, though?’ I asked him.
I found Old Man Halton sitting in the Officers’ Mess bar, reading The Times and drinking gin. I stood back at the door with Randall, playing the family retainer bit, until he looked up, saw me and beckoned us forward. He stood up to meet Randall: he had that sort of class, even if his hand disappeared inside the American’s. I reckon Randall’s bulk exceeded Halton’s and mine put together . . . he certainly occupied more space. For once Randall looked more or less respectable: he wore clean USAAF chinos and shirt, but no tie . . . and an old leather bomber jacket which must have been privately made, because no company makes anything that size deliberately.
I said, ‘Randall; this is Mr Halton, my boss. He owns Halton Airways.’ I should have said Sir Somebody Somebody Halton, but I always got that wrong. To the Old Man I said, ‘This is Randall Claywell Junior, sir. He’s an American pilot, and a friend of mine.’
Friend was actually pushing it a bit.
‘Good morning, Mr Claywell.’ He smiled then he asked me, ‘Did you buy us anything?’
‘Yes sir. I reserved two Lancastrians for you. They’re almost new, and having Merlin engines like Dorothy means that you won’t need to engage or retrain ground crew for them. They’re almost giving them away.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Two Airspeeds. They’re as strong as oxen, and will last you years if Milton doesn’t drop them.’ (I’ve already told you Milton was another of our pilots. He was famed for his clumsiness.)
I couldn’t work out if he was being a patronizing git when he said, ‘Well done, Charlie . . .’
‘And I bought you something else,’ I told him. ‘Used my initiative.’
He didn’t frown or anything like that. He had a coughing fit which lasted minutes. When he looked up his face still wore a quizzical, friendly look.
‘I bought Randall for you as well. He’s just received a Dear John letter from the War Office, and they’re selling his aircraft. You’ve just bought it. I decided to buy him with it.’
The quizzical look didn’t waver, but I was suddenly rather aware of a dangerous old sod behind it weighing up his options.
‘I don’t think I need another pilot, Charlie.’ He sounded a bit like a
schoolmaster saying, See me after school, boy.
‘You need this one. Randall can land an Oxford on a bit of grass not much bigger than your handkerchief. At night without lights. And take off again uphill, with eight passengers on board. If we’re being smart, sir, you need him more than you need me.’
There was one of those long frozen silences where no one wants to be the first to break it, and then Halton said, ‘. . . and don’t call me sir when you don’t really mean it, Charlie.’
‘No, boss. It would mean that you could get rid of that wanker Milton before he breaks something, or kills somebody.’
‘I can’t do that.’ That was quick. Then he said, ‘You’ve got it all worked out, Charlie, haven’t you?’
‘Not quite, boss.’ What I had worked out was that he did need me; although I didn’t know what for. He laughed, then coughed and then laughed again. Several conversations at nearby tables stopped to watch him. He didn’t give a damn.
‘Sit down, Mr Claywell. Go and find a Mess boy, Charlie. Let’s have some lunch.’
He offered Randall a six-months contract. That may sound a bit dodgy to you, but we were all on six-month contracts, so it meant that Randall was in. The Old Man asked him, ‘Where do you live?’
‘I have a small flat up in town, sir.’
‘You’ll be based at Croydon, OK?’
‘Fine, sir.’
‘Fly one of the Oxfords up there today; come back tomorrow for the other one. You’ll do most of the maintenance yourself.’
‘Fine, sir.’
‘Charlie?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Find a telephone, and call Elaine. Tell her to book some hangar space for the Oxfords at Croydon. There’s plenty to spare over on the far side. And tell her we have another pilot on the books.’
‘What about the Lancs?’
‘I’m still thinking about that. Can we get them into Lympne like Dorothy?’
The Hidden War Page 8