There was no other Halton aircraft on the field, and Old Man Halton stood in the office door to cough a greeting at me. He’d given me a leather music case for his working documents, and he took it back immediately.
‘Any problems?’
‘Depends whether they give us our own space at Gatow, boss . . . but I’d say no; no problems.’
‘Good man. Do you want a couple of days off?’
I felt as if I hadn’t done much in the last five days. Nothing that could explain why I felt so drained.
‘Yes; I should go over and see the kids, but I actually fancy a couple of days on my own. Up in the Smoke maybe.’
‘Bring the children here for a visit some time. Boys love aeroplanes.’
I couldn’t remember telling him I had sons. Perhaps it was in my papers somewhere.
I probably forgot to mention it – and you’ll find it hard to believe in these days of putting fences around everywhere, and locks on every door – but the road to Lympne village ran through the north of the airfield. There was a traffic-light system when the airfield was flying. Nobody thought that strange at the time. After I turned left on to it I came across Crazy Eddie weaving along the road in front of me dragging a small but heavy suitcase. He was sauced. He didn’t notice me until I drove past and stopped.
He stopped as well, swayed from side to side, and then sat on the suitcase.
‘Where are you going, Ed?’
‘Home.’
‘You missed the last train.’
‘Spent too long in the bar. Daft. I’ll sleep on the station, or maybe walk.’
He wouldn’t get much out of a 48 if he walked all the way.
‘No you won’t. I’ll give you a lift. I’m going that way.’
He heaved his case into the back seat and followed, slumping and then fumbling in his pockets for a cigarette. I gave him one, and filled and lit my pipe. After his first fag Eddie slept all the way to London, until I woke him at Wandsworth and asked for directions. It was after one when we drove into a street of small nineteen thirties mock-Tudors which old Jerry had left standing. Ed insisted that his aunty would still be up.
I propped him up against the door with his case at his feet. Then I rang the doorbell and stepped back a couple of paces. If aunty appeared with rollers in her hair and a rolling pin in her hand I was ready for a swift exit.
OK so she surprised me. Aunty was a stunner: long blonde hair like Carole Lombard, silk shift and a cigarette burning at the end of a long cigarette holder. Hollywood comes to Wandsworth. She had a nice smile and a soft, middle-class South London accent.
‘Edward’s plastered again I suppose.’
‘Sorry. I think so.’ Who was I kidding? I knew so.
Ed had slumped down against the door jamb, and appeared to have gone to sleep. He wore an exceedingly contented smile. So would I if my aunty looked like that.
Between us we hauled him upstairs to a small bedroom. He reeked of old beer and stale cigarette smoke. When we returned to the door I lifted his suitcase over the threshold for her. I needed both hands for it. She closed the door behind me as I set it down, but that was only for privacy.
I said, ‘’Strewth. What’s he got in here?’
‘Shall we have a look?’
She knelt and opened a suitcase full of wristwatches and clocks. Hundreds of them. Bollocks. I stood up from where I had bent over it, heard myself say it aloud, and apologized.
‘Sorry. I spend too much time in male company.’
She had lifted a couple of the watches. When she handed the watches up to me she took my hand, and used the leverage to help her to stand. She was no bigger than me.
‘Keep them. Eddie won’t notice.’
I remembered the watches in my jacket pocket the next morning. They were beautiful chunky Swiss jobs, and possibly exceptionally valuable. And profoundly illegal. The thought of having driven from Lympne with a suitcase full of them scared me to death.
When I had known Dolly the year before, I sometimes stayed in her mews flat when I was up in town. She shared it with an Australian girl named Denys, and they’d given me a key to come and go. I’d even met their landlord, a dentist with a soft handshake who drank wine for breakfast. His name had been Stephen. I headed there now, not wanting to face booking into a hotel at two in the morning.
Even so I was signalled down by a lonely patrolling copper who wanted to see my identity card, and shone his torch in my face. He didn’t apologize; they never do – but he did give my car the once-over, and observed, ‘Lovely car, the old Singer. I ’ad one before the war.’
‘I like her. What do you have now?’
‘A bicycle,’ he said flatly and turned away, looking for a better prospect than me.
The girls’ flat was above a couple of lock-up garages where Stephen kept his cars. The ground-floor door gave onto a narrow steep stair – I remembered a surprisingly commodious cupboard in the wall halfway up where they kept their booze. My hand found the light switch by memory. The cupboard was still full of booze. I lifted out the first bottle to hand as I ascended. Bourbon. The girls must have been targeting the Americans again. In one respect it was like Marthe’s ramshackle place in Berlin: I knew immediately that no one had been there for days. The milk in the cold cabinet had curdled so I drank Camp coffee topped off with the bourbon until I slept, wrapped in a Royal Navy greatcoat I found hanging behind the door, on Dolly’s cold bed.
I dreamed of burning aeroplanes over Germany – that still happens occasionally – and woke in a cold sweat. If there was the echo of a noise hanging in the room it was probably my screams. I had been disturbed by the noise of the United Dairies milkman in the mews, raced down and bought a bottle from him. An hour later I repeated the trick with the Co-Op baker, and came away with a cut white loaf of bread I paid three times over the odds for. The girls’ butter was a bit on the old side, but we weren’t as picky about butter when you couldn’t get it that easily . . . so what it meant was I had the makings of a toast breakfast. I was feasting on that, and a tin of PX strawberry jam I’d found, when Stephen trod daintily up the stairs. He hadn’t seen me for a year, but didn’t bat an eyelid. He said, ‘Hello. Nice to see you again . . . ?’
‘Charlie . . .’
‘That’s right; Charlie.’ I always hate it when someone congratulates me for remembering my own name. ‘Weren’t you going out with Den? Or was it Dolly?’
‘Both. Sorry; where are they?’
‘Den’s up in Scotland with her American. I never know where Dolly gets to. Terribly hush-hush I think. Best not to ask.’
‘I think so too.’ I was doing what my mother had always cautioned me against: talking with my mouth full. If Stephen noticed the discourtesy all it provoked was, ‘I say, that looks rather good, even if the jam will do for your enamel . . . not enough for two by any chance?’ I pushed the loaf at him: he could toast his own. When I asked him about the dentistry business he told me he was giving up on it.
‘I’m absolutely fed up with sticking things in people’s mouths, even if it does pay well. Dentistry is only upside-down gynaecology. Ughh!’ He shuddered theatrically.
‘What will you do?’
‘I fancy retraining as a chiropractor, and learning to play the piano.’ I didn’t see the connection, but he hurried on, ‘All the best folk have their own chiropractor these days. The royals have so many that they throw garden parties exclusively for them.’ What was pleasant was that he felt good about his decision. It was a pity it all went tits-up fifteen years later.
I didn’t want Stephen to know my business so I telephoned the Customs office at Thurleigh from a callbox. The operator took about an hour to find me the number. The woman’s voice which answered the telephone sounded both guarded and intelligent, but you can always be wrong. I asked for Officer Holland.
‘PO Holland’s not here at present, sir. Can I help?’
‘It’s not an official matter,’ I told her. ‘I’m civilian aircrew; I
met him recently and he asked me to look him up when I was nearby. I can be nearby today or tomorrow.’ Then I asked, ‘Who am I talking to, anyway: sorry?’
‘Woman Search Officer Search . . . and please don’t make a joke about that. I’m sure I’ve heard them all.’ She must have been in the office alone to be speaking to a stranger like that, and if she was in the office alone then it was probably a small office. Good thinking, Charlie.
‘I’m Charlie Bassett. I can tell you every liquorice allsorts joke in the world, so perhaps I know how you feel.’
‘Have you heard the one about . . . ? ’
I was smiling now. I reckoned this woman was ex-services. I told her, ‘Don’t even think about it.’
A pause, and then she asked me, ‘Are you speaking from London by any chance?’
‘Yes I am.’
‘Bob’s gone up to town to get some injections and to see the Waterguard Superintendent . . .’
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘He’s also the chairman of his local council as it happens, but he’s our boss as well. Bob’s bound to go to a pub called the Canterbury on Fish Street Hill, just opposite Billingsgate market; he always does – creature of habit. He’ll get there for lunch, and stay until he catches a girl or the train back. You could see him there if you can find it.’
‘I will, and I’ll tell him you’re a gem.’
She laughed, ‘. . . and he won’t believe you; he knows me too well.’
‘Thanks anyway.’
‘That’s OK.’
One of those odd conversations where neither of you knows how to hang up. The pips did it for us. We both said goodbye hurriedly, and maybe a little embarrassed, and then the line was gone.
I parked the bus on Lower Thames Street between two fish lorries, and hoped that the smell wouldn’t rub off. I put the hood up because there was that sense of rain in the air. The Custom House on the bank of the Thames was a Georgian building as big as a battleship. It was a honey colour, and not bashed about too much by the Kraut. It reminded me of my girl Grace’s place in Bedford. I was angry with myself for still thinking of her as my girl Grace, because she hadn’t been for a few years.
I backtracked towards the old London Bridge site, and then turned right up Fish Street Hill. In minutes I was walking into the Canterbury Arms, a low dark pub with wood-panelled bars and a rich aroma of tobacco and Whitbread’s beers. If you want my opinion, when I get to heaven it’s going to look something like that. There was a bloody great stone column in the road outside. I’d paused before ducking into the low doorway and squinted up at it. I suppose that it had been grey once, but it was stained and pitted with smoke now – sinister somehow. Our man was sitting on a stool at the bar, and a barmaid with tumbling falls of chestnut hair was giving him her full attention. They were both laughing as I walked up and hopped on to the stool alongside him.
Enter a gooseberry, stage right.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Remember me?’
‘Yes. Charlie Bassett. You fly with Halton. Want a drink?’
‘Thank you. Bitter please. Your name was Holland.’
‘Still is. Is this meeting coincidental?’
The girl came back with my beer, and Bob paid her. She blushed. I thanked her, and then said, ‘No. Not entirely. I telephoned Thurleigh, and a funny girl told me where to find you. Cheers.’
‘Funny amusing or funny peculiar?’
‘Amusing. She made me laugh.’
It was very good beer. The barmaid was a very pretty woman. I began to think that Holland had very good taste in all the things that counted. It took that long to settle him, then he turned to face me properly. When the girl moved away he asked me, ‘OK, so what’s the problem?’ The transformation from playboy to officer was absolute and immediate, and unnerving.
I took a gulp of the sharp hoppy stuff first, then, ‘I have some information to pass on, and you’re the only one I knew.’
‘You could have tried your locals, or the police.’
‘No. I don’t know the locals, and the one time I walked into a police station I was arrested and locked up for three months: I avoid them now.’
He chuckled. He still looked like a film star when he smiled. The barmaid had given us space but she still couldn’t keep her eyes off him.
‘What had you done?’
‘Forgot to come home after the war: it’s a long story.’
He shook his head, but was still smiling. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
I’d been putting it off by filling and lighting a pipe. I’d sloshed through my pint too quickly, but waved for another round from the girl.
‘What if I started by talking about the smuggling of a couple of DPs from Germany to an airfield in the UK?’
He looked relieved, waved a hand dismissively, reached for his new pint and said, ‘Thanks by the way. That’s happening all the time. We can’t sit on every little airfield or bay – we just don’t have the manpower. Were they going to stay here, or just use us as a staging post for a jump to the US?’
‘No; to Israel. That’s the way the story was told to me, anyway.’
‘That’s a bit different, old son. A lot of people are pretty fed up with what’s going on over there . . . official policy is to intercept them if we can.’
‘What if I went on to tell you that I saw the same DPs a week ago at a war surplus aircraft sale at Fairleigh?’
‘What were they doing?’
‘Buying late-mark Spitfires and a couple of Marauders. I think they’re tooling up for a serious little war.’
‘Are the aircraft still here?’
‘I don’t know. I thought that should be your end of the business.’
He nodded broodily. Then he said, ‘Let’s go and sit at that table in the corner, and go over it again.’
I had decided not to tell him about an attempt on Bevin’s life, and the murder of a British soldier in Berlin, but, even so, it had been good to get even a bit of it off my chest. In the end I gave him two decent descriptions of the Joes. The hard agreement we came to was that regardless of what he did with anything I told him, he wouldn’t reveal my identity to anyone. When we had finished he leaned across the table, shook my hand and said, with some irony, ‘This could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship,’ as if I had suddenly woken up in the last scene of Casablanca. I briefly wondered what Tommo was up to.
The pub was shutting up around us by then anyway, and wouldn’t reopen until half past five. I admired a brand-new dark green Mk IV Jaguar saloon parked outside: it had been there when I walked in. It had wire wheels and looked sleek and fast.
He offered me a fag, but I shook my head, and started to fill my pipe again. I suggested we slope off to find a bar that was open, but he refused. He said he had a prior arrangement. The barmaid came from the bar towards us, and Bob steered her towards the passenger side of the Jag and let her in; perfect bloody gentleman. He gave me a cheeky grin across the roof of the car before he, too, disappeared inside. His partner had said he was on the train. That was interesting.
London’s not the worst of cities in which to be at a loose end. I had a day and a bit for myself, hadn’t planned what to do with them, and there was money in my pocket. I parked up on Soho Square and took a cup of thick tea with the cabbies in their green wooden kiosk. Then I walked to a big toy shop on Oxford Street, where I bought a painted wooden aeroplane for Carlo and a Kiel Kraft glider kit for Dieter: the sooner we started him with the old balsa wood, paper and glue the better. Then I went mad, and booked myself a night in the best suite at the Regent Palace; the truth was I didn’t want to go back to Dolly’s place.
After I had eaten at the grill, I strolled out to a Soho pub my old Lancaster crew used to favour on our trips up to the Smoke. What happened there was odd; I found that I couldn’t cross the threshold. There was another piece of my life the other side of that door, and I wasn’t ready to face it yet. I went back to the Regent, and drank at the bar
there until decision-making became problematic.
I called the airfield just before I checked out the next morning, just to find out what was going on. Elaine answered, and the thought that came straight into my head was, You’ve been crying. Brunton must have quickly taken the telephone from her. He said, ‘Charlie?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Where are you?’
‘London: just booking out.’
‘You’d better get down here. Milton’s bought it.’
Chapter Ten
The Russians gave us the body back a week later. They were pretty good at giving bodies back I remember . . . as long as there were no incriminating wounds on them.
The Old Man had arranged a week’s buckshee instruction on Lancastrians for Milton with a company called Flight Refuelling. They specialized in converting freight aircraft for the transport of fuel: each carried tanks containing 1500 gallons of petrol or diesel. Milton had done three trips as a second pilot, and was looking good. Even fully laden their nimbler Lancastrian suited him better than our lumbering York and Dak.
He was trucking a routine load of petrol along the corridor, for the garrison at Gatow, when his aircraft reconfigured itself into a fireball. The explosion was heard five miles away apparently. For once no one blamed the Reds. They hadn’t been anywhere near him. The sad fact is that if you overload aircraft with tanks of gasoline and fly them up and down the country you’re doing something that God did not intend you to do, and occasionally it’s going to end in tears. Milton’s body had been blown clear and according to the American army pathologist who did the needful, was burned black, and saturated with petrol. It’s customary to tell relatives and loved ones that the dead man wouldn’t have felt a thing. Who do they think we’re kidding?
I went out with Old Man Halton to recover the body. Randall flew us over in the other Oxford that had been painted in Halton’s livery: it looked very smart. So did Randall. He was wearing black trousers and flying boots, and had a new dark grey leather flying jacket with a narrow collar. Randall being Randall, it was big enough for me to have slept in, of course. Apparently his was the new flight crew uniform and we were all going to get them. I wore my old flying jacket over a sober suit, and the old man was in black.
The Hidden War Page 13