For King and Country

by David Monnery

  ‘It’s mutual,’ he said. ‘We’ve been friends a long time.’

  ‘I know. I remember how horrible you were when you were about fourteen.’

  ‘You can’t have been more than four?’

  ‘I’d have been six. You’re both eight years older than me.’ Trinity College loomed to their left, as the water rippled softly against the footbridge they were passing. ‘I hope we can be friends, too,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he replied casually.

  ‘Could I write to you?’ she asked.

  ‘I suppose so. I don’t have much time for writing letters,’ he lied.

  ‘That’s all right. I won’t expect any replies. But you will have to take me out for a meal when the war’s over.’

  He laughed for the first time that day. ‘It’s a deal,’ he said.

  McCaigh scanned the crowded Hackney billiard hall, his eyes lighting up when he saw the man with the familiar face and greased-back hair. It had taken him most of Saturday evening to find Billy Sangster, time which he could otherwise have used in more pleasurable pursuits, but at least his search had finally been rewarded. He threaded his way through the tables towards his quarry.

  McCaigh had been a couple of years behind Sangster at their Stoke Newington school, and the black marketeer had no trouble recognizing him. ‘You’re looking fit, Mickie,’ he said.

  ‘So are you,’ McCaigh said, though in fact Sangster’s skin had the unhealthy tinge of someone who rarely saw daylight. ‘I’d like a quiet word, Billy. About some business, if that’s OK?’

  ‘I’m always open. Let’s go into the office.’

  ‘You own this place?’ McCaigh asked as they walked across the hall.

  ‘The owner got himself killed in Africa, and I took it off the widow’s hands.’

  They entered the office and Sangster walked round behind his desk and sat down, waving McCaigh into the other chair.

  The SAS man closed the door behind him but ignored the invitation to sit. ‘I just wanted a little chat about my brother,’ he began.

  ‘He’ll have his certificate in a couple of days,’ Sangster said irritably.

  ‘No, he won’t,’ McCaigh contradicted him. ‘Or at least, if he does, there’ll be consequences.’

  Sangster smiled, but there was uncertainty in his eyes. ‘You’re not threatening me, Mickie?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Billy. Not with the law, of course, because that wouldn’t be very sporting. And since I’ll be back with my unit this time tomorrow night there’s no way I can stop you giving him a fake certificate. So I’m just going to tell you this, Billy: if my brother goes to war then everything that happens to him is going to happen to you. If someone shoots off his cock then when I come home I’m going to shoot yours off. If he gets his face burnt off by a flame-thrower then so will you. If he’s blown up by a mine then you’ll probably go up with your car. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Billy? Of course, you might be lucky and he comes home all in one piece, or maybe he’ll get killed and so will I, but is it worth fifty quid to find out?’

  Sangster stared back at him, rage warring with fear in his face.

  ‘And make up a good story as to why you can’t do it,’ McCaigh added, his hand on the office doorknob, ‘or I’ll just come back and maim you for the hell of it.’ He opened the door and walked back across the billiard hall, a grin spreading on his face.

  All through Sunday Tobin waited in vain for Megan to call and apologize. There was no phone in the Allchurch house so he couldn’t ring her, but he wouldn’t have done so anyway. And he certainly wasn’t going round to have the door slammed in his face for a second time. Sooner or later she would find out who had shopped her stupid brother and then she’d come crying for forgiveness, and when she did then maybe, just maybe, he’d forgive her.

  On the train back to Fairford, somewhere between Neath and Port Talbot, he tossed the unopened packet of johnnies out of the corridor window and into the night.

  Farnham didn’t return to the Fairford base on the Sunday evening, and in the briefing room on Tuesday morning Rafferty, McCaigh, Tobin and the others found out why. All the squadron commanders had been summoned to Moor Park on the Monday, to be filled in on what the immediate future held for them and their men. In the short term, as Farnham now explained to the fifty or so men gathered before him, they would continue to wait, train and wait some more. In the medium term, he said, raising his voice above the groans and frustration, the plan was to insert them en masse behind enemy lines in France. Since the average life expectancy of such a unit – in terms of mental and physical wear and tear – wasn’t thought to be much more than a month, the date of their insertion would need to be carefully calculated. The first prerequisite, though, was that the Allied armies break their way out of the defensive ring which the Germans still held around the expanded Normandy bridgehead.

  This explanation, while not exactly what they wanted to hear, at least gave them all something to hang their hopes on, and for the next couple of weeks the endless retraining was endured with no more than the usual litany of complaints. In the evenings they crowded round the radio hoping to hear about the promised break-out, and any available newspaper was scoured for news of the military situation.

  The post brought different kinds of news. McCaigh got a letter from his mum telling him that Patrick had been in a foul mood for about a week, but that he was now getting excited about the new football season. Both West Ham and Charlton had offered him trials, and he was still hoping that Spurs would do the same. Reading between the lines, McCaigh reckoned that Billy Sangster had heeded his threats, and with any luck Patrick wouldn’t think about anything other than football for the next six months. And by then the war might even be over.

  Rafferty got two letters from Cambridge on the same day, one from Beth, the other from Tommy’s sister. The first was to tell him that his wife had packed up all his personal stuff and had it taken round to his grandparents’ house. After reading this he found it hard to concentrate on Mary Slater’s chatty epistle, which meandered along through Tommy’s love life, the film they’d seen together, a book she was reading. Reading it again later that day it seemed to Rafferty so innocent, so divorced from the realities which Beth’s betrayal had forced to the front of his mind.

  Tobin got no letter from Megan, let alone the humble apology he was hoping for, but his mum did write with the news that Barry Allchurch had been remanded for trial on various black-marketeering charges, and was still in Gowerton prison. Which bloody well served him right, Tobin thought. He was still angry with the whole damn Allchurch family, and particularly her. If it was over then it was over, though the thought that it might be engendered a sense of emptiness which only sleep or violent activity could banish.

  On the first day of August the military news took a turn for the better – the Americans had punched a hole in the German ring at Avranches – and in the succeeding days, as Patton’s tanks flooded through the gap, the whole German defensive position began to crumble. The SAS men were given detailed maps of eastern France to study, which also seemed a good sign, and finally, on Thursday 10 August, the three squadrons were summoned once more to the Fairford briefing room, where they were addressed by Lieutenant-Colonel Donegan.

  He gave them an outline of top brass thinking on how the current Allied advance would develop over the next few weeks, and how their intended activities in the Vosges region fitted into the overall strategy. ‘Whether they’re pushing in troops or supplies to bolster their position in France, or just trying to pull themselves back over the Rhine in good order, they’ll need every east-west road and railway line they have running at full capacity. Cut those roads and railways and they’ll be like puppets without strings.’

  Farnham was then invited to give an appreciation of the local geography and the local Resistance, with whom it was assumed the SAS unit would be reaching some sort of arrangement. It was thought unlikely that the Maquis would agree to se
rve under a British commander, but there were hopes that they could be persuaded to fight alongside the SAS as allies, with at least some level of tactical coordination between the two forces.

  Donegan then took the stage once again with a more detailed breakdown of how they were getting there, what they would be taking with them and what exactly it was hoped they would achieve on French soil. They would be leaving, he concluded, in three days’ time, late on the Sunday evening. For those who wanted them, thirty-six-hour passes would be available, commencing at eight o’clock the following morning.

  It was early afternoon before their train reached Paddington. McCaigh had invited Rafferty and Tobin over to Stoke Newington for the night, but Tobin had declined. He had been through London a few times, he told them, but he’d never really seen it, and this seemed like a good opportunity.

  A Circle Line train took him to Westminster, where he walked round the outsides of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, marvelling at their size and grandeur. Next he walked up to Downing Street, and stood at the end of the cordoned-off little road, wondering whether Winnie was in until a police constable moved him on. Retracing his steps, he walked across Westminster Bridge and sat by the river, gazing up at the Houses of Parliament and trying not to wish that Megan was there with him.

  On the river itself several barges were working their way upstream, heavily laden with coal. The famous London buses rattled past him, and further downstream he could see and hear the occasional train rumbling across the Southern Railway bridge outside Charing Cross. After a while he got up and joined the stream of people walking on the wide path which ran alongside the river. Most of them seemed to be women, quite a few of them were pretty, and several gave him an unsolicited smile as they walked by. Megan wasn’t the only girl in the world, he told himself.

  By the time he’d recrossed the river on the Hungerford footbridge hunger was beginning to gnaw at his stomach, and just up the Strand from Charing Cross Station he found one of the ‘British Restaurants’ the papers had been so full of. The place was far from full but the food didn’t seem half-bad to Tobin, probably, he thought, because he was so used to the crap the Army served up. Here too the women seemed to outnumber the men, and a pretty sophisticated-looking bunch they were, with jaunty little hats over their Veronica Lake hairstyles. Some of them were even wearing lipstick, which was almost impossible to find in Swansea. For more than an hour Tobin just sat watching them come and go, revelling in the fact that he was actually there, in the heart of London, which everyone knew was the centre of the world.

  Trafalgar Square was bigger than he’d imagined, Piccadilly Circus smaller. A pub in Shaftesbury Avenue offered a rest for his feet and a pint of beer, and he sat sipping it slowly, wondering what the people around him would say if they knew he was about to be dropped on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. The men would all try and buy him a drink, he thought. The women would be interested in him.

  He bought himself another pint, wishing he was back in Swansea with people he knew.

  Around ten o’clock he realized that it had grown dark outside, and that he’d left it rather late to find the hotel in Bayswater. He stumbled out into the blackout, grateful that there was a moon to help him see his way. Farnham had said the nearest tube station was Queensway, and a passer-by pointed him in the direction of the nearest Central Line station, Tottenham Court Road. He was pretty sure he’d only had four pints, and it had to be the blackout which was making it so difficult for him to stay on the pavement.

  He also seemed to be hearing voices, but these, he soon realized, were real. Women were standing like sentries in almost every doorway of the road he was walking down, and as he passed each one a vividly painted pair of lips would part to make him an offer. His mute refusals were met by a mixture of laughter, derisory snorting and anger.

  There were so many of them, and they were a lot better-looking than the pros who worked the Swansea docks. The summer clothes were revealing, and some of the women helped his imagination along by caressing their own breasts as he walked by. ‘Just ten bob,’ one girl whispered, and she looked so pretty that he hesitated in his step.

  She was beside him in an instant, putting an arm through his, and urging him across the street. He started to protest but his eyes were hooked by the glistening trace of sweat in her cleavage and the jiggling of her unseen breasts. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked stupidly.

  ‘Just in here,’ she said. They were now about ten yards down an alley, and the darkness hid everything but her face. ‘Ten bob,’ she said again. ‘Or five bob for a suck,’ she added when he didn’t reply.

  Tobin didn’t know what she meant. ‘A fuck,’ he said, knowing what that was.

  ‘Ten bob,’ she repeated.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  He bent to kiss the painted mouth, but she shrugged him aside and reached for his trouser buttons. The trousers dropped to his feet, and she almost delicately lifted his cock from his underpants. ‘I’m not wearing anything under the skirt,’ she said, leaning back against the wall.

  A fleeting feeling of utter foolishness was overridden by the urgency of his desire, and he pressed forward against her, uncertain of exactly how he had to do it. She seemed to realize this, and with a small snort of impatience used one hand on his shoulder to push him down and the other on his cock to push him up inside her. It felt drier than he expected, and the pain of entry momentarily lessened his desire, but he started pumping up and down the way he knew it was done, and the pain quickly gave way to mounting excitement. He groaned as he spouted inside her, and stood there, his knees bent, until she shook herself off him.

  ‘Ten bob,’ she said again, and after he’d pulled up his trousers he took a note out of his tunic pocket. ‘Ta,’ she said, and turned away to go.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said, and she stopped, her face just visible in the gloom.

  ‘Ready for another, Taff?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘No…nothing,’ he said. As she walked away he leant back against the wall, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach. He had a mental picture of himself pumping away at her like his uncle’s dog trying to fuck his mother’s leg, and felt half ashamed, half angry. Fuck Megan, he thought. Fuck her. At least he wasn’t going to die a virgin.

  Rafferty took the streaming plate from McCaigh, waited till most of the water had dripped off, and applied the drying-up cloth. It had been one of the best meals he could remember for a long time, and not just because Mickie’s mum was a good cook. There had been about eight friends and relations around the table, with ages ranging from ten to eighty, and every one of them had contributed to a conversation that had been not only interesting but downright entertaining. The McCaighs and their neighbours knew how to laugh.

  He had obviously made the right decision in accepting Mickie’s invitation. There was less time to brood than there would have been in Cambridge, and he’d taken an instant liking to McCaigh’s mum. He’d only had to entertain himself for about half an hour, and in that time he’d managed to write to Mary Slater at last. She’d written three letters, after all, and now that they were bound for France he didn’t want her wasting her time writing to someone who wasn’t there. He hadn’t really known what to say to her, and the letter was only about half a page long, but at least he’d written something. She was a nice kid. A nice woman, even. She’d make someone a really good wife.

  Mickie’s brother Patrick was just a kid, but he seemed nice enough. He’d spent about ten minutes explaining to Rafferty how much he wanted to do his bit in the war, and how near he’d come to fiddling his way in. Eventually Mickie had just told him to put a sock in it. ‘Dad was in the last war, I’m in this one and you’re welcome to the next. This family only offers up one sacrifice per war.’

  For some reason that had seemed to boost Patrick’s spirits.

  Rafferty’s own had been boosted by McCaigh’s friend Jimmy Cullen, who seemed to know even more about the car business than Tommy, and wa
s just as certain what a gold mine it was going to be after the war. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to use a train or a bus when they can drive from their own front doors to exactly where they want to go, without a crowd of people digging them in the ribs or showering them with germs. Have you ever seen a television? It’s like having your own cinema in your living room. That’s what the future’s going to be, Neil. Things that people used to do in crowds they’ll be doing on their own, or just with their family.’

  ‘It’s sad, if you ask me,’ Susan McCaigh had interjected.

  ‘Maybe, but that’s progress.’

  The only member of the family that Rafferty hadn’t met was Mickie’s Uncle Eamonn, who was on duty down at the fire station. The plan was to call in and say hello to him on their way to a favourite pub in Church Street, but as Rafferty, Jimmy Cullen and the two McCaigh brothers strolled down the High Road fate took a hand. The whine of the doodlebug had only just established itself in their consciousness when it cut out, and after looking at each other like idiots for a few seconds, the four of them made a run for the inadequate shelter of a shop doorway. Only seconds later the street ahead of them erupted in a shower of brickwork and a vast cloud of smoke and dust. The roar of the explosion seemed to roll past them in the direction of central London.

  In its wake they could hear the screams of the trapped or injured, and all four men instinctively started forward into the billowing smoke. McCaigh stumbled across an old man lying on the pavement, blood running down his face from a gash just above his eye, his arm stretching out hopefully in the direction of an old woman who was lying a few yards away. Her eyes were staring blankly at the sky.

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ the old man whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ McCaigh said softly, and the old man’s arm went limp. He sighed once, in the manner of someone experiencing a minor inconvenience, closed his eyes and died.