Only When I Larf

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‘Get a drink, and that’s an order,’ I’d seen it before; the high-pitched voice, and fluent talk, just an inch away from hysteria. He’d break in an hour or so.

‘O.K. chief,’ he said happily. ‘You are the C.O. now that Mason, Bertie, and Dusty Miller and Little have copped it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That makes me the senior officer.’

Leadbetter stared out through the tent flap for a long time, then he spoke again. ‘Old Mason must have guessed what we were heading into. I wondered why he left you here at HQ Squadron yesterday. The C.O. was a good old stick wasn’t he?’ I’d been reprimanded by the colonel only a few hours before, I could almost see him standing where Leadbetter now stood.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was.’

Funny to think of Colonel Mason as the father of Liz. I wondered what he would have thought of both of us today. What would any of our fathers think of any of us? I wished my father had lived longer. I was only a child when he died, and I had never had a real chance to become his friend. He was a wise man, everyone agreed about that, and everyone had gone to him for advice. If only he had given me more. A reserved man, for no one knew how sick he was until it was too late; no one knew, not even my mother. I remembered being angry that he would not carry me home the day before he died. Poor father.

I was fond of Liz and Bob but I couldn’t really talk with them. If only there was someone to whom I could talk. Sometimes, truth to tell, I felt more at home in the homes and offices of the men we swindled, than in the clubs, bars, restaurants and international hotels where we spent our ill-gotten gains. It was merely a trick of fate that I was not, in reality, the President of Amalgamated Minerals or some similar concern in the world of international commerce. Or was it. Perhaps I was just fooling myself, as I was expert at fooling others. Perhaps I was just a criminal as my mother had once told me I was. ‘A hit and run driver,’ she had called me, banging into people’s lives and causing them pain and distress. She had been referring to the divorce and to the swindle in Frankfurt 1946. I came almost unscathed out of both, but as a prediction it was not too wide of the mark. I was a disappointment to her, after my dashing career in the army nothing was beyond my power, and precious little beyond my ambition.

Karl Poster, the tall thin mark. I had a feeling he wasn’t completely convinced at the very end. As I went out through the office door I had looked at him, and he had doubt written right across his face. I’d been worried that he’d follow me out of the building. What could we get. It’s hard to say, but if the city put up a really astute attorney there could be a dozen or more charges. Using that building as a site for a fraud was probably an offence, and then our fancy cheque was a forgery. Can you imagine ten years in prison. I’d never live through it your honour. Very well, says the judge, just do as much as you can of it. Very funny. Ten years, fifteen perhaps. Would an American prison be better than a British prison. I’d often thought of that. Central heating, running water, better food but more violence. Greater chance of being hurt by the other prisoners. Still I’d survived the war. I’d done a bloody sight more than survived it; I’d thrived on it. That’s why I’d never stopped fighting it. This was my war, and Liz and Bob were my army. Not much of an army, but then a commander has to adapt to his resources. That was the secret of command in battle; flexibility and full utilisation of resources. Terrain, men, weapons, skills and surprise. Now I was talking to myself as though I was a mark. This was a war all right, but I wanted to sign a separate peace. I’d taken all the combat I could handle. Ten years in prison; that was the sort of wound from which I would no longer recover. Each time I seemed to make more mistakes. I covered them, but they were mistakes. In the old days I made none. Liz had stalled them in the lobby, very well, but I should have made sure that that damned hire car arrived exactly on time, not five minutes early. Bob’s stutter, why didn’t I think of that, I might have guessed he’d try to use it. It was the most unconvincing stutter I had ever heard. The stupid little fool. Well, I’d make sure he never tried that again.

One more operation. I must have a very small drink. I reached the flask from my inside pocket. I must have a very small drink. The old crone in the next seat is looking at me in a disapproving way. Where does she think she is, the Royal Enclosure? It’s a bloody aeroplane madam and I’m having a drink. Your health. Look at her face. She heard that last bit. Damn her. Damn them all in fact. I’m the victor laureate, and that’s a two hundred and sixty thousand gun salute in that black case. I won. So why don’t I stop worrying, I won and I’ll go on winning. A man doesn’t burn himself out, that’s bosh. Liz loves me, adores me. I’m the leader and she’s the kind of girl who stays with the leader. Bob will never be a leader. She knows that. She’s told me so a million times. He’s pathetic, that’s what Bob is, a cipher, a psychological archetype orphan, brave as only the brainless can be. I’ve seen regiments of Bobs under fire, without enough imagination to be scared. I’ve got too much imagination, that’s my trouble, if I have any trouble, which I don’t for one moment admit. Perhaps I had less imagination when I was young, perhaps that’s why I was so brave. As you get older, you get wiser and less brave, that’s why the higher you go in command the farther from the fighting line they put you, until the man who really controls the battle is not even in artillery range. Ten years. My God; ten years. Would Liz wait. Would any woman. Why should they.

Check the stewardess call-button, adjust the air supply, tighten the lap strap. Chocks away. The aeroplane drones on and all I can see below me is endless white cloud. Richthofen’s Flying Circus would be over the lines this morning. Fancy sending half-trained kids against them in crates like these.

Across the grey German sky, dawn slashed bright red weals. Tackatackatacka. Kick the rudder bar, there goes young Bob; a black feather dipped in red flame. The wind screams in the wires as I turn, tighter than the Red Baron. Tackatacka … tackatacka. Mercilessly the twin Vickers guns stitch the bright fabric. Inches below my fuselage the thin wirelike tracers curve and fall away. Roger Wilco. Left, left, steady. A small shed, the intelligence officer said, in it enough heavy water to put the Nazis months ahead in the race for the atomic bomb. Steady, steady. Another fierce cannonade all around us, followed by the ominous rattle of shrapnel against the engine nacelle. Losing height. The others were stealing sidelong glances at me. My jaw stiffened. Losing height rapidly now. Steady, bombs gone: Down they go. Down, down, down until they are the merest specks against the green of the airfield. Crash, an indescribable explosion. It’s as much as I can hold the control column. Intelligence were right. Enough heavy water to destroy the whole of southern England. Lower now. We are done for. This is it boys, too low to use the brollys I’m afraid. Hold on to your hats fellows, down we go. What a landing skipper, who’d believe that three engines are feathered and the whole fuselage shot to shreds. I just smile back. What’s our best chance? Split up chaps, it’s no O flag for me, it’s cross-country, and living on the land, travel by night, lie up by day, and avoid the villages where the dogs bark. It’s the compass in the button, and silk scarf map of the Rhineland that have been with me for fifty-five missions. Oh well, this is it chaps. See you all in blighty.

‘Please fasten your seat belts we are about to descend for London airport,’ said the stewardess. I’d need warmer clothes than this in Britain. I could use a cup of coffee. Damned uncomfortable things aeroplanes.

4

Bob

I’d walked straight out of the bank carrying a bag full of folding money, and feeling as conspicuous as hell dressed up with blue and white uniform, badges, artillery and all, but not a passer-by gave me so much as a glance. I separated from Liz and walked into the men’s toilet of the Continuum Building. The brown paper bundle of clothes was where I had left it in the towel disposal bin. I locked myself in a cubicle. I pulled out the cloth zipper bag that was sewn into the lid lining of the cash case. I put the uniform and toy pistol into it, closed it, locked it and dumped it. I removed the Security Company metal plate from the case and it became an ordinary leather document case. The chain I unclipped and dropped into the toilet cistern. They only check them every twenty years. I went into the washroom, put a dime into the electric shaver and shaved off my moustache. Vroom vroom. I’d had it for two years and I was sorry to see it go. It was a real Pedro Armandariz. I trimmed it back to a Doug Fairbanks and finally a thin Errol Flynn before demolishing it altogether. Easy come, easy go. I put a little talc across the white upper lip and I was a new man. I’d been frightened that one of the bank clerks would come into the men’s room while I was killing my face-fungus, but I needn’t have worried. They have their own toilet right there in the bank.

Liz was waiting. She’d reversed her coat and put on a hairpiece which hung loose at the back. She looked no more than nineteen with that little-girl hairdo. She looked great, great! I know that she was angry at me for staring at her, but it would have been more suspicious not to have stared. She looked sensationnelle. Oh boy, she did. She’d reversed her coat to become an ocelot.

That helicopter trip is a futuristic freak-out. It’s like throwing yourself off a skyscraper in slow motion. Can you imagine that big jet copter inching off the edge of the Pan Am building, then suddenly 57 floors below, Park Avenue full of yellow cabs slides under us. Almost near enough to touch is the Chrysler spike. I looked for the Continuum Building where those two little toy men were guarding the front of that false safe; crunch. I opened the envelope that had my air ticket and expenses in it. (Silas would be angry if I spent any of the operation money en route). There it was, a neat type-written slip with plane times and a bar in London where I should leave a message if there was an emergency. Just like a military operation. Silas sat up the front and never looked out of the window. Liz was just looking at her nails and looking at the men who were looking at her, which gave her quite a lot of action. At Kennedy I changed on to the big jet plane. For hour after hour it hummed on across the Atlantic with the stewards trying to sell cheap lighters and artificial silk scarfs, and serving little plastic dinners. Any police message would say travelling together, so why make things easy; first class to London direct for Liz, first class via Shannon for Silas, and a tourist flight to Manchester for me with a train ride down to London. But there would be no police messages; certainly not today, not tomorrow either, nor Monday. Well, Monday maybe. Police messages. Imagine getting off this aeroplane and have a couple of smiling law men waiting to put the irons across you.

Charlie was a smiling law man. Charlie was the most vicious screw on the block. A big fat smiling type with a balding head and a gold tooth. It was like he realised that he looked like a nasty piece of work and finally let art follow nature. He caught me with the two ounces of snout right in my hand, grabbed me by the hair and swung me round in the exercise yard until my feet slid from under me; then he let go. Slam against the wall.

Peter the bigamist saved me from being kicked bloody. He had nerves of steel Peter did. He stood up to Charlie without a word and Charlie backed down.

Charlie was going to get me for that. I mean, could anyone doubt it. He’d backed down in front of a yard full of hard cases and that was a dangerous thing for a screw to do. So Charlie would put the boot into me. It was just a matter of time.

‘It’s just a matter of time sonny,’ Charlie said. He didn’t believe in discipline except by knocking people around.

‘He’ll get you,’ Peter the bigamist warned me. ‘And when he has a go at you, kick the shit out of him, it’s your only chance.’

‘Yeah O.K.’ I said, and I looked at Charlie who was a giant and wondered which bit of him I’d kick first when he started to have a go at me. It’s no good worrying, I always say. But I always worry.

The next time I shaved was Monday morning. We were in our London flat eating breakfast. It was a pretty little place. The windows were poky and my room was no bigger than a cupboard, but it was cosy and warm. The mews outside was cobbled and our neighbours were starlets and young stockbrokers, as well as chauffeurs who lived near their cars and washed them and polished them and could be heard banging garage doors at three o’clock in the morning. The flat was so small – a ‘mews cottage’ the agent’s list said – that it didn’t need much furniture to make it ‘fully furnished’. My bed was the kind you have to have if something goes wrong with your backbone, and the refrigerator would only hold three bottles of champagne and a tin of caviar. Silas said we would have to get another one if we wanted to keep milk and butter cool too. There was one thing that I liked; an electric toaster. I plugged it in near the table so that I could make toast without going into the kitchen. I bought lots of wrapped bread, and I posted them into that machine as fast as I could spread butter and jam on them. I like toast very much, and with this machine you could select it to be dark, light or medium. Dark, I liked best.

Silas was dressed up in a silk dressing gown and paisley scarf and Liz was in a fluffy sort of coat with an ostrich feather collar. Right, but I didn’t see any reason to come to the table like the first act of an English play, so I was taking a little toast and coffee and shaving at the same time.

Silas said, ‘You look like a survivor from a particularly harrowing sea disaster.’ I pulled my dressing gown tighter and folded the collar more neatly.

Silas said, ‘Why aren’t you up at dawn doing Royal Canadian Air Force exercises?’

‘I haven’t even got an aeroplane,’ I said.

‘Must you use that terrible machine at the breakfast table?’ I switched the razor off.

‘I’ve thought of a good thing to do with this,’ I said.

‘Have you?’ said Silas.

I said, ‘Shave a round piece from the top of your head like you are going bald, see?’

Silas grunted.

‘Start selling hair restorer, and you can prove your hair is really growing back. Because it would be, on account of you’ve shaved it. Got me? They’d come running for that one, I tell you.’

‘Pass me the butter,’ said Silas. He turned his newspaper inside out while I took some more coffee. ‘And don’t rest your elbows on the meal table.’

‘They’re not my elbows,’ I said, ‘they’re my knees,’ Liz giggled and so did I.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ said Silas.

Well, I hadn’t even noticed that I’d belched, but I know it’s one of those things that he’s very funny about. ‘It’s considered very polite to do that in China,’ I said.

‘Really,’ said Silas. ‘I’ll remember that when we enter that vast and ever growing area of operations.’

Liz said, ‘300,000 suckers born every minute.’

Silas gave his remember-they-are-only-young-people, type of smile and I called the cat. The cat went with the flat. Its name was Santa Claus. Or, I suppose that might have been claws, as a joke. I called the cat and offered it a bit of buttered toast, but it didn’t respond. I put a little apricot jam on it and called the cat again. It ran toward me but kept on going and jumped up onto Silas’s knee. Silas stroked it without even noticing it, and the cat stared up at him as Liz did sometimes. Some men are like that, without doing anything, cats and women just adore them. I finished shaving and went on reading my book.

‘What’s everyone doing this morning?’ said Silas. ‘After we leave the bank I mean.’

‘Are we going to the bank first?’ said Liz.

‘Of course we are,’ said Silas. ‘What do you want to do, leave all that money lying around under the bed? Certainly, that’s the first thing to do; get that stuff into a good strong vault.’

‘Are we going to buy a car?’ Liz said.

‘I’ve arranged all that,’ said Silas. He pushed the cat off his knee.

‘I want a car of my own,’ I said. ‘I’m fed up with having to ask you every time I want to go anywhere.’

‘Just as you wish,’ said Silas. ‘If you want to undertake all the trouble and expense, then do.’

‘I want a red car.’

‘Very well,’ said Silas putting down his newspaper. ‘Have any car you wish. I shall of course deduct expenses and set aside our “projects fund” for the next operation, but after that there will still remain a sizeable payment for each of you.’ I said, ‘Can I buy two cars? A Mini Cooper as well as a Rolls.’

‘No,’ said Silas. ‘I bought two cars when I was a young man.’

I was going to say something corny like ‘did they have cars then?’ but I didn’t want to spoil his good mood. Silas went on, ‘I had them both delivered simultaneously and they were outside the door shining like an RSM’s boots. The neighbours were discussing them, and my younger brother stood near them just to get a bit of the glory. I went out and looked at each of them, as though making sure they were what I ordered, and then I got into the front one and started it up. The motor caught first time, and I pumped the accelerator and made the devil of a din. I made sure the gear lever was fully in, because I didn’t want the gears to crash, and then I let in the clutch. Too quickly of course, I wasn’t a very skilled driver. But I had the gear in reverse and bang I went back into the other car and smashed both of them severely. I can remember the neighbours trying not to laugh. My God the humiliation. I never owned two cars again. Never, no matter how much money I made on an operation, I never bought two cars.’

‘A yellow car would be gorgeous,’ Liz said. ‘Yellow like mustard.’

‘It’s not a bad job this one,’ said Silas. ‘You’ll have enough for a mink or a diamond.’

‘I just want you,’ said Liz and she kissed Silas. He was embarrassed but he needn’t have been. He should have been proud.

‘We will have a really good time. A happy time I mean,’ Silas said. Perhaps he was thinking about smashing up those cars when he was a kid, because he gave one of his rare loud laughs. It was disconcerting when he did that, because it was awfully easy to get the feeling that the joke was on you.