Then it was a matter of keeping close to the wall and edging around the room to the dark shape of the wardrobe. He stepped deftly over one of the fallen chairs, sidled past the dressing table and reached out his fingertips to feel for the suit. With his hand firmly over the padded shoulder, he lifted it from the wardrobe and held it against his chest. The sleeve length matched his arm to perfection. Elated, he started back around the edge of the room, blundered into the chair, went arse over tip, as he put it to Private Plumridge, and plunged alarmingly to the floor.
There was a short, uncomfortable hiatus, not unlike the seconds after a flying bomb cuts out, when Private Gorman waited for the crash. It started as a rending sound in the plaster, followed by a crack and a groan as the entire floor caved in. Gorman dropped yelling with a mass of wood, plaster and linoleum. His first thought was that the entire building would collapse on him.
After the fall, he heard himself spluttering, so he reckoned he was still alive. Most of his body had hit the mattress of the double bed. One of his legs hurt and he couldn’t breathe for plaster in the air, but he was able to get up. Still holding the precious suit, he stumbled through the debris and hobbled off in the blackout as quickly as his injured leg would let him.
He passed the night at the feet of an angel in a churchyard, with the suit laid out on a granite tomb nearby. At first light, he gave himself a fitting. For off-the-peg, it was as good as anything from the Fifty Shilling Tailors. Better. In the pockets there was four and threepence, a packet of Senior Service and a box of Swan Vestas. After he had dumped his uniform under a heap of discarded wreaths and flowers, Gorman climbed over the churchyard wall into someone’s garden and helped himself to a shirt from the washing line. Without clothing coupons, what else was he to do?
A smoke, a shave at a barber’s in Hounslow High Street and a cup of tea at the bus station gave him the confidence he needed to enter the town hall and see the National Registration people about an identity card. If you said you had lost your card, it cost a shilling to apply for a replacement, and they would give you a receipt that you could show to anyone who challenged you. A passport to civilian life.
Gorman understood identity numbers. When the woman clerk asked him, he rattled off a number similar to his own before he was called up, AB to say he lived in the London Borough of Bermondsey, and a slight variation in the digits after, to prevent her from tracking him to his real address. He gave a false name. He was getting smart at last.
When the clerk asked him for the shilling, Gorman casually took a two-shilling piece from his pocket and placed it on the counter. She wrote out the receipt, stamped it, handed it to Gorman and passed him his shilling change. And that was when his luck ran out.
In his elation, he dropped the shilling. It fell off the counter and rolled for a short distance across the floor. Gorman pursued it. He put out his foot to step on it just as someone stooped to pick it up. With his regulation army boots Gorman crushed the fingers of the police constable on duty.
No apology could save him. He was unable to explain how a civilian in a smart blue suit came to be wearing metal-studded army boots. Inside the hour, he was collected by the redcaps.
‘I was dead unlucky,’ he complained once more to Private Plumridge.
‘Deplorably unfortunate,’ agreed Plumridge, who was socially a cut above Gorman. Plumridge was regularly in trouble for insubordination when addressing NCOs, who were apt to mistake an elegant turn of phrase for sarcasm. It was a shame he had failed the intelligence test for officer selection, yet to his credit he had come to terms with the rigours of life in the ranks. He had no plans to desert. To be candid with you, Gorman, I’m at a loss to understand why you keep doing it.’
Gorman scowled. ‘I hate the army, don’t I?’
Plumridge leaned on the polisher he was supposed to be using on the floor outside Gorman’s cell. ‘If it comes to that, I’m not passionately devoted to wearing khaki and living in wooden huts myself.’
‘Why do you stick it, then?’ asked Gorman, expecting a short sermon about King and Country and Mr Churchill.
A smug smile spread across Plumridge’s face. ‘I have an incentive. A certain somebody who happens to believe I’m the finest soldier in the British Army.’
‘God Almighty, who’s that?’
Plumridge lifted one of the flaps of his fatigue dress and took out a photograph, which he pushed through the grille of the cell door. ‘Annabelle.’
Gorman studied the picture and passed it back. ‘Not bad. Not bad at all. Your girl?’
‘Wife, in point of fact,’ Plumridge remarked with an attempt to be casual.
‘You’re married?’ Gorman said in a shrill note. ‘Give us another look at that.’
Plumridge held the picture up. ‘She is rather fetching, I must admit. She agreed to marry me the day my call-up papers arrived. She adores the uniform, you see. Before that, I was merely one of a string of would-be suitors. Now Annabelle is keeping my home fire burning in Chiddingfold.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘In a rather select part of Surrey that you wouldn’t have heard of. Whenever I get a weekend pass, I’m off there. She’s terribly proud of me. Fully expects me to get a stripe before Christmas.’ He took the photograph away from the grille and gazed at it. ‘So you see, I’m utterly committed to the army.’
The conversation was cut short by the appearance of Corporal Harker, the Military Policeman on duty. Harker was the most conscientious redcap in the barracks. ‘What’s that in your grubby fist, Soldier?’
‘Only a photograph, Corporal,’ answered Plumridge, tucking it away.
Harker snapped his fingers and held out his hand.
Plumridge reluctantly handed over the picture of Annabelle. ‘My wife, actually.’
‘My wife, actually, Corporal.’
‘Sorry, Corporal.’ Plumridge hesitated. ‘May I have it back please? It’s rather precious.’
Harker snorted his displeasure. ‘You’ve got no business showing photographs of women to the prisoner. He’s under close arrest and you’re supposed to be polishing the floor. What else have you been handing over? Cigarettes? Chocolate? Turn out your pockets, at the double.’
Plumridge obeyed, producing a letter addressed to Annabelle, his pay book, a set of keys and his identity disc.
‘This should be round your neck, not in your pocket,’ Harker reprimanded him. ‘Co’s orders: identity discs will be worn by all personnel at all times so long as the air raids continue. That means round your fat neck, Plumridge, have you got that?’
‘Yes, Corporal.’
‘Put it on, then. Put this other rubbish back in your pockets and get polishing the floor. I’m going to search the prisoner now, and if I find so much as a peppermint on his person, you’re on a charge, do you understand?’
Plumridge nodded unhappily.
The search of Private Gorman was a simple matter because he was wearing only shorts and a singlet, having disposed of his uniform and had been deprived of the blue civilian suit. To his credit, he was still wearing his identity disc around his neck. Corporal Harker could find nothing irregular, so he had to content himself with some disparaging remarks about deserters, and, when he emerged from the cell, a blistering attack on the quality of Plumridge’s polishing. He ordered Plumridge to buff the entire floor again, and with that he went off duty.
‘That man’s an absolute sadist,’ Plumridge confided through the grille to Gorman.
‘Who’s on duty now?’
‘The tall ginger one with the moustache.’
‘That’s Corporal Davis. He’s all right. He’ll let you off in twenty minutes.’
This might have been the case, but inside three minutes, the air raid warning sounded and within seconds they could hear the ominous note of a flying bomb. The procedure in an air raid was to evacuate the guard room, which was a timber structure, and go into the underground shelter at the rear. Corporal Davis unlocked Gorman’s cell. He was holding a pair of handcuffs.