Sandown was the one place where I was likely to bump into him, and if I hadn’t thought he had gone for good that night in Crete, “missing in action,” I might have had my antennae tuned in for an encounter. As it was, I first wondered where I had once seen that face, now ten feet away — perhaps in the paper, or on the telly, and then it became more personal, a neighbour perhaps, as he returned the look I was giving him and I tried to sort him out. And then who it was announced itself, still without a name until he spoke mine, and then it was Billy.
We collected our tea and confirmed by individual observation that each of us was on his own, and we walked over to a vacant table and sat down.
The way we were, you’d think we were two brothers, living in different parts of the world, not communicating much if at all over the years, come together at a funeral, say, arriving early before anyone else turned up, wondering where to start. “Why didn’t you write?” would be the first question, followed by, “Why didn’t you?”
We sipped our tea and waited to see who would find the right button.
“Thought you were a ghost at first,” he said. He didn’t smile.
“Twenty years,” I said, eventually. “Maybe I am.”
“Twenty-two.”
I don’t think he meant it as a challenge, though that’s what it sounded like.
But it was too soon to get into it. “Fancy anything for the next race?” I asked.
He looked at his newspaper, marked up before he left home, probably. “This one belongs to Piggott, I reckon,” he said.
I thought so, too. “Got your money on yet?”
He nodded.
“Wait here, then, while I put a bet on. I want to watch this one from the rail, so if we miss each other, I’ll meet you back here after the race.”
“How long should I wait?” He leaned back, watching me.
“What do you mean?” I asked. But I knew what he meant.
“You might get detained,” he said.
There was no mistaking his meaning now, but I wasn’t ready for it yet. “I’ll be here,” I said.
The crowd was thick that afternoon, so when I went back after the fifth, and again after the sixth, and there was no sign of him, I let it go. I knew I would see him again soon.
He was there at the next race meeting, two weeks later, waiting at the same table with his tea before the first race. I wondered if he had gone through the same process that I had. Missing him had been no accident. I’d gone back after the sixth race, all right, but I didn’t wait when he wasn’t there right away.
But not to go to the next meeting would have been unnatural for me, as would not buying a cup of tea before the first race to study the form with.
I said, “I did come back after the last race but there was no sign of you.”
“I picked the last winner and there was a lineup at the tote.”
“I always bet with the bookies on the last race. That way you get paid off quick and you don’t have to wait around.”
“That what you did?”
“I didn’t have a bet on the last. I just made sure you weren’t here, then I left.”
“I was here. You must have gone already.”
“I hung on for a few minutes.”
He waited to see if I was finished. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Another time. What do you fancy for the first?”
“Sunny Jim,” I said. “He got off to a bad start last time out, but he still only got beaten by a short head. I’ve been waiting for him to reappear.”
“Do you still transfer to Tattersall’s if you win the first?” he asked.
“Did I tell you that?”
“Your dad used to do it. Have a big bet on the first and if it comes in, buy yourself a seat in the stands. I always remembered that. You told me about it while we were in that ditch, the first night in Crete. We were waiting for it to get dark enough to make a move.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I do. I dozed off, but when I woke up you were still talking, about the times you’d watched the Derby, that sort of thing.”
“That was the idea, wasn’t it? Stay awake?”
“Until we realised that we should sleep in shifts so as to be ready for the night march.”
“Right. You come to every meeting here?”
“I will now. I worked up north for a long time. Leeds.”
“Doing what?”
“Commercial traveller. For Crosse & Blackwell’s. When I had enough seniority I put in for a transfer. I’m here for good now. But this is only the second time I’ve been to Sandown since the war.”
“You married?” I asked.
“Twice. First wife died of cancer. Angel, she was. Then I got lucky, found another angel two years ago. Friend of my first wife’s, actually. What about you?”
“Married once, then divorced. Nobody’s fault. We couldn’t get along. Fact is, we weren’t suited. But we still have a drink together, now and then.”
I found it very strange, catching up on the missing twenty years, and at the same time falling into our old way with each other immediately. In some ways, nothing had changed. He was wearing his hair longer, of course; we both were. And we were in civvies, which showed up the little differences which uniforms hide. He was one of those blokes who dress to disappear, who think if anyone notices what they are wearing then there’s something wrong. But I was still trying to impress women, as well as look good on the job. I worked for a travel agent in Kensington. That day I was wearing my new duffel coat, an Austrian loden coat, actually. Dark green.
The horses moved on to the course for the next race, and paraded in front of the stands. “You doing this one?” Billy asked.
“I haven’t found anything to fancy yet.”
“What about Last Call?”
“I’d noticed that. Might be a possibility.”
He had been doing what I was, what everybody does sometimes, not finding a horse he fancied, so falling back on the jockey on the grounds that good jockeys like good horses. Apart from that, it was just a matter of fancying a name. For some reason, Last Call, a useless twenty-to-one shot, had caught his eye. He stood up. “See you back here?”
It was a test again, a little challenge: Did I plan to come back after the race?
I felt in my watch pocket for the fiver I kept for emergencies. “Let’s have it each way,” I said, holding out the note.
He looked in his wallet to find a fiver to go with it. “We’re on,” he said, and disappeared towards the line of bookies.
While he was gone, I tried to pick my way across the minefield that lay between us, going over again in my mind the events of that night in Crete.
We had been walking for two nights, hiding from Stukas during the day as we made our way to the coast. We had lost touch with the rest of our unit when the retreat turned into a shambles. Billy and I weren’t part of the regular infantry; the Service Corps was what its name says, the backup brigade. We had rifles, of course, until we threw them away, but that wasn’t our function; our job was to move supplies — ammunition, equipment, and so on — to where they were needed, to get them to the troops who were doing the actual fighting. Billy and I were left in charge of a small dump of supplies — rations, mostly — protecting them from the local population. Then one morning everything went quiet and we waited for a messenger with some orders, but he never appeared. Then Billy pointed and said, “We’d better scarper if we can.” A couple of furlongs away, a Jerry bicycle platoon appeared, not coming towards us but crossing at right angles to us, four of them. Our front line had gone and these Jerries were the sign that we had been overrun.