Hell, what’s on it’s way? Didn’t she love me anymore? We were so snug it couldn’t be possible. Was our marriage heading for shipwreck? No, likewise. But at least I wasn’t long in finding out.
“A good while before meeting you,” her breath was hot against my shoulder, her face unseen, “I had a devastating abortion, which put paid to all that.”
And explained why she had never got pregnant after all the wonderful love we had made in our married life. I knew what was coming, and felt like vomiting. “Delphick?”
She turned to look at me, lips trembling. “You saved me from him, and I’ll love you forever for that. You see, darling, I hadn’t taken the pill for a few days, not expecting anything to happen. But he put something into my drink. There’s no other way to explain it.”
I felt like going out to kill Delphick, but the lucky bastard was in prison, and in any case what men she’d had before we met was no business of mine, and I knew she hadn’t had another since. All I could do was kiss her, and thank her for telling me.
“About Sam,” she said, as ever in control, “I can’t see her staying on with her mother after a few more years. It didn’t seem a good situation, so I can imagine her being thrown out, and if so we’ll have to take her on board. She’s lovely and intelligent, and I’m more than fond of her. On the way to Nottingham she said she would like to go to medical school, and when I said everyone had to study hard to do that she said she wouldn’t mind. We’ll make sure she goes to university, and knows we’re behind her when she needs us. I’ll leave money in trust for her, at twenty-one.”
Marvellous, I thought, before going to sleep, my daughter a doctor too.
A thick airmail letter covered in pictorial African stamps plopped through the letter box. I’d never had one from Bill, so it took a few lines before realising who was writing. He told me he was organising native troops for combat, and getting paid in diamonds. “Of course,” he went on, “I train them under active service conditions. When they’re proficient enough, and know which way to point a gun — though they learn quick — I tell them that as a month’s training exercise we’re going to invade the next province, and take it over from the government there. Off we go, lads, I say. Just do it like I told you. Michael, they love it, and so do I.
“It may surprise you to know that I didn’t have time to spend much of the loot from Moggerhanger, because before I could I got headhunted, and not from Borneo, either. For the present work, I knocked twenty years off my age in filling out the application form, and they took me like a shot, especially when I told them my record. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, old cock. There’s such a lot of work to do out here, but when I retire in a couple of years I’ll be made for life. I’ll come back to Blighty, buy the sort of motor as will by then befit my status, and drive over in style to call on you.
“Meanwhile, I’m in my element. You’d be surprised at the amount of ammunition that gets fired off, bombs thrown and rockets launched. It don’t bear thinking about. They shoot stuff off like it’s Christmas every day, though I shout at them no end. Where it all comes from I wouldn’t like to say, except that if it didn’t get here a lot of factories in the UK would shut down, and we don’t want poor blokes on the dole again, do we?
“Another thing here is that the women are lovely, some of them anyway, though now and again I’ve got to draw the line at those with the lid of a cocoa tin stitched into their lips. Obviously, I can’t always get the food I like — no custard creams or eccles cakes, for instance — but I’m fitter than I’ve ever been. You’ll never believe this, but we had grilled python for breakfast the other day, and I kept holding my plate out to my batman for more because it was delicious.
“We once talked about doing work like this, didn’t we, and I said I disapproved of it, but all I can say is that when needs must they certainly must. No man is perfect, not yours truly, and that’s a fact, and the joy is that I know it. If people only did moral things what would people have to argue about at those posh dinner parties I used to see through lighted windows in Wimbledon when I walked around on my uppers? Me being out here does them a favour. They can leave the immoral things for me to do, and go on thinking how good and pure they are.
“The longer I live the more convinced I am that a soldier is born and not made, but one thing for sure is I’m piling up money in a London bank like shit out of a camel, so when I come back to Blighty I’ll fasten on a nice little manor house, and settle down. If it’s got a few acres I might open a fitness academy, and lay out a commando assault course for young bloods from the City to get toughened up. Retirement for me won’t be too long away, Michael, because between you and me I’m closer to seventy than sixty, though I know I don’t look anywhere near it. I can put myself through the hoops quicker than most of the young lads.
“Oh yes, I almost forgot to tell you. Kenny Dukes and Ronald Delphick turned up here after they got out of prison. They talked me into employing them. You know what a soft touch I can be, and who could turn down a couple of backpacking Brits? They were both absolutely out of cash. I made Kenny my quartermaster, whose responsibility was getting supplies up from the coast, or collecting them from an airdrop. He’ll post this letter when he goes through the lines next time. Mind you, I’ve had to give him a good hiding now and again for slackness, and for treating the locals in ways that he shouldn’t, but he’s improving all the time.
“As for Delphick, I made him a corporal at first, because of what he told me about his education, and put him in charge of a few men, but they just rolled about laughing when he gave them a speech from Henry the Fifth. He was also shy of going on operations with them, and in any case couldn’t learn the front end of a gun from the back. Or he made out as if he couldn’t. I still have to give him a bit of a kicking from time to time, so mostly keep him as my tea boy. He’s not bad at that, but he’ll never amount to much. When I told him, after a particularly telling thump, that eternal conflict was the price of safety, he just wrote it down in a little damp notebook and grinned. What can you do with a tike like that?
“It does get dangerous out here at times, though, and I’ve had a few close shaves, but I love it. Not that I ask you to worry about me, because I know I’ll get out of it in one piece if ever the balloon goes up. There’s a bloke much like me training the wallahs on the other side, and if my lot comes to grief he’ll see me right. Likewise, if his lads go down the chute and he’s in peril I’ll look after him. We met for a chat recently, under a white flag, and worked it all out. He used to be in the Buffs.
“Must go now, and get Fred Karno’s army back on parade. In my few idle moments I often wonder how the kids and young men out here will get on when military instructors like me aren’t available to set them at each other’s throats. We’ll have to confetti them with french letters or contraceptive pills from Jumbo jets so’s they’ll stop breeding so fast. All the same, in this swampy heat who can blame them for having their bit of fun with the girls?
“Give my love to Dismal, and whoever else you’ve got stashed away at Upper Mayhem. I hope there’s still plenty left from your nest egg. Your old pal, Bill.”
The world has a place for everyone, I reflected, even me, but still I very much looked forward to Bill’s return, not doubting that I’d see him again, because if there was a born survivor, it was surely him.
When I decided that the house was back to its former state, only more so, I gave a dinner party. I felt financially safe for the foreseeable future, knowing that the fifty thousand would last some time because most was still on deposit. I would use as little as possible. Paying no rent, and living in the country, it would last at least until some other source turned up.