“Gone. They booked out. Fled. What happened?”
A furrow of self-satisfaction went across his brow. “All I did was get into conversation with those two beauties at the door waiting to go into the hotel with me. On the beach I just happened to put a finger near one of the girls breasts to scare a mosquito. Muriel didn’t see it, so took my gallant action the wrong way. I mean, I wasn’t married to her, was I? She lost her temper when I kissed one of them. It was only a bit of fun. She said she’d never seen anything like it. But what had I been doing with her in my room? I told her if that was how she felt she could get lost. But I’ve got her address in England, so I’ll make it up when I see her again.”
“I don’t think you will. It must have been the shortest affair in history.”
“I doubt it. But just because I started chatting up those two girls! By the way, I’ve promised them a ride to Athens in the morning. They’ve never been in a Rolls Royce before.”
“Over my dead body,” I shouted. “I’m on Moggerhanger’s official business, and you know his rule that there are to be no hitchhikers in the Roller.”
“Michael, you occasionally manifest yourself as something that I have never been in my life, and that is uncharitable. All I can say is that it behoves you to listen to me, and give me a fair hearing. You talk as if Moggerhanger is the be all and end all of our existence, but he’s not, and shouldn’t be allowed to be. Regarding his so-called golden rule about hitchhikers, he’s got to be wrong in this particular instance, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve got my wits about me, and know that it’ll be tactically sound to have a bevy of beauties in the back, because if any of the Green Toe Gang are still lurking around to check us out they’ll think you’re only a middle-aged gent on pleasure bent when they see our girls waving arms and legs out of the windows. The master planner — me — has thought it all out.”
“Let them travel in your car.”
“Michael, it’s only a small favour, and I ask you to recall the big one I did for you not more than a couple of hours ago. If it hadn’t been for me you’d have been served up already as meat pies in some canteen by the roadside, or sliced up in a kebab joint and swilled down with a few gallons of that porcupine wine they drink out here. I don’t like to harp on it, but the fact is, you owe me. Anyway, don’t take it so hard. As a quid pro quo I’ll let you have one of the girls. I’m not greedy.” He finished my brandy. “Come on, they’re waving to us. We can’t let them down.”
They were teachers from a village in the Languedoc, Janine a bit spinsterish with short fair hair and a mousey little face. Marie, who was mine, had a fringe of dark hair and looked about nineteen, though I learned she was thirty. They seemed too nice and respectable to be attached to the likes of us, but they were good sports, and spoke perfect English, so what could I do?
They wanted a bit of fun, and good luck to them, because so did we. Judging by noise from Bill’s room next door it seemed as if he and Janine were having it off on the ceiling. As for Marie, when she came it was force nine on the Richter Scale. I hadn’t made love since being with Sophie, so flooded out as much as would have set the alarm bells ringing in Holland.
At supper Bill wanted champagne for the four of us. “We can’t afford it,” I told him.
“Of course you can. Doesn’t Moggerhanger pay?”
“Not for that. I’ve got to keep an itemised account. What about Blaskin’s expense sheet?”
“He told me to bring receipts back as well, and I don’t want to be writing Sidney Bloods for the rest of my life, do I? He only allows beer for the sergeants’ mess.”
It was lucky, because my heart was softening and I was about to give in, that the proprietor had no champagne in stock, so we settled for ordinary red, drinking in a way that didn’t fit well with any hanky-panky later.
The girls were on a cultural tour of Greece, and that day had done an excursion to the Vale of Tempe. Tomorrow they were off to Athens, then Thebes, Corinth and Delphi. Bill winked that we should all go around the sites together, to see how thorough the RAF had been in the rest of the country, but I turned the idea down. “It’s business only from now on. The sooner I get back to London and report in the better.”
“It’s a lot more convenient to tour in a Rolls Royce.” He put on a show of moodiness, as Janine stroked his arm. “The girls will be disappointed after they see what it can do on the road to Athens in the morning, won’t you, my darlings?”
They let us argue, and I was tempted to do as he and the girls wanted, but more than anything I hankered to be on my own again, away from Bill’s baleful influence and unpredictable behaviour which would bring nothing but trouble. I had of course appreciated his assistance that afternoon, and would be sorry to see him go.
When like a true gentleman he passed the reckoning for the merry supper to me I was too tired to protest, and too proud to argue in front of Marie and Janine. Gluttonous and amicable to the end, at eleven we went slap and tickle to our rooms. On the way upstairs Bill suggested, in a whisper, that we change the girls over, but I said no, telling him that they’d be shocked, or hoping they would be, and I was right when he hinted at it with them.
I had put three hundred miles under the wheels since my half sleep in the Macedonian fleapit, survived a fight for life on reaching Greece, and gone through the shock of meeting up with Bill, who I had last seen begging at Liverpool Street station. After that was the nursing of daft Ernest through a nervous breakdown, or I hoped so, and then a pleasant though exhausting hour or two in bed with Marie, finally drinking more at supper than I could calculate.
I felt that another such day would see me in the knackers’ yard, but the excess certainly helped me speedily into oblivion.
Chapter Twelve
Bill claimed to have sprained his thumb in yesterday’s conflict (and who was I to call him a liar?) and stood idle as I laboured carrying bags, cases and rucksacks, and stowing them into the two cars.
“I’ll tailgate you, so that nobody can get between us,” he said, “except the girls. I can signal to them now and again. It’ll be good for my morale.”
I flunkied the girls in. “You’re the last person to need it,” I said, getting a whiff of the best Floris’s aftershave as he took all the thanks for my action on himself.
His Corsa was in my mirror along every inch of the road, delightful feminine French sounding from the seats behind me, and laughter at Bill’s no doubt obscene gestures, blasts on his horn as if leading the advanceguard of an armoured division.
We stopped when my passengers needed a toilet, and over coffee Bill read my instructions regarding the drop off at Glyfada. He brought out his bundle of maps, and swept a blunt pencil along the route. “It’s not far beyond the airport, which is right up my street, not to say a piece of cake, to which I’m very partial, as you know. We’ll put the girls off in town, then drive southeast, to the hotel on the seafront, where you’re to wait outside at half past one. Very convenient, because as soon as the transaction’s done I’ll flip back to the airport. As for you, don’t go home through Jugoslavia, in case the Green Toe lads think to lay on a party somewhere along the line. Moggerhanger wouldn’t like you to have an accident. Nor would Major Blaskin. Or me, for that matter.”
He’d only told me what I already knew. “I’ll take the ferry across to Italy from there.” I pointed out the place on the map.