Archie was currently fucking one of the caterers, Albert, an unsmiling Londoner who could usually be found on a stool crouched over a tin bucket, peeling potatoes. Archie called him ‘The Butcher’ because his cock was eight inches long and thick as a hat stand. He’d supposedly followed Archie into the lav one night, dropped his trousers and said, ‘Give us a wank, mate?’ Archie’s eyes glittered with mirth when he recalled this story. ‘How could a girl say no to that, eh? Coleridge himself could only ever dream of reaching such dizzy heights of romantic expression.’
Back home, Archie had led a double life. There was his manly stand-up persona, which brought him some minor celebrity in the halls and pubs of greater Birmingham, and then there was Ditzy Quimm, a bewigged, large-breasted drag queen in glittering gowns who cracked jokes and sang old favourites every Sunday night at the Tapette, an underground bar full of poofs, prostitutes and dope fiends. He recalled a night in the early 30s when a mob of evangelists had formed outside the bar, throwing eggs at the door (ah, the luxurious excesses of pre-rationing). ‘We locked the doors and we were looking out the windows, terrified,’ said Archie. ‘And do you know what I did? I put on my wig and make-up and I sneaked out of a side window when they were all occupied with a rousing hymn, and I joined them. I joined the mob. “Come out and face God, sodomites!” I mobbed myself!’ A giggle. ‘I laugh about it now, but honestly, I have never felt such abject horror towards the human race.’
It was Archie who introduced Bart to Burma Road – Be Undressed and Ready My Angel. Its real name was Bab El Louq and it was situated halfway between the back of the barracks and the spice bazaar. A long, desolate, sand-strewn street crawling with knobbly-spined cats, it was where the prostitutes waited for soldiers with a night off and some spare pennies to spend. At the far end was a side-street known by a select few as Buma Lane – Bums Up My Angel – and it was here that the homosexual soldiers came to relieve each other.
Bart was nervous the first time because he’d never done this sort of thing sober before. He waited by a bin, smoking (Archie went to the opposite side and immediately started proceedings with a black GI – one of his regulars) and was soon approached by a young British soldier who resembled Orson Welles. Silently they took turns sucking each other off. The man’s technique was terrible – he was all tooth and had an overly sensitive gag reflex. Bart closed his eyes and dangled his hands at his sides, a tap on the wall poking at the back of his knee. He heard Archie giggling girlishly with his GI, and a tethered goat softly bleating. Then approaching footsteps and the low growl of a zipper – a voyeur. Bart promptly came. And that was that.
They returned one night a week, always together. If they had a few hours to spare in the day they went to the large bazaar three miles away – Archie would attempt to walk it, but invariably ended up paying for a cart ride because the skin between his upper thighs chafed in the heat. They wrote sketches and songs together, Bart beginning to embrace the silly lowbrow humour because Archie made it fun. Archie made everything fun – well, except for that one night when he brought a bottle of some horrid spirit back from the market and they stayed up drinking in Archie’s room, and Archie got so drunk he started crying and admitted to Bart that he’d been raped by his uncle as a boy. Bart had held him tight, close to tears himself, and waited until he passed out. He took off his shoes and socks, secured the mosquito net around his bed and watched him sleep. Could I love him? he thought. Yes, easily. But could I fuck him? No. If he were thinner? Still, no. But the next morning over their breakfast, he reached out and squeezed Archie’s hand and said, ‘I’m not very good at being sincere and saying heartfelt things, but I want you to know that – well, I suppose what I’m trying to say is… what am I trying to say?’ Archie waited, his eyes bloodshot. ‘Look, it’s like this,’ he continued, ‘if we get bombed in this hellhole and die horribly, I’m glad it’ll be with you. I want us to still be friends when we’re old men. I want us to be seventy years old and still giving blowjobs to strangers in close proximity of one another.’
Archie smiled, pursing his face in that way Bart’s mother did when she was especially touched. ‘I feel exactly the same way, Crabbecake.’
Chapter 28
June 1943, Hathaway Farm, Sussex
She lay on her bed, sipping black-market parsnip poteen from a tin cup and reading The Private Life of Helen of Troy. The room was painted white and had mould patches coming through on one wall, which the landlady treated with vinegar once a week. It never went away, that smell. There were no framed pictures up and the blankets on the beds were a scratchy wool. She had a small bedside table, the only furniture provided. Inside the top drawer were photographs of her children, which she kissed every night, and one of Bart, which she included for appearances only. She kept her cigarettes and stockings (both very desirable items) in a locked suitcase.
Bettina’s roommate Bunty had been sent home two days ago. She was a spoiled, whining eighteen-year-old, conscripted. She’d tried to get out of it, supposedly even asking her rich uncle to pull some strings, but her family were fiercely patriotic and felt she should muck in like everyone else. Having endured the little snot for three months, Bettina wondered if they’d just wanted to get rid of her for a while. On her first day Bunty was given the job of picking maggots out of the sheep’s wool, and she’d cried the whole time. Every night she threw herself on her bed like a terrible debutante, but on her first day off she went to visit the nearby village and found it full of yummy Yank soldiers. Quick as a click she cheered up, and soon adjusted to the 4.30 a.m. starts and gruelling long days of stooking and muckspreading, and a month later, when Bettina saw her picking maggots off the sheep, she was singing, ‘He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings’ in a pretty, wispy soprano.
Now she was back in her family home, in the family way. So terribly predictable.
Bettina loved having the room to herself. She no longer had to hold in her gas, escaping to the toilet or garden to let it out in long airy hisses. She could read her book without being interrupted and sneak her black-market moonshine without fear of being squealed on.
But now – a knock on the door.
‘Come in!’ said Bettina.
It was Millie the farmer’s wife, trailed by a young woman. Bettina’s eyes immediately went to the suitcase at the end of her bed, which held the bottle of parsnip liquor. Had she locked it? She wouldn’t have forgotten to lock it.
‘Ivy, meet Bettina; Bettina, meet Ivy,’ said Millie.
She smiled at the girl, who was standing just inside the room, looking around with eyes of steel. She was average build and average height. Late twenties, perhaps. Her hair was white-blonde – almost white, actually – and scraped back, hanging in a long unfashionable plait down her back. Her ears stuck out and one of them, at the top, seemed to have a point to it, a little nub. Her eyes were light blue and she was dressed in a plain navy-blue button-down dress and brown shoes of the sort a man would wear. She did not smile back.