Unexpected Aftermath Of A Fiasco

10

Unexpected Aftermath Of A Fiasco

August 30 Not. Well knowing Colonel John Raice I might have expected he’d cheerfully ignore my every word, so as the dust cleared I perceived groggily that altho the others had all obediently departed, he was still there.

    He sat down, handed me a large handkerchief, and said mildly: “Dry your eyes, Mel, sweetheart. Been going it a bit, have you?”

    So I blew my nose hard and gave him an evil look. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black, John?”

    “Indubitably,” he agreed, still mild. “Still, better to get a bit of experience under one’s belt, I always think. Not serious about any of those chumps, are you?”

    “As a matter of fact Christopher isn’t a chump and I invited him and he only left out of GOOD MANNERS!” I shouted.

    “Or because he’s a chump, yes. Think the older fellow’s going to be dining out on it for the rest of his natural, by the way.”

    Gulp. Actually I could just see that. Help, the name of LeBec would be a laughingstock all over France! The fact that technically it isn’t my name not counting.

    “Nail on the head, I see,” he drawled on a malicious note. “Is there anything drinkable in this execrable dump of Patrizia’s?”

    “Um, well there’s some gin left, Mr Prosser told me where to get that—it’s all different in England,” I explained redundantly. “And Clive Lamont gave me a couple of bottles of Cognac. There’s a full bottle left.”

    “That’ll hit the spot. I seem to have been getting on and off ruddy planes for the last week. Mind if I have a shower?”

    “Um—no, of course not,” I said feebly, belatedly taking in how crumpled he looked. Not only that—

    “You look terribly thin, John, what the Hell have you been doing? –Don’t answer that,” I sighed. “If it’s some form of Delhi Belly, Clive Lamont’s doctor is a wonder, he’ll fix you up. And don’t for God’s sake neglect it, it can be really serious.”

    “No, I’m fine. Just missed out on a few meals, one way or another,” he said. getting up and going over to the 1930s Queen Anne sideboard. “Is this where you keep the grog?”

    “Yes: it’s a cocktail cabinet, really. The lid lifts up,” I said helpfully as he looked dubiously at the absence of door handles.

    “My God,” he muttered, lifting it. “My God,” he said as the thing did its un-concertina-ing act and the front came out towards him and part of the inside lifted up smoothly.

    “Yes, isn’t it putrid? The sugar daddy that used to own the dump had it made to order. Mum thinks it’s the bee’s knees, she’s always showing it off to her horrible chums.”

    “I must say the remains of a bottle of gin and an unopened Cognac don’t do it justice,” he admitted, opening the Cognac forthwith and pouring into two glasses. “Where’s the rest of the glassware? In the dishwasher?” he asked, coming over to my sofa.

    “No, Mr Prosser says most of it got broken when she had the frightful telly crowd round for a last-night party before she took off for Guadeloupe. Someone had given them a case of Russian vodka.”

    “All becomes horridly clear.”

    “Yes. The poor cleaners that do most of the flats in the building just about mutinied, and their boss told Mr Prosser it wasn’t in their contract, so he cleared it all up himself. He had to throw out two of the rugs, there were just too many tiny splinters in them.”

    “Really?” he said weakly, looking at the horribly adorned floor. Wall-to-wall putrid floral Axminster with extra equally putrid rugs on top of it.

    “Yes. –She’ll never notice.”

    “No!” he agreed with a grin, handing me a glass. “Drink that.”

    “Thanks,” I said feebly as he sat down beside me, took a large swallow, and sighed.

    I drank brandy desperately and couldn’t think of anything to say except a very lame: “Tommy will be thrilled to see you.”

    “Mm? –Oh: good. Nearly missed my connection at bloody Dubai, actually: the place is a nightmare.”

    Oh yes? Connection from where, exactly? I didn’t ask, there was no point.

    He swallowed more Cognac, and said: “Ranjit says Hullo, by the way.”

    I gulped slightly. “Your Indian friend? Did—did you tell him about me, John?”

    “Mm. –Well,” he said with a sidelong smile, “ever since I’ve known you, really; we keep in fairly regular touch. Tho letters don’t always get through and one never knows when emails, er, may be read by interested parties, so we tend not to contact each other that way.”

    Right. Got it.

    “Don’t look so worried: I left him at Karachi airport hale and hearty and waving me off like mad as I went through the whatsit to the usual interminable wait amongst unspeakable rows of shiny consumer goods followed by twenty minutes sitting on the tarmac wondering if the thing’s bally engines were going to fall o— Oh, Lor’! Don’t bawl again, darling Mel!”

    “I—thought—never see—again!” I wailed as he put his arms right round me and hugged me.

    “I know. Giving it away,” he said into my hair. “This was the last lot. Getting too old for it, anyway. And Ranjit’s given it away too: settled down to domesticity with the lovely wife and the two kids he’s somehow managed to father in between his other activities.”

    “Really?” I said, sniffing juicily and looking up at him doubtfully.

    “Yes. Blow your nose and have another belt.”

    So I blew my nose and finished my brandy, slightly hampered by the fact that he still had his arms round me. Oh dear, he did feel a lot thinner. Not that he’d ever put his arms right round me before, he’d always been very circumspect in view of my tender age, but I did know his figure very well, especially after that time he’d been confined to bed with a badly broken leg and Bean Minor and I had stayed in his cottage to look after him. Making sure he changed his pyjamas and didn’t guzzle whisky and didn’t take too many painkillers and did get some solid nosh down him, kind of thing.

    “So you’re really back for good?” I ventured as he laid his head against mine and sighed deeply.

    “Er—yes. Sort of. Well no more ventures to the far-flung whatsits, but they’ll probably send me to Washington fairly soon, filling in at the Embassy for a chap who’s off sick.”

    “Washington, D.C.?” I croaked.

    “Uh-huh. It’ll be a dashed bore, but it’s only for a few months.” It dawned that I was now looking up at him in bewilderment, so he made a face and said: “Attaché: military liaison officer, technically, darling.”

    “Oh. They have them at the embassies, do they?” I groped.

    “Mm. Well largely entails keeping one’s ear to the ground and trying to figure out what the Yanks are up to behind our backs but yes, that’s it. Office jockey.”

    Oh sure. At the Embassy? I could just see it! Endless cocktail parties and receptions, lipsticked hags in vile pastel satin or little black numbers, back-biting gossip till it came out your ears, bored wives by the hundred on the hunt for a little something to while the time away… Jesus! Well better than getting shot at or tortured by the crazed terrorists he’d been spying on, yes, but really!

    “I see,” I said heavily.

    I could feel him shaking slightly. “I’m sure you do!” He kissed the top of my head lightly and got up before I could react. Or even blink.

    “Point me at the bathroom, would you, Mel? If I don’t get a shower in the next two mins. I may commit harikari.”

    “Through there, it’s at the far end of the passage. Unless you’d prefer to use Mum’s one: it’s all pale peach,” I said with relish.

    “I think it might finish me off. You and Michael using the other one, are you?”

    “Yes. His razor’s in the cupboard if you want to borrow it. And there’s a big towelling bathrobe on the back of the door, we don’t know whose it is, you might as well use it.”

    “Right!” he said, disappearing.

    I just sagged back on the sofa and looked limply at my empty glass. Crumbs.

    Well I mean to say…

    Well crumbs.

September 1 Not. Continuing: “If it isn’t a tactless question…” he said, coming back from his shower swathed in the giant towelling bathrobe, which did everything for his very nice shoulders, on second thoughts it was the shoulders doing everything for it. It had looked totally ridiculous when I tried it on, I appeared to have no shoulders whatsoever, added to which females have bulges in the wrong places for huge terry-cloth garments.

    “Yuh-yes?” I croaked, quailing.

    Those very clear blue eyes twinkled. “Would there be any food going?”

    Oh! Phew! True, it’s not like John Raice to ask tactless questions of one, but given the scene when he arrived… Er, yes. Fully justified.

    “Well um, I think there are some eggs. And bacon, I think. Hang on, I’ll have a look.” I hurried out to the kitchen.

    … Oh. Dash it.

    “No?” he said coming up behind me.

    “Um, I think Bean must have eaten the eggs for brekkers yesterday. Well, um, toast and bacon?” I offered weakly.

    “Fine!”

    “And would you like a cup of tea? –There isn’t any coffee, Mum hasn’t got a decent coffee-pot and I keep forgetting to buy one. And Bean threw out her instant stuff. Well it was foul but at least it was a hot beverage if one poured the hot water on it.”

    “Tea would be fine, thanks, Mel.”

    I rechecked the fridge. “Bean’s finished the milk,” I reported mournfully.

    “That’s all right. Black tea would be a nice change, ’smatter of fact: I’ve been drinking ferociously sweet Indian-style tea soused in condensed milk for what feels like the last millennium.”

    Er… does that mean he was in India? No, impossible: if, as claimed, he hadn’t had a dose of Delhi Belly, he’d be as fat as butter, their food is cooked in it—well, clarified, but yes. However, very likely he was in Pakistan—northern Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, for some time, I can believe that! And judging by the “Indian” restaurants in London, their food is identical. Okay, he drank oversweet tea in northern Pakistan and very probably the Afghanis share the taste for the same and he was drinking it over there in the intervals of starving as he crouched behind rocky outcrops with his binoculars trained on the savage hills…

    “Is that a prescient silence? Because I can make it, if you like,” he offered.

    “What? No. I mean, that’s okay. Sit down, you look exhausted.”

    John made a wry face but sat down at the kitchen table. Which is about the only piece of furniture in the entire place that isn’t rosewood-ed and pie-crusted to the point of insanity.

    He didn’t look as if his cholesterol count would be harmed by any amount of bacon but on due consideration of his age I only made him three rashers and he ate them with six pieces of toast and three cups of weak black tea. And then had two more slices of bread with marmalade on them for pudding.

    “Thanks awfully, Mel: I may live,” he conceded.

    “Didn’t they feed you on the plane from Dubai? I thought the airlines always did.”

    “What? –Oh. Er, not that sort of trip, really. Only a short hop, y’see.”

    My brain worked frantically and came up with that stuff Bean Minor and Trelawney had told me about Aden. “Right. Hopped over to Aden, did you?”

    “Y— How the Devil did you— Yes,” he said limply.

    “Uh-huh. Where you were just in time to hurl yourself into one of those big Army transport planes where everyone has to sit on the floor and you can see the thing’s horrible ribs! And get deafened by the noise of the engines.”

    “Uh—well sort of. Me and a couple of dozen other chaps, yes. Well there was coffee. And they had some chocolate: passed it round.”

    “Don’t go on, thanks. –Where’s your luggage, just by the way?”

    Well certain chaps would have lied airily at this point that they’d dropped it off at their flat but my Colonel Raice replied truthfully, if uneasily: “Er… Didn’t really have any.”

    In other words he’d got out of wherever-it-was by the skin of his teeth!

    “I’m not asking how you reconcile that statement with the earlier statements that your work was intelligence analysis, John,” I warned.

    “Y— Well I can’t tell you the details, y’know. Thing was, they decided some of the intel we had was, um, contradictory, so to speak, so they thought I’d better take a closer look and, um… yes.”

    I drew a very deep breath and managed not to scream “For all these months?” but it was a near-run thing.

    My expression must have registered, because he said glumly: “I was going to suggest bed, but um, perhaps you’d rather not.”

    At which point I went bright red and managed to croak: “No, y’fool! I mean yes of course I want to!”

    “Oh, good,” he said with what, disturbed as I was, I couldn’t manage to convince myself wasn’t a silly smile. “Lead the way, then.”

    “It’s just through here. It was originally meant to be the cook-housekeeper’s room, we think. Anyway it’s nice and private. It’s a bit of a trek to the bathroom if one wants a shower or a bath but it’s got its own little lavatory and handbasin through that door—see? It’s quite nifty really.”

    “I see,” he said, staring numbly at a room containing a rather untidy chest of drawers, a small bedside cabinet with a small metal reading lamp on it, and a double bed. Not a queen-size or one of those even huger ones in the advertisements which surely in Britain few people must be able to fit into their flats? Just an ordinary double one. Plus of course a horrible carpet. Gigantic cabbage roses in this instance.

    “Don’t look at the carpet,” I advised.

    “No,” he said numbly. “Well—put the light out?”

    “Hang on, I’ll put the bedside lamp on. –There. Now you can turn the main light out. Um, I’ll just have a pee,”  I said, departing hurriedly.

    When I came back his towelling bathrobe was on the floor, there being nowhere else for it to go, and he was in the bed. So I took my things off and got in beside him. And he put his arm round me.

    “I—er—won’t be able to put up much of a performance, y’know, Mel. What with the travelling and the, um, anticipation, and wondering if you would—”

    “I don’t want a performance, y’fool!”

    “That’s good,” he said weakly, kissing me at last.

    Oh, John!

    Well the rest is definitely History. Well, History-making, actually. I mean, words cannot describe—! I mean, doing it with someone you really, really love… Quick, so to speak, but super-super good, was what it was.

    Afterwards he fell asleep like a log but actually I wasn’t surprised. So I nodded off, too…

    Well as good old Bertie W. could more than have told one, the Course of the bally Whatsit never does run as expected and Life tends to be Like That, and etcetera, so at some point during the night there was a terrific racket and John woke with a jump, sat bolt upright and gasped—no kidding—“Incoming!”

    Yes well. Possibly that dated back to his days on so-called active service and if that was certainly active what would they have classed his last little lot as? However.

    I sat up groggily and said: “It’s only Bean falling over his great feet.”

    “Oh,” he said weakly. “Been on the town, has he?”

    “More or less. With Uncle Flossie and Flossie,” I said as there came a rending CRASH! from the kitchen next-door and Bean’s voice said loudly: “Hell!”

    “God,” sighed John. “Put the light on, darling.”

    I did and he groped automatically for a bedside table but as there wasn’t one at that side desisted and instead looked weakly at his wrist. “Oh. –Forgot to take my watch off. Must have been distracted by something,” he said with a silly grin.

    “Mm. What is the time? Fourish?” I sighed.

    “Er—no. Quarter past one,” he said on a sheepish note.

    What? Oh. Yes, we were fairly early to bed, come to think of it.

    “What— God! What’s he doing?” he sighed as more noise came from the kitchen.

    “At a guess looking desperately for coffee what there isn’t any of,” I replied elegantly.

    “Right.”

    CRASH!

    Sighing, John got out of bed and swathed the manly form in the towelling thing. “I’ll go and strangle him, shall I?”

    “Good idea,” I agreed.

    So he went out to the kitchen. “Can you stop that row, thanks, Michael? Your sister’s trying to sleep.”

    Whereupon my dashed sibling replied: “Oh, it’s you. Thank God. Thought she was out with that smooth type, actually.”

    “BEAN!” I shouted furiously. “John’s been risking his neck with horrible terrorists and Talibans and things for MONTHS! You might at least say Hullo!”

    “Hullo,” he said to John: I could hear the grin on the blasted lad’s face.

    “And brass knobs on ’em to you, too. What the Hell are you trying to do?”

    “Make coffee. Uncle Flossie’s idea of a smallish one is half a pint of neat Scotch.”

    “Yes, well you have some excuse for forgetting, then. There’s no coffee because there’s no coffee-pot.”

    “Blast. You’re right. So there isn’t.” There was the graunching sound of someone pulling out a chair and a loud sigh: presumably the Bean had sat down.

    “If I make you a nice cup of black tea will you take it and roll away nicely like a hoop?” John asked cordially.

    “Eh? What’s the time?”—Slight pause.—“It’s not late,” dratted Bean reported somewhat muzzily.

    “Not very, no.”

    There were sounds of kettle filling and then John reappeared, saying: “Would you like a cup, Mel darling?”

    “I might as well, since I’m awake now. And come to think of it, I never had any dinner, did I? I might make some toast. Want another round?”

    “Thanks, I would, ’smatter of fact!” he said with a grin, disappearing again.

    So I made toast on the most historic night of my life.

    Yes well. The Mundane does tend to Intrude, rather, when it comes to us poor human ants, doesn't it?

    Tho nothing could detract from the sheer gloriousness of my lovely Colonel breaking down and admitting he wanted me at last!

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