Derek Robinson - Damned Good Show

Zoë came in with coffee on a tray. “I couldn’t get you into bed,” she said. “Too heavy. But at least I got your uniform off.”

“Trousers come in pairs,” he said. “Nobody has ever seen one trouser all on its own. Odd, isn’t it?”

“I’ve sent everything to be cleaned. It smelled dreadfully of rum. You can wear this.” A tweed suit hung over a chair. Also a shirt and tie.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

She poured coffee. “Drink. This stuff is black magic.”

The suit was a reasonably good fit. He dressed and went out and bought a pair of brown brogues and a tweed hat to go with the suit, and retrieved the Bentley from the Ritz. The doorman got two pounds, and Langham got a salute worthy of a Wingco. It seemed appropriate. He felt meritorious.

They drove to Oxford. He parked in the High.

“I want to see all these lovely colleges before Hitler bombs them to bits,” she said. Langham asked why he would do that. “Look what he’s done to Warsaw,” she said. “And the Daily Telegraph reckons that if his bombers come here they’ll kill six hundred thousand people in two months.”

“Let ’em try. We’ll make mincemeat of them.” But he remembered the RAF’s annual exercises, only that summer, when 409’s Hampdens had played the part of an enemy force arriving from the North Sea. They had flown deep into England, cruised around for hours, never seen a fighter. On the other hand they never found their target, a factory near Reading. Never found Reading, come to that. Too much low cloud.

“I have a friend in the Home Office,” she said. “Toby Stone-Pelham. He said mass graves have been dug in the suburbs. All his family are the most tremendous liars. Perhaps we should go and look, except I’m not exactly sure where the suburbs are.”

“And you don’t seem hugely upset about it.”

“No, I’m not. Are you? Yesterday morning I might have cared if six hundred thousand Londoners got killed, but since I met you nothing else matters.” She was calm and content. They were walking arm-inarm. He really didn’t want to talk about bomb damage; he’d driven all the way from Kindrick to escape the war. “You’ll feel better after lunch,” he said, and wasn’t sure what he meant.

“I don’t want to feel better. Were you listening to me?”

Langham had a chilled and fluttering sensation in his stomach, a feeling he sometimes got at takeoff, when he was convinced that both engines were going to fail just as the Hampden got airborne. “Yes, I was listening,” he said. “It seems that we’re in love with each other. Rather an amazing coincidence.”

“Quite stunning. You look slightly stunned.”

“That’s hunger.”

They lunched at the Randolph. Watercress soup, braised pheasant and bottled Guinness, lemon syllabub.

“Now that we know each other rather better,” he said, “and since this suit obviously wasn’t made for you…”

“It’s my brother’s. Spencer Herrick Herrick. At Eton they called him Herrick Squared, very suitable, he’s got a brain like a brick. He’s in Rhodesia now, thank God. When father died—”

“Slow down. Who was father?”

“Who cares? He’s dead. He despised me, and I detested him.” She ate the last of the lemon syllabub, and licked the spoon. “Should I have another? Probably not.”

“For a piece of thistledown, you’re a hearty eater.”

“I do my best. Father did his worst, smoked in bed, the whole manor house went up, nothing left to bury, not even bones. I got an obscene amount of money. Spencer got the title and fifty thousand acres of beef ranch in Africa and the apartment in Albany, rather a long way from Africa so he lets me use it, and unless you know some reason why not, such as bigamy or insanity or—God forbid—impotence, I suggest we marry. Fast.”

He took a deep breath, held it while he counted to five, let it go. “This time yesterday we hadn’t met. How can we be sure that…”

“Oh, tosh. We knew after ten seconds. Ten weeks’ thinking about it won’t change anything, will it?”

“No.”

“Good, that’s settled. I can call you darling now. I’ve been itching to do it all morning. Get the bill, darling. We must order you some more suits, darling. You look ravishing in tweed, darling.”

“Well, ravishing is what I do best.” Oops , he thought. Bit premature, that. “Or so my horoscope says.”

“I expect we could get a room here,” she said, “if your lust is overflowing.”

“No, no. Not necessary.” As he paid the bill he wondered why he had said that. Why be so coy? So cautious? Of course his bloody lust was bloody overflowing. She looked like a nymph and dressed like a dream and called him darling. How was he supposed to feel? He over-tipped hugely, and felt slightly better.

They strolled through a few colleges. She said enough to prevent awkward silences and no more. Her mind was busy making and unmaking thoughts which she was afraid to put into words in case they spoiled the happiness of the moment. She was twenty-six, utterly determined never to marry a man who was merely suitable. London was littered with suitable men. She had told so many of them they were wasting their time, that her friends had decided her standards were impossibly high. But all she wanted was someone to give her what she didn’t know she wanted until she got it.

Not just sex. Sex might be essential but it wasn’t crucial. Or perhaps the other way around, she didn’t care, sex happened, it was glorious but it was predictable. Life wasn’t all sex. She wanted to be surprised from time to time. Maybe shocked, even frightened. That’s what made Langham a perfect match for her. She was looking for trouble and he was a trouble-maker. He thought he could hide it. She knew better.

On the way back to London she saw a lone Spitfire doing aerobatics. Langham stopped the car and they watched it. Wing-over, plunge, soar, loop, roll, level out, steep bank, circle. “Probably doing an air-test,” he said. “Making sure none of the screws are loose.”

“Thrilling. Doesn’t it thrill you?”

“It interests me. You thrill me.”

She was silent, which made him look. Blood had rushed to her cheeks. He was impressed by his own powers.

That night he did not sleep on the couch. Again, he was impressed by his own powers until she said: “There’s no hurry. We’ve got hours and hours.”

He felt the light sweat drying on his body, and listened to his heartbeat dropping to normal. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“We’ll call that an air-test.”

“Agreed.”

“Now we know that none of the screws are loose.”

“Exactly. We can explore the wide blue yonder.”

“Infinity for eternity,” she said. “Yummy.”

Langham had never known a popsy who talked like that.

Next morning they walked to Savile Row and ordered some suits from Latham & Nunnerley. Zoë charged them to her brother’s account. Then they drove to Richmond and lunched at a riverside hotel. The air was easy, and there was just enough haze in the sky to soften the heat of the sun. An anti-aircraft gun had been set up on the other side of the Thames. The soldiers were playing cricket with a tennis ball. “This war is a swiz,” Langham said. “I want my money back.” It had been a busy night and now he felt very idle.

“Where do you want to get married?” He had no quick answer, so she said: “Not in a church. Ever since the Hitler-Stalin Pact I’ve gone off God. I don’t think God’s playing the game, do you?”

“Probably not.” He didn’t care, one way or the other. “I rather think I’ve got to get permission from my CO.”

“Oh. Shall I come with you?”