‘No names,’ someone shouted, but I knew it was Curly. His basha too. Black as the back of an eyelid inside. Men were everywhere. Sitting over the floor, on the charpoys, standing round the walls. Couldn’t see anyone but could sense it was a crowd by the deadened shuffling and the lack of breathable air. Feeling my way in, I realised I was fondling a face. My hand was flicked off pronto. I felt some fingers spread under my foot as I stepped on. ‘Oi, watch it. Christ!’ I sat down as best I could. Chaps on either side were clammy as hot baked potatoes. The person speaking was attempting to disguise his voice with a pencil in his mouth. Old trick. But it sounded like he was bubbling up from under water. I couldn’t understand a word. Soon realised it was Maxi, once everyone shouted for the silly pencil to be removed.

‘I say, we make a delegation to the CO. Explain the circumstance – it was a stupid order, the sergeant wasn’t thinking. Ask him to get the charge on Spike dropped.’ Some mumbling went off round the room. Bloke beside me shot his hand into the air. His elbow banged my head as it went. The room was pitch black, no one could see it. Fool.

‘What if he don’t wanna know?’ someone asked.

Then a chap by my side shouted, ‘Strike!’ right in my ear. Moved my head away sharpish. Cracked my skull on the knobbly shoulder of the fellow beside me. The chap said it again, ‘We have to strike.’ Felt the splatter of his spittle this time. Everyone groaned. I tried to rub my head but my arm was jammed to my side. I could hear the tap of a pipe against teeth. Knew it was Maxi – he did it when he was nervous. Hadn’t been using a pipe for long but already his teeth were wearing to accommodate the wood.

‘We’re being used now,’ someone at my side said. ‘Prop up the British Empire.’ His face was so close I could smell his breath, sweet with gentian violets. One of Uncle Joe Stalin’s friends buzzing at my ear. So near I knew he was unshaven. ‘The military are just using us now,’ he went on. His sweet breath was obscene in the stifling heat. Intimate in my ear, he wanted to know if we’d lost our lives in Calcutta would that be ‘killed on active duty’ even though the war most had signed up to had been over for a year? He sat up straighter and I had to shift with him, our shoulders sticking together in the crush. ‘Some mother,’ he spouted, ‘would have lost a son, some wife a husband for that. Piggy in the middle of squabbling Hindus and Muslims.’The silly room had quietened down to listen to him. One of Uncle Joe’s boys! I was having none of his nonsense.

‘Maxi . . .’ I said, to get his attention. I knew what direction he was but could only imagine him there.

‘No names,’ everyone shouted.

The whole meeting was ridiculous. I could feel the rise of a man’s chest on the back of my head. His knees digging my kidneys. ‘Mr Speaker,’ Maxi said from a long way off, ‘just call me, Mr Speaker.’

Nothing for it. ‘Mr Speaker,’ I said, ‘what is the point of this meeting? To run down our country?’ I could hear breathing behind me. A chap clearing his throat, sniffing up the phlegm. ‘I, for one, am proud to be part of the British Empire. Proud to represent decency.’

Everyone started to jeer.

‘Trust you, Pop,’ someone from over Maxi’s side called.

‘No names,’ Maxi said. ‘I don’t want anyone put on a charge for having this meeting.’

‘So, why are you having it, then?’ I asked. A finger poked hard into my ribs. I brushed it off. ‘We’ll all be going home soon. We don’t need this trouble for someone like Johnny Pierpoint.’

‘Why don’t you just belt up?’ was whispered to me, so close it sounded like a thought.

The man beside me landed a knee on my fingers. ‘You’re on my hand,’ I said. But he didn’t move. I pulled away, accidentally cuffing someone who was too droopy to yell. I could hear Maxi muttering something. Soon the whole room was at it like a classroom with the teacher gone.

No sense was going to be talked in this cauldron. I could see two cigarette tips, waving round like sparklers. Shapes, shadows, but nothing else. My fingers hurt like hell. There was no air to breathe – only foetid breath wafting about.

‘Put a sock in it, Pop,’ I heard, accompanied by a whiff of gentian violets, ‘or fuck off.’ A knee kicked into my back winding me. The culprit said sorry. But I soon realised I’d sat in the red corner among the Communists. I would have known to avoid them if I’d seen their faces.

There was no point in me staying. ‘Excuse me, I want to leave.’

Several men around me jeered. I pushed and shoved to get to my feet. And I was jostled roughly back. One of them grabbed my ankle with a ‘Watch where you’re bloody stepping.’ I made my way like a blind man to the door. Squeezing against clammy torsos and slimy bulks. Grabbing what I could to steady myself. I wished Maxi was coming with me. Away from this rabble.

I felt some fingers again, back under my foot. ‘Fuck off,’ the chap screamed. Curly had trouble getting the door open. Pushing at it nearly brought the walls down. But the sticky night air soon had me – hitting me fresh as a mountain breeze.

Forty

Bernard

I had a stint of guard duty that night so I would’ve had to leave the meeting anyway. A three-hour patrol on a hangar out near the edge of the field, guarding gliders that were still stacked up in their crates. Funny thing was, during the war, filters, magnetos, even simple washers you could get new for neither wish nor prayer. Had to scavenge everything from somewhere else. An undamaged wing off one kite put on to another. Use the butchered one for spares. Most of the mechanical training we had back home had been pointless. Stripping engines down to the last nut and bolt. Endless tests and VVs. Out here if it didn’t work, take it out and replace it. Engines, props, wheels, anything. We had to ransack a Japanese Oscar 2 after it landed intact. Maxi (disgruntled) said we should have been trained by thieves. Said any loose wallah could have taught us the skills we needed – how to dismantle and carry away in the fastest possible time. Absurd, I know, but he had a point. We even patched up a kite’s cloth bodywork with a chap’s shirt and then doped it with rice wine – never taught that in Blackpool. Yanks had had it all, of course. All their bent kites tinkered and fussed over in their well-equipped workshops.

But even though the war was over – the Japs having long surrendered – supplies still kept coming out. Stuff we’d dreamed of during the fighting. The explanation: the ships were on their way and couldn’t be turned back. Most chaps complained, of course. No crates of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding found their way out. No hangars filled with bacon sandwiches on white crusty bread. No barrels of spotted dick and custard. Just the ammunition COs had begged for. The planes, the trucks, the nuts, the bolts, the spares every erk had wished away his back teeth to fondle. Out they came. The trouble was, now it all had to be guarded. Kept safe from the thieving little black hands that sneaked all around us.

Those loose wallahs could lift anything. Took a man’s wallet, more than once, from under his sleeping head. Didn’t know a thing about it until the morning. Every piece of Perspex was stripped from a hangar full of kites, while the two armed guards outside pooped off their rifles at shadows. The booty was then carried off into the jungle leaving His Majesty’s Forces scratching their heads. A priest lost his entire church: the bell tent that housed it, the altar, the seats. One night there, the next morning an unholy gap. Chaps jeered that not even God had seen that one coming.

But the worst by far were the dacoits. These men were murderers, not sneak thieves. Thugs. Thought nothing of stabbing, shooting, bludgeoning a guard to get their booty. Professionals of a sort. Everyone complained. ‘Now the war’s over,’ they said ‘we’re fighting these wretched bandits.’ Dacoits everywhere. Hell bent on using our ammo against us to tear up the British Empire. Everyone was jumpy. Worse than the Japanese, we all agreed, because we couldn’t tell them apart from the coolies.