There was a pause whilst the fellow thought this over. He looked searchingly at me once or twice as though trying to make up his mind. At last he said, ‘I can’t be absolutely certain. But he looks very like him.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Perhaps if he would submit to a search. As I told you, I saw him jotting something down on a piece of paper afterwards. If he is the right man he probably still has the paper on him.’
‘How do you know he was taking notes of his conversation with you?’ Ogilvie was annoyed and I think he was inclining to take my side.
‘I don’t. That’s why I suggest a search. That would satisfy me.’
Ogilvie glanced at the C.O. Winton gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘All right.’ Ogilvie turned to me. ‘Do you object to a search?’ ‘
‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘But I strongly object to being suspected on such flimsy grounds.’
‘I understand. The whole thing is most distasteful to me.’ He turned to Langdon. ‘Will you go through Hanson’s kit, Sergeant? All papers to be examined thoroughly and take care that you leave no hiding-place unsearched. Now Hanson, come with me into the sergeant’s room and we’ll go through everything you have on you.’
It was a most degrading business. Ogilvie left nothing to chance. I understood his thoroughness. He was determined to prove definitely to his own satisfaction that I was all right.
When it was all over and they had found nothing incriminating, he merely said, That’s all, Sergeant Langdon,’ and marched out of the hut. He was furious at the ignominious position in which he had been placed. I had some satisfaction out of the episode, for I surprised a look of something like frustration in the eyes of the little workman.
I felt excited now that the ordeal was over. It had achieved something. I now knew two of Vayle’s satellites. There was the workman who had planted the diagram in my Army pay-book that morning. And there was this little man with his fresh round face and watery blue eyes that had a quick darting alertness.
As soon as the door closed behind him I became conscious of the unnatural silence in the room. I knew that everyone was just dying to discuss what had happened and that my presence embarrassed them. Rather than face the barrage of speculation and comment at my expense, I went outside. As I closed the door I heard Micky say, ‘Bloody sauce, coming in like that and holding an identification parade!’
I lit a pipe and went over to the pit to talk to the air sentry, a little Welshman called Thomas who was old enough to have been through two years of the last war. He asked me what Ogilvie had wanted. I told him what had happened. He thought it over for a moment. Then he said, ‘These civilians, they get panicky. They get so as they think everyone but themselves is a spy. Indeed and I remember a case in ‘eighteen. The poor devil was shot for something that he never did at all. And all because of a civilian who laid a charge before he had paused to consider.’ And he launched into a long story about a soldier who had been shot at Arras just before the big offensive.
It was very hot out there in the glare of the sun. I took my battle-dress top off and lay down on the top of the parapet. Thomas chattered on. He was a great talker. I closed my eyes. The light on my eyeballs was red as it shone through my closed lids. I felt a sense of satisfaction. Things were moving, though as yet I had taken no positive action. It seemed to augur well. And yet at the back of my mind I felt uneasy. I had so narrowly escaped an extremely awkward situation. It was only chance that I was not now under arrest pending a court-martial. The next time I might not be so lucky. And that there would be a next time I was quite certain. They had shown their hand too openly to me not to make sure that during the next few critical days I should be out of the way.
But uneasy though I was, it did not prevent me from falling fast asleep on top of the sandbags. Mental strain, in addition to the nervous and physical strain from which everyone was suffering, had made me incredibly tired.
I slept for nearly three-quarters of an hour. Yet when I went back into the hut some of them were still talking about what had happened.
‘Just because a bloke’s picked out in an identification parade, it don’t mean he’s a Nazi,’ Micky was saying. ‘Anyway,’ he added pointedly, ‘he ain’t going to ‘is grandmuvver’s funeral tomorrow.’
There was an awkward silence as I came, in. Instinctively I knew that it was Chetwood who had caused Micky’s quixotic outburst. But strange to say, I did not feel afraid of their hostility for the moment. I felt confident and at ease. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I hope you boys have made up your minds whether I’m a Nazi agent or not.’
I had caught them on the raw. Chetwood, Helson, Fuller and Bombardier Hood all seemed trying to appear unconcerned. But at the same time they were watchful. And I knew that Chetwood and Hood, at any rate, were suspicious. I should have to be careful. From now on everything I said and everything I did would be marked. I lay down on my bed, pulled a blanket over me and pretended to sleep.
The afternoon seemed to pass slowly, unaccustomed as we were to such a long period free of alarms. Some slept, others played chess or cards. The hut was quiet save for stampings and hammerings on the roof. Micky, with the aid of Fuller, was endeavouring to camouflage the hut with branches of hazel cut from the woods at the foot of the slope. I understood his frame of mind, and only wished that I could have found something to do that would have kept me occupied. In a way, I was as scared as he was, though, strangely enough, it wasn’t the prospect of being bombed that scared me. That was something tangible. I am a great believer in fate. If a bomb is going to get you, then it’s going to get you, and there’s damn-all you can do about it. It might just as well be the wheels of a bus in peace-time. But I was deliberately walking into danger. There was a difference.
The second Take Post of the day came at about five, just as tea had arrived. It did not develop and all that came of it was that the baked beans on toast were cold. Micky had practically finished the hut by the evening, so that it looked like Malcolm’s army before Dunsinane.
I spent the evening trying to read, of all things, Liddell-Hart’s Foch. I was in a deck-chair out in the open patch of grass between the hut and one of the newly constructed pill-boxes. It was quiet and still — a beautiful summer evening that made one think of the river. The peace of it was incredible. The sun sank slowly in a golden glow. An Anson and an old Harrow, cumbersome yet very light off the ground, came in and took off after a short stay. That was the only activity. There might have been no war on. God! how I wished there weren’t! I was too conscious of how changed the scene might be in the short space of twenty-four hours. And all the time I was progressing slowly through Liddell-Hart’s account of the follies of the last war, epitomised in the slaughter of Passchendaele.
I was sitting facing the roadway and shortly after seven-thirty my eyes strayed more and more from my book. Despite an assumption of calm, there was an unpleasant fluttering in my stomach. I found myself hoping that Marion would not come.
But she did, and my heart sank. I saw her when she was down near the hangars. Even at that distance I could see the fair straight hair beneath her cap catching the slanting sunlight. I watched to see whether she would turn in at Ops. But no, she came straight on, strolling leisurely towards the pit. When she was about fifty yards away I rose to my feet and went into the hut, to show her that I had seen her. I got my pipe, and by the time I came out again she had turned and was walking back towards Ops.
Well, the die was cast. I couldn’t turn back. I felt much easier now that everything was settled. I sat and read on until the light began to fail, shortly after nine. When I went into the hut I found it empty. The detachment on Stand-to were already in the pit. The others had all drifted off to the Naafi. I had a momentary sense of lostness. But it did not last, for I had too much on hand.