Sitting among the hilarious Greeks, Harriet did not want to hear about Miss Dunne, but Alan had started a long story about Miss Dunne’s taking all the hot water for a bath then blaming him when he used what remained because she wanted to wash her stockings.
Harriet laughed but Alan did not laugh. She could see how intolerable it was for him, after his year of solitary freedom, to live a sort of conventional life beneath a female tyrant, but his complaints did not discourage her. She remembered Gracey’s spacious, shabby room and could imagine their days there, planned, coherent and beautiful. She had had enough of disorder and had seen that in war there was anxiety instead of expectation, exhaustion instead of profit, and one burnt one’s emotions to extract from life nothing but the waste products: insecurity and fear.
She said: ‘For a while, I’d love to live in an ordered community. You can have too much of confusion. In no time, you begin to think that war is real and life is not.’
‘Or that war is life?’
She nodded. ‘I couldn’t believe in the peace-time society here. It was almost a relief when the air-raid siren sounded. I felt at once that I knew my way around.’
Alan laughed and some minutes later asked her: ‘Would you take a job, if there was one?’
‘I certainly would.’
‘We’ll have to expand when the Mission arrives. Nothing definite yet, but I may be able to offer you something. We’ll see. Ah!’ On a rising note of satisfaction Alan added: ‘Here’s our man at last.’
Guy, making his way round the restaurant, was not alone. He was talking boisterously and his voice told Harriet that he had had more than enough to drink. He was followed by a train of young men in air-force uniform, among them the bearded pilot whom they had seen carried shoulder high past Zonar’s.
The procession arrested the whole room. Even Cookson’s party paused to gaze. Guy, leading his prize in, waved to Dobson and Dobson, not over-sober himself, stood up and embraced Guy fervently.
‘Welcome,’ said Alan. ‘Welcome.’
Guy’s introductions were wordy but vague, for he had found the airmen wandering aimlessly through the narrow lane of the Plaka and did not know what they were called.
The waiter, flustered and important because the British aircrew had come to his table, seized chairs wherever he could find them and seated the men down with a proprietary firmness. He insisted that the pilot sit on one side of Harriet and the rear-gunner on the other. As this was being arranged, she glanced over at Charles Warden and found him watching her. He gave her a smile of quizzical inquiry, but now it was her turn to look away, and with an expression that told him she had enough young men and could manage very well without him.
She wanted to know what the pilot was called.
‘Surprise,’ he said. Surprise what? Nothing – just Surprise. But he must have another name? He shook his head, smiling. If he had, he had forgotten it.
‘Why are you called Surprise?’
He laughed, not telling. Sprawled in his chair, his eyes half-closed in sleepy amusement, he treated her questions as a joke. He seemed not to know the answer to anything. He simply laughed.
Harriet turned to the rear-gunner, an older man, who said he was called Zipper Cohen. She asked: ‘Tell me why he’s called Surprise.’
Cohen said: ‘When the Group Captain saw him, he was so surprised he fell off his chair.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was wearing a beard.’
‘They’re not worn in the air force, are they? How can he get away with it?’
‘He can get away with anything.’
The navigator, Chew Buckle, was a small, thin, sharp-nosed boy who, in normal times, would probably be morose and unsociable. He still had nothing to say, but he laughed without ceasing.
Guy was drunk enough but the airmen were more drunk and evaded any sort of serious topic as a blind man evades obstacles. Only Zipper Cohen was ready to talk. He took out a cigarette-case, opened it and, showing Harriet a photograph tucked into the lid, watched her keenly as she looked at the face of a young woman holding a child.
‘My wife and little girl,’ he said. He seemed the only one whose feet were on earth and when Harriet handed back the cigarette-case, he sat staring at the picture which attached him to the real world. But this incident did not last long. In a moment he shut the case, put it away and began asking what was wrong with the girls in this place. Harriet was the only girl who had given him a smile since he got here.
‘The Greek girls won’t look at us,’ he complained.
‘It’s their way of being loyal to their men at the front.’
Zipper gave a howl of laughter. ‘I hope my old woman’s being as loyal as that.’
Alan, drawn into the rantipole merriment of the young men, tried to talk to Chew Buckle who sat beside him. Why were they stationed so far behind the lines? he asked.
Chew Buckle giggled. He was a man used by events but not involved with them. When asked a direct question, he knew something was expected of him, but could scarcely tell what.
The war had plucked him out of his own nature but given him nothing to take its place. He giggled and shook his head and giggled.
Zipper explained that the Greeks, fearful of provoking the Axis, kept them well behind the lines with some idea that the Germans would not notice them. ‘We just about managed to get to Albania and back. When we landed last night, there wasn’t a pint in the tank.’
‘Suppose you’re forced down?’ asked Alan.
Zipper laughed. ‘It’s a friendly country. Not like Hellfire Pass.’
The mention of Hellfire renewed the laughter and Chew Buckle, speaking in a deep, harsh voice, said: ‘They cut y’r bollocks off there.’ The others collapsed.
It was some time before the three civilians could discover that, if the Arabs of Hellfire Pass caught a pilot, they held him to ransom and, as proof of his existence, sent his expendable parts to Bomber Command.
When Costa came out to sing again, the enjoyment had a second focal point, and Costa, acknowledging applause, waved at the aircrew to show they were as much part of the entertainment as he was. Glasses of wine were sent over to the young men and, as a special honour, apples were sliced and put into the glasses. More bottles were ordered by Guy and Alan so these compliments could be repaid, and glasses passed to and fro, and were sent to Costa, then to the proprietor and the waiters, and soon the tables all around were covered with glasses, some empty, some half full and some waiting to be drunk. The restaurant swayed with drink, and the air quivered with admiration, affection and the triumph of the day.
Suddenly one of the waiters, a middle-aged man as thin as a whippet, ran into the middle of the floor, and began to dance, and the audience clapped in time for him. Cookson and his friends watched, not clapping but indulgently approving.
Guy was in a jubilant state. He suffered from his own frustrated energy and the challenge of other men’s activity, but now it seemed nothing could daunt him. A sort of electricity went out from him and infected the neighbouring tables, and even the airmen began to talk. They told, in terms of riotous humour, how they were sent out every morning over Valona at exactly the same time. It was intended as a double bluff. The Italians were expected to think such tactics impossible and so be unprepared.
‘But the bastards are expecting us every time,’ shouted Zipper Cohen, and Surprise, shaking in his chair, said: ‘Thank God for the Greek air force. They’ll fly anything. They go up on tea-trays tied with string.’
The wine was as much for Guy as for the air-crew. Among the Greeks he was an honorary Greek, among the fighting-men, he was an honorary fighting man. Aware that she could not, for the life of her, attract so much enthusiasm, Harriet was moved with pride in him.