27. Setting A Blistering Pace

What Ho Proles!

As every blister eventually toughens your hand, I like to believe that the difficult things in life are eventually balanced by the good.

For instance, an acre and a half of top quality manure has been spread about the Middle East arms race. Tyrants with ‘A’ bombs, huge armies with trigger fingers: all the things we should really be thinking about before nodding off to sleep at night. But, in its favour, I’d like to say that whatever piece of Iraq’s anti-aircraft defence system lay lodged in Jimmy’s leg, it vastly improved the quality of the walk we made back to the terminal building. Here, I believe, you have in microcosm, an example of the way the universe rights itself quite nicely, thank you very much.

‘Sorry about this, Jack, old boy,’ hissed Jimmy as he treated his gammy thigh to a full Thai massage. ‘Damn leg feels like it’s got an army of red ants living inside it. I shouldn’t try to do so much. Damn embarrassing holding you up like this. You should be inside, you being our guest of honour and all that.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ I said, enjoying the change of pace. ‘After all, what’s a bit of shrapnel among friends?’

‘Friendly fire,’ he replied and a dark look passed fleetingly across his face.

‘Then be thankful it’s only Iraqi shrapnel in there, Jimmy,’ I said. ‘Think of the damage American shrapnel might have done. And while you’re about it: thank the good Lord that you still have your kneecaps below and your lobes of manhood above. What lies between is mere thigh.’

‘Actually,’ he carried on, ‘it’s not technically shrapnel that’s in there. The bit the medics didn’t dare dig out was actually part of the missile’s guidance system. Odd thing is, whenever I go near a warm engine, I swear that I’m drawn to its heat signature.’

‘I had an uncle who felt the same way towards goats,’ I assured him as though both were quite normal.

He winced as he flexed his leg a few times and stood upright. ‘Let’s be going shall we?’

‘Take your time, Jimmy, there’s no rush,’ I said though admittedly, we had been walking slower than my wetlands friend who had managed to stretch out a good lead on his leash.

Mr. Mullins had clearly been delighted by the casual stroll while I had discovered the solace to be had by being outpaced by a duck. He walked between the two of us with what I perceived to be a happy sway to his waddle. And I was happy because Mr. Mullins was happy. In an odd sort of way, I had come to love that little aquatic friend of mine and the sense of calm he gave me by just having him around. The old Squadron Leader was also happy because like any old Squadron Leader, he was as keen as American mustard to get some aircraft into the sky. Even as he limped along, he kept licking the unhygienic end of a finger and pointing it to the heavens.

‘Gates open at ten,’ he explained as he checked the large luminous face of his aviator’s watch for the fifth time in that many minutes. ‘That’s T minus two minutes and three two one seconds,’ he added, and for all I know, he may well have scanned that figure from one of the instrument’s many dials.

‘Neither Mr. Mullins nor myself can hardly wait,’ I said him as I watched my small friend give beak to a weed coming up through the runway.

‘I’ll take you up to the hospitality HQ for a quick sit down,’ Jimmy carried on. ‘Catch your breath. Cup of tea. Snifter if you like. Meet a few of the VIPs. Then we’ll have you out, ready to give the old girl the wave off at ten thirty.’

It really was a bravura performance and he topped it off by curling a finger under his moustache and starting to whistle the theme tune to ‘The 633 Squadron’.

‘You’ve certainly got the weather for it,’ I said, not being such a fan of a man whistling as much as I am a great admirer of an amiable amble.

‘Just like 1940,’ agreed Jimmy and looked again at the puffy thingums against the azure whatnot. He stopped for a moment and I believe got a little teary eyed as he gazed at the contrails from the immensely high jets overhead. I didn’t know if he expected me to say a few words and I spent an awkward few moments desperately trying to recall the usual speech I give on Remembrance Day.

I remembered it was something about not forgetting...

I needn’t have bothered. The moment passed as Jimmy licked his finger again and tested the wind.

‘You ever wanted to be one of the Few, J.P.?’ he asked. ‘I know I do. I spend hours wondering what it would have been like to take charge of a Spitfire during the Battle of Britain. Hands on with the old Tommy guns and none of this fire and forget nonsense.’

‘Never given it much thought,’ I admitted as we set off again. ‘To be honest, Jimmy, I’m not good in the air. I’m a feet on concrete sort of chap. I once spent the whole of a flight from Manchester to London with my head stuck between my knees.’

‘Ah,’ he said with a knowing purse of the lips. ‘Economy class on Easyjet?’

‘Actually, it was air sickness,’ I replied to correct this terrible slur on a very great company.

‘Oh, air sickness, was it?’ Jimmy pondered. ‘Well, you were probably much better with a spot of air sickness than if you had flown economy class on Easyjet. I have a friend who went to work for them. Odd chap. In his Tornado days he would pick up bits of hedgerow in his undercarriage because he liked to fly so low. I hear he’s doing the same thing with 747s.’ He lips pursed again before his head was back looking up at the clouds before he was off again, limping after Mr. Mullins who had a lead on us the full length of his leash.

All three of us arrived at the terminal building just as the gates opened and the crowds began to stream towards three large tiered grandstands that had been built beyond the perimeter fence.

The aerodrome soon took on the atmosphere of a prison barbeque with heavily tattooed men and women, loaded down with jewellery and radios, moving through the crowd. They resembled a rolling flea market of counterfeit clothes and medallions sure to leave your skin green. There must have been about half an ounce of real gold spread between fifteen hundred bodies.

This really is a new breed of Briton I’ve not yet managed to understand. They live odd, peculiar lives that I know nothing about except they rarely dress for dinner, never eat from anything you need to wash, and appear to be quite well off by doing very little. Looking at them, I realised the fallacy of compulsory voting. I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll have to say it again: democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be. You should at least be expected to wear a tie before you take part.

In stark contrast, the terminal was filled with VIPs who represented a very different culture of this very great nation of ours. There were the usual faces that are always found at civic functions. These are the free grub groupies, many of whom I’ve grown to dislike, a few I’ve learned to tolerate, and a rather smaller number I would actually throw caution to the wind and describe as somewhat likable. I wanted nothing to do with any of them until I could wet my lips with a bit of tonic water.

As Jimmy started to greet his guests, I tied Mr. Mullins to a statue of a Vulcan bomber and made a dash into the crowd to recover a glass of grape juice from a waiter. When I’d got back, Jimmy was chatting to a small dumpling of a woman, stout but for weak ankles and wrists which made her look physically incapable of bending over and petting Mr. Mullins, a task she was actually achieving with no small measure of success.

‘I just have to introduce you two,’ said Jimmy as I approached. He looked down at the woman giving Mullins a back rub. ‘This is Jack,’ he told her. ‘I was telling you about his problem with air sickness? You should tell him about your cure.’ He looked to me. ‘Sounds like just the ticket. Involves sticking peanuts behind your lips.’

The woman stood up and turned to me.

‘Not much use if you have peanut allergy,’ she said in a high piercing voice. Then she smiled. I would say it was like pure sunshine but only if viewed from the surface of Venus. Her skin was a lightly powdered frame to teeth whose whiteness said much for the quality of dental ceramics. I felt compelled to ask her if she put them in bleach at night but held myself in check.

‘There’s really no need to be so formal, Sir James,’ she said. ‘I know Mr. Murgatroid very well.’

‘Do you?’ I asked, remembering neither the face nor the teeth.

‘Of course,’ she said and smiled again, though I really wished she wouldn’t. ‘Of course, Mr. Murgatroid, I never know you suffered from air sickness.’

‘It’s my fatal weakness,’ I said with a jovial rise that quickly ran into jest. ‘Along with alcohol, shotguns, money, and occasional flings with married women. Apart from that, I’m untouchable like you’re your average Greek god.’

‘Well peanuts will cure you,’ she said and hid her mouth behind a glass of red wine.

‘Oh, well,’ said Jimmy backing away, ‘if you’re old friends, I’ll leave you two to talk. Have to make sure things are getting under way. Don’t go far J.P. We’ll need you soon.’ He glanced at the watch. ‘T minus twenty mins,’ he shouted before he promptly limped backwards into glass table, the corner of which caught him on his bad thigh.

The party died for a moment until his scream came to an end.

‘You wouldn’t think that the male voice could get so high,’ I was about to comment to the woman but I found her examining my features quite closely.

I smiled, for once uncertain about myself.

‘Have I got something on my nose?’ I asked when it became apparent that she wasn’t for saying anything.

Instead, she extended her hand.

‘I’m Millicent Granger,’ she said.

I might have topped Jimmy’s note when I realised I had already shake the fiend’s hand. I still don’t know why I did it. Politeness has some an overbearing presence in one’s life that one struggles to keep it subdued at times.

‘Thump!’ I said, stuck for the suitable lingo. I looked to Mr. Mullins but even he seemed lost for quacks.