Damned Good Show by Derek Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

his legs. Covered in ugly black hair. Except the feet. Why no hair on the feet? Nasty-looking things, feet. And kneecaps. Both bald as an egg. Not things of beauty. So God created trousers.
    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.”
    â€œTrousers come in pairs,” he said. “Nobody has ever seen one trouser all on its own. Odd, isn’t it?”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œCuriouser 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œLet ’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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œAnd you don’t seem hugely upset about it.”
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œQuite stunning. You look slightly stunned.”
    â€œThat’s hunger.”
    They lunched at the Randolph. Watercress soup, braised pheasant and bottled Guinness, lemon syllabub.
    â€œNow that we know each other rather better,” he said, “and since this suit obviously wasn’t made for you …”
    â€œIt’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—”
    â€œSlow down. Who was father?”
    â€œWho 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.”
    â€œFor a piece of thistledown, you’re a hearty eater.”
    â€œI 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