Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton Page B

Wilderness relished. It was like swapping masks at the ball.
    “Quite. It does. It means I’m not going to let you go on square bashing. It would be a waste of everybody’s time. You’re moving to my operation.”
    “What? The Guards?”
    “Regiments are meaningless. You’ll be a trainee for a while, in fact for six months at least. If you pass you’ll be in an Intelligence unit, and for the time being that’s all you need to know about it. You’ll still be in the RAF for purposes of pay and uniform, but effectively not. You need never go on parade again, no one will put you through a crack of dawn kit inspection. You’ll answer to me. And I’ll tell you now, you make trouble, you fuck up . . . I’ll just send you back here for the bunch of twats to pick over your bones.”
    No was not an option. Technically, in shoving Bodell aside Wilderness had struck an NCO. He’d spent the last four days in the glasshouse. He knew he was looking at six months in a military prison.
    “Fine, sir. Where do you want me?”
    “Cambridge. Queen’s College. You’ll be learning Russian and German.”
    §30
    Much to his surprise this transfer—which Wilderness saw as something between being booted out and being rescued—was regarded by the RAF as just another posting. He was paid up to date—an unprincely two pounds and six shillings—and he was allowed forty-eight hours embarkation leave.
    He avoided Turpin and Bodell, since it seemed obvious that they would resent his dodging the glasshouse, would therefore have it in for him and be looking for one last way to take a poke—and whilst it was tempting to make up his bed by numbers, lay out his kit to a grid and then unzip and piss all over the lot, it was a temptation readily resisted.
    He spent a quiet, sad weekend back in Sidney Street—Merle poised wistfully in front of a cold cup of tea lamenting the downturn in trade since peace broke out—walked the streets of the old manor in search of faces he knew, concluded that everyone he’d ever known, every kid and every scallywag, was now in uniform and elsewhere, and boarded a Cambridge train at Liverpool Street Station two days later, not glad to be there, or anywhere, but feeling that he was nowhere, and hoping this sensation would not last.
    Much more to his surprise Burne-Jones met him off the London train at Cambridge Station.
    “You thought I wouldn’t show up?” Wilderness asked.
    “Nothing of the kind. And don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Or in this case a gift MG in the radiator.”
    Wilderness had never thought much about cars. They had always been beyond his reach. He knew no one who owned a car. He’d never even been in a London taxi. He’d not yet learnt to drive. But if he did, when he did, this, a neat little open-topped 1938 MG two-seater, was what he’d like to own.
    “Sling your kit bag in the back.”
    Driving up Hills Road towards Parker’s Piece, Burne-Jones said, “You’re in digs a couple of streets from here. There’ll be no room in college, what with dozens of chaps returning to pick up the degrees they put on hold during the war. But you’ll be fine. Besides, you get a taste of living in hall and it could spoil you for life.”
    “Maybe I’m ready to be spoiled. Very few opportunities to get spoiled have come my way.”
    “My point exactly. You’re vulnerable. Seducible by easy living. And if you get seduced . . . you’re no bloody good to me.”
    Wilderness handed over his kit bag to his new landlady—an aproned, tiny, floury, cockney woman called Mrs. Wissit, who looked not unlike his great-aunts and who did not look likely to seduce him—and dashed back to the car.
    “We’ll go into college. I’ll introduce you to a few people I know.”
    “You went to Cambridge yourself?”
    “Yes. Magdalene. 1920 to 1923, and again in 1926 for my master’s. Hasn’t changed much. I’ll show you around. There’ll be about a dozen other chaps doing the crash course with you.