The Daedalus Quartet Box Set by Richard Townshend Bickers

Author:Richard Townshend Bickers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2017-03-27T06:00:00+00:00

Too Late The Morrow

Richard Townshend Bickers

ONE

James Fenton woke when he heard the knock on his door. His batman never made any attempt to be quiet. It was his job to waken Squadron Leader Fenton, who tipped him a pound a month and was pleasant to look after, not to let him sleep on while his tea grew cold. Leading Aircraftman Higgs was a logical man.

James kept his eyes closed. He heard the door shut, LAC Higgs’s boots cross the red linoleum floor, the blackout curtains being jerked open. Higgs put the cup and saucer on the table beside the bed with enough force to rattle them and the spoon without spilling any tea.

‘Good morning, sir. Seven-o’clock.’

James opened his eyes. He knew that it embarrassed Higgs to rouse him by shaking his shoulder, as he sometimes had to after night flying or a riotous evening in the mess.

Higgs was short, thin and in his late twenties. He had sharp features, large red ears and a Suffolk accent. He had been a stable lad in Newmarket before enlisting in the Royal Air Force a year or so before the war. In those days officers’ messes employed civilian servants and Higgs had started his Service career as the lowest form of life, a tradeless aircrafthand, in a Signals section somewhere: mostly cleaning floors and windows and running errands and messages.

With the sudden expansion in numbers, more mess staff were needed. Higgs, who was always conspicuously clean and smart - grooming horses, mucking out stables and polishing tack had taught him a thing or two - was suddenly transformed into a batman. It frightened him, for he held officers in awe. He still felt much the same; hence his reluctance to lay hands on any of his slumbering charges.

Higgs felt at home in the R.A.F. It was an extension of the discipline imposed in a racing stable: and the insistence on neatnss and the care of property were familiar to him. He had liked Newmarket because it was laid out in such an orderly fashion and kept so spick and span. He liked R.A.F. stations for the same reason. He had joined up because it was, he thought, an easier life than being a groom; and his ambition to be a successful jockey was plainly not going to be fulfilled.

James sat up.

‘Good morning, Higgs. What’s the weather doing?’

Higgs, a countryman born and bred, veteran of years of rides out at dawn with a string of racehorses, fancied himself as a weather prophet. He was usually reliable. To his store of folklore he had added snatches of Service jargon.

‘Two-tenths cloud, sir. Wind’s from the west, about ten knots. It’ll stay fine; here, anyway: can’t say what it’s like over there.’

‘Over there’ meant enemy-occupied France; and the way Higgs said it, one would suppose that it was as distant and mysterious as central Africa. To him, it probably was. He had been around a fair number of racecourses, but never further than Felixstowe of his own volition.

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