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The RAF were fed up and started the lorry with a jerk so as to throw the blasted bunch of officers out of the back. It was a short flight; I was decanted out at Croydon airport. Then Southbourne and the baby – a cheerful little mite and apparently glad to see me. My mother and father were anxious as if they expected me to be in a bad way. Would I consent to have the baby adopted? Of course there would be formalities. … I was too outraged to understand that it was intended to be a serious question. Thick, slow-witted as ever, I undid the mass of ordnance towels I had been allowed to buy – and, crowning glory, zip fasteners! How Betty would have … she had mentioned how awkward it was never to be able to get zip fasteners for a number of jobs she would have to do – especially when the baby was born. When? That was now.
People were very helpful; someone said they knew of an arrangement that could temporarily provide the baby with all the care needed for the first year. “No”, I said. I seemed unable to think of any other word to use.
I joined the suburban souls of sub-men and sub-women with subsouls. I did not know who to be or what to be when death took my mate who was not a coward, and left me with a baby and £8000 to get on with. The £8000 we had saved out of my pay ‘just in case’. In case what? I would have done better if I had had the sense to make the best of a bad job. In fact it seems now that it has always been the bad jobs, the hated jobs, the terrifying jobs that have made some sense of me.
The war, so they said, ended. Tub-thumping Montgomery, who fortunately knew how to thump other things besides tubs, broke out of the bridgehead at Rouen, trapped the big German forces sent to throw him out of France, and with the aid of his Air Force destroyed
a considerable number of Wehrmacht. Later, the ability of the American forces to thump tubs made me aware that thumping tubs has a long history and great achievements to its credit: thumping one's own chest can produce