Tornado Pratt (24 page)

I was good with tanks right from the kick-off and my confidence began to come back. I learned the manual practically by heart until I knew every nut and bolt in the vehicle. But my particular
speciality
was judging terrain. In those days, the chief danger to armour was not enemy action but landscape. Swamps, rocks, hills, streams—lots of things could stop a tank. You see a little forest ahead—can you crash through or are you going to get a stump through your tread? I could glance at the country and mentally see a road for my tank. I could take a hillside steeper than anyone else because I could feel the old monster’s stability. They gave us a point-
to-point
test over a two hour course. I was home ten minutes before the next steel hulk came pounding in.

That night I was laying on my bunk after lights out, mentally bucking round the course again and feeling proud as punch and suddenly I saw my future. I was going to be the best damned
soldier in the world. The old Tornado had blown himself out—right, a new one, a martial one, was going to conquer the empire of arms. I didn’t see myself as a budding Caesar or Alexander. I wanted to soldier and play a part, as big a part as all my sinew and intelligence could embrace, in toppling the new, brutal Caesars of Europe. I was good with tanks. Well, I was going to be better with small arms. I was going to master artillery, learn to fly,
something
of navigation, tactics and strategy, logistics—I was going to get the boss of this trade. I was a buck private, a rooky, and it never occurred to me to aim higher. It wasn’t rank I aspired to but proficiency.

Horace, I worked harder for the next two years at soldiering than I ever had as a tycoon. My passion increased. I wasn’t satisfied with getting three bulls on the range. It had to be five. It didn’t gratify me when I had the fastest time in camp at stripping and reassembling a machine-gun. I had to be able to do it blindfolded. To train myself to the highest pitch of physical perfection, I gave up two things that were important to me: cigarettes and women. For a month I was strung up over cigarettes, feeling my brain dispersing with need for tobacco, but I sucked mints and worked out in the gym and in the end I licked it. Never smoked again until Japan surrendered when I accepted a Havana and since then I’ve only smoked cigars. Could use one now, Horace. Could you spare a Corona or get one sent up to my room? I need a cigar, Horace, to complement this martini and this girl—lup—girl is—girl was the other thing, Horace, that I gave up. No more girls for the duration. Except I didn’t quite make that one, Horace. I want you to know I didn’t give up girls because I had primitive ideas about
squandering
my vigour. Hell, no. I knew then as I know now that fucking is the finest thing for health and the best exercise any guy can take. But you see, Horace, the chase was distracting. I was determined I wouldn’t be distracted from my martial training and so I gave up women—or I practically gave them up, Horace. All except one. Funny this is, I can’t remember where I had that one. It could have been in the mountains because we did a mountaineering course in the Rockies. Maybe one afternoon I heaved myself on to a ledge and there was a maiden, curled up like a cougar, who took Tornado into her arms. But that doesn’t seem too probable, Horace, because how would that girl have got up there on the ledge when we had to use ropes to make it? It could have been on the sea-shore because we did disembarkation practice on the beach. You think I could have come plunging in full kit out of a landing craft and stumbled
over a naked, sandy girl who pulled me down on to her? If that had happened the other guys would have made lewd comments and it would have ended up unpleasant for everyone. One time, after I’d only gone solo a couple of times, I bumped down with a coughing engine into a corn field. You suppose there was a corn maiden there, with corn-yellow hair and sky-blue eyes? I just can’t fix the exact occasion, Horace, but I know that once, as I became a warrior, a lipsoft damsel welcomed me into the moist palace of her belly.

I kept inspecting the map of Europe, Horace, and watched Germany spread like a stain. I had this idea that if they’d drop me anywhere in the occupied territory I could scrub it clean single handed. With a cannon in my mouth and machine-guns in each hand I’d go whirling down the German lines. I’d erupt in their base HQ’s like a volcano. I’d burst like thunderbolts on their panzers. I—knew I was the fittest, best trained captain in the marines. Then the general sent for me—yeah, well it’s classified information, Horace, top secret. If the Hun knew who we were he’d send commandos to pick us off individually. There were only twenty of us but the General said he reckoned each of us was worth a battalion, in certain situations a division. We were all colonels but for the first year, though I drew colonel’s pay, I still wore bars on my shoulders. That was to keep us inconspicuous. When the action started and the ETO was crawling with juvenile colonels I put my eagles up. We were trained to do anything from commanding a battalion, or even a corps, to operating single-handed behind enemy lines. We were good enough pilots to mix it with enemy fighters. We were expert with most hand guns. We could do things like pick locks, signal with heliograph, talk German and many others. We were the greatest, the elite!

The day of Pearl Harbour—yeah, I think I told you wrong earlier, Horace. I said I never got laid by Alex which is true but there was another time, which I failed to mention, when it nearly happened. Damn nearly happened. Didn’t I say, about the first time, the abortive time, that her nose got bony? Well I must confirm that. It did get bony—in the end. But it so happens that that was later, after the second time I fancied her and we nearly mixed juices. Her nose got bony at the tip with fleshy wings of a purple hue. It was really the fleshy wings that offended me more than the boniness. But the second time—day of Pearl Harbour—her nose
was practically as good as on the first time when that bitch of a Hitler sabotaged our link. Then we met again after three years and became friends. But on the day of Pearl Harbour we were stretched practically naked on the screened terrace of her Washington house in the sun. What follows now is an irony, boy, the most conspicuous single irony I can recall in the life of Tornado Pratt, which has been rich in irony.

I’m pretty sure I was stripped down to my jock-strap and Alex was wearing nothing but lustrous white pants and for a couple of hours we’d drowsed and talked and petted each other’s pubic regions. My head was on her belly and our bodies made a T. Once in a while I’d bend my head sideways, lift the band of her pants and peek at her black fleece. We both knew that sooner or later I’d start to caress more urgently and we’d rev slowly up into the sumptuous fury of sex. But there was no rush. Above my head gleamed a net of maiden-green, a universe of leaves, that rippled faintly in the faint breeze. And when the zephyrs came the shattered sun sprinkled fire down through the tree. We basked on huge cushions. I turned my head again, this time to the breast side and, as I licked salt from her taut belly, Alex put out her hand and switched on the radio—and a charged voice spoke of bombed battleships. I sighed because I wanted the rage of Alex’s loins not of flaming steel and I was just about to grunt: switch it off, when the message reached me: American ships! The emotional guy was saying that
American
battleships had been bombed.

So do you dig that irony, Horace? Pearl Harbour. On the second and last time I nearly coupled with my beloved Alexandra Wilks, the Nips bombed our union. And so twice, once by Hitler and once by Hirohito, war-lords of the first age of the machine, we were flung apart. I only taste the true bitterness now, Horace, here at Terminus, for she was the second love of my life and I never plumbed her sweet depths.

Alex asked: “How bad is it?”

“Bad?”

“Is that the whole Pacific fleet?”

“There’s carriers—he didn’t say anything about carriers.”

“Why are you dressing?”

“Have to phone base.”

I couldn’t tell Alex that we of the Support Unit (our code name) had orders to report immediately if there was any kind of crisis. This obviously qualified. I put on my uniform and felt something which could have been fear or exhilaration stir in my belly.

“You don’t have to dress to phone.”

“No, but—they may want me—”

“I’ve lived in Japan. Did you know that, Tornado? And—want you? What do you mean, want you?”

“Well, I’m a soldier. They may want me to join my—unit.”

“But we’re not at war. Are we? God, I suppose we are. They won’t send you to fight the Japanese?”

“You never know.”

“But I like the Japanese. I don’t want you to fight the Japanese. I want you to fight the Germans who have wrecked Europe—wrecked it! But do you have to go now, dear Tornado? I thought—didn’t you?—that we were going to make love? My God, aren’t we ever going to make love? You could get killed, couldn’t you? What an amazing thought. Oh, you mustn’t—you mustn’t—promise me you won’t? Oh really—I must stop. You’re only a captain. They may not send you for ages. Oh, those poor men and women—isn’t bombing terrible? And those Japanese—so delicate, aesthetic—the militarism. I always thought it was some kind of ritual, like the tea ceremony. Whoever heard of the Japanese fighting real wars?”

And do you know what she did then, Horace? With her natural crispness, she stood up, flicked down her pants, stepped out of them and nestled into my arms. I smelled her then, after the hot sun, and the pungent musk of her cunt plucked at my resolution. But a quick fuck—in parting? No, when we first made love, I wanted it to be long and rich. Anyhow, I wasn’t sure they’d order me to base immediately. Why should they? They weren’t going to send me to assassinate Hirohito—war hadn’t been declared yet. I squeezed her naked body to my uniform for a few seconds, and then said:

“I have to phone, honey.”

But all the lines to base were jammed and after half an hour I gave up trying. By that time, Alex had dressed and made some sandwiches. There was no more sex in the air. She drove me to the station and waited twenty minutes with me for my train—and that was the last time I saw Alex until after the war.

So then—I got over to England, on a destroyer. No incidents. There weren’t many Americans in England at that time and I was instructed to wear civilian clothes and keep a low profile. I was given a nice apartment, overlooking Regent’s Park, now full of sprouting vegetables, and I had to phone HQ daily for instructions.
Naturally, I soon contacted Harvey and, after a couple of weeks, I was given permission to travel down to Devon and visit him.

Peeved’s not the right word. In some ways—hell!—I was
enchanted
. I guess if I really probe for the truth I was offended or—yeah, hurt. Now, it had been no sweat maintaining my cover since I’d joined the Support Unit. I didn’t want to impress anyone, even Alex. But after a while with Harvey I wanted to shout at him that I wasn’t just a civilian visitor on an obscure official mission, which was what I claimed to be, but a rip-roaring daredevil who was going to wring Hitler’s neck with his own hands. Sad. I wanted to impress Harvey because—I guess I wanted him to take notice of me again, as he had done in the old days. He was, naturally, the soul of courtesy. Assisted by a deferential village lady, he looked after me like a prince. But I sensed that, deep down, he wouldn’t have minded if Tornado had remained on his own whirling grounds. Harvey wanted to forget that he’d ever lived out of England.

No one else got off the train at Ashdale or Ashford or whatever that stop was called and Harvey was the only civilian on the wooden platform. Three soldiers, with heavy packs and rifles, got on the train between Harvey and me who were walking towards each other. As I got closer, a flush of love surged through me and I was on the edge of giving a yowl, leaping forwards and hugging him. But some subtle warning issued from Harvey. He was smiling and, at a glance, I saw how he had changed and how he had remained the same. He looked fifty rather than sixty, with hair shading from white at the temples to iron grey on top. He was still slim but he walked a trifle stiffly and carried a silver-headed stick. He was dressed English country style in tweeds and a cravat. He put out his hand first:

“Tornado!”

“Harvey!”

“Good Lord—well, well—”

And he chuntered on a bit like a squire. He was pure friendship, his eyes roving all over me and his hand wringing mine and yet—his dress, his very smile, suggested a degree of formality that should not be transgressed. He urged:

“Well, come on, we’ll just be in time for tea.”

And that doubled me up. It was straight out of a stiff-upper-lip type of English war movie. I snorted and Harvey asked:

“Ah, now what have I said that’s funny?”

So I explained and Harvey chuckled some. Then he led me out of the station to a quaint little automobile and in it we chugged away into the Arcadia of a fine day in superb English country.

Huge chestnuts and elms stirred in grassy meadows. The roadside banks were a tangle of wild flowers. Thatched cottages and
whitewashed
cottages and old brick houses gleamed in quaint crooks of the road. We puffed through a pretty village and then, about a mile beyond, turned off the road between ramparts of glowing red and purple rhododendron. A moment later, across a sweep of inviting lawn, a small manor house came into view. I made the admiring sounds it deserved and Harvey explained that most of it was laid up.

“It really needs a staff of four or five to run properly and, of course, that’s out of the question now.”

“You live here alone, Harvey?”

“Oh yes. Except for a village woman who comes in to clean and so forth. Rather a hermit as a matter of fact.”

“How about your family?”

“You mean my brother? He’s far too busy with war work. He’s on all kinds of regional boards. Anyway, there was never a great deal of love lost between us.”