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By Root 132 0

changed to protect the innocent) is waiting. A tiny almost unnoticeable sign says LIAP PARTY NO. 26 ASSEMBLE HERE. We’ll never do it, it’s much too small to stand on. We move slowly up the gangplank like shuffling penguins. I’m humping a kitbag, big pack and trumpet case. The kitbag is vital, it contains all the hoarded underwear that my mother has promised will put me on the road to success in civvy street. And I will never be taken short. The officers in first class look down at our huddled mass from the top deck. “There’s one thing we’ve got over them, Len, we can see right up their noses.” A clatter of donkey engines and French steam; hawsers plummet into the waters. Cries of yo, ho, ho, and the ship slips from the quay into the muddy waters of Calais harbour, but soon we are free from the muddy French waters and out into the pure English Channel and its muddy waters. It’s very choppy; ere long the first victims are starting to retch. Whereas other ranks are seasick, officers only have Mal-de-Mer, as befits the King’s commission. Sleek white gulls glide alongside. In their total freedom, we must look like a bunch of caged monkeys. It’s getting rougher; three green men are throwing up at the rail. Thank God for gravity.

Landlords Ahoy!

Frightening Folkestone on the Kardboard Kow! The golden seaport hove into view; I would rather have viewed into Hove. It’s raining, and doing the gardens good. We are close to the quay.

“It looks so bloody foreboding,” Len says. “I think I’ll go back.”

I remind him that his dear little wife is at this moment panting on her bed with the heating turned up and drinking boiling Horlicks.

The customs are pretty hot. “Read that, please.” I am handed a foolscap sheet of writing.

“Very good,” I say.

“Have you anything to declare?”

I declare that the war is over. He’s not satisfied. What have I got in the case. It’s a trumpet. Can he see it. He opens the case. Where did I buy this? In London. Have I got a receipt? Yes. Where is it? It’s in an envelope in a drawer in my mother’s dressing-table in Reigate.

He hums and haws, he’s as stupid as a pissed parrot. “Empty your kitbag.” I pour out a sea of my second-hand underwear. He turns it over and over. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The contents.” He thinks it’s the wrapping for something. Why have I got so many underpants? I tell him of my mother’s forecast of the coming world shortage that will* hit England soon. He is now pretty pissed off. OK. He makes a yellow chalk mark on everything. Next to me he finds a poor squaddie with a bottle of whisky. “You’ll have to pay One Pound Ten Shillings on that,” he says with malice aforethought.

“Oh no I won’t,” says the squaddie.

“Than I’ll have to confiscate it.”

The squaddie opens the bottle and hands it round to us. With devilish glee we help lower the level to halfway, then the squaddie puts the bottle to his lips and drains it. The customs officer is in a frenzy, says to an MP, “Arrest that man.”

The M P wants to know why.

“Drunkenness,” he says.

“He’s not drunk,” says the M P.

“Wait,” says the customs officer.

From the quay to the station, we are now free of military encumbrances. Just for the hell of it we go into a little teashop in the high road. It’s very quiet. Three middle-aged ladies are serving.

“Tea, love?” says one in black with a little white apron.

“Yes, tea love.” That, and a slice of fruit cake that tastes like sawdust. The sugar is rationed to two lumps. The war isn’t quite over yet. We pay tenpence. Folkestone station and the 11.40 train to Charing Cross. London is as I left it -black, grimy, rainy but holes in the terraces where bombs have fallen. Len and I split.

“See you in four weeks’ time, two stone lighter and skint,” he says.

I buy my first English newspapers for two years. The Daily Herald, the Daily Mail, the Express, the Mirror, the News Chronicle. I go straight for my beloved Beachcomber and find that Justice Cocklecarrot and the Red Bearded Dwarfs are still in court. He is sentencing a Mrs Grotts for repeatedly pushing the Dwarfs into people’s