RULES. ‘TACWARGAME’. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
You might think you know your boss, but you don’t. Not unless you’ve seen him at home on Sunday.
There are only three trains to Little Omber on Sunday. The one I caught was almost empty except for a couple of Saturday-night revellers, three couples taking babies to show Mums, two priests going to the seminary and half a dozen soldiers connecting with the express.
Little Omber is only thirty-five miles from central London but it is remote, and rural in a genteel way: frozen fish fingers, and picture-window housing-estates for the young executive.
I waited at the deserted railway station. I hardly knew Charles Schlegel the third, Colonel US Marine Corps Wing (retired), so I was expecting anything from a psychedelic Mini to a chauffeured Rover. He’d taken over the Studies Centre only ten days before I’d gone off on my last sea trip, and our acquaintance had been limited to a Charles Atlas handshake and a blurred glimpse of a pin-striped Savile Row three piece, and a Royal Aero Club tie. But that didn’t mean that he hadn’t already scared the shit out of half the staff, from the switchboard matron to the night door-keeper. There was a rumour that he’d been put in to find an excuse for closing the Centre down, in support of which he was authoritatively quoted as saying we were ‘an antediluvian charity, providing retired limey admirals with a chance to win on the War Games Table the battles they’d screwed up in real life’.
We all resented that remark because it was gratuitous, discourteous and a reflection on all of us. And we wondered how he’d found out.
Bright red export model XKE – well, why didn’t I guess. He came out of it like an Olympics hurdler and grasped my hand firmly and held my elbow, too, so that I couldn’t shake myself free. ‘It must have got in early,’ he said resentfully. He consulted a large multi-faced wristwatch of the sort that can time high-speed races under water. He was wearing charcoal trousers, hand-made brogues, a bright-red woollen shirt that exactly matched his car, and a shiny green flying jacket, with lots of Mickey Mouse on sleeves and chest.
‘I screwed up your Sunday,’ he said. I nodded. He was short and thickset, with that puffed-chest stance that small athletes have. The red shirt, and the way he cocked his head to one side, made him look like a gigantic and predatory robin redbreast. He strutted around the car and opened the door for me, smiling as he did so. He wasn’t about to apologize.
‘Come on up to the house for a sandwich.’
‘I have to get back,’ I argued without conviction.
‘Just a sandwich.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He let in the clutch, and heel-and-toed like a rally driver. He gave the car the same sort of attention that I suppose he’d given his F-4 or his B-52 or his desk, or whatever it was he flew before they unleashed him onto us. ‘I’m glad it was you,’ he said. ‘You know why I say that?’
‘Man management?’
He gave me a little you’ll-find-out-buddy smile.
‘I’m glad it was you,’ he explained slowly and patiently, ‘because I haven’t had a chance of a pow-wow with you or Foxwell, on account of the mission.’
I nodded. I liked the glad-it-was-you stuff. You’d have thought the message said anyone who’d like a free train ride to Little Omber this Sunday could go.
‘Goddamned imbecile,’ he muttered as he overtook a Sunday driver tooling down the white line, chatting with his kids in the back seat.
Close to Schlegel, I could see that the sun-lamp tan was there to disguise the complicated surgery he’d had on his jaw. What from a distance might look like the legacy of acne was a pattern of tiny scars that gave one side of his face the permanent hint of a scowl. Sometimes his face puckered enough to bare his teeth in a curious lopsided humourless smile. He did one now. ‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘Yank trouble-shooter, hundred missions in Nam. They probably are saying I’m a hatchet man.’ He paused. ‘Are they saying that?’
‘I’ve heard it whispered.’
‘What else?’
‘They are saying that you are taking the staff aside one by one and giving them a working over.’ They weren’t saying that – as far as I knew – but I wanted to get his reaction.
‘Like this?’
‘Let’s wait and see.’
‘Huh.’ He did that crooked smile again. He slowed to go through the village. This was really home-counties stuff: six shops and five of them selling real estate. It was the kind of authentic English village that only Germans, Americans and real-estate men can afford. At the far end of the village there were four locals in their Sunday clothes. They turned to watch us pass. Schlegel gave them a stiff-armed salutation like the ones in that old English war film. They nodded and smiled. He turned off the road at a plastic sign that said ‘Golden Acre Cottage. Schlegel’ in ye olde English lettering. He gunned the motor up the steep track and fired gravel and soft earth from the deep-tread tyres.
‘Nice place,’ I said, but Schlegel seemed to read my thoughts. He said, ‘When they cut my orders they said I must be within easy access of NATO/ASW down the road at Longford Magna. Your government won’t let us Yanks buy a place to live – by law, by law! And half the county is owned by the same English lord who’s got his finger in my eye.’ He slammed on the brakes and we slid to a halt inches short of his front door. ‘A goddamn lord!’
‘You haven’t started Chas off about the landlord, I hope,’ said a woman from the doorway.
‘This is my bride, Helen. There are two daughters and a son around the house someplace.’
He’d parked outside a large thatched cottage, with black cruck-frame timbers and freshly whitened plaster. Placed on the front lawn there was a very old single-furrow plough and over the front door there was a farming implement that I didn’t recognize. The daughters arrived before I was even half out of the car. Slim, fresh-faced, clad in jeans and brightly coloured lambswool sweaters, it was difficult to tell wife from teenage daughters.
‘What a wonderful thatching job,’ I said.
‘Plastic,’ said Schlegel. ‘Real thatch harbours vermin. Plastic is cleaner, quicker and longer lasting.’
Mrs Schlegel said, ‘Gee, Chas, you should have told me. I was only doing BLTs for lunch.’
‘BLTs, Helen! You want to send him into a state of shock? These Brits strike into roast beef with all the trimmings for Sunday lunch.’
‘A bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich will be fine, Mrs Schlegel.’
‘Helen, call me Helen. I sure hope Chas hasn’t been too rude about our English landlord.’
The Southern United States – its climate and terrain so suitable for training infantry and aviators – has played a part in moulding the character of American military men. And it is there that so disproportionately many of them met their wives. But Mrs Schlegel was no Southern belle. She was a New Englander, with all the crisp assurance of that canny breed.
‘He’d have to be a lot ruder before he could hope to offend me … er … Helen.’ The sitting-room had a big log fire perfuming the centrally heated air.
‘A drink?’
‘Anything.’
‘Chuck made a jug of Bloody Marys before going to meet you.’ She was no longer young, but you could have prised that snub nose and freckled face out of a Coke commercial. The teenager’s grin, the torn jeans and relaxed hands-in-pocket stance made me happy to be there.
‘That sounds just right,’ I said.