Free The Yellow Room Conspiracy by Peter Dickinson

it. Other ranks like me did wear uniform, but for instance Dora got away with far more make-up than she’d have been allowed in the proper army, and I wore my hair down a lot of the time. But not on the weekly parade, my goodness no. CSM Barnett would have exploded. He was an enormous man with a face like a ham and a ginger moustache which he could make bristle, the way a dog can make its hackles stand up, and he’d put his face six inches from yours and yell in a voice you could hear on the other side of the parade ground. He would yell at the officers, too. That’s how I found out about Beano having gone to Eton.
    â€œAnd where were you at school, Mr Fish, sir!!?”
    Mumble mumble.
    â€œWell, you’re not at bleeding Eton now, sir! You’re in His Majesty’s Armed Forces, sir!! And in His Majesty’s Armed Forces … we … stand … up … straight!!! SIR!!!”
    The ‘sir’ was the most insulting part. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Beano making a huge effort and drawing himself up to six foot two. I’ll try him, I thought. He might know Gerry.
    Dora wasn’t at all keen on Beano. “He’ll make a mess of it,” she said. But in the end she agreed it was better for me to try with someone I wanted than with someone I didn’t and she got her friend Sergeant Hattersley in Transport to fix things. Beano was due a forty-eight-hour pass, but there was a hitch and the pass wasn’t ready so he didn’t get away with the main transport and Sergeant Hattersley said he’d fix him a spare truck. At that point I turned up with my own forty-eight, and of course I’d missed the transport too, so the obvious thing was for me to go in Beano’s truck, only it was still in the workshop having something done to its engine. Sergeant Hattersley swore it would be along, and he’d drive it himself—he was having a lovely time, winking at me behind Beano’s back and then keeping a straight face for Beano—but it didn’t come and it didn’t come until there was only one train left we could catch, and then it did at last, but it sounded pretty sick and half way to the station it conked out. Sergeant Hattersley just managed to get it to chug off the road into a by-lane beside a wood—I’d picked the place a couple of days before—and then he said he’d go and get another truck. He said he’d be about an hour, so we still ought to make the train.
    It was a lovely May evening. We sat in the driver’s cab. I asked Beano if he’d known Gerry, and it turned out he’d been in College too, but in the election above, so he hadn’t known him very well.
    â€œBesides,” he said, “I was a maths specialist, and I was useless at games.”
    It got dark. We found some other people we both knew to talk about. I yawned and said we’d obviously missed the last train and I was going to see if there was anything to sleep on in the back of the truck. Of course there was. Beano pretended he was happy to sleep in the cab, but he didn’t need a lot of persuading that he’d be much more comfortable in the back.
    The birds woke us before it was properly light, making the usual racket. I lay quiet, feeling extremely pleased with myself. Dora had been right about David being a first-timer, but wrong about him making a mess of it.
    â€œDid that really happen?” he asked in a dreamy voice. “And if so, how?”
    I hadn’t realised he was awake. I’d already decided I was going to tell him. I didn’t want him falling in love or anything. He lay there, thinking about it. Then he laughed.
    â€œBut why me?” he said.
    â€œI heard CSM Barnett yelling at you for being at Eton,” I said. “So I thought you might know Gerry. It was a sort of introduction, I suppose.”
    He laughed again, differently.
    â€œGood Lord,” he said. “Who’d have