Free Crossfire by Dick;Felix Francis Francis Page A

don’t tell anyone.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I won’t.”
    False legs clearly brought some small benefit after all.
    Funny how rules can be so easily ignored with the application of a modicum of common sense. Security? What security?
     
     
    I found it was surprisingly easy to drive with a false foot. A few practice circuits of the parking lot and I was ready for the public highway. And I was much more confident about arriving safely at my destination with me driving with only one real leg than I had been in Isabella’s VW with her driving with two.
    She insisted on following me the nine miles from Pirbright to Aldershot.
    “You might need help carrying your things,” she’d said. “And you won’t get much of it into that.”
    True, my Jaguar XK coupé was pretty small, but Isabella obviously had no idea how little I had acquired in the way of stuff during fifteen years in the army. I could probably have fitted it into my car twice over. But who was I to turn down the help of a pretty woman even if she was married?
    We negotiated the busy Surrey and Hampshire roads without any mishaps and, surprisingly, without my Jag being overtaken by Isabella’s dark blue Golf, although I was sure she was going to on a couple of occasions before she obviously remembered she didn’t know the way.
    “Is that all ?” Isabella was amazed. “I’d take more than that on a dirty weekend to Paris.”
    I was standing next to two navy blue holdalls and a four-foot-by-four-inch black heavy-duty cardboard tube. Between them they contained all my meager worldly possessions.
    “I’ve moved a lot,” I said, as an explanation.
    “At least you don’t have to engage Bekins to shift that lot.” She laughed. “What’s in the tube?”
    “My sword.”
    “What, a real sword?” She was surprised.
    “Absolutely,” I said. “Every officer has a sword, but it’s for ceremonial use only these days.”
    “But don’t you have any furniture?”
    “No.”
    “Not any?”
    “No. I’ve always used the army stuff. I’ve lived in barrack blocks all my adult life. I’ve never even known the luxury of an en suite bathroom, except on holiday.”
    “I can’t believe it,” she said. “What century is it?”
    “In the army? Twenty-first for weaponry, other than the sword, of course, but still mostly in the nineteenth for home comforts. You have to understand that it’s the weapons that matter more than the accommodations. No soldier wants a cheap rifle that won’t fire when his life depends on it, or body armor that won’t stop a bullet, all because some civil-service jerk spent the available money on a flush toilet.”
    “You men,” Isabella said. “Girls wouldn’t put up with it.”
    “The girls don’t fight,” I said. “At least, not in the infantry. Not yet.”
    “Will it happen?” she asked.
    “Oh, I expect so,” I said.
    “Do you mind?”
    “Not really, as long as they fight as well as the men. But they will have to be strong to carry all their kit. The Israeli army scrapped their mixed infantry battalions when they suspected the men were carrying the girls’ kits in return for sex. They were also worried that the men would stop and look after a wounded female colleague rather than carry on fighting.”
    “Human nature is human nature,” Isabella said.
    “Certainly is,” I replied. “Any chance of a bonus?”

5
    B ack at Kauri House Stables there was still tension in the air between my mother and her husband. I suspected that I’d interrupted an argument as I went through the back door into the kitchen with my bags at three o’clock on Monday afternoon.
    “Where has all that stuff come from?” my mother asked with a degree of accusation.
    “It’s just my things that were in storage,” I said, “while I was away.”
    “Well, I don’t know why you’ve brought it all here,” she said rather crossly.
    “Where else would I take it?”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” she said with almost a sob. “I