Free Ormerod's Landing by Leslie Thomas

skylark! Well, almost. Row ashore. If something goes wrong you may have to swim.'
    'I can't swim, said Ormerod stonily.
    'Oh God,' said Gerry, concern wrapped around his face. 'They always overlook something. Do you remember that chap who went to Norway, Charles, suffered from snow-blindness.'
    'Black chaps often do,' said Charles.
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    'Black?' said Ormerod with slowly realized horror. 'You sent a black man to Norway?'
    'Bad planning,' agreed Gerry. 'Bloody bad. But, as I said, we've hardly got ourselves organized properly yet.'
    'Anyway,' said Charles firmly, wanting to get away from that aspect, 'there's no time to teach you to swim now. Not unless you're a damn quick learner. You'll be on your way in twenty-four hours.'
    Ormerod felt a stone turn in his stomach. 'That soon?' he said.
    'That soon,' confirmed Gerry. 'Time and tide and all that nonsense, you know.'
    'What about the other agent, the lady?' asked Ormerod. 'I thought I was going to meet her today.'
    'Stood you up, I shouldn't wonder,' laughed Charles.
    'She'll be with you later, don't fret,' said Gerry. 'She'll join you at Portsmouth. That's where you get the sub. I gather she's really something. Wouldn't mind toddling off with her myself.'
    They sat looking at him in a special sort of silence after that for what seemed like several cold minutes. Then Charles said apologetically, I wish we could tell you more about what will happen, Ormerod. But to tell you the blessed truth we don't know. Somehow you've got to get from Chausey Island to the mainland. We must hope the natives are friendly.' He got up and went to the map and scribbled his finger across it. 'Obviously they'll have to land you somewhere quiet on the mainland. But there are lots of small beaches and such like and the Germans can't be properly organized in Normandy. I mean, they've hardly had time to move in. There must be lots of loopholes. In a way, I suppose, it's just as well you're the early bird, one of the first back. Catch them before they've got their flies done up, as it were.' He saw something on the map. 'See, here's an appropriate beach, and ha! Look at this, Gerry, what a name! St Jean le Thomas! St John Thomas, dammit!'
    Gerry bounced up and laughed youthfully. Ormerod accepted their invitation to see the place was genuine, that it was no joke. He smiled woodenly. Another half an hour of this, he thought, and I'll kill these two bastards before I've ever laid a finger on the Germans.
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    There was another twenty minutes of it. At the end they said they couldn't help him any further. He was on his own. He thanked them without enthusiasm. 'Get a good night's sleep,' advised Charles. 'No sloping off down the pub.' They laughed again heartily but when Ormerod did not join in they lapsed into hurt silence. 'The car will be along in a minute,' said Charles huffily. They shook hands stiffly with him and he went out.
    He knocked on the door of the old man from the Public Records Office. 'I'd like to see the Magna Carta,' he said. 'If it's convenient.'
    'If I'm going to die,' he thought, 'I might as well see what I'm dying for.'
    It rained the next day, the variety of rain peculiar to dockyard towns like Portsmouth, a lean sea-hung drizzle across the grim wartime streets and the grey and crowded naval tenements in the port. Seagulls croaked in the wet. Ormerod was taken to a naval barracks and there, as if it were part of a well-oiled and minutely rehearsed operation, he was once again given lunch in a deserted room. He ate moodily, although he had been eating alone for weeks, reflecting that this was how he had felt when he was in quarantine with chicken pox as a boy. Every now and then someone came and stared through the window at him, patently knowing that he was something of a curiosity, and then went away. He found himself becoming bad-tempered at this, unusually so, but he put it down to the proximity of the dangerous mission. As he was eating his Royal Navy rhubarb and custard he poked