Free Rising Summer by Mary Jane Staples Page A

He knew he’d not only been diddled, he also knew he had no hope of discovering how. His dog seemed to share his frustration. It growled. ‘Down, Jupiter,’ he said, ‘down, boy. You’ll have to wait. But we’ll get ’em. The whole festering bunch are in on it, I shouldn’t wonder. But who’s the ripe pineapple, who’s the po-faced ringleader?’ He looked piercingly at me. ‘Is it you, Hardy?’ I kept quiet. ‘You’ve got all the chat and the crust and he’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?’
    ‘Who, sir?’
    ‘The village black marketeer, Jim Beavers.’
    ‘I wouldn’t call him that, sir.’
    ‘I’ll get the bleeder,’ said Major Moffat, ‘and anyone else who’s his partner in crime. This is a deferred hanging party. All right, dismiss them, staff.’
    Dismissed, we filed out. The Dalmatian rumbled. I made my way to the orderly room. Heads lifted as I entered. Corporal Deborah Watts, standing beside Sergeant Johnson’s desk, showed a slight wrinkle in one stocking.
    ‘Pull ’em up, Deb,’ I said.
    ‘Beg your pardon?’
    ‘Yes, message from Major Moffat. Pull ’em up.’
    Knowing what that meant, Corporal Watts took a look at her stockings. ‘Some people,’ she said and retired behind her desk to sit down and do what was necessary.
    ‘Well, Hardy,’ said Sergeant Johnson, ‘been remanded pending a court-martial, have you?’
    ‘Tim, was it really you?’ asked Corporal Deirdre Allsop, currently the ambition of a GI from Baltimore and accordingly looking most of the time as if the war was a bit of an irrelevance.
    ‘Was it me what?’ I asked, sitting down.
    ‘Were you the juice flogger, that’s what,’ said Bombardier Wilkins.
    ‘It fell down dead,’ I said.
    ‘What did?’ asked Frisby, in line to become Cecily’s friendly psychoanalyst.
    ‘The inquiry. It fell down dead. False alarm.’
    ‘Sounds like the triumph of iniquity to me,’ said Sergeant Johnson.
    ‘No, survival of the innocent,’ I said. ‘Jesus was with us.’
    Later, I ran into Sergeant Masters. In the hall. ‘I was coming to see you,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
    ‘Not guilty.’
    ‘You got away with it?’ she asked disbelievingly.
    ‘It all went up in smoke,’ I said. ‘You’re a good old sergeant, thanks for your help and I’m overlooking what you told Gunner Dunwoodie about me.’
    ‘I’m touched,’ she said, ‘but why I let you turn me into a half-wit I’ll never know.’
    ‘Hand of friendship, that was,’ I said. ‘Look, we could have a few dates, if you feel keen enough.’
    ‘I think we’ve already got a date,’ she said.
    ‘Have we? I didn’t know.’
    ‘I’m working on it,’ she said and whisked away up the stairs to her out-of-bounds sanctum. Her stocking seams were arrow-straight.
    I called on Jim that evening. In the twilight. Halfway down the village street, I met Minnie. What a walking advertisement she was for all that the rural life of Suffolk could do for a cockney girl. Not only had she acquired a healthy country look, but her fair hair was the colour of ripe corn. But was it Suffolk or Camberwell that had made a minx of her?
    In a blue dress, she danced up to me. ‘Oh, you Tim,’ she said in her usual scatty way.
    ‘All right, you Min, take it easy, I’ve had a long day.’
    ‘Blessed old war,’ said Min, ‘but bliss meetin’ you. I’ll put it down in me diary tonight, like I always do. I’ll put down I met Tim and ’e give us a good ’un.’
    ‘What good ’un?’
    ‘Kiss,’ said Minnie.
    ‘Not likely, I’m fighting that.’
    ‘Won’t do you no good, Tim,’ she said, her smile stunning. ‘Glad you got off, Mum said if you didn’t she’d knock Dad’s block off.’
    ‘How’d you know I got off?’
    ‘Little dicky bird flew in, didn’t it?’ she said and laughed. Then she gave me an accusing look. ‘Dad said you’re gettin’ to know that American girl sergeant. You’d better not.’
    ‘Better not what?’
    ‘Break ’er legs, I