The Crew Read Online Free PDF

like crews usually did.
    â€˜Lend us five bob, would you, Harry. Just till pay-day.’
    â€˜Five bob!
What for?’
    â€˜I’ve asked this WAAF from Parachutes out to the flicks in Lincoln, see. A real smasher, she is.’
    â€˜You shouldn’t’ve asked her, Bert, if you can’t afford it.’
    â€˜Aw, come on, Harry. You were young – once.’
    â€˜I’ve forgotten what ’twas like.’
    â€˜You’ll ’ave it back next pay-day.’
    â€˜Aye, that’s what you said last time, and it was two of ’em before you coughed up, lad. I don’t know what you do with your money, Bert. You never seem to ’ave any. You ought to learn to manage it a sight better. Save some of it. That’s what we do up north.’
    â€˜Blimey, I didn’t ask for a lecture, Harry. Just five bob. Come on, do us a favour. She’s a corker!’
    â€˜I don’t know . . . you and your girls, Bert. You’ll ’ave to settle down one of these days and stop your larkin’ about.’
    â€˜â€™Ave an ’eart, mate, I’m only nineteen. Don’t want to lock myself up for life yet, do I . . . not if I’ve got any sense. Got to get about a bit first. Find out what’s what. Part of me education, see. Come on, be a sport.’
    Harry sighed. ‘All right. Just this time. But no more, mind.’ He handed over two half-crowns and Bert was out of the door faster than a greyhound out of its starting gate, leaving him alone in the hut. The other crew sergeants they shared with were away on leave, and even Charlie had gone off somewhere.
    He sat down on his iron bed, beneath the line of threadbare RAF blankets slung to dry from the roof. Without the other lads around, the place got him down. It was a right slum and no mistake: what with the blankets overhead, the greatcoats stuck on pegs all along the walls, muddy boots lying around, Stew’s girlie magazines strewn over his mattress, tin-lid ashtrays overflowing with cigarette stubs, unwashedThermos flasks left under beds, a sorry collection of broken old chairs, the empty coal bucket upside down in a corner, an oil drum for a rubbish bin – overflowing. No wonder they got rats.
    They tidied it up now and again, but on an operational station nobody bothered much about inspections and bull like that. Too much else to worry about. And you didn’t notice the mess when everyone was there. It was different then – with all the talk going on and the joking and leg-pulling and the laughs they had.
    He picked up a tattered paperback from the floor.
No Orchids for Miss Blandish.
It fell open where the saucy bits were. They’d all read it in turn but he wasn’t sure that Charlie ought to have read it at all. Personally, he hadn’t thought much of the story, but he’d kept that to himself. He rubbed his hands together. It might be May but he could have done with a bit of warmth from the coke stove – if there’d been any fuel. He felt cold and depressed, and Bert had set him off thinking about things again, which never did any good. There was no girl he wanted to take out. Once bitten, twice shy, that was the trouble. Perhaps if he’d got about like Bert beforehand, he might have known better.
    He sighed and took the creased snapshot of his ex-wife and their daughter out of his breast pocket and stared at it for a while. It had been taken more than four years ago when Paulette had only been a toddler; Rita was holding her in her arms, turning her round to face the camera. When he’d taken the picture the two of them had been all the world to him. Now, he didn’t want to look at Rita at all because the sight always gave him pain, but he hadn’t a photo ofPaulette on her own, so he couldn’t look at one without the other.
    When he’d first set eyes on Rita she’d been working in a tobacconist’s shop in Leeds.