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.’‘We can’t allow the whole peninsula to fall,’ Frank Stanton said.The four rings nicely stacked on the arms of his tunic shone very fetchingly under the chandeliers.‘Where else in that region would be lost next?’‘And you were a friend of Ray’s at the officer training unit, were you, Ian?’ Mrs Bain said.‘He used to mention you.’‘A friend and an enemy,’ Bain replied.‘He was defence, I was attack, in an imitation battle one night out on the airfield.Waterloo wouldn’t come anywhere near it for intensity.’‘The various courses competed – sort of war games,’ Emily said.Keep it general, keep it matter-of-fact, keep it playful.‘I was White, Ray was Green,’ Ian said.‘And you stayed at the OCTU afterwards, I gather,’ Mrs Bain said.‘Yes, that’s the convention,’ Frank Stanton said.‘I think it’s quite a valuable practice.Ian can help by passing on to new intakes what he has learned, and what he has excelled in.’‘Ray could have done that, if he’d stayed, could he?’ Mrs Bain said.‘Certainly,’ Stanton said.‘He could probably teach them something else now,’ Mrs Bain replied.‘The luck of the draw, I suppose,’ Mr Bain said.‘Not exactly that,’ Stanton said.‘No, as I understand it from Ray, it’s a kind of reward, a kind of distinction,’ Mrs Bain said.‘One could describe it so, yes,’ Stanton said.‘But also a very practical business.We – the Service – benefit.’‘Ian overtook me quite late on in the merit table,’ Ray Bain said.‘He was the Sword of Honour.’‘By a very narrow squeak,’ Ian said.‘Quite often narrow squeaks are what shape our days, aren’t they?’ Mr Bain said.‘Ian will have to move on to a new posting eventually – so as to make way for future Sword of Honour officers,’ Stanton said.‘Move on to where?’ Mrs Bain asked.‘That will only be decided at the time,’ Stanton said.‘Where the need is.Needs change.’‘Airfields here, there or anywhere,’ Mr Bain said.‘Yes,’ Stanton replied.‘Certainly,’ Emily said, as if she would have some influence in the choice.‘When you say “a very narrow squeak”, Ian, what does that mean? What counted towards the squeak, I wonder?’ Mrs Bain said.‘All quite complex,’ Stanton said.‘Always at the end of these courses it’s a problem sorting out the top people in order,’ Emily replied.‘Many are excellent but one of them has to emerge as supremely excellent.Obviously, I know this only from the strain and worry I detect in Frank at these times.I’m not consulted.No backseat driving.It’s a Service matter.’‘But it must be very stressful for you,’ Mrs Bain said.As Ian saw it, a kind of egomaniacal, very belated gratitude drove Emily.She’d been saved from the sea by his father and come to believe she had failed to show proper thankfulness towards him, by piling most of her farcical praise on dead Corbitty that day at the memorial service, and perhaps generally elsewhere.So, as one way of compensating, transfer the thankfulness, direct it to the rescuer’s son.Help get him a cushy, unendangered posting where he might oversee mock engagements on the airfield, but dodge being part of a real, bone-smashing, potentially slaughterous engagement on another airfield on foreign soil.She’d try to skip the fact that someone had to go out to that other airfield and take the hurt.It would taint her generous policy of recompense.Ian was her generous policy of recompense.His legs proved it.He hated the role, felt subjugated by it, wanted to resist it; loathed the notion of getting selected, elected, as stand-in for his father.He saw himself as caught in the noose of her gratitude.Emily didn’t owe him – Ian – anything.He’d prefer it like that.She’d had a goofy, girl-like adoration for a ship’s captain who’d died for her.OK, understandable.Now, she’d matured into somebody else, and saw that the man who saved her might be just as entitled to hefty thanks.In fact, she’d matured altogether, as her important, deeply unspecified job seemed to prove.She didn’t have to go on making it up to Ian because she’d slighted his diving dad for a while.She was continually looking for means to reward those she’d injured.He recalled words in her letter about Ray Bain’s medal.‘Isn’t that wonderful news in so many ways?’ The ‘in so many ways’ meant, did it, the DSO might help make more tolerable the wrecking of his body? Could she really believe that? Final whistle on his prop forward games.If I should get half my legs blown off,Think only this of me: that there’s some corner,Of a foreign field where I needn’t have been,But for dirty work behind the scenes at OCTU.‘Of course, we’ll move on from this posting ourselves at some point,’ Stanton said.‘Different type of stresses then, I expect
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