Crossfire - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,2

was a good question. I suppose that I was technically, and manifestly, homeless.

For the past fifteen years I had lived in army accommodation of one form or another: barracks, Sandhurst, officers’ messes, tents and bivouacs, even in the backs of trucks or the cramped insides of Warrior armoured cars. I had slept in, under, and on top of Land Rovers and, more often than I cared to remember, I had slept where I sat or lay on the ground, half an ear open for the call of a sentry or the sound of an approaching enemy.

However, the army had now sent me ‘home’ for six months.

The major from the Ministry of Defence, the Wounded Personnel Liaison Officer, had been fair but firm during his recent visit. ‘Six months’ leave on full pay,’ he’d said. ‘To recover. To sort yourself out. Then we’ll see.’

‘I don’t need six months,’ I’d insisted. ‘I’ll be ready to go back in half that time.’

‘Back?’ he’d asked.

‘To my regiment.’

‘We’ll see,’ he had repeated.

‘What do you mean, we’ll see?’ I had demanded.

‘I’m not sure that going back to your regiment will be possible,’ he’d said.

‘Where, then?’ I’d asked, but I’d read the answer in his face before he’d said it.

‘You might be more suited to a civilian job. You wouldn’t be passed fit for combat. Not without a foot.’

The major and I had been sitting in the reception area of the Douglas Bader Rehabilitation Centre in Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton, London.

Part of Headley Court, the military’s own state-of-the-art rehab centre in Surrey, had been temporarily closed for refurbishment, and the remaining wards had been overwhelmed by the numbers of wounded with missing limbs. Hence I had been sent to Queen Mary’s and the National Health.

It was testament to the remarkable abilities of the military Incident Response Teams, and to their amazingly well-equipped casevac helicopters, that so many soldiers with battlefield injuries, which would in the past have invariably proved fatal, were now routinely dealt with and survived. Double and even triple traumatic amputees often lived when, only recently, they would have surely bled to death before medical help could arrive.

But not for the first time I’d wondered if it would have been better if I had died. Losing a foot had sometimes seemed to me a worse outcome than losing my life. But I had looked up at the painting on the wall of Douglas Bader, the Second World War pilot after whom the rehabilitation centre was named, and it had given me strength.

‘Douglas Bader was passed fit for combat,’ I’d said.

The major had looked up at me. ‘Eh?’

‘Douglas Bader was passed fit to fight and he’d lost both his feet.’

‘Things were different then,’ the major had replied, somewhat flippantly.

Were they? I wondered.

Bader had been declared fit and had taken to the air in his Spitfire to fight the enemy simply due to his own perseverance. True, the country had been in desperate need of pilots but he could have easily sat out the war in relative safety if he had wanted to. It was his huge personal determination to fly that had overcome the official reluctance to allow it.

I would now take my lead from him.

We’ll see, indeed.

I’d show them.

‘Will the Tube station do?’ Vicki said.

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘The Tube station,’ she repeated. ‘Is that OK?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Anywhere.’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Home, I suppose,’ I said.

‘And where is home?’

‘My mother lives in Lambourn,’ I said.

‘Where’s that?’ she asked.

‘Near Newbury, in Berkshire.’

‘Is that where you’re going now?’

Was it? I didn’t particularly want to. But where else? I could hardly sleep on the streets of London. Others did, but had I gone down that far?

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the train.’

My mind was working on automatic pilot as I negotiated the escalator up from the Underground into Paddington mainline railway station. Only near the top did I realize that I couldn’t remember when I had last used an escalator. Stairs had always been my choice and they had to be taken at the run, never at a walk. And yet here I was, gliding serenely up without moving a muscle.

Fitness had always been a major obsession in a life that was full of obsessions.

Even as a teenager I had been mad about being fit. I had run every morning on the hills above Lambourn, trying to beat the horses as they chased me along the lush grass training gallops.

Army life, especially that of the infantry officer at war, was a strange mix of lengthy, boring interludes