THREE

Operation Tabula Rasa - or Clean Sheet, as its participants more commonly referred to it - was the brainchild of Professor Alexander Mclntyre of Aberdeen University. He wanted to test his theory that anyone could be taught any academic subject to a reasonable level of proficiency, given the right environment and the right methods. Kilveen Castle, thirty miles inland from Aberdeen and available at a bargain rent, was deemed by him to be an ideally secluded location for such an experiment. And a group of National Servicemen who had kicked over the traces of Forces discipline constituted appropriately unpromising material. Through the good offices of a cousin of his, an Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Air Ministry, the RAF agreed to provide fifteen such bad boys, hoiked from punishment units, detention centres and guardroom cells at short notice in March 1955, for a three-month trial. If Professor Mac wanted them, it was implied, he was welcome to them.

Professor Mac was afterwards heard to complain that three months was not enough. Six was the minimum necessary. But the University, who were paying the rent and supplying the teaching staff, would not go beyond three. Nor would the RAF, who reluctantly seconded a flight lieutenant and a warrant officer from 612 Squadron at Dyce to ensure the fifteen recalcitrants did not run amok.

Thus, in a sense, the experiment was doomed to failure from the outset. From the point of view of the participants, however — the students, as Professor Mac called them — it was a resounding success. Three months lounging around a classroom in a Scottish castle studying art, literature, history, algebra, geometry, psychology, philosophy and suchlike with less than determined zeal involved a modicum of mental effort and occasional bouts of cataleptic boredom, but was so vastly preferable to the alternatives that not a single voice was raised in protest. Nor did anyone abscond, disrupt the proceedings or steal so much as a teaspoon. In disciplinary terms if in no other, they were model students. The three months passed uneventfully and ended with few signs of startling intellectual progress, at least as far as Aircraftman Harry Barnett was concerned, although one or two of his fellow students succeeded in developing scholarly habits if not attainments. It was, nonetheless, not what Professor Mac had been hoping for. He went back to the drawing board. While Harry and the other Clean Sheeters went their separate ways. Harry found himself posted to RAF Records, Gloucester, for the remainder of his service. Chipchase was despatched to a battery-charging station on the south coast. They did not meet again for several years. And they did not even dream of meeting the thirteen men with whom they had shared a Nissen hut in the grounds of Kilveen Castle, Aberdeenshire, for the three months in the spring of 1955.

—«»—«»—«»—

The Nissen hut was happily long gone. Accommodation for the Clean Sheet reunion was going to be in the Kilveen Castle Hotel's luxury guestrooms. This was just one of the nuggets of information contained in Johnny Dangerfield's latest round robin, which Harry perused over a pint in the Glue Pot on his way back from the station. Dangerfield had clearly done extremely well in the oil business to judge by the lavishness of the entertainment he was laying on. But he had always been a generous soul, quick to offer the loan of a quid or a drag on his cigarette. It was, to that extent, in character. The e-mailed photographs of Kilveen Castle suggested it had hardly altered outwardly. The original sixteenth-century building was a stocky, mean-windowed tower sporting turrets at the corners and battlements between, to which had been added, a couple of hundred years later, like a smart new growth from a gnarled tree stump, a plain but well-proportioned Georgian gentleman's residence. The interior in Harry's day had been more than a little dilapidated, especially in the tower. The rooms had had a bang-up-to-date designer makeover since then, however, with rich-toned fabrics and fine-lined furniture much in evidence. The dining room where they had eaten frugal meals in draughty gloom had been transformed into an elegant restaurant, while the classroom where they had blunted their wits on cubism and calculus was now a stylish conference centre equipped with every technological aid known to corporate man.

If Kilveen Castle was wearing its years lightly, the same could not be said of all the veterans of Operation Clean Sheet. Dangerfield had supplied notes on their careers and accomplishments since, though in some cases these were distinctly sparse. He described himself as 'pensioned off by an oil giant and divorced by a man-eater', but his address — Sweet Gale Lodge, Pitfodels, Aberdeen — did not sound like a hovel and Harry saw no reason to doubt Lloyd's assertion that 'Danger's rolling in it'.

Lloyd himself had spent forty years shuffling paper for the Cardiff Port Authority and boasted a wife and three grown children. It was not a life story to set the pulse racing. Nor was Askew's. Crooked had apparently worked with animals in assorted zoos and vets' practices. His relations with humans were a blank.

A blank was nonetheless preferable to a full stop. Mike 'Three Foot' Yardley had written himself off in a motorbike accident in 1964. Les 'Smudger' Smith, double-glazing salesman, had succumbed to a heart attack while explaining his employer's unique beading system to a client in Chatham in 1993. Leroy 'Coker' Nixon had drowned (circumstances unknown) in 1983. And Lester 'Piggott' Maynard, after making something of a name for himself as a radio comedy scriptwriter, had died of AIDS in 1987, which some — not including Harry — had already realized on account of a couple of newspaper obituaries at the time. In addition, Ernie 'Babber' Babcock, long emigrated to Australia, was reported to be gaga following a stroke. Thus the original fifteen had been shorn to ten for the reunion Dangerfield had taken it into his head to arrange.

Some of them had clearly done better than others. Gilbert 'Tapper' Tancred never had been a dullard. Harry could remember him surprising the tutors at Kilveen on several occasions with the breadth of his knowledge. And he had been responsible for the more ingenious of the nicknames conferred on every one of the Clean Sheeters. It was no surprise to learn that he had finessed his way into the City, prospered in the pinstripe-suited world of merchant banking and retired to suburban leisure in Carshalton Beeches. His intellectual equal, Neville 'Magister' Wiseman, had likewise done well and was now a semi-retired art dealer living in London SW1. Bill 'Judder' Judd had risen from hod-carrier to house-builder courtesy of several property booms and still had a hand in what had become a family business in Essex — Judd & Sons. Those three plus Dangerfield counted as definite success stories.

The story was less happy where Owen 'Gregger' Gregson was concerned. He had taken early retirement from Colman's Mustard of Norwich to care for a disabled wife and keep pigeons. It did not sound as if his fifty years since Clean Sheet had been fun-packed. Nor did those of Milton 'Paradise' Fripp, bookkeeper for a laundry in Derby prior to uneventful, unmarried retirement.

It was perhaps as well that Harry remained for the purposes of the round robin a question mark. He could only assume his mother had thrown away Dangerfield's initial letter, mistaking it for junk mail, which she had often complained about. What if she had sent it on to him: would he have volunteered about himself anyway? Ten years filing memos for Swindon Borough Council; seven running a garage business that ended in Chipchase-induced bankruptcy; six holding down a desk job with Mallender Marine in Weymouth; nine lotus-eating in Rhodes; six going to seed in London; and ten married to a beautiful, brainy American academic: it was hardly an arrow-straight progression and an explanation of every turn it had taken was best not attempted for a number of very good reasons.

Chipchase could have supplied some of this information, of course, but he seemed to have been as reticent concerning Harry as he had been concerning himself. Dangerfield said that he had 'contacted Fission just as he was about to relocate to South Africa, a move he's magnanimously put on hold so that he can join us at Kilveen, pending which he's shacking up at my humble abode'. There was no mention of anything Chipchase had done in the intervening years, but he was surely going to have to come up with some sort of account of himself when he met his old comrades face to face.

Among those comrades he presumably did not expect Harry to figure. Dangerfield would get a phone call from Lloyd tonight reporting that they had struck lucky in Swindon. Only then would Chipchase realize that Harry was going to reappear in his life. They had last met, entirely by chance, in Washington DC more than ten years ago. At that time, Chipchase had been romancing the wealthy widow of a Yorkshire undertaker. Somehow, Harry suspected little had come of that in view of the old reprobate's imminent relocation to South Africa — assuming such relocation was not a cover story in itself. All in all, he was looking forward to subjecting Chipchase to some gentle grilling.

And if he did not do it, others might. Professor Mac was dead and gone, so was in no position to be curious about whether his experiment had had any long-term effects. But his gloomy young research assistant, Donald Starkie, now Dr Starkie and far from young but probably still gloomy, was going to join them and might be expected to pursue the question. The fact that he would be accompanied by an old student of his from the University, Erica Rawson, certainly suggested that something more than a simple knees-up was planned. Dangerfield had not quibbled over her attendance, apparently. 'I'm sure I speak for all of us in welcoming some young, intelligent — and, more to the point, pretty — female company. Just don't mention her to your wives/partners/ girlfriends/live-in lovers!'

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry did indeed fail to mention Erica Rawson when he telephoned Donna late that night. But that was because there were so many other things to say rather than because he had taken Dangerfield's sexist sentiments on board. Donna, as he had expected, was all in favour of him making the trip to Aberdeenshire.

'You've got to go, hon. I remember you telling me about the place. You absolutely have to find out what these guys have been up to since.'

'Not a lot's my bet. It could be a dire weekend.'

'But Barry will be there, right?'

'Apparently.'

'Well, you'll enjoy seeing him again, won't you?'

'I'm not sure enjoy's the word, but—'

'Go for it. What have you got to lose?'

'A couple of days out of my house-clearing schedule.'

'You'll just have to work harder when you get back.'

'OK, but—'

'Daisy and I'll expect a postcard. And take a camera. I'll want to see how these reprobates have aged compared with my craggily handsome husband.'

'You think it's a good idea, then?'

'A good idea?' Donna laughed. 'Why not?'