"Lieutenant O'Malley, may I present Lieutenant Schneider, who joined the squadron today?"
"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," Mary Agnes said. "Did anyone ever tell you you look just like John Garfield?"
Dave Schneider flushed. "No, I can't say that anyone has."
"Don't you think he does, Bill?"
"Spitting image," Bill Dunn said. He was pleased to see that Lieutenant Schneider did not seem to be able to keep his eyes away from Mary Agnes's tunic, where her bosom placed quite a strain against the material; it sort of made her gold buttons stand to attention.
He beckoned to the bartender.
"We'll have a round," he said.
"Sir," Dave Schneider said uncomfortably, "I was led to believe we'd be flying tomorrow."
"One cognac won't hurt you," Bill Dunn said. "And we can't welcome you aboard with ginger ale."
"Yes, Sir," Dave Schneider said.
"And another part of the welcome aboard ritual is a dance with Lieutenant O'Malley," Dunn said. "Mary Agnes is something like the squadron mascot, isn't that so, Mary Agnes?"
"Oh, it is not," she said. "You make me sound like a cocker spaniel. But I do like to dance."
How about a bitch in heat?
(Two)
HEADQUARTERS, RAN COASTWATCHER ESTABLISHMENT
TOWNESVILLE, QUEENSLAND
1945 HOURS 15 JULY 1942
Both Major Ed Banning, commanding officer of U.S. Marine Corps Special Detachment 14, and Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, Officer Commanding, Royal Australian Navy Coast Watcher Establishment, were waiting at the small Townesville air strip when the Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson came in low over the sea and touched down.
As the twin engine bomber-transport taxied to a parking place, Banning put the Studebaker President in gear and bounced over the grass to it.
By the time the rear door opened, and Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was emerging from it, Banning and Feldt were standing on either side of the spot where his feet would alight. After Feldt saluted elaborately, in the British palm-out manner, the hand quivering, he barked, "Sir!"
Banning extended a towel-wrapped bottle in an ice-filled cooler. The cooler had begun life as a tomato can.
"It's beer," he said. "But you can't fault our good intentions."
"I expected at least a band," Pickering said, taking the bottle from the can and removing the towel. "What am I supposed to do, bite the cap off?"
"Sir!" Feldt barked again, and bowing deeply handed him a bottle opener.
Pickering opened the beer bottle, took a pull from the neck, and offered the bottle to Feldt.
"Very good of you, Sir," Feldt said, taking a pull at the beer and handing it to Banning. "And may I say how honored we all feel that you could find time in your busy schedule to honor us with a visit."
Pickering appeared to be thoughtfully considering the remark. Finally, smiling, he said, "Yes, I think you may."
Feldt laughed with delight.
The pilot, a silver-haired Wing Commander, the co-pilot, a Squadron Commander, and the crew chief, a sergeant, came out of the airplane. Banning introduced them, and then said, "I think, Wing Commander, that you may unload the emergency rations for these starving savages."
"Very good, Sir," the Wing Commander said.
The sergeant went back in the Hudson and started handing boxes out. There was a case of scotch, a case of bourbon, six cases of beer, and a wooden case marked Moet and Chandon.
"Do you sodding Americans do everything backward? Christmas is in December," Feldt said.
"A small contribution to the enlisted mess," Pickering said. "Knowing as I do that a fine Christian officer such as yourself would never allow alcohol to touch his lips."
"I can get it down without it coming near my lips," Feldt said. "Anyone who comes between me and the bubbly does so at his peril."
"What's up, Boss?" Major Ed Banning asked.
"Never treat with the natives until you've plied them with alcohol," Pickering said. "And always hope that no one has warned them to beware of Americans bearing gifts."
"Why don't I like the sound of that?" Feldt asked.
"Because you're prescient," Pickering said. "You intuit that I am here to tell you how to do your job."
Feldt continued to smile, but the warmth was gone from his eyes.
"Will it wait until after dinner? Or should I more or less politely tell you to climb back on the sodding airplane and bugger off now?"
"That would depend on dinner," Pickering said. "What are we having?"
"Probably very little," Banning said. "I told them to go ahead and eat if we weren't back by 1830."
"We ran against a forty-knot headwind all the bloody way," the Wing Commander said. "We had to set down and refuel."
"Then I suppose we'll have to drink our dinner," Pickering said. "How are we going to get all that in the car?"
"We'll take the booze, naturally, and leave you and Banning here," Feldt said. "There's such a thing as going too sodding far with this international cooperation crap."
"Why don't you and the Wing Commander and Captain Pickering take half of the booze, and then send the car back to pick up the rest of us and the rest of the booze?" Ed Banning suggested.
"Why don't we leave the Wing Commander, too?" Feldt said, "That way there would be no witnesses when I remind the Captain that the understanding was that he would keep his sodding nose the hell out of my business?"
"That," Pickering said, after a moment, "as you suggested, can wait until after dinner."
"It's a pity, really," Feldt said. "I was on the edge of almost liking you, Pickering. A man, even a sodding American, can't be all bad if he brings me Moet and Chandon."