S2.6: The backstory

“This is what I heard and so what I told Alcock.” 

Masongill interrupts, cautiously: “Let’s be clear, though keep in mind the customs of the ‘Short’. You don’t now need to tell me the truth if a little embroidery will help the story along. But let me ask as a member of the audience: is what you are now going to say what you heard, more or less word for word, or what you reconstructed, having eavesdropped on a private conversation at the very far corner of the breakfast area?” 

Lottie pauses to give this question some thought. 

When Hipparchus tells tall tales, he likes to lower the flame of the oil-lamp, let the stove fall to embers and speak softly (much as she’d seen Masongill do, in imitation, a week or three before). Everyone knows that only half of what he says on such occasions is true. His anecdotes about working at Bletchley, while seemingly ludicrously improbable, are generally regarded as true while his apparently more feasible but much funnier stories are probably mainly made up. But in answer to Masongill’s question, Hipparchus would reply, without skipping a beat, that everything in his story was true ‘or almost true!’. Lottie lacks his poise however. 

“I agree that that’s a good question. I certainly thought that I had heard everything I am now going to say, which is also just what I told Alcock. I still think I did. Hmm. I did! I am going to say that I did! 

“Alcock said he was very disappointed with Fabian because of ‘that meeting;’ which turned out to be their first meeting. Now I am going to have to summarise. I’m going to have to tell you what Alcock said but I cannot remember his words. I cannot quote him. 

“Back in 1977, Alcock was still a squaddie, as we all know. He wasn’t officer class but he was in charge of some troops.” 

“An NCO, probably.” 

“And his ‘platoon’ or ‘troop’ or whatever was stationed in Africa. They were fighting in a revolutionary war on behalf of an African government, which was an ally of Britain. But the other side was both revolutionary mountain dwelling ‘natives’ but also a mercenary force paid for by the oil and minerals they had already seized. 

“One of the revolutionary factions was led by a Western mercenary who had left his Western employers and ‘gone native’. He’d gathered together some of the mountain people - who were called the ‘Kikuyu’ - who opposed the government that Britain was supporting - and he trained them to fight like him: more skilfully than they had been but also ruthlessly and without mercy. And in silence. No one knew his name but he was called the ‘god of war’ and the ‘deadly assassin’ and also the ‘serpent poet king of the Kikyuyu’. It was also rumoured that he himself never carried a gun into battle which was obviously stupid when up against British troops with guns.

“One day, Alcock’s troop thought they had cornered a group of Kikyuyu and called in an air strike but something must have gone a bit wrong because Alcock got separated from the others, got a bit blown up, and found himself in a shell-hole facing a steely, silent adversary. Oh, also, Alcock had run out of bullets and would need to reload from his pack, which would take some seconds. And there was a sword on the ground between them, probably thrown out of his enemy’s grip in the blast. 

“He spotted that his opponent was a snail, so one natural question was how fast could a snail slither, to retrieve his sword, compared to how fast Alcock could reload his gun. 

“While they waited in the hole for some time, not moving, Alcock got a bit unnerved by the situation (by his own account) and found himself suggesting the snail surrender, pointing out that in the long run he was unlikely to escape capture and torture by either government forces or his old mercenary colleagues. Surely it was better to be safe in the custody of the British Army. Alcock even got out, to offer him a drink, a hip-flask from a long lost sweetheart inscribed: ‘To Alcock, from Ann with all my love.’ But Fabian - it was Fabian (SURPRISE!) - simply looked at him and said nothing.

“Then they both heard British squaddies approaching - no doubt singing ‘Locate and Cement’, that old Empire Scout song - which would mean Alcock’s rescue from the situation but Fabian’s arrest and, caught as a non-soldier with a weapon, possible summary execution. ‘Hide the sword! Quick!’ said Alcock and Fabian slithered forward and somehow slipped the sword into his shell. He also pocketed Alcock’s hip-flask. 

“Fabian was arrested but, without the evidence of a weapon, he was shipped back to Britain and later released. And Alcock, a natural stickler for rules and order, but who had broken an important one, by, in effect, releasing an enemy, handed back his gun and left the army. He came here and founded the Potting Shed community. We are here now because of that meeting.” 

“Wow! Good story!”