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  As I sat down I decided to have one last try.

  “Is this the tooth?” I asked, tapping the only possible suspect.

  “It is indeed!” boomed The Butcher. That’s the one.”

  “Ah well,” I said with a light laugh. “I’m sure I can explain. There’s been some mistake …”

  “Yes … yes …” he murmured, filling the syringe before my eyes and sending a few playful spurts into the air.

  There’s just a bit of enamel off it and Mr. Grover said …”

  The WAAF suddenly wound the chair back and I found myself in the semi-prone position with the white bulk looming over me.

  “You see,” I gasped desperately. “I need that tooth. It’s the one that holds my …”

  A strong finger was on my gum and I felt the needle going in. I resigned myself to my fate.

  When he had inserted the local the big man put the syringe down. “We’ll just give that a minute or two,” he said, and left the room.

  As soon as the door closed behind him the WAAF tiptoed over to me.

  “This feller’s loopy!” she whispered.

  Half lying, I stared at her.

  “Loopy …? What d’you mean?”

  “Crackers! Round the bend! No idea how to pull teeth!”

  “But … but … he’s a dentist isn’t he …?”

  She pulled a wry face. “Thinks he is! But he hasn’t a clue!”

  I had no time to explore this cheering information further because the door opened and the big man returned.

  He seized a horrible pair of forceps and I closed my eyes as he started flexing his muscles.

  I must admit I felt nothing. I knew he was twisting and tugging away up there but the local had mercifully done its job. I was telling myself that it would soon be over when I heard a sharp crack.

  I opened my eyes. The Butcher was gazing disappointedly at my broken-off tooth in his forceps. The root was still in my gum.

  Behind him the WAAF gave me a long “I told you so” nod. She was a pretty little thing, but I fear the libido of the young men she encountered in here would be at a low ebb.

  “Oh!” The Butcher grunted and began to rummage in a metal box. It took me right back to the McDarroch days as he fished out one forceps after another, opened and shut them a few times then tried them on me.

  But it was of no avail, and as the time passed I was the unwilling witness of the gradual transition from heartiness to silence, then to something like panic. The man was clearly whacked. He had no idea how to shift that root.

  He must have been gouging for half an hour when an idea seemed to strike him. Pushing all the forceps to one side he almost ran from the room and reappeared shortly with a tray on which reposed a long chisel and a metal mallet.

  At a sign from him the WAAF wound the chair back till I was completely horizontal. Seemingly familiar with the routine, she cradled my head in her arms in a practised manner and stood waiting.

  This couldn’t be true, I thought as the man inserted the chisel into my mouth and poised the mallet; but all doubts were erased as the metal rod thudded against the remnants of my tooth and my head in turn shot back into the little WAAF’s bosom. And that was how it went on. I lost count of time as The Butcher banged away and the girl hung on grimly to my jerking skull.

  The thought uppermost in my mind was that I had always wondered how young horses felt when I knocked wolf teeth out of them. Now I knew.

  When it finally stopped I opened my eyes, and though by this time I was prepared for anything, I still felt slightly surprised to see The Butcher threading a needle with a length of suture silk. He was sweating and looking just a little desperate as he bent over me yet again.

  “Just a couple of stitches,” he muttered hoarsely, and I closed my eyes again.

  When I left the chair I felt very strange indeed. The assault on my cranium had made me dizzy and the sensation of the long ends of the stitches tickling my tongue was distinctly odd. I’m sure that when I came out of the room I was staggering, and instinctively I pawed at my mouth.

  The first man I saw was Simkin. He was where I had left him but he looked different as he beckoned excitedly to me. I went over and he caught at my tunic with one hand.

  “What d’yer think, mate?” he gasped. “They’ve changed me round and I’ve got to go into room four.” He gulped. “You looked bloody awful comin’ out there. What was it like?”

  I looked at him. Maybe there was going to be a gleam of light this morning. I sank into the chair next to him and groaned.

  “By God, you weren’t kidding! I’ve never met anybody like that—he’s half killed me. They don’t call him The Butcher for nothing!”

  “Why … what … what did ’e do?”

  “Nothing much. Just knocked my tooth out with a hammer and chisel, that’s all.”

  “Garn! You’re ’avin’ me on!” Simkin made a ghastly attempt to smile.

  “Word of honour,” I said. “Anyway, there’s the tray coming out now. Look for yourself.”

  He stared at the WAAF carrying the dreadful implements and turned very pale.

  “Oh blimey! What … what else did ’e do?”

  I held my jaw for a moment. “Well he did something I’ve never seen before. He made such a great hole in my gum that he had to stitch me up afterwards.”

  Simkin shook his head violently. “Naow, I’m not ’avin’ that! I don’t believe yer!”

  “All right,” I said. “What do you think of this?”

  I leaned forward, put my thumb under my lip and jerked it up to give him a close-up view of the long gash and the trailing blood-stained ends of the stitches.

  He shrank away from me, lips trembling, eyes wide.

  “Gawd!” he moaned. “Oh Gawd …!”

  It was unfortunate that the WAAF chose that particular moment to call out “AC2 Simkin” piercingly from the doorway, because the poor fellow leaped as though a powerful electric current had passed through him. Then, head down, he trailed across the room. At the door he turned and gave me a last despairing look and I saw him no more.

  This experience deepened my dread of the five fillings which awaited me. But I needn’t have worried; they were trivial things and were efficiently and painlessly dealt with by RAF dentists very different from The Butcher.

  And yet, many years after the war had ended, the man from room four stretched out a long arm from the past and touched me on the shoulder. I began to feel something sharp coming through the roof of my mouth and went to Mr. Grover, who X-rayed me and showed me a pretty picture of that fateful root still there despite the hammer and chisel. He extracted it and the saga was ended.

  The Butcher remained a vivid memory because, apart from my ordeal, I was constantly reminded of him by the dangerous wobbling of my pipe at the edge of that needless gap in my mouth.

  But I did have a small solace. I finished my visit to room four with a parting shaft which gave me a little comfort. As I tottered away I paused and addressed the big man’s back as he prepared for his next victim.

  “By the way,” I said. “I’ve knocked out a lot of teeth just like you did there.”

  He turned and stared at me. “Really? Are you a dentist?”

  “No,” I replied over my shoulder as I left ‘I’m a vet!”

  CHAPTER 4

  I LIKE WOMEN BETTER than men.

  Mind you, I have nothing against men—after all, I am one myself—but in the RAF there were too many of them. Literally thousands, jostling, shouting, swearing; you couldn’t get away from them. Some of them became my friends and have remained so until the present day, but the sheer earthy mass of them made me realise how my few months of married life had changed me.

  Women are gentler, softer, cleaner, altogether nicer things and I, who always considered myself one of the boys, had come to the surprising conclusion that the companion I wanted most was a woman.

  My impression that I had been hurled into a coarser world was heightened at the b