An Odd Pair

I’ve forgotten the exact date, but it was a few years ago: I happened to be in London when I heard through the grapevine that there was to be a re-union over Christmas of a number of my friends from Canada who’d begun their lives in Wallasey, a suburb of Liverpool in Northern England .

Bondy

About a week before the mob was due to descend, I discovered that my old mate Bondy (from the fiasco at Club Arroyo Hondo in the Dominican Republic - related in a previous blog) was already in Wallasey—his home town. So I headed north.

We hadn’t seen each other in a while so we had a bit of catching up to do, an activity which invariably involved lengthy sessions at various pubs.

Well, by the time the rest of the lads began to filter in I was beginning to show signs of fatigue. But my old mates from Canada—who I also hadn’t seen for years—couldn’t be neglected. I had to keep stepping up to the plate.

At this point we were all bunking in the rambling expanse of Dukey’s attic: He’d been brought up in this huge, kind of run-down place and the Ducal manor was the inspiration for the Duke’s nick-name.

Anyway, as soon as the local pub opened at midday we were there. When it closed around three, we’d head back to Dukey’s attic for a nap.

We’d wake up, eat a huge meal; prepared by Mrs. Duke and ‘Aunt Jude’—a mysterious woman reputed to have worked with the French resistance during the war—then head back to the trough. It was a rigorous daily routine.

I’d been in Wallasey perhaps two weeks when I decided I couldn’t take this punishment any more. So one night, during the height of the revelry, I quietly slipped away from my friends and made my way to the railway station.

“I want a ticket on the train going the furthest distance from here in the next half hour,” I told the ticket-vendor. Peering at me rather oddly, he sold me a ticket to a place called Fishguard.

I fell promptly asleep on the train, waking up a couple of hours later to observe stations with names like Tywyn and Aberystwyth.

The next morning we stopped a mile from the town of Fishguard so I had to walk through the pouring rain until I found somewhere to stay.

“Ahh,” I thought. “Peace at last,” when I’d checked into a B&B. I dried off in front of a radiator and plunged into bed where I luxuriated until around seven that evening.  After supper I thought, “I’ll just slip out for a pint, have a brief chat with the locals, then head back for an early night.

Dukey, Simon, Paul, Me

Of course, as the mythical ‘they’ might be inclined to quote, “The best laid plans…” the ‘pint’ inevitably led to another and I met a bunch of interesting locals.

The point of the story is that the two landlords of this particular pub were best friends despite the fact that they’d fought on opposing sides during WW11.

I don't recall the British partner’s name, but he’d been a naval captain. The other was Heinz, who had been a Stuka pilot. Heinz spoke perfect English but with a strong German flavor.

On the walls of the pub were pictures of the British captain—his ship—his crew, mingled among photos of Heinz—beside his Stuka—with other German pilots.

Chatting with the British partner one afternoon, I learned of an incredible coincidence. A couple of weeks previous, Heinz and a traveling customer were talking about the war and it turned out that the customer had been a ship’s captain in the Med.

When he told Heinz the name of his ship, Heinz had replied, “Ah. I vos the vun who sunk you.”

Rather than taking a swing at Heinz however, the captain shook his hand. Apparently, once he’d disabled the ship, Heinz had circled around in his Stuka until everyone had left in the life-boats before dispatching the vessel to the bottom. The two ex-adversaries ended up the best of friends.