‘Meshuggah, am I?’ Higgs was indignant. ‘Want to bet? Here…’ he pulled out his wallet and banged a handful of notes down on the table. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘come on, you big, black bastard. Let’s see yours. Come on. Let’s see your money talk.’

‘Quiet,’ said Dickie Crawford. ‘You’re like a couple of old cows at closin’ time. Is that the griff, Higgsy?’

‘May God strike me dead if it ain’t,’ said Higgsy fervently. ‘Have I ever given you a wrong tip? The Old Man was talkin’ about it breakfast-time. You know he was at Brigade last night.’

‘The sods,’ Charlie Venable was on his feet, the angry blood flushing up into his cheeks. ‘My leaf comes up next week. My bleed’n’ leaf I been sweatin’ my guts out for this last three months.’

‘It’s just your bad luck,’ said Sergeant Bender. ‘It had to come some time. You know what Churchill said in Parliament about the invasion.’

‘That strikebreaker!’ said Charlie bitterly. ‘I’m ’aving my leaf. — Churchill. — Monty. — the Old Man. And — the lot of you,’ he said violently. ‘I’m ’aving my —ing leaf.’

‘All right,’ said Sergeant Bender amiably, ‘have your leave. We ain’t stopping you. What’s so wonderful about leave all of a sudden? There’s women there. There’s women here. There’s beer up there. There’s beer down here. You can go to the dogs up there. I take your bets down here. What you worrying about?’

‘You,’ said Charlie bitterly. ‘You don’t want to go home, you don’t. You’re afraid of your bleedin’ missus. Me, I’m thinking of the ol’ lady. She’s been up there for three months in them new raids. I want my bleedin’ leaf.’

‘Big mouth,’ grunted Rabinowitz, ‘you’ll stop here and like it. Your deal.’

Charlie took the cards and shuffled. ‘They’ve ’ad it,’ he said as he dealt the hand. ‘From me they’ve —in’ ’ad it. No leaf, no soldierin’. That’s Charlie Venable.’

The little community that had its meeting place in the carrier workshop was known throughout the battalion as the Doggy Boys, because its members were linked by their common passion for greyhound racing. The dogs were their hobby and their livelihood. They were scientists of form; not gamblers but shrewd and cautious financial speculators who invariably prospered. They had their friends on every track; they collected and pooled and sifted every day a mass of information, scandal, gossip and rumour; they knew when a dog was doped and when a dog was going to win. They shared their knowledge but they rarely let it leak out. To them the rest of the battalion were the mugs, the poor, benighted cash customers who enabled bookies and Doggy Boys alike to live in comfort.