‘I work a desk,’ I told him.

‘You speak the lingo?’

‘No. Mostly I just move paper and some French translation when it’s needed.’

‘So you’re a REMF then,’ he said, still smiling, ‘not a highly trained killer about to go solo into the jungle?’

‘Afraid not. Just words on a page. Shuffling papers, sometimes writing transcripts. And you?’

‘I do words on a page too, so we have that in common. I tell stories. I’ve worked for USIA and CORD.’ When he saw that the names were just more of those endless acronyms with which the war effort was littered, he explained they stood for the United States Information Agency and Civil Operations and Rural Development Support.

‘You tell stories?’

‘Yes, I write upbeat stories about how many wonderful things we’re doing here,’ he said, then flopped on the bed, making its springs creak. ‘Propaganda really, if truth be told. Then I try to get them placed in the press back home.’

‘What sort of stories?’

He propped his head on the pillow of his arms and stared at the ceiling before answering, ‘How we come bearing gifts to the needy. How we build roads and schools. Bring sanitation and clean water. Bring candy and toothbrushes. Bring Uncle Sam kindness.’ Then, blowing a stream of air up through his fringe, added, ‘You need to get an electric fan for in here. You can use your PX card, pick one up at the warehouse. I can go with you if you like.’

As I saw him looking at my meagre collection of clothes hanging in the narrow wardrobe which had no door, it felt as if he was inspecting them, so in an attempt to distract him I asked where he was based.

‘The Lincoln Library mostly but I get around. Listen, I know a really good tailor’s just behind Tu Do Street – he’ll run you up everything you need for very little.’

And then, as he lay stretched out on my bed, he slipped into full Steerforth mode, with advice on the best restaurants, how if I wanted we could go bowling at the airbase, swim at Le Cercle Sportif, even some weekend perhaps head down to Vung Tau, a beach resort two hours’ drive from Saigon. I was cautious in my responses, not wishing to appear stand-offish but not wanting to commit myself to a relationship when I knew almost nothing about him. So we lapsed into a silence that I tried to pretend was merely caused by my preoccupation with trying to get my room shipshape. But then as he saw the dozen or so novels that added the ballast to my life and which I had arranged on a makeshift shelf, he became suddenly animated, springing off the bed and lifting them. A couple were dropped dismissively but he held on to others as if his hands held the Holy Grail.

‘You read?’ he asked, as if it was the most unlikely of discoveries. ‘I’ve never met anyone here yet who read anything other than porn mags, sci-fi or hard-boiled detective crap. But what’s with so much Steinbeck?’