During the next weeks we met again and talked around the possibilities of a flying career. I was bored by my job as a copywriter, and there were fewer weekend visits to Cambridge now that Miriam was working for her history of art degree. Still the mutinous sixth-former, she had become one of the star turns of undergraduate life, scandalising the first-year men with her powerful motorcycle, acting in a pornographic play by Apollinaire that the proctors had banned, smuggling boyfriends overnight into her room at Girton. She was always happy to see me, fiercely holding my shoulders as if ready to marry me that afternoon. But she was waiting for me to come to terms with the war and find my real compass bearing.

Flying in the American bomber force, now readying itself for a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, seemed to fulfil all those dreams, a make-or-break challenge that would force me to face myself. However, the U.S. Embassy, in a misguided fit, declined to recommend us for pilot training. David was stunned by the rejection, remonstrating with the polite but weary officials, who clearly regarded us as complete madmen and strongly urged us to join the RAF.

“No Chrysler for you, Jim, more like some gravel-rash MG.” David patted my shoulder as we stood outside the RAF recruitment office in Kingsway, after enlisting on short-service commissions. “But at least you’ll get a ringside seat at World War III.”

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Needless to say, this shrewd guess summed up my real reasons for joining the RAF. During our three months of basic training at RAF Kirton in Lincolnshire, as we learned the rudiments of meteorology, scaled hangar walls on assault courses, and fired submachine guns at the rifle range, I never once lost my belief that at last the real elements of my life were coming together. I was preparing myself, in the most practical way, for the Third World War, which had already begun at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and whose first instalments were the Berlin crisis and the Korean War. Somewhere over the skies of Central Europe Armageddon would wake from my dreams.

*   *   *