After the RAF Ken Browne and I wrote to each other from time to time, about what we were up to.
In the 1930s the Chips comic had featured British secret service agents Laurie and Trailer, Laurie upper class, languid, in a lounge suit; Trailer lower class, in bowler and weskit, addressing Laurie as ‘Sir’: their opponents two daft Russian spies, Prince Oddsockz and his crazed assistant Serge Pantz, smoking bomb in hand.
These latter endearing imbeciles spoke English with ‘ski’ or ‘ovitch’ tacked onto the ends of their speech-balloon words.
Now, writing my latest letter to Ken Browne, about my recent doings at the Post, on an impulse I tacked ‘ski’ or ‘ovitch’ onto the ends of my words, and signed off with ‘Roll On the Red Revolution’.
Addressing the envelope, for good measure I added on the bottom ‘If undelivered please return to the Ministry of Defence.’
Unbeknown to me, on the very day that I posted the letter, Ken Browne moved from his flat in London. The GPO duly returned my undelivered letter to the Ministry of Defence. A couple of weeks later, crossing the reporters’ room, I noticed Jim Potts creeping towards me on silent feet.
Potts was the Post’s crime reporter.
Potts spent much time at the CID building.
Potts was a Special Constable.
I avoided Potts.
Potts, smirking, held out an empty envelope: “Is this yours, Leo?”
Astonished: “Yes. Where did you get it?”
Potts, smirking anew: “The CID would like to see you.”
I went across to the CID offices and saw two men, plain clothes Detective Sergeant and Detective Constable, in a small room.
The Detective Sergeant pulled out my letter to Ken Browne: “We’ve had instructions from the Ministry of Defence to investigate your communist activities.”
He handed the letter to me. Sure enough, stapled to my letter was a small green MOD form bearing the typewritten message: “investigate this man Baxendale’s communist activities.”
I placed my letter back in the Detective Sergeant’s hands and pointed at it: “Have you read the letter yourself?”
The Detective Sergeant looked down at my letter uncertainly: “Yes.”
“ Then surely you can see that it is a joke?” He made no answer to this, but stared down at the pieces of paper.
I leaned forward to press my interrogation: “If you’ve read the letter, surely you can see for yourself that it is a joke.”
Again the Detective Sergeant made no answer, but sat staring down at my letter, at a loss.
After some moments, irresolute, in a low voice: “Well, I suppose I’d better write back and tell them there’s nothing in it.”
I rose to leave.
As I closed the door behind me, in the last particle of time as the door shut to, and I was turning to take my first stride down the corridor, hand still on the doorknob, the voices of the Detective Sergeant and his assistant the Detective Constable came in unison through the door: “Goodbye Comrade.”
I told Peter Fox. He roared with laughter.
I told my mother, and realized as I spoke that I had made a misjudgement in doing so. She was instantly worried: “Will the police want to see you again?”
From then on, at intervals, I would look up from my drawing to see Pott’s face rising like a moon beyond the glass partition: “The CID are watching you. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.”