I married, for the first time, whilst still in the army. This venture was no more successful than my career as a soldier, and lasted eighteen months, thankfully with no issue. The brief delights of the three-day marriage leave were too great to resist, and I went absent without leave for twenty days, taking care to return before the twenty-first, when I would have been automatically posted as a deserter. I turned myself in at Victoria Barracks and after a night in a vomit-splashed cell with a thankfully-unconscious battered drunk, I was tried the next morning. I only now realized what I had done, and what the consequences could be - almost certain imprisonment, and for an unbearable period. I had done something very stupid out of a sort of contempt for the whole wartime establishment, and it became suddenly evident that I was not the sort of character able to buck that system with any hope of success. I was scared stiff; and off the top of my head launched into my defence - that of the victim of a brand-new marriage, now broken by a villainous and entirely fictitious American G.I. The pallor, trembling and, eventually, tears, with which I told this story came easily, prompted by the thought of my probable punishment. The resulting and completely unhoped-for leniency accorded me by the officer was a stupendous relief. He was visibly moved by my story, which was all too common, and he fined me £25, and 'return to unit'. This unexpected triumph of dishonesty could have encouraged me in the further use of persuasive fiction (which maybe it has done!), since there have been some remarkably successful confidence-tricksters from my part of the world, but I remember feeling, close on the initial relief, very ashamed. The episode had been one of deliberate deception compounded of lies and emotional blackmail and still remains a memory of discomfort.