Tuesday's War, page 17
‘Remember we’re working tomorrow,’ I said.
Grease said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s cool.’ That was the first time I’d heard those words used that way. He gave me one of those looks – you know, his eyes were focused on me but the alcohol was getting in the way: he took a swing at me whilst I was still six feet away, and fell from his stool.
‘What was that for?’ I asked the Toff.
‘Something to do with the fat guy who runs the kitchens. Apparently one of the girls has broken her arm, and you forgot to remind him of something.’
I bent to help Grease up. Initially he shook me off, but then let me pull him to his feet.
‘Bloody Sparks! Are you my sparky bloody conscience or bloody aren’t you?’
‘No; I’m not,’ I told him. ‘I’m your bloody sparks, that’s all. I can’t help your bad memory.’
‘Tha’ little girl’s got a broken arm now. Fat Guts says she’s fallen down again.’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘She’s off home, isn’t she. I asked Fat Guts where she was, and he told me. Bloody smiling he was.’
‘Are you going to do something about it this time?’
‘If you bloody remind me.’
‘We’ll remind each other, Skip. OK?’
‘Yeah; that’s . . . cool.’ He must have just learned the expression.
I walked them both out into the crisp air for an early night. Outside a car slowed to let us cross the road. It was Bushes. He was in the passenger seat, which probably meant that he was too drunk to drive, and his wife was behind the wheel in civvies. You could see her arms. (Our bold pilots, Bushes and Grease: I wondered if Quelch was drunk somewhere, too.) She smiled at Grease and the Toff and didn’t even make eye contact with me. I learned then that a woman you wanted could pull out of you, and blow away all the pleasure from the woman you’d just had, no matter how good she’d been. Cow. Something like that. You know what I mean? Why was it that at exactly that moment I began to think about Grace, and wonder who she was with?
After we went to Kiel the MO was in need of a stress break. He had a nervous breakdown instead.
I was in the dome looking for the fighters that were bound to come after us, and was the first to notice it. I clicked, and said, ‘Skip? It’s Charlie.’
‘OK, Charlie; what is it?’
‘Quelch has lost his top turret. Like it was wiped off.’
‘Speak to him.’
I twinkled to Quelch’s sparks – Quelch was flying on our starboard side, and the Boss on the other, and we were all so close to the deck that swimming was the only other option. I fired up our Aldis lamp and asked him, ‘What’s your situation?’ It was actually the one-letter code the squadron used unofficially, which was ‘Q’.
He twinkled back. ‘Flak. OK.’
His twinkling was slow. I thought that it might have been wrong handed, or maybe he was just out of practice. I turned my back on him, and twinkled that over to the leader’s aircraft. I added that Quelch no longer had a mid-upper turret. What always impressed me about Bushes was his speed of thought: he immediately dropped back behind our twitchy little formation, and then surged up on the other side of Quelch so that we were bracketing him.
I saw the German fighter before anyone else, which made a first. I just happened to be looking aft from the dome.
‘Fighter, Skip, above and dead astern.’
I didn’t shout ‘Corkscrew’, in case he did. You can’t corkscrew anywhere from fifty feet, except into the briny. Almost immediately I felt Tuesday shake as the Pole and the Toff poured .303 shit back at the Kraut. I became aware peripherally that Quelch’s and Bushes’ rear gunners were doing exactly the same. Piotr was shouting something in Polish which sounded extremely filthy, and which must have done the trick because then there was a big white flash: a quick, white wall of water from where the Kraut flew into the sea behind us. The poor sod never even got a shot off at us.
Pete stopped firing immediately. ‘He’s had it,’ he said. I could hear him drawing in great gulps of breath.
Grease hadn’t deviated from his course by a degree. He responded. ‘Good show.’
I ask you: ‘Good show’ – what did he think he sounded like? I found that my hands were shaking, and held to the rim of the dome to stop. Bushes put Quelch into the circuit first, and then us. He did another low, fat circuit himself before coming in, which meant that we were off the runway and on to the track by then, and I had a rare chance of watching my squadron leader landing an aircraft. All those stories we’d heard about his ground crew strengthening his kite’s undercarriage must have been true. He was even worse than Grease at getting back on to the deck: he bounced it like a football, and I reminded myself not to fly with him unless I was ordered. I was standing behind Grease for our landing. It became my place for what was left of our tour, unless I was working. Grease had said, over his shoulder, ‘You can be a good leader without being a good pilot.’
I knew that he was talking about the Boss, but said, ‘You can’t be a good pilot unless you’re good at landings.’
‘But you can still be a leader.’
‘Then there’s even a chance for you, Skip.’
Conners had held Fiver back from Q’s aircraft, but we could see the people clustered around it, and the meat wagon was by the square fuselage door. Quelch slouched over, dragging his heels and leaned into the Morris to bum a cigarette. That wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was to talk to somebody: anybody, that is. There was dried blood on the back of his hand.
As usual, it was me who asked the question. ‘What was it?’
‘A Flak 88 we think. It came in under the sparks, and out through the turret. Just blew it clear away. Francie went with it. He’s in several bits in there.’ This was all delivered in a matter-of-fact, weary voice. If you didn’t know him better you’d think he didn’t care. He blinked, like someone waking from a deep sleep. ‘One of the bits lived for about ten minutes. Told a damned funny story about Don Bradman, but for the life of me I can’t remember it now.’
‘What about Fellowes?’ – that was his sparks.
‘Shrapnel in his bum and legs, I think. He took a knock, and wasn’t with us for a while. That was Henry signalling you. What did you think of his Morse?’ Henry Horsefall was Quelch’s flight engineer – Fergal’s opposite number.
I said, ‘Neat. Very easy to read. He can have my job any day.’
Fergal leaned over to me and said, ‘I should learn how to do a bit of that.’
Grease said, ‘Yeah. Good one.’ Then he said, ‘Sorry about Francie. He was a good type, wasn’t he?’ It was rhetorical, and for us all.
‘Yes,’ Quelch said.
We offered him a lift, but he said that they’d wait for their own transport. Because we’d only used three aircraft the intelligence people had arranged a one-off interrogation for us. They’d pushed twenty-two chairs around two tables angled together, and of course we left two of the chairs empty. I’d seen the empty chairs before, usually in sevens in the mess at breakfast, but for once these got to me. Before I could sit down I picked them up, and placed them against the wall, out of our sight.
There was just one intelligence officer for all of us together – a bent man; in his fifties I’d guess. I remember his long drooping salt-and-pepper moustache, like a Mexican bandit, big, unreadable dark brown eyes, and a languid manner which told you he was a proper bastard. He asked pointed questions, but wrote slowly. That suited us – our brains didn’t seem to be working too fast. It was always like that after a job: either your brain moved at a funereal pace, or it raced like Wolf Barnato at Le Mans – there was no telling.
He had a brown cardboard file cover alongside his writing pad. I read the title upside down: it said Barrett Bombing: Trial. The cookie had been dropped between the flak ships by a volunteer Mossie from a Northampton Pathfinder squadron. Pathfinders could be like that. We over-flew the impact point three minutes later, unloading Marty’s mines and flying through what was left of the shock wave, with seawater falling on us like rain. One of the flak ships had overturned completely. The others didn’t get a gun on us. There was some desultory responsive fire from the shore side, and it was one of these that did for Francie. The last enemy shot of the night, as it turned out.
The four gunners who fired on it were each interested in who was to be credited with the unlucky night fighter. Piotr said, ‘It was a single-engined radial. Must have been a 190.’
Bushes’ gunner disagreed. ‘It was a single all right, but it had a pointed nose. I reckon that it was a late mark 109.’
That didn’t solve the problem of who was going to claim it: nobody liked claiming quarters – I mean, which quarter had you shot down? The tail assembly? The port wing? No.
The Toff came up with a solution; resigning his own claim he said, ‘Francie can have my quarter.’
Quelch’s rear gunner immediately agreed. ‘Mine too.’
That settled it. The letter to Francie’s parents would say that he got his Kraut, before they got him. That was our second fucking gardening trip, and our last. Someone’s got to show the clever sods how to do it the first time.
Trudging out, tired to my bones, I found myself alongside Bushes, and asked him, ‘Excuse me, sir, but what was that Barrett Bombing thing about, on the IO’s file cover?’
‘Your idea, wasn’t it? Gotta call it something. Don’t worry, you’ll only be famous for about a quarter of an hour, until the next one comes along.’
There was a new Lanc in one of the blast bays when we got back, and Grace was asleep in Marty’s bed. They must have moved into number eight sometime during the early hours in order to spare our blushes.
That was trip seventeen. Oh yeah. The MO was in need of that stress break because Q made him stitch the body of his mid-upper gunner back together again before putting it into the coffin. He went off the station the morning of the boy’s funeral, and we never saw him again. He left a small Austin Seven Chummy, which Piotr bought from him before he left.
The sewn-together pieces of Francis Lambie, Francie, were buried in the small churchyard at Everton about ten miles from Bawne. The Everton church caps a sharp hill, and looks out over Tempsford airfield. Putting him there was a matter of RAF expediency; they were planting the five crew of a Tempsford Halifax, and their three unlucky passengers, on the same day. Some faceless wonder must have figured that it saved official time, expense and effort to tag Francie on to them, rather than give him his own send off. After all, there was a war on. I didn’t mind. Although he was further away from those alive who knew him, he was alongside good company. He’s there still – he wasn’t moved soon after the war the way a lot were: you can see the stone. Visit him sometime, he’d like that. He’d think it funny.
In the graveyard I noticed a marker stone from the 1700s which read something like Joanna Giggle, beloved wife of Jonas, and her dates, and Peace, perfect peace. It had been put there by her husband, and its homily made me smile. It would make Francie smile too. Maybe they could all giggle together in the hereafter. From the squadron there were five from Quelch’s crew, and everyone from Tuesday. Grace came along, but stood away from us close to the church. It was a fine bright day, but the wind had a bone in it which brought tears to the eyes. It got to Grace more than the rest of us: her cheeks gleamed wet in the sharp light. That’s what I chose to think anyway.
Quelch surprised me. His face wore a dangerous look as he stood over Francie’s coffin, defying the whole damned world to say anything ungenerous about his boy. A Home Guard patrol provided the volleys of rifle fire, and a Boy Scout bugler sounded the last notes. I’ve heard that bugle call too many times, and in too many places, to want to hear it again, but it was never better than on that windy Bedfordshire hill top. Bravo, Francie.
When the practised service was complete, Grease and Quelch got us all together in a huddle near the lychgate and told us that we were all up for a week’s leave: Bushes’ orders, apparently.
We’d borrowed the Morris for the funeral so that we could all travel together. We’d even borrowed Fiver to drive it, although she had stayed away from the service and sat in the car. Grace hooked through my arm as we walked back to it, and asked me if I was going back to my folks for leave.
My stomach knotted immediately: I answered her. ‘No.’
‘That’s sad. They’ll want to see you; wherever they are.’
I said, ‘They’ll see me soon enough, if this lot keeps up,’ and gave her the long stare until the penny dropped.
She just said, ‘Oh,’ as if she’d stepped in something a dog had left, dropped her hand from my arm and moved up to walk between Marty and Connors. After a minute she linked her arms through theirs, and I knew exactly what she was asking them. I hadn’t realized that Grease was just behind me, and had caught the exchange. Now he moved up alongside. He didn’t ask me anything, but his silence was saying it all. I told him.
‘My mother, father and kid sister had a house south of London which got on the wrong side of a doodlebug. No one was hurt, but they decided to go up north to my father’s brother in Hamilton in Scotland. They wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘I know where Hamilton is,’ said Grease, ‘we’ve one in Canada, too.’
‘They were lucky. Dad got a job almost immediately, and they got a nice small flat for the duration. It was cheap: probably from someone at the Lodge.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘It was a tidy little tenement flat, with some sort of stove in the kitchen. Mum and my sis used to bank it up when the old man had a night shift, so the place was warm for him to come home to. There was never a problem with fuel: his brother’s down the mines. What they didn’t know was that there was a problem with the flue. Dad came home one morning to find the flat full of fumes, and them long dead. He told me they looked peaceful; like they were asleep, but with rosy red cheeks.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘The funeral was a few days before I joined you. It was such a silly way to go Grease; a bloody waste.’
‘I wish you’d told us. It’s all waste. Even Krauts in night fighters.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said.
‘Grace’ll feel bad – putting her foot in it.’
‘She can live with it,’ I told him, but I was thinking of myself.
The passenger seats in the Morris ran across it in benches. I climbed into the rearmost one, sat in the corner and leaned back against the canvas tilt. After some pushing and shoving Grace squeezed in beside me. A few minutes after Fiver lurched it into gear Grace let her head drop on to my shoulder.
‘I guess that we’re even now. I remember being so cross at you when the thing with the Americans came up. I was trying to forget them: to get myself away from them. Everybody has a secret grief these days and I’ve blundered into yours, haven’t I?’
I think that I nodded slowly, taking in what she was trying to say, and said, ‘It’s OK. There are just some things I don’t want to talk about.’
‘My thoughts, precisely. Can we be friends again?’
‘Does that mean I get to have you again?’
‘Until bits start to come off, darling.’ She put her arm around my shoulders and hugged me, like someone from one of those Red Army posters you sometimes see. OK, so maybe I loved Grace, but there’s more than one kind of love, isn’t there? Maybe that’s why I asked Pete, who was sitting directly in front of me, to ask Fiver to drop me in the middle of Crifton as we drove through.
‘I’ll see you all later,’ I told them.
The post office was closed. I walked around to the back door and knocked – I could hear dance music coming from the kitchen radio. It was Ambrose and His Orchestra, I think. Susan was wearing the same dress as before. It looked freshly washed and ironed. She smiled, and then stopped smiling, but let me in immediately.
I stepped past her and said, ‘I know you said not too often, but something happened and—’
She surprised me by stopping my mouth with a kiss. Not one of real passion: there was something else in it. Something like I’m angry, but it’s all right this time because I’m also pleased to see you. I lifted her dress, and had her against the wall. She was desperate for me not to come in her, but I was stupid. That must have upset her, but afterwards she stroked my hair, as if I was the one who needed consolation.
This time I stayed for the cup of tea she had originally promised: we sat on hard upright kitchen chairs on either side of the kitchen stove.
‘One of those killed my sister, you know,’ I told her. Then I explained about Black Francie, and how he laughed at the English and everything we did, and was never patronizing. I told her what had happened to him, and about his funeral. I told her about pointless death and my beautiful kid sister. I told Susan that the first time I had seen her I noticed that she had my sister’s beautiful hair; that I knew it would gradually darken and copper over the winter months, and she nodded as if she knew what I was talking about. I told her.
‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but when I’m with you it’s like she isn’t quite dead. Not yet. But that’s not why I wanted you.’ I told her that when I had told Grease about my sister, I had thought of her instead. There had been nothing else in my head, and no logic to this, but I said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you had said no. You probably knew that.’
She blew on her tea and reached her free hand over to lay it on one of mine.
‘I didn’t. But a bit of notice would help, and . . .’
I knew what she wanted to say. I blocked. ‘Yes. I’m truly sorry about that. It won’t happen again.’
‘No, it won’t; and if there are any consequences this time, remember you’re sharing them. My father’s a solicitor. A vindictive one.’
I laughed.
Then, without warning she made me cry. She made me cry simply by asking my sister’s name. My sister had been named Francesca, for my Italian grandmother. Everyone called her Francie, and her smile lit up the whole world. It suddenly made Black Francie’s equally meaningless death impossible to bear. In front of that terrible shiny enamelled stove, on a hard chair with my head bowed to my knees, I cried myself to pieces in front of a woman I hardly knew.
