Tuesday's War, page 38
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She lied. She has a natural mother, and a stepfather. You’ve met him, I take it?’
‘If it’s the big man I think he is, I repaired his radio. It’s my trade in the RAF. I think that I heard you singing when I was up there working on it. I thought you were a ghost.’
‘I never sing, so perhaps it was.’
‘Why should she tell me you’re her stepmother if you’re not?’
‘Good question Charlie-Barley.’ She held up her drink and squinted at me through it. I noted that she was taking very small sips and savouring each one. ‘It could be something to do with hating me.’ When I didn’t respond she added, ‘Aren’t you even going to ask why?’
‘I thought that I’d leave that to you.’
She smiled. I liked her smile. She had a bags of character smile. There were sad things in it, and defiant things in it.
‘Her stepfather dated her before he dated me. She was twenty and he was forty: so was I. You can work out the mathematics if you’re that interested. He shagged the daughter first, and then the mother. Collected the complete set: you men are all little boys at heart. Then he confounded everyone by marrying the latter. He tells me that he hasn’t had her since he met me, although she has tried often enough.’
‘Do you believe him?’
‘Yes; I do rather. It might explain the loathing she feels for me.’
‘She also says that you are a lush.’
‘She didn’t lie about that. She doesn’t lie about absolutely everything.’
‘None of us do.’
‘No.’
‘Are you getting better?’
‘Better at what, Charlie?’ She suddenly had the voice of a sexy schoolgirl, and when I looked up quickly she laughed at me. ‘I told you: Barnsey looks after me. If you want to know the story then I’ll tell you.’ I didn’t, particularly, but that didn’t stop her. ‘I’m one of those lapsed Catholics who takes God half seriously, so when the booze buried a good friend of mine, and threatened to bury me, I went down to the chapel here with Mr and Mrs Barnes. We all knelt at the altar, and I promised God not to drink a drink here that they hadn’t personally handed to me. Then I had them promise God never to give me a drink if they thought that it would be bad for me. It was a bit like marriage vows.’
‘Did it work?’
‘More or less. It meant giving Mrs B the run of the cellars, and that turned out to be a mistake. Her problem’s almost as big as mine. Poor Barnsey!’
I tried again. ‘Are you getting better?’
She sighed, and looked across at the sweep of the lawns, the narrow river and the distant trees. Her eyes were huge and brown and clear. Her chin was as narrow as her mouth was wide. I had been so used to the company of twenty-year-olds with million-year-old faces, that I was suddenly stunned by a middle-aged mother with a twenty-year-old face. There was half an inch of drink in her glass. She smiled, and suddenly inverted it onto the gravel. She looked at me and smiled again.
‘Yes. Much better. What are you thinking?’
‘I’m not going to tell you, Mrs Baker.’
I liked her laugh.
There was another deep thump from the Long Ride. I left the Indian there, and drifted slowly back in the Austin. Barnes told me he’d have one of the land girls deliver the bike.
Grace wasn’t there; did I already tell you that? Neither was her father. I wondered if her mother and father were ever in the house at the same time.
There used to be an airfield at Great Gransden. It was the next nearest bomber command station to our own at Bawne. I had agreed to meet the chums there for the dance the Gransdenites were throwing. It was a mixed ranks affair, also open to civilians, in one of their great T sheds, and they had gone to town on the prep. They had commandeered small chairs and tables from all over the neighbourhood, and arranged them around a huge bare circle that formed a dance floor that could accommodate thousands – well, hundreds, anyway. They had decorated the hangar with red, white and blue streamers and fitted a long bar down each side. The band was a Brown Jobs band, but they were bloody good. They did Dorsey so you thought that it was Dorsey.
‘Who are they?’ I asked Grease.
‘The RASC dance band. Service corps. They must all be bloody professionals. Bloody good, what?’
The ‘what’ threw me for a second, then Marty said, ‘He didn’t get a bollocking. Brookie told him that his landing was so piss poor that he had to become an officer, because he was embarrassing the sergeants.’
‘What did you make?’ I asked him.
Grease said, ‘Pilot officer, but don’t get excited. He then went all serious on me and said that the piss poor landing was so piss poor that even the officers wouldn’t have me, so he was demoting me again immediately. I’m a flight sergeant at present, and things aren’t looking good. I’ve got at least four landings to make before the end of the tour, and if I lose a rank each time I’ll be an Erk before we finish.’
‘My people would be right proud of me if I did that. Da hates the English. Ashamed of me being a sergeant in their air force,’ Fergal said.
‘What’s with the “what” then?’ I asked Grease.
Conners said, ‘He’s been speaking officerish ever since the interview. I’ve told him that it won’t wash: he has to have the uniform to go with it.’
Grease had already had a few; he grinned cheerfully. ‘Maybe that guy Braddock could get me one.’
I looked away and asked, ‘Where’s Pete?’
‘Dancing with Harriet with his prick up her skirt,’ the Toff told me. His toff accent always became more toffish with ale.
‘He’d better be careful,’ Grease said.
‘Why?’
‘I think that I might have given her something: I’ve been awfully itchy for the last couple of days.’
Within the limits of decorum Harriet was spreading herself around the team. She could see we were short of females. While she was dancing a smoochie slotted between Marty and Fergal, Pete topped up our beers from a flat bottle of bourbon, and asked, ‘What did Grace say?’
‘Nothing. Wasn’t there. She only stayed overnight, and then picked up a Beau at Twinwood and flew it to Ringway; she’s back in the business. She didn’t tell them anything, but her mother knew.’
‘What was the old lady like?’ Pete asked.
‘I’m not going to tell you. Not what I expected,’ I said.
‘Ah,’ Pete said. It was a noise we were all learning.
Marty alarmed everyone by dancing a rumba with an empty 250-pounder bomb case, fins and all. He looked like a man very much in love.
‘What about Tuesday?’ I asked Grease.
He squinted at me through the smoke. Everyone had cigarettes except me. I was beginning to enjoy the pipe, and drank less when I had it stoked up. Tommo wandered over, gave me a half wave and wandered away again. I thought I saw Peter Wynn behind him, but when I shook my head the picture cleared. It was some fresh-faced lieutenant I’d never seen before. I tried again. ‘What about Tuesday?’
‘Oh. She’s ready. They stuck the gadgets in, and fired them up. It all works apparently.’
‘Who’s going to show Conners how to work it?’
‘No one. We’re too close to the end of our tour. Not worth the bother Brookie says. He’ll get it at his next OTU. We’ve got to fly her, and pretend they’re not there. The next mob will be shown how to do the business with it.’
Brookman danced by with a huge Wren he’d magicked from somewhere. His leg was still troubling him so he flew a bit left wing low, and one of his legs would occasionally dart between hers: that was his excuse, anyway. It meant that they crabbed about the dance floor a bit. As he looped close to our table he slowed long enough to toss a bulky envelope in front of Grease and said, ‘Get a uniform with a proper jacket, and get these up.’
When Grease shook out the contents in front of us it was the uniform ring, buttons, wings and cap badge of a pilot officer.
‘Fuck it,’ he said, ‘I’m an officer again.’
‘Don’t be too pleased,’ the Toff told him. ‘So was Samson, and look what happened to him.’
‘What did happen to him?’ Pete asked us. He’d come back with a tray of beers. The Gransdenites served a decent pint at their parties.
‘I think that Charlie arse-ended his missus, and then he went mad. I’m not sure about that; it may have been the other way round,’ Conners said.
‘Naughty, naughty,’ Pete said, and waved a finger in front of my face.
It was a good party. I spoiled it by telling Pete, ‘I think Brookie arse-ended Samson’s missus as well. Probably still does. He wears one of her stockings around his neck.’
‘Really? She’s a matrosse then. That’s what a German soldier would call her.’
‘Tell me that again?’
‘Three grades of Fräulein: matrosse, unter offizier matrosse, and uber offizier matrosse.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Most of the Polish countesses I told you about. They been matrosses before they come here.’
‘What about the ones who don’t do it?’
‘I’m Polish, Charlie. Do I believe in fairies?’ he asked me, and leaned over to top up my beer with bourbon again. Hadn’t I already said something like that about Brookie?
Some time after midnight the band was playing ‘Stardust’, and I found myself dancing with Fiver. She had come in uniform, and had managed to keep it on so far. I looked around for Dougie and couldn’t see him. As we danced I ran my tongue around the edge of her ear, not thinking about what I was doing, and whispered, ‘Where’s Doug?’
Although she had kept her uniform on she had undone the jacket. She moved closer as our feet shuffled to the tune. I felt as if I was in an earthquake.
‘Tain.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Hundreds of miles away. North of Inverness: near Wick. In the Forbidden Zone. They’re building huge new runways up there for the transatlantic flights. Doug got part of the contract: he’ll be away for months.’
‘Where’s the Forbidden Zone?’
‘North of the Neutral Zone: deepest Scotland. We’ll be rich when he comes back.’
‘Good for you.’ Some of her hair got into my mouth. I gently displaced it with my tongue. ‘Are you staying in the cottage or moving back to the Waafery?’
‘In the cottage I think. I haven’t told them at the station – my section officer would just move me back – I’m actually looking forward to it: I’ve never lived alone before.’
‘Nor have I.’ I slid my right hand down on to her breast as we moved: she put her left hand over it, but didn’t pull it away. I asked, ‘Can I stay with you tonight?’
Her voice was more a loud breath inside my ear than a voice. ‘No . . . but you can fuck me if you like.’
OK Charlie boy: decision made. It was a bit like arriving at a destination I’d been travelling to for a while. What did I feel? I felt a deep sense of relief, and I’m told that that’s not uncommon. Grease raised his glass to us as we danced past the table. When I heard him say to Conners and the Toff, ‘They look all right together,’ I felt childishly pleased. Fiver had heard him too, and smiled back at me. Somewhere in my head Grace vanished, like a genie at the pantomime. Back in her lamp with a puff of smoke. I could handle it.
I walked home from the cottage after 0530, still trying to whistle ‘Stardust’. There was a sickle moon on its back about twenty degrees east of me. If you bisected the arc of the sickle and moved out to the west at about forty-five above it, there was a bright star hanging there. About four inches away: Jupiter, I think, or Venus. Together they were like a gleaming signpost into the sky. Wrens and robins dived in and out of the dawn chorus, and scolded me for trespassing.
When I took my head out of the bucket there was a low-slung red sports car close by: a beauty, with Brookman sitting in it gently blipping the throttle. He was dressed for flying, and Jenny’s stocking was flapping prominently outside his jacket.
‘Morning, Charlie,’ he said.
‘Morning, sir,’ I said, at which he winced. My voice was probably too loud for his hangover. I relented: maybe one ‘sir’ per conversation would suffice. ‘She’s a beaut of a car. What is she?’
‘A Beezer. BSA. The bint likes it, anyway. Where’s your leader this morning?’
‘Pounding the peri-track. He’s fanatical about keeping fit. He was a sportsman before he joined up.’
‘I know: ice hockey, wasn’t it?’
‘Do you want me to give him a message?’
‘No, Charlie – I’ll wait. I left some things out at Gransden last night, and thought I’d pop over in the old Annie and pick them up. Mac can second pilot for me.’
‘Do you need a nav or the radio?’ More for the form of it really.
‘Charlie, I can almost see the Gransden windmill from here: even I can navigate to something I can see without getting lost!’
I grinned the daft laddy grin: damned if I wanted to fool around with them in that draughty old Anson at 0800 anyway.
In the Pit Marty groaned, and crawled out from beneath his bed, under which he had eventually slept cradling his bomb case. One of the fins had creased his face. I thought that he was seriously in love.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked me.
‘Brookie’s showing off his new car, and wants Grease to fly over to Gransden in the Annie with him to collect some gear he left last night. I think that pilots cure hangovers with the act of flight.’
Conners’s voice came from beneath a heap of blankets on his bed. ‘Landing practice.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s going to teach Grease how to land aeroplanes without bouncing them to buggery. He’ll do it at Gransden, away from here, in order to save face for the chump. Grease is an officer now, don’t forget.’
‘Is that official?’
‘Fuck knows,’ said the Toff, ‘but if he moves out, I bags his spot by the stove.’
For the second time since we had moved in I had forgotten to stoke it in the morning, and so it had died. I imposed on myself the penance of emptying and rekindling it: I needed the discipline, and it was like paying God back for the loan of a Fiver. The curtains were closed around number eight, and for a moment I thought one of the murmuring voices inside was Grace, but it was Pete and Harriet: they seemed to be grumbling about something.
At breakfast it was interesting how the rest of the squadron deferred to us. For instance, the crew at the window table we preferred scuttled away to the back of the room as soon as Pete’s sharp nose and narrow moustache preceded us into the mess. It was an honour conferred on us by longevity alone: we were now the longest serving crew on the squadron, our predecessors having got chopped on the last raid. Statistically, if you looked at things from the pessimist’s point of view we had already been dead a few weeks. If you took the optimist’s point of view it was beginning to look as if we could make it. I stared around the breakfast tables and realized that I didn’t know half the faces in the room, and my hands began to shake.
Berlin
Marty was last in, his face still creased from sleeping with a bomb. He said, ‘Make the most of it: we’re on for tonight,’ as he tucked in to scrambled powder and sawdust sausages. He always seemed to know. I was already on the jam and wads. Oddly, as soon as he had said it, I lost the shakes. There was something in the tea again that morning; it had that irony taste.
We drove down to the briefing, clinging around the Singer like limpets. They let me drive because with my pipe in my mouth I had both hands free.
‘Fucking Big City again, boys, but it’ll be the last time,’ Grease told us.
‘How d’you know it’s our last time?’ Marty asked.
‘Brookie promised me two or three milk runs after this, if I learned to land properly.’
‘And did you?’
‘First time. No worries.’
‘Good on you, Skip!’ the Toff said.
‘Stop talking so bloody Australian: this is supposed to be an English squadron,’ said Conners.
‘Then what am I doing here?’ Fergal asked.
‘And me?’ said Pete.
‘You’ll all get proper passports along with your gongs. Everyone knows that Johnny Foreigner can’t get gongs!’
By then we were out of the car and joining the stream of bodies channelling into the corrugated iron shed where they told us where we were going die each trip. It was just the sort of nonsense we talked to get us there. The station commander was there again, and Brookie sat in Samson’s old seat, looking for all the world like a keen gun dog off on a shoot.
The wing commander gave us the smoking light early, which was always a bad sign, and casually observed that he would be going out himself tonight, before sitting down and leaving the usual words to the usual ranks. Both the master gunner and master bomber were officers I hadn’t seen before – or if I had I couldn’t remember them – because we’d lost their forerunners the raid before.
I liked the gunnery officer immediately: when he stood up to the map of Krautland on the board he drew irregular shapes on it with a chinagraph pencil: then he hatched the shapes in with straight lines, and said, ‘Regardless of what wing intelligence tells us, these are the shiteholes tonight, gentlemen. Flak, and fighter beacons. Shiteholes.’ He got a murmur of laughter, then, ‘Fly into them and you’ll get flushed down the pan.’ It was silent again: he had our attention. ‘Solution: don’t fly into them.’ I could see Conners scribbling furiously from the corner of my eye: that was unusual during the gunnery part of the brief. ‘If you do, you are going to need your gunners. Don’t come crying to me afterwards; even if you are able to. Gunners, you are loaded up with 50 per cent tracer, and 50 per cent plain ball. I know that some of you don’t like tracer because it tips the Hun off as to where you really are. My opinion is that the risk is offset by the hell of a scare you give him when he sees those coloured lights screaming towards him. Any questions?’
