Tuesday's War, page 41
‘Thanks, Pete.’
And then everyone looked at me, because it hadn’t been Pete talking to me, but Marty. Pete was dead. I had to keep reminding myself that Pete was dead.
I began at Crifton Hall, in a huge, long, empty room with twenty-foot windows running down the whole of one side. It was chilly. Mrs Baker, dressed in flappy silk French knickers, a tight running singlet and plimsolls, pounded around its periphery. Barnes brought me an upright chair and an upright whisky: I sat in the middle of the room while she orbited me at a quarter revs; my visit was not going to cut short her exercise regime.
‘She’s been here. Once for tea, and once to stay over. She had a nice young American with her.’
‘How is she?’
‘Still pregnant. It’s beginning to show if you have the eye.’
‘And you have, Mrs Baker?’
‘It’s what mothers are for.’
‘What’s she going to do about it?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Will she tell you?’
‘Don’t know.’
I swallowed the whisky. It was rough and fiery; I put the glass down carefully on the polished pine boards, and stood up. She stopped running alongside another chair, which had a towel hung over it. She draped the towel around her neck, and looked out of the windows.
‘For God’s sake Charlie. Don’t sulk. It isn’t manly,’ she said.
‘Pete told me that. He’s our rear gunner. He died. What is manly? I thought that I knew once; now I’m not so sure.’
I had been about to walk out, but walked over to join her instead. We were looking away from the back of the house to the dip and the climb of the Long Ride. It had several more scars.
‘What was this room? A ballroom?’ I asked her.
‘No; an orangery. Before the last war it would have been full of plants, and a full-time gardener would have worked here.’
‘I’m glad you still use it. You could fit a U-boat in here.’
There was a small airy sitting room alongside. Barnes had laid a tea tray with a high swan-necked teapot, glasses instead of cups and a tiny clear jug of milk on a low table. Grace’s mother and I faced each other across it on small sofas.
‘The tea’s Earl Grey. That’s slightly scented,’ she said.
‘I know it. My mother liked it when she was alive . . . so, what do you think of me?’
‘Too good for my daughter. Excessively middle class.’
‘Is there a cure for that?’
‘Of course there is: but it would alter you. We may not like what you become. Then, of course, you wouldn’t be good enough for my daughter. Heads we win: tails you lose.’
‘What happened to Grace’s real father?’
‘Peter killed Jack. Maybe eight years ago.’
‘Some sort of accident?’
‘No. He killed him in a duel. In Germany. The Germans still allowed it then. Perfectly legal. I think that they were drunk when it cropped up, and too proud to back down. The Germans would have loved that. Peter hasn’t drunk so much since then.’
‘Was it over you?’
‘No. It was about business, I think. They were both in the firm. Grace and I came after that.’
‘How?’
‘Peter and Jack had made a legal agreement that the business went to the survivor; nothing for me except a piddling little pension. I think that sort of thing is called a tontine arrangement. Don’t know why. Grace went to confront Peter in London when he got back. She was going to kill him. That was about a month after the funeral. I understand from Peter that she was in his bed that night – she did so like to shock us all when she was a child. She’s better than that now.’
‘I’m glad. When did you become involved?’
‘A few months later: Grace brought him down here to shag him under her dead father’s roof, and he met me. I was drunk: had been for weeks. I can’t have been hard to roll on my back that night; if it was on my back. Initially I think he did it for the mother and daughter thing: you know, a matched pair. Later he said that I was a better fuck than my daughter, and would do for him. Privately I think he’d fallen in love with the house, rather than me: thank God he did; his money saved it.’
‘It was your house then?’
‘After a fashion – but we’d only been here a few months, and I couldn’t afford to keep it.’
‘What’s Grace doing?’
‘Based at Ringway again. She’s ferried several old Beaufighters from Twinwood I understand.’
I drank the tea sharp: without milk. I loved its tartness on the back my tongue. I told her that my war was over: temporarily. She said, ‘I’m pleased for you,’ then asked me, ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Find her. Talk to her. Make sure she’s all right. I suppose that that’s excessively middle class of me?’
She paused before replying. A hit; a palpable hit. And then she spoke quietly, studying the floor. ‘I would probably say endearingly middle class, I think. I wish I was again.’
‘I think that I’d better be going.’ I stood. The room suddenly seemed small; like a woman’s room. It wasn’t her face I looked at as I left. OK: I had a last minute glance at it – she was smiling again.
Twinwood seemed to be a much more professional set-up than Bawne. The RAF police guy at the gatehouse kept his white helmet on all the time; ever ready to repel the wily Hun. He didn’t like the look of me, or my paybook, and kept me kicking my heels for half an hour while he made calls and checks. Then I made for the watch office. A bored, middle-aged lieutenant, who was sharing the place with an equally bored AC2 telegraphist, offered me a mug of tea. Unlike at Bawne, most of their aircraft were stored under cover in single-aircraft-sized Blister hangars. They hadn’t bothered with camouflage, but painted them with heavy matt black tar paint, and had allowed trees to grow close to them. The aircraft I saw – Beaufighters and Mosquitoes – looked purposeful, deadly, and ill-used, with patches and dents: they had rockets and bombs hung all over them. I counted three empty Blisters; somebody was out.
The officer perked up at the mention of Grace. They had a sweepstake out on her, but no one had claimed it yet. There was a young American with her sometimes, but everyone agreed she just seemed to mother him.
‘I’ve just come from her family’s house.’
‘That big place up at Crifton?’
‘That’s right. I was with her mother: there’s some family business which needs to get settled up, and I needed to speak with her.’ It wasn’t exactly untrue.
That brought a third voice into the conversation. A tall, slim, bespectacled American Major unwound himself from a chair in the telephone switchboard behind the watch office: he must have been dozing there. He said, ‘You looking for a lift to Ringway then, son?’ He had a quiet speaking voice: I strained to hear him. I gave him my sloppy salute, at which he smiled.
‘Yes, sir. That was the idea. If she wasn’t here I needed to get wherever she was; if you see what I mean.’
‘I do indeed.’
‘If that’s not on, I’ll drive. I have transport, but it’ll take that much longer.’
‘Indeed it will. May I make a suggestion?’
‘Please do, sir.’ He was one of those men you would have called sir with or without his major’s badges.
‘Let me offer you a lift. I’m away from here in an hour, an’ I don’t like flying, an’ I would appreciate your company. Flying makes me nervous.’
What I wanted to say, was Then why the fuck are you in the air force? but instead I said, ‘Thanks. This means a lot.’
‘You ever been to Manchester, son?’
‘No sir.’
‘Then don’t thank me until after you have.’
‘OK, Major.’
‘Wake me when we’re set up, Shorty.’ I had a new name.
The aircraft was an American Norseman; the American pilot, John Morgan, was a sociable, very professional type who seemed to have heard all of his passengers’ grumbles already. They had an easy relationship. I thought that the major was probably an admin wallah. Morgan assured the major that the little aircraft had a better than average passenger kill rate. He grinned at that, and the major winced and popped a tab. I think that they had both been through the routine before. The major slept all of the way to Manchester. The pilot told a lot of jokes, and laughed at them all. He didn’t laugh at any of mine. Behind us, the major snored.
Don’t believe everything they say about Manchester. It only rains half the time. I must have just missed it. The runways were wet, and the sun was shining. The wind was cold, as it often is on large airfields where there’s nothing to get in its way. The ATA had its own set-up at Ringway. The man in charge wore an old, food-stained Imperial Airways uniform with about a thousand rings on his sleeve, and pince-nez spectacles. He was working alone in a brick office, writing up a ledger of some sort. He didn’t even look up when I asked how I could find out where a particular ATA pilot named Grace Baker was.
‘You can’t. Now bugger off, there’s a good fellow,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said.
He sighed, decided that I was just a figment of his imagination, and that if he ignored me I would disappear; like a cartoon character in Fantasia. He carried on writing. I kicked his desk. It was a good solid desk. I gave it a good solid kick. His pen nib jumped on the page, and about a quarter of an inch of navy blue ink pooled in a place his signature was poised for.
‘Balls!’ he said, and looked at me for the first time. He hadn’t an unkind face: just a very old, ugly one. Most of his hair had migrated to his nose, and curled out of it like tusks. ‘Look what you made me do.’
‘I didn’t come here to do that. I came here to meet Grace, because she asked me to.’
‘Not in so many words, if I know our Grace. Do you want to sit down?’
‘Don’t mind if I do, sir, but it won’t change my mind.’
I had had my pipe in my hand since leaving the aircraft. Turning it this way and that; putting off the hour.
‘What do you put in it?’ he asked me.
‘Tobacco.’
‘Clever little sod. What kind?’
I just relaxed; I don’t know why. ‘Navy Cut. I’ve only just started; I find it a bit heavy.’
‘Here. Have a go at this. It’s called Sweet Chestnut. You can get it if you search about a bit.’ He threw a smallish leather tobacco pouch on the desk. Didn’t Red Indians do that sort of thing instead of punching each other’s lights out? He was right. It was a nice light tobacco. The smoke was sweet, and very blue.
‘Forget the fillies: stick to the pipe – it won’t let you down the way they will,’ he told me.
‘Are you going to tell me where I have to go to speak to Grace Baker, sir?’
He sighed. His pipe had gone out. He fiddled with it, and sighed. ‘Just how many sergeants, lieutenants and jumped-up whatnots with stars and oak leaves do you think sit in that chair every day, and ask for one of my girls?’
‘Loads, probably, but I’m different.’
‘And how many of them tell me that?’
I grinned despite myself. ‘Loads probably.’
‘And how are you different from them?’
‘Her mum sent me.’
‘Not bad, but not different enough.’
‘Grace told me to find her when I could.’
‘Still not different enough. She’s probably told dozens that in order to get rid of them.’
‘I fly in a Lancaster that’s named after her: Tuesday’s Child. All of us in the crew are indebted to her, one way or the other. Mostly the other.’
He still shook his head.
‘She’s pregnant.’
‘Damn.’ He managed to light his pipe from an old brass Great War petrol lighter. ‘She’s staying in a pub with the others out on the Altrincham road; her little American chum is probably there too: so watch out for yourself, you’ll hardly be welcome.’
‘She’ll kill me for telling you, anyway.’
‘And she’ll kill me for telling you where to find her.’
‘Then we’d better un-have this conversation, and find a better way of doing it.’
The room was thick with smoke, like a Wild West saloon after a gunfight. He barked a quick loud laugh. ‘Pragmatism: and you so young! It’s most likely why you’re still alive. Come and see me after the war: you’ll do all right in the merchant service.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘Come back tomorrow ack emma. Say 0930. She’s taking an Oxford down south at 1100.’
‘Twinwood?’
‘Can’t say, old boy. Ears have walls. But if it were, it would be because we were taking all their old Beaus away, and giving them brand new aeroplanes to play with. Their CO is up for a new station hack though; hence the Oxford.’
‘Don’t you mean walls have ears?’
‘Do I? You work it out, old son; toodle pip.’
That was it. He looked down at his book again, made sure the ink blot was dry with an overused piece of blotting paper, and set to signing his name laboriously underneath. That’s when I noticed that he had lost all of the fingers of his right hand down to their first joints. They swung their own propellers in the early days I remembered. The chair scraped as I stood up. He didn’t look up.
Their provos were friendlier than our southern breed: bigger, too. Perhaps that was something to do with it. One of them gave me the name of a small hotel close to the main gate with which they had an arrangement.
Mrs Madigan, the landlady, was a slightly overfilled goodtime girl of about fifty, with a flowery scarf around her hair. She had an accent I loved immediately. It was as wet as a suet pudding. She said she only had a double room left, but that I could have it if I could pay. Her part of the bargain was throwing in a breakfast, she boasted, the like of which I wouldn’t have seen since before the war. She invited me to go to a local WVS hop with her, and hinted that the evening needn’t end there. I pleaded battle fatigue and weariness, and said I’d drink a glass with her if I was still up when she came home.
I ate hot, peppery faggots, and bread and cheese at the pub next door, and took back three bottles of beer, which I drank lying on the bed listening to tinny dance music from a small wooden box radio receiver on the bedside table. Lou Praeger and ‘Coming Home’ stuck in my head. Later I fetched a large bowl of piping hot water from the shared bathroom, and gave myself the luxuries of a proper stand-up wash in it, and then an evening shave. I hadn’t done that for months.
I heard Mrs Madigan come in about midnight, but I didn’t go down. Lying back warm and clean, in a double bed, slightly squiffy, and not having to fight the Kraut tomorrow or for the next few months: life didn’t get much better than that.
I dreamed of flying over Germany.
A persistent tapping at the door woke me out of it. When it opened I saw the silhouette of Mrs Madigan. It looked as if she was unsuccessfully buttoned into a pair of men’s heavy-duty pyjamas; she had a glass in each hand, and gently punted the door shut behind her with a foot. The weak light from the doorway had destroyed my night vision, and it took thirty seconds or so to readjust to the darkness in the room. I realized that I was sweating. My face was wet.
‘Do you want the light on?’ Mrs Madigan said. The bed dipped heavily as she sat on it.
‘No. I’m OK.’
‘Here; get this down you. You were shouting so loud I was scared you’d wake the other guests.’
‘Sorry. I was dreaming.’ I sipped the drink she put in my hand. It was warm port and lemon. There was something else in it.
‘Port and lemon and . . .?’
‘Tansy. It’s a herb I grow in the garden. It’ll help you to sleep.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You fly in the RAF then?’
‘Yes. I’m a radio operator. Bombers. I’ve finished for a while: done my trips.’ I was glad that she couldn’t see me because tears were rolling down my cheeks.
I turned up the next morning as early as a nervous bridegroom: which I certainly wasn’t. The ATA-in-Chief put me on one of several hard chairs in the corridor outside their flight office with a huge mug of char in my hand, and directions to a galley where I could refill it on demand. They seemed a nice relaxed bunch, and their lack of bull could even teach the Aussies a thing or two. I quickly noticed that the women all seemed older than those in the so-called fighting services, and had about double the IQ.
There was one in her mid thirties who introduced herself to me as Sheila: she was taller than me, had long blonde hair and was zipped into an olive American flying overall that clung to her like a second skin. She would have completely knocked me over if I hadn’t been there for another reason. As it was I settled for letting her tongue-tie me, which seemed to amuse her.
‘You’re sitting in the taxi seats,’ she said.
I shook my head, and eventually spat out, ‘Sorry: I don’t understand.’ Which was almost as good as keeping my trap shut.
‘The chairs Arthur sits people in if they’re looking for a lift. We just come along and pick the ones we fancy. I’m taking a Messenger up to Glasgow and then Grangemouth; back again tomorrow with a Halifax. Any good?’
I think I blushed. Ninety per cent of me was screaming to say Yes, I’ll go anywhere with you.
‘I’d love to, but I’m heading south. Anywhere in Cambridgeshire or Bedfordshire would do.’
‘Pity.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me know if you change your mind. I’m off at 1015.’
A smart sergeant with a flashy haircut, and an old observers wing on his uniform, came and sat near me. His service cap was buttoned under his epaulette. He seemed to know most of the pilots who passed him by name, but wasn’t having any luck.
Grace arrived with about four others, three men and another woman. She was in her baggy old brown lifesaver Sidcot suit. Her voice was the quietest of the lot, but I picked it out before I saw her, amongst the banter and laughs.
‘Excuse me,’ she said as she pushed past, and then turned back to say, ‘Charlie.’
The group stopped for her, but she waved them away with, ‘Go on: I’ll catch you up.’ Then she said to me, ‘What are you doing here?’
