by Rafe Posey
Perhaps they are not the golden boy and girl of her adolescent reveries after all. And from this distance, with the layers of confusion and evasion, there is no way to tell. Perhaps marriage isn’t for her. Perhaps she should let Alec go, let him find someone who can love him better and be the kind of woman he wishes she could be.
But the idea of giving Alec up makes her heart hurt. Despite their feelings, isn’t it possible that the very closeness that has, from the beginning, tethered them into the unit they have become is exactly what might now tear them apart? If she met someone else later, she could be vague about the war. But this is Alec, and every day she feels it more, the way her choices and duties are pulling at the fabric of them.
1943, RAF Blida
January, and the world smells of orange blossom from the thousands of trees in the groves surrounding Blida. The town is an oasis of sorts, old and French and Mohammedan at the base of the mountains. It is nothing like India, and yet. There is something about the scent of oranges, and the chatter of the urchins who line the roads and sell fruit to the airmen, something about the dust storms that fill their planes with grit, that calls to Alec. On their leaves, he goes with Charlie and Sanjay into Algiers and drinks Pernod in some cafés and mint tea in others. The drive in the borrowed Jeep feels reckless at times, as if they’re waiting for a German plane to lean across the sky and strafe them into oblivion, but getting away from the dusty airfield and the stench of jet fuel for a handful of hours is a gift. But, like most gifts, it has its complications.
There are corners of Algiers in which the war doesn’t exist, in which a man can forget for a few hours. Where Alec can find men who remind him of the Mohammedans in the markets of Bombay and Srinagar, although their Arabic is not enough like the languages of his childhood to help him. The scent of braziers and spicy Merguez pulls at him from the chaos of the souk and makes him wonder if he will ever get back to India. Occasional letters from Roger make the connection between this life here and that life there even stronger; the letters are nostalgic more often than not, as Roger, stationed for the moment in Egypt, misses the mountains where he’s made his life.
Across the Mediterranean from Algiers is Marseille, and talking of Marseille with Charlie leads to talk of their days aboard the RMS Jaipur, and the boys who roamed the ship with them. And they talk of India too, sometimes; these men are some of the only people he’s ever met who understand how hard the landscape of his childhood can tug at him. Sanjay, in particular, seems caught between two worlds here.
Alec longs for June all the time, her absence tugging at him as well, although at this point he is almost used to being without her. Years of going away to school have turned out to be a kind of practice for whatever this is, with him in North Africa and getting farther away all the time. He writes to her as often as he can, although her own letters are coming less frequently. Sometimes they look as though they’ve been opened and inspected, the London postmark blurred with wear and weather, but perhaps that’s what comes of working for the Foreign Office, even as a secretary. She is incredibly precise with her details—nothing that might be censored, nothing too personal.
But it’s never enough. He misses the feeling of her skin under his palms, the way her eyes flash when something catches her attention, the bare hint of the Fens in her voice when she’s tired. He misses the way her fingers wrap around his wrist to catch his attention when they’re walking together. He misses everything.
* * *
• • •
Alec almost can’t remember before the war. He’s been flying for nearly four years now, and he can hardly imagine a life based mainly on the ground. Most of his days are a broken rhythm of waiting for alarms or soaring into the sky. Even when he can get away from it, clear himself out of the base, the war and its routines are always there. In the beginning he joined the University Squadron because he thought it would be an adventure, and he left school to be part of the fight because he knew it was important. Germany had to be beaten back; the stakes were too high for him to choose otherwise. And still too, it was a lark. He has turned out to be good at it, and, perhaps more important, he hasn’t yet died of it.
But the war is a grind, and if he lets himself think of what it actually means, what his squadron and the other Allied forces are actually doing here in Algeria, or wherever they’re sent next, it seems it will never end. And what is the point, really? Someone will surrender, and treaties will be brandished. There will be blame and recriminations, and the endless fields of the dead with their lonely white crosses. And one day there will be another war, another cohort of boys sent off to their deaths. There are days when the war is confusingly remote, except when he flies out into it, over the Mediterranean, or dips his wings over the desert-creased carcasses of tanks and trucks abandoned by the German retreat.
The war is most evident in the gaps left behind by the men who vanish—wounded, missing, or dead—or in the stories new squaddies tell of things they’ve seen or done. There are men who want the war to end so they can go home to the girls they left behind and forget all this, and men who want it to go on forever because they have the scent of blood in their souls now, and this is who they are.
* * *
• • •
Sometimes he wakes in the night with a queasy, confused feeling about June. For years he had mostly felt the worry as a quiet fret—is she all right, is she well out of the bombing—but now it’s been far too long since he’s seen her, and the absence hurts. He had hoped to see her last autumn, in the days between his return from Canada and rejoining the squadron in Algeria. But his efforts at a visit had been disastrous. He had gone to the town house in Bloomsbury with a single bright rose, the best he’d been able to scrape up on short notice in a bomb-scarred London, but June had not been there. Ainsley Finch-Martin had been home, though. The look on Ainsley’s face—that flash of surprise—had left a dank feeling in Alec’s chest. He had asked to see June, and Ainsley had told him she wasn’t there just then, that June was traveling for work and had not said when she might be back.
But she had done him the kindness of writing out Floss Corbett’s telephone number on a bit of newsprint, and so Alec had gone to a call box and rung the man up. The conversation, such as it was, had been far from satisfactory—Corbett had told him only that June was out of town for the Foreign Office and no, he was not at liberty to tell Alec where. He had sounded smug and oily, and wholly infuriating.
That had been months ago, and still Alec regrets not calling Corbett out. His arrogance has never sat well with Alec, but what could he do? All that time, and still no clarity—why couldn’t Corbett just tell him where June was? Days when he is in the air are better; they keep him from thinking so much about June and the things he doesn’t understand. She’s never said exactly where she’d gone, although he’s asked her twice now when he’s written to her. At least her last letter had responded to the question in some way—I’m so sorry I missed you, Alec. I’d thought there would be more time before you were home from Canada. He has no idea what to make of that.
Days like today . . . those are more challenging. Alec sits on the chock wedged under his plane’s landing gear, leaning back against the metal. He thinks of Corbett’s cane and the twist of a limp when he walks, and grimaces. Alec spits bitterly to the dusty ground. He won’t strike a cripple, no matter how big an ass he is. Not even Floss Corbett.
He looks up when he hears footsteps—Sanjay is coming across the tarmac, flapping an envelope against his palm. Alec stands, hopeful, his eyes on the envelope, but Sanjay shakes his head.
“Sorry, Cosmo,” he says. “This one’s mine.”
Alec shrugs, aiming for nonchalance without much success. “Perhaps the next bag.”
“That may be,” Sanjay says. “It takes too long for post to come from home.”
“That’s all very well for you,” Alec says crossly, “you’ve got your damned letter.”
“She’ll write,” Sanjay says.
Alec looks at the ground, watches the dust eddy across his shoes in what’s passing for a breeze today. Sweat pools in the small of his back. “What if she doesn’t?”
Charlie, on his way across the tarmac, pauses to listen, and laughs. “Some old gaffer’s got her busy typing memos and buying black-market stockings for his wife, I’ll wager.”
“Perhaps your mail is going to Canada,” Sanjay says. “That would seem more likely.”
Despite his worries, Alec laughs. They’re probably right. It’s never been easy to imagine his brilliant girl as a secretary, and the picture Charlie brings to mind seems most unlikely. But he knows June, and if that’s what the war effort and that prat Corbett need from her, she’ll do it better than anyone.
* * *
• • •
If not for the gnawing absence of June, and the ongoing press of war and flying sorties over the Mediterranean, Alec would be happy in Algeria. The sky here seems taller, somehow, and a wholly different kind of blue, a brilliant canvas on which he paints the triumph of hunting Germans and earning his ace. He loves the blur of language around Blida, the intersect of Berber and Arab and a host of other cultures and tongues, the elaborate Moorish gates around the city, the squalor and chaos and grandeur of the labyrinthine nest of streets and alleys. The food in Blida is better than the food in England, olives and lamb and spices. Orange trees by the side of the road. The idea of food growing in the fields outside the city, or in the Atlas foothills that shimmer in the near distance, makes everything feel more immediate, more tangible. Even when the sand whirls into a haboob, and dust and grime coat the world and block his view of the mountains, he knows how to interpret the landscape, how to work with the people.
Not far from base there is a railroad crossing, and an old woman there will fry up a slab of bread and an egg with a thick orange yolk for a couple of coins. There are urchins selling fruit and eggs and bacon by the roadside, and while many of the men avoid this fare because they don’t trust the freshness or the vendors, Alec welcomes it. Like everything else, buying something to eat from a clamorous boy by the side of the road reminds him of India. This would be glory enough after the years in England, but on the heels of all those months in Canada it feels like paradise—the terrain, the action, the clamor, the food all feel nearly bespoke for him.
* * *
• • •
The early-spring clouds float like schools of thin white fish against the cobalt sky. It’s so peaceful that Alec can almost forget he’s at war, looking for the enemy. The Blue and Green sections of A Flight have been sent aloft on a rare daylight mission to find and interfere with a German convoy reportedly making its way from Livorno to Bizerta. The three Green planes have vanished along the southern scoop of the sea to find the ships, while Charlie leads Blue a hair more north and east, hunting the fighter escorts with Alec and Sanjay at his flanks.
The sun blooms in prisms off the wings of each plane, the engines throbbing against the sky. It’s a beautiful day for flying, so perfectly clear that when the first Messerschmitts appear, they seem unreal and almost imaginary.
Alec’s radio clicks to life, Charlie’s voice rattling through. “Trust you see the bandits, lads?”
“Off to port,” Sanjay confirms.
“Got ’em,” Alec adds.
The radio is silent for a moment, then, “Engage at will,” Charlie says.
Alec glances over his shoulder, gets the thumbs-up from Tim, nods.
The horizon crackles with the light of muzzle flashes as the German guns thunder. There are planes coming from above and behind, from everywhere. The Beaufighter’s fuselage shudders, rocked by the punch of German guns finding their mark—there are planes coming from behind them now, from everywhere, Charlie and Sanjay yelling on the radio, then silent as another shot shatters Alec’s aerial.
Alec’s throat goes dry, and the Beaufighter angles dizzily toward the sea.
Above, a waft of clouds.
Below, the rush of low waves on the Mediterranean, a rocky coastline, a vineyard.
Alec’s plane spins against the sky until the coastline lies above him, heaven and earth inverted.
There is too much smoke to see behind him the dozen feet or so to the navigator’s compartment, but Alec can feel the stillness and knows Tim is dead already in the rear of the plane, like Cobber before him.
Alec squints into the distance, to where the horizon used to be. His breath comes ragged, the sound of it all wrong as he struggles for air. There’s no time, but he has to do something. And if he cannot steady himself, perhaps he can steady the plane.
He clenches his teeth until his jaw aches, pulling at the wheel until the Beaufighter has rolled back nearly upright. The fuselage creeps down the sky, leaking fuel in a pungent rain. An emergency landing will be impossible; his Beau is stiff enough landing on a proper runway; the choppy waves of the sea will kill him. He slips a hand into the breast pocket of his flight jacket, fingering the St. Christopher medallion Constance sent him the year before, and a much-folded letter from June tucked around it.
Gravity wants to hold him in the fatal embrace of the canopy, but he pushes sludgily through the pressure and the stink of burning oil and pulls his parachute off the wall mounting, strapping it to his harness over the life vest. The smoke is getting worse, making him queasy and slow.
He flattens his seat, flips the latch that opens the hole in the floor. His gloves are too thick and unwieldy, and he casts them aside so he can open the hatch. Thank God they’d loosed their torpedoes already or his exit would be blocked. The hatch hangs open, and he knows from his training that there is a spot of dead air—less than a second to get his bearings, but better than nothing.
He looks down through the opening, pats the sides of the old crate as if it were a horse or a dog, the seconds hurtling past on the screaming wind beneath him. If he doesn’t jump now it will be too late, his chute won’t open in time.
Alec takes a breath and drops into the wide-open air, falling like a stone, the plane too close. He tries to aim himself like a javelin, like a bolt of lightning thrown by a god, like anything that will angle him away from this doomed trajectory.
The Messerschmitt has turned its guns on Charlie’s plane, and Alec is helpless to stop any of this, dropping too fast, hardly able to breathe, flinching against the sound of German shells shredding through the carapace of Charlie’s Beaufighter. Alec pulls his chute, braces himself for the terrible jolt against his chest and underarms when the parachute billows into the sky above him. His plummet sways into a controlled fall, almost lazy by contrast, holding him in the palm of the sky to watch the Messerschmitts vanish into the distance, their mission of carnage complete.
A hundred yards away, Charlie’s plane curls into a spiral, black smoke billowing from the tail, the engines, the cockpit. It fans out into the evening, a pyre in the air.
“Godspeed, Charlie,” Alec whispers. He can’t see what’s happened to Sanjay. God willing, he has pulled away safely.
The airplanes fall screaming into the rocks.
* * *
• • •
He can still smell the smoke when he hits the water, scrambling to free himself from the drag of the parachute. Somehow his hands have tangled in the cords, his fingers awry at angles his mind won’t grasp, and for a moment he is full of a blistering panic that he won’t get loose, that the chute that should have saved him will be the instrument of his death. Then at last—freedom. The ropes and his frantic efforts to extricate himself from them have left his hands broken and bleeding, but the shore is not far, and if he’s careful, or lucky, perhaps his descent has gone unnoticed. Perhaps there are Allied ships nearby. Perhaps something.
But the boat, when it comes gliding silently over the low waves, is neither civilian nor Allied. It’s a wallowing cutter, a batter
ed donkey in the Italian navy. The sailors on board haul him from the sea and cut away the life vest and the jumble of harnesses. They bandage his hands, give him a blanket and a cup of coffee, and lock him in a tiny cabin far belowdecks. And there he stays. His hands are an agony, and he can’t hold the coffee. It grows cold while he waits to see what will happen next.
By the time he reaches shore, he has provided the barest information he can to a series of officers. He is officially a prisoner of war.
There are days of fever. There is a beautiful nurse with soft, brisk fingers, who tends his bandages. She coos like a mourning dove when she looks at his hands. She has almost no English, and Alec speaks no Italian at all, but in the fever he believes they can understand each other. Le mani sono rovinate, she whispers. He hears: Soon you will go home. Soon you will go back to the sky whence you came. Soon the war will end. When the fever breaks, he knows—his hands are ruined.
On a packed transport train a few days later, British officers from North Africa and Gibraltar are shoved in like steerage passengers as the Italians take them to a prisoner of war camp. He looks for Charlie, but Charlie is never there, and the nights are full of the whine of the Beaufighter slapping into the rocks. And June—his whole future, his life—feels further away than ever.
1943, Campo 78
Campo 78 sits not quite two thousand feet above the Adriatic in the Apennines, surrounded by olive and persimmon trees just outside the village of Sulmona. The camp is a cluster of brick barracks, yellow and red, hundreds or thousands of officers and enlisted pulled out of the sea or out of the desert. All these men, lost. Most of them British or from somewhere in the Commonwealth. Some of them beset with night terrors and worse. There’s one man in Alec’s barracks who cries when the sun sets, and again when it rises.