Rose tried to remove the glazed look from his face. Technical matters always confounded him. “Oh, yes…er, I see.”
But he didn’t. It was about as clear as a rusty bucket of dirty ditch water in a coal cellar at midnight.
White pointed at something in the box, “Did the four-way switch trip, Stan?”
Rose looked his operator in surprise. Airborne Intercept operators were not usually trained in the maintenance and repair of their sets, so to hear White casually asking Hale about the intricate workings of this incredibly complex piece of equipment was quite a revelation.
“No, actually it didn’t at any point before the thing went pop, chum.” Hale noticed Rose’s face, “Chalky, er, Pilot Officer White here is a good student, sir,” he explained.
White rapped his knuckles on the side of the indicator unit’s casing, “Whenever I was free, Stan was kind enough to spend time showing me how it all worked.”
Hale nodded. “Mr White, do me a favour? Would you ask the girls outside to disconnect my lamp? I’m all done in here for now.”
“Yes, Stan, of course. Excuse me for a moment.” White squeezed past Rose and clambered down the ladder and disappeared.
Hale watched him go affectionately, “May I speak frankly, sir?”
Rose adjusted his position again, what a horrid little hole, give me a nice roomy cockpit any day. “Please do.”
Hale scratched one ear, “Pilot Officer White is highly gifted, technically, and he was being wasted as a general dogsbody. It was a downright liberty to treat him that way, if you’ll pardon my saying so, sir. I was going to ask for him to become my assistant; and after a couple of weeks I would put in a request to the CO for a transfer for him to undergo training as a specialist.”
He patted the swivel seat gently, “but then you came and took him away from all this, and up into the clouds and the moonlight instead. Where he really belongs.”
Looking back at Rose, Hale added earnestly, “You saved him before I could, sir. Thank you.”
Rose didn’t know what to say. It seemed that there were others who cared for White’s wellbeing just as much as he did, and at least one of them had been working on a plan to save the young operator from the purgatory he had found himself in.
He swallowed the lump that had somehow appeared in his throat. “Sergeant Hale, I want to thank you for what you do for us every day and night, but I’d also like to thank you for what you did, and also for what you were intending to do, for Chalky. You’re a good man.”
The lamp suddenly went out with a soft ‘tick.’
Hale looked embarrassed in the sudden darkness of the shadowed interior, “it’s no more than the lad deserved. He thinks very highly of you, sir. Looks like the dice fell right for him this time. I’m glad.”
“Yes,” behind him, Rose could hear the scrape of White’s footstep on the ladder. Reaching out, he shook hands with Hale, “Thank you, Stan. God bless.”
White puffed his way back up into the compartment. “Crikey!” he chortled, “What are you two doing here standing around in the dark? Waiting for a bus? Come on out, the NAAFI van just drew up outside.”
Hale began throwing tools into his case, the clattering and clanging reverberating deafeningly in the enclosed space. “I’ll be along in just a moment. I’ll clean up after. Thirsty work this, could do with a nice steaming brew and an iced bun.”
Rose stopped halfway down the ladder, grateful to escape the operator’s section of the fuselage.
“Sergeant Hale, can I help take anything out?”
The young specialist shook his head, “That’s kind of you, sir, but I can handle this. Leave these to me, but please, do me a favour? Well, two favours actually. Take good care of the lad, and keep shooting those Nazis down?”
Rose nodded firmly, “I will, Stan, gladly, and again, thank you. Thank you for everything.”
Chapter 29
“A nun gave me a black eye once.”
“What?” mumbled Rose, still staring blearily into the black and empty recess of his mug.
They were sitting on a pair of gaily striped deckchairs outside the crew room. Grey streaks of light warned of a sullen dawn that was approaching fast, the sky through which they’d flown scant hours before now lightening in preparation for the new day, the fresh fragrance of dew and earth blending with the sharp airfield odour of thinners, dope, glycol and fuel.
“A nun gave me a black eye once,” White repeated patiently, tossing the cold dregs of his cocoa onto the pale frosted stalks of grass.
Rose stifled a yawn, and squinted at his friend in befuddlement.
“Cripes, I must be dozier than I thought, Chalky. I could have sworn you said that a nun knocked you out?”
Involuntarily, White yawned in sympathetic response. It had been a protracted and lacklustre night, and the thought of his bed was more attractive even than the flying supper which awaited them.
There had been just the one interception, and that had been a shabby Wellington bomber returning from the continent, sedately bumbling its way to its home airfield, the tired and strained crew unaware of the Beaufighter keeping station behind and below as they carefully identified it.
“Oh, for goodness sake! No, Flash. She didn’t knock me down; she gave me a black eye. Stop being such a clot. Are you listening or what?” Irritability heightened the soft burr of the young operator’s Highlands accent, and he put down his empty mug onto the paved slab beneath him with a dull ‘Clunk!’
Interest piqued, Rose straightened with an effort, his muscles, spine and the chair creaking disturbingly. It was the first time White had spoken about his past.
“I’m sorry, mate. What do you mean, though? Did I hear that correctly? A nun gave you a black eye? Strewth! What on earth did you do? You didn’t try it on, did you? Bloody hell! You cheeky randy rascal!”
“Listen for a moment, Flash, will you?” White tucked his chin down and pushed his hands deep into his pockets. “It happened when I was a child. I was fourteen years old at the time.”
Chastened, intrigued, and curious to know more about White’s mysterious past, Rose was silent.
“Nobody here knows, excepting Mandy of course, but the truth is, I was raised in a children’s home. My Mum died when I was six, and I don’t think my Dad was able to look after me. He was in freight, see? ” White’s voice was low, carefully neutral, his face hidden in shadow.
“He came to visit me once, about six months later, bought me a big red enamelled bus. It was fantastic. He cried the whole time, kept asking me to forgive him. He’d married again, you see. And that was the last time I ever saw him. I always wondered why he never came back to get me. I suppose he just didn’t love me enough to be my father anymore.”
White sighed desolately, a long, low lament that spoke of pain and loss in the grey half-light.
Something hollow and metallic clattered suddenly in the distance, in the general direction of where the young Norwegians were mushroom prospecting near the edge of the runway.
One of them must have dropped the mushroom bucket.
The thought of those fresh mushrooms, sliced thin and fried in hot fat, and then served with their flying supper would normally have made him dribble, but White’s revelations had driven away all other thoughts.
“As soon as he’d gone, Sister Katherine took my toy bus away, and said it wouldn’t be fair for me to have a toy when all the other children had nothing. I never saw it again, either.” The depth of his pain was all too evident, and Rose shivered involuntarily.
“God! It sounds bloody awful, Chalky.” Oh, how trite and inadequate those words sound!
“Worse than that, chum. It was a living hell. They’d beat us for the slightest reason. There was no laughter within those walls, just pain and tears. Lots and lots of tears.” He wiped his dry cheeks as if to wipe the memory of them away.
“Any display of affection, like hugs or kissing were disallowed. They forbade any kind of physical contact, so i
f you tried to comfort one of the smaller ones when they were upset, which was pretty much every day, you’d get a beating. You learnt pretty darn quick to hold in the tears, because if they saw even one, it was enough to earn another beating for being weak. But it was hard not to cry living within those walls. In the end, it taught me to be tough and not to cry, never, ever, no matter what.”
Somewhere in the distance, an aircraft towing tractor coughed into guttural life, and White looked for a long moment, but there was nothing to see. Rose said nothing. What was there he could say?
They sat in silence together, Rose shocked and saddened and wide awake, all weariness gone.
What are you looking at? What can you see in your mind’s eye, Chalky? What memories lurk there?
“I left that awful realm of torment at sixteen, when I joined up. Despite everything, it was the best experience I’d had for years. I’d just had the other kids, see, and then suddenly I had a family of hundreds that looked after me, kept me warm, and fed me ‘til my stomach was bursting. All the other boys with me were missing their homes, crying in the night, but not me. For the first time since my dad left me in that shithole, I was home. We had a laugh. Even the old Warrant Officer seemed kind and gentle. He was strict and harsh, but never unfair. And he was a good man, just tried not to let it show. He must have been a good Dad, I reckon.” White sniffed and then wiped his nose. “It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it?”
He nodded, “Yes, Chalky, it is a bit. And the black eye?”
“Sister Anna. She caught me sitting under a tree.”
Rose shook his head in disbelief. “She hit you because you were sitting under a tree? Bloody hell!”
“No, not quite. The thing is, one of the older girls was standing on a branch above me.”
Rose could hear White’s smile, “Lily Evans, almost eighteen, long smooth legs and no knickers. Couldn’t take my eyes off her fanny, even when the old dragon came up to me. Lily knew I was looking, knew I was there below her, pretended she didn’t, but she did, and let me enjoy the view.” He sighed. “Cor. What a view…”
His eyes were distant, remembering the sight, and the corners of his mouth turning up.
Rose waited quietly, scared to break the thread.
“Sister Anna would have skinned us both alive if she’d known Lily had it all out on display, luckily she ranted and raved about eyes that were where they shouldn’t be, and she had the right thing for them in her hand, and then wallop! Apparently, I was using them to do the devil’s work.”
White sighed again, but the sigh this time was in happy remembrance.
“It was worth two black eyes, Flash, and I got a real eyeful, believe me! Lily legged it, sharpish like, ‘cause if Sister Anna had known she’d had no drawers on…!”
Rose chuckled, even though his heart weighed heavy for the tortured little boy that had grown into the slight young man now sitting beside him.
“Did you go to the Police, old mate?” he asked gently.
“Nobody cared a damn, Flash. We were problems no-one wanted to be responsible for. For instance, one of the girls got into trouble, in the family way, so to speak, and they labelled her as a brazen whore and pushed her down the stairs to avoid a scandal.”
White shook his head with frustration, anger tainting his words. “Broken pelvis and neck, a verdict of accidental death and no further action from the authorities. The kindest girl you’d ever meet. On the way to Dimple Heath after training, I bought a pistol from a spiv at Glasgow railway station, and I went to the Home. I thought that I’d never let those nasty bitches hurt another child. I’d dreamed so many times of putting a bullet between Sister Patricia’s beady little eyes.”
A moth fluttered silently before them, a tiny wraith in the gloom. The taste of the cocoa was gone, only an acid bitterness pooling in his throat, “Chalky…you didn’t…?”
White turned to face him. “No, Flash, when push came to shove, I didn’t have the courage. I stood outside in the rain for over an hour, but I couldn’t take those last steps to the front door. I let the children down, but I just couldn’t do it. When my pilot was killed and I got ground duties, I guessed this was my punishment. Either I was being punished for contemplating murder, or because I let the kids down. I accepted it and got on with it. Whatever they gave me, I did. It was my penance for being weak. I deserved it. Do you believe in God, Flash?”
“Good Lord, if you’ll pardon the expression, yes, of course I do. He kept me safe even when we were going up there piecemeal umpteen times a day in scrappy little formations against great clouds of Germans, he let me live when so many others, better men than me, didn’t. And of course, he gave me a girl like Molly. I don’t need any more proof than that.”
White nodded in satisfaction. “Good, because so do I. I don’t know why some things happen, but I know there must be a reason for everything that does.”
Rose patted White’s shoulder. “You weren’t being punished, old son. I think you suffered more than enough in that bloody Home. I think everything happens for a reason, we just don’t always know why.”
“If I were being punished, I wouldn’t have been crewed up with you, Flash. Where I am now is because of the path I’ve trodden. He sent you to take me up into the clouds. As they say, God moves in mysterious ways.” Wearily, White rubbed his eyes.
“Exactly, my old son. Now you’re here, you’re not just looking out for the kids at the Home, but you’re actually looking out for everybody who lives on these islands. That’s a lot of people, a lot of lives, chum.”
White nodded gratefully, “Thanks, Flash. Look, please don’t mention it to anyone. I’ve never told a soul before, and I didn’t tell you because I wanted pity, or anything. I told you because I want you to know who I am, where I’ve been, and what flying with you really means to me. You and Mrs Rose are my dearest friends.”
“Does Mandy…?”
“She does. She’s wonderful,” then, almost defiantly, “and she’s seen the scars. All of them.”
Rose surprised himself by blushing like a schoolboy, momentarily lost for witty repartee. “Ah.”
White smiled. “I must have done something right to be loved by someone like her. Her old man’s a High Court judge, a KC, you know. God only knows what he’ll make of me.”
“Talking of black eyes, tell me about that one you were sporting just before the first time we flew together?”
White winked at him. “Settling old scores, Flash. I’m glad you saw fit to let me keep the stripes, though, or else I’d have been right up shit creek, without the proverbial! I’ll tell you about it one day, I promise.”
They sat quietly now, comfortable in each other’s presence like an old married couple, enjoying the burgeoning bloom of light glazing the undersides of the clouds and the straight edges of the wet grass, yet another night of operations survived, and another day of life to be savoured and celebrated.
Another dawn witnessed, a success in itself, and another morning to experience, to live and rest, and to love.
Rose closed his eyes, and thought of Molly, his special girl.
I love you, Moll, and thanks be to God, I get to share yet another day with you...
The telephone shrilled behind them, and they tensed but remained seated, unable to turn their heads in dread, nerves jangling and skin prickling, hearts thumping, trying to make sense of the muted murmuring inside the hut.
Rose felt like crying at the unfairness of it. Damn it! The night’s over! Dear God, Please let it not be a scramble…
The murmuring inside stopped, and then a moment later they heard the swish of the blackout curtain behind them, footsteps, and then Barr was standing behind them both.
“If you two poor, romantic fools can stop holding hands and canoodling in the moonlight, would you mind coming back in?” he asked conversationally, conveniently ignoring the fact that the dawn was breaking and that the moon was nowhere to be seen.
Oh God, don’t choose us, it’s not fair�
�
“Sector have kindly told us to call it a night,” Barr looked up at the brightening sky ironically, “and some of us would like to nip along for a spot of breakfast. Would you care to join us? Flash, your missus should be waiting for you, come on. You too, Chalky, I daresay there might be a glamorous young blonde WAAF around here somewhere waiting for you, too. Hard to believe, of course, but there you are...”
Like arthritic old men, the two young men stood and stretched, dry-eyed, stiff and slow and aching, before gratefully following their flight commander to a well-earned flying supper/breakfast.
Another long, dark night survived, another cold but infinitely beautiful dawn savoured, and yet another personal victory against both the Germans and Sir Isaac.
Thank God.
Chapter 30
With a final wave goodbye, the airman turned and disappeared into the swirling eddies of fog, leaving them alone.
After the endless din of the Hercules motors, the sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the occasional tink-tink of the engines as they cooled and the creaking of the airframe.
“There was a moment there when I was starting to get a bit worried, Flash.” White’s voice was shaky.
Rose licked dry lips. “I know, mate. The fog was already rolling in when we made our approach. Another thirty seconds and Sir Isaac would have had us. The lights wouldn’t have been visible anymore. We were lucky.”
Rose looked out past the starboard engine to the indistinct, almost indiscernible shape of a Hawker Hurricane fighter parked nearby, then down at his hands, clasping them together to still the faint tremor.
Lady Luck had remained on their side once more.
The erks would be along soon, and Rose unstrapped himself. “Come on, Chalky, let’s get out, our truck should be along shortly. I need a sweet cup of char.”
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