James felt that if he went away now for seven days, he would be letting Phyllis Addison down. Walter had taken a cottage only half a mile from the camp gate when they moved here from Nesborough. Tug Wilson had taken a large house nearby. His wife and Addison’s widow were old friends, but Phyllis’s parents were in Kenya, she had no siblings or other close relations to come and stay with her. There were few married officers on the squadron, only two living out with their wives, and, anyway, they had been on the squadron only a few months.
There were also the two children to think of: a boy of three and a two-year-old girl. Wilson, Ross and James were surrogate uncles to them and could help to console them in their bewilderment at their father’s absence and their mother’s tears.
It was well past the middle of March when James and Christopher arrived home: the one in his small green M.G., the other in his light blue and black Talbot Fifteen. Roger had been given sick leave. His leg was in plaster and he had to use crutches, so his father had gone to Baxton by train to meet him and drive him home in his blue Morris Eight; Roger having been taken to Baxton in an R.A.F. utility van.
Roger’s relief at being able at last to set out for Hayling Island was caused not only by the prospect of being reunited with his parents, of seeing his aunt and uncle with whom he reciprocated a lifelong affection, of enjoying the companionship of his two best friends, his brother and cousin, and pleasure at leaving hospital. It also owed much to the escape it offered from the sense of guilt which had been growing in him since Group Captain Brand brought him the news of his Distinguished Flying Cross.
He felt fraudulent. He knew he had not been awarded the decoration specifically for his last sortie against the enemy. It was given to him in acknowledgment of all the months of operations, since he won a D.F.M., which had preceded it. Just the same, he could not quell the accusation that he had quailed in the last seconds of that final bombing run. He had pulled out sooner than he had intended when he began his attack; to avoid the tremendous fire that was being aimed at his aircraft, and the likelihood of being caught in the blast of his own bombs.
The shame and remorse had been with him from the moment he regained consciousness in hospital. He had contrived to thrust them aside: until Brand had brought a vivid reminder; for the award embraced all that he had done, which included that last attack when his nerve had not quite held out. Thompson had died for nothing. Devonshire had been wounded for nothing; so had he.
At first he had felt self-conscious with Devonshire. But Devonshire had shown no sign of accusation: perhaps his own wound had knocked him half-senseless and he had not registered all that was happening in those final few hectic seconds.
It was good to get away from it all. From Baxton, which had been a sad reminder of all his friends who were gone. From Devonshire, whom he held in high regard and deep affection, but who was another reminder; and, even if unwitting, a witness of his moment of irresolution. From the hospital, with the fears it provoked that his leg might never be fully serviceable again; that he might never fly any more.
During the two days he had spent at Baxton, clearing from the station and assembling his kit, ensuring that his car was in working order, he had thought often of his departure from hospital. He didn’t have to worry about an accidental meeting with Daphne: she had written to tell him she was posted to a new station in Leicestershire.
The events in his mind had begun when Group Captain Brand and the two friends he brought had left. Sister Yerby had come in and, standing with her hands clasped on her crisp white apron - disturbingly in proximity to her mons veneris - smiled beautifully at him and then at Devonshire, then back at him.
“Well! So congratulations are in order. I’m proud of you both.”
Devonshire had never concealed his nervousness of Sister, nor had he at all overcome it during their weeks in her care. He rolled his eyes apprehensively and blushed, muttered something incoherent, and suddenly jumped out of bed, put on his dressing gown and slippers and scuttled into the corridor. The obvious conclusion was that he had gone to the lavatory.
Sister Yerby had watched him with an expression of amused astonishment. Four brisk strides took her to Roger’s bedside.
“Well! Now I can congratulate you properly.”
He felt her lips on his forehead. It was no cursory buss. They dwelt there. She had a conspicuously full and sensual mouth. Roger felt as though a warm, titillatingly soft and moist poultice had been pressed to his skin. There was a gratifying reaction elsewhere. He recognised it with delight. His vigour, at last, was very evidently restored.
For the remainder of his stay he was intensely aware of her presence whenever she came into the room. Her visits had become less frequent. Did she regret that momentary lapse from her usual jocular formality? Was she, perhaps, deliberately heightening his anticipation? Other questions filled his mind. How old was Agnes Yerby: thirty, thirty-two? Was she a virgin? Four weeks ago he would have had no hesitation in betting on it. Those flashing, beautiful eyes could be forbidding; her broad shoulders suggested a healthy swipe for anyone who grew too bold. But he had heard of romps in the linen cupboard with randy registrars and housemen - it was about all he had heard about the nursing profession - and there was nothing austere about those ripe lips, the occasional slanting look of what could be invitation, the provocative legs and vibrating breasts.
On the morning of departure he went into her little office. He heeled the door shut, pretending that there was not room for his bulk with it open. What bulk? His shoulders had not narrowed, his chest had not lost its convexity, but he was still many pounds underweight.
She smiled at him, made as though to rise, then resumed her seat. Standing, she would have overtopped him by an inch or two. She held out her hand. When he took it, she drew him towards her with firm gentleness.
“Goodbye, Roger. I’ll miss you. Come and see us some time, won’t you?”
Her other arm went around his neck. Her lips against his opened, mastering his. There was a delirious, delicious interlude of warmth and moisture, of disequilibrium.
She released him, still smiling. “Come and see us if you’re ever this way again.”
Did she seek some anonymity, impersonality in the plural?
He felt unsteady on his feet and it was not only the plaster and the crutches that upset his balance. His feelings raged, his head reeled.
“I’ll come and see you... soon as ever I can... before my leave’s up...”
Her hand caressed his cheek. She chortled. “Make sure you’ve got the plaster off before you do.”
*
Christopher had been feeling that the clearly defined features of his life since he joined the squadron seven months ago were deliquescing and becoming blurred. It disturbed him the more because he had a sense of order, instilled by a secure home life and a strict schooling. Despite his wild ways he had a disciplined mind, a scholar’s cogent and lucid way of thinking. He was accustomed to making a regular, methodical disposition of all the circumstances of his life, however drastically it changed. Flying on operations was a drastic change.
He had come to terms with it quickly by applying a sense of proportion to the alternating periods of intense concentration and relaxation. Flying predominated. He strove to excel. This imposed its own tension, but with increasing skill came the serenity of confidence. He was gregarious and enjoyed boisterous evenings in the mess or in some good pub with his crew. The drinking was only incidental to the company. The noise that sometimes filled the mess made the carousing seem heavier than it was. In the pubs, licensing laws restricted the amount they could consume in the short time they spent there. He played squash at least twice a week, nearly always winning too easily. He swyved girls. He had bought a spacious car with a realist’s eye to it. He formed no strong attachments except with his crew and one or two others in the mess. There was variety, excitement - of various kinds - sport, pride in his work, freedom from repression.
Lately, another di
mension had presented itself to his attention: a feeling of entrapment. Was this whirligig never going to stop? Could it end only as he had seen it end for so many others; with a fiery plunge into the sea? Which was the logical conclusion to draw from the fact that he had come so far unscathed? Was it that the longer you survived the more immune to fatality you became, because your expertise increased; or that the reverse applied and your chances of survival, based on some mathematical law of probability - averages, diminishing returns, sequentiality - diminished?
He could not resolve it. In a way he did not wish to, in case the latter prognosis emerged as the logical one. The doubt and the sensation of being confined to a peculiarly unpredictable but menacing treadmill had begun to confuse the outlines of the routine to which he had adapted.
Train for battle. Fight a battle. Slough off the residual fear with hard, sweaty exercise. Shed some more of it over a few pints of bitter and a sing-song, a rough-and-tumble in the mess corridors and ante-room. Or around the bar of The King’s Head or The Unicorn, with leg-pulling and funny stories and perhaps a W.A.A.F. at everyone’s side. Forget it completely in the arms of some undemanding girl, who gave gladly in return for a little attention and kindness, a few visits to the flicks, a five-bob dinner in Newcastle.
The trouble was that it was a cycle and you were all too soon back at the beginning again: training... fighting...
It was the fighting that stuck in the mind, that returned undimmed in every unpleasant detail after each temporary erasure.
They were called for a dawn strike. Six crews gathered torpidly in the Operations Room three and a half hours before first light: first light in Norway. A long country, running north and south; all right, then, first light at their target. Which was? This.
“See this fjord?” The controller ran his finger across the map to an indentation which, even on that scale, looked deep.
They could see it. They had not been there before but they could picture it in the mind’s eye as well, from what they recalled of others like it.
“A fleet tanker, sent there to refuel U-boats. Two escorting destroyers. It’s the tanker that is your primary target.”
“They will have strengthened their flak,” the Intelligence officer told them. “Here are yesterday’s P.R. pictures.” The photographic reconnaissance didn’t show all that much: Jerry was crafty at camouflage. They shared the same demotic thoughts: Jerry... P.R.... flak... It all had the sound of careless familiarity. Familiar it was, but careless never.
Climb into the three-tonners and trundle across camp to the Ops Canteen behind the centre one of three hangars. Inside, warmth and the aroma of frying bacon and eggs, fried bread, tea and coffee. The usual banter with the W.A.A.F. waitresses, the most nervous making the greatest number of jokes, the girls trying to smile and all the time knowing that perhaps not all these faces would appear again for an operational meal.
Someone said to Christopher’s crew “At least you’ll get away early on your leave.”
Doyle, the crew’s adept at repartee, dutifully laughed. “Group laid it on specially so we could be included. They wouldn’t want the best crew left out, would they?”
It was a good effort. Christopher silently applauded. You’d have to get up earlier than this to score off Tom Doyle. He felt flat, just the same; wouldn’t at all have minded being left off this one. Nearly two and a half hours’ graunch each way. He hardly felt fully awake yet. It was the fug in here. Be better when they got outside. From then on, the cold would keep them awake. Never mind, the best bed in the world awaited him tonight. Nearly three hundred miles to drive, but he should make it before dinner. Decent of that farmer type he’d met at The Unicorn to let him have those extra gallons: still, with a marriageable daughter... an officer would be a good catch. Wonder what he’d say if he knew I’ve had her too, as well as the juice!
A keen wind blew from the sea, stinging the ears when they walked from the lorry to their marshalled aircraft some way down the perimeter road. It would be on their beam for the first hour or so. Christopher hoped the Met man had got its strength correct. Landfall was going to be tricky enough without any navigational errors. Coming back didn’t matter so much: sometimes they were glad to make landfall anywhere on the east coast between the Firth of Forth and the Humber. Once they found Britain, they knew their way home.
Off into the blackness behind the twinkling red, green and white lights of the three aircraft in front. He was leading the second section. Fred Curran told him as each of the others became airborne.
Monotony set in. Ronnie Brinsden was ceaselessly busy: checking position from Doyle’s bearing on the direction-finders, putting smoke floats down the flare chute to calculate wind drift, verifying all the time that the observer in the leading aircraft was taking them on the right track.
They could see occasional streaks of phosphor-escence on the sea as they held their hundred-foot altitude. It reflected neither moon nor stars, both hidden by the clouds.
Christopher thought about his leave... which led him to the extra petrol... thence to the farmer... he was what people called a gentleman farmer, a silly attempt to distinguish between those who toiled and those who mostly directed... his own family would hardly have agreed that this one qualified; there was a distinct undertone of Geordie there... the daughter, a land girl, cannily employed at home... those velveteen britches with the convenient buttoning arrangement... she had taken him into a barn stacked with straw, a rug thoughtfully provided. Curtain. He must keep his mind on this job, not that one. Watch the altimeter.
It grew colder, wind whistling through every chink. He mentally recited a verse from Julian Grenfell ... “Into Battle”... wonderful stuff.
“The fighting man shall from the sun
“Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
“Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
“And with the trees to newer birth;
“And find, when fighting shall be done,
“Great rest, and fullness after dearth.”
His Beaufort out-sped the wind, but they would not see the sun that morning, nor know any warmth. They would see no trees; only the tall, barren rocky sides of the fjord. But there was the rest to look forward to, seven days of it; and fullness too: the love of his family... home cooking!
They came to the fjord’s entrance as first light was stealing into it over the mountains ahead, faintly touching the black water. The flak sites on both sides gave them a terrifying firework display: heavy stuff and light stuff, a close-woven spider’s web of it. The leader slipped through. The aircraft on his starboard disintegrated in a sheet of flame that lit the steep-sided watery canyon. Christopher scraped past, thinking “Ventre-A-terre ventre-A-reau.”
The destroyers began shooting at the moment that he glimpsed the tanker, as big as Buckingham Palace it looked in that narrow place.
An incandescent flash, and smoke hid half one destroyer... another vivid, dazzling leap of flames and the tanker was ablaze. Now his torp. Steady... steady... press the tit and away it went... another tremendous thunderclap... and one more as someone behind him scored as well. Beyond, deeper into the fjord, there were no guns. The enemy had prepared for seaward attack and relied on the mountains to guard them from the other direction.
They rose above the crags and peaks and turned for home. The swiftness with which they had struck after the ships’ arrival had confused and confounded the enemy. There were days when almost everything went right, and, as Tom Doyle put it, it was a shame to take the money.
*
James, who had the shortest distance to travel, arrived first. His father came home to lunch and gave himself the rest of the afternoon off. At tea-time Beryl Hallowes telephoned her sister to say that Roger had just arrived home. At six, Christopher called to announce that he was well on his way and would be there in two hours.
Throughout his journey James had been preparing himself for his parents’ questions. He and Christopher tried to concea
l the worst from them, but evasion was not always possible. They read the casualty lists and even if they did not know the names of many of the officers on Christopher’s squadron, they knew all those who had been on James’s when war broke out. He did not want them to know about Walter Addison, but his father quietly brought the matter up.
“It was a great blow for us,” James said. He did not add that he had witnessed his friend’s death.
“Who’s your new C.O.?”
“Tiny had the squadron as acting C.O. for a couple of days.”
“I didn’t know he was senior to you.”
“We’re the same seniority, but he was at Cranwell, remember.”
“Yes, well, I suppose...” His father sounded grudging.
“We’ve got a chap called Hall; known as Henry, of course.”
“Is he the same one who instructed you?”
“That’s right. A good type.”
“I remember meeting him when we came to see you once.”
“I told you we’ve got Tug Wilson as wing leader. They’ve put the establishment at fighter stations up and we’ve just got a group captain in command. Luckily he and Tug are old cronies.”
“What’s his name?”
“Noel Runcey.”
“He was on my squadron in 1918. He came to us about three months before the end of the war: we used to call him Nipper because he looked about sixteen. He was barely eighteen.”
“It’s the same chap: I’ve heard Tug call him Nip quietly in private.”
“Give him my regards.”
The difficult moment had passed with fortuitous lack of awkwardness. Conversation had been diverted from Walter Addison and casualties on the squadron.
Stephen Fenton reminisced for several minutes.
It was not to be quite so simple. When her chance came, Sheila put in a quiet question about Addison’s widow.
The Daedalus Quartet Box Set Page 32