“What is it that you haven’t told me, Nicole?”
Her arms tightened around him and he felt the shudder that ran through the whole length of her body. “Inquisitor.”
“I can tell there is something.”
“You are taking advantage of me, asking me questions now, when you know I am in a mood when I can refuse you nothing.”
“I told you, life is unfair.”
“All right, if I must. I was not going to tell you until just before I go back to London. But it will be easier now, in the dark, alone with your arms around me.”
“Go on, darling. What’s been worrying you all these weeks?”
She sighed deeply and for a moment she stiffened. Then she relaxed again and her voice had the firmness of someone who had made a resolution from which there was no turning back.
“James darling, I am going back to France.”
The jolt was like being touched on a nerve by a dentist’s drill. Involuntarily he pulled her hard against him and held her tightly for several seconds. Gradually he loosened his hold and then he asked gently “Why?”
“Because of what you are doing... and Christopher... and Roger... and compared with that, my work is trivial. And because I want to see my parents. And because Henri is trapped in Algeria and can do nothing to fight the Nazis... and perhaps... I don’t know, but perhaps he is not even trying to get away... perhaps he is content to let things continue as they are... to obey the orders of the Vichy Government... I am so confused about so many things, but I know what is right, and it is right for me to go back to my own country and fight.”
“But you won’t stay there?”
“Darling, there are things about which I cannot talk even to you. The Resistance is growing stronger month by month. I have had something to do with helping to organise it. I can do better work if I am on the spot. But don’t worry: I shall be back. It will be my job to come and go. First I have to have some special training. That will take two months, during which time I shall not be able to see you. Then I shall go over there... for perhaps three months, maybe less...”
“Maybe more.”
She kissed him. “Three months. You don’t think it will be easy for me to be away from you, not knowing... unable to get any news of you?”
“I won’t try to argue with you. But I’m going to miss you as though a part of me had been amputated.”
“You aren’t sorry about... us... are you? I could have prevented it happening, you know, even though I fell so much in love with you and I would have been hurting myself.”
“I’m glad about everything that has happened between us. And I’m proud of what you are going to do. I wouldn’t be able to find the courage to fight that kind of war.”
“I am not looking forward to it, but it has to be done. And perhaps I can bring my parents back with me to England: there is a lot of useful work they could both do in this war.”
*
When he had seen her off on her train he drove back to camp to telephone Christopher and find out if the date of his court martial had been set. He would fly up to Northumberland to attend it.
Twenty months ago he had faced the outbreak of war with optimism that he would survive and stoical acceptance of the statistical fact that he probably wouldn’t. He had not worried about Christopher then: Christopher had yet to confirm that his place at Oxford would be kept open if he volunteered for the R.A.F. and after he joined there would be a year of training before he went to a squadron. He had not thought that Roger, on a day bomber squadron as a Volunteer Reserve pilot, would be much involved in action.
He had hardly thought at all of Nicole until many months after the war began: France lay stagnant behind the Maginot Line and its population seemed to be in no danger.
How differently events had turned out. In twenty months he had risen three ranks, from pilot officer to squadron leader: it would have taken him at least ten years in peacetime. He had won two decorations. Roger had been in the thick of the fighting from the very beginning and he also had been twice decorated, had been wounded and was already resting while he himself was still in the front line. And Christopher. No one had doubted that Christopher would show all the bravery and dash as a pilot that he had always displayed at sports and games. But nobody had predicted a court martial for a dangerous and wilful breach of flying discipline.
He had not expected to fall in love with Nicole or to become her lover. Nobody had expected France to succumb to German invasion and occupation, so no thought of her being involved in clandestine operations had ever entered his mind.
His anxieties were multiplying as well as his responsibilities and he wondered what the next twenty months would bring. That they would not bring an end to the war was the only prediction he was prepared to make.
Too Late The Morrow
Richard Townshend Bickers
ONE
James Fenton woke when he heard the knock on his door. His batman never made any attempt to be quiet. It was his job to waken Squadron Leader Fenton, who tipped him a pound a month and was pleasant to look after, not to let him sleep on while his tea grew cold. Leading Aircraftman Higgs was a logical man.
James kept his eyes closed. He heard the door shut, LAC Higgs’s boots cross the red linoleum floor, the blackout curtains being jerked open. Higgs put the cup and saucer on the table beside the bed with enough force to rattle them and the spoon without spilling any tea.
‘Good morning, sir. Seven-o’clock.’
James opened his eyes. He knew that it embarrassed Higgs to rouse him by shaking his shoulder, as he sometimes had to after night flying or a riotous evening in the mess.
Higgs was short, thin and in his late twenties. He had sharp features, large red ears and a Suffolk accent. He had been a stable lad in Newmarket before enlisting in the Royal Air Force a year or so before the war. In those days officers’ messes employed civilian servants and Higgs had started his Service career as the lowest form of life, a tradeless aircrafthand, in a Signals section somewhere: mostly cleaning floors and windows and running errands and messages.
With the sudden expansion in numbers, more mess staff were needed. Higgs, who was always conspicuously clean and smart - grooming horses, mucking out stables and polishing tack had taught him a thing or two - was suddenly transformed into a batman. It frightened him, for he held officers in awe. He still felt much the same; hence his reluctance to lay hands on any of his slumbering charges.
Higgs felt at home in the R.A.F. It was an extension of the discipline imposed in a racing stable: and the insistence on neatnss and the care of property were familiar to him. He had liked Newmarket because it was laid out in such an orderly fashion and kept so spick and span. He liked R.A.F. stations for the same reason. He had joined up because it was, he thought, an easier life than being a groom; and his ambition to be a successful jockey was plainly not going to be fulfilled.
James sat up.
‘Good morning, Higgs. What’s the weather doing?’
Higgs, a countryman born and bred, veteran of years of rides out at dawn with a string of racehorses, fancied himself as a weather prophet. He was usually reliable. To his store of folklore he had added snatches of Service jargon.
‘Two-tenths cloud, sir. Wind’s from the west, about ten knots. It’ll stay fine; here, anyway: can’t say what it’s like over there.’
‘Over there’ meant enemy-occupied France; and the way Higgs said it, one would suppose that it was as distant and mysterious as central Africa. To him, it probably was. He had been around a fair number of racecourses, but never further than Felixstowe of his own volition.
He took James’s everyday tunic from the wardrobe, picked up one of his three pairs of uniform shoes and went off to polish brass and leather, which he enjoyed. He had pressed James’s battle dress blouse and slacks - a recent innovation, as yet for air crew only - the previous evening. This was the rig James would wear.
James sipped his tea, then picked up the chromiu
m-plated perpetual calendar beside his bed. He turned the knobs to advance it to the day’s date, 20 July 1941.
From the calendar his attention turned to a photograph of a beautiful dark-haired girl in a silver frame, standing on the bedside table. It was two months since he had seen Nicole: when she had broken the news to him that she was going to be dropped back in France to work - to fight, she had said - with the Resistance. There would be two months’ training before she went, during which she would not be allowed to see him, she had added. His first thought every day, after the weather, was of her. Contemplating today’s date, he wondered if she had gone already.
She had assured him she would return to England after three months. He had worried about her from that moment. And five months of celibacy? The past nine weeks had been a burden as it was. At twenty-two, with an uncertain life expectation, that was one asceticism too many.
The twenty minutes he spent bathing, shaving and dressing he reserved as the private part of his day. This was when he had time to think about his family and his mistress, before preoccupation with the day’s work and the exigencies of command took over. After duty, personal affairs were crowded out by retrospective examination of the day’s flying and fighting, long professional discussions, the general boisterousness of squadron life, the evening’s activities: planning the next day’s programme with the Wing Leader and the two other squadron commanders, going out to a cinema or one of the local pubs, staying up talking over a pint or two of beer in the mess; perhaps letting off steam with vigorous mess games in which injuries were not unknown.
He was anxious about his parents at home on Hayling Island, close enough to Southampton and Portsmouth to be endangered by badly-aimed or jettisoned bombs when the enemy made their frequent attacks against south coast ports.
He was concerned about his young brother Christopher who had marked a miserable twentieth birthday last month on a Coastal Command airstrip in the Outer Hebrides, where he was doing penance for a low-flying escapade which had earned him a court martial. He had been severely reprimanded and lost six months’ seniority. To rub the lesson home, Command had posted him to flying control duties at the remotest R.A.F. operational station in the British Isles.
Christopher was having to watch others fly Hudsons on anti-submarine patrols, chafing until he would be allowed to return to his Beaufort squadron and torpedo strikes against enemy surface ships. James knew that he considered the air crews who flew on general reconnaissance - which was what hunting U-boats was called - to be stodgy. They needed patience, a phlegmatic temperament and a different sort of courage, a different general outlook from the strike crews. Christopher was all headstrong dash and a love of excitement. The G.R. types were resolute and fearless in attack, but, in Christopher’s view, dull by temperament; an unjustified but typically prejudiced attitude. In the Services, everyone scorned everyone else’s trade.
What was more, there were no women on the island, no civilians at all. And leave came only every three months. Christopher was used to having attractive girls at his beck and call. He had told James that he was sure his temporary grounding would not last more than three months and that he would then return to operations. James had not damped his optimism, but thought it likely that, although Christopher was a very good pilot with an excellent operational record, his punishment would be prolonged by a posting that would humiliate him: flying some superannuated type which towed drogues for embryo fighter pilots and air gunners to shoot at; or an old Dominie biplane on communications work; or an obsolescent biplane Valentia - the Flying Pig - laden with student wireless operators all tapping out Morse and trying to read it at twenty words a minute.
There was a danger in such repression for anyone as ebullient as Christopher. When released from it, he might break out so wildly that he would run an even greater than normal risk of a fatal accident. It was little comfort to James that their parents were not as worried as he was. He and Christopher had concealed the court martial from them - and from Nicole - and they thought that their younger son was continuing his operational flying from his treeless, gale-lashed islet.
*
At 9 a.m. twelve Spitfire Mk VBs taxyed away from their brick and sandbag blast pens, crossed the perimeter track and formed four abreast in three ranks fifteen yards apart. Their pilots wove a snaking path to left and right in order to see ahead out of the sides of their cockpits and avoid colliding with the aircraft in front. The Spitfire’s long nose, rising steeply, obscured the view. The pilots had all, in their early days on Spits, heard of or seen one over-running another, its propeller chewing into the fuselage. Sometimes the propeller sliced into the pilot of the overtaken aeroplane, a peculiarly nasty end.
Ahead of James Fenton’s squadron, another squadron of the Dallingfield Wing, led by Wing Commander Wilson, the Wing Leader, was already positioned for take-off: also four abreast and in three ranks. The third squadron was taxying to take its place behind James’s.
Their thirty-six 1440 h.p. Rolls-Royce Merlin engines could be heard on the farthest side of the station and brought many of the men and women serving there out of doors to watch them fly overhead. Those who could not take part in operations took almost as much pride in the Spitfires as the pilots did.
A green Verey light flared from the Control Tower and the leading squadron released brakes and opened throttles. The din of the accelerating engines filled the ears of the twenty-four men awaiting their turn. James’s twelve crept forward and stopped. A green flare burst above the tower for them and they surged ahead. On James’s right his Number Two followed a few feet behind. To his left, each stepped back two yards, the two aircraft of the other pair which comprised the leading finger four accompanied them.
Before the last four of these were airborne the rear squadron was rolling forward in their wake.
The wing took off into a westerly wind, over the Sussex farmland and woods which surrounded the station on three sides. They swung southward to the sea which bordered the fourth side beyond the main road, the village, and the beach which was now separated from the Channel by barbed wire and other obstacles to invasion erected the previous summer.
The Dallingfield squadrons were to fly at 30,000 ft and provide top cover for the other 108 Spitfires and twenty-four Blenheim bombers comprising the Circus. The objective was to tempt the enemy up to attack the Blenheims, so that the fighters could shoot them down. Circuses varied in size. Usually, the Germans were reluctant to be drawn. It was hoped that this morning, with more than the usual number of bombers in proportion to the immediately visible fighters, and the top cover unlikely to be seen until it was too late, the Luftwaffe would take the bait.
The rest of the escort flew either at 15,000 ft on a level with the bombers, at 20,000 ft or at 25,000 ft. Some were Spitfire Mk IIBs, which had four.303 machine-guns, two 20 mm cannons and a top speed of 357 m.p.h. The MkVBs, like James’s, carried the same armament but could attain 374 m.p.h. There were also Mk VA squadrons among them, which had the same speed as the VBs but were armed with eight.303 machine-guns.
The Blenheims needed close protection although their mutual cross-fire provided quite a strong defence. Their own armament consisted only of a fully rotatable dorsal turret with two.303 machine-guns, a third similar gun in the nose and a fourth, firing astern, in a blister under the chin.
If the Luftwaffe accepted the dare, its Messerschmitt 109Fs would be interesting adversaries. They had a maximum speed of 390 m.p.h. and were armed either with two 7.9 mm machine-guns and one 20 mm cannon or with two 15 mm and one 20 mm cannons.
The most important factor was that a cannon could destroy an aircraft at longer range than a machine-gun; and with a mere one-second burst if its shells hit the right spot. But, and almost as important, the Spitfire possessed the great advantage of being able to turn inside a Messerschmitt; although an inexperienced pilot in combat with an experienced German could not always achieve this.
The Circus, formed by fighter wings stationed in
Sussex and Kent and bombers from East Anglia, was to rendez-vous over Dungeness.
James always viewed these large assemblies with mixed feelings: satisfaction at the strength that Fighter Command could muster after the lean months in 1940 when the Hurricanes and Spitfires were outnumbered by anything from three to one to five to one; and a cynical pessimism about the enemy’s willingness to fight when numbers were about equal. He would almost rather have gone out as part of a much smaller force, to ensure that a fight did develop. He was confident that the superiority of the Spitfire, the rigid mentality of the German pilots and the R.A.F’s high morale would compensate for lack of numbers. He thought, these days, in terms of the R.A.F. rather than the British: for it now comprised scores of French, Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, Poles and Czechs as well: in addition to Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and South Africans; and two squadrons of American volunteers.
The Blenheims, with their much longer endurance, could afford to arrive first at the meeting place. The Spitfires, converging from four different directions, were still climbing when they reached it. The close-escort wing levelled out to surround the bombers while the remainder continued to gain height. When they headed south across the Channel, Tug Wilson led his wing up until they just entered the level at which condensation trails formed, then took them down again to fly close beneath. In this way there would be no vapour trails to betray them and if the enemy approached from above they would make trails which would warn the Spitfires.
Crossing the French coast at such an altitude, James could see a vast panorama of the country and for a moment his concentration on searching for the enemy was invaded by a personal thought. Was Nicole somewhere down there, a miniscule pinprick in all those hundreds of square miles? If he turned his head this way or that and looked at a certain point or at another, would he be looking directly at the town, the street, the very house where she was at that moment?
The Daedalus Quartet Box Set Page 37