by Amy Myers
‘You’re very white,’ Luke observed dispassionately, his eye keenly on her. ‘How nothing is nothing?’
Georgia swallowed. Suppose it was nothing? She had been wrong before, hadn’t she? It could just be the gloom ahead that deterred her, as she stood there in relatively sunny daylight. Anyway, if here be dragons, shouldn’t she be facing them, returning fire for fire?
‘OK, let’s go, Indiana Jones.’ Surprised by her sudden bullish attitude, she took the lead, picking her way carefully along the damp grassy path. It couldn’t be that bad, she tried to convince herself. After all, these were the well-maintained grounds of a flourishing hotel in so-called rural Kent, hardly the outposts of civilization as they knew it. Nevertheless she continued warily, glad that Luke was behind her; that way he couldn’t turn unexpectedly and be presented by the sight of her white face. Then she came to the bend in the path . . . Onward, she ordered herself firmly, fighting her desire to turn and run.
After her first few steps, she knew she couldn’t go on. Instead she stood there looking at what lay before her, as Luke came up to stand at her side. She felt as hypnotized as Wordsworth gazing at his fluttering daffodils, though hardly with the same emotions. In her case it was an instant relief that all that seemed to face her was the blue haze of a Kentish wood in May. The path before them sloped gently into a dell with banks on either side, protecting it, sheltering it from outside view. Bluebells clung to both sides in profusion, their colour only broken by the occasional grey rock which served to highlight it. Unlike the rest of the gardens of Woodring Manor, if gardeners penetrated here at all they were running after nature, rather than imposing their will upon it.
‘Bluebells,’ he announced with satisfaction. ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t chicken out?’
Georgia didn’t answer Luke’s question. She couldn’t. Relief was giving way to an overwhelming sense of unrest that clung to her like a pall. Her instincts had been right. However lovely the sight, these bluebells were masking a tragedy whose roots were deeply embedded in this small valley. It reeked of some terrible event. It reeked of death.
‘The Ash Grove,’ she said abruptly.
‘Beech and hazel, I’d say,’ Luke replied idly, wandering down the path into the dell.
She tried to make her legs follow him but they refused. ‘Around us for gladness the bluebells were ringing . . . Amid the dark shades of the lonely ash grove.’ Isn’t that how the old folk song went? That grove had been a place of grief, death and loss, although the story behind it was lost in history. What did this one hide? She wanted to cry out to Luke to come back to safety, to leave the enchanted wood, and had to force herself to remain silent.
‘You’re bonkers, Georgia,’ she told herself, and by the time he had strolled back to her she had almost convinced herself it was true.
‘Time we found Peter,’ Luke said, taking her arm. It felt good, though she hated to admit she needed the comfort of company. ‘He should be here by now.’ She had been staying with Luke overnight in his South Malling home, and her father was driving up that morning from his home in Haden Shaw near Canterbury.
‘He’s never in much need of finding,’ she managed to laugh. Back to normal, now that the dell was behind her.
Woodring Manor was no architectural beauty, with its Victorian towers, mock beams and flamboyant touches of the Gothic, but it was certainly eye-catching, Georgia thought as they skirted the lake to walk up the slope to the terrace and hotel. It was set in the midst of nowhere at the end of a single-track lane running up from the Mereworth road, situated on the ridge of a low hill, with lawns and formal gardens sloping down to a small lake with a wooded wilderness beyond. For diners to appreciate this view, the former ballroom and dining room had been converted to a restaurant, with a delightful small bar-cum-conservatory at one end. It was there as she and Luke reached the terrace that she could see a group of elderly men sitting chatting in the armchairs – and with them was Peter, who had somehow manoeuvred his wheelchair into the circle. Being that much higher than they, he appeared to be leader of the group, which amused Georgia greatly – especially as, when they drew closer, she could see the men were all blazer-clad with identical formal ties, the design of which looked familiar.
‘RAF,’ whispered Luke in her ear. He was beginning to read her thoughts with uncomfortable ease, Georgia thought. She now realized why Peter was chatting so much that he hadn’t noticed their arrival: his father had served with the Royal Air Force, and that of course was where she had seen the tie before.
What did etiquette demand, she wondered. There was hardly room for them all to sit in here and yet Peter obviously had no intention of moving.
‘Georgia, Luke,’ he cried with great pleasure as he at last acknowledged their presence. ‘Let me introduce Number 362 Spitfire Squadron, here to toast the memory of West Malling airfield, now alas with only a lonely control tower and a bronze statue to mark the spot.’
Spitfires? Did that imply Second World War or post-war, she wondered. Peter was obviously about to tell them, but just as he began to introduce the group the restaurant manager arrived to summon the veterans to their lunch. Georgia was left only with a jumble of names and impressions: a virtually bald, bright-eyed thin man, a red-cheeked life and soul of the party, a serious grey-haired academic type, a burly rugged no-nonsense sort, and an almost skeletal man with a bewildered look in his eyes. Not one of them could be under eighty-five, and one or two might be nearer ninety, she estimated, so that could mean they saw service during the Second World War. The quintet departed for lunch with courteous pleasantries to them, reaching for sticks, squaring stooped shoulders under loose blazers, and tossing names between them: Daz, Bob, Jan, were the ones she caught.
‘Enough gongs and history between them to start a museum,’ Peter said with satisfaction as she and Luke took the now vacant armchairs. ‘Did you notice one of them had the DSO, and there were a couple of DFCs?’
‘All World War Two?’ Luke asked.
‘I imagine so.’
‘Unlike you not to have their full life stories by now,’ his daughter remarked.
‘You’re quite right, Georgia,’ Peter said without rancour. ‘My usual charm didn’t seem to work, though they’re friendly enough.’ A pause, then an innocent-sounding, ‘Let’s eat in the restaurant, shall we?’
‘Hey, what happened to the quick bar snack?’ Georgia asked.
‘I’ll treat you both,’ Peter said firmly.
‘No turning that down,’ Luke accepted graciously. ‘All right by you, Georgia?’
She nodded. ‘I never stand in the way of Peter and piqued curiosity.’
‘How well you understand me,’ her father commented. ‘I do admit to a certain interest. What do they talk about at such reunions?’
‘The old days.’
‘That’s just it,’ Peter said. ‘They weren’t when I arrived.’
‘Because you’d arrived,’ Luke pointed out.
‘You think they stopped gassing about their war exploits just to be kind to a gent in a wheelchair? They’d never talk at all if so. They got inured to disabilities quickly in wartime.’
‘I meant that you were an outsider,’ Luke explained equably.
‘All the better audience, in my experience,’ Peter said. ‘After all, I have a bond with them. My father flew in Burma.’ Georgia’s suspicions were confirmed. For some reason the bloodhound was on the trail of prey. It was her duty – mutually understood – to shoot it down at birth, if she could. If it survived, that gave it validity.
‘Some people want to talk about their war experiences, some don’t,’ she said flatly. ‘You can’t take them by the scruff of their necks and insist they talk like Lewis Carroll’s old man on the gate.’
Peter wore a look of hurt dignity. ‘I trust I am sensitive enough to realize that. Just as,’ he said thoughtfully, as Luke vanished to speak to the waiter, ‘I detect you don’t wish to talk about whatever upset you out in the gardens. A quarrel
with Luke?’
‘No. This place,’ she told him bluntly, deciding to overlook her father’s quick departure from sensitivity. ‘At one end of the lake, there’s a series of feeder ponds in a wilder part of the garden, and on the far side a sort of hidden valley smothered with bluebells.’
‘But not ringing for you, I take it?’
‘Very definitely not.’ She glanced at him, knowing he would understand. ‘It might just be me . . .’
‘Or it might have the same effect on me. All right, I’ll go after lunch. Coming?’
She made a face. ‘I suppose I’d better or Luke will wonder why you’re shooting off on your own to look at bluebells.’
‘I have a notion that Luke is not as unobservant as you imagine in such matters. He might even feel left out.’
Georgia dismissed this impatiently. ‘We’ve talked about this before. Even if Luke the man would understand, the publisher side of him might not. We go to great lengths to separate what sparks off our investigations from the facts that eventually make the book. We agree that they have to stand alone, so why fill Luke with unnecessary worries?’
‘Because he’s halfway in, halfway out of our family, and it behoves me to say, dear daughter, that this can’t go on for ever.’
‘I know,’ she said crossly. It was her fault, she knew that. But the status quo was much more comfortable than a possible thorny way ahead – into a marriage like her last one.
When they entered the restaurant there were few diners, which was just as well since 362 Squadron obviously took its reunion seriously. It was too small a group, Georgia presumed, for a private room to be allotted to them, but a virtually empty restaurant sufficed.
She watched the former pilots with interest, while she, Peter and Luke ate their own passable meal. One of them, the burly one, whom she had pinned down as Bob, had a sketchbook on his lap and was busy drawing unobserved, or at any rate disregarded, by his comrades. The ceremonial, even the permission to smoke – which no one did, of course – took place with moving dedication.
‘Gentlemen, the Queen.’ The toast was proposed by the thin man with the bewildered look. All five of them looked entirely wrapped up in themselves and their reason for being here. Even if the restaurant had been overflowing it would have made no difference to them, she realized. They must have pasts that made most people alive today seem pale shadows, and today 362 Squadron was reasserting its values. At one point the bright-eyed man stood up to make another toast – to whom she could not hear – and began to recite the well known, but still spellbinding lines:
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings . . .
She knew the poem, but had never heard it voiced by men who had so danced the skies, albeit in their case so often a dance of death. Each one of them could surely say, as did the poet, he had put out his hand and touched the face of God.
‘Written by John Magee,’ Peter whispered. ‘Canadian. Shot down and killed in 1941 aged only nineteen. Remarkable poem to write in wartime. And over there are five of them who flew for the same cause.’
‘That’s a lot,’ observed Luke, ‘when you come to think of it.’
‘Five out of thousand upon thousand? Fifty-five thousand lost in Bomber Command alone, let alone the other commands. That’s just in this country, not counting the other Allies and the Germans.’
‘True,’ Luke acknowledged, ‘but if you take twelve or so in a squadron at any one period – and these men look all in their mid-eighties, which suggests it was at more or less the same time – where are the others? Squadrons didn’t die out with the war, they went on. You know what I think? This isn’t a squadron reunion, it’s a reunion of part of a squadron.’
‘Interesting,’ Georgia said. ‘You could be right.’
‘We publishers sometimes have something to offer you struggling authors,’ Luke said graciously.
‘There’s something else unusual too,’ Peter pointed out. ‘There are no women here.’
Georgia laughed. ‘The last stand of the male preserve.’
‘Up to a point,’ Peter replied seriously. ‘But these men are a fair age, and not what they used to be, physically. Where are the carers, the helpers, the wives, the daughters to see their poor old dads are OK? Even grandchildren often come to listen to what Grandpa did in the war.’
Georgia considered. ‘Too close a group. They’ve just come to chat and bar the door to all intruders, or at least those without a rhinoceros hide like yours. They probably drink all they like, and the minions come to pick them up when midnight strikes the witching hour.’ Unbidden, the thought of a witching hour in that dell crossed her mind, but was quickly sent packing.
‘Perhaps.’ Peter yawned – a trifle ostentatiously, Georgia felt. ‘I need some fresh air. Feel like a turn round the grounds?’
‘Again?’ Luke asked plaintively. ‘I’ve done my mud walking for the day.’
‘I might need a push,’ Peter said firmly.
The fitful sun had disappeared now, and as they strolled into the gardens from the terrace, Georgia decided to keep firmly away from the dell. Peter would do better alone, she told herself, and it was probably true. Instead, as they walked over the grass, she fixed her mind on 362 Squadron. Luke’s comment had set her thinking. Why, if he was right, was that group here? Just because they remembered their time at West Malling in the war?
‘Where was the airfield?’ she asked.
‘It’s disappeared under the King’s Hill business development,’ Luke replied. ‘Not to mention housing estates. I was sad to see it go. It had a splendid pre-war career, run from the mid-1930s by the Malling Aero Club. All the aviation celebs touched base here.’
‘Amy Johnson?’ Georgia asked.
‘Yes, and Sir Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus. Then the RAF took it over in ‘39, where it was conveniently placed for the Biggin Hill and Kenley sector in the Battle of Britain the following year. It went on to play a bigger role during the war, especially during the early part of the flying bomb campaign, but in August 1944 it was closed for operational purposes.’
‘And that was it?’
‘No. After the war it remained an RAF station until the early Sixties; the Yanks then took over for a couple of years, and one way or another it stayed an active airfield until the going was too tough and it was sold for development.’
‘How come you know so much about it?’ Georgia asked curiously. It was the first time she’d heard Luke express any personal interest in aviation, though his publishing list included local war histories and memoirs.
‘One can hardly fail to, living round here. Anyway, my dad brought me to see the Red Arrows here in the 1970s . . . Where are you off to?’ Luke looked round in surprise as Peter turned his chair and bumped along the path to the dell. Georgia was glad he hadn’t asked her to come. Peter didn’t always agree with her, and she found herself hoping that this time he wouldn’t.
‘To see those bluebells Georgia told me about,’ Peter called back over his shoulder. ‘Damn! I’m stuck.’
Luke gave her a quick glance as he went over to push the wheelchair out of the mud. She heard Peter thanking him, which must have been an effort. Peter hated anything he couldn’t do himself. She watched the chair progress to the bend in the path, but then it went a little further and out of her sight, and there was only the sound of the birds singing their May song. Luke stayed silent, which made Georgia feel guilty. Was she truly excluding him because it was sensible, or because she wanted to keep areas of her life to herself, as some kind of defence?
When Peter returned, he nodded soberly at her. So that was that. He had felt as she had. It was a done deal, but she was profoundly depressed at the thought. They would have to investigate what lay behind this. Perhaps it was nothing, perhaps only the remaining sadness of a tragic love story, and not the business of Marsh & Daughter. No unsolved murder, no injustice crying out to be avenged. In any case, why was she worried?
Such investigations were their livelihood, so her unwillingness to face this one was weird.
‘Odd place,’ Peter said cheerfully to them both as they returned to the hotel. ‘Did you see those large rocks in between the bluebells? Strange, don’t you think? We’re hardly in mountainous countryside here, so how do great lumps of Kentish ragstone come to be there? They must have been specially brought in, probably for a rockery garden at some time, and left derelict till the bluebells took over.’
This was a neutral subject, but even so Georgia was glad to be back inside the hotel. Peter disregarded the restaurant and made straight for the disabled entrance and then the bar. Of course, she realized, that’s where he guessed 362 Squadron would now be. He had something in mind, which was fine by her, provided it didn’t involve that dell.
Once inside the hotel, she went in search of the ladies’ toilet before joining them in the bar, and soon found herself in the basement. This must have been where the kitchens were when the house was first built, but now it was home to conference rooms and toilets. The latter were beautifully appointed. The smell of fresh potpourri reached her, and the room was well lit. Yet it felt dark, and she came out of the cubicle distinctly eager to leave, glad of the whirl of the hand drier as distraction. It wasn’t a return of the panic she had felt in the dell, but even so she was glad to reach the corridor again.
She found the squadron group ensconced in armchairs round a table in the corner of the bar. Peter was just sallying up to them with murmurs of great surprise at meeting them again. He continued with a flattering mention of the Magee poem, then his interest in the Second World War, and his own memories of Farnborough air shows in his youth. Of course he was too young, he said deprecatingly, to recall the war himself, but perhaps he could buy them a drink?
It appeared he could. Once drinks were distributed and introductions made, Peter embarked on a description of his father’s RAF career in Burma – little of it true, from what Georgia could recall, but at least the ground was softened to the extent that she and Luke felt able to join them. Nevertheless, there was very much a ‘them and us’ atmosphere.