by Amy Myers
‘Nothing like the old ozone,’ Eddie said contentedly. ‘Not a patch on flying up there in the clouds, but at my age I’ll settle for the old sea. Look at it, eh? Hard to imagine it all roped off, radar stations, mines, guns. I can tell you, I wouldn’t have wanted to be down here. Up there’s better. You can see what’s coming.’
‘Even considering what you went through?’ she asked.
‘Each to his own,’ he rejoined. ‘Glad you suggested coming here.’ There was a glint in his eye. ‘It’s like going back to Malling. Easier to remember it all. I went with Jack to that golf clubhouse – know it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Looking out from those windows brought back what it was like taking off in the Spits. You don’t forget things like that. Mind you, most of the time we were looking down at the craters in the runways, not up in the sky. Once you were up, half of you was wondering what you’d done to make God so good to you, giving you the Spit to fly up in His clouds; the other half was wondering when the black specks would appear, and those Stukas scream down for another go. Ever heard a Stuka, have you?’
‘On a museum recording.’
‘Well, imagine six of the bastards heading for the airfield. I was down there one day when we caught the lot. Stays with you like the air-raid siren, etching into your mind. Another time it was eighteen blooming great Dorniers. Now, what was it you wanted to know?’
‘About your fellow sergeant pilots, Eddie.’
‘What about them? Told you most of it.’
‘That’s the problem. We don’t know. We just don’t want to miss anything. So you talk away.’
‘There’s an offer my old lady never gave me.’ Eddie grinned. ‘First thing, you make it sound as if we were two groups. We weren’t. Slept and ate separately, but that’s no more than most people who work together anywhere, any time. It’s what you do together that binds you. Take Tanner. His two mates were Ken Lyle – officer – and Joe Smith, sergeant pilot. We were all one. Vic was the son of a bespoke tailor, and there’s a word you don’t come across now. We thought he was posh, one up on us. My dad was in the Thanet mines, Tanner’s was a porter – another word you don’t hear much now – and Joe Smith . . . can’t recall. Yes, I can. Gardener somewhere. We were all in for hostilities only. We all got to do some training before the war, so were first in the queue for pilots. My pal was Vic. Joe was a loner, and Tanner – well, never knew really. A quiet sort, who hung around with Joe a lot. I liked Tanner, though I hardly saw him in the mess. He was in love, met some girl in Malling and that was that. Rarely saw him and never saw her. Off out whenever he could get a pass. Fat lot of good it did him. We’d met up in June when we joined the squadron. Some of the chaps had been in France, not on holiday either. Nasty do that. Patrick had been flying convoy patrols, so had Matt Jones.’
‘And Alan Purcell?’ Georgia asked.
Eddie squinted at her in the sun. ‘Same as Patrick, if memory serves me right.’
‘Have you ever heard from him again?’
‘Not a dicky bird.’
‘Did you get on with him?’
‘He was in B Flight. Tanner and Smith were his buddies amongst us NCOs. He was interested in the LMFs. The news went round dispersal one day that Smith and Tanner had been up before the CO late the afternoon before. Smith was proven LMF, Tanner was to return next morning for the verdict. He didn’t wait. He deserted that evening.’
‘Did he tell you?’
‘Nah. Wouldn’t have had the guts. Adj came for their effects the morning after, and by the evening we had two new chaps. Purcell thought we were too hard on the LMFs. He didn’t have much time for Smith, but Tanner was in a different class. An oddball like Purcell.’
‘What was odd about him?’
Eddie considered. ‘Not a mess chap. Anyway, he told me he tried to intercede with the CO on the Sunday.’
Georgia winced at that name again.
‘No use though,’ Eddie continued, ‘except that might have been why CO King Arthur postponed the verdict. His family reckoned he drowned himself. Bodies were being washed up all the time and not all of them could be ID’d.’
‘It must have been a shock for you and Vic.’
‘Nah. Not really. We were losing mates every day. Never had time to mope about it – not till later, anyway. Some of the lads never went to funerals; that way they could think blokes had just gone for the famous Burton, rather than died in flames or in a thousand bits. If they stopped to think what they were doing, they’d all be LMF.’
‘When did all this happen?’
‘Let’s think now. We flew in to Malling on July twentieth – know the date, doing my homework for Jack, see.’ Eddie stopped for a moment. ‘Poor old chap. Never did harm to no one did Jack.’ He looked at them. ‘You thinking that 362 business had anything to do with it?’
‘It’s a possibility that Fairfax’s death could be involved,’ Peter said matter-of-factly.
‘Then ask on, mate. Anything I can tell you, I will.’
‘Did you realize there was a big battle coming when you arrived?’
‘That and invasion, yes. Invasion was the word of the day, believe me. Oh-ho, we’re for it. We flew in on the twentieth, like I said, to replace a squadron of Defiants. Or what was left of it. The poor devils in 141 copped it in those death traps. No way out for the gunner, you see. Eleven of them left Malling one day for an advance landing field. Only four landed back there. Fodder for Jerry guns. They’d all have gone if some Hurri squadron hadn’t come in to save them. Well, they were posted away and in we come with our Spits. There was action right from the word go. In the Channel, not over Kent, because the Jerries were softening up the target by attacking shipping. From then it escalated . . . Well, you know the story. Eagle Day, was it? Göring telling his chaps to attack the airfields to put them out of action. He didn’t specify Malling, but he might as well have. The chaps no sooner got the runways back in order than back the bombers come again. We began to get a bad name in the luck states. ’Course, I have to be fair, Biggin on the Bump was worse hit. Then Hitler gave the go-ahead to attack London and it was all systems go to stop the bombers getting through. Like the blooming trenches, it was. No sooner get a fag in your mouth, a drink in your hand and your arm round a woman than Hitler asks for 362 in person. Vic and I were there for the duration. Tanner and Smith were long gone by then.’
‘When exactly?’ Peter prompted when Eddie paused.
‘Not long after the station dance. I kept a sort of diary – well, we all did, and no, mine’s not the sort you can quote from, full of poetic thoughts about life. Just odd jottings of dates and things. Got the dance written in big letters, at the Manor House on August thirty-first. We all spilled out into the gardens, a couple of us went for a dip in the lake – that sort of thing. Ken Lyle had been shot down that day, so we had to do something. Patrick had a spat with Tanner at dispersal after – tearing him off a strip, I reckon – and it was the day after that the LMF thing blew up. Blew up’s not right, though. All very hush-hush it was, which meant more and more rumours.’
‘How did they start?’
‘The MO might report chaps are calling in sick without reason. One too many engine failures. The CO might pick up something, or the IO. Who knows?’ Eddie was puffing away, looking out to sea.
‘Did other pilots make complaints?’
‘Rarely. Only if something happened in the air maybe. In dispersal you wouldn’t always notice who wasn’t there and should be, or who didn’t get to their Spit quickly enough and someone else grabbed his place. Weren’t supposed to, of course, but it happened, especially when the airfield was under attack. Most of us were all too keen to get the hell off the ground and into the air then.’
Georgia misunderstood. ‘Because of the invasion threat?’
‘We didn’t stop to ask ourselves why we were doing it. We just went. It was them or us. You don’t stop to wonder in the middle of a dogfight whether this is a worthy cause.’
<
br /> Peter chuckled. ‘Point taken. Were you surprised about Smith and Tanner and the LMF?’
‘No. Too many rumours around. They were in Fairfax’s section as a rule, in B Flight under McNee. Sometimes they flew with A Flight, though, to fill in gaps. No time to think at the time, but afterwards you put two and two together, when the chaps talk in dispersal. The times he wasn’t there when he should have been. Now Vic was a different case. He was right there at your side. Salt of the earth.’ Eddie sighed. ‘It’s a long time ago,’ he continued. ‘I don’t reckon either of you were born then.’
‘Did Jack spend a lot of time talking about 362?’ Georgia asked.
‘He would, wouldn’t he? That’s what I know about best.’
‘Did he ask you about the other sergeant pilots?’
‘Why not? We were part of it. He talked to Tanner’s brother, he said.’
‘When did he do that?’ Georgia asked curiously. ‘When he wrote the squadron history, or recently?’
‘When we started this new thing,’ Eddie said impatiently. ‘Look, what’s this about? The chap’s dead. Drowned. You think his blinking ghost came back to kill Fairfax?’
‘I don’t know,’ Peter said. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘Nah. And even if I did they don’t shoot with Webleys.’
*
‘Rainy days are sent to make us appreciate the sunny ones,’ Peter said sanctimoniously.
‘It works,’ Georgia grunted. She was sick and tired of computer screens.
‘There is a certain pleasure,’ Peter remarked irritatingly, ‘in bringing one’s records up to date. Boring though it might seem, it has its own fascination. I for instance considered it worthwhile to reread all Jack’s notes again, since he was asking Eddie about those sergeant pilots.’
‘All the pilots,’ Georgia reminded him. ‘And all the pilots would be relevant to this book that he proposed to write.’
She was ignored. ‘Both Vic Parr and Eddie went on flying right through the war, which is remarkable, but they weren’t present on May tenth 1975, and even if we follow the theory that they were hiding in the Woodring Manor broom cupboard on that Saturday, we haven’t a ghost of a motive for them, so let’s rule them out. Alan Purcell is in a different category, even though he wasn’t there in 1975 because—’
‘Jack went to see him because of the new book,’ Georgia finished for him.
‘Which is apparently so secret he has to hide his contact details so efficiently that they can’t be found.’
‘Touché,’ Georgia admitted. ‘Moreover, if his guru Michael Hastings was right and Jack was edgy, then there was concern on both sides, not just on Alan’s.’
She had even gone so far as to think that France was a double bluff and that Alan Purcell was alive and well but living in England. The number of Purcells even in the local telephone directory was daunting, however, and after trying several she had given up the attempt. First prove he did have something to contribute on the subject of Fairfax’s death, and then put in the spadework.
‘I’ve been piecing together Purcell’s wartime career,’ Peter said, ‘including reading about evasion in occupied France. That’s quite a story. Selflessness on the one hand and betrayals on the other. Alan Purcell himself was shot down just after D-Day, and though you might think it would be easy for him to slip through the lines to the Allied forces, it wasn’t. Evasions by then had changed. Before that servicemen had to find an evasion line that would take them through either to Switzerland or the Pyrenees. By the time Alan Purcell was shot down behind Boulogne, at a village called Wierre Effroy, there was another plan to gather all the evaders together in camps at certain spots so that when the Allies reached them they would be ready to help the war effort. Alan was in Camp Sherwood, near Châteaudun. In fact the camp was there for longer than MI9 anticipated.’
‘Interesting, but what does this have to do with Patrick Fairfax?’ Georgia demanded. ‘I can see that if Purcell had good help from the French it could have bonded him to the country, but Fairfax was safely in London at that point helping to plan D-Day.’
‘True, but you know what? These computers are damned clever machines. In an idle moment, waiting for my coffee,’ Peter roared out in the hope that Margaret would take the hint, ‘I followed up that apparent implication by Heywood about Purcell knowing a lot about Fairfax’s evasion, and did a search for Purcell in Jack’s Fairfax files. And guess what?’
‘Fairfax was a classical music fan and was particularly fond of Henry Purcell.’
‘Wrong. Purcell came up in a file I hadn’t looked at before. The sources, not his career notes. We were too busy thinking in terms of 1940.’
‘Really?’ Now this was interesting. ‘Tell me, and I’ll get your coffee myself.’
‘The name Purcell does crop up in the story of Patrick Fairfax’s evasion.’
Curiouser and curiouser. She meant it.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ he warned her. ‘I failed to cross-reference that with Alan Purcell’s own file, so I’ve had to do some more digging. The Fairfax evasion was covered in Jack’s biography, and he calls Purcell Alan in that, but when I read the story in another source, it referred to Maurice Purcell. Could be a mistake, but interesting.’
‘Why? Could I remind you that neither Alan nor Maurice Purcell – if he exists – was present in 1975?’
‘I don’t need reminders.’
She was forced to eat humble pie. ‘The story as I recall was that he went down the Garibaldi line, presumably so called after the gent who evaded the Germans by flying his balloon out of the Siege of Paris.’
‘Correct. In the summer of 1941 Fairfax crash-landed on the Belgian border near Lille. He was slightly injured, was lucky in the folk who found him, was sheltered and his wounds tended. As soon as he was fit to travel he was sent to join a group travelling south to the Pyrenees. The first stage, to a safe house near Etaples, was with a Belgian woman called Marie. Her husband was a bilingual Englishman, who was the chief organizer and code-named Garibaldi. They had contacts all the way down to the Franco-Spanish border, and the main courier was a girl called Roseanne. It worked on a system of safe houses, and on the usual plan of each safe house not knowing the names of the next in line. Roseanne took them to a safe house in the Pyrenees, near St Jean de Luz, from which they were handed over to a Basque guide.
‘One of the servicemen in Patrick’s group was Purcell, either the unknown Maurice or Alan himself. I presume the former since Alan was shot down again later, and was never in a POW camp. They were captured just after they set off for the Pyrenees, and taken to the local police station – even in Vichy days working with the Germans – to wait for interrogation by their very special inquisitorial squads who were usually eager to out-Gestapo the Gestapo. Then they were despatched they knew not where, but Patrick and one of the other pilots, Hugo Barnaby, managed to break out of the train van. The guide was shot, so were the owners of many of the safe houses, so were the organizers of the line. The pilots eventually ended up in a POW camp.
‘Patrick and Barnaby lay low after their escape, went through a rough time and Patrick persuaded Barnaby not to surrender but that they should have a go at crossing the Pyrenees themselves. Madness, of course, but somehow they managed it. They had a rough time with the Spanish on the other side, but once through that they reached Gibraltar, where the new MI9 agent was by then installed to organize travel onwards. They got back to England by the early summer of 1942.’
‘Does that tell us anything about Patrick Fairfax in 1975?’
‘I don’t know, but it makes me keener to talk to Purcell.’
*
She heard the familiar car draw up, and couldn’t for the moment believe it. Surely that was Luke’s car, and this was a Wednesday morning? No way would he be here. Nevertheless she ran to the window and peered into the street. It was his car, and, moreover, it was Luke as well.
She flew outside just as he climbed out. One slam of the do
or and she was in his arms, being whisked off her feet, spun round and placed back again for a long kiss.
‘I’ve got it,’ he said.
No need to ask what.
‘That’s wonderful.’ Doubts fell away; it was wonderful. It was a step forward into a new life.
‘Happy?’ she asked.
‘You ask me that? Woman, I tell you, I’d move in tomorrow if I could.’
‘Can’t you?’
‘The deathwatch beetles are lining up with their spears and body armour to prevent me. A month or two yet I’m afraid, but you can start packing.’ He must have seen her face. ‘You are moving in with me, aren’t you?’
‘Luke, I . . .’ She mustn’t spoil this moment. ‘I hadn’t realized that’s what you wanted,’ she finished weakly.
‘Georgia,’ he said warningly. ‘Decide now. Realize now. Sorry if I hadn’t made that clear. I thought it was a done deal. You will, won’t you?’
Decide now? How could she? It was too much, too soon. No, this wasn’t fair of Luke, even if he had made a genuine mistake. Even if she had. She couldn’t be expected to give him an instant yeah or nay. She turned to see Peter’s wheelchair in the doorway.
‘Don’t let her back out, Luke,’ he called cheerfully. Damn him, she thought savagely.
‘I’ll walk round the block,’ she announced. Not that there was a block, but she could walk. Anywhere to escape those four eyes scouring her face.
Luke said nothing, but she had to go, despite his expression. She walked down the lane by the side of Peter’s house which led to Pluckett Farm. How could she move in so quickly? Did she want to move? Had she imagined the status quo would go on for ever? Was she crazy or just selfish? She had to be sure. She gazed into the stream trickling away under the bridge. Here as a child she used to play Pooh sticks with her mother. She had played Pooh sticks here only last week with Luke. She’d always wanted to float along with the sticks, not get stuck under the bridge. And that’s where she appeared to be now. But round the corner the Pooh stick might run into a Zac. So what, she reasoned, if Luke were there too? No, she should manage on her own. But why? It was only one tiny step to Medlars, Cot Street and Luke. She wasn’t burning any bridges; she would be making one.