The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set

by Melvyn Fickling

  ‘Damn. Sorry, Flight. I’ve lost contact.’

  ‘Stand-down operator.’ The officer’s order compounded Tommy’s disappointment. ‘Pilot. Fly straight and level, we’ll take over as target plane.’

  ***

  Jenny and Alice veered west across the grass. In the middle distance, the squat outline of Wandsworth Prison hunkered against the skyline.

  ‘Do you fancy a quick drink in The County Arms?’ Alice asked. ‘Then we should catch a bus home before it gets any chillier.’

  They quickened their pace along the path, admiring the primly kept front gardens of the large houses bounding the common, residences of an erstwhile Victorian merchant class. Crossing the main road, they pushed through the heavy wooden doors of the saloon bar into the comfortable fug of the panelled pub. Stripping off hats and gloves they walked to the bar.

  ‘Whisky and green ginger, please,’ Alice ordered.

  ‘Oh, that sounds nice. Make that two.’

  Alice paid for the round and they carried their glasses to a corner booth, away from the bar.

  Alice sipped her whisky and regarded Jenny from under arched eyebrows.

  ‘So, why did you tell him not to?’

  Jenny’s eyes dropped to the amber liquid that she swirled around the glass and she remained silent.

  ‘Jenny, you have a lovely man who cares about you. Why shut him out?’

  Jenny’s brow furrowed against the reprimand and she cleared her throat.

  ‘I was very much in love with a lovely man when I was eighteen.’ Her voice stayed steady, but when they lifted from her drink, her eyes glistened with nascent tears. ‘I don’t ever want to be hurt that badly again.’

  ***

  Bryan and Tommy trailed back to the operations hut behind the scientific officer. Bryan cast a wistful glance across the field to where the Beaufighters rumbled and coughed their way through engine tests in preparation for the coming night’s patrol.

  ‘What sort of evasion was he pulling, Flight?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘None. He was flying straight and level right down the line.’

  ‘Strewth… Really?’ Tommy dragged his leather helmet from his head. ‘I’m sorry, Flight. I was working exactly the way they taught us in ground training. What a bloody shambles.’

  ‘I’m not sure it was,’ Bryan murmured. ‘You’re not an idiot, and the boffins seem convinced their magic box works. So, we must be missing something.’

  The trio clumped into the operations hut and the officer flicked through the training roster.

  ‘Back here tomorrow at the same time, please,’ he said. ‘We’ll give it another crack.’

  The man walked out and Tommy made to follow him. Bryan reached out and tugged at Tommy’s sleeve.

  ‘Wait a moment, Scott. Sit down and let’s have a think about this.’

  Tommy took a seat opposite Bryan’s.

  ‘The whole point of this game is to get our kite into the right bit of sky directly behind the target, going at more-or-less the same speed in exactly the same direction.’

  Tommy nodded.

  ‘I’m sitting up front doing what you tell me to do,’ Bryan continued. ‘So essentially you are trying to knock down the enemy using our plane as a missile.’

  ‘In a way, I suppose…’

  ‘You trained and served as a gunner, Scott. What’s the most important principal when aiming at a moving target?’

  ‘Deflection.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Bryan leaned back in his chair.

  Realisation lightened Tommy’s features: ‘So, I need to direct you towards the place the target is going to be, rather than where he is when I read his bearing.’

  ‘That’s the key.’ Bryan smiled. ‘If he’s off our bearing by thirty degrees, call a fifteen degree turn and then concentrate on getting our speed the same. Call another ten degrees and take time to check our speed again. Then call the last five degrees and we should be right up his arse.’

  ***

  The bus swung left down the High Road between rows of shops closed and shuttered against the deserted pavements of a Sunday afternoon. Jenny travelled in silence, the smooth warmth of the whisky buzzing in her stomach, a counterpoint to the jagged edges of old memories. Alice sat mute beside her, digesting the revelation and adjusting her mental image of her friend. Alice reached up to ring the bell and the two women stood as the vehicle shuddered to a halt outside their block. The conductor tipped his hat as they alighted.

  Alice offered her arm as they crossed the pavement and Jenny accepted with a faint smile.

  ‘I can’t fully understand the way you feel,’ Alice began, ‘but you can’t punish Bryan for something that someone else did to you.’

  The pair crossed the lobby and stepped into an open lift. They endured the porter’s furtive glances until the door slid closed.

  ‘He’s not a child, Alice. I’ve told him it will never be a serious relationship. How he deals with that is his choice.’

  Alice pulled a wan smile: ‘I don’t know that he has a choice anymore.’

  The lift whirred upwards and Jenny stared in silence at the door.

  ***

  Bryan strolled into the officers’ mess and headed for the bar. Carson was there already, leaned on the gleaming wood surface, chatting with another pilot.

  ‘Ah, Bryan. The new boy. Come and join us.’ Carson waved him across. ‘Meet my good friend and fellow knight of the darkness, Leslie Moss.’ Carson’s voiced dropped to a conspiratorial level: ‘He’s a bit of an arse, but you’ll find he grows on you.’

  Carson giggled at his own joke while Bryan ordered a round of drinks.

  Moss offered his hand. ‘How is your training coming along?’ he asked. ‘Have you divined the secrets of the black magic box yet?’

  ‘It’s the bloody operators,’ Carson interrupted. ‘Mine’s little more than a grease monkey made good. He’s obviously in above his depth.’

  Bryan glanced sideways at Carson. ‘If the RAF trained Einstein to be your operator, you’d be doing no better.’

  Moss leaned forward. ‘How do you mean?’

  Bryan took a swig of his pint. ‘Me and my operator have been thrashing this out. Tell me, when you’re flying at night or in heavy cloud, do you feel comfortable relying on the aircraft’s instruments.’

  The other two nodded.

  ‘So, if you’re happy to believe those instruments are telling the truth,’ Bryan continued, ‘why are you disbelieving the AI box? Simply because it’s a new invention?’

  ‘But it’s obvious it doesn’t work,’ Carson said. ‘My operator tells me the target is in range, and it’s patently bloody well not in range, because I can’t bloody see it.’

  Bryan placed his pint on the bar. ‘You’ve gone past it.’

  ‘What?’ Carson frowned in confusion.

  ‘It’s not only about direction, it’s as much about speed,’ Bryan continued. ‘I reckon you’re approaching too fast. We know the operator loses the trace at close range. In between him telling you that you’re on the bandit’s tail and you actually searching for the target, you’ve gone past it.’ Bryan smiled into Carson’s face. ‘So, you end up flying next to it, or worse, in front of it.’ Bryan took another swig of beer. ‘To be quite honest, I’m surprised you haven’t been shot to pieces already.’

  A contemplative silence descended on the trio for a moment.

  ‘Right.’ Carson, the colour draining from his cheeks, broke the spell: ‘Call of nature. Excuse me, gentlemen.’

  Bryan watched the shaken man stumble towards the latrines and drained his pint. He turned to Moss: ‘So, telephone calls off base. What’s the rigmarole?’

  ‘Strictly against the rules, of course,’ Moss said. ‘However there’s a public telephone outside The George in the village. As long as you don’t say anything that might encourage the Luftwaffe to come and bomb us tomorrow, no-one seems to mind too much.’

  Bryan winked his thanks and strode to the mess door. />
  The first creeping fingers of dusk tugged at the horizon as he climbed into his Humber. The shouts and laughs of riggers and mechanics drifted across the field as the never-ending task of checking and maintaining the squadron’s fighting machines ground on.

  Bryan waved to the guard at the gate and turned left for the short drive along the edge of the airfield to Middle Wallop village. Parking in front of the pub, he climbed out and walked to the red telephone box at the corner of the car park, fishing around in his pocket for change. The door creaked closed on its thick, leather hinges and he dialled the operator to connect his call.

  ***

  The dull tones of the October skies began their descent towards darkness over the washed-out grey of London’s grimy buildings. Jenny squinted at the typeface on the bone-yellow paper, struggling against the fading light. She sighed and dropped the newspaper.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she called. ‘I need the lights on.’

  She stood up, closed the blackouts and skirted the sofa to the light switch.

  ‘Already?’ Alice lay in the bath, shaping her fingernails on a decrepit emery board. ‘I hate winter.’

  Jenny sat down and retrieved her paper. Small articles filled the inner pages, glossing over the bombing raids that were categorised as light or heavy, on anonymous towns and cities hinted at by their rough location, northern or coastal. Only London was named. But the news always lagged a few days behind the events; casualty figures in stark black and white that, for all their implied horror, had already become mass burials in hard-pressed local graveyards.

  A small knot of anger gripped the base of Jenny’s throat. This new world of prosaic destruction tore her between what she wanted and what she was ill-prepared to suffer. The anger in her breast cooled and tightened to a smaller ache of despair, a longing for it to be over so she could be Jenny again.

  The telephone’s jagged ring ripped across the room. Jenny leaned across and picked up the handset.

  ‘Hello? Jenny Freeman.’

  The operator instructed Jenny to hold and connected the caller.

  ‘Hello?’ Bryan’s voice sounded metallic through the miles of cable.

  ‘Hello, Bryan.’ The muscles across Jenny’s shoulders loosened. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m well. I was calling to say I won’t be heading your way for a while. They are very keen to teach me an awful lot of things over here, and I think they’ll keep me at it until I’ve learned them all.’

  ‘That’s alright, Bryan’ – Jenny lowered her voice and turned her back to the bathroom door – ‘it’s probably just as well; I’m busy at work too. I’m simply glad to hear you’re safe.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Things are less hectic here than the job I came from.’

  The small talk wilted into a heavy pause.

  ‘Damn’ – Bryan cursed – ‘no more loose change. I’ll call again when I can-’

  The strident beeps counted down the last seconds of the call to be replaced with the self-satisfied purr of the dropped line.

  Jenny placed the handset in its cradle and returned to the sofa. The gentle zip-zip of the emery board lacerated the silence and the knots of tension retied across her shoulders.

  Chapter 11

  Monday, 11 November 1940

  Bryan and Tommy trailed after the signals officer back to the operations hut, slumping into chairs as the man flipped back through his log book.

  ‘Right gentlemen’ – he looked up and smiled – ‘you’ve achieved 90 per cent interception success on target planes that are flying straight and level, which is excellent.’ He paused to allow his compliment to sink in. ‘And 55 per cent interception success where the target plane is engaged in evasive flying. Of course, by success, we mean the aircraft is close enough to the target for a reasonably competent pilot to score some hits.’

  Bryan sucked his teeth in contemplation: ‘So what happens now?’

  The signals officer snapped his log book shut.

  ‘Well, I’m done with you’ – his smile broadened – ‘so you’ll be sent back to the flight instructor for conversion to Beaufighters.’

  ‘At last,’ Bryan breathed to himself.

  ‘Hale, you report here tomorrow at 10 o’clock. Scott, you’ll remain on station at standby until conversion is completed. Then there’ll be a few familiarisation flights and they’ll let you loose on the enemy.’

  He walked towards the door.

  ‘By the way’ – he said over his shoulder – ‘a little bird tells me you’ve been assigned Blackbird C-Charlie.’

  As the officer left the hut, Bryan looked at Tommy and his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Shall we go and take a squint at C-Charlie?’

  The two men walked side-by-side across the grass towards the dispersed night-fighters. Scott stood a good few inches shorter than his pilot and whistled self-consciously, kicking at tufts of thick grass with his flying boots.

  ‘Well done, by the way,’ Bryan said. ‘It’s your solid performance that’s got us this far.’

  ‘Thanks, Flight.’ Tommy’s cheeks reddened. ‘I always try to do my best.’

  ‘There’s a couple of pilots in the officer’s mess who don’t have a great deal of affection for their operators.’

  Tommy remained silent.

  ‘And I’m guessing that’s a two-way street?’

  Tommy nodded: ‘I’ve heard a couple of grumbles in the sergeants’ mess.’

  ‘Well, we’re both after shooting down bombers before they get to their targets, so let’s focus on that and leave the bitching to the others.’

  They arrived at Blackbird C-Charlie, standing in its blast pen outside the perimeter track. Once more Bryan’s senses thrilled to see the pugnacious, round-nosed aircraft sitting squat and fearsome on its sturdy undercarriage.

  ‘Shall we take a peek inside, Flight?’ Tommy whispered. ‘There’s a hatch under the fuselage.’

  Tommy unlatched the hinged panel and Bryan climbed the steps built into its topside. Tommy followed and pulled the hatch closed behind them. Bryan elbowed his way along the fuselage towards the cockpit, Tommy lingered to view his own station.

  Forward of the access hatch, the fuselage housed a Perspex dome. Set high under the dome was a swivel seat with backrest and safety harness.

  Tommy glanced down in front of the seat. Four 20mm cannons sat underneath the catwalk, slightly below floor level, their thickly greased breeches glimmering with murderous intent. Smiling, he climbed into the seat and swivelled to face the tail. Grunting with pleasure at the largely unobstructed rear view, he turned his attention to the ‘magic box’. It sat suspended from the fuselage roof behind the dome. He could look into the visor and back to the sky with a small movement of his head. The box itself was a newer version of the equipment he’d used during training. Next to it was a dedicated altimeter and an airspeed indicator to assist his interpretation of data on the screen. He noted with some pleasure a hot air duct on the fuselage wall set to discharge straight at the seat.

  Tommy squeezed forward through a pair of armour plate doors to the cockpit and found Bryan musing in the pilot’s seat set in the centre of the compartment. The sloping windscreen had the oily translucency of bulletproof glass, while lighter, Perspex panels offered unrestricted views to the sides and above.

  ‘How do you get out in an emergency, Flight?’

  Bryan shot a withering glance at his operator. ‘There’s a hatch behind the seat, thanks for asking. You’re standing on it.’

  Tommy braced his feet either side of the hatch, released the latch and dropped down onto the ground. He walked out in front of the aircraft, surveying its shape and form like a stable boy assessing new horse flesh. The Beaufighter’s air of muscled aggression made up for the extra weight her lines might carry. He ran his hand along the sensuously scalloped slots under the nose that vented the cannons’ fire, and smiled. As a tool for the job in hand it was unlikely to get much better than this.

  Tuesday, 12 Novemb
er 1940

  The Beaufighter curved gracefully onto the landing circuit, dropped towards the grass and flared out for a perfect three-point landing. Tommy watched the man he’d started to think of as his pilot taxi smoothly away to dispersal, gunning and cutting the engines to steer the big aircraft off the runway.

  He pulled up the collar on his overcoat and wandered back towards the sergeants’ mess.

  ***

  ‘If it was up to me, I’d put you on operations tonight.’ The instructor scribbled the training flight down in the log and closed the heavy leather cover. ‘But rules are rules and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Bryan pleaded. ‘Bombers are getting through unmolested while I have to jump through hoops to prove to you that I can fly a bloody aeroplane.’

  ‘Listen, Hale’ – the other man jabbed his pencil into Bryan’s chest – ‘if I let you go into combat with only a couple of hours of familiarisation, and you don’t come back, then it’s my neck on the block.’ He jammed his pencil into his top pocket. ‘Get as many hours in your log book as the maintenance crews will let you.’

  The instructor strode out of the hut. Bryan sank into a chair and cupped his face in his hands. ‘Shiny-arsed bastard.’.

  ***

  Bryan shouldered his way into the officers’ mess and threw his greatcoat across a chair on his way to the bar. Carson stood there already, scanning through The Standard. Bryan ordered a bottle of light ale and hunkered down next to the reading man.

  ‘What’s news?’ he asked.

  Carson flipped back a few pages and jabbed his finger at an article.

  ‘It says here that Bomber Command paid a visit to some factories in Munich on Friday night.’ He sucked in a long breath ‘Germans aren’t happy. Says here they’ve promised a “reprisal in strength”.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Bryan swivelled the paper on the shiny wood of the bar and read the headline. ‘Why does Winston insist on stirring up the bloody Nazis on their own doorstep?’

  Carson frowned: ‘Why on earth wouldn’t we? They’re bombing our cities. They’re absolutely creaming London. Surely we have to hit back in kind.’