The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set

by Melvyn Fickling

  ‘I hope it’s alright.’ Bryan said. ‘I don’t want to become a nuisance.’

  ‘No. It’s lovely to see you.’ Jacobella’s smile was weary but genuine.

  ‘Bine,’ Luċija said to herself.

  ‘I’m afraid I have no goat,’ Jacobella said. ‘In fact, I don’t really have anything.’

  ‘That’s alright.’ Bryan patted his satchel. ‘I’ve brought some bully beef.’

  They hurried through the damp air and into the house, wiping the sheen of rain from cheeks and eyelids. Bryan placed the tin of beef on the kitchen table. Jacobella whisked it onto the draining board and bore down on the lid with a can opener. The thick aroma of preserved meat drifted across the room as Jacobella spooned the contents into a pan, chopping it up with the spoon.

  Abruptly she stopped working and swallowed hard. She dropped the spoon and ducked her head into the sink, retching loudly. Strings of saliva hung from her lips as she convulsed in pain, vomiting nothing from an empty stomach.

  Bryan moved to her side. ‘Are you alright? What’s wrong?’

  Jacobella coughed and spat. ‘Mother of God!’ she hissed through clenched teeth as another spasm gripped her and lurched her body forward.

  Luċija ran into the kitchen and hugged onto her mother’s leg, her face darkened with concern.

  ‘What can I do?’ Bryan lifted Jacobella’s hair away from the bile pooling in the sink.

  ‘Nothing!’ Jacobella’s voice was a ragged rasp. She coughed and spat again. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’ Her voice softened. ‘It’s morning sickness. I’m pregnant.’

  Bryan’s hand still held her hair, his knuckles resting against her smooth, cool skin. The unfamiliar proximity and the intimacy it suggested filled him with a lumpen awkwardness and the words he searched for died in his throat.

  Chapter 14

  Thursday, 22 January 1942

  Copeland walked towards the blast-pens, Bryan moved at his side, a flying helmet hanging from his hand. The rainstorms had abated over the last two days and most of the puddles of standing water had drained away. The two men skirted patches of glistening mud as they made their way around the perimeter.

  ‘You’ll have to trust me, Hale,’ Copeland said, ‘there are things happening that I can’t talk about.’ They arrived at a pen containing one of the black Hurricanes. ‘We have to take this thing one step at a time.’ He put a hand on Bryan’s shoulder. ‘This is the first step.’

  Bryan eyed the aircraft with suspicion. ‘What the hell are those?’

  Underneath the wings, outboard from the undercarriage, two cylinders hung from brackets.

  ‘Extra fuel tanks.’ Copeland smiled. ‘These give you the range to mount a proper intruder mission into Sicily and meet the bombers on their home territory.’

  Bryan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do they work?’

  Copeland shrugged. ‘Let me know when you’ve finished your test flight. Make sure you switch back and forth a few times. Put them through their paces properly.’

  Copeland walked away and groundcrew bustled around the fighter, preparing it for flight. Bryan pulled his flying helmet over his scalp and climbed onto the wing.

  ****

  Bryan took off from Ta’Qali, feeling the sag of extra weight in the fuel tanks on his wings, and pulled into a shallow climb to the south.

  ‘Pipistrelle One to Control. Airborne on flight test. Listening out.’

  A brief acknowledgement rattled back, ending in background static that hissed in his ears as he overflew the rocky coastline and banked out over the sea.

  Checking he had sufficient altitude for a bail-out, Bryan flicked the fuel taps over. The engine coughed, missed a beat and roared back to life.

  Bryan smiled to himself. ‘Well, well. It looks like we’re off to Sicily.’

  Sunday, 25 January 1942

  ‘It really is time you moved somewhere safer,’ Bryan said. ‘The weather will start getting better and they’ll come back again and again.’

  Jacobella sat on her couch, Luċija perched on her lap, snoozing against her breast. She stayed silent.

  ‘There’s every likelihood they’ll flatten Valletta completely before they’re done,’ he pleaded. ‘Listen to me, I’m speaking as your friend.’

  She looked up. ‘It’s my home,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s as far from the docks as a building can be, and’ – she gestured at the wall with her free hand – ‘it’s made of rock.’

  ‘Your husband would agree with me.’

  Jacobella’s eyes widened slightly. ‘My husband isn’t here.’

  Bryan flushed red at his clumsiness and stepped out onto the balcony to escape his discomfort. Aircraft noise snapped his attention to the sky. Passing over the buildings of Sliema a gaggle of Hurricanes laboured in a battle-climb out to sea, off to give air cover to a ship movement. He watched their progress until another scratchy motion in the blue-grey heavens drew his eye. Far above, a dozen dark silhouettes curved down towards the British formation, embroidering an angry edge to the buzzing engine noise, then overlaying its drone with the hammering of cannon fire. The Messerschmitts flashed through the formation, leaving flares of flame in their wake. Three Hurricanes sagged from the formation, trailing black and white streamers of smoke and fumes. Below them, the Germans flattened out and, riding their blistering speed, streaked inland to seek out targets on the ground. Over the sea that swallowed their aircraft, two pilots drifted down under creamy-white parachute canopies.

  Bryan ducked back into the room. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, hoping it would be enough. ‘I have to go.’

  Jacobella looked up, nodded faintly and returned her gaze to her sleeping child.

  ****

  The quarter-moon hung behind emaciated clouds and their frayed drapery diffused and softened its thin light. Bryan’s awareness grew as his vision adjusted. The black expanse below him became a subtle undulation of watery darkness, the impenetrable blank dome over his head revealed the slow scudding of tattered cirrus, and the horizon solidified into the caliginous bar of the Sicilian coast.

  He lofted the nose of his Hurricane slightly to better define the shoreline’s profile as he made landfall. Glancing at the map taped to his thigh, he made his best guess at his location, marked it with a pencil, noted the time and set a due-north bearing. Mindful of detection, he sank his craft closer to the ghostly trees and fields that rolled away below him, swathed in the ethereal cobwebs of the incorporeal lunar light.

  Bryan looked around, resting his eyes from the dim instrument lights, allowing them to relax once more. A sense of preternatural calm descended on him; the extra fuel he carried made time his ally. He eased the throttle back, damping the growl of the engine closer to a purr, a sound that better suited the maverick danger he carried into the enemy sky. A near-blind tiger on the prowl, yet still possessed of tiger’s claws.

  Bryan checked his watch and ran a quick mental calculation; he was at least forty miles inland on the large island’s rump, which put him over open ground in the middle of a cluster of five enemy airfields marked on his map by red dots. He tweaked the throttle forward and dropped into a shallow bank to starboard that led him into a wide, slow orbit. He let his helmeted head sag back onto the cushioned rest and held his unfocussed gaze out over his lowered wing, fishing for minnows of light in a sea of ebony anonymity.

  On his third circuit, a stubby, silvery speck appeared on the ground away to the south. Keeping his eyes locked on this fragile scintillation, he banked out of his orbit to curve back down-country and investigate.

  As the miles rolled away, the transient gleam acquired the rigidity of a hooded searchlight beam raked along what was almost certainly a runway. Keeping a cautious distance, Bryan dropped into a wide circle around the anomaly, seeking some confirmation for his suspicion.

  A shape moved across the beam at one end and was reabsorbed by the darkness. Bryan circled, intent, his expectation rising. Moments later, from the other end of the bar of illuminat
ion, rising steadily into the void, two navigation lights scribed ascending lines through the night before blinking out.

  Bryan looped back to the other end of the enemy airfield, counting away the seconds under his breath. ‘…twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty…’

  Another pair of lights climbed away from the beam and extinguished.

  Bryan thumbed his safety catch to fire and restarted the count. ‘One, two, three…’ He dropped into a figure-of-eight pattern to eat away the seconds. ‘…twelve, thirteen, fourteen…’ Banking around he lined up with the beam and began his approach. ‘…twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five…’ The searchlight station passed under his nose, its finger of light bisecting the darkness ahead. ‘…twenty-nine, thirty.’

  A black shape lifted into the air at the end of the light-path, bracketed by navigation lights that nestled neatly into the edges of Bryan’s windshield. He jabbed his thumb onto the firing button and his aircraft rattled with recoil, tracers flashing and bouncing in the night.

  A blinding yellow flash, an instinctive pull on the stick, engine screaming, the concussion of an exploding bomb-load somewhere too close behind, a flirtation with a stall, adjust, recover, buoyancy, flight, speed and escape.

  Bryan glanced into his mirror with dazzled pupils. The landscape around the airfield erupted with anti-aircraft guns pumping anger and vengeance into the space he no longer occupied.

  Friday, 30 January 1942

  Knuckles rapped on the wood, paused, then repeated their urgent summons. Bryan lifted his head from his pillow and glared across the room at the door. Champing against the dryness in his mouth, he fumbled on the bedside table for his watch and squinted at its face. ‘Christ,’ he muttered to himself and swung off the mattress. ‘This had better be a bloody emergency,’ he called as he strode across the room. Opening the door, he stood staring blankly at Squadron Leader Copeland. ‘What?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘There’s a meeting in half-an-hour,’ Copeland said. ‘I’ve requisitioned the mess.’

  Bryan blinked. ‘It’s a dining room.’

  ‘Whatever it’s called, there’s a meeting there in thirty minutes, all flight leaders are required to attend. Embry is on his way.’

  ‘Who is Embry, and is he not aware that I work nights?’

  ‘It’s Group Captain Embry’ – annoyance stretched Copeland’s tone – ‘and I’m fairly certain he doesn’t give a toss about your nocturnal habits. Wake up, Hale, and see to it that you’re not late.’

  Copeland strode off down the corridor and Bryan swung the door closed. ‘Shiny-arsed bastards,’ he breathed and tottered towards his dressing table.

  ****

  Twenty-five minutes later, Bryan sauntered into the dining room. Chairs, arranged in rows, were filled with pilots, many from the other aerodromes, some that he did not recognise. He found an empty seat in the back row and sat down.

  Moments later Copeland entered with the group captain and everyone rose to attention. Waving them to be seated, Copeland introduced the other officer and stepped back to allow him to speak.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ Embry began, ‘I’ve been sent from London to take a look at the way things work out here.’

  As the man spoke, Bryan examined his face, vaguely handsome with brown eyes shining from under dark eyebrows and a downturned mouth unaccustomed to mirth.

  ‘I’ve visited the HQ in Valletta and inspected all the airfields,’ the group captain continued. ‘It’s obvious you’ve been tasked with a difficult job under less than ideal circumstances.’

  A polite murmur of agreement rippled around the room.

  ‘I understand that scarcity of fuel is a major limiting factor. However, the complaint I’ve heard time and again from pilots is the state of the aircraft you have been issued.’ A faint smile displaced his lips. ‘The Hurricane is a fine aeroplane and I’ve enjoyed flying it myself in the past. But I think its time in the sun is coming to an end.

  ‘Uniquely, in your predicament, it comes down to simple mathematics. It takes fifteen minutes for the enemy to fly from Sicily to Malta. In that time, a Hurricane can climb to fifteen thousand feet – barely enough to reach the bombers, and always well below their escort. It’s intolerable that you should be expected to operate at this constant disadvantage.’ He paused and looked around the upturned faces. ‘Especially as the Spitfire Mark V can climb to twenty-five thousand feet in the same time span. Consequently, I will be recommending that Spitfires be assigned to Malta as soon as operationally possible.’

  Sunday, 1 February 1942

  Bryan dropped from the back of the transport and trudged down the slope towards Ta’Qali’s perimeter track. The metallic ring of shovels and the murmur of labouring voices drifted through the deepening gloom from parties of soldiers filling in the afternoon’s bomb craters. An engine choked into life and dropped into a rough, rhythmic chug as the aerodrome’s last surviving roller crept out from its camouflaged blast-pen and trundled out to flatten the scars on the landing strip.

  Ben jogged up to Bryan’s shoulder and matched his stride. ‘Where do you slip off to every Sunday afternoon? Are you still getting your washing done somewhere?’

  Bryan threw his companion a sideways glance. In the dying light the young man’s bones pressed against his gaunt skin, throwing unnatural shadows across his face. His eyes were submerged in pools of shade, as if his skull sought to escape its fleshly sheath.

  ‘Her name’s Jacobella. She lives in Valletta.’

  Ben barked a laugh. ‘Has she replaced Katie, now?’

  ‘No,’ Bryan’s tone was measured, ‘Katie was’ – he cast around for the right phrase – ‘a dancing partner. Jacobella is a friend.’

  ‘Until she isn’t.’ Ben smirked. ‘Anyway, how do you manage to get away from the aerodrome every Sunday?’

  They arrived at the readiness station and ducked under the netting.

  ‘I told them I’d converted to Catholicism,’ Bryan answered.

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ Ben asked.

  ‘What? Becoming a Catholic, or lying about it?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘No.’ Bryan slapped a folded map into the other man’s chest. ‘Flying a clapped-out Hurricane across the sea to look for German airfields… that’s dangerous.’

  Saturday, 14 February 1942

  The truck crept slowly through Mdina Gate then the engine roared as it lurched down the narrow road towards the aerodrome, the driver anxious to fulfil his responsibilities in the narrowing gap between air raids and strafing fighters.

  Bryan sat in the passenger seat, bracing bony knees against the door and the dash, wincing with every jolt and rattle. Smoke from a recent raid laid a pall over the airfield, mirrored in the distant background by thicker sooty columns curling away from Valletta. Anxiety pricked for a moment in his heart, then it was subsumed under the blanket of weariness that shrouded his shoulders.

  The truck lumbered through the airfield gates and Bryan clambered out. He scanned the sky with wary caution as he hurried along the perimeter to get maintenance reports from his ground crews. He slowed his pace as he came to the first pen. Two airmen busied themselves covering the black fuselage with sand-coloured paint, slapping it on with busy, careless strokes.

  Bryan diverted up the slope, heading towards the stone buildings that bracketed the makeshift administration centre of the aerodrome. As he approached, Copeland turned to greet him.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Why are you taking my fighters?’ Bryan arrived under the netting, breathless from hurrying up the slope. ‘I can barely put up a brace every night as it is.’

  ‘I’m not taking your fighters, Hale.’ Copeland placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m disbanding Pipistrelle Squadron altogether.’

  ‘What?’ Bryan cocked his head in disbelief.

  ‘Your chaps are reverting to daytime ops.’ Copeland handed him the folded order. ‘You really ought to be heading back
to England, given how long you’ve been plugging away here. But I want you in my flight. If we ever get some Spitfires, I want you to be around to use one.’ Copeland eyed him dispassionately. ‘As long as you agree to stay?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Bryan stuttered. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll need you available from dawn on Monday.’ Copeland treated him to a mischievous wink. ‘So tomorrow might be your last chance to go to church for a while.’

  Sunday, 15 February 1942

  The little girl slipped away from Jacobella’s hand and skipped up the stepped pavement towards Hastings Gardens.

  ‘Luċija!’ her mother called. ‘Come back. You must stay close to me.’

  ‘I’ll catch her.’ Bryan loped up the steps in pursuit.

  Luċija peeped around a tree, saw Bryan coming for her and squealed in mock terror, running deeper into the gardens and ducking behind a bush.

  Bryan stopped by the tree, hands on hips, searching for some sign of the child.

  Jacobella arrived by his side breathing heavily. ‘Luċija! Come to me, darling, we can’t play now.’

  The lilt of childish laughter drifted back through the gardens. Luċija was heading back towards the house, dodging ahead of her guardians and revelling in her cleverness. ‘Ommi,’ she called and laughed skipping ahead once more.

  ‘Such a naughty child,’ Jacobella muttered.

  ‘It can’t do any harm,’ Bryan chided, ‘it’s just a bit of fun.’

  The path forked around a raised bed and Bryan took the parallel track to Jacobella, spreading out to corral the playful child towards her front door.

  A low noise nibbled at the still air and Bryan felt the hackles rise on his neck. He scanned the sky, hunting for a physical presence to which he could pin the sound. Approaching from the north, buzzing low over Sliema, the glint of canopies, like dragonfly cyclopes, riding the crest of their own swelling roar.

  ‘Run!’ he shouted. ‘They’re bombing the submarines!’ Sprinting down the path he combed the bushes and trees with darting glances. ‘Where is she?’

  Jacobella called out in Maltese, fighting to restrain the panic rising in her voice. The two of them ran together out from the gardens. Bryan veered to one side of the empty limestone plinth and twisted his head in time to register Luċija standing with her shoulders against the backside of the massive, pale block, her face shedding the pleasure at her game of hide-and-seek and crumpling into the first realisations of fear. On the other side of the plinth, Jacobella also turned, skittering to a halt, her mouth opened in shocked relief. A shadow flashed across her face as the German bomber roared over, barely one hundred feet above them.