Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

by Derek Robinson

  Nobody was in a hurry. Then a trainee raised his arm. “Sir: the casualty – ”

  “Casualty’s dead, son. Question is: will your ship live?”

  Later, they took up a few trainees in whatever bomber was available and Silk corkscrewed the aircraft. Back on the ground, there were many questions. Someone always pointed out that corkscrewing in close formation was suicidal. “You won’t always be in close formation,” Knox said. “Hell, some days we ended up in no damn formation at all.”

  “Look at it from the enemy’s point of view,” Silk said. “He likes to get in fast and fire and get out fast. To follow a corkscrew he’s got to slow down and stay close, which brings him near my gunners. No, thanks. He’ll scram. Look for easier pickings.”

  “The squadron leader knows,” Knox said. “He’s done it.”

  Next day they moved on. They flew in a Harvard single-engine two-seat trainer. Knox said he won it in a poker game. Maybe he did. They cruised across America, from one aircrew school to another. “You learn success,” Silk told pupils. “Good. But it also pays to practise failure. What can go wrong? Before take-off, I always wrote the courses to target on my left hand, courses from target on my right. I wrote big. My navigator gets the chop, I don’t want to guess where to steer next.”

  “And stay away from ships,” Knox said. “All sailors hate flyboys. They’ll kill you if they can.”

  2

  They were in Virginia when Knox asked Silk if he’d like to make a call to England. Silk said it was a nice idea, but wasn’t the transatlantic telephone confined to official military business? Knox said, “You’re military, I’m official, and besides I know a guy.” An hour later Silk was talking to Zoë. She was in her Albany apartment. “Should you be in London?” he said. “I worry about all those flying bombs.”

  “Yes, nasty. And the rockets, too. We’re not supposed to know about rockets. The government keeps saying it’s just another gas main exploding. Not very clever, are they? That’s the worst thing about war. One gets treated like a child. Laura’s safe and sound, of course, and fat as an Irish pig. Are you well?”

  “Never better. Lots of flying. Lots of oranges.”

  “Haven’t seen an orange since...” She sneezed. “Damn... Another cold coming on. Eddy Skinner got killed.”

  “Tough luck.” That was what he always said. “Eddy who?”

  “Oh, I forgot. You didn’t know him. He was in the Grenadiers. Not that it makes any difference. London’s awfully dreary without you, Silko. When are you coming home?” The line was cut, no warning, he was left listening to a harsh buzz. He rattled the cradle and said: “Hullo? Hullo?” It was what they always did in the movies and it did nobody any good, then or now.

  Knox said, “All well in the old country?”

  “She wants me to come home.”

  “Sure. That’s what they always want. Heard it a hundred times.”

  “You’re married? I had no idea.”

  “Nor did Jessy. She fell for the uniform, wings on the tunic, very romantic. Then she expected me to come home every night to eat her meatloaf, drop my pants and do my husbandly duty. Thought she could educate me out of flying. That’s the difference between women and airplanes, Silko. An airplane kills you quickly, a woman takes her time.”

  “I don’t think Zoë’s like that.” But a corner of his mind was thinking: You don’t really know what Zoë’s like, she’s a beautiful mystery, all you really know is flying. Another part of his mind answered: So why did you marry her, if you want to spend your life in the sky? Yes, but on the other hand...

  Barney was talking about a great new airplane from Lockheed. “It’s coming into Washington DC,” he said. “If we go now...”

  “Why the hell not?” Silk said.

  They borrowed a jeep.

  3

  There was a crowd at Washington airport, many of them newsmen. Knox had told Silk all he knew: the C prefix made the model a transport, it had four engines and it was said to be something special.

  It arrived from the west, low; made a half-circuit; and came straight in to land. The crowd roared its applause. “That can’t be a transport,” Silk said. “Too beautiful.” It was the first aeroplane he had seen that was as sleek and streamlined as a big fish. Nothing seemed straight, everything was gently curved. It had tricycle undercarriage and triple fins, and it was a shining silver. It turned at the end of the runway and taxied back and the PA system announced, “A new American record – from Burbank, California to Washington DC in exactly seven hours and three minutes!” The crowd cheered. Knox cheered. Even Silk clapped his hands quite warmly.

  They got a close look at the plane, talked to a Lockheed representative, took a copy of a press release, and went for a beer.

  “We have seen the future, and it flies,” Knox said.

  “It’s a work of art, I agree. But it’ll make a lousy transport.”

  “Grow up, Silko.”

  “Truly lousy. They’ll crop the wings and enlarge the tail and add a bloody great cargo loading bay and it won’t make two hundred knots. You watch.”

  “No, you watch. This war’s got another year left in it, maybe less. What d’you aim to do then? Go back to England? Drop a rank? Flight Lieutenant Silk, boring the pants off everyone in the Mess?”

  “There I was over Berlin,” Silk said dreamily, “flak so thick you could get out and walk on it, and would you believe it, the port wing fell off. ‘Damn,’ I said.”

  “Seven hours, three minutes,” Knox said. “You realise what that means? Breakfast in LA, dinner in New York. Coast to coast in a day! Who wants to spend three days and nights in a train? Or a week in a car, you arrive with your ass feeling like hamburger, very rare, hold the onion. Air travel, Silko, is gonna be big. Very big.”

  “And you reckon there’s a job in it for blokes like you and me?”

  “I’ve had two offers already.”

  A spark of patriotism burned inside Silk. “What makes you think I won’t go home and fly for British Overseas Airways?” he asked.

  “What makes you think Britain has an airliner?”

  “There’s the Sunderland.”

  “It’s a flyingboat, for Christ’s sake. Ten passengers at a hundred and twenty knots. This C-69 carries sixty at three hundred plus!” Knox waved the company hand-out. “A pressurized cabin, yet!”

  “We’ll build our own. Britain’s got a bloody good aircraft industry – ”

  “Warplanes, Silko. You make warplanes. US companies were building big passenger aircraft five, ten years ago. Lockheed, Boeing, Douglas... This beauty already has a name. Constellation.”

  “Oh, bollocks,” Silk said.

  RUMBLED

  1

  When Germany surrendered, the US Government gave Silk a medal and the Embassy sent him back to England. He asked for immediate demobilisation and he got it. While he was at Air Ministry he called on Air Commodore Bletchley, to say goodbye.

  “I hear you cracked up in California, Silk,” Bletchley said. “Good choice. I blew a gasket in Libya, poor choice, everyone was more or less batty in Libya, it helped to pass the time, you lost your friends in the morning and lost your marbles in the afternoon. Not important any more. How did you get on with the Americans?”

  “They like to fly, sir, and so do I.”

  “You’re wise to leave the Service. Britain can’t afford another war for ten years. Imagine spending ten years in clapped-out Lancs, dropping dummy bombs on the Suffolk ranges.”

  “Done that, sir. I hit Norfolk once. Similar spelling.”

  They shook hands. “Give my regards to your wife. She intends to enter Parliament in the coming elections, or so I read. Brave girl.”

  It gave him something to think about, on the midday train back to Lincoln.

  Zoë was waiting there, with the Frazer-Nash. After American roads, English lanes seemed dangerously narrow and twisting. This is worse than Bremen, he thought; but they arrived intact.

  He d
umped his suitcases in the middle of the living room. He had forgotten how small the place was, how low the ceiling. He went out and stood in the garden. Flowers everywhere, a riot of colour. Not like America. Zoë appeared, carrying two gin-and-tonics. “Bed,” she said.

  “I was looking at the hollyhocks.”

  “Awfully pretty.” They touched glasses and drank. “But non-starters in the bed stakes.”

  In the bedroom, his fingers felt clumsy, fumbling with shirt buttons until Zoë, wearing nothing at all, told him to stand still and she rapidly stripped him. The bed felt pleasantly cool. Zoë felt blissfully warm. Silk had a brief memory of his sense of total relief and relaxation as the Lanc touched down after a long and dodgy op. Then he got down to business. After ten minutes it was obvious that business had shut down for the day.

  “Buggeration. What a hell of a homecoming.”

  “Don’t worry, darling. Not important.” She very nearly said It happened to Tony once, but she stopped herself in time. “Just one of those things.”

  “Actually it’s two of those things,” Silk said, “Rumpty and Tumpty, remember? Each as useless as the other.” Then he remembered the day when Tony told him he had the same problem, he couldn’t keep pace with Zoë, the well had run dry. That was three years ago. In those days, Silk had lusted after her. Everyone had. But Tony had been his best friend, his only surviving friend. And sex was just an itch to be scratched, it was nothing compared with sudden death, three or four miles high, of which there was more than enough to grip the squadron’s attention. Tony had solved his sex difficulty with special bath salts, or so he said, but the bigger problem caught up with him over Osnabrück.

  Now Silk was in his bed and he knew how Tony must have felt. Utterly bloody useless.

  “Hey!” he said. “Just remembered. Got some Benzedrine tablets somewhere. We used to carry them. Keep us awake on ops.”

  “Silko.” She threw back the sheet and sat astride him. “You’d have a heart attack. I look awful in black. Who on earth is going to vote for a widow?”

  “I was going to ask you about that.” He linked his hands behind his head and enjoyed examining her breasts. “I had a joke about two upstanding members in one household, but it doesn’t seem so funny now.”

  They got dressed, and had tea and toast in the kitchen. Zoë explained how she came to be a candidate.

  She had gone to a party and met a major in the Education Corps, slightly drunk, offering odds of ten to one that Labour would win the General Election hands down. Most people were amused. Zoë asked why he was so sure. “Easy,” he said. “What was the British army doing between Dunkirk and D-Day? A few divisions slogged their guts out in North Africa and Italy and Burma. All the rest – trained. Troops got bored. War Office invented ABCA – Army Bureau of Current Affairs. Lectures, film shows, debates. What are we fighting for? Millions of troops had four years to think and what did they decide? They’d die for their country,” the major said. “They wouldn’t die for a load of Tory toffs.”

  Next day Zoë registered as the independent candidate for Lincolnshire (South). She had a strong political base: she had run Salute For Stalin Week (socks for Red soldiers), followed by Wings Over Berlin Week (the county gave the RAF a Lancaster) and Build Our Destroyer Week (a shilling bought a rivet). She knew every club and society in the constituency and they knew her. “Good start,” Silk said. “Who are you up against?”

  Zoë had four opponents but only two that mattered.

  The sitting MP was 62, unmarried, a Tory backbencher for half his life. His fat majority convinced him that Lincoln (South) liked a steady hand on the tiller. His campaign slogan was Business As Usual. Nothing exciting. The country had had enough excitement.

  The Labour candidate – also a local man – was an ex-soldier. France, Egypt, Italy. Invalided out in 1943; ran the family farm.

  “He’ll slaughter you,” Silk said.

  “He’s got a beard, he shouts a lot, he’s teetotal and he wants to nationalise the pubs.”

  “All the pubs?”

  “And the breweries.”

  “Extraordinary... Who else?”

  “A vegetarian and a nudist.”

  “Too much for me.” Silk warmed his hands on the teapot. “I can’t take the hectic pace of English politics.”

  “But you must. I need you to stand behind me at my rallies, Silko. In uniform. Don’t say a word. Just look staunch.”

  He did his best. Her next rally was that same evening, on a piece of waste land in Lincoln. A couple of hundred turned up. Zoë stood on a barrel and used a megaphone. “Why are your pubs shut on a Saturday afternoon?” she asked. “Exactly when you want a drink? I’ll tell you why. 1916! Scandalous lack of shells! Drunken munition workers! Lies – but that’s who the government blamed and they shut the pubs! When the real blame lay with incompetent bosses! And that, my friends, is why, forty years on, you can’t enjoy a drink after two o’clock! What hypocrisy! What humbuggery!” It went down well. They cheered lustily.

  Zoë struck left and right. She demanded that, for every new law which Parliament passed, it must abolish an old one (“Muck out the stables of democracy!”); that everybody’s wages should rise annually to compensate for inflation (“If you stand still, you fall back!”); that the Church of England must be separated from the State (“The prime minister – who might be an atheist – chooses the next Archbishop of Canterbury! Bishops pass laws in the House of Lords! Is that how we want to run the country today?”).

  She spoke for twenty minutes, answered three questions, moved on to a village hall, repeated the formula, and did it again at a tennis club.

  Next day she made five speeches, all in farming areas. After her last, and biggest, meeting of the day, she stayed to talk with voters. Silk’s calves ached from so much standing. His face was stiff with staunchness. He wanted to go home, he wanted a large drink, followed by another. Farmers kept talking to him about the warble fly. Silk didn’t give a flying fuck about the warble fly.

  At last Zoë said goodbye. The night was moonless, and it was a bad road. Silk drove slowly, snaking around potholes. “That went rather well,” Zoë said.

  “Okay. It’s not real politics, is it? Where’s your big election manifesto? Zoë Silk’s ten-point plan to save Britain. Everyone else has got one.”

  “Not my style, darling. These people have just put in a hard day’s work. They don’t want to be lectured. They deserve some fun.”

  “I see. What does that make me? The clown?”

  The potholes ended. He got the Frazer-Nash up into second gear. With peace, all the dimmers had come off the headlights: now you could see oncoming traffic a mile away. There was no oncoming traffic. She tied a scarf around her hair. Thirty miles an hour. Silk thought he was just stooging along, not much above a stall. He turned onto a main road and let the car off the leash. It swept through fifty and hit sixty. He held the wheel lightly. He enjoyed feeling the vibrations, it was how he’d held the control column of the Lanc, at one with the machine yet totally in command of it. At seventy the car was no longer working hard, it was following its headlights as they swept the road clear. Eighty wasn’t too fast. The road was doing all the rushing. The car was untroubled, a rock in a torrent. Ninety would be nice. Ninety was take-off speed, when everything was roses. The engine died.

  He groped for the ignition key and found nothing.

  No headlights. Black night everywhere. The car slowed, and slowed more. Now the only sound was the wind, and it too was fading to a soft whistle. He put the gearstick into neutral. The wheels started to shudder on the grass verge. He used the brakes. The car stopped.

  Silence, except for the faraway ping of the cooling engine.

  “That was bloody silly,” he said. “No lights, we could have hit... hit anything.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” She sounded very quiet, very calm. “The way you were driving, we were bound to hit something. Tree, telephone pole, low-flying aircraft. Quick dea
th. Lots of strawberry jam. Laura inherits everything, and her only two.”

  “Give me the damn keys.”

  “You’re a selfish bastard, Silko. Kill yourself, if you wish, that’s your privilege. You’re not going to kill me.”

  “That wasn’t fast, for Christ’s sake. We were just cruising along.”

  “Call it what you like. I’m driving now.”

  He thought about it. “You’re a lousy driver. Slow as cold treacle.”

  “And you’re ten years old.”

  He got out, and she climbed over the gearstick and the handbrake and settled into his seat. He slammed the door.

  “Kick the wheels,” she said. “Spit on the bonnet. Then get in and we’ll go home.”

  “I’d sooner walk.”

  “Five years old.” She started the car and he watched her drive away.

  The RAF did not do much marching. Bomber crews rarely marched at all. Silk had been standing all evening. By the time he walked a mile his feet were beginning to ache. There was very little traffic on this road and none was willing to stop for him. After two miles his calves were weary. After three miles he felt crippled. The Frazer Nash was parked on the grass and Zoë was asleep at the wheel. He woke her up. They drove home.

  2

  They slept late.

  The sun was up, the day was warm enough for breakfast in the garden. There was little conversation until Silk felt stronger now that he had some grub inside him and he said, “Sorry about last night.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re not a bit sorry.” She wasn’t laughing at him, but she was definitely enjoying herself. “The only thing you’re sorry about is the fact that you got caught out. You got rumbled, Silko.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You’re a terrible cheat. You couldn’t fool a flea.”

  “Wrong. I’ve fooled dozens of fleas. Hundreds.”

  “Oh yeah? Name three.”

  “Hank. All called Hank. American fleas. Big, muscular specimens, very hard to fool.” He cleared his throat. “Foolhardy, in fact.”

  She rested her elbow on the table and her head on her hand, and looked at him with some affection. “One person you can fool, and that’s you. You’re really sorry the war’s over, aren’t you?”