Charlie's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Your little trip. We’re throwing you back up into the wide blue yonder for an hour to see if you can still cope. You know the idea: if you fall off a horse get back into the saddle as quick as you can. Some can’t, you know; not after a serious crack-up.’

  I couldn’t resist it.

  ‘I wonder why?’

  I deliberately left off the sir, and Goldie just as deliberately ignored it. He had my open file on his desk. He closed it with a snap, gave me the big eye and muttered, ‘Dismissed.’

  That’s what the umpire used to say to me with such relish at school cricket matches. Bastards.

  *

  Would you believe it? It was another fucking Stirling. And Cliff was going to fly the bloody thing. We walked out to it with Strainer, who was a buckshee Flight Engineer, and a nineteen-feet-tall Navigator. Cliff referred to him as ‘Big Job’: he filled a comfortable space below the Skipper. Strainer looked, frankly, as if he wasn’t all there. He reminded me of some of the types in the big ward. I shook hands with them both, remembering briefly how courteously Sir Thomas More had greeted his executioners.

  Cliff asked me, ‘Windy?’

  ‘A bit, sir, I think. I usually am until we get going.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’

  ‘Yes. What’s the form?’

  ‘Air test. Then some other poor sod gets to fly it tonight.’

  It was painted overall black, and had no squadron codes or other numbers. The only other colour was provided by the red, white and blues, and they still looked too much like gunnery targets.

  ‘Anything else I should know, sir?’

  ‘The MO wants us to wind it up to five thou or so, and then put you on oxygen to see if there’s any permanent damage to your lungs. Don’t worry: if they collapse or blow up on you he’s told us what to do.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Pull your parachute ripcord and sling you out apparently: get you back on terra firma before us.’

  My feet were on the rungs of the ladder by now. No way back. The two sergeants had preceded me into the kite, and Cliff pushed me up the steps in front of him, eager to get going, before he missed too many pints.

  Strainer sounded bored as they pre-flighted the Stirling, and yawned between calling back the checks. Cliff paused and said, quite casually, ‘Wake yourself up, cunt, when you’re flying with me. Otherwise Charlie here will take you back, and drown you in the Elsan. He’s murdered two types already; a third won’t make any difference to him now.’

  He sounded very believable. I wondered how much he knew: I’d witnessed one murder on my old station, and knew of two others. Even helped dispose of a couple of the bodies. It didn’t seem like a big deal when you set it alongside the number of people we’d killed with our bombs every night. The problem was that I couldn’t recall ever mentioning it to Cliff.

  As usual I found I didn’t mind the take-off so much as long as I was up at the front looking around. It was a clear, sharp day, and some of the trees and hedgerows were showing off a faint blush of early green. The tall buildings, like the manor and the church, threw exact shadows on the grass. The Stirling lifted off slower than the Lancs I had been used to, and Cliff seemed to hold her on a lot longer than Grease, my old Canadian pilot, would have. Nevertheless he pulled her off smoothly, with none of that sideways yaw that radial-engined aircraft are notorious for. I noticed at once that there was something ominously competent about his flying. He flew in shirtsleeves, with the mask and mike dangling at his throat, holding it up with one hand when he wanted to speak. He addressed Strainer again.

  ‘OK, cunt. Get lost. Go down to the dispatcher’s berth and strap yourself in there.’

  ‘Aye, Skip.’ That was Strainer. He had an odd glaikit grin. Made him look not all there. After he’d left the flight deck Cliff called me forward to fill his seat. I asked, ‘Why do you treat him like that? What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing. Other ranks. Thickos. I bloody hate them.’

  ‘Funny. I used to feel like that about officers. Did you hate me when I was still a Sergeant?’

  ‘No. I knew you had it coming. Do you want to talk, Charlie?’ But before I could answer he pulled up his mask, and called the Nav.

  ‘Hey, Big Job . . . give me a course.’

  ‘Where to, Skip?’

  ‘Out around Cambridge somewhere; that’ll do.’

  ‘Roger, Skip. Fly 0030 for now. I’ll give you a correction.’

  ‘0030,’ Cliff said into the mask, and then let it drop. ‘Why doesn’t the silly bugger say nearly north, which is what he means?’ he asked me.

  ‘It’s the way we train them. What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘The two guys the RAF thinks you killed. One at Bawne, and one in London somewhere. Did I get that right?’

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I suppose not. I didn’t bump them off, as it happens. That was Pete, our rear gunner: you probably know all about him. He blew them away with a Colt .45 that an American friend had given me. You probably know all about him too. If Pete hadn’t killed them they would have murdered him, and me. He did them in first.’

  ‘Like self-defence before the event?’

  ‘You could call it that.’

  ‘A court martial won’t. They’ll hang him.’

  ‘They’ll have to find the bits first. He got blown to pieces over Holland by our own trigger-happy flak gunners. Now you know why I won’t join the brown jobs.’

  ‘So we executed him anyway, in a manner of speaking, and you inherited his radio and his car?’

  ‘Someone had to.’

  ‘The two dead men were policemen. Did you know that?’

  ‘One was English and one was a Pole, like Pete. They weren’t proper policemen. Did you know that?’

  ‘Why would they have killed him?’

  ‘He once told me something about the death of General Sikorsky: he was there. On the plane. It was some sort of political thing. Now that the war’s as good as over, and governments-in-waiting are popping up all over the shop, I think that someone was cleaning their stables. Pete was just a piece of horse shit that might have been stepped in.’

  ‘You really think that, Charlie?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That the war’s as good as over?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I think it’s just beginning. Ask me again in 1950.’

  Then he leaned forward and tapped the altimeter, which had stuck stubbornly at 175 feet. The indicator hands spun up immediately to over six thou, and he said, ‘On oxygen, Charlie; let’s see how you do. Big deep breaths now.’

  I noticed that he didn’t, and had a quick moment of distrust and misgiving, before I thought Oh hell, and Who cares? and filled my lungs to capacity. Cliff pulled his mask up again, mumbling to me just before he did so, ‘OK. Let’s put you under some pressure.’

  Then he spoke into the mask for everyone’s benefit, and said, ‘Hold tight chaps. Here we go,’ and dropped the bugger’s nose until we were pointed at the ground.

  What I learned that day was that Stirlings fall very fast. We still had a thou on its unreliable clock by the time he pulled her out of it, but he must have had 350 knots on the speedo at some time in that dive, and Stirlings weren’t designed for that. Neither was I. The old kite creaked and trembled. By the time we were flying straight and level again I was breathing deep breaths. Cliff said, ‘Off ox, Charlie,’ and, ‘You’ll do. Your lungs didn’t burst.’

  ‘No thanks to you.’

  ‘That’s no way to thank the officer who’s just saved you from an internal inquiry and a court martial, Charlie boy, is it? Anyway: the sun’s over the yardarm – fancy a bevy?’

  We walked back from dispersal to the sheds. I was remembering I had seen the ground coming up to meet me at more than 300 knots, and on it was the big accommodation hut at Bawne where Pete had shot one of the policemen who’d come
after him. It was from Bawne airfield that I had paid numerous nocturnal visits to the Thousand Year Reich. How could Cliff have known exactly where we were in that big sky? How could he have known that? I told them a long and complicated joke about Don Bradman, and was pleased to raise the dutiful laugh. Bravo Charlie.

  As we dumped our parachutes and flying clothes he asked me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

  ‘I fancy being a journalist on a sports paper, living somewhere where the sun never sets. My mum always had her heart set on one of the professions – doctor, teacher, civil servant. That would never work out though.’

  ‘You’d make a good civil servant.’

  I said, ‘Fuck off, Cliff.’ It wasn’t to be the last time.

  Whenever I think about Cambridgeshire or Bedfordshire I think of rain: oceans of the sodding stuff. In Cambridge they have more names for rain than Eskimos have for snow. Which is why it is so odd to remember that during all the visits that I made to Crifton House – during the war, and since – the rain held off. Crifton is a honey-gold Palladian mansion bigger than the Admiralty Building. It straddles the county boundaries like your childhood: a place in your memory where the sun always shines.

  It was also where Grace lived. The last time I had arrived there I had been a strung-out Sergeant on a borrowed motorbike, wearing a tatty collection of RAF uniform parts, and giving sweet f.a. about anything. Herr Death in Germany had been knocking on my door, and reorganizing my values. Now I came back as an officer with his own car, and money in the bank. Grace’s mother also lived there, with a few vintage retainers who dated to the turn of the century, I’d guess. She kept court, and suffered the occasional visit from her husband, Grace’s stepfather, a bullets millionaire. The phrase we would have used about them in those days was ‘They didn’t get on.’ The old man got on with making money though: if there is a surer recipe for success than making the bullets for the winning side in a major war, I don’t know of it. Grace’s mother got on with visiting heroes. It was a complicated household because her husband had rogered Grace before he got round to the old lady, and that was all of six months after he had killed Grace’s original old man in a drunken duel in Germany. That was before we fell out with the Kraut, of course. You see what I mean. Complicated.

  Barnes, the butler, was about seventy and divided his time equally between the house, the lady’s maid, and listening to the radio traffic from our bomber raids on a cat’s-whisker radio he’d built himself. He usually looked shagged out. He said, ‘Good morning, Mr Charlie,’ and, ‘Nice car.’

  ‘Thank you Barnsey. Has Miss Grace shown up yet?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s been some time now. We hoped that you would turn up sooner or later, to look for her.’

  I let that lie.

  ‘Is Mr or Mrs Baker at home?’

  ‘Mrs Baker, sir. Sir Peter is at the small office at Blunham, and asked me to call him if you came by.’

  ‘Would it be too difficult to stop the sirring Barnsey? It’s making me twitchy.’

  ‘I expect it goes with the new uniform, Mr Charlie.’

  ‘Bugger off, Barnsey.’

  ‘At once, sir. I’ll take your case from the car. Mrs Barnes and the staff will be pleased to know that you’re staying again.’

  I hadn’t exactly intended to. Damn him.

  ‘What about Mrs Baker?’

  ‘Not as pleased, Mr Charlie: she’s grieving for her last American.’

  I had met the man. He was another one with the 306th at Thurleigh, a USAAF station. I had known his navigator too, a slow-spoken, funny man named July Johnson. I liked them both a lot. I guess that I turned my head away, because Barnes added, ‘Oh no, sir. Nothing like that. He’s taken up with the postmistress in the village, that’s all. Madam’s nose is seriously out of joint.’

  That was all right then; except that I had known the postmistress as well. So had Glenn Miller; I mentioned her earlier but you didn’t notice. Barnes turned to get my bag and gave an unexpected little skip, like a child. I realized that he was drunk. As he walked away, he told me that Madam was in the Orangery.

  I knew the way: ninety degrees banked turn to port from the square Jacobean hallway, and down a corridor a half-mile long. The last time I had met her in the huge, empty room, with its symphony of light, and floor-to-ceiling windows, she was pounding around it as if it was an indoor exercise track. She was still exercising, but this time on a great black high-stepping horse. They had spread sand on the floor to prevent it from slipping, which had been stupid because it made things worse. Black Beauty was making a fair old mess of the fine pine boards with its iron shoes. The noise was tremendous, and the beast skidded from time to time as I watched them. I wondered how long before they crashed out through one of the vast sheets of glass. When she tired she walked the steaming beast over to me. It shoved its face in mine and showed me its teeth. I showed it my teeth back, and pushed its head firmly away. The only animals I’ve ever been truly afraid of fly Messerschmitts.

  Adelaide Baker held her hand down to shake mine. I said, ‘Men are bastards.’

  ‘We agree on something at last, Pilot Officer Bassett. How nice of you to come.’

  ‘I’m sure you say that to all the men.’

  ‘Only when I’m in the mood. I’m in the mood a lot less often than you’d think these days.’

  ‘Like Grace. She said something like that.’

  ‘You’ve come to find her for us?’

  ‘Actually I’m looking for her, for myself – if you see what Imean . . .’

  ‘Adelaide. You can call me Adelaide or Addy, now that you’ve been made an officer. How does that happen by the way? A solemn ceremony with an Archbishop and a sword, or something?’

  ‘Not quite. Another officer signs a piece of paper that says You are now an officer. Your pay goes up, and your brain boils away into space. Just like that.’

  ‘Grace told me that you said that all the time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just like that!’

  ‘I suppose that I do, really.’

  ‘She liked it very much.’

  ‘Yes. I liked her too.’

  She was off the horse by now, which wandered away to steam in another part of the room. Adelaide Baker and I looked at each other, neither breaking the silence. The horse broke the silence with a long and pungent piss. Addy said, ‘Balls. Who’s going to clear that up?’

  ‘Your Mr Barnes, I suppose. He seems to do almost everything else here.’

  She scuffed at the scarred and sanded boards with the toe of an expensive riding boot.

  ‘I guess you’re right.’

  I thought that she had been spending too much time with the Americans.

  We walked around the outside of the house together. The coarse gravel path was as golden as the stone house, and crunched under our feet. Adelaide Baker flicked her riding crop lazily against her boot as we moved. I hoped that she wasn’t about to start on me with it: I’d heard of women like that. I told her, ‘It’s odd. I don’t feel much like an officer yet. It’s as if I’m pretending, and will be found out at any minute.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ll find that other people treat you as if you are one. Then it fixes itself. It was like that when I married Peter. People treat you differently when you’re rich, too.’

  Lunch was cold beef sandwiches. The beef was old. I was glad that I still had all of my teeth.

  ‘Your American, Washow: he liked you for yourself. And he liked your body.’

  ‘I know. They’re not bad, are they?’

  When Peter Baker breezed in later he was followed by Cliff.

  He said, ‘Don’t get up,’ to Adelaide, and bent to drop a kiss on her upturned cheek. You’d think they were Darby and Joan if you didn’t know better. He asked me, ‘She given you a drink yet, young Charles?’, but before I could answer, bellowed, ‘A bottle of whisky, please, and three tumblers,’ over his shoulder. Barnes must have been lurking outside the door.
>
  I asked Cliff, ‘What are you doing here, Cliff?’ then, before Cliff had time to reply stuck in, ‘Nice to see you again Sir Peter,’ for Baker.

  They lined up on me like a half section of Kraut fighter planes; taking turns.

  Cliff said, ‘Sir Peter’s place is just round the corner from the Blunham pub; I offered him a lift when I heard he wanted to come back to talk to you.’

  Baker said, ‘So you’ve come to find our Grace for us?’

  I wished they wouldn’t keep saying that. I didn’t know where the hell she was. Anyway, if you’re wondering where this is going, Adelaide withdrew, and left the men with a bottle of ten-year-old. You’d think that there wasn’t a war on.

  My old skipper once told me to always expect the unexpected. I should have listened to him. If I had I would not have been surprised when Cliff and Baker told me what they’d arranged for the next few months of my life. Nice. These people were like icebergs: ninety per cent was under the surface, waiting to rip you to pieces. I’m surprised it wasn’t sealed with a special handshake. Maybe it was, because they didn’t even bother to smile.

  First of all Cliff said, ‘You haven’t got a proper job any more, Charlie, and you won’t want to get back into a Lancaster, not this close to the end. Your Tempsford berth’s been filled. They needed a living person in it.’

  ‘I am one.’

  ‘But not a Sergeant any more. Cheers.’

  We echoed him, and swilled down some of the whisky. It was fiery and over proof.

  ‘Anyway, everyone expected you to die. That’s why no one came to see you. Too depressing.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Cheers.’

  We did it again. Baker topped up our glasses, and I rounded mine off with water. Then Baker said, ‘They do that in the distilleries, you know: top off their whisky with water. They wouldn’t dream of swigging it down neat, English fashion.’

  ‘How did you learn that, sir?’

  ‘I think we can dispense with the sir, Charlie; you’re almost one of the family now. I have a small island and its own distillery. It’s why I chucked my lot in with Winston at the start. Couldn’t bear the thought of Jerry getting his hands on it, you see.’