The Dearest and the Best

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘Maybe towards the end.’ He felt her shrug. She shifted against him, extending on her side so that her warm, slender length was slotted against his body as he lay on his back. Her legs held his, her hands were cradling his waist, her breasts lay dozing against his arm; her chin touched his shoulder. She said: ‘I hear that there’s a flying-boat service starting to New York. You get there the same day.’

  ‘A flying boat?’ he said surprised.

  ‘It’s crazy, isn’t it. British Overseas Airways Corporation. Only your country could start an international air route when it’s pinned to the floor. I went to see the flying boat the other day, they took me on a trip. She’s called the Clare and she’s beautiful. Inside too. Just like a luxury train.’

  James smiled slightly. ‘This country does seem to have some strange priorities.’

  ‘It certainly does,’ she laughed. ‘I read in The Times the other day that you’re going all out to make cookies . . . biscuits. Millions and millions. For export. A great cookie drive! Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Have you made inquiries about a sea passage?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure. There’s a liner sailing from Liverpool for New York at the end of August, or the start of September. The City of Benares. She’s more or less been reserved for British children being evacuated to the States, but maybe they’ll take other passengers too. I figured it would make a good feature for my paper. Travelling with the kids.’

  ‘September,’ he said as if announcing a decision. ‘At the latest.’

  ‘At the latest,’ she replied softly. ‘And, James . . . I had a thought.’

  ‘I’d like to come,’ he answered with a wry laugh. ‘But it would be desertion.’

  ‘In more ways than one, I guess,’ she confirmed. ‘No, I wasn’t going to ask you to run away with me. Don’t worry. No . . . Mrs Beauchamp told me that John Colin’s mother had said she would like to send him to the States. I thought of getting somebody in Geneva to ask her if I could take him.’

  Nineteen

  IN THE LATER days of July the Luftwaffe increased greatly its attacks on the English Channel coast, although London and other cities remained relatively unmolested. There was a bombing raid on the Isles of Scilly, the outriders of England, twenty-five miles west of Cornwall in the Atlantic. One islander was killed. Strange occurrences were reported. An American bomber, a Chance Voight 156, was brought down by British anti-aircraft fire, causing mystification. It was wearing the swastika and black crosses of the Nazi air force and had apparently been appropriated by them in France. The whole coastline of Europe, from Narvik in Norway to Bayonne, was now in German hands, plus the British Channel Islands. Along the chalky cliffs of southern England the narrow-eyed defenders of the island watched. From Romney Marsh in Kent a quarter of a million sheep were evacuated to safer pastures inland.

  The Luftwaffe sorties in that time were a harbinger of what was to come; the raiders arrived daily, trundling over the coast, bombing seaside towns and shipping in the Channel. Dover and Folkestone were shelled by big guns from the opposite French shore. Binford, wedged in its estuary with the forest around it, saw the battles overhead and out at sea but remained unbothered.

  Robert went daily to stand by Donald Petrie at the coast-guard station and, using the heavy binoculars in the observation tower, watched the convoys of coastal shipping sidling along the protective shore. ‘Here they come now,’ murmured Petrie nodding towards the headland. He looked up anxiously at the July sky, azure-patched with creamy clouds moving on a moderate westerly. Round the headland Robert saw the small ships rolling in the waves, their attendant barrage balloons bobbing above them. They looked like children returning from a birthday party.

  When the last of the clutch of ships had rounded the promontory Petrie gave a grunt. ‘Here’s Jerry,’ he muttered. He picked up the telephone. ‘Stukas,’ he continued as if talking to himself. ‘Bastards.’ He spoke into the phone. ‘Hello, RAF Control. Binford Haven Coastguard. Convoy three miles off-shore, proceeding west, hostile aircraft in vicinity. Attack imminent.’ A voice crackled back along the line. ‘Right,’ nodded Petrie vigorously as if the speaker were there with him. ‘You’ve picked them up already. Yes . . . Stuka, dive bombers. I can see five. No fighter escort as far as I can tell. Right. Over.’

  Motionlessly the two men stood and watched the adjacent battle take shape. There was nothing for them to do but witness it. ‘The lifeboat’s been alerted,’ said Petrie flatly. ‘They’ll probably be needed too. For one side or the other.’

  The German planes were staying high, flying in and out of the clouds like predatory birds hesitating to fall on a victim for fear of a trap. They remained cruising in the cumulus while the alarm klaxons from the convoy sounded plaintively on the breeze. On shore the siren echoed from Binford police station. The people were used to it now. They continued whatever they were doing, those indoors peering with mild interest up from open windows and those in the open keeping only a casual eye on the sky.

  The Stukas, however, had no intention of moving inland. Having arranged themselves among the clouds they circled, grunting, and then the leader’s nose dipped and the deadly plane screamed down in an almost vertical dive pulling out sharply just above the jolting masts of the convoy, its stick of bombs released at the depth of the dive. White trees of water grew abruptly alongside the small ships. The rattle of a pom-pom gun, a violent but impotent chattering, echoed to the watchers on land. Robert looked down and saw that the people who lived around Binford Haven were standing in helpless idleness, some hands in pockets, the women silent in their household aprons, watching the deadly sideshow offshore. Only Brice the policeman was wearing a steel helmet and he sat on his bicycle in the open, squinting from beneath its rim. A second dive bomber now dropped on crooked wings above the convoy, another stick of bombs churned the sea. A third followed and a bulbous redness appeared amidships on one of the coastal craft. Explosions rattled windows on the shore. Another vessel was straddled. They saw it shudder and heel. ‘Where’s the bloody RAF?’ grunted Robert. ‘Those ships are helpless. Sticking those silly damned balloons over them and thinking that’s enough.’

  Petrie was not listening. He was talking to the lifeboat down the phone. ‘Watch out for the buggers,’ he called. ‘They’ll get you as well if they can.’

  As he spoke there was a roar over the coastguard post and three Hawker Hurricanes, at roof height, streaked out over the sea. They banked, laid off and waited their chance. The fifth Stuka had just completed its dive, its ponderous rise a contrast to the flamboyance of its screaming descent. ‘Once they’re down they have trouble getting up again,’ commented Petrie. ‘They don’t look so clever then. See – they’ll get that one.’

  Two of the Hurricanes curled almost lazily in their flight and fired from their wing machine-guns as the Stuka attempted to clamber into the upper sky. They peeled off and then returned to the staggering German. The burst of fire sounded succinctly over the water. ‘Got him!’ said Petrie triumphantly but without raising his voice. It was like a conversational remark.

  Robert shouted: ‘Well done, chap! Damned wonderful! Look, he’s on fire!’

  The bomber, with a long groan of complaint, tilted on its side and with a funeral plume of smoke issuing from its belly, fell, now silently, striking the sea with a brief white upheaval.

  ‘They’re skedaddling,’ said Petrie looking through the glasses. ‘They’ve had enough.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ shouted Robert jubilantly. ‘Sent off with a bloody flea in their ear! Hooray! Hooray!’ He cheered wildly, like a schoolboy applauding a winning goal. Petrie could not resist a grin and Robert was embarrassed when he saw it. ‘Well, it was, wasn’t it,’ muttered the older man. ‘Jolly good show.’

  Early in the afternoon Millie cycled to Binford Station to catch the local train for Ringwood. The sky had greyed but the air remained warm, the thickness of July lying over everything. Honeysuckle, lolling over the pointed railway fence along the platform
, filled her senses. Nettles and mown grass smelled with a different sweetness. There had been a plague of white butterflies in the south – a matter reported in the newspapers – and Bowley, the porter, was circled by two as he sat on the station trolley, wiping his reflecting head with a piece of tissue paper. He had been sorting parcels. A dog from the village briefly surveyed the platform from the booking office door, decided there was nothing to detain him and retreated to the dust of the street.

  Bowley, puffing in his waistcoat, came towards her, legs bowed, arms hung out as if to create a cooling current. ‘She won’t be long, Mrs Lovatt,’ he announced. ‘Ten minutes adrift today.’ He gave his head another wipe. ‘They say it’s because of the war, but I don’t know. After all she only goes up and down this little line, don’t she? How can she be late because of the war?’ He seemed to be searching for excuses. ‘Could be the sort of coal they’re having to use now, I suppose.’

  He took her ticket and, with care, punched a hole in it. ‘Off to do your bit?’ he said. ‘How often do you go now?’

  ‘Three or four days a week, depending on other things,’ Millie told him. ‘I hope it’s worthwhile.’

  ‘Oh, ’course it is,’ he smiled encouragingly. He had new wartime dentures, like windows. ‘We can’t all have a gun. That’s what I say. There’s you serving tea and cakes to the airmen and there’s me looking after Binford Halt single-handed. We’re all helping, I say.’ He leaned defensively towards her. ‘How is your husband getting along with Winston?’

  Millie laughed. ‘Well, I know he’s in London, but I don’t exactly know what he’s doing. I never ask. One mustn’t, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I know that all right, Mrs Lovatt,’ returned the porter. ‘Mustn’t tittle-tattle, must we. Old Ma Fox is the one. Terrible. She reckons that Lord Haw-Haw has read out the names and addresses of everybody who owns a bit of land or a house in these parts. According to her Hitler’s spies have got lists of certain people around here.’ He spotted a puff of steam sprouting in the landscape. ‘Here she comes now,’ he said looking automatically at his watch. ‘Eleven minutes today.’ He tutted. ‘Nice to know you’re helping the RAF boys,’ he said going for his red and green flags. ‘They reckon three of they Hurricanes from Moyles Court shot down eight Germans in the Channel this morning. Ma Fox said people could see them falling in the water like ninepins. Right off The Haven.’

  Bowley put her bicycle in the guard’s van for her. Millie was the sole passenger to board the train, which was only one carriage. She sat in the compartment and watched the serene green countryside float past, the water-meadows, streams attended by pollarded willows now leafing again, the brilliant buttercups, the voluminous trees. At the next stop, Forest Halt, a man loaded with fishing tackle boarded the train and climbed, huffing, into her compartment. He sat down bulkily and arranged his umbrella, baskets, waders, nets and tackle around him, sitting like some King Neptune. ‘Not a single bite today,’ he announced. ‘Too noisy.’

  ‘Oh, is it?’ she said. ‘Noise makes a difference, does it?’ She saw that his large umbrella was camouflaged like a military object.

  ‘Difference? I’ll say it makes a difference. Frightens the wits out of the fish. All these aeroplanes buzzing around. Half of it’s unnecessary, you know.’

  Millie’s annoyance rose quickly. The man forestalled her. ‘Fish hate every minute of it,’ he announced as if he had asked them.

  She regarded him with controlled distaste. ‘There’s bound to be some noise, isn’t there?’ she said. ‘War tends to be a bit noisy.’

  ‘War? This is not war. Just a skirmish, believe me. I want nothing of it. I’ve retired and retired I stay. I came down here for a bit of peace and some fishing.’ He looked at her patronizingly. ‘The Germans don’t want to beat us,’ he said as though pointing out something glaringly obvious. ‘It’s not our hides they’re after, young lady.’

  ‘Whose hides would it be then?’ she inquired coldly.

  ‘Ruskies’,’ he confided with a great sniff and a withdrawing of the head. ‘They want to put down the Ruskies. And, mark my words, that’s our interest in the long run too. The sooner Russia is wiped out, the sooner the world will be peaceful again. It’s nothing to do with this business now. Nothing at all.’

  ‘I hope it is all sorted out soon then,’ Millie retorted stiffly. ‘So that you can get some peace for your fishing.’

  ‘Please God,’ he said fervently. He opened a parcel of sandwiches wrapped in newspaper, thick layers of bread and cheese. It looked to her like a whole family’s ration of cheese for the week. He saw her watching. ‘The wife doesn’t eat cheese,’ he said. ‘So I take it.’

  ‘It’s very good for you,’ Millie said tartly. ‘Keeps you healthy. For fishing.’

  ‘Oh, you need your health for that,’ he confirmed heartily. ‘Wet and cold it gets sometimes, believe me. But it’s worth every minute. Most peaceful thing in the world, fishing. Now that’s something that’s really worth fighting for.’

  She took her bicycle from the guard’s van and cycled from Ringwood to the RAF Fighter Station at Moyles Court. At the gate the sentry waved her through and she arrived outside the operations room in time to see a jubilant young officer, square, round-faced, with a tight top of curly hair, standing back to admire a swastika which he had just fashioned on the squadron scoreboard. The paint was sticky in the sun. It stood at the end of a line of ten others.

  ‘Look at that, then,’ he insisted boyishly. ‘Bagged my first one this morning. Stuka over the Channel.’ He inclined his hand and made an engine noise, then opened both hands like a fan and said: ‘Splash!’

  ‘Good for you,’ she nodded gently and seriously. He was the same youth who had been playing netball on the day she had first gone to Moyles Court.

  ‘Wait until I tell my mother,’ the young man enthused. ‘A blinking Stuka!’

  Millie began to wheel her bicycle towards the mess and he walked alongside her, hands deep in pockets. ‘Still, all drinks on me tonight,’ he mused. ‘That’s going to cost a packet. Fourteen and sixpence a day isn’t much if you’re going to keep downing Jerries, is it?’ He shook his head and guffawed reflectively. She could see he was still trembling. ‘My old man did a hole-in-one at his golf club once but it cost him a fortune in drinks. He wished he’d never done it in the end.’ He was chattering relentlessly.

  His talk, his youthful expression, the way he strolled with a boy’s swagger, made her wonder how someone like him could fly a machine in the sky.

  ‘How are you getting on with the amenities?’ he asked her suddenly, a rush of a question as if he had to gather all his courage to say it.

  Millie smiled: ‘Fine, I think,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t heard any complaints.’

  ‘Oh, there won’t be,’ he said hurriedly. ‘None at all.’

  She put her bicycle with the squadron bikes under a low corrugated iron roof and walked towards the office where she worked. He trotted after her earnestly. ‘Can I ask you something?’ he said nervously. ‘Please?’

  Puzzled, she laughed: ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Could you tell me your name? I’ve only heard you called Millie.’

  ‘That’s right, it’s Millie. Millie Lovatt.’

  ‘I’m called Graham,’ he told her still in his boyish way. ‘Graham Smith.’ He added hurriedly. ‘Flying Officer, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ she smiled. She moved towards the door.

  ‘Stop!’ he exclaimed. She turned quickly, again surprised.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, his voice dropped. ‘I didn’t mean to say it like that. I just meant to say “Stop” in an ordinary voice . . . but that’s how it came out. Sorry . . . but can I ask you something else, er . . . Millie?’

  ‘Last question,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘I know, but I have to ask you now, before you can go in there. The other chaps will be in there and I won’t get a chance, see. It’s . . . well, will you come to t
he pictures with me one night? In Ringwood. Would you?’

  She looked with assumed reproof at him. ‘Flight-Lieutenant Smith,’ she said, ‘I am a married woman.’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes, well I can see that. Your ring. But I thought you might be on your own sometimes. I thought perhaps your husband was away. A good distance.’

  Kindly she said: ‘That’s all the more reason why I should not go to the pictures with you.’

  ‘In India, is he? Or the Middle East?’

  ‘He’s in London. He’s at the War Office.’

  ‘Oh God, I might have known. Sorry I asked. It’s just they have some smashing flicks in Ringwood. And it’s not a bug-house. It’s Abbott and Costello this week, until Wednesday anyway. Hold That Ghost.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently. ‘Anyhow, you should go to the pictures with someone your own age.’

  ‘I’m nineteen,’ he told her. ‘I was looking for somebody a bit older. To take me in.’

  In those waiting weeks of July and the start of August the Air Ministry, on behalf of the RAF, claimed the destruction of many German raiders who were marauding the southern coasts. In one eight-day period, it was reported, one hundred and forty German planes were shot down and, although the true figure was significantly less, the evidence was strewn across farmland and hillsides. Fleet-footed children were often the first to these aircraft wrecks, eager for pieces of metal, bullets or shreds of parachutes to add to their souvenir collections, and were occasionally discovered with a distressed and embarrassed Luftwaffe pilot in their custody when the panting defence forces eventually arrived.

  Sometimes the defence services, and in particular the amateur soldiers of the Home Guard, displayed an eagerness that overcame discipline. Floating down by parachute over the New Forest, Flight-Lieutenant James Nicholson, who had minutes before displayed gallantry which eventually won him the Victoria Cross, was seriously wounded by a shotgun discharged by an excited Home Guard who imagined he was the vanguard of a Nazi paratroop drop.