Youwilllightmywaytonightyouwilllightmywaytonightyouwilllightmywaytonightyouwill
Only weather.
And its heart looking out at you and laughing.
You
Will
Light
My
Way
Tonight
Until it spits you free.
Merlins so quiet without the thunder.
A miracle.
When you don’t believe in them.
But you get one, anyway.
‘Fires over there, Skip.’
‘I see them. That Hamburg?’
‘It’ll do.’
Someone got through, then. And we got through. Dead reckoning and we’ve something to hit.
And then home.
Get the fucking bombs down and get home.
You can feel her relaxing, tender.
Get fucking on with it, put them down.
‘Steady, steady.’
Left leg shaking for some reason. Can’t stop it, so leave it be.
‘Bombs gone.’
And keep on north and outrun the bastard weather, jink across when we can, when it’s clear. Feel the skipper sink you into the usual, normal bed of cloud cover, trying to hide you, because you are clearly alone now and bombers should never be alone.
That’s why it isn’t fair when it happens – because everybody is doing their very best.
And because it makes you be alone.
Flak you know what it is when it hits and that it hasn’t ruined you because you are still thinking and when it hits it’s faster than you think and then it comes again you smell its skin before it blows up stink of smoke and sneaked in the cloud and got you and yo hear the skipper yo can tell it’s him and there’s other things yo hear like hurt babbies and somebody callin out Molloy and your poor lickle Lanc she seems so sad around yo and wallowing and Perspex to yer right yer winder there’s a big ole in it which seems daft and abracadabrajumpjumpjump yo hear that in Skip’s voice and someone blartin for their ma and hard to breathe with stuff in your air and abracadabrajumpjumpjump and yo’m tryin but yo cor turret jammed cor get it round enough and yo bay frit but yo do seem away far off and slow and yo try and crank again and it’s hard and she’s dyin on yer yo can feel how she cries and three engines is all that’s gooin and yo gerrout through the doors yo do gerrout and clomber and drap and yo see there’s no more Bastard and no more turret where he would have been all shattered and pummellin wind about yo and ash and Window magic Window flying all about and the flak’s stopped which is good and why yo’m alive and there’s no people yo cor find any people and yo go forward and there’s no one yo’m alone legs rattlin under yo everything rattlin apart and remember portable oxygen remember yo’ll die otherwise only yo’m breathin already without it and so yo’m low flyin now and doe need it and yo breathe more panicky with the taste of fuel and glycol and that other thing on the floor that bad thing that might be the Bastard part of the Bastard and goo forward and now there’s Miles there’s this creature they made of Miles and its arms moving but he doe mean them to they’re only moving with the Lanc and yo cor look at it and it’s like a poor wammell a poor lickle dog that’s crouched with no chest and yo’ve got to see your skipper soon you need him or Dickie Molloy or anybody to not be alone and my how she’s weeping and singing and slipping down your lovely Lanc only gliding now she can’t manage better and there’s all red on the floor and clip on your chute and make yerands do it make sure they do it and the astrodome is gone blown out and no Parks and no sign of Parks and forward yo’m gooin on and she makes a stagger down but she’s brave a brave wench and here he is yer skipper yer safety yer best yer gaffer and white white in his face doesn’t see when yo shout and yo mun get him to listen because jeth is set by him atein him up yo can see it and his mouth sayin abracadabra again and his mask off and lollin and wet and he’s took poorly took terrible badly and his cap is gone again and yo cor find it and his flying helmet tore open and red in his hair not sandy as it should be and yo want to find his cap but yo cor because maybe it jumped out the hatch like Torrington must have and Parks is gone and Molloy and they’ve left their red behind and yo behind and yo cor jump because yo look down through the hatch and yo just cor and so yo goo back and the skipper is still there and still flyin and now he turns awful slow and different to how he is and he does see yo now he sees.
‘Alongin a moment, Boss. On you go.’
Bad smile he gives you horrible.
‘To pleaseme onyougo.’
Yo can tell he’s weary with holdin her and wants to go home and yo’d like to goo wum with him and he has such blue eyes the skipper like he’s got all the morning sky inside his head.
drop
There never is any memory of leaving, nor of pulling the cord to open the parachute. You only tumble into thinking again when your harness yanks you up so hard you feel you’ve been split in half, or your balls knocked up into you somewhere and no chance of getting them back.
And this is just you now – you and infinity and the cold, deep silence it’s made for you to sway about in. For a while you think something will reach down and touch you, something you can’t understand and this is the first time you’ve truly been frightened all night.
Which unhinges everything and you don’t know if this is a silence or you are deaf and if this is a mist or you are blind, or maybe this is dying – one last joke to get your hopes up before you get the final drop.
But then you notice you’ve lost your boots and your Type D linings and your socks and your feet are aching – there they are, your sore naked feet – and a dead person wouldn’t be bothered with that and here is some sound, hissing and pressing back in, of the silk above you and the harness and your racing breath and you can understand that seeing will be tricky because you are in a cloud which is why you are wet and freezing, but there is some light, a type of glow which means that day is coming in an overcast dawn.
You wish for a moment that Sweden will be beneath you – the skipper would have tried for Sweden if he could, if he’d thought they wouldn’t make it home.
The skipper.
There’s no Lancsound. So he’s gone. But no fire, no sign of fire, so you can believe that he hasn’t crashed, that maybe he’s still flying. Or he could have jumped. You want to think that he’ll make it to Sweden. Or you don’t want to think at all.
Except maybe your hearing’s not so hot as you’d thought because there’s this rush now, a terrible racket, keeps getting louder, and the mist thinning while your chute starts to buffet a bit more.
And then you see – the whole thing clearing, the whole bloody mess – that you’re coming down over water, over a coast, some thin bit of coast – Jesus, a tiny strip of land, island, something, and if you don’t make it you’ll be in the fucking ocean, you’ll be fucking dead.
Tugging and hauling to steer yourself and the wind impossible, can’t tell if it’s set to take you out or save you – maybe both. Dropping faster now, or it seems that way, and you are – fuckit – you are going to hit the water, but not on the ocean side, you think not on the ocean side, you hope – unless you’ve got it all wrong – remember to release the harness, hit the release before you’re in the water, get away from the fucking ’chute.
Much nearer now, much too near – it will be the water – can’t bloody swim – get out of the harness, get out of it now, get the bloody thing, get it away before it drowns you.
And then suddenly it’s your business to live, fight for it.
Landing in a way you don’t completely feel and the canopy coming down after like a wet skin, like your shroud, and you’re breathing water, but it’s all queer – your legs are wrong, make no sense of your being in water – and your hands caught for a moment in this soft stuff, warm – before it comes clear in y
our head how you are and where you are and that you have Joyce to be alive for, maybe nothing else, but she is enough – and you are dragging and dragging and dragging the silk from your back, your head, but also standing, toes sunk in cream-feeling mud – almost – because the water here is up just to your waist and now you’re free, open, and it’s raining – there’s a cold and beautiful thin rain falling on you, washing your face, and this warmish water that you’re thick in, that you can walk through – alive – a living man who has fallen from a plane and hasn’t died – shove down the ’chute, sink it as best you can – and work your way up to the shore from this lagoon that’s bright with the threat of sunrise, that’s sparking as it sinks to your thighs and then your knees.
Not too hard to keep on wading along this sort of channel – whistly little birds stirring away from you, but no other disturb-ance, no shouts, no alarms. Then the channel dries and rises to some kind of springy soil and then there is scrub and then woods, pine smelling – too sparse to hide you.
You keep walking and here is a little road to crouch across and run to its other side until you are on grass – horrible fierce stuff that hurts your feet, so you move to a path and it’s getting very light – no houses, no sign of shelter, but that’s maybe good – no people, quiet still, but a silver shine everywhere that makes your head ache – you ache a good deal – but you keep on trotting – sand now, more gentle – and you go further, you’re in dunes – ocean sound coming at you and tussles of wind, the last of the storm leaving as the rain fades and there’s this wonderful smell of roses and bushes: a high, thick mass of bushes, a hill that seems it is roses and nothing else and it pains you, but you tuck yourself in under it – this grey coming when you look and you have to sleep now, you really do have to sleep.
And when you wake there is a kind of heaven with you.
Cloudless sky and warm and the smell of your ma’s garden – so many roses – and a calm tide breathing in and out somewhere at the edge of the white sand where you’re lying.
Dog roses.
And a tiny blue flower by your face, trembling.
So comfortable here.
Except for your shoulder and your feet.
And they’ll know now, back at home – that you’re too late to be anything but gone.
And you realise you’re thirsty, taste of clay and salt in you mouth.
And you roll yourself over, which causes you this long, tugging pain and you look up and see three faces, three men standing over you, peaked caps elegantly tilted and pencil moustaches – makes you think of a movie, the comic-opera type of thing – gleaming boots and dapper greatcoats.
Fucking Germans, of course.
You understand. Whatever they do, it can’t surprise you: you’ll always understand.
Dulag Luft: that should be where you’re taken, but you don’t think you’re there. This wouldn’t happen there. They don’t say where you are and you can’t see. There’s only this room and the other.
You haven’t been processed, or given a number, or given shoes. There’s only this room and the other.
You haven’t told anyone you’ve lost your hat, the one Joyce made you and there’s no time to cry about it. There’s only this room and the other.
They say you’re not a terror Flieger – because nobody heard your plane – because nobody saw your plane – because nobody found your parachute – because you are not in full uniform – because they were expecting someone who is not a terror Flieger and what they expect has to be right. Which only means they’re stupid, but you can’t tell them that. They don’t think you’re really aircrew and they don’t believe your name, or you serial number, or your rank. You tell them all three, in any case. Whenever they ask. Whatever they ask. But you do not stop them believing that you are something else, something wrong.
It took a long time to get here and people were not kind and did not ever believe you and so you stay here – back in what you understand. There’s only this room and the other.
I always was wrong. And nothing my father liked better than the ways I could be wrong: sayin things I shouldn’t, lookin arrim funny, actin daft, actin saft – I was made inside me to be wrong. And yo knock that out, yo fuckin knock that out of a boy, yo bate him till he doe feel it and yo knock im right.
Tastes of salt, my fuckin father. Tastes of fuck you. Tastes of I’ll fuckin watchyer, I’ll watchyer fuckin die and hear yo squeal.
There’s only this room and the other. Here is where you get it wrong, in this little space, like a box, and damp brick walls with whitewash on them. You have to stand here. This is the room where you stand. Until they tell you not to. Sometimes with your hands above your head. Shoulder hurts, something bad with your shoulder. Sometimes with your hands down by your sides. Shoulder hurts, either way. It doesn’t matter, the important thing is to stand and never lean, never brush the walls, never touch them so the whitewash comes off, because then when they come back to check you they see how you’ve done wrong and then they take you to the other room.
The other room is where it’s your fault you get a beating.
And when I’d hit him, when I tried to hit him, keep her safe, that’s when I was a bad boy, made him hurt her. I’d hit him and he’d bate her. Then he’d bate me.
But I knew better than him what I deserve.
I know better than them.
Sometimes rubber truncheons, sometimes leather with a sting in them, a kind of echo once they’ve hit. Sometimes you don’t see. Not interested.
Fucker with a ring, he punched me, cut me – my lip’s all swole and bad now.
But I understand. It ay that I doe understand.
If there’s no whitewash on you, they beat you, anyway. That’s your fault, too, because you can’t tell them what they’d like.
Fucker with the ring calls me Alfred, like no one ever does – except her sometimes, except her – an he has a officer’s voice an he says he wants to help me, but he wants to help hisself.
I understand.
I’m wrong, so he has to bate me.
He’s wrong, so he has to bate me.
They’m wrong, so they have to bate me.
I unnerstan.
I’m running this. I own it. I’m getting what I deserve.
There’s only this room and the other, which is why it’s hard to tell the time. You don’t how many hours or days you’ve been here, how long you have to stand until you fall now and then and they come and lift you up and beat you or give you a cigar-ette you can’t smoke but you try to and the fucker talks about cricket which you never follow and then you don’t please him and sometimes they don’t have to hit you at all before you make sounds these noises and curl up and want to be asleep only a tiny piece in the space it takes for them to pick you up you could rest a while stretch the seconds.
Stretch a second with your hand.
They’re starting to think you’re maybe soft, honest – which makes them beat you differently.
Showing cheek, trying to prove them wrong, when I’m the one who’s wrong and that’s the way I’ll be for ever.
While you stand, there’s this crying you do sometimes – when you think you won’t look nice for her any more. Don’t think her name and then they won’t have it. They see names in your face and then they try to smack them out.
Yo cor ave em, though – or me. I was made to be bate. I was made for gunnery and batin. Yo cor find me this way, norrall the way down ere, in where I stop.
I can hear yo. I can feel yo. But yo ay gorra chance to see me. I bin down in the glory hole, I bin, shut in. Yo cor hurt me where I bin. So fuck yo.
There’s only this room and the other.
You try to stand the way the air force taught you, be a credit to the service and yourself.
There’s only this room and the other.
You don’t do it very well.
drop
They threw him back eventually – he was too small a fish. And the Luftwaffe guards came and took him and wouldn’t quite meet his eye, because he was embarrassing – the way he had made himself be treated. They gave him a number and a tag, cutlery and a dixie, a blanket and a Red Cross parcel, all of his very own to keep. But the best was getting dressings on his shoulder his face and his feet and then socks and then the chance to scrum in when they threw down a load of boots and he wasn’t ashamed to dig and shove to find a pair that fitted and would last – he wasn’t ashamed by anything, not even of shuffling into the camp that first evening and seeing men look away from him, just the way the Luftwaffe had.
Because there is a difference between being in a prison and being a prisoner. And, for a while, Alfred had liked to be a prisoner. He was grateful and obedient and quiet and would only look, every now and then, at the Germans – real Germans there, alive and moving about, as if they were people and not what the newspapers had told you, as if they were people and not what had hurt you, as if they were people and not what had hurt your friends. Here they were, the Germans – something to start a flinch in you, although you fought that – chatting and standing guard, sneaking cigarettes, being tired and lazy and officious, angry, jolly, boorish, sly.
You could have worn them away with watching.
You could have gone mad with shaking and not sleeping and needing to weep.
But Ringer saved you.
Yes, our kid – it was Ringer that saved you and not the other way around.
Not the way you seem to remember it, but that’s the way it was.
The other chaps had taken to leaving Alfred alone: he was, they could only observe, an almighty bore and his nightmares were trying their patience. And Alfred had taken to watching the Germans, staring at the Germans, in ways that were trying their patience. And then Ringer arrived.
Whatever you were watching, you’d see Ringer: the great, bobbing head, the height of him as he shambled about across the sand, that daft helmet perched up above the placid face and the half-soaked smile. There was nothing to fear in Ringer’s smile.
Day Page 26