by Ray Ollis
He’s out there now: it’s a Ju 88. Joe can see him but Joe can’t tell the skipper. Here he comes! He’s telling himself you’re a dead duck. His finger’s on the trigger … Wait for it … Joe won’t get him: Joe with four machine-guns. The Hun has four cannon and ten machine-guns. They were learned imps; masters in the art of the nervous breakdown. They would keep nagging a long hour or more.
‘W/op to skipper. Testing.’
‘Skipper here. Okay! I can hear you. What have you done?’
‘I guess I’ve fixed it, skip.’
‘Oh, good show!’
‘Whacko!’
‘Thank Christ!’
‘Good effort, Krink.’
‘Bless thee, lad!’
Every voice spoke eagerly, delighted at its own sound. Only Yarpi did not speak. His imp had proved too strong. Yarpi was unconscious; slumped over his sights, his face twitching, fingers misshapen hideously like twisted claws.
Now, the others felt, they could make it. Queenie wouldn’t let them down. Even if they did have to feather the starboard inner, Queenie could make it on two. Simply because they could speak and hear they felt that they had conquered war. Not long now. They would soon be home.
The starboard inner held until the French coast. Maybe it could last the whole way but Queenie could fly on two; better to save the engine.
It was while Hyde and Magnetic were discussing the feathering that Yarpi came to. He heard the voices.
He looked down and saw sea.
He must’ve collapsed. Must pull himself together.16
‘Special to skipper. Want to hear something funny?’
‘What is it, Johnnie?’
‘Listen!’ Johnnie plugged his receiver into the intercom circuit. The fighters, game to the last, were still trying to cut off the stragglers. A frantic, three-way squabble was going on in German. A German pilot, a German Wurtzburg operator and a German-speaking Special in a 101 Squadron aircraft were arguing like Italian lovers in an opera. Yelling, swearing, cursing. Perhaps the words were unintelligible, but their meaning was transparent. Perhaps it wasn’t much fun being a German fighter pilot, either.
Q-Queene did not have to wait when she returned to Ludford Magna. Their ‘Request emergency landing on two’ was answered instantly with a green and they came straight in. As it was they were late. Even the valiant Queenie could not maintain timing, minus half her engines.
‘Gee, you look crook, Yarpi,’ Joe said, as soon as the crew were indoors in the light. ‘Anything wrong?’
‘No, I’m okay,’ Yarpi answered, and instantly his imp resumed its tormenting. ‘You fool! That was your chance. You only had to tell them. You’ve had a sort of fit. You’re too sick to fly. Tell them!’
But Yarpi was afraid to tell anyone. His imp resolved never to cease torturing Yarpi about that lost opportunity.
Hyde and the Wingco drank late into the night. They were waiting for the reports. ‘I’ve phoned Four-sixty and One-hundred Squadrons,’ the Wingco said. ‘They say the same as we do: “very successful but expensive”. One-hundred Squadron lost three, Four-sixty lost two and we lost three. Eight out of seventy-eight. Over ten per cent losses on one trip.’17
‘And thirty to a tour’, mused Hyde.
‘And Buckley’s plane’s a write-off. Flak holed their port landing-wheel and they ground-looped on touchdown.’
‘Anyone killed?’
‘No. But three injured. Their first trip.’
‘The force was too small,’ Hyde complained. ‘The more kites the fewer losses. We proved that in May in the first thousand-bomber raid on Cologne when One-o-one flew without loss. At least the weather was kind tonight and we got the target. But another five hundred bombers raiding nearby towns could’ve done good work and halved our losses. We were promised progress if Cologne succeeded. Well, it did. But what’s happened? Nothing!’18
‘Expensive if a thousand bombers miss the target.’
‘Then give ’em this radar we’re told is coming.’
‘Not enough of it.’
‘Then give it to the lead bombers and let them mark the target with flares or something.’19 Hyde jumped up. ‘I say, let’s pop into photo-section and see if the target shots are ready.’
When they had studied the target photographs the two officers felt better. H-H was there and the Wingco chided him: ‘No fighters for you chaps to jam if we keep this up. Germany now has over four hundred He 113s and no carburettors.’ He pointed to a photograph taken late in the attack. ‘Absolutely wrecked! I’m to phone Group and tell ’em. I’ll use this phone here.’
He spoke to a wing-commander friend and insisted there was no need for photographic reconnaissance. ‘Send ’em as a formality; but I tell you the place is wrecked.’
Then he listened for a moment. ‘Who? Holbrook-Hardwicke and Parke? They’re with me. Certainly, old boy. Gladly. I’ll tell them now.’ He hung up.
‘Tell us what?’
‘You’ve both been awarded DFCs. Congratulations. Yours was recommended after that last dicey-do, Parke, and is now confirmed. A press-on gong. Yours, H-H, was recommended last night. But it’s so certain it’s come straight through.’
‘But what’s it for, sir?’ H-H looked amazed.
‘Getting sixty-seven fighters, that’s what for.’
‘But that was a mistake, sir. I just said that. I just couldn’t think of anything else.’
‘You didn’t need to!’
‘But it was unintentional. Quite an accident. Honestly!’
‘Look,’ said the Wingco, sternly, ‘did you tell your chaps to say “Fly north and await instructions” or not?’
‘Yessir. I did, sir.’
‘Right! Then you destroyed sixty-seven German fighters and I’ve given you a DFC and that’s that. Now come and have a drink before Parke tells me he wants to give his back, too.’20
Section Officer Wendy Marlborough-Jones lay in the darkness of her room watching the rain running down the window.
What was it Krink had said? ‘I’ve got a couple of night-fighters lined up at the Wheatsheaf. Coming?’
And Hyde had jumped up and said, ‘Sure. Let’s go shoot ’em down in flames.’ Then Hyde had patted Wendy’s knee and left the mess.
Just how much did his metaphors imply? Did Hyde actually make love to these women? Oh, why was she so terrified of such things? Hyde had kissed her once and she had jumped back a foot. Literally jumped back a foot out of his arms.
He had laughed. He apologized immediately and said it was because she looked so funny, but that hadn’t helped. If only she could have flung her arms around him and kissed him back. But what if he had gone any further? She could not bear that.
The thought left her frightened and confused.
‘Are you really a squadron leader?’ she asked, fingering the three rings of braid. As a night-fighter she looked above average; straight, black hair like a ballerina, large, lash-swept eyes, flashing teeth and vivid mouth.
Krink’s girl was a blonde edition of the same book. There were differences, yet the two girls seemed cut with the same pattern, painted by the same commercial artist. Their names even came from the same comic-strips: Blondie and Daisy Mae.21
‘Are you really a squadron leader?’
Hyde’s body stayed very close to the night-fighter—legs together from toe to thigh and her shoulder snuggling under his encircling arm—but his mind stayed aloof.
‘Why’, it was asking, ‘why do these stupid girls talk to us as though we were babies?’ He knew she’d tried that ‘Are you really a Squadron Leader?’ gag a dozen times. Or perhaps none of them wanted anything but periphrases. To delve might be to find too much, like an anthropologist who discovers the missing link, only to prove that Man is still a monkey and cannot really think at all.
When the two couples emerged from the bar, icy rain was falling. They ran, the girls squealing, and scurried into Krink’s car. It had only been a twenty-yard dash but the girls’ flimsy cloth
es were wet through. Krink saw Blondie shivering and offered her his jacket. Hyde, lacking the American’s consideration and wondering why all the British Raleighs had emigrated, was obliged to offer the same to his own partner in the back.
‘I’m sure your jacket’s nice and warm,’ Blondie said to Krink. ‘But I’d still freeze. My blouse is wet.’
‘Take it off,’ said Krink.
‘But my bra’s soaked as well.’
‘Take ’em both off.’
Blondie looked sideways under suspicious lids, then said: ‘Okay!’
Hyde swallowed, and thought: ‘Well, well! The history books didn’t tell you Sir Walter’s ulterior motives. Krink’s certainly a smooth operator.’
The car’s four occupants, hidden in the darkness of the blackout, started disrobing. The girls were soon stripped to the waist; the flyers’ eyes, trained to see in darkness, could just discern exciting outlines. The men slipped their warm jackets over the naked shoulders.
This, Hyde felt, was the embarrassing stage in the alchemical period when stranger turned to lover. Now was the vortex in between. They had lost the strangers’ decorum; now coyness—a brazen coyness perhaps, but a definite conventional shyness demanding a decent interval before beginning to surrender—now coyness left a vacuum.
Hyde paused, content to kiss discreetly as though he did not know soft breasts were near, defenceless against premature caresses.
‘I had thought we’d go along to the Cafe Dansant for some coffee and a dance,’ he said. ‘But we can hardly do that in this garb.’
He rattled his gold RAF cuff-links against the button on Daisy Mae’s tunic. ‘So where to now, Krink?’
Smothered in the depths of voluptuous kissing, Krink’s answer was indiscernible. Hyde thought: ‘So Krink’s already airborne, eh? Quite a hot-house chrysalis!’
‘Let’s go to my place,’ said Blondie. ‘I want to get out of this flying officer’s tunic before Daisy Mae pulls her rank on me. So let’s go, Krink.’
There was a pause, then she said petulantly: ‘Well you can’t drive and nuzzle at the same time. Put it on ice till we get home.’
‘Blondie’s place’ was neat but mean, the top two stories of a single-front terrace-house. As she turned her key in the latch she said, ‘Don’t turn on the lights yet. I want to check the black-outs.’
While they stood in the dark room Hyde could see Daisy Mae doing up the buttons of his tunic. She need not have bothered. In clothes cut for Hyde’s massive measurements her dainty figure was but scantily hidden.
‘Can’t see why you wear uplifts, Daisy Mae,’ said Krink, and Blondie looked daggers at him.
‘I’ll go put on some coffee,’ said Blondie, heading for the kitchen.
‘Can I come?’ asked Krink.
‘Why?’
‘I want to go with you everywhere, like a devoted lap-dog following his, er …’22
Hyde and Daisy Mae were left together. He could usually take this situation easily but tonight it unsettled him. His gaze travelled the tiny room, then fell on a divan. He instantly averted his eyes, as though the divan was a vulgar villain hissing lush, off-stage suggestions in a whisper all the audience could hear.
He stared around for a diversion. ‘Shall we light the gas-fire?’ he asked.
She smiled radiantly and said, ‘Oh, yes; wonderful!’ most reassuringly.
Blondie and Krink returned, giggling childishly. ‘I’m going up to change,’ she said. As she headed up the stairs Krink followed. ‘Where are you going, big boy?’
Krink’s baby-face wrinkled into an innocent grin. ‘I’m just that devoted little lap-dog, remember?’
Blondie answered with a smile that said nothing. But as Krink followed her upstairs she did not stop him.
Daisy Mae had sensed Hyde’s restraint. ‘Funny,’ she thought. ‘He didn’t look the kind of a chap a girl has to lead.’
He was shuffling around now, actually embarrassed.
‘Give me a hand with the divan,’ she said. ‘Over by the fire.’
They slid the divan across the linoleum. As she lay down and turned back towards Hyde she blinked up at the light. ‘Just firelight, huh?’
Hyde obediently flicked the switch, then stood looking down at Daisy Mae in the fire-light as she nestled back, pillowed in cushions, smiling encouragingly.
It was an open, pleasant smile. For all he knew this girl might slap his face if he got too fresh. So why did he feel this revulsion?
Daisy Mae thought, ‘Next thing I know he’ll be talking philosophy.’
So she took his hand and drew him gently down. ‘Now tell me,’ she said. ‘What is it you like most in a woman?’
Hyde kissed her. A fatherly kiss. On the forehead. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it’s funny, this sort of thing. Isn’t it?’
Daisy Mae thought, ‘Ho-hum!’, rolled on her side and cupped her chin in her hand. ‘Here it comes. Philosophy! Who will it be tonight? Schopenhauer? or Spinoza? I’ll give him ten minutes. Then, if I feel I’ve still got the strength, so-help-me-god I’ll rape him!’
— 4 —
My dear husband,
There’s nobody like you at writing love-letters, Passion-pants. And Cuddles-pie honey, I’ll stay true to you, too. How can I even look at any of these aviators here at the Fort when I’ve got my own Yank in the RAF?
Sugar, these guys do have nicer uniforms, though. Nicer than that photograph you sent, anyway. And where are your medals? These guys all got medals. Ruffles (he’s my room-mate’s boyfriend; she’s single) says if you been to England you must have a medal too.
Do you have to fly clapped-out old fan-beaters like he says they have in the RAF? He says our Flying Fortress flies higher, faster and further than any ship in the air. Fortresses are bombing Berlin night after night.
Say honey, I’m going to finish now. My room-mate is pitching woo with her boyfriend (a dumb mechanic called Willis) and their breathing’s getting so I can’t concentrate. Makes me think of you, Passion-pants …1
Magnetic and Vincent were waiting for the bus to Grimsby when brakes screeched beside them and a car horn honked. Krink’s head appeared out of the driver’s window. ‘Going to Grimtown?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Hop in.’
Everybody in the queue rushed forward. ‘Hold it, youse guys,’ yelled Krink. ‘Slow down to a gallop, eh? I can take five. My two buddies here and the three prettiest Waafs. You, you and, er, you.’ Krink chose them carefully.
Vincent recognized a pretty Waaf from the met office. At this range he recognized, too, why she was nicknamed Paps. He murmured a shy hello and was surprised that she remembered him. ‘Patrick is always talking of his crew,’ she said. ‘The met staff know you all. It’s your crew’s gong party tonight, isn’t it?’ Before anyone could answer, she added: ‘Wendy’s going. Patr … I mean Hyde asked me, too.’
‘Great!’ said Krink. ‘We’ll see you there.’
‘I really don’t know whether to come.’
‘Gee, honey. Why not?’
‘Well, with squadron leaders and such. And Wendy. She frowned a bit when Hyde asked me. I really don’t know …’
‘The Limies and their officers; phooey to officers!’ said Flying Officer Krynkiwski. ‘You come along.’
‘I will, then,’ decided Paps. She was obviously eager to be talked into it.
‘I hear Mr Holbrook-Hardwicke’s fiance is coming up, and I’m crazy to meet her. I saw her in Tatler. She’s gorgeous and her father’s a millionaire.’
‘Tatler was under-estimating as usual,’ said Krink, as he unleashed his gaze to feast upon the lovely Miss Barbara Cunard.2 ‘Even Hollywood couldn’t do her justice. Imagine! All that and a million dollars, too.’
‘A million pounds,’ said Joe.
‘Eh? Oh, pounds, yeah. Say, that’s four million dollars, ain’t it? That doll looks lovelier every minute.’
No less doll-like beauty than Barbara Cunard’s could be imagined. True, her hair was
perfect blonde and her eyes were large and blue. But there the likeness ended. Her features were smooth and adult: one sweeping curve from the top of her forehead to the tip of her nose. Yet it was her voice and grace which turned her loveliness into charm. To watch her move, whether to dance or to light a cigarette, could have taught something of grace to a ballerina. She captivated everyone. Her influence made even Yarpi attempt refinement.
H-H quite obviously adored her, but his adoration was typically English; restrained and tasteful. One sensed his affection, not because he gazed lovingly or whispered romantically, but because this creature he obviously treasured. He had chosen her; naturally she was a goddess and he worshipped her.
After dinner, the party moved from the Wheatsheaf to the Cafe Dansant. The move displeased Krink. ‘Blondie’ll turn up,’ he told Hyde. ‘Blondie is terrible sick. Bells ring in her ears; wedding bells.’
‘Nonsense!’ Hyde said. ‘Anyway, she’s married. So is Daisy Mae.’
‘Blondie was married. But Poppa got the chop. Merchant Navy. Now she’s got her merry widow eyes on me.’
‘You’re imagining it.’
‘No such luck. ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ she says. ‘Dear Herb is dead. Now we can get married.’ Those were her exact words.’
Krinks’ tone implied that Blondie had donned the black cap as she spoke.
‘Isn’t this music romantic?’ asked Paps.
‘Yes,’ said Vincent.
‘A waltz. I love to waltz.’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause while Paps looked at Vincent and Vincent stared at his drink.
‘Ah, the waltz,’ breathed Paps again.
‘Er, would you like to dance?’ Vincent asked.
‘Oh!’ Paps turned to him quickly. ‘Why, yes,’ she said, and they joined the kaleidoscope of dancers.
‘Crowded.’
‘Yes,’ said Vincent.
‘Nice, though.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’d take less room if we danced closer.’
Vincent started at a tap on his shoulder. ‘Excuse me, mate,’ said Joe. ‘I’m cutting in. You’re wasting this shapely armful dancing at that range.’