Bomber Boys - a Ghost Story

by Simon Leighton-Porter

For the moment there was silence on the line before Grimes replied. ‘How the hell did you know?’ he asked.

  ‘If I told you, they’d lock me up.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘You’re not going to like this,’ I said. ‘But the place is coming back to life.’

  ‘Don’t talk in riddles, Bill, I haven’t got all day.’ Grimes the angry copper was back.

  ‘Listen. It’s very simple. Ever since my accident I’ve been having hallucinations. I’m perfectly sane and I know the difference between what’s real and what isn’t. But these aren’t hallucinations, they’re real. Something, someone, has woken up the past. RAF Leckonby is haunted. Somebody was test firing the guns mounted in the rear turret of a Lancaster. The gypsies’ vans were parked in front of the old shooting butts.’

  Another silence, longer this time. ‘Bill, I’m not in the mood for leg-pulls. Pack it in.’

  ‘I’m not pulling your leg. I didn’t believe it either, but I do now. It all makes sense…’ I started to explain what had happened but Grimes cut me off short.

  ‘Bill, for Christ’s sake, go and see a doctor.’ He hung up.

  That night, thoughts of Amy filled my head. Half dreading, half longing for another visit from her, sleep eluded me. So I resorted to the hated pills. Slipping through the gap between consciousness and oblivion, other uninvited guests stole into my mind. Some in battledress, others in bulky one-piece flying suits, they stood around the bed looking at me. One of them spoke.

  ‘Was it for this?’ he asked.

  ‘For what?’ I heard my disembodied voice reply.

  ‘What you’ve done,’ said another. They were all talking at once now, some speaking directly to me while others chatted animatedly among themselves. I strained to hear what they were saying but could only pick up the odd word.

  A small, thickset man looked directly at me, I could see his battledress tunic was darker than the others’ yet I couldn’t make out his features. ‘He doesn’t get it. None of the bastards do.’ The accent was broad Australian. ‘None of you bloody understand that we didn’t have a choice. We missed out. It wasn’t worth it. I wish I’d never fucking bothered.’

  An appalling feeling of dread came over me and I was aware of trying to wake up, anything to stop this nightmare. The pills had worked too well and my drugged mind had no control over my body, chemically coshed into a state of paralysis. ‘Bothered doing what?’ asked my borrowed voice once more.

  ‘Fighting. Getting my stupid bloody self and all my crew killed just so you bastards could fuck things up. It was all supposed to be for something. I should’ve stayed home and got laid.’

  ‘He’s right you know.’ Again, I could see the speaker, but his face refused to come into focus.

  The Aussie voice continued. ‘To think I came all this way to fight for you bloody drongos. And then what do you do once we’ve done our bit? Turn the country into a paradise for bludgers, spivs and boongs, that’s what. Well, thanks for coming, Blue. Sorry you won’t be going home, mate, but we’ve sent a telegram to your old mum to let her know you copped it in a good cause. Christ, what a prize mug I was.’

  A muttered chorus of approval went up from the group of airmen. ‘They’re all as bad as Attlee now,’ said one.

  ‘So what was wrong with Attlee?’ came the reply from the back of the group. An argument broke out and the figures swum in and out of focus as they all shouted at once. Their anger became a tangible force which turned itself on me, seeming to crush me under its weight. A roaring, hissing sound like a waterfall filled my ears and I couldn’t breathe. I tried to call for help, but even my own voice remained beyond my mind’s control. No sound came. I knew I was dying, drowning on dry land.

  Somehow, lungs bursting, I clawed my way back up to the surface of consciousness. Agonisingly slowly, the nightmare faded until the last spectral outlines of my tormentors flickered and slowly vanished. I turned on the bedside lamp and lay, gasping lungfuls of delicious air, shivering and sweating with terror.

  I rolled over and looked at the clock: one AM. This couldn’t go on. The thought of facing monsters from the depths of my own mind every night was unbearable. My hand closed round the bottle of sleeping pills; it was still almost full. Washed down with a bottle of Scotch they would put a painless end to this torment. And after all, who would care, who would mourn my passing? Not self-pity, just reality. No. I put the bottle back down. There had to be another way.

  After two nights of broken sleep I was in no state to go to work. I phoned in sick and then began the ritual battle to get an appointment with my GP. The receptionist was condescending and indifferent, but I finally managed to negotiate myself an appointment for 1030 that morning.

  Eleven o’clock came and went and I began reading the same three year-old copy of Country Life for the fourth time. Finally, I was ushered in to the overheated consulting room of my GP, and at the sight of his tired, grey features my anger at being kept waiting drained away. He looked almost as bad as I felt. I recounted my experiences of the last two nights in detail and confessed that I felt my sanity was slipping away.

  The GP gave what in another life may have started as a smile. ‘No, you’re not going mad, and given the cranial trauma you’ve suffered, I’m afraid it’s likely to recur.’ Cranial trauma, I noted. Never brain damage. Never, ‘Well, the inside of your head’s been scrambled, so what do you expect?’ No, just cranial trauma. So that’s all right then, I thought. To his credit, my GP knows his stuff, even if his bedside manner is non-existent, and he spent twenty minutes explaining that what I had suffered during the last two nights even had a name. Something he called ‘Hypnagogic incubus hallucinations,’ explained my visit from the embittered airmen. The roaring noise, together with the feeling of drowning was down to something he called ‘Sleep Paralysis’, also a common feature of hypnagogia and triggered by a malfunction in a part of my brain called the amygdaloid complex. It even explained the sensation that I had held Amy’s hand, he said. I took some comfort from the fact that I wasn’t the only poor sod who had to put up with such things and left the surgery feeling very glad I had resisted the temptation to finish myself off with the sleeping pills.

  As if to reflect my improved mood, the sun came out and the late November air lost its chill. I took out my mobile phone and called Inspector Grimes.

  ‘Sorry for being a pain in the arse earlier,’ I said when he answered.

  ‘I’ve got used to it by now, Bill. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing really. Just to say that I took your advice and went to the doc.’

  ‘So what did he say?’ His voice betrayed genuine concern.

  ‘Says there’s a lot of it about. Hypnagogic hallucinations, apparently.’

  ‘Do-what hallucinations?’

  ‘Hypnagogic. You don’t even need a bash on the head to get them. Never know, you might be next,’ I added. ‘But I just rang to say sorry for all this haunting nonsense.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Bill. Glad you’re feeling better.’

  We spoke for another five minutes about nothing in particular before I hung up and made my way towards Lincoln High Street to buy a book. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I felt almost at peace with the world. The winter sun felt warm on my back; my fears that I was going mad or worse still, had become the subject of paranormal activity I didn’t even believe in, had faded; and I had ended the simmering row with Grimes. It had just turned noon and I felt hungry – even my long-departed appetite was back. I paused in front of the bookshop window, lost in thought and enjoying the normality. It was not to last.

  My reverie was broken by a man’s voice calling. ‘Hey, Tommy, thought I’d find you here. What’re you waiting for? They’ve been open five minutes.’

  I took no notice, my attention already diverted by a series of green squares which were forming at the top of the bookshop window and then sliding down to form puddles on what I knew to be a dry pavement. If ever I needed a reminder of what
was reality and what was a momentary reprieve, this was it. I screwed my eyes tight shut, willing the hallucination to go away and felt in my pocket for the pill bottle. Much closer this time, I heard the man’s voice again. ‘What’s the matter, Tommy? Seen a ghost?’ I heard him laugh and a hand clapped down on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and spun round. The Lincoln High Street I knew had gone. In its place was something more like a film set: people in drab, old-fashioned clothing; the younger men in uniform, the older ones in long overcoats and hats, many were smoking pipes. The women, like threadbare beetles, scuttled past clutching wicker shopping baskets. A scruffy Austin Ten in RAF blue wheezed by over the cobbles of a street I had only known as pavement. I made to speak, but stopped dead, my mouth hanging open. The bookshop and the jewellers next to it had gone. In their place was the façade of an old coaching inn. A sign over the entrance bore the name, ‘Saracen’s Head Hotel.’

  I turned once more to face the owner of the voice but froze in disbelief on catching sight of his reflection in the hotel’s window. Dressed in World War Two RAF battledress, a tall, slightly stooping blond figure, barely out of his teens, with a pilot’s brevet over the left breast pocket and a Flying Officer’s stripe on each epaulette, was chatting amiably to a slightly older, more solidly built Sergeant. I noticed the Sergeant’s tunic sported the single-winged air gunner’s brevet. As I stared in amazement at this bizarre cameo, I realised that I recognised the air gunner. It was me, but many years younger.

  I’m not given to falling asleep standing up so this was clearly no dream. Half fascinated, half terrified, I followed the tall figure in front of me as he pushed open the doors to the hotel entrance. What little remained of my confidence to tell reality from hallucination ebbed by the second. This was obviously not happening, but never before had my misfiring brain succeeded in transforming everything around me, even down to the clothes I stood up in. The last time I had worn scratchy woollen battledress like this was in the cadet force at school. I felt the long-forgotten chafing of a hard, detachable collar, its brass stud pressing uncomfortably against my windpipe.

  The hotel’s interior was even shabbier than the street outside. The long, narrow entrance hall had once been lit by a vaulted skylight at second storey level, but it was now covered over with blackout material, faded grey by the sun, dusty and festooned with spiders’ webs. Miss Havisham would have felt at home. On a table, its brass pot unpolished since peacetime, stood a lonely aspidistra, wilting and sickly from a diet of neglect and artificial light. Opposite the aspidistra was the reception desk and as we walked past her lair the receptionist treated me to a look that would have curdled milk. My companion obviously saw, or more likely, felt the waves of disapproval aimed at us for he came to an abrupt halt as if on the parade ground at Cranwell. ‘Hat, Tommy, for Christ’s sake take your hat off. We’re indoors, you clot.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry,’ I mumbled, and removed the ‘chip-bag’ fore-and-aft forage cap I hadn’t even noticed I was wearing. I’d owned a ‘chip-bag’ myself, but this one was cheap and badly made, the lining stained with a tidemark of what I took for hair oil. I looked a bit closer and saw the owner’s details inked onto a grimy cotton label that had once been white: Handley W A, 923041.

  To the right, a nicotine-stained illuminated arrow, its bulb flickering and buzzing like a dying firefly, pointed down to the saloon bar. The passage of countless feet had worn the carpet shiny. What had once been proud red Wilton was now the colour of beaten earth. At the top of the steps, a fug of tobacco smoke and beer fumes met us. To protect the carpet, the nose of each tread had been reinforced with canvas which had then been thickly painted with white emulsion – the last time I had seen anything like it was at a seaside boarding house in the sixties, as a small child on holiday with my parents. Although it was only a few minutes after midday, the small, airless space was packed with bodies, all in uniform, some wearing the darker blue of Australia, most of the men standing around in groups of seven – the standard component for a heavy bomber crew.

  With a dozen s’cuse mes and pardons, we managed to make our way to a corner of the bar.

  A voice called out to us. ‘Bloody bad show, Skipper. Seven minutes late on target.’ We were obviously among friends for five expectant faces grinned at us.

  ‘It’s that man again!’ said my pilot companion, pointing at me. The others doubled up at what was clearly a hilarious joke, but which was entirely lost on me.

  ‘Can I do you now, sir?’ said one of them in a high falsetto, sending the others into fits of laughter once more.

  While watching them dry their eyes and recover their breath, understanding slowly dawned. From somewhere in the still functioning part of my mind I remembered where the catch phrase came from: ITMA – It’s That Man Again, and the star of the long-defunct radio show was called Tommy Handley. If the owner of the chip-bag hat shared the same surname, and clearly the hat seemed to be mine, then it explained why they were calling me Tommy. At least one part of this bizarre hallucination made sense.

  ‘So where did you find him?’ asked a small, weasel-faced Flight Sergeant who wore the purple and white striped medal ribbon of the DFM below his bomb aimer’s brevet.

  ‘Oh, not far off target,’ replied the skipper, who had just lit a cigarette, shouting to make himself heard above the din of voices. ‘Standing out in the street catching flies. Didn’t even see me coming.’

  ‘Well, he’d better see Jerry coming,’ said the bomb aimer. ‘Or we’re all for the chop.’

  ‘Chop, chop, chop,’ chanted the others in unison, miming imaginary hatchets at me. I knew well enough what ‘getting the chop’ meant to a bomber crew, and the little pantomime caused an outbreak of laughter and good-natured barracking from the other aircrew in our corner of the bar.

  ‘Well, it’s a dry old do. Poor show, chaps,’ said the skipper. ‘How about five bob each in the kitty? That’ll get us up to cruising altitude.’

  I reached into my tunic for a wallet I hoped was there. To my relief, I found it and peered inside, looking for notes or coins, but all I found was my alter-ego’s RAF identity card, an old cinema ticket and a creased photograph of a homely young woman in a pill-box hat. I dug around in my trouser pockets and came up with a handful of coins of a type I vaguely remembered from my childhood. I spread out my worldly wealth in puddle of beer on the counter-top and tried to work out how much was there – if my calculations were correct, it came to three shillings and sixpence.

  One of the crew peered over my shoulder at the heap of coins. ‘Well, knock me down with a feather, Tommy’s skint again. Whose turn is it to sub the mangy blighter this time?’ he asked. More laughter.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tommy, me old china, you can add it to the slate,’ said the bomb aimer, winking at me. ‘If this war goes on much longer, with what you owe me, I’ll buy meself a gold watch.’ He slapped the money down on the bar and stood back while the navigator, a serious-looking officer, with a long, sad face, gathered up the coins and tried to attract the barmaid’s attention. I noticed that when he finally managed to order, he was the only one of the group drinking barley water rather than beer. Apart from me, he was also the only one not smoking. The beer cost one shilling and twopence a pint.

  ‘Well, bottoms-up, chaps,’ said the skipper, raising his glass.

  Although I knew this had to be a hallucination, how had I conjured the genie of the lamp into painting the canvas of my shadow world in such precise detail? I could smell the cigarettes and even feel the effect of the alcohol as I finished my first glass of beer. At the time it didn’t taste that strong, but after only one mouthful of my second pint I began to feel giddy and unsteady on my feet. ‘Sorry. Don’t feel well,’ I said, looking around for somewhere to sit. All the seats were taken but I managed to prop myself against the wall, slightly away from my newly adopted crew. The dizziness got worse and I could no longer see. The voices were still there, but indistinct now. Someone was shouting but I couldn’t make out what he
was saying. Then a bright light and a woman’s voice too. Odd, very odd, the only woman in the place was the barmaid. Must have upset her. ‘Ver’ sorry,’ I mumbled.

  ‘There he is.’ The woman’s voice was closer now and even through my closed lids, the light was vivid. I opened my eyes. No bar, no bomber crews, just a windowless room with white walls, strip lighting and piles of cardboard boxes, one of which I was leaning against. Blinking in disbelief I saw that the woman whose voice I had heard was dressed in modern clothing and flanked by two uniformed policemen. I looked down and felt around my neck. The hard collar and battledress were gone, and in its place were the clothes I had put on that morning. However, in my right hand, I still held a half-full pint glass of beer.

  ‘Put the glass down, sir. You are under arrest,’ said the taller of the two policemen. ‘Turn away from us and put your hands behind your back.’ I did as I was told, felt handcuffs tighten around my wrists and a hand closing round my upper arm. They steered me towards the door, not the one I had come in by, but another, several feet away to the left. The steps with their white-painted reinforcements had gone, and in their place stood modern concrete and steel.

  I had never been arrested before and so probably said and did all the wrong things. However, the mind is very adept at airbrushing out painful memories, so the details of what happened still remain a blur to this day.

  The cell at the police station was functional, white and brightly lit, not unlike a smaller version of the storeroom where they had found me. In the corner opposite the aluminium shelf that served as a bed was a lavatory and a washbasin. How long I was in there I have no idea, it was probably no more than an hour but it felt like several days. Eventually, I heard the sound of the spy-hole cover being moved back, followed by the rattle of keys in the lock. I recognised my visitor at once – Inspector Grimes.

  He stood in front of me, hands on hips, looking down at me with a mixture of exasperation and bewilderment. ‘Why, Bill? What the hell do you think you were doing?’ I expected angry copper Grimes, but his voice seemed to show genuine concern.