So Much Life Left Over

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘Don’t go out, madam. You know there’s no chance of hitting one, and if you do it’ll be like water off a duck’s back, and there might be more bombs.’

  ‘I am quite confident of getting one, one of these days, Cookie.’

  ‘Yes, madam, but that thing’s only got a few yards’ range, and you still shouldn’t go out. You know what His Majesty said.’

  ‘Indeed, Cookie. He has no more loyal subject than me, as you know, but on this occasion I feel that I may make an exception, as neither you nor I is very likely to tell him, and I am only doing my duty. Make sure you shut the door behind me, for your own protection. I shall return very presently.’

  Mrs McCosh put ten lead pellets in her mouth for reloading, opened the door of the shelter and ducked out of it. On the lawn she breathed in the crisp air, and felt the droning of hundreds of bombers vibrating in her own bones. She raised the air rifle to her shoulder and fired upwards against the shadows, then reset the spring and opened the breech, removing a pellet from her mouth to place in it.

  High above her, a young German aircraftman from Cologne finally worked out why the bomb hatch of his Heinkel had not opened, and informed the pilot. The pilot’s opinion was that it was better to leave the bombs somewhere in England, rather than carry such a heavy load home again at greatly reduced speed, and so the bomb hatches were duly opened, and a long stick of bombs released.

  For the second time in a century, the glass of The Grampians’ conservatory was shattered.

  By the time Cookie found Mrs McCosh, still clutching the Britannia, in the rose bed by the blue door where she had been thrown by the blast, she had already bled to death, her head cracked against the wall and her neck sliced through by a plate of glass. Cookie could see the heavy pool of blood glowing thickly in the darkness, and she took off her scarf and patted at it, as if by this she were doing something to be helpful to the dead woman.

  Cookie knelt down and placed her head on her mistress’s chest. ‘Oh, madam,’ she said, ‘I did tell you not to go out.’

  Cookie took the air rifle from her mistress’s hands, and raised it up against her shoulder as a last stray bomber passed above. She had never fired a gun before, but she pulled the trigger and felt the sudden kick against her collarbone.

  She propped it carefully against the blue door, and manoeuv-red her heavy body down next to that of Mrs McCosh, lying beside her amongst the roses. She held her mistress’s rapidly cooling left hand to her cheek, weeping quietly, trying not to get prickled, and confusedly working out how many years they had been together in this house. It must have been something like fifty.

  ‘Just think, madam,’ she said, at last, ‘you’ve gone out in exactly the same way as your friend Myrtle, all those years ago. In 1917.’

  When the all-clear sounded, she went out through the house to try to find help, and it struck her that when Mrs McCosh went to her funeral, she ought to have that gun on the top of her coffin. Yes, she should, she should have that there gun on top of the coffin, where it rightly belonged, and there ought to be a union flag.

  46

  The Aguila

  The first SS Aguila was sunk by the submarine U-28 in 1915, but its owners optimistically caused a new one to be built, which spent its heyday carrying passengers and fruit to and from Lisbon and the Canary Islands.

  On 13 August 1941, with a cargo of naval personnel, the SS Aguila left Liverpool with Convoy OG 71, bound for Gibraltar, accompanied by a Norwegian destroyer, a sloop and six corvettes.

  Two of the ships were Irish, and so they did not black themselves out, much to the irritation of the other crews. Because of these blazing lights, the convoy was soon spotted by a Focke-Wulf Fw 200.

  During the first ever U-Boat wolf-pack attack, the Aguila became the third ship to be sunk. Some of the crew were saved, only to be killed shortly afterwards. The twelve Wrens from the base in Scarborough went straight to the bottom of the sea.

  The U-201, the submarine that had sunk the Aguila was itself sunk on 17 February 1943 by HMS Viscount, off the east coast of Newfoundland, with the loss of all of its crew of forty-nine, but its captain had already moved on. By the end of the war, Kapitänleutnant Adalbert Schnee had sunk at least twenty-three ships, and won the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, With Oak Leaves.

  He spent six months after the war helping to clear mines, and died in 1982. Whether or not he had any regrets is unknown.

  47

  The Cliffs

  After the Stuka attack on Tangmere aerodrome that destroyed the east wing of the officers’ mess, the new and very sensible policy of dispersal meant that Daniel was in the mess at Shopwyke House when he was handed the telegram by an orderly, a few days after Wing Commander Bader had had to bail out over France. He read it several times, unable to take in its enormity, and then, all rational thought impossible, he went straight outside, fired up the Brough, and drove to the airfield to see Wing Commander Paddy Woodhouse.

  He found the Wing Commander outside one of the hangars, saluted, realised that his throat was closed, and silently handed him the telegram. Woodhouse looked at it, and said, ‘My dear Daniel, I am so very sorry. I suppose you need a while to take it all in.’

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘Can’t speak, eh? Can’t say I blame you. You must have compassionate leave. Of course you must. Will ten days be all right? We’ve got a lot on, as you know. You can hardly be spared, but under the circumstances…go back to Shopwyke and I’ll have somebody bring the pass over in an hour or so, is that all right?’

  Daniel nodded again, and Woodhouse stood and held out his hand for Daniel to shake. ‘Bon courage,’ he said. ‘I really can’t tell you how very sorry I am. When you come back we’ll keep you busy. In times like this, the trick is to keep busy, I’ve always found.’

  Daniel was able to make the long journey from Tangmere to Beachy Head because he had long ago given up smoking and had been trading his weekly tin of fifty cigarettes for petrol. In wartime one has to improvise, and he felt guiltless about it. Other people used their cigarettes to obtain chocolate, or vice versa. He was careful with his fuel and never wasted it on trivial jaunts, but from time to time he needed to go to Brighton to check up on Archie, or to see his mother at Partridge Green, who was scarcely managing any more. He would take her treats from the NAAFI and do whatever maintenance jobs needed to be done about the house and garden, directed by Mme Pitt, who, on her bad days, was largely confined to her bath chair.

  On this September day, however, he would pass both Partridge Green and Brighton without a thought for his mother or his brother. The tears and the rain made it impossible for him to drive the combination with his customary elan, and he felt a pressure inside his head that was maddening and intolerable, as if someone had inserted a jack inside his skull and was pitilessly winding it up. He could feel the pulse in his temples hammering, and his throat was so constricted he could barely breathe. He had to take short breaths to keep going, and for once the sheer exhilaration of being out on the open road on a motorcycle completely failed to enthral him. His mind was empty of reason, his usual stray thoughts suppressed, replaced by a hideous, tormenting numbness that was as irresistible as a spring tide. He was drowning in it, and there was only one way out.

  Daniel stopped for a short while above Cuckmere Haven. Its tranquil beauty, its lovely meadows and oxbows of water, had never failed to move him and fill him with a sense of natural wonder, until today. He stopped only to say a cold farewell to it, as if his soul had risen above the merely beautiful.

  When he arrived at Beachy Head immediately afterwards, the loss of forethought that comes with overwhelming grief brought him up short. He had forgotten that there was a war on, and he perceived now that the clifftops were crammed with equipment and personnel. A chicane had been set up in the road with a Canadian guard who was checking the papers of everyone passing through. Daniel
halted and shut off the engine.

  He produced what he had, and the guard asked, ‘And do you have a warrant, sir?’

  ‘A warrant? For what?’

  ‘A warrant for whatever you are a-doing of,’ replied the guard.

  ‘I’m not really doing anything, Corporal,’ said Daniel.

  ‘And might you have a warrant permitting you not to be doing anything, sir?’

  Daniel looked up into those eyes that were both cynical and humorous, and said, ‘I have compassionate leave, as you see.’

  ‘I’m sure sorry you should have needed it,’ replied the guard, ‘but this is a reserved area. I can’t let you through. You’ll have to get to Eastbourne by going round the back way.’

  ‘Bugger Eastbourne,’ said Daniel violently. ‘It was here I was hoping to come to.’

  The guard looked at him suspiciously. ‘But do you have a warrant, sir?’

  At that moment a passing British lieutenant decided to take an interest. He saluted Daniel, and took the papers from the guard. After a moment he said, ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Thought what, Lieutenant?’ said Daniel.

  ‘You’re Daniel Pitt, aren’t you? The Daniel Pitt? The flying ace?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘I suppose I must be. How on earth did you know?’

  ‘Cigarette cards, sir.’

  ‘Cigarette cards?’

  ‘Player’s, sir. My father smoked Player’s, and I kept the cards; Great Footballers of the World, Great Explorers, Flying Aces of the Great War. I memorised all of them; twenty-five victories, in Pups, Camels and Snipes. You shot down a Gotha bomber, didn’t you, sir?’

  ‘Forced it to land,’ said Daniel. ‘I forced a Roland Walfisch down once, and after the war, the two fellows on board became personal friends. I don’t know what happened to the Gotha crew.’

  ‘I am so pleased to meet you,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘May I shake your hand, sir?’

  Somewhat confused by all this, Daniel held out his hand. The Lieutenant shook it vigorously, saying, ‘You’ve always been one of my heroes, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, and everyone says it was really a lot more than twenty-five.’

  ‘I had no idea I’d been on a cigarette card,’ said Daniel.

  At this point the guard, who had been waiting for all of this to begin to make sense, asked, ‘Excuse me, sir, but if you weren’t going to Eastbourne, why were you coming here?’

  ‘I just wanted to come to Beachy Head, Corporal, but of course I remember it from peacetime. I should have realised it would be like this. It was stupid of me.’

  ‘You must meet Captain Roberts,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘He’ll be thrilled to meet you.’

  It was from the inside of his surreal psychological fog that Daniel had to shake hands with half a dozen officers and be shown around the clifftop, attempting to show a polite interest whilst suppressing intense and sickening waves of grief, and the strange impatience of the condemned man to have it all over and done with. It was a bright and windy day, with small clouds scudding across the sun, so that from minute to minute it was either chilly or hot.

  Captain Roberts was a solid man with a greying but soldierly moustache, who had come back into the army after ten years of being a solicitor in a small Cotswold town. The Lieutenant, on the other hand, was a small lively man with sleek black hair, who had grown up in Shropshire, ‘Mary Webb country’ as he called it, in response to Daniel’s polite enquiry as to his origins.

  ‘My wife loved Mary Webb,’ said Daniel, and he thought briefly of Rosie, wondering what she would think of his intention. ‘She would just think it was a sin,’ he thought bitterly. He still thought of her as she had been in their youth, chestnut-haired, freckled and bursting with poetry. He thought about their brief period of happiness in Ceylon. The memory brought with it another pang of loss.

  The three men stood, not looking over the cliff, but at the peaceful and beautiful farmland behind it. ‘This is what it’s all about,’ said Captain Roberts, waving his swagger stick.

  ‘I’m half French,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve had two countries to fight for, just like the last time.’

  ‘We’ve got some Free French here,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘They shout insults at the German aeroplanes. And yesterday five young Frenchies turned up on the beach in canoes. That’s the spirit, eh, sir? Two pairs of brothers, and a spare. Another little poke in the eye for Adolf.’

  There seemed to be something of everybody up there on the cliff. There were Home Guard manning aircraft guns, a great many men from the Observer Corps, and a colony of WAACs operating a radio station. There was an establishment monitoring transmissions from the Eiffel Tower, which the Germans were using to broadcast to their troops in France, so that there was a small group of people who were condemned to spend the entire war listening to appalling German light entertainment, without ever discovering one useful secret. To the west, a company of Canadians was executing a mock attack on a stubby disused lighthouse which was already pocked with bullet holes, and divots carved out by mortars.

  The two officers left Daniel to his own devices after a runner appeared with a message, and he took the opportunity to wander along the cliff edge, only to feel the full force of his despair wash over him again. It was so overwhelming that he had to sit on the grass.

  He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked out over the sea. He was reminded of Tennyson’s poem about the eagle; ‘The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls’. The sea did indeed seem wrinkled. In places it was black from the shadow of the tiny clouds, and in others it sparkled so brightly that it was almost impossible to look upon it. A huge full moon hung above France.

  He dropped his head on his knees and closed his eyes, but a sense of drowning, of being overwhelmed by water and panic, overtook him, and he was forced to look up. There really was only one way out.

  He stood, peered over and saw the stones hundreds of feet below. He felt a kind of vertigo take hold of him, as if some malign spirit was pushing him in the small of his back, and he swayed. It would be so easy to give in to it, to close his eyes and topple forward, but at the same time it seemed infinitely hard. He realised that it would take more courage than he had ever needed before in his life, because this time he was not fighting with others but with himself.

  On the other hand, he was contemplating the most extreme liberty of all, the only liberty that was both infinite and truly desirable. It occurred to him that he could sit at the cliff edge, facing the downs, and just go over backwards, as if getting into bed. On the other hand, he could take a run, and fly for the last time in his life, making the leap to freedom joyously and spectacularly. Or he could simply step forward, as if going for a stroll, and go quietly, with dignity.

  It was a death he had faced daily in the Great War. If your aircraft was on fire, rather than burn, you would unbuckle, flip the machine over and fall to Earth. The force of the impact was so great that every bone in one’s body would be shattered, and all one’s internal organs turned to a paste. Death was instantaneous and probably painless. He had seen dozens of such deaths. He had seen both enemies and comrades die in that manner.

  Daniel had carried a revolver, like so many others, just in case his machine could not be flipped, and now he suddenly wondered why he had not simply walked out onto the airfield and put a pistol against his temple or in his mouth.

  But that was not a real airman’s death. That was a second-class death. He stepped up to the brink and looked at the moon over France. Death in flight; this was a real airman’s death. ‘Goodbye, world,’ he thought. ‘I won’t miss you.’

  A quiet voice behind him said, ‘I wouldn’t jump there if I were you. The cliff isn’t vertical, and it’s studded with flints. You don’t go down like a thunderbolt; you bounce all the way and get shredded. You might end up on a ledge. It can take several hours to die. There’s a much bett
er place further along. You might even consider Seaford Head.’

  Daniel did nothing. The voice seemed as though it might even have been inside his own head. He looked down at the beach far below and felt the cliff drawing him over. It had its own hunger; it needed him to be crushed, bloody, and gone.

  Daniel watched two black birds squabbling on a small ledge.

  ‘They’re choughs,’ said the voice. ‘People think they’re jackdaws, or crows, but they have red legs. They’re cliff-dwellers. Have you ever seen King Lear? Where Edgar describes the Dover Cliffs?’

  ‘You’re disrupting my peace,’ said Daniel, without looking round.

  ‘How fearful / And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!’ continued the voice.

  ‘The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

  Show scarce so gross as beetles; halfway down

  Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!

  Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

  The fishermen that walk upon the beach

  Appear like mice, and yond tall anchoring bark

  Diminished to her cock, her cock a buoy

  Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge,

  That on the unnumber’d idle pebble chafes,

  Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more,

  Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight

  Topple down headlong.

  * * *

  —

  ‘I have often wondered why Shakespeare made that mistake about samphire. Samphire grows in muddy estuaries. People did gather seagull eggs, though. I imagine a great many people perished like that. Of course he and Gloucester weren’t at the cliff at all. Did you know that once an entire village committed suicide here, during a famine? Can you feel your brain turn? The cliff does turn the brain, doesn’t it? You’d better step back before you topple down headlong.’