by Roald Dahl
I was feeling my face with my fingers but I couldn’t feel it; I could only feel something else.
‘What’s wrong with my face?’
I heard her coming up to the side of my bed and I felt her hand touching my shoulder.
‘You mustn’t talk any more. You’re not allowed to talk. It’s bad for you. Just lie still and don’t worry. You’re fine.’
I heard the sound of her footsteps as she walked across the floor and I heard her open the door and shut it again.
‘Nurse,’ I said. ‘Nurse.’
But she was gone.
THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD
* * *
First published in Ladies’ Home Journal (March 1945)
The two of us sat outside the hangar on wooden boxes.
It was noon. The sun was high and the heat of the sun was like a close fire. It was hotter than hell out there by the hangar. We could feel the hot air touching the inside of our lungs when we breathed and we found it better if we almost closed our lips and breathed in quickly; it was cooler that way. The sun was upon our shoulders and upon our backs, and all the time the sweat seeped out from our skin, trickled down our necks, over our chests and down our stomachs. It collected just where our belts were tight around the tops of our trousers and it filtered under the tightness of our belts where the wet was very uncomfortable and made prickly heat on the skin.
Our two Hurricanes were standing a few yards away, each with that patient, smug look which fighter planes have when the engine is not turning, and beyond them the thin black strip of the runway sloped down towards the beaches and towards the sea. The black surface of the runway and the white grassy sand on the sides of the runway shimmered and shimmered in the sun. The heat-haze hung like a vapour over the aerodrome.
The Stag looked at his watch.
‘He ought to be back,’ he said.
The two of us were on readiness, sitting there for orders to take off. The Stag moved his feet on the hot ground.
‘He ought to be back,’ he said.
It was two and a half hours since Fin had gone and he certainly should have come back by now. I looked up into the sky and listened. There was the noise of airmen talking beside the petrol wagon and there was the faint pounding of the sea upon the beaches; but there was no sign of an aeroplane. We sat a little while longer without speaking.
‘It looks as though he’s had it,’ I said.
‘Yep,’ said the Stag. ‘It looks like it.’
The Stag got up and put his hands into the pockets of his khaki shorts. I got up too. We stood looking northwards into the clear sky, and we shifted our feet on the ground because of the softness of the tar and because of the heat.
‘What was the name of that girl?’ said the Stag, without turning his head.
‘Nikki,’ I answered.
The Stag sat down again on his wooden box, still with his hands in his pockets, and he looked down at the ground between his feet. The Stag was the oldest pilot in the squadron; he was twenty-seven. He had a mass of coarse ginger hair which he never brushed. His face was pale, even after all this time in the sun, and covered with freckles. His mouth was wide and tight closed. He was not tall but his shoulders under his khaki shirt were broad and thick like those of a wrestler. He was a quiet person.
‘He’ll probably be all right,’ he said, looking up. ‘And anyway, I’d like to meet the Vichy Frenchman who can get Fin.’
We were in Palestine fighting the Vichy French in Syria. We were at Haifa, and three hours before the Stag, Fin and I had gone on readiness. Fin had flown off in response to an urgent call from the Navy, who had phoned up and said that there were two French destroyers moving out of Beyrouth harbour. Please go at once and see where they are going, said the Navy. Just fly up the coast and have a look and come back quickly and tell us where they are going.
So Fin had flown off in his Hurricane. The time had gone by and he had not returned. We knew that there was no longer much hope. If he hadn’t been shot down, he would have run out of petrol some time ago.
I looked down and I saw his blue RAF cap, which was lying on the ground where he had thrown it as he ran to his aircraft, and I saw the oil stains on top of the cap and the shabby bent peak. It was difficult now to believe that he had gone. He had been in Egypt, in Libya and in Greece. On the aerodrome and in the mess we had had him with us all of the time. He was gay and tall and full of laughter, this Fin, with black hair and a long straight nose which he used to stroke up and down with the tip of his finger. He had a way of listening to you while you were telling a story, leaning back in his chair with his face to the ceiling but with his eyes looking down on the ground, and it was only last night at supper that he had suddenly said, ‘You know, I wouldn’t mind marrying Nikki. I think she’s a good girl.’
The Stag was sitting opposite him at the time, eating baked beans.
‘You mean just occasionally,’ he said.
Nikki was in a cabaret in Haifa.
‘No,’ said Fin. ‘Cabaret girls make fine wives. They are never unfaithful. There is no novelty for them in being unfaithful; that would be like going back to the old job.’
The Stag had looked up from his beans. ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t really marry Nikki.’
‘Nikki,’ said Fin with great seriousness, ‘comes of a fine family. She is a good girl. She never uses a pillow when she sleeps. Do you know why she never uses a pillow when she sleeps?’
‘No.’
The others at the table were listening now. Everyone was listening to Fin talking about Nikki.
‘Well, when she was very young she was engaged to be married to an officer in the French Navy. She loved him greatly. Then one day when they were sunbathing together on the beach he happened to mention to her that he never used a pillow when he slept. It was just one of those little things which people say to each other for the sake of conversation. But Nikki never forgot it. From that time onwards she began to practise sleeping without a pillow. One day the French officer was run over by a truck and killed; but although to her it was very uncomfortable, she still went on sleeping without a pillow to preserve the memory of her lover.’
Fin took a mouthful of beans and chewed them slowly. ‘It is a sad story,’ he said. ‘It shows that she is a good girl. I think I would like to marry her.’
That was what Fin had said last night at supper. Now he was gone and I wondered what little thing Nikki would do in his memory.
The sun was hot on my back and I turned instinctively in order to take the heat upon the other side of my body. As I turned, I saw Carmel and the town of Haifa. I saw the steep pale-green slope of the mountain as it dropped down towards the sea, and below it I saw the town and the bright colours of the houses shining in the sun. The houses with their whitewashed walls covered the sides of Carmel and the red roofs of the houses were like a rash on the face of the mountain.
Walking slowly towards us from the grey corrugated-iron hangar came the three men who were the next crew on readiness. They had their yellow Mae Wests slung over their shoulders and they came walking slowly towards us, holding their helmets in their hands as they came.
When they were close, the Stag said, ‘Fin’s had it,’ and they said, ‘Yes, we know.’ They sat down on the wooden boxes which we had been using, and immediately the sun was upon their shoulders and upon their backs and they began to sweat. The Stag and I walked away.
The next day was a Sunday and in the morning we flew up the Lebanon valley to ground-strafe an aerodrome called Rayak. We flew past Hermon, who had a hat of snow upon his head, and we came down out of the sun on to Rayak and on to the French bombers on the aerodrome and began our strafing. I remember that as we flew past, skimming low over the ground, the doors of the French bombers opened. I remember seeing a whole lot of women in white dresses running out across the aerodrome; I remember particularly their white dresses.
You see, it was a Sunday and the French pilots had asked
their ladies out from Beyrouth to look over the bombers. The Vichy pilots had said, Come out on Sunday morning and we will show you our aeroplanes. It was a very Vichy French thing for them to do.
So when we started shooting, they all tumbled out and began to run across the aerodrome in their white Sunday dresses.
I remember hearing Monkey’s voice over the radio, saying, ‘Give them a chance, give them a chance,’ and the whole squadron wheeled around and circled the aerodrome once while the women ran over the grass in every direction. One of them stumbled and fell twice and one of them was limping and being helped by a man, but we gave them time. I remember watching the small bright flashes of a machine gun on the ground and thinking that they should at least have stopped their shooting while we were waiting for their white-dressed women to get out of the way.
That was the day after Fin had gone. The next day the Stag and I sat once more at readiness on the wooden boxes outside the hangar. Paddy, a big fair-haired boy, had taken Fin’s place and was sitting with us.
It was noon. The sun was high and the heat of the sun was like a close fire. The sweat ran down our necks, down inside our shirts, over our chests and stomachs, and we sat there waiting for the time when we would be relieved. The Stag was sewing the strap on to his helmet with a needle and cotton and telling of how he had seen Nikki the night before in Haifa and of how he had told her about Fin.
Suddenly we heard the noise of an aeroplane. The Stag stopped his talking and we all looked up. The noise was coming from the north, and it grew louder and louder as the aeroplane flew closer, and then the Stag said suddenly, ‘It’s a Hurricane.’
The next moment it was circling the aerodrome, lowering its wheels to land.
‘Who is it?’ said the fair-haired Paddy. ‘No one’s gone out this morning.’
Then, as it glided past us on to the runway, we saw the number on the tail of the machine, H.4427, and we knew that it was Fin.
We were standing up now, watching the machine as it taxied towards us, and when it came up close and swung round for parking we saw Fin in the cockpit. He waved his hand at us, grinned and got out. We ran up and shouted at him, ‘Where’ve you been?’ ‘Where in the hell have you been?’ ‘Did you force-land and get away again?’ ‘Did you find a woman in Beyrouth?’ ‘Fin, where in the hell have you been?’
Others were coming up and crowding around him now, fitters and riggers and the men who drove the fire tender, and they all waited to hear what Fin would say. He stood there pulling off his helmet, pushing back his black hair with his hand, and he was so astonished at our behaviour that at first he merely looked at us and did not speak. Then he laughed and he said, ‘What in the hell’s the matter? What’s the matter with all of you?’
‘Where have you been?’ we shouted. ‘Where have you been for two days?’
Upon the face of Fin there was a great and enormous astonishment. He looked quickly at his watch.
‘Five past twelve,’ he said. ‘I left at eleven, one hour and five minutes ago. Don’t be a lot of damn fools. I must go and report quickly. The Navy will want to know that those destroyers are still in the harbour at Beyrouth.’
He started to walk away; I caught his arm.
‘Fin,’ I said quietly, ‘you’ve been away since the day before yesterday. What’s the matter with you?’
He looked at me and laughed.
‘I’ve seen you organize much better jokes than this one,’ he said. ‘It isn’t so funny. It isn’t a bit funny.’ And he walked away.
We stood there, the Stag, Paddy and I, the fitters, the riggers and the men who drove the fire-engine, watching Fin as he walked away. We looked at each other, not knowing what to say or to think, understanding nothing, knowing nothing except that Fin had been serious when he spoke and that what he said he had believed to be true. We knew this because we knew Fin, and we knew it because when one has been together as we had been together, then there is never any doubting of anything that anyone says when he is talking about his flying: there can only be a doubting of one’s self. These men were doubting themselves, standing there in the sun doubting themselves, and the Stag was standing by the wing of Fin’s machine peeling off with his fingers little flakes of paint which had dried up and cracked in the sun.
Someone said, ‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ and the men turned and started to walk quietly back to their jobs. The next three pilots on readiness came walking slowly towards us from the grey corrugated-iron hangar, walking slowly under the heat of the sun and swinging their helmets in their hands as they came. The Stag, Paddy and I walked over to the pilots’ mess to have a drink and lunch.
The mess was a small white wooden building with a veranda. Inside there were two rooms, one a sitting-room with armchairs and magazines and a hole in the wall through which you could buy drinks, and the other a dining-room with one long wooden table. In the sitting-room we found Fin talking to Monkey, our CO. The other pilots were sitting around listening and everybody was drinking beer. We knew that it was really a serious business in spite of the beer and the armchairs; that Monkey was doing what he had to do and doing it in the only way possible. Monkey was a rare man, tall with a handsome face, an Italian bullet wound in his leg and a casual friendly efficiency. He never laughed out loud, he just choked and grunted deep in his throat.
Fin was saying, ‘You must go easy, Monkey; you must help me to stop thinking that I’ve gone mad.’
Fin was being serious and sensible, but he was worried as hell.
‘I have told you all I know,’ he said. ‘That I took off at eleven o’clock, that I climbed up high, that I flew to Beyrouth, saw the two French destroyers and came back, landing at five past twelve. I swear to you that that is all I know.’
He looked around at us, at the Stag and me, at Paddy and Johnny and the half-dozen other pilots in the room, and we smiled at him and nodded to show him that we were with him, not against him, and that we believed what he said.
Monkey said, ‘What in the hell am I going to say to Headquarters at Jerusalem? I reported you missing. Now I’ve got to report your return. They’ll insist on knowing where you’ve been.’
The whole thing was getting to be too much for Fin. He was sitting upright, tapping with the fingers of his left hand on the leather arm of his chair, tapping with quick sharp taps, leaning forward, thinking, thinking, fighting to think, tapping on the arm of the chair and then he began tapping the floor with his foot as well. The Stag could stand it no longer.
‘Monkey,’ he said, ‘Monkey, let’s just leave it all for a bit. Let’s leave it and perhaps Fin will remember something later on.’
Paddy, who was sitting on the arm of the Stag’s chair, said, ‘Yes, and meanwhile we could tell HQ that Fin had force-landed in a field in Syria, taken two days to repair his aircraft, then flown home.’
Everybody was helping Fin. The pilots were all helping him. In the mind of each of us was the certain knowledge that here was something that concerned us greatly. Fin knew it, although that was all he knew, and the others knew it because one could see it upon their faces. There was a tension, a fine high-drawn tension in the room, because here for the first time was something which was neither bullets nor fire nor the coughing of an engine nor burst tyres nor blood in the cockpit nor yesterday nor today, nor even tomorrow. Monkey felt it too, and he said, ‘Yes, let’s have another drink and leave it for a bit. I’ll tell HQ that you force-landed in Syria and managed to get off again later.’
We had some more beer and went in to lunch. Monkey ordered bottles of Palestine white wine with the meal to celebrate Fin’s return.
After that no one mentioned the thing at all; we did not even talk about it when Fin wasn’t there. But each one of us continued to think about it secretly, knowing for certain that it was something important and that it was not finished. The tension spread quickly through the squadron and it was with all the pilots.
Meanwhile the days went by and the sun shone upon the aerodrome and upo
n the aircraft and Fin took his place among us flying in the normal way.
Then one day, I think it was about a week later, we did another ground-strafe of Rayak aerodrome. There were six of us, with Monkey leading and Fin flying on his starboard side. We came in low over Rayak and there was plenty of light flak, and as we went in on the first run, Paddy’s machine was hit. As we wheeled for the second run we saw his Hurricane wing gently over and dive straight to the ground at the edge of the aerodrome. There was a great billow of white smoke as it hit, then the flames, and as the flames spread the smoke turned from white to black and Paddy was with it. Immediately there was a crackle over the radio and I heard Fin’s voice, very excited, shouting into his microphone, shouting, ‘I’ve remembered it. Hello, Monkey, I’ve remembered it all,’ and Monkey’s calm slow reply, ‘OK, Fin, OK; don’t forget it.’
We did our second run and then Monkey led us quickly away, weaving in and out of the valleys, with the bare grey-brown hills far above us on either side, and all the way home, all through the half-hour’s flight, Fin never stopped shouting over the RT. First he would call to Monkey and say, ‘Hello, Monkey, I’ve remembered it, all of it; every bit of it.’ Then he would say, ‘Hello, Stag, I’ve remembered it, all of it; I can’t forget it now.’ He called me and he called Johnny and he called Wishful; he called us all separately over and over again, and he was so excited that sometimes he shouted too loudly into his mike and we could not hear what he was saying.
When we landed, we dispersed our aircraft and because Fin for some reason had to park his at the far side of the aerodrome, the rest of us were in the operations room before him.
The ops room was beside the hangar. It was a bare place with a large table in the middle of the floor on which there was a map of the area. There was another smaller table with a couple of telephones, a few wooden chairs and benches and at one end the floor was stacked with Mae Wests, parachutes and helmets. We were standing there taking off our flying clothing and throwing it on to the floor at the end of the room when Fin arrived. He came quickly into the doorway and stopped. His black hair was standing up straight and untidy because of the way in which he had pulled off his helmet; his face was shiny with sweat and his khaki shirt was dark and wet. His mouth was open and he was breathing quickly. He looked as though he had been running. He looked like a child who had rushed downstairs into a room full of grown-ups to say that the cat has had kittens in the nursery and who does not know how to begin.