by Peggy Savage
‘History.’
‘Any hobbies or sports?’
‘I play cricket, and club tennis,’ Charlie said. He hesitated. ‘And I play the piano.’
To his surprise Bill’s face brightened. ‘Play the piano? Good. You might have a light touch on the controls.’ He looked at Charlie: a speculative look, Charlie thought, weighing him up. ‘Why do you want to fly?’
‘If there’s a war,’ Charlie said, ‘I’d like to join the Air Force.’
‘Do you think there’s going to be a war?’ Bill said.
Charlie shrugged. ‘Who knows? But it sounds as if it’s getting more likely.’
‘Our wing commander would agree with you,’ Bill said. ‘He’s pretty convinced. Very keen on training more pilots. You’d have to have an interview with him, but I can take you up this morning if you like – see how you get on. No point in being interviewed if you’re sick as a dog or terrified.’
‘I’d like that very much,’ Charlie said. ‘Thanks.’
Bill got up and took two flying helmets from hooks on the wall. ‘Come on, then.’ They walked out to one of the Tiger Moths. ‘You sit in the back,’ Bill said, ‘and be careful where you put your feet.’ He hung over the cockpit and showed Charlie how to strap himself in. He grinned. ‘Don’t want you falling out, do we? And don’t undo it till we’re back on the ground and stopped. And if by any unlikely chance we turn over on the ground don’t undo them at all, or you’ll fall straight on your head and break your neck. Wait for help.’ He pointed around the cockpit. ‘Control column or stick, rudders, speaking tube. And don’t touch anything unless I tell you to.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Charlie said.
They taxied into the wind and Bill took off.
Charlie watched the ground fall away beneath him. For a few moments he felt a kind of stillness, as if he were waiting to find out how he felt. He watched the stick move and felt the pressure on his straps as Bill put the plane into a gentle turn. He looked down over the airfield, the roofs of the hangars, the woods and fields beyond. Slowly, stealing over him in the clear air, he felt a kind of exultation, a sense of extraordinary freedom. They flew through a patch of cloud and came out above it, the sun gleaming and casting rainbows on the white billows below. I’m so lucky, he thought. Fifty years ago no man had ever seen such beauty; this unknown world.
They came out again into clear air. ‘All right?’ Bill said, through the tube.
‘Yes.’ Charlie found himself nodding vigorously.
‘Fancy doing a loop?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said again. He felt himself pushed back in his seat as the aircraft climbed. The earth disappeared, and then slowly revolved in front of him until they were straight and level again. It was extraordinary. He didn’t feel that he had moved at all. It was as if the world had moved around him.
‘All right?’ Bill asked again.
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘Fantastic.’
‘Put your hand on the stick and your feet on the rudder bars,’ Bill said, ‘and don’t do anything. Just feel what I am doing.’
They did a gentle turn to the left and Charlie felt the movements of the controls. I can do this, he thought. I know I can. He wanted to do it more than anything he had ever wanted in his life.
‘I’m going to do a spin,’ Bill said. ‘That’s the one aerobatic manoeuvre you’d have to learn before you went solo. You can get into them by accident. You need to know how to get out.’ Charlie saw the stick move back and then they seemed to flip into a turn. The plane began to spin, round and round, and the ground came rushing up to meet them. ‘Stick forward and full opposite rudder,’ Bill said in his ear. The plane came magically out of the spin, flying straight and level. ‘All OK?’
‘Brilliant,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s brilliant.’
Bill did a circuit of the airfield, landed and taxied back. They went back into the office. ‘What do you think?’ Bill said.
Charlie firmly suppressed his emotional reactions and tried to be practical. ‘I think it’s great,’ he said, ‘and I want to do it.’
Bill grinned. He knows, Charlie thought. He knows how desperate I am to get in.
‘We’ll make an appointment with the wing commander,’ Bill said. ‘You might do.’
Charlie stayed at the airfield for an hour or two, ostensibly waiting for Arthur, but in reality just watching, watching the aircraft come and go, doing take-offs and landings, circuits and bumps. He had a sense of extraordinary peace and contentment. He watched someone apparently doing a first solo, the instructor standing on the grass, his body tense, watching the aircraft circling the field, watching it land, bumping a little but landing safely. He watched him greeting the new pilot, shaking his hand. I can do this, he thought. I will do it. He felt as if he’s been handed a huge gift, a goal, a reason for being alive. He knew that he would be back.
‘It’s spring,’ Amy said, ‘March already.’ The garden was waking up again, snowdrops gleaming.
‘Look at this,’ Dan said. He held up a cartoon in Punch, showing John Bull, who seemed to be waking up from a nightmare – the nightmare of another war.
Amy didn’t smile. Dan put his arm around her and held her against him. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It isn’t over. It’s like living on top of a time bomb.’
He kissed the top of her head. ‘We’d get through it,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, we’d get through it, together.’
‘We shouldn’t have to,’ she said, agonized. ‘We shouldn’t have to go through that again. Twice in one lifetime. It isn’t fair.’ There was nothing he could say.
She did her normal clinics and surgeries, meeting every day other women with stricken faces and frightened eyes. ‘My son …’ they said, ‘my husband, my son, my children….’ She tried to be reassuring, but she knew that there was nothing that would really help. How could there be when she felt the same?
She opened the morning paper one March morning, and gasped. Hitler had invaded and taken the rest of Czechoslovakia. There was a picture of jeering, weeping crowds in Prague, of crowds of Jewish people storming the railway stations, trying to get away, knowing too well what the future held for them. Dan took her hand, not knowing how to comfort her, knowing, as she did, that the future was now decided, whatever the politicians might say. She telephoned her father. He sounded older, more tremulous. She thought, perhaps, that he had been crying.
The twins came home for the Easter vacation, Tessa worried and strained about the news from Europe, and Charlie strangely calm and cheerful.
Tessa sought him out in the garden. ‘You seem very calm about it all,’ she said. ‘You’re up to something, aren’t you? Have you joined up or something?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t do that without telling the parents.’ He hadn’t told her, or his parents, that he was learning to fly. He didn’t want to tell them until he’d got his wings, and he didn’t want his mother worrying herself to death. He’d tell them when it happened. He had another reason. It was a new and private joy. He didn’t want to tell Tessa that flying had answered his prayers, had opened the door to his own new world, that he felt about it the way she seemed to feel about medicine. He had to prove himself first.
The twins went back to Cambridge. The year wore on. It seemed to Amy that the whole world was taking one irrevocable step after another, as if pacing steadily and meaningfully towards another war. A new aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious, was launched at Barrow-in-Furness, Italy invaded Albania, conscription of young men was begun, plans were made for the evacuation of children from the major cities. One step after another, relentless, destroying all hope. Germany and Italy formed the ‘Pact of Steel’. It was as if the monster, death, had been resurrected and had planned it all – do this, do that, run about like chickens with their heads cut off, but you can’t escape me. Everything you do will bring the horror nearer.
‘We’ll get through this,’ Dan said.
There was nothing that Amy could say.
> Chapter Seven
1939
The twins came home for the summer vacation. On their first evening they sat in the garden, having sherry before dinner.
‘Nice to have you home,’ Dan said, ‘have the family together again.’
‘Have a good term?’ Amy asked.
‘Yes,’ Tessa said. ‘It was lovely. I’ve got some snapshots to show you. I’ve got very good at poling a punt. I only fell in once.’
Amy laughed. She looked around the garden, at the height of its summer beauty, the finest summer for years. How could one imagine that all this would ever change? Surely nothing was going to happen? The King and Queen were back home from touring America. They had come back. They obviously hadn’t intended to send for the Princesses and stay in America or Canada, out of danger. That wouldn’t be very good for morale. She looked at the children, half-closing her eyes against the evening sun. They looked well. Charlie especially looked cheerful and full of energy. He must have found Cambridge very much to his liking. If it wasn’t a girl, perhaps he was finding his way, something he wanted to do with his life – if…. The terrible thoughts would not go away. If he was allowed to do anything.
‘What are you going to do in the holidays?’ she said.
‘I’m going to see if I can do a first-aid course,’ Tessa said. ‘I’m not much use as I am now, am I? I can’t actually do anything.’ Amy glanced at her quickly, but Tessa was calmly sipping her sherry. ‘Do you know if any of the hospitals are doing them?’
Amy forced down the immediate spike of fear. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I can find out.’
‘I might go up to Cambridge now and again,’ Charlie said.
Amy’s ears pricked up. ‘What for?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘just to see some chaps.’
Amy wondered again whether he had a girl. Neither of them had said anything.
‘I can take you to the hospital, Tessa,’ Dan said. ‘I’m sure the casualty officer would help you. He would probably be a better instructor than your mother and me. He does that sort of thing all the time. And the nurses could show you a thing or two.’
Amy looked at him sharply, but he merely raised his eyebrows, signalling her to say nothing.
After dinner Dan followed Charlie back into the garden. He lit his pipe, puffing to get it going. He blew out the match and flipped it into a flower-bed. ‘Why are you going back to Cambridge, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Anything we should know about?’
Charlie leant back, looking up into the sky, blue and cloudless. ‘I wasn’t going to say yet,’ he said. ‘Especially to Mum.’
‘What then?’
Charlie looked back at his father, smiling a little. ‘I’ve been learning to fly, Dad, in the air squadron. It’s absolutely terrific. I’m about to do my first solo. If the balloon goes up I want to join the Air Force.’
For a long moment Dan was silent. It was all too easy to bring back the last war – those young men in the Flying Corps. Many of them died just a few weeks after they got their wings, shot down, killed, or worse. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell her yet. Nothing has happened yet. Get over your first solo.’
‘How do you think she’d take it?’
‘Your mother,’ Dan said, ‘is one of the bravest women I know. Women are tough, Charlie, when the chips are down. She did her surgery all the way through the last war in France, through the bombing and the danger. She went out with an ambulance picking up the wounded from God knows where. She’ll love you and support you whatever you do.’
Charlie grinned. ‘I think at one time she thought I might be a conscientious objector.’ He looked into the sky again. ‘I want to fly fighters, Dad. If I have to fight I want to see my enemy, face to face, man to man.’
Dan sighed. ‘If what we are hearing about Germany is true, our enemy would be far more profound than fighting only men. We’ll be fighting something much worse, a philosophy that could poison the world for hundreds of years. We will have to win, whatever it takes. We will all have to do what we’re told, whatever it is, no matter how much it goes against the grain.’
‘But women and children, Dad?’
‘They won’t care about women and children,’ Dan said. ‘Look what they did in Guernica. They’re very powerful, Charlie. They have enormous military strength. They’ll try to frighten us to death.’
Charlie smiled. ‘No chance.’
‘Could I come?’ Dan said. ‘Could I come to see you do your first solo?’
‘That would be great,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve brought a paper for you to sign. You have to give your consent, as I’m not twenty-one yet. I suppose we’d have to tell Mum.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Dan said. ‘I’ll tell her afterwards, when you’ve done it and it’s all over. She’ll be fine.’
They arrived in Cambridge and Dan booked into the University Arms Hotel. They had dinner in the restaurant.
‘You’d better get back to college early,’ Dan said. ‘Get a good night’s sleep. I’ll pick you up tomorrow in a taxi. Get you there calm and collected.’
Charlie smiled. ‘I think it’s you who has to be calm and collected. I’m going to be busy.’
Dan lay in bed, thinking of Charlie, up there alone for the first time. He wasn’t worried – well, not too worried. Charlie was sensible and reliable. He wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t think he was ready. Hundreds of people did it. Girls did it. What about Amy Johnson? He deliberately closed his mind to the images of the air battles in the so-called Great War, aeroplanes a new weapon then. At least the RAF gave their pilots parachutes now. He would not think of Charlie in a fighter, turning and weaving in that desperate game.
They drove to the airfield the next day. Dan stood at the perimeter, out of the way. Why did I come, he thought? Was it just because he wanted to be here to watch his son do something rather important, or was it because he wanted to be here in case something went wrong, so that he, and his medical expertise, would be on immediate hand? He shook his head briefly. He must dismiss that thought. He could not always be there. That responsibility would belong to someone else. The risk of impending war could so easily lead to black, negative attitudes. As he got older, he had begun to believe that thoughts were things, and that even unexpressed they could influence reality, one way or another. Positive. Be positive.
He watched as Charlie climbed into the Tiger Moth with his instructor and they took off. The aircraft did one sedate circuit of the airfield and then taxied back. He saw the instructor get out, have a brief word with Charlie, and walk away. His throat tightened. He watched as Charlie, alone now, turned the aircraft into the wind, watched as the aircraft trembled on the edge of the grass runway, gathered speed, and then as it rose, steady and graceful into the air. His throat tightened more. Is this what it’s like, he thought? Is this what it’s like, watching your son go off to war, into danger, into some steadfast resolve that you couldn’t share? The instructor, he saw, was standing as motionless as himself, watching the sky intently, waiting.
Charlie did his cockpit checks in a kind of tense calm – fuel, trim, magneto, compass, harness. All seemed well. Remember how to get out of a spin – stick forward, full opposite rudder – not that he’d have enough height. Air speed. Don’t stall. The green signal appeared. ‘Here we go,’ he said aloud. He pushed the throttle forward, his heart pounding. The Tiger began to move, gathering speed over the grass. He reached flying speed, eased gently back on the stick. The aircraft rose, steady and true into the still air. This is it, he thought. I’m off. There was no turning back now.
The ground fell away. He glanced down, then upwards into the clear sky, and felt a sudden kick of pure joy, of pure exhilaration. I’m on my own, he thought – there is no one here with me. It is all mine. He knew that for the first time in his life he was totally reliant on himself, that whatever happened now was entirely in his own hands and that nothing and no one could help him. The thought filled him with the deepest satisfact
ion.
He reached 800 feet and made the first of the gentle turns that would take him in a circuit around the airfield – stick and rudder together; watch the airspeed, nose attitude, come out of the turn straight and level. It felt absolutely meant, intended, that he should have the power of this wonderful machine in his hands. It felt right, as if the aircraft had settled with intention into his safe control. It felt like part of him.
He flew round the square circuit, maintaining his height, until he was on final approach. He had no doubts now, no uncertainty. He was in his element, and that element, he knew now, was the air. He felt that he had found something that he hadn’t even known he was looking for. He made his careful approach to the grass runway: flying attitude, airspeed, flaps, throttle. He watched the ground coming up gently to meet him, watched the yellow dusting on the grass turn into buttercups – throttle back, stick back into his stomach, the little bump. The aircraft rolled to a halt. I’m down, he thought. I’ve done it. I’m a pilot.
He taxied back and parked the aircraft. He got out and shook hands with his instructor, and walked back to his father.
Dan watched him coming towards him over the grass. He’s different, he thought. Something is different, some assurance, some strength. He shook Charlie’s hand. ‘Well done,’ he said.
Charlie gave a huge grin. ‘It’s fantastic, Dad. I wish I could show you. Perhaps I will, one day.’
‘I’ll look forward to that.’
‘I’ll have to stay for a bit,’ Charlie said. ‘De-briefing with my instructor. I’ll meet you back at the hotel in an hour or two.’
‘Fine,’ Dan said. ‘Then I’ll make my way home. I’ll give your mother a call and tell her what you’ve done and that you’re still alive. She’ll be much relieved.’
His instructor seemed unmoved by Charlie’s pleasure. He’d obviously seen it all before. ‘Now you’ve got to do it again,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll have to start on some aerobatic manoeuvres. Can’t have you flying just straight and level, can we? Not a good idea.’