The Long Flight Home

by Alan Hlad

  Refusing to leave Epping—and her family’s farm, for that matter—she’d chosen to temporarily live in the bomb shelter, surviving on cold rations: bread, boiled eggs, turnips, and wilted cabbage. She collected her water, for both drinking and washing, from a rain barrel. She slept on a cot buried under mounds of musty blankets, which did little to keep her warm or muffle the nocturnal war that raged in the skies. She stayed in the shelter, except for the coldest of nights, when she accepted an occasional bed and a warm bath at the McCrearys. Although Mrs. McCreary had offered for Susan to move in, Susan had politely declined by saying, It’s only temporary. But a day turned into a week, which turned into a month. And winter turned to spring.

  Susan finished tying down the tarp, then scanned the empty green pasture. The sheep, and even the lambs, had been requisitioned by the government to clothe and feed the military. Her grandfather had adored his sheep and had only sheared the flock for wool. And it saddened her to think that, although it was necessary for Britain’s survival, Bertie’s beloved lambs were now canned meat.

  She made her way to a pigeon loft. Along with the cottage, most of the lofts had been destroyed. With only a few pigeons remaining, Susan consolidated them into a single loft. As she opened the door, she glanced at the grain barrel, which had been Duchess’s favorite perch. Her hopes of Duchess returning had been snuffed out months ago. All she had left of her pet pigeon were memories. And Ollie’s messages that she had so bravely carried out of occupied France.

  Each morning, Susan read Ollie’s messages. Before meals and sleeping, she prayed that he was alive. But as months passed, her belief that he would someday return slowly faded. Now, several months since Ollie’s last note, she’d become resigned to the fact that she’d never see him again. And that everyone she loved had been taken by war.

  Susan poured grain into the feeding tray. The pigeons swarmed and pecked. Less than fifty pigeons remained, a fraction of the nearly 1,000 that had once filled their lofts. Most were old pigeons or squabs, unsuitable for service. But she didn’t care that these birds were of no use to the National Pigeon Service. They were alive. And for the moment, that’s all that mattered.

  Leaving the loft, Susan picked a handful of daffodils and placed them in the basket on her bicycle. Having no use for the truck, she’d sold it to buy an old woodstove and pigeon feed. She pedaled to the village with cold rain pelting her coat. As she turned into Epping Cemetery, the bicycle’s tires bounced on chunks of gravel, causing her arms to rattle. She braked near a patch of upturned soil and leaned her bicycle against an alder tree adorned with long brown cones. She gathered the contents of her basket and walked to a newly chiseled hunk of limestone. She kneeled, rain seeping through her skirt, and stared at Bertie’s headstone. A twin marker a few feet away bore her grandmother’s name, Agnes Shepherd. Her parents, casualties of the Spanish flu pandemic, were buried on the opposite side of the cemetery.

  Susan placed half of the flowers on her grandparents’ graves, keeping the remainder for her parents when she finished her rounds. As she stared at the etched stone, her guilt swelled, crashing like waves in a storm.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her words muffled by the pattering rain. “I should have insisted that we sleep in the shelter. I’d much rather live like a mole than carry on without you.” She pressed her fingers to the headstone. “I miss you terribly.”

  Carefully, Susan adjusted the flowers between the graves, making sure they were evenly distributed. And after visiting her parents’ graves, she got on her bicycle, wiped a mixture of rain and tears from her face, and then pedaled away.

  By the time Susan returned to the farm, the rain had become heavy, transforming the lane into a marsh. Unable to ride, she pushed her bicycle through soupy ruts until she reached the shelter. Inside, she tossed scrap wood lath, once sealed inside the plaster walls of the cottage, into a rusted iron woodstove to stoke a fire. As the scent of burning wood filled her nose, she removed the notes from her pocket, then draped her coat over a makeshift clothesline strung above the stove. She wondered, although briefly, if her clothes would always stink of smoke.

  As she carefully unfolded the messages, she realized that the papers were damp and the writing was beginning to smear. Foolish of me to carry them in my pocket. She placed them on her cot to dry, resolving to store them in an empty tea tin.

  Refusing to succumb to the somberness that always enveloped her after visits to the cemetery, she retrieved the sewing basket that she’d borrowed from Mrs. McCreary and went to work mending her tattered clothes. She replaced buttons. Patched holes. And as she was repairing a loose seam, she heard a slosh of footsteps. She stopped and put down her needle. Rain pelted the tarp roof. Through a crack in the wall, she caught a glimpse of a dark coat. A knock on the door.

  Hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Susan hesitated, unsettled by the fact that she rarely had visitors.

  Another knock.

  She glanced at the messages. Her pulse accelerated. She stood and opened the door, causing her heart to sink. “Mr. Wallace,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment.

  “Hello, Susan.” Jonathan Wallace removed his hat. Rain dribbled from the elderly man’s chin. “May I come in?”

  Susan hesitated. “It’s rather uncomfortable, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t do well in this weather.” He turned a palm to the rain. “I raise pigeons, not ducks.”

  Susan’s face flushed warm with embarrassment. She hated having anyone see her live like this, especially a respected member of the National Pigeon Service and, even more, a friend of Bertie. But she couldn’t very well leave him standing in the rain, so she stepped aside. She quickly gathered her sewing and placed the notes inside a tea tin, then gestured for him to take a seat on the cot.

  Jonathan looked around the shelter. “How are you, Susan?”

  “I’m well,” she lied.

  “You haven’t responded to my letters.”

  Susan glanced at a stack of unopened mail. She struggled with what to say and was relieved when he changed the subject.

  “Your grandfather and I were quite good friends.” He looked at Susan and smiled. “Even though his racing pigeons always seemed to outperform my own flock.”

  Susan tried to smile but couldn’t find the energy.

  “I understand that you’re a cracking pigeon trainer, and that you were studying zoology before the war.”

  “Second part is true,” Susan said.

  “I’ve come to offer you a job,” he said. “I’m raising pigeons in Northampton, away from the bombs. The farm is rather large, to accommodate the training of both one-way and two-way pigeons.” He paused, then wiped rain from his hat. “I’d like your help.”

  Susan shook her head. “I can’t leave.”

  Jonathan took a deep breath and sighed. “How long can you live like this?”

  The man’s candidness reminded her that she had no job and no money. She had little chance of maintaining, let alone restoring, the farm. Maybe it was her stubbornness, shell shock, or perhaps even madness that enabled her to carry on living under the Luftwaffe bombardment. But deep down, she knew there was something else that was keeping her rooted. “Until I rebuild,” she said.

  “There’s no time,” he said. “The invasion could occur at any moment.”

  Susan recalled the disturbing posters, illustrations of German soldiers and parachutists, presumably to help one spot the enemy, plastered over the village. The ringing of church bells had been banned months ago; they were to be rung only when the enemy invaded. Even the Home Guard, slow but spirited old men, had begun affixing armored plates to their automobiles.

  “I’ve never forgotten how you stood up to our military at the Source Columba meeting in London,” he said. “When members of the National Pigeon Service, including myself, failed to speak up on obvious errors, you had the courage to stand alone.”

  Susan thought of the meeting in London. A flash of Ollie coming to her aid
on the train.

  Jonathan sighed, then looked at Susan. “Bertie adored you.”

  Hearing her grandfather’s name caused her eyes to water.

  “He’d want you to move on.”

  Susan deliberated, torn between abandoning the farm and letting go of her last bit of hope. But Jonathan had shaken her core. He’s not coming back.

  “Join me,” Jonathan said.

  Susan wiped her face. “I have pigeons.”

  “We’ll take them,” he said. “I brought baskets. My lorry is at the end of the lane, which is too muddy to drive on, I’m afraid. We’ll have to carry them.”

  Susan wavered. Her mind and body were drained. Her heart ached with remorse. She’d never given up on anything in her life, at least nothing that mattered. But how could she go on? Tired, hungry, and defeated, she closed her eyes and said, “Very well.”

  For the afternoon, under a drizzling rain, they loaded the pigeons onto Jonathan’s lorry. Susan gathered her few belongings—an armful of clothes and the tea tin. She had Jonathan drive her to see Mrs. McCreary; she returned the sewing basket, kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her for all she’d done. Before departing, she gave Mrs. McCreary Jonathan’s address in Northampton where she could be reached.

  As they drove away, Susan’s hands trembled. Be an egg. She buried her fear, determined to someday return to Epping, assuming Britain wasn’t occupied by Hitler’s army. “I’ll be back after the war,” she whispered to herself.

  CHAPTER 55

  EPPING, ENGLAND—JULY 18, 1996

  “Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,” Susan counted.

  “No peeking!” a small boy shouted.

  “Yes, no peeking, Grandmother!” a girl called.

  “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .” Susan pressed her hands over her eyes. A cabinet squeaked open and abruptly closed. The screen door banged against its frame. The patter of small feet faded away. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. Ready or not, here I come.”

  Susan lowered her hands. Her eyes squinted, adjusting to sunlight spraying through the kitchen window. She stood from her chair, hoping the pain in her knees would allow her to hold out long enough to finish the game. Last week, she had only enough stamina in her rickety legs for two rounds of hide-and-seek, disappointing her grandchildren—Hugh, age five, and Evie, seven. So today she’d chosen to use her cane, an ugly metal contraption with four miniature stubby legs. “It’s for extra stability,” her doctor had said. But she hated it. And rarely used it, except for when she needed extra endurance, like the days her daughter, Clover, dropped off the grandchildren.

  Susan hobbled over the hardwood floor. A warm breeze blew through an open window near the fireplace, the only original part of the structure, although the stones were now in all the wrong places. She’d rebuilt the cottage five years ago, much to Clover’s dismay. “Perhaps it would be more prudent to consider a retirement home,” Clover had said. But although she respected Clover’s opinion, it was her life. And most of her life, at least to this point, had been centered in London.

  During the remainder of the war, Susan trained war pigeons in Northampton. After the war, she finished her studies and became an ornithology professor at the University of London. She got married at the overripe age of thirty-three. Raised a child. Retired. And buried a husband, Duncan, after a long and arduous battle with colon cancer. Her mark in this world, she believed, was nearly complete.

  “I’m returning to Epping,” Susan had told Clover as they cleaned out Duncan’s closet. Clover didn’t understand. How could she? Although Susan had retained the deed to the land, she’d only taken Clover, mostly as a wee child, on family picnics to the farm. The pasture had been overrun with thistle. The lofts were dilapidated. The shelter had collapsed. And Clover, not being an outdoorsy child, had refused to tinkle in the woods, let alone step foot in a spider-infested loo. The picnics were often cut short as they rushed off to a filling station with Clover’s bladder about to burst.

  A year after Duncan’s passing, Susan began rebuilding the cottage. From memory, she worked with a local contractor to build a replica of the structure. It looked much as it did before the war, with one large exception: the cottage was one story, instead of two. “Your knees, Mother,” Clover had said as they reviewed the architectural blueprints. Despite giving in to her daughter’s insistence on leaving out the stairs, the cottage turned out splendidly. Susan started by spending weekends at the cottage. But within a year, she’d sold her flat in London and moved to Epping. She acquired sheep, and as their bellies fattened, the field once again turned green and fertile. And although Clover didn’t fancy the farm, Susan’s grandchildren had grown quite fond of their provincial retreat.

  “I’m going to find you,” Susan said, crossing the living room. A rustling from down the hall. Susan smiled as she made her way to a guest bedroom.

  “Ahem,” a wee voice whispered.

  Susan turned and saw the tip of a child’s shoe sticking out from under the bed.

  “I wonder where you could be.” Susan’s cane clumped over the floor.

  The foot wiggled.

  Susan lowered herself, disregarding pain in her kneecaps. She plucked off the boy’s shoe and tickled his foot.

  “Aaaahhh!” Hugh giggled.

  Susan grabbed the boy’s chubby calves and slid him out from under the bed.

  Hugh squeezed her. “You cheated!”

  “I did no such thing,” Susan said, helping Hugh put on his shoe.

  “I’m it!” he proudly proclaimed.

  Susan marveled at Hugh’s delight in being caught. And at how much he resembled Bertie. Stocky frame. Small barrel chest. His legs, adorably bowed, like the forearms of a pug.

  Hugh ran outside and shouted, “Olly olly oxen free!”

  Susan, returning to the living room, looked out the window and saw Evie, a thin, wiry girl with curly chestnut hair, galloping over the rows of sea lavender. She stepped on asters, squishing their stems, and sprinted toward the porch. Susan smiled. Where a garden once grew bland cabbage and root vegetables, it now contained a variety of flowers. After the war, she’d lost her taste for homegrown food and relished buying her groceries in a store, without the necessity of a ration book.

  They played two more rounds of hide-and-seek. Then Susan made lunch—leftover lentil soup, crackers, and tall glasses of Irn-Bru.

  “Mother doesn’t let us drink soda,” Evie said, dipping a cracker into her Irn-Bru.

  Hugh took a big gulp, then burped.

  “Hugh,” Evie said, giving her brother an elbow.

  “Sorry,” Hugh said.

  Susan took a drink of her soda—a sweet, citrusy orange concoction. She much preferred a glass of water or a cup of black tea. But she was glad to have made the purchase, if only to create a memory.

  They spent the afternoon, as they usually did during the children’s visits, with the pigeons. Along with the loo, the loft was one of the few surviving remnants on the property. Although the structure had been reduced to warped and rotted boards, Susan had had it restored by a local handyman. Except for a plastic grain barrel and the fact that there were only a dozen pigeons, the loft looked much as it did before the war.

  Unlike their mother, Clover, who seemed to have an innate fear of feathered reptiles, Hugh and Evie adored pigeons. Often during the children’s visits, they’d each select a pigeon, tie a color-coded ribbon around its leg, then take a road trip to Clacton-on-Sea. Without the aid of cages, there were occasional droppings on the seats and several episodes of pigeons flying freely about inside the car, which required them to keep the windows rolled up. After arriving in Clacton-on-Sea, they’d toss their respective pigeons into the air, jump back into the car, and race home. But they never knew who had won. The pigeons always arrived first. And Evie and Hugh never seemed to mind, since Susan always stopped on the way home for ice cream.

  “You’re lovely, Bashful,” Evie said, stroking a pigeon’s back.

&
nbsp; The pigeon cooed.

  Hugh plucked a rather hefty pigeon from its cubby, held it above his head like a trophy, and said, “Buzz Lightyear is faster.”

  Susan chuckled. Most of the pigeons were named after the Seven Dwarfs, the remainder after various animated movie characters. Susan thought of her grandfather. Bertie, fond of naming all his racing pigeons after remote Scottish landmasses, none of which he had ever visited, would have been appalled of such commercialized naming. But she didn’t mind the daft labels. After all, she’d once done the same thing. A lifetime ago.

  They spent the afternoon in the loft, until a car horn sounded. Hugh and Evie tucked the pigeons they were holding back into their cubbies and ran outside. Susan stepped from the loft, purposely leaving her cane inside, and gingerly walked to Clover’s shiny black sedan that was parked in the drive.

  Clover checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, then lowered the window.

  “You’re early.” Susan stepped to the car, its engine still running.

  “I have a meeting tonight, remember?”

  “I must have forgotten,” Susan said, noticing Clover’s navy dress and pearl earrings. Her brown hair was neatly combed. Clover, a lawyer—as well as a divorced single mother raising two children—always seemed to be rushing off somewhere.

  “Aw,” said Evie, “can’t we stay?”

  “Not tonight,” Clover said. “I’ve arranged for a sitter.”

  “They could stay with me,” Susan offered.

  “Please,” begged Hugh.

  “Next time,” Clover said. “We need to go.”

  Susan hugged Evie and Hugh, then helped them into the car and buckled their seats. She stepped to the driver’s door.

  “Have fun?” Clover asked.

  Susan nodded. She leaned in and gave her daughter a hug, careful not to smudge her makeup.

  Clover reached into the passenger seat and produced a pile of mail and newspapers. “These have been collecting at the mailbox.”