The Seventh Link

by Margaret Mayhew

  They divided the bags and the lake between them. Geoffrey to cover the outer section in his chest-high waders, the Colonel to deal with the centre from the dinghy. He had done a fair bit of rowing at school and in the army and the boat was very easy to handle. He rowed backwards and forwards, dropping bags at the correct distance from each other. From time to time, fish broke the surface of the water and he knew that they were following him to and fro – curious, or hungry, or both. Several times, he caught sight of the ghost carp.

  The inspector phoned later. Geoffrey took the call and came out on to the terrace where the Colonel was sitting with Heather.

  ‘They’ve done a post-mortem. Death by drowning and he was awash with alcohol. Nothing suspicious and no inquest necessary, thank God. The body’s been released for burial but the Australian police can’t trace any family over there, except for two ex-wives who didn’t want to know anything about him. No children or other relations. Poor fellow, it’s all rather sad. And there’s only a few dollars in his bank account, so the problem is who pays the burial expenses and where is he to be buried? Not much point sending him all the way back to Australia, in the circumstances. I told the inspector I’d have a word with the vicar here and the local branch of the RAF Association. See if something decent could be worked out. I reckon he deserves it.’

  ‘His crew will want to know,’ Heather said. ‘They were like brothers.’

  ‘Good morning, Colonel. Another beautiful day.’

  She had used perfectly normal speech and she was wearing perfectly normal clothes: a plain skirt, blouse and cardigan such as English women of a certain age and type frequently wear. He rather expected her to be eating a plain boiled or poached egg but she was tackling the Full English with the usual gusto.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Warner.’

  He fetched some cornflakes and sat down at the table. She passed him the jug of milk and the sugar.

  ‘I’m leaving today, as you see, Colonel. Sadly, I have to return to the real world.’

  ‘I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay.’

  He didn’t know quite what else to call it; holiday was hardly the right word when she had been slaving away, baking bread from morning till night while the gentry loafed about.

  ‘I always do. I take part in the re-enactment every year.’

  ‘Then you must enjoy it very much.’

  ‘It makes such a change from my other life, you see.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I work for my local council. In the Refuse and Recycling Department. Very little romance there.’

  He smiled. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘For three weeks I escape into another world. The world of four hundred years ago. It’s the best kind of holiday I know and I can thoroughly recommend it. So much better than a cruise. There are still some places available for next year, if you’re interested.’

  He wondered exactly what role she had in mind for him. If he could choose, he thought that he would settle for being a gallant knight in armour, galloping around on horseback, re-fighting some ancient battle with clashing swords. He certainly wouldn’t want to be one of the gentry, sitting around doing nothing all day.

  As though she were following his thoughts, she said, ‘They’re definitely doing Bosworth. It’s all decided.’

  ‘That’s an interesting choice.’

  ‘You could ride with the king as one of his loyal personal guard – knights of the body, they were called. Poor Richard! Dragged from his noble horse, White Surrey, as he led the charge against Henry Tudor and brutally hacked to death. A dreadful end and his body shamefully treated afterwards. He was the last of our kings to die in battle, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I did know. If you don’t count James IV at Flodden thirty years or so later.’

  ‘Which I don’t. He wasn’t English.’

  This was irrefutable. The Scottish king, cut down on the Northumberland fields of Flodden with his nobles and ten thousand troops was dismissed as of little consequence as Miss Warner warmed to her theme.

  ‘Come to that, Richard was the last English king of all. After him they were all foreigners. Welsh, Scots, Dutch, German … every sort. Much as I admire the Tudors, the Plantagenets definitely had the edge when it came to breeding. No one can fault their lineage. They thought the world of Richard in the North, you know. And all that nonsense about him having a hunch back and a withered arm was made up by Shakespeare. It was all Tudor propaganda.’

  In a moment, he feared, they would be on to the conundrum of the Princes in the Tower but, instead, Miss Warner started buttering her toast.

  ‘Will you be staying here long, Colonel?’

  ‘Just a day or two.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure Mr and Mrs Cheetham will be glad of your company until the dust has settled over the accident. Such a dreadful thing to happen. Mr Wilson must have drunk far too much but then Australians often do, don’t they?’

  Naomi would have agreed.

  ‘You said they made rather a lot of noise taking him upstairs to bed that evening, Miss Warner – when you were woken up.’

  ‘Oh yes. An unnecessary amount, I thought.’

  ‘Unnecessary?’

  ‘Quite unnecessary. Banging about and swearing loudly at the poor man. They didn’t seem the kind of gentlemen who would normally swear but I suppose they were fed up with him by then. He must have spoiled their evening.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt he swore back.’

  ‘I didn’t hear him. I should think he was beyond it. Anyway, they were much quieter when they came down. They tiptoed past my room.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear anything later on? Mr Wilson coming downstairs again?’

  ‘Not a sound. As I told that inspector, I went back to sleep quite quickly. Whatever can have got into his head to make him do such a silly thing?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Perhaps it had been the bomber’s moon? The impulse to do something reckless? The urge to retrieve his lost youth? To rediscover the big adventure of his life? The one part he could be proud of? The one part that had not been a failure?

  Miss Warner was spooning some of the home-made marmalade on to her side plate. ‘Of course, they would have taken his shoes off when they put him to bed, wouldn’t they? So he wouldn’t have made much noise when he came down.’

  He remembered the pair of shoes placed at the foot of the bed. The one he had picked up had felt damp but there was a simple enough explanation for that. There had been no other shoes in his luggage. The Australian would have been wearing the same pair as he had worn for the afternoon’s unsteady jaunt on the lake when they’d shipped a fair amount of water.

  Miss Warner spread the marmalade. ‘I suppose he’ll be taken back to Australia.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have any family there. I gather it’s possible that he might be buried here in Buckby, if it can be arranged.’

  ‘That sounds like a very good idea. A suitable resting place for a man who came halfway round the world to fight for this country in her hour of need. Don’t you agree, Colonel?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘Completely.’

  She put down her knife. ‘He was different from the rest of his crew, quite apart from being Australian. I only saw him once and we never spoke but I’m very observant about people. He was the odd man out. Did you notice?’

  The seventh link, he thought. Not necessarily the weakest but, yes, definitely different.

  Miss Warner left after breakfast and he said goodbye to her in the hall.

  ‘I shall hope to see you at the re-enactment next year, Colonel.’

  It would be uncivil to dash her hopes and untrue to raise them. He chose the middle way.

  ‘Possibly, Miss Warner.’

  She considered him, her head tilted to one side.

  ‘You’d make a very good knight.’

  TWELVE

  Don Wilson, former mid-upper gunner of a World War Two Lancaster crew, was buried with ceremony in the church
yard of St Luke’s, Buckby, a few days later.

  It was impressive to see how the vicar, the RAF Association, the RAF Benevolent Fund and the villagers had all worked together to give him a dignified farewell. The church was full and after the service, the coffin, draped in the Australian flag, was carried out on the shoulders of young servicemen and followed slowly by the six surviving members of his old crew. Two RAF buglers played the Last Post when the coffin had been lowered into the grave.

  All properly done, the Colonel thought, and very moving. Due respect paid. A decent conclusion to what seemed to have been rather a wretched life. Even his courageous war service had not, apparently, given the Australian much personal satisfaction. He remembered their conversation: I’ve plenty to remember and none of it good …

  People began to drift away and he went over to speak to the crew who were, in effect, the chief mourners. They had driven up for the burial and though Heather had invited them to stay the night at The Grange they had told her that they would drive back immediately afterwards. It seemed just as well in the circumstances.

  ‘It’s all been a bit of a blow,’ Davies, the bomb aimer, said. ‘Poor old Don. The first one of us to go.’

  As you grew older, the Colonel reflected, all funerals were unsettling reminders of your own mortality. This particular one would have been especially so for these men.

  ‘He’s in a good place.’

  ‘That’s true. And we’re grateful for that.’

  The Colonel murmured a few words to the rest of the crew who scarcely responded.

  The skipper said to him, ‘We never thought this would happen. It takes some getting used to.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘We went through a lot together. The seven of us.’

  The Colonel said sympathetically, ‘You must have done.’

  ‘We didn’t meet for years after but things won’t be the same now that he’s gone. If you can understand that.’

  ‘Yes, I think I can.’

  ‘Don talked to you, didn’t he? Did he say much about the war?’

  The Colonel hesitated. ‘Well, he said he’d got a lot to remember and none of it was good. I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that.’

  ‘It depends on how you look at things, I suppose. He always had his own point of view. He could be a difficult customer.’

  ‘So it would seem. Apparently, he told the local newspaper reporter that serving as crew in Bomber Command was a mug’s game. That the RAF didn’t care about the losses because the men could easily be replaced.’

  ‘Just the sort of thing he would say, I’m afraid. I hope the reporter didn’t take him seriously.’

  ‘I don’t think so. His article is about heroes. Nothing contentious.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  Others came up and soon the crew were surrounded by people wanting to shake their hands. Six elderly men, still quiet and unassuming in spite of all the admiring attention being paid to them.

  The Colonel moved away.

  The newspaper reporter appeared.

  ‘The article will be in tomorrow, Colonel.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to look out for it.’

  ‘The title’s been changed to: “Unsung Heroes.”’

  ‘That sounds much better.’

  ‘There’ll probably be a shot of the RAF buglers today. It will make the point rather well, don’t you think? The present honouring the past.’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘He was rather a rum customer, the Aussie, wasn’t he?’

  Bill Steed had called him a difficult one; the reporter saw him as rum. It was much the same.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Well, I’ve just been talking to a young guy who met him at the reunion dinner. He’s been telling me about it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Apparently, the Aussie insisted that he and his crew weren’t heroes at all. Anything but heroes, in fact. Just the opposite.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He said that they did the first two ops and found out just what hell it was. They also found out that they’d only got a one in three chance of surviving their tour. So, they decided to give themselves better odds.’

  ‘How did they manage that?’

  ‘By dropping their bombs short of the target and buzzing off home. That’s what he said. They got away with it because nobody was expected to be perfect in the early days. It was all pretty chaotic and bombs got dropped all over the place, often nowhere near the target. On a real stinker of an op like Berlin, he said they’d pretend something was wrong so they could turn back. Hydraulics, magneto, oil pressure, R/T … whatever. Any excuse. With any luck, the next target they were given would be a safer one. Or, if it wasn’t, they’d dump their bombs in the sea. That was the general idea, he said. Making things easy for themselves. They’d got it all worked out together. Of course, this guy listening to him was shocked rigid until he finally cottoned on that he was having his leg pulled. It was all a big joke. The Aussie was just kidding.’ The reporter grinned. ‘It wouldn’t have gone down too well in my piece on heroes, would it?’

  Creepback, the Colonel thought. Creepback. But not the involuntary tendency during long raids as described by the Air Vice-Marshal. Don Wilson had meant something else entirely. Deliberately unloading bombs too soon. Deliberately turning back early. Calculated cowardice. And he hadn’t been joking.

  After a while, the crew drove away amid salutes and waves. Skipper, flight engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, rear gunner, leaving their mid-upper gunner behind. The Colonel watched them go. He wondered if they would ever return to visit his grave. Somehow he doubted it.

  ‘Whisky, Hugh?’

  ‘That would be good.’

  Geoffrey poured two large measures.

  ‘Damned shame it all had to end like that. Heather’s still really cut up about it.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘I keep telling her it wasn’t our fault. Nobody’s blaming us. It was an accident, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll feel better about it in time.’

  ‘She keeps saying we ought to sell The Grange and move somewhere else. Give up the whole B and B thing.’

  ‘Do you agree with her?’

  ‘No, I don’t, as a matter of fact. It has its drawbacks – like Miss Warner – but it keeps me busy and out of mischief. Besides, there’s the old control tower to consider. We’ve got plans to make it into a decent museum, did I tell you? Collect old photos, memorabilia, uniforms, genuine fittings and furniture – all that sort of thing. Quite a project. I wouldn’t want to miss out on it.’

  ‘That sounds like a very good idea.’

  ‘Can you stay on a few more days? I could show you what we’ve got in mind. Get your input.’

  ‘It’s kind of you, Geoffrey, but I ought to be getting back.’

  ‘Well, stay until tomorrow at least.’

  The local paper was delivered the next morning and the Colonel retrieved it from the front door mat. The reporter’s article, headed ‘Unsung Heroes’, was on the front page. The Colonel skimmed through it …

  This weekend saw the gathering of fifty-four heroes from the Second World War. Men now well into their eighties, who served at RAF Buckby and risked their lives night after night in the bombing campaign against Hitler’s Nazi Germany. They assembled to remember the comrades they had lost in the struggle and to renew old acquaintance. For too long their vital contribution to victory has been ignored or even condemned by people, many of whom were not born until years afterwards and who have little or no understanding of what was at stake. But this weekend those men, and their comrades who died for our freedom, were given full acknowledgement. A fine stained glass window was unveiled in their honour in St Luke’s church, Buckby, after a moving service of thanksgiving.

  There was a photograph of the memorial window, the group photograph taken at the dinner, and the separate photograph of Bill, Jim, Roge
r, Bob, Ben, Jack and Don, captioned: Seven heroes: a Lancaster bomber crew reunited 57 years later.

  At the end there was a brief mention of the sad accidental death of the Australian mid-upper gunner, Don Wilson, with a picture of the RAF buglers at his burial at St Luke’s. Nothing about The Grange, and no photo. The reporter had kept his word.

  After breakfast, the Colonel took a final walk round the lake with Geoffrey.

  His friend was frowning. ‘Damned blanket weed. Worse than ever, if you ask me. That new stuff’s useless.’

  As usual, the fish had spotted their presence and a hungry escort followed their progress. Once or twice the Colonel caught the pale glint of the ghost carp. They passed the jetty where the dinghy was moored.

  ‘Heather wants me to get rid of the boat.’

  ‘It might be a good idea, if it upsets her.’

  ‘But it’s a nice old thing. I mean, look at it, Hugh. Steady as a rock. It was entirely that chap’s own fault. He was a drunken fool.’

  The Colonel agreed with the drunken part, but he didn’t believe that Don Wilson had been a fool, whatever else he had been.

  They walked away from the lake, past the rescued hens who had ventured bravely forth from their run and were enjoying a glorious freedom for the first time in their lives.

  Geoffrey said, ‘One last look at the old airfield?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He followed his friend through the gateway that led towards the perimeter track and the two of them stood at its edge, in silence for a moment.

  The wind was making the ripe corn rattle sharply; short, dense, common market corn unlike the long-stalked, feathery old-fashioned kind of the Colonel’s childhood that used to whisper softly.

  He said, ‘Did you know that Don Wilson told someone at the reunion dinner that he and his crew were anything but heroes?’

  ‘He was drunk.’

  ‘But he was quite insistent about it, apparently. He claimed that when they crewed up they agreed that they would do whatever they could to improve their chances of survival.’

  ‘No harm in that.’

  ‘No, of course not. But do you remember my asking you what creepback meant?’