‘That’s hardly the point. And we’ve heard all about your good work in the dinghy from all four of the rest of your crew.’
‘I was the only uninjured one, sir: no one else could do much.’
‘You weren’t uninjured. I’m very glad you’ve got the decoration. And you, Flight.’
‘Mine ought to go to Sergeant Rhys, sir: he aimed the bomb that pranged the cruiser.’
‘Sergeant Rhys gets the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. And Corporal Edkins is mentioned in despatches. I’m sorry there’s nothing for Fuller.’
‘I’m very glad about Rhys, sir. Glad about Edkins, too.’
‘I’m afraid we’ve got to rob you of your second pilot, though.’ Sumner turned to Vachell. ‘You’re getting your own crew, Sergeant.’
‘M-my own c-crew, sir?’ Vachell looked as astonished, and as alarmed, as though he had been ordered to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He gazed at Wheldon with a wild look in his eyes.
Wheldon read the look of appeal—Get me out of this, Pete, for God’s sake—and felt sorry for him. Vachell would be on his own now, with a vengeance.
I hope he gets a second dicky he can lean on.
But the look of near-despair had vanished more quickly than it had dawned. Vachell sat up straighter and began to smile. With pleasure? So it seemed, to Wheldon.
‘Thank you very much, sir.’
‘You’re quite senior on the squadron, now, Sergeant Vachell. I’m sure you’ll do very well as a captain.’
It could be, Wheldon was thinking. Tony’s beginning to behave as though he’s remembering how he coped when it looked as though we were bound to prang; and when we were in the dinghy.
I hope the flight commander’s right. I’m just asking myself whether it isn’t that he’s windy: it’s being shot at when he’s got a few thousand feet of empty space under him that he doesn’t like. He was all right in the dinghy and he’d probably be all right in a warship or on the Maginot Line.
What the hell did he join the R.A.F. for? Must have been the rank and the flying pay.
He said ‘Congrats, Tony. It won’t be the same without you.’
He laughed when Vachell said, lively with gratification at his Distinguished Flying Medal and his captaincy, ‘That is an ambiguous remark, Pete, but I won’t ask you which way you really meant it.’
Wait until he figures out what the flight commander really meant when he told him he’s quite senior on the squadron; now. I wonder how many more pilots we lost on that last op? And since.
Eight
Everyone was at the New Year’s Eve dance, including the Group Captain and the Wing Commander, with their wives. Snow lay several inches deep on the airfield. Squads of airmen had cleared a wide strip with the help of a snowplough, to provide a runway into the prevailing wind. There had, however, been no flying for three days. The wind was erratic and often blew strongly across the runway. The cloud base was too low for a safe approach if an aircraft had taken off. Frequent snow showers left five or six inches on the grass that had shown faintly through after the spades and snowplough had done their work. The squads had to turn out again and again.
Paper chains and holly still decorated the N.A.A.F.I. The stone floor had been sprinkled with talcum powder to make it slippery. Its verbena scent cloyingly dominated the odours of packed uniformed humanity: thick, sweat-soaked boot leather, boot and button polishes, the peculiar stale smell of the shoddy serge-like cloth of which other ranks’ uniforms were made; and brilliantine.
Wheldon, slow foxtrotting Audrey to the strains of A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, enjoyed the wafts of shampoo from her freshly washed hair and the Ouelques Fleurs with which—in contrast with the ubiquitous Phul-Nana and Californian Poppy—she scented herself. He wished that it were Judy Campbell who was singing this sentimental tune instead of the brassy, busty W.A.A.F., a semi-professional—whatever that meant: and a semi-professional at what? Both singing and prostitution seemed within the bounds of credibility—whom everyone knew was being well stuffed by the Entertainments officer. The Entertainments officer was a wartime-commissioned adornment of the Physical Fitness Branch, a peacetime games master at a preparatory school, with conspicuous phallic development.
Wheldon thought of last New Year’s Eve, when war was still eight months off but accepted as inevitable. The sergeants’ mess had held a dance and he had done rather well with a nurse from a local hospital. Dancing with Audrey, he recalled that the nurse had said casually, towards the end of the evening, ‘Is there somewhere we can go for a quick knee-trembler?’ He had soon thought of a place. She had said, afterwards, ‘I don’t do this with every attractive man, you know. Only with my fiancé: but he’s on duty… a house surgeon at the hospital.’ Wheldon remembered being flattered at being categorised as attractive.
When he thought of the 31st of December 1938, he thought also of the grievous differences between the squadron then and now. Half the aircrew who had seen the new year in, in the sergeants’ and officers’ messes or on leave, were gone now. Those who had not been killed had been badly enough wounded never to fly again or were still in hospital. He wondered how many of those still surviving would be alive to see 1941 in. It was a thought that he shoved aside at once.
He smiled down at Audrey.
‘A penny for them,’ she murmured.
He bent to whisper into her ear. ‘I was thinking about our forty-eight.’ Romance has made me a ready liar, he accused himself.
‘Which one: the last or the next?’ There was an intimacy and sensuality in the way she spoke to him that made it difficult to identify her with the hostile, suspicious newcomer to the mess of only a couple of months ago.
‘Both. When can you manage it again?’
She also, that tempestuous first time together, had declared she was ‘only doing this’ because she was ‘really fond of’ him. ‘There’s only been the boy I was engaged to, before you.’
Mention of his dead predecessor had been almost enough to cause immediate flaccidity of his ardour. Almost, but not quite. He didn’t want to think of dead pilots of any kind at that moment, not even fighter pilots who had not even seen the war. He was practical enough to discount her declaration of affection. A healthy young woman of her age needed a man; especially if she had already had one and was being deprived of an accustomed relief for her libido. It was easy enough to feel affection for someone you liked and who was giving you physical pleasure. It was not necessarily a lasting emotion.
But after their two days and nights constantly in each other’s company, he had believed her when she told him that she was very fond of him. He said the same to her.
And now she was proposing a second helping.
‘We could go on an S.O.P.’ A sleeping out pass was readily obtainable and a room could be rented in the village.
‘Let’s do it, then, on your next stand-down.’
‘If you aren’t on night flying.’
He would rather fly. The other was always there, now that they were going steady. They could even manage to do it in his car, if they were pushed. It had a bench seat. They’d have to leave a door open so that there would be room for their legs, and in this weather they would have to be quick about it. And all those layers of clothes between flesh and flesh…
But flying you had to grab whenever you had the chance, just now. And lack of practice at screwing couldn’t kill him, whereas lack of flying practice could. Especially with a new crew; and now that the squadron was definitely off day ops. The last disaster, a week before Christmas, had seen to that. Thank God—there I go again: well, thank… something… someone—the squadron hadn’t been on that shambolic show when another lot of Wimpeys had been hacked to bits on a daylight against Jerry warships. At last the brasshats at Air Ministry recognised that unescorted slow bombers on day ops must be massacred by Messerschmitts even more easily than by Flak.
Forget it, for the moment, can’t you? He was angry with himself for what he looked on as mo
rbid introspection.
Audrey cut across his dark reminiscences. ‘Tony’s come on, hasn’t he?’
Wheldon followed the direction of her eyes, turning her with a neat feather step and hesitation. Vachell had indeed come on during the last few weeks. His boyish fair hair and pale complexion, which had once seemed insipid, now apparently spelt romance when adorned by the still rare ribbon of a Distinguished Flying Medal. He had sold his Morgan three-wheeler and bought a dead flying officer pilot’s roomy Talbot 15: a rakish dark blue coupe with a dimpled fabric-covered body, in which there was ample space to stretch out. His pallor these days was mostly attributable to sexual excesses. Failure had given place to numerous successes, now that he had a decoration and a big car and there was a horde of ill-paid and impressionable young women on camp.
‘I don’t know about come on, but he’s certainly got off!’
‘Jan fancies him no end, you know.’
‘She’s quite a bit older than Tony.’
‘That’s why!’
‘Fay’s worked a miracle on the S.W.O.’
The leathery ex-nanny, still bearing traces of the East African sun, had touched some dormant impressionable chord deep in the Station Warrant Officer’s soul. Perhaps it was her smartness on parade, or it might be her inflexibility as a disciplinarian: but they were regular companions now at the mess bar, at the weekly dances, and on jaunts into neighbouring towns in the S.W.O’s impeccably polished black Austin Ten saloon. They were at that moment performing a well drilled series of intricate and stately manoeuvres to the rhythmic beat of the station dance band, unsmiling and intent on their weaving path through the throng.
Audrey said ‘The poor man’s had it. If Fay doesn’t have him lined up in front of the padre for a spring wedding, I’ll eat my hat.’
‘Really? I thought… never mind.’
‘You thought wrong. No hanky-panky there. The S.W.O. may have tasted all sorts of rabbit pie, from Hong Kong to Uxbridge, but he’ll never break through Fay’s crust until they’ve marched down the aisle.’
Marriage was not a welcome subject. Wheldon was glad that the music stopped just then and his crew surrounded them. The squadron was back to full strength and he had three air gunners again. The new one was another V.R., a 19-year-old who had been an insurance clerk, called Donovan, a qualified wireless operator. His new second pilot joined them with a Scots W.A.A.F. in tow. He was also a Volunteer Reservist, under articles to a firm of accountants. His name was MacLeod and he was very happy this evening because it was Hogmanay and he had been drinking whisky in the sergeants’ mess.
By special dispensation from the station commander, the N.A.A.F.I. bar was selling sherry, for the benefit of the wives and W.A.A.F. MacLeod was handing round drinks and chuntering genially to the three air gunners. ‘You laddies will be drinking forbye in comfort in our mess; and have more bawbees in your pockets too, d’ye ken,’ he told them.
An Air Ministry Order had just been published promoting all aircraftmen aircrew to sergeant. For the time being, the squadron was issuing stripes to be worn on operations, in the hope that these would confer privileges if a wearer were shot down and captured. The stripes had to be handed back to stores after each sortie!
Wheldon looked around his crew and felt a current of affection and responsibility which seemed to him so out of place at that moment that it embarrassed him. A New Year’s Eve dance was not the time to indulge in mental reminiscence of the tribulations they had shared and the stoicism with which everyone had borne them. Donovan’s face was sharp and eager as he listened to what Macleod was burbling on about, and Rhys was laughing as he tried to talk MacLeod down so that he could make the others listen to a joke he had brought back from his leave in Tredegar. Fuller was blinking, a new habit, and smiling quietly in a secretive way, as though he had some hidden knowledge that gave him satisfaction. The knowledge, Wheldon reflected, that he had discovered the depth of comradeship which bound the four of them who had shared the dinghy so indissolubly together.
There had been a fifth man in the dinghy, and without him none of them might be here to greet 1940. He looked for Vachell and found him with a beautiful W.A.A.F. at his side who was looking at him with blatant admiration. He was more interested in Vachell’s second pilot than in his girl. There was a dour and sceptical air about the fellow which made Wheldon uneasy. No business of mine, he told himself. Still, I don’t think Tony’s going to enjoy going on ops with that tough-looking type.
The tough-looking novice was swarthy and built like a whippet. Wheldon would not have been much surprised if he had worn an earring. I can just see him in a fun fair, he thought: ‘Cross me palm with silver and I’ll tell yer fortune.’ He had the aspect of a fighter who would be readier with a knife and a few cripplingly planted kicks than with his fists. He had arrived only that morning and now Vachell, catching Wheldon’s eyes, was leading him towards his old crew.
The beautiful W.A.A.F. still did not take her eyes off Vachell, despite the obvious blandishments of another sergeant pilot who had quickly stepped into his place.
Vachell wore a perceptibly defiant air when he presented his acquisition. ‘This is Sid Moakes.’
Moakes looked bleakly at each of the crew in turn and then at Audrey.
‘Hello. Call you Donkey, do they?’ Wheldon didn’t want to be offensive but Moakes’s austere, smouldering regard invited jest.
‘Not if they don’t want trouble.’ Moakes’s lips moved in a strange way, as though he had to find and then force each word out: as though spitting pebbles. He spoke with a Geordie accent. Wheldon had always liked Geordies. He didn’t think he was ever going to like this one. A Gipsy Geordie? He supposed it was possible.
‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Trouble? We don’t want any of that on this squadron. We get enough from Jerry, as it is.’
‘What a bloody line,’ Rhys said with a shout of laughter.
Wheldon grinned. ‘All right, Taffy. We all know you never shoot a line. Except, of course, about how you nearly got picked for a Welsh trial.’
Macleod asked ‘How long have you been in the V.R.?’
Moakes looked at him as though making up his mind whether to ignore the question or answer. ‘Joined at Munich time.’
This was just the kind of information for which Macleod had hoped. He grinned. ‘You won’t have more than a couple of hundred hours in, then.’
This called for further silent study before Moakes said ‘Enough to fly a Wimpey on ops, apparently.’
Macleod had spent three years in the Volunteer Reserve and earned his living during the last of them as an air taxi pilot. He was disappointed that Moakes had not given him the chance to say so.
Moakes did not seem remotely interested in his captain’s friends. He looked at Audrey again. ‘Dance?’
She was startled and glanced at Wheldon. She cleared her throat. ‘I’ve already…’
‘Promised it to the Flight Sergeant. O.K.’ Moakes took a long pull at his beer, then suddenly announced ‘I’ll have that bint,’ and made for a spectacled W.A.A.F. who had been shifting hopefully from foot to foot and picking a pimple on her chin.
Wheldon wondered whether he was being deliberately insulting: putting Audrey in the same unattractive category as the waiflike wallflower. Moakes whirled her away, moving with the virtuosity of a veteran palais de danse habitué. The very plain girl, as so often happened, followed his intricate flourishes with equal skill.
‘Well, now,’ said Rhys, ‘if he flys like he bloody dances, you’ll be all over the sky, man.’
Vachell looked discomfited. ‘Sid’s all right.’
Wheldon said ‘You haven’t flown with him, yet.’
‘No, but he’s a lay preacher: steady type.’
They all laughed. ‘A lay preacher?’ ‘A lay preacher!’ ‘Him?’ ‘A bible-thumper?’ And so on.
‘How do you know?’ Wheldon was curious. ‘He’s only been on camp a few hours. Tried to save you already, has he?’
/>
Vachell looked bashful and did not answer.
Audrey said ‘He was pulling your leg, Tony. Didn’t you hear him call her a “bint”? That’s not the respectful way I’d expect to hear a preacher refer to a girl.’
‘He was just trying to be one of the boys… y’know… Service slang.’ Vachell giggled. ‘He could have used a lot of less respectful words than bint.’
‘Let me know sometime what he calls you, when you scare him,’ Wheldon said.
‘Me? Scare him? When did I ever scare anyone when I was in the left-hand seat?’ Vachell looked happily round at his old comrades, knowing the flurry of insults this would provoke. He was looking merrier than he had all evening.
Oh, calamity! thought Wheldon.
*
There was no fixed time for briefing or take-off. The crews on the Battle Order, detailed to drop leaflets over German cities, had been told that they must take off and return between certain times which would ensure that the entire sortie was covered by darkness; and they could choose their own targets and routes.
‘Targets!’ Wheldon was not given to sneering, but his grimace displayed contempt as much as disappointment. ‘A target is an object you try to hit. What we’re going to do is drop buckshee bog paper on Jerry. That’s all they’ll use them for. They daren’t read them: they get slung in jail, if they’re caught.’
‘It’ll be a more interesting navigation exercise than cruising all round this country,’ Rhys said. ‘And we may get a bit of excitement.’
‘Jerry’s not going to give away all his searchlight and flak positions, when he knows we’re only carting a load of paper around.’ Macleod put his pipe back between his teeth and held a match to the black shag with which its bowl was packed. He had sounded as scornful as Wheldon.
‘What about fighters?’ said Edkins. His promotion, with Fuller’s and Donovan’s, had been promulgated in the Personnel Occurrence Report that day. Their chevrons (tapes, to the R.A.F.) were now stitched on permanently.
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