That Summer

by Andrew Greig

  She held me tighter then and we held on to each other.

  ‘What are we becoming?’ she murmured.

  I knew what she meant, and in that at least we were close. Then it was natural to kiss her. And she kissed me back, quite fierce, and when I was ready she climbed on top of me and took what she needed.

  When she lay in the silence with her sweating head against my shoulder, I felt moisture in the pool of my neck, and held her more tightly with my heart so open and aching they could have done surgery to try and fix it right there, and I wouldn’t have resisted.

  ‘What was that music?’ I asked as we put ourselves together again.

  ‘Mozart’s clarinet concerto,’ she said. ‘I’ll educate you yet. Oh, Len.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Late August

  He was mine, no doubt about it. A lumbering Do17, the ‘flying pencil’, too low to dive, too slow to run. I’d followed down a Me109 against orders and common sense, but he’d outrun me and pissed off back to France with a whiff of smoke coming from his engine nacelle. But now here was this bomber, heading home. He wouldn’t drop any more bombs on anyone’s dad, I decided that.

  I checked my tail one more time then went in. Got in close before taking out the rear-gunner. Then I could take my time. I checked again and closed.

  My first burst shattered the canopy. Then the pilot was sitting there, his shoulders and head twisting towards me to look. As he turned, my second burst caught him and blew his head off.

  Believe me, I was very close and saw perfectly well.

  I saw how the slipstream caught the neck, the stub of the neck, and as the blood kept pumping out, smeared it back along the fuselage in ragged streams – like raindrops across the windows of a train, I thought. Bright red on grey, right back to the tail, then flecked across the cross.

  It flew on straight and true for a full thirty seconds, then slowly dipped and entered the sea. I thought, the plane’s so stable, why have pilots at all? Stay on the ground and guide them. In the future, we will not be necessary.

  Then I turned and, feeling kind of numb but hungry, turned and flew home for lunch. Number four. I am one hell of a fellow.

  What have I done?

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  So I was back at work the day after the funeral. My headaches had stopped, just the occasional ringing in my ears. This time I didn’t sit at the console like a nervous daydreamer, hoping not to make a mistake and waiting for my shift to end. Instead I read the screen actively, leaned forward to it like I was attacking the planes myself. When I saw the IFF blips that signalled our side, I silently cheered them on.

  For maybe the first time in my life apart from university, which is a study in detachment anyway, I was fully engaged. I wasn’t standing back out of it being ironic or just observing.

  Fact was, I thought even as I read out the details of the approaching hostiles, I joined up because of a vague dislike of bullying and because it was the thing to do. I’d hoped it might be more exciting than a job like teaching. That would come in time. Like Len’s mates, I was embarrassed to talk about great causes, probably because I didn’t at heart have one. I disliked what had happened to Poland and Czechoslovakia then the Low Countries and France. I disapproved of it but essentially it was nothing to do with me. I’d joined the Peace Pledge when I was eighteen because peace seemed a good idea to someone who wanted to be left in it.

  Even this later stage of the War, the blips and all, had made me meet Len (good) then got in the way of me seeing him as often as I’d like (bad). But it was essentially not to do with me because other people themselves were not to do with me.

  I stopped, hand on the calibration dial, appalled at what I’d let myself think. Then as I reeled off bearing and height, distance and approximate numbers, I knew it had been true and I knew that it had ceased to be. Something to do with being bombed personally, and Jean Finlay’s death and then my father’s, had connected me to other people. Even the ones I didn’t particularly take to were connected to me, just by being alive and on our side.

  I stared at the screen and wondered about the ghostly Fräulein looking back at me from the other side. My pale sister, my opposite number. I didn’t know if I was connected with her. I didn’t know if I could afford to be, or if I could afford not to be. That was the dilemma, wasn’t it? Be a poor fighter or a poor human being.

  For a while I tracked a group heading south-west. Then they straightened and came our way. Directly our way. I’d been here before and passed on the warning. I was prepared to sit there to keep tracking all that came behind, that felt like my duty and my personal desire, but the new major ordered us all out when the force got within a mile or two.

  As we ran out of the door I looked up and saw them, the small buzzing fighters first, then the deeper drone of the bombers, and felt that deep clutch in my belly. Then Major Astley pushed me into the slit trench along with the others, and I huddled down, desperately trying to strap on my tin hat. That was the worst bit, waiting with my face pressed against the cold earth as if I was already in my grave. Last time I’d seen, before I turned away, what happened when a bomb fell in a slit trench, and I was terrified of having my body mangled. It was all I had.

  Then the earth began to shake and the noise began. First off to the left, by the masts, a series of huge blasts. Then directly behind, thudding earth into my back. Someone’s hand was clutching my sleeve. The major lay partly on top of me and kept apologizing as he struggled to crawl away. I elbowed him in some kind of a panic.

  I glanced up from my private terror and saw Foxy Farringdon looking back at me. She grinned in the oddest way, raised her eyebrows at once rueful and mock-rueful. Then her face altered as there was a particularly big bang and the earth began to slide. It stopped and she was staring down, all white-faced and her teeth clenched. And suddenly I wasn’t so scared because I was out of my private terror. I was connected. There was a bunch of us in a trench, all scared, all hoping and struggling to survive. I wasn’t alone. We were the same.

  Two more sets of explosions, the rattle of machine-gun fire from above, a scream somewhere suddenly cut off. Then the sound level dropped and the engines began to fade. I lay face-down in the earth, almost comfortable, still trying to understand what had just happened to me. Something big had, for sure. I could feel the difference somewhere in under my ribs. It was almost like falling in love, as subtle, as undeniable, as irreversible.

  Then Major Astley got off my shoulder and I sat up and looked out. Incredibly, the masts were still there, all six of them. One of the huts was leaning badly, the aerial had been blown off ours and two of the windows had disappeared. A bicycle, not my own, lay twisted at an extraordinary angle. Someone was already being carried out of the next trench along.

  I pushed down on the rim of the trench and climbed out. Staggered slightly on my feet then steadied again.

  ‘Are you all right, Corporal?’ Major Astley asked.

  I looked down at myself, then back at Foxy and the adjutant and a secretary I exchanged cigarettes with, all crawling out of the trench.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  Bastards have ruined my stockings, I thought. Then we all started walking back to the hut to check over the equipment.

  There was a lot of glass on the floor, some embedded in the wall, but amazingly the console was still working. I could see fresh blips building up across the Channel, so I pulled on the headphones and got back to work, still holding on to this rare and precious feeling. I felt it pass through the hut, this sense of connectedness, as someone swept out the glass. Jessie Walker took up her pad beside me, Foxy Farringdon settled down with her latest pupil, Major Astley struggled to get through on the phone and the adjutant brewed up tea for us all. It passed through like the life-giving shock wave of a tender bomb, and I thought at least something positive has come out of this, like me and Len on a wider scale.

  I hope I don’t forget it, I thought. I hope I never lose it. I h
ope we don’t die before we can share it.

  An hour later I was sitting outside having a cigarette while my replacement, a new quiet woman called Millie, was on. It was a fine morning, slightly hazed. A Vic of Spitfires swept by low, chasing bandits to the north, and when I waved up the nearside wingman waggled his wings. I thought of Len, and wished him well and good hunting.

  *

  At last I was able to visit Tim Baker in hospital. He was a little pale, but what else could I expect. He thanked me for bringing cigarettes and wanted to book ‘a slow smoochie with the poppet’, which I took to mean a dance with Stella. Said he’d be a little stiff, but maybe she could help with that. Winked. Swine!

  ‘I’m fighting to protect my girl from hogs like you,’ I said.

  ‘Any excuse, old boy,’ he replied, ‘any excuse will do’ – then that inward smile, quite at odds with his posh drawl and that preposterous moustache.

  We stood at a window in the dark, smoking as the bombers went over. His hand shook on his stick and I helped him to a chair. His hip was worse than I’d realized: he’ll not fly again.

  ‘Well out of it,’ I said.

  Silence. I’m a fool. We’ve flown a hatful of sorties together. In a way I love the man. There was the far-off thud of Bofors guns – shooting in the dark, but you have to put up some kind of a show, like me and Tad with those darts so long ago.

  He shook his head, lit up another, never said a word.

  I left with the all clear, got a lift from the CO’s batman, who’d been visiting his son. We didn’t talk much. The night was clear, there were many stars like so often on these blackout nights. I thought: not all the faint ones are far away, nor all the bright ones near. Some are planets, that fuzzy thing’s a galaxy.

  It seemed important, I hung on to it while the bitter smoke of Gold Flake stung my eyes.

  ‘Bloke next to Eddie died in the night,’ the batman said. ‘Spare a cig?’

  We hit something in the road.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Something small.’ We didn’t stop. ‘Well out of it, I reckon.’

  I shook my head, lit up for two, passed one over.

  *

  Into the shelter, here come the planes. They are silver and have no wings. They drop their load. Nothing explodes. A sound like footballs bouncing.

  I look out from the shelter and the airstrip is thick with severed heads, like turnips or huge brown hailstones.

  One rolls at my feet. It is for me, personally. I lift it up. The hair grips my fingers so I cannot put it down. I know I’m going to recognize this and it will be too frightful to bear. The face starts to swing round–

  *

  I woke screaming, trying to beat the blanket off my face. I apologized to the others as I got dressed and went outside for a cigarette. It was right dark out, no moon but cool enough to chill the sweat along my skin. I kept my eyes wide open, fixed on the pale blur of my hand as it rose to my lips. I didn’t want to see anything else.

  I thought of my fierce excitement just before I killed, and my numbness once I had, and then like Stella I said out loud, ‘What are we becoming?’ The night made no answer but an owl’s low hoot. I dragged the lit tip left to right across my face, then into my lips with the good end and dragged the harshness deep into my lungs.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Beginning of September

  We went to a dance, the four of us: me and Len with Tad and Maddy. It was an Observer Corps do and almost everyone was in uniform. The dance hall was a long wooden hut with painted walls and a raised stage where a small but determined swing band was giving its all to some Glenn Miller numbers. There were a few streamers and balloons and somehow the whole thing was infinitely touching to me, this desire to share some fun and laughter in the middle of a war. Though we didn’t know it, this was the crisis week when we came nearest to cracking.

  My slit-trench vision of things had faded a bit – as these things do, I was beginning to realize – but it was still there and I felt unusually well disposed towards my fellow mortals. I was particularly well disposed towards my paramour and positively hung on his arm, which I knew made him feel good.

  So we had a few drinks, then Maddy and Tad disappeared outside for a while and Len and I had some dances, mostly quicksteps and foxtrots. As we danced, we caught up with each other. I told him about the bombings, keeping it light as possible, and he held me that bit tighter. He seemed older, as though the tiredness had sunk inside like water. He told me he’d finally visited his friend Tim in hospital but didn’t enlarge much on it, and I was torn between accepting his privacy and trying to stop distance growing between us.

  We drank and danced some more and grew warm and closer on the turns. We kissed a while in the corner, in the shadows off to the side of the stage. Maddy and Tad reappeared looking tousled and flushed. I told Maddy to at least pick the grass from her dress and what a tart she was. She laughed and told me I wasn’t exactly being demure, hanging on that man like I was begging for a bit of him and she knew exactly which bit.

  I said, ‘In that case I’ll have a dance with yours,’ so I grabbed a rather surprised-looking Tad and dragged him onto the now crowded floor.

  He was a great dancer. Rhythmical and, well, witty. Prepared to lead and give me some of his beat, but without being bossy. Shorter and wider than Len, he turned on a sixpence.

  ‘If you fly like you dance, you must be very good,’ I said.

  He made a face.

  ‘I like the flying well enough,’ he said. ‘It’s the shooting at me I don’t like.’

  I started laughing and couldn’t stop. That seemed to me so funny and truthful and modest. It was the first time we’d talked properly.

  ‘You were bombed, I hear,’ he said. ‘That must be so frightening, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The worst part is just waiting and being helpless.’

  He nodded as we foxtrotted in and out of a tight space. He somehow steered me through without bumping anyone. He must be very good in the sky, I thought.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Helpless I hate, too. Things happen to my family, my country, and I am here and cannot stop them.’

  He looked so desolate then there was nothing I could say that wasn’t foolish. I imagined what it was like, no longer having a home one could go back to or run away from. It didn’t feel nice. I held him a bit tighter.

  The dance ended. I looked around, couldn’t see Len and Maddy. The band launched into ‘Night and Day’, Tad bowed, asked if I’d dance with him again. He kissed my hand when I said Yes and looked at me with open pleasure. I began to see why he and his fellow Poles in other squadrons did so well with women. Len might be an exception, but with other members of his squadron one couldn’t help sensing they wished they were back in the Mess with male company.

  Then to my surprise in the following dance I found myself talking about my dad and how he died, and the hating, how it was inevitable and bad for us. And he listened and didn’t laugh. He said that Len thought if you believe in what you’re fighting for, you can do it without hatred or anger, just do it because it has to be done. Maybe this was true, but he himself needed the hatred.

  He looked at me hard. His big dark eyebrows and strong nose like a hawk’s beak. He was rather impressive, I decided.

  ‘It is not a question of flying but of shooting,’ he said. ‘For me, shooting is best when hating. It is like fuel. Perhaps when it is finished, I crash.’ Then he shrugged and smiled. ‘But this is shooting line, yes? I prefer dancing with lovely ladies, you see.’

  I looked at him with new interest. Then as ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ ended I was telling him I’d heard the man with the big cigar talking about them – the fliers – some days back, saying how much was owed by so many to so few.

  ‘He must be thinking our Mess bills,’ Tad said. ‘I owe so much.’

  We were still laughing as Len came by with Maddy draped over him like ivy. He looked a bit em
barrassed, bless him, so I extricated him by taking her to the Ladies.

  ‘Tad’s a wonderful dancer,’ I said.

  ‘He’s pretty good at lots of things,’ she replied and giggled as she reapplied her lipstick, her bangles clacking away. She glanced sideways at me.

  ‘I like Len,’ she said. ‘He’s kind of serious, then suddenly he’s like a kid again.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s rather sweet.’ I plucked the lipstick, which was mine anyway, out of her hand and leaned towards the mirror to make my mouth yet more irresistible. ‘I’m quite serious about him.’

  I was surprised at the way it came out. She looked at me again.

  ‘Quite serious,’ I repeated.

  ‘Good,’ she said. She put her hand on my arm. ‘I think that’s very brave of you.’

  *

  We went back into the hall and up the far end to the bar. I spotted Len’s head, the slightly too long brown hair. There was a knot of people around him and I smelled trouble like it came out of sweat glands. A big hefty man in Observer Corps uniform was jabbing his finger into Tad’s chest. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Tad’s face was stiff and pale but he wasn’t responding.

  I pushed in closer, Maddy in behind me. I saw two men backing up the tall one and another trying to play the peacemaker. Len was trying to explain something but his fist was clenched.

  The tall man jabbed Tad again.

  ‘You bloody foreigners think you own the place! And our women! Why don’t you go home and keep your nose out of it?’

  Tad grinned a quick, tight smile.