by Andrew Greig
‘I have no home but here,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anyone owns Madeleine.’ Then he added ‘Least of all you, my friend.’
Then the big man’s fist was coming up and Len was cutting across between him and Tad. He caught the blow right on his temple. He staggered sideways then came back and jumped for the man’s throat with both hands. Then Tad joined in and so did hefty’s two mates and I got pushed backwards out of the mêlée. I’d never seen grown men fight before and it was horrible. Maddy screeched and waved over two more pilots from the squadron, and they joined in. Then some more Observer Corps showed up.
It was like Len said about their dog fights: a shambles. Blows to the face, arms round throats, kicking and flailing, people falling down, slipping. It was the violence of it, the fury that had suddenly erupted, that’s what was shocking. As was my inability to do anything about it.
It wasn’t like in the films. It wasn’t heroic or funny or even clean-cut. I saw Len fold as he took an elbow in the gut, then I was pushing to try to get in to the circle to pull him out. I saw him get off his knees then with a horrible shout he threw himself at the red-faced tubby man who’d hit him, and started trying to pull the man’s head off. They both fell backward on the floor, the tubby man on top. Tad was in the centre of a thrash of fists and shoulders. The band was still playing ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ but the dancing had stopped.
Then the military police burst in and broke everything up and in seconds the whole thing ended. Men were clutching their wounds or drifting sheepishly back to the bar. Len had been arm-locked by a military policeman. I didn’t know their exact powers but I had a strong feeling they could arrest anyone in uniform and this meant trouble. With a bit of luck, it meant non-flying. I was pleased to see Tad had been secured too, though it took three to hold him.
Then the CO from the squadron was in there talking to the MPs. He took them aside and whispered in their ear. Next thing was our men were being released with just a minor bollocking (as they put it so tastefully) all round and we took them outside.
‘What was all that about?’ Maddy asked.
‘You, mostly,’ Len replied. He seemed angry and I couldn’t decide if it was because of his loss of control or that he didn’t do better in the fight.
‘I think not,’ Tad said. ‘Those boys don’t like my accent, that is all.’ He put his arm round Maddy then looked up at the dark sky and laughed. ‘Whoee! Maybe we are letting off some steam.’
‘What did the CO say to you?’ I asked Len.
He massaged his eye.
‘We’re to report to him in the morning. Oh, and he said next time try not to get outnumbered.’ He shrugged and laughed quietly. ‘Well, they’re not going to ground us at this stage in the game. Experienced pilots are worth roughly their weight in gold right now.’
‘So you can get into fights?’
He looked at me for a long time while Tad and Maddy canoodled at the other end of the porch.
‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘We can get into fights. But I tried to stop it till that bloke insulted Tad about being foreign. The man’s risking his life being over here, Stella.’
I knew I should leave it but I couldn’t. I was still shocked by that physical violence so near to me. The sheer anger of it, so close and so personal, much more so than bullets and bombs all released at a distance. I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
‘So is he fighting because the cause is right or because he likes flying and fighting? And what about you?’ I asked.
A long silence, then I looked up at his face, side-lit by the light that spilled from the hall as another couple stumbled out. He looked tired and drawn but rather fine. His right eye was already swelling up.
‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. But right now, does it matter? When it’s serious, I’m not sure how much motives matter. Maybe only what you do counts, not why. Maybe Why? is just a game you play at university.’
I thought then of Roger, his beautiful elegant way with an argument. The way he used to dispatch causes like a bullfighter did away with bulls. Roger was now on the North American convoys and somewhere way in the back of my mind or heart the anxiety was always there. Had he put Why? behind him like a childish toy of our student days, or having come to his own conclusions, did he not need to think of it any more? Then I admitted that more important to me was whether he’d put me, us, behind him. That mattered to me more than these high-flown speculations. Simple ego as usual. Me, me, me.
I drew Len to the other side of the porch and clung on to him. We kissed lots, which is often better than thinking.
*
We got our lift back sometime after midnight. The night was clear and soft. As we sat on the men’s knees in the back, someone wound the window down and the night air blew over our faces. Behind me Tad started singing quietly ‘I’ll be seeing you in all the old, familiar places / that this heart of mine embraces all day through’, and Maddy joined in. I could feel Len’s face pressed into my back, felt the wind on my face and saw a handful of stars in the northern sky, and for a long moment felt I was travelling home through the night with a mixed bunch, like I’d always wanted.
May we learn to take without anxiety the days that are left.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Early September
Shaken awake in the half-light, mug of tea into my hand, sign the chit. My right eye throbbing and swollen as I looked out on the dawn through a slit. Not the best way to prepare for another day staying alive.
Tad was sitting beside me on the truck to the airfield. He was looking cheerful, shaved and neat and whistling. The word had got round about last night’s doings and we took some flak about it but the general feeling was we’d stood up for the squadron’s honour. Me, I was less sure. I still felt the rush of murderous rage that had gone through me like a cornfield fire. I had wanted to tear that man’s head off. Then I shivered at the picture.
I quietly told Tad I was sorry for what the man had said about his being a foreigner over here. I said we were all bucked that he and many others thought it right to come over and join in. Everyone knew the new Polish 303 squadron had downed another six aircraft the other day; they were great fighters.
He put his arm round my shoulder, which I still wasn’t used to, and he laughed.
‘Thanks, my friend,’ he said. ‘I should know Maddy would get me into trouble, spreading herself around like that. But she’s a great girl, great!’
He blew on his fingertips – his hands were surprisingly small – then crunched the apple he’d picked up and with a whoop hurled it into the poplar trees as we sped by.
‘Say, Tad,’ Dusty Miller called, ‘how come you haven’t joined 303 squadron, be with the other Poles?’
Tad stared at him, then broke into a big smile.
‘And leave you lot blind without me?’
And there was laughter because it was true. Like other Polish pilots we’d heard of, Tad had phenomenal eyesight and, not having trained on RDF ground control, had always relied on it. Time and again he was the first to spot aircraft.
Now we drove past hop orchards dark-wet with dew that was getting heavier as the month wore on. We bumped down the track in a plume of pale dust, and I thought about how much I loved these morning rides, just as I hated the growing sick, heavy feeling in my stomach as we got closer to the airfield. I loved the onrush, the clear, cool morning blown into my face and waking me up, the undemanding company of friends. I’d have been happy if we’d never arrived, just kept on bumping for ever down the pale flinty tracks of southern England.
*
Someone must have messed up or else the enemy was getting smarter. We were hearing how Biggin Hill had been given another pasting when we became aware of a buzz on the horizon, low over the trees. Getting louder. Wrong sort of engine. Then we were all running towards our planes, preferring to take our chances in the air to getting caught helplessly on the ground.
I was being strapped in as the first plane
appeared over the boundary fence. My engine caught, the chocks were dragged away and I began to trundle. It all happened too slow, the bomber closing in and me gradually picking up speed. I glanced to my left and saw Sniff Burton’s tail wheel come up. Then to my right where Tad was leaning forward in his cockpit as though it could make him go faster. Then my kite was starting to get unstuck even as I saw the first flashes from the bomber’s nose and then the fat slug bombs dripping from below it.
A hell of a bang and my windscreen was covered in earth. Then the plane flipped and I was on my back with a terrific roar and jolting. I cut the ignition and prayed the cockpit cover would hold up, for only it was stopping my head from getting ripped off by the ground we were skidding over. I tried to hang on and squeeze myself small as possible. I think I was sobbing No, no, when there was a great jolt and my head slammed into the instrument panel and that was it.
*
It was quiet but rocking when I came to. Someone was pushing the wing up and down, as if that would help. I had a very strong desire to get out of the plane but could see no way of doing it, not with the hood pinned to the ground by the weight of the Hurri. I felt the tickle and taste of blood running from my nose down over my cheek and forehead. It was very uncomfortable being upside down. I felt my head was starting to swell up and panic wasn’t far away.
There was a rapping at the canopy beside my head. I turned and saw Evans squatting and looking anxiously through at me. Then he gave me the thumbs up and something oddly like a quick grin. He seemed almost amused. His mouth moved but the glass was thick and my ears were still ringing.
It must have been half an hour before I was freed, slithering sideways out of the cockpit. I lay on the grass, snatching for breath and feeling my head pulse. I didn’t want to move ever again.
Tad sat me up, arms round my shoulders as I tried to fall back again.
‘Did you get off?’ I asked.
He grinned savagely.
‘Depends how far you call off,’ he said. He pointed, and over the hedge on the west perimeter I saw a Hurri’s wing, canted up towards the sky.
‘And Sniff?’
‘He got away all right. Trouble is the 109s got him.’ Tad nodded over towards the trees. Behind them a black twist of smoke rose lazily into the still air. ‘I know he is killed. The Spits all got shot up to hell at the far end.’
I shook my head and tried to stand up. The ground was making like we were at sea. I kept noticing how quiet it was, the kind of silence that follows much noise.
‘Think I’d better sit down for a while,’ I said.
*
So I sat down for an hour or two, feeling very strange. Then the CO talked to me. He didn’t seem to make much sense but told me to stand down for the rest of the day, which was fine as I felt quite tired.
I lay down in the long grass away from the huts but couldn’t sleep, kept slipping back into that roar around my head. I was thinking about Sniff, how I couldn’t remember much about him apart from his name and his sniffing from hay fever which drove everyone crazy and how he rattled away at the Mess piano, and a delighted quiff of fair hair that jumped up from his forehead, and there he was, suddenly past tense. Gone. He must have had parents, brothers and sisters maybe, a girlfriend. Just like whoever had shot him down. Who we must kill in turn.
I got up, slipped through the perimeter fence and went for a walk through the woods. It was cool and green in there. I found the tree where I’d carved my name but it looked too much like a tombstone so I took ten minutes to carve a thumbs up fist below it then wandered on my way.
I had a hell of a headache and felt edgy and snappy. I stopped at the edge of the field, cracked a dry branch and suddenly was close to tears. Then I went on to the village, sat down in the tea shop to get a decent cup of tea and some cake. The woman behind the counter told me she’d heard that the RAF had sunk barges full of German troops and the Channel was awash with bodies. Surely the invasion would be soon – did I know anything? I assured her I knew absolutely sweet Fanny Adams and concentrated on my cake.
I found myself back at the airfield – it seems I can’t stay away. I’ve nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. I sat in a chair in the sunlight, wondering. We’re all desperate for this to end but what else are we fit for now? We’re like elastic that has been stretched way beyond its size so when the pressure’s off it won’t spring back again. That’s what the War does and nobody told us. Our dads could have told us but they didn’t want to talk about it.
I looked around at the lads. I looked at them playing cards, flicking through magazines, arguing over tactics and pubs, places to go in London, snoozing in the sun or brewing up inside the hut, waiting for Blue and Yellow sections to putter down over the boundary. They used to look so relaxed to me. Now I could see the tension that came off them like a heat haze. They were pretty bloody scared. It was in the little things – matches cracked across knuckles, a tuneless whistling from Tad as he turned another page of his Polish Air Force newspaper, the edgy irritated corner of the mouth of the man next to him whose name I didn’t even know, the misdeal in the game of cards, the shock that jerked through everyone when the Tannoy clicked. It came to me: these are doomed men and they know it.
Then I thought: so are we all. It’s just that in wartime it’s speeded up a bit.
I sat there in the sun, dazed with heat, without any answers, just feeling a half-formed question go through me like another nausea attack. Only Coco Cadbury seemed genuinely at ease, smoking a pipe and reading a book as though he had a lifetime to spare. What was his secret? Was he just very stupid? He didn’t seem stupid, the few times I’d talked with him.
A plane came droning down over the trees. Then a pair more. Then another, weaving drunkenly and shot up round the tailplane. That left two more to come. There was a long pause. Everyone was counting but no one was speaking about it. They went back to their papers and cards and fitful dozing.
Then the CO came over, with a medic of some sort, a man with very light eyes and a quiet voice. He drove me back to barracks, asked me some questions about what had happened to me that morning, and shone a light in my eyes. He tapped various parts of me, looked in my ears with something cold, asked the date (which I got wrong), the day of the week (right), the name of the Prime Minister.
‘Tommy Handley,’ I said. ‘Only joking,’ I added. ‘It’s really Ernest Bevin.’
He hesitated then smiled. Sort of. He asked about my headache, if I’d ringing in my ears, if I was feeling normal.
Normal! I told him if this was normal, the world had gone mad. Nothing had been normal all summer. Would he call this normal? If I felt normal, there was something wrong with me.
‘Take it easy, old chap,’ he said. ‘I have to ask these questions.’
Then I felt suddenly very close to tears. I think he saw that, and he asked when I’d last had leave. I told him: after my last accident (that was the word I used, stupid really). I said I’d gone off for a few days with my girlfriend but I really couldn’t remember when that was.
He nodded then asked a bit more, about how I was sleeping and that. Then he shook my hand, stood up and said he had to get on. He was going to see more pilots. He told me to get some rest because I had concussion. I probably wouldn’t fly for a few days. Then he went off. I’d a feeling he was quite senior.
*
I was sitting in the Mess, swallowing aspirin and catching up my diary when the news came through. We were to be withdrawn for a spell, to Scotland, somewhere near Aberdeen. I reckoned the medic chap had something to do with it, and he was right. It wasn’t just me, the squadron was in pretty bad shape. Too many pals had come and gone. Everyone was shattered, and at least a couple of the lads had been breaking off early from combat and flying home. They were brave enough men, they were just too tired to feel up to it.
I’d a few days leave for my concussion, and I hoped to see Stella then go and visit my parents. Something needed to be said, I didn’t know what.
Then I’d go north to join the squadron and have a damned good rest.
I wrote a quick note to Stella, sealed and addressed it. I slumped in the old leather chair in the corner of the Mess. For once there were no high jinks going on at the bar, just quiet steady drinking as the news went round of our posting. I looked up as someone called my name, grinned and slipped the letter into my uniform pocket. Then, despite the strange high ringing in my head, I got up to join them at the bar, sip a pint of thin wartime beer, and be in the company of men who for the first time felt maybe they were going to survive this.
*
When I stumbled into our room last thing, I found Tad packing up his gear. He was, I think, in a worse state than me. He never drank heavily before early flying, but now he could relax and a steady stream of vodka had gone down his throat that evening.
‘Off to Northolt to see Polish friends at 303 squadron,’ he said. ‘Tell them they are not all so hot. Then we will go into London, to the 400 Club for some night life. Lots of Poles, lots of women, lots of laughing and lies.’
‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘Home from home.’
He pulled tight the drawstring of his kitbag and sat down heavily.
‘We do our best,’ he said, ‘and General Sikorski is a fine leader. But really we have no home, and I think perhaps we will never return to Poland.’
With that he flopped back on the bed, closed his eyes and was away.
I pulled his bag against the wall and noticed a pair of brown shoes under the third bed. Everything else of Sniff Burton’s had already been gathered up. This was the scuffy old pair he never shone because he claimed he was allergic to shoe polish. Well, we wouldn’t have his maddening sniff keeping us awake any more.
I picked up the shoes and put them out in the corridor and closed the door carefully. Then I brushed my teeth, my head swimming and my eyes watery. I managed to get undressed though it took all the concentration I had, lay down and was gone.