That Summer

by Andrew Greig

  Lying beside them, listening to their quiet voices doing routines about the trenches, he felt the distance he’d come from himself since the War began, and the unknown distance yet to go. As if there were a long row of earlier selves lying in sleeping bags to his left in what was presumably the big bothy of his life, and another more shadowy series of future selves parked off to his right, stretching into the dimness beyond the reach of his torch.

  He smiled to himself in the half-dark. He appreciated Alec and Jimmy not asking him about the flying and combat. Their stories of their war seemed a kind of sympathy, a way of letting him know they understood both the terror and the dailyness, the exultation and the bewilderment and the weight of the knowledge that one had killed.

  Jimmy was talking about the importance of keeping your feet washed and dry. One sunny afternoon his platoon hung their socks out to dry on a radio-telephone line and German snipers had used them as target practice, and he’d lain in the sun darning a bullet hole in the heel and it had been the happiest moment of the war, happier even than the end of it when they’d been too tired to feel much at all.

  ‘Of course, you had to believe you personally wouldn’t get it,’ Alec said thoughtfully. ‘Even though you knew you probably would. Otherwise how could you carry on?’

  How indeed, Len thought.

  He lay unmoving in his bag as Alec went on to talk about the day he lost that particular illusion. A grey, misty morning, after hours and days of barrage from the guns behind them. Then the silence. Then the men being ordered over the top, slowly breaking out of the trenches like a wave breaking the length of a beach. And when it came to their company and the officer, a Captain Grey, ordered them to attack, leave the trench and advance towards the enemy. As he stood below the lip of the trench, Alec understood for the first time he would die if he went up there. A bullet would hit him, perhaps several, and he’d be dead. He was no different from anyone else. His body was soft, he would be hit – he could hear the machine guns had started up, heard the shouts and the sudden, cut-off cries – and he would die.

  He stood in the trench, unable to move as his mates levered themselves from the trench and started off. He stood there, shaking his head. Captain Grey stood on the lip of the trench, pointing his revolver at him. Ordered him to leave the trench. Alec stood looking down at his feet, his precious muddy feet, and shook his head, more in bewilderment than refusal.

  ‘For the last time, Corporal!’

  He looked up at Grey, at the gun pointed at his heart, and slowly shook his head. Captain Grey frowned as though puzzled, then suddenly reeled sideways and spilled into the trench. Alec looked at the open emptying eyes, the blood spreading from the throat and more staining the uniform round the chest. Then he shrieked, jumped out of the trench and started running, shouting, after his companions. Then a bullet hit his thigh and he went down and stayed down, cheek resting on the mud. He cursed the deep pain and muttered Thank God, thank God, for he was still alive. After a while he began to crawl the short distance back to the trench. He made it, and his war was over.

  ‘I don’t know what changed,’ Alec concluded. ‘Or why. I just woke up that morning and realized I wasn’t an exception. You think because you’re smart or lucky or just because you’re you, you’ll get off with it. But I realized I was like anyone else. I would be hit and I would die. Well, I was wrong about that last bit!’

  ‘You were aye a right haiver,’ Jimmy said, and then they both turned the conversation to jokes and anecdotes and finally got off the war altogether. But long after they ceased and the torches had gone out, Len lay awake in the blackness inside the bothy, looking up where the ceiling must be and, beyond that, the distant, indifferent night sky, where he too was not an exception.

  We got to the Farringdons’ pile round five o’clock and were met by Foxy, her parents and brothers, her boyfriend John Goldsmith, and various alarmingly smart (though not too intelligent) aunts. No butler, to Maddy’s disappointment, but a couple of maids took our coats. At first sight I disliked John G. for having a high forehead, wavy hair and a long aristocratic nose, but he seemed so high-spirited, so pleased with life and himself (and, it has to be said, me), that I came round to him. I’m shallow and easily led, but it is nice to laugh and flirt again.

  Meanwhile Maddy was having a wonderful time, being outrageously forward with Foxy’s brother Gerald, who looked rather smart in his army uniform, back for a weekend’s leave before being sent out to Malaya.

  ‘I expect it’ll be gin slings and polo parties and the chance to improve my golf,’ Gerald said. ‘Should be pretty quiet, not like here.’ And indeed as he spoke, we heard the low distant thuds and some sirens nearer by.

  The house was enormous. We were shown up to our room, quickly had baths then changed into our new frocks and went downstairs. We rather nervously went into a marvellous public room with a genuine Adam ceiling and there met loads of confident, high-spirited people and had cocktails and chat.

  I was trying to be an ironic observer, told myself I was cleverer and better educated than most of these people. But still I felt gauche as I drank and laughed and listened to John G.’s dubious but funny stories.

  My body tingled, my mind seemed full of bubbles. I felt the heat and warmth of John’s big shoulders brush mine as we sat down together for dinner. (Foxy was further up, wedged in between two stiff aunts, and I had to wonder what the parents’ attitude was towards this supposed couple.)

  The meal lingers in my mind’s mouth still. There was a handwritten menu in front of each of us.

  Oysters or smoked salmon or grapefruit

  Thick or clear soup

  Steamed sole

  Glazed chicken with vegetables

  Iced puddings

  Savouries

  Coffee

  To accompany this, we had sherry, hock and champagne, and John and I applied ourselves with zeal to all of them. He explained to me how drink numbs the higher centres that control your repressions, thus giving free play to all your lower centres. I pointed out I had no repressions so the drink would make little difference to me.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said, and filled my glass again. ‘We’ll see about that.’

  I caught Maddy’s eye over my glass; she winked at me. Lacking all decorum, I winked back. Then someone put on gramophone records in the ballroom and John went to have the first dance with Foxy while the aunts scrutinized. Then he came back and danced with me.

  He was a marvellous dancer but ooh! sensual to his fingertips. He had a habit of getting your right hand on his hips, where he would play with it in a thoughtful way. Also of placing his lips on top of my head (at least, that’s what it felt like). His conversation was excellent too – the best part was his voice, which was deep and very slow and considered, nothing like Len’s urgency. He lamented that we hadn’t met earlier, not just before he had to leave. He rebuked me for trying to chassé at the end of a three-quarter turn. I pretended to kick his shins and told him I would chassé just when I wanted, and his job was to keep up with me.

  I kept noticing Foxy looking on, and her aunts, but what could I do? Besides, I was enjoying myself extremely. On a turn by the blacked-out windows, I briefly thought of Len somewhere in the mountains, but he seemed faint and a long way off. And besides, he’d said often enough it’s important to enjoy the here and now, so I decided I’d be a sophisticate and do just that.

  It was, I should say, a very speedy and passionate foxtrot. At the end of it, he insisted on taking my pulse, said with pride he’d once got a girl’s to 130. Mine was 100, his 90, but as his is usually 60, I thought I’d done pretty well.

  Then I made to sit down but he kept me up for two more dances and then finally an eightsome reel, which seemed complicated at first but like anything else you watch other people and catch on and begin to see the point in it. The point is fun, nothing else.

  I glimpsed Foxy flanked by guardian aunts and felt sorry for her. But really, if she allows her life to be guid
ed by aged relatives, no surprise she’s unhappy.

  John G. took my pulse again – 110. He said he’d never met a woman with such marvellous stamina. He lingered longer than strictly necessary over my palm then asked my height. I told him.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Just the right height for a waltz.’

  And certainly we fitted nicely as we spun round the room (which was, I admit, beginning to spin round me). And he liked the right books too – Cold Comfort Farm, Pooh and Pygmalion and Gone with the Wind.

  Most of the time seemed spent with him, but I also danced with a Derek, another John and a moon-faced calf called Anthony who asked me what pack I hunted with.

  Then I sat down a while and talked to Maddy and Gerald (she was sitting on his knee, fairly drunk, I think, her lower centres working just fine). She pointed across the room at Anthony.

  ‘That fat bloke,’ she said. ‘He asked me what pack I hunted with. And I told him – my girlfriends on a Saturday night. Then he went all pink in his ears. Ooh, I said, you’ve gone the colour of one of those riding coats.’

  Then John G. was sitting beside me and we talked about Life – a thing, he agreed, one was tempted to do after midnight. And we said lots of things about how short and strange and uncertain it was, and how you had to stay up late and enjoy all experience as much as possible. Then we went out into the garden to cool off.

  The garden was huge, walled, with big trees at the bottom end. We sat on a bench in what I suppose you’d call a bower, drinking champagne direct from the bottle (which made it go up my nose) and admiring the moon. A fine full moon, low in the sky and still yellow. A harvest moon. A bomber’s moon – or is that a clouded one? I wondered. Off in the distance was a red glow and every so often sparks lit up in the sky. It was, in its way, very beautiful.

  ‘Your pulse rate is still raised,’ he said. ‘I wonder why?’

  He had his hand lightly on my wrist. He looked at me, smiling in the moonlight. I saw his teeth shine in the dim light from the moon and the docks on fire, and his eyes were dark in shadow. I knew he was going to kiss me and at that moment I wanted him to. I wanted to feel someone else’s lips, the taste of someone else’s mouth and their arms round me. He bent towards me. I’d never see him again. I bent towards him.

  Maddy pushed into the bower, trailing Gerald behind her.

  ‘Hello, you two! Got anything left in that bottle?’

  Then somehow she got between us on the bench, and we chatted for a while till the bottle was finished. She said that we’d go inside and fetch another, but once we were in she steered me up the stairs to our room.

  I stood at the window while I tried to unhook my dress. From this height I could see much better the glow around the docks, and even the tips of flames, and searchlights hitting barrage balloons, and ack-ack bursting in the sky.

  ‘Maddy, why is it all right for you to do some things and not me?’

  She lay on the other bed in her maroon pyjamas. She raised her head and looked at me.

  ‘You don’t half ask some stupid questions, Stella,’ she said.

  Then I lay down and listened to the distant thuds and sirens, and tried to play back the day, then fell asleep, still hungering for something just out of reach.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Mid-September

  Next morning he went out for a pee and the mist had come down again. So he lay in his sleeping bag while Alec and Jimmy made their breakfast and packed to move on. Jimmy went outside to cough and Alec handed over a mug of tea.

  ‘Sorry if we went on a bittie last night,’ he said. ‘It was just yarning and blethering.’

  Len nodded as he took the mug, scalding hot, by the rim between two fingers.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘It made me glad I’m not in the trenches!’

  ‘Aye,’ Alec said. ‘Right enough. Still, you do what you must, eh?’

  Jimmy came back, pale and drawn.

  ‘Bloody mist,’ he said. ‘Bloody country. When this is over I’m thinking I’ll emigrate to Australia with my wife and the bairn James.’

  They shouldered their packs and stood looking down at Len.

  ‘Well, good luck, son.’

  ‘Aye, look after yoursel,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Len said. ‘You two go careful.’

  ‘Aw, us!’ Alec said. ‘Nothing ever happens in Clydebank!’

  And they were gone. He’d not see them again, nor forget them.

  He lay in a long time, shifting about trying to find a comfortable position, too lazy to get going. Eventually he got up, made breakfast, ate it standing outside. The upper slopes were well wrapped in mist and tatters blew down the empty glen. He checked the map and decided to stay off the tops, take the long track through the Lairig Ghru to Aviemore, get the train back from there.

  He slowly packed up his sack and buried his rubbish and left that place.

  *

  It’s still possible to go there. Corrour Bothy. It’s on the map, easy enough to find at the southern end of the Lairig Ghru pass. Anyone can take the train to Braemar and walk in as he did. Cross the same burns, follow the same tracks with the certainty his feet passed here.

  Very little has changed in the bothy since he slept there. The dirt floor is now overlaid in concrete, even colder and harder. The fire grate looks ancient and probably is the one he used. If visibility is poor, it’s still best to follow the stream up the slope onto the plateau as he did, take a compass bearing and believe in it until The ‘Angel’s Peak’ appears. It’s simple to add another stone to the cairn, touch it as he did.

  The plateau, like anywhere else, is just as full of ghosts as it’s allowed to be.

  On good days the cloud level is above 4,000 feet, and unlike for him it’s possible to see perfectly clearly, all the way across the undulating plateau, Loch nan Stvirteag. His lochan is easy enough to find; it’s the only one thereabouts. What can’t be seen – and yet imagined with such certainty it seems it really should be visible – is him. Sergeant Leonard Westbourne, groping cautiously across the plateau, compass held in front of his chest, peering into blindness as he searches for his destination.

  ‘Rise and shine, little star!’

  I woke slowly and reluctantly. The room was dim from the blackout blind. The inside of my mouth was an ash-pit. Maddy was standing by my bed in her pyjamas, holding out a mug of tea.

  ‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘Oh, God. Maddy, I’ll never be superior again.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘I blame your mum.’

  I slowly sat up and took the mug and began sipping. I couldn’t say I’d forgotten last night. It was all too clear but now looked completely different. I didn’t appear a witty, attractive and sophisticated woman. I seemed like a stupid, nearly-drunk, over-impressionable silly girl. And John G.? I went over the things he said, and his charm turned to a kind of patronizing bullying. That remark about me being the right height. And I’d laughed and felt pleased instead of kicking his shins.

  No, that wasn’t fair. I’d played along with it. And he’d been upset the way the family had kept him away from Foxy. And then out in the garden, I must have known what was happening and really wanted it to happen. I loved Len but a week away from him and this …

  ‘Oh, God,’ I moaned again. I put down my mug, then began to cry. She put her arms round me.

  ‘I miss him so much,’ I sobbed. ‘Honest I do. But I’m so scared he’s going to die. I don’t want to be left alone. I used to, but now I don’t and it’s his fault.’

  She soothed me, held me, stroked my shoulders and kindly said nothing. Then once I’d stopped snivelling and drunk my tea I started to thank her for saving me from making even more of a fool of myself the night before. She cut me off.

  ‘The main thing is to know when you’re flirting and when you’re serious,’ she said. ‘And be sure of the difference. Champagne is bloody nice but it muddies the waters.’

  ‘What about Tad?’ I asked. ‘Is that
serious?’

  ‘Go and have a bath,’ she said, ‘and don’t ask stupid questions before breakfast.’

  *

  For Len Westbourne it was a long day stumbling about among the boulders that litter the bottom of the Lairig Ghru like tank traps. Aches and twinges came growling up his shins – flying had brought no fitness whatsoever. He stuck burning soles in an icy stream and was surprised they didn’t sizzle. He was hobbling by the time the glen started to open out, his shoulders raw from the weight of the pack.

  This is how he spent 15 September, which would come to be held as Battle of Britain Day – alone, sore-footed, laboriously covering rough ground like the infantry man his father had been in the previous war.

  With the deadline for destroying the RAF in order to launch Operation Sea Lion only two days away, late that morning the Luftwaffe sent massive bomber fleets, heavily escorted by fighters, to attack London. Raids were also made on Thames shipping, Portland, and the aircraft factory at Southampton. Part of the strategy was to force the RAF to finally fully engage and send up all its fighters. And fighter aircraft, both sides had now grasped, were the key to the struggle.

  The August raids had been bigger. Neither side was now at its full strength. This phase of the fighting is best seen as two depleted, exhausted fighters swinging blows at each other with weakening arms, one desperately seeking a knock-out, the other only to hang on.

  The RAF were running low on fighter reserves, and more than a quarter of their pilots had been killed or put out of action. Though the losses overall were in their favour, they could not go on much longer. On the other side, the Luftwaffe had suffered significant losses, especially among the bombers. And unlike the RAF, its pilots were not rotated; many had been fighting now for two months without a break. Still, they were assured, the RAF was very nearly finished and would put up little resistance.