by Andrew Greig
Then I was picturing when I’d closed on that Heinkel in the rush of combat. I watched again the tracers that marked the last of my ammunition, watched them sparkle and seed bright rosy buds along the fuselage. How they suddenly bloomed into one monstrous rose …
I bounced into the verge and wobbled back into the centre of the empty road. Death’s gardener, I thought, that’s me. Getting good at it, too.
My hands were pale and tight on the grips. It seemed unlikely that those hands could touch my lover so, and also press the button and kill men.
I swore out loud and pedalled on. This is not the way for a fighter pilot to think. Surely the other blokes didn’t think like this. Or maybe we all do and just keep it to ourselves. If I survive, I want to do something better with these hands, something to soothe and make well …
I pictured myself kneeling as I pushed peas into soft earth with my forefinger. Pushing them down somewhere, oh, in Hampshire maybe, a soft rain falling on my gardening trousers, April and the hour before a weekend lunch …
I have to marry this woman because whenever I see her now I have this urge to plant, deep and patiently. I can see her face, teasing and laughing and making me blush at my naïvety. But if we live through this, and are to live well later, surely something must grow – children, sweet peas, routines and hollyhocks and marigolds. We must grow them to screen off the war years. Only once in a while will we mention it, out on a walk on our own or late when the children are in bed. And I begin to think I see why our parents kept their war to themselves. It was too horrible yet precious, it had gone too deep.
And so I biked on, too late again, knowing lack of sleep would make me slow tomorrow. I turned the corner and came in through the gates. The guard stepped out with his rifle lowered and a joke ready, he knew me well enough by now.
Outside the Mess I could hear music though it was late. I went in. There was no one in the bar except Bill Raymond the Intelligence Officer, the barman and a figure hunched low over the keyboard playing the same phrase clumsily over and over: Tad. One of the keys wasn’t in tune, even I could tell.
Raymond waved to me. I could see he was quite drunk. Watching pilots come and go seemed to affect him as deeply as it did us. The lights were harsh and his face was pale.
‘Better get your friend to go to bed,’ he said. ‘He won’t listen to me.’
I went over to the piano and let my shadow fall over the keys. Tad looked up then. After the news he’d sat in the Mess and wept openly for ages, everyone giving him a wide berth and me just sitting by helplessly. He was dry-eyed now and it worried me more.
‘Oh it’s you,’ he said. ‘Did you have nice evening?’
He didn’t say it nicely. I just nodded.
‘Time for bed, Tad,’ I said. ‘Got to be sharp in the morning.’
‘I’m not a child,’ he said. ‘Go fuck yourself.’
Then his mouth twisted like he’d just chomped on a lemon.
‘Leave me be, friend,’ he added. ‘I’ll to bed when I’m good. Now I want more drink and night music. A Polish love song – all very sad, you know.’
Then he bent forward and played the same phrase again, stumbling over the sour note.
‘The bar’s closed,’ I said.
‘Uh-huh,’ he said indifferently. ‘Well I’ll just stay here till it opens again. Good night.’
He carried the phrase on, singing in a whisper under his breath. Tad was a man of many talents but music wasn’t one of them. It was almost unbearable to listen to though I didn’t understand a word. I stood there, waiting.
‘She’s gone,’ he said conversationally. ‘She’s a gone girl.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s rotten and nothing can change it.’
He glanced up at me then but kept on playing.
‘She was … swell,’ he said. ‘A whole lot of fun. A bundle of fun. And a lot more no one knew.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I thought so too. But this is not the way to mourn her.’
He stopped playing abruptly and glared at me.
‘Best thing you can do,’ I said, ‘is get a night’s sleep and go back to work tomorrow in decent shape. You know that’s what she would want.’
He stared down at the black and white keys like it was their fault. Then he slammed down and played violent nonsense. He broke off, slowly lowered the piano lid and got to his feet.
‘Let’s go beds, I’m finished,’ he said. He draped his arm round my shoulders then looked down at the piano. ‘Lennie, one of these days I burn this damn heap so they have to get another,’ he said. ‘So help me God.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Late September
The trees outside the boundary fence are shedding leaves like old delusions. Already they look rather tired and the last two nights’ winds have stripped most leaves away. I have to remind myself that trees are not emotional and stand for nothing but themselves – which these do rather nicely. Their roots must be huge. I’ve read that there’s as much tree underground as over, and even when the wind really blows, they scarcely sway at all. They at least are mature, fully grown, adult.
We’ve flown three sorties today, four yesterday, and now my section has been stood down. It seems there’s no end to the supply of bombers, though they’ve been perhaps fewer the last couple of days. Equally, there’s no end to us rising to meet them now they’ve given up bombing the sector stations and the RDF masts, and concentrating on London and the factories. We’ve more pilots and more planes. (That Sergeant Dixon, no one saw him go or found the plane, he just vanished into the sky.)
I’ve found the initials I carved. Already the raw cut is filmed over. That’s good, because I didn’t want to damage the tree. I’m sitting propped against it, telling myself things I already know, as Tad would say.
Not that he’s saying much these days. He’s given up the cards. Mostly he just sits with the latest Polish ‘News of the World’ unread on his knee. In the evenings he drinks and plays the piano in the Mess, same lugubrious Polish songs over and over. It’s starting to get on people’s nerves and the other evening there was nearly a fight when Paddy McNally was called on to replace him at the keys.
Last night I came up to him with the news he’d been moved and made my wingman. I thought it worthy of a bit of a roasting, maybe an evening down in the pub in the village where we could have a proper talk, about Maddy and the rest of it.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘No problem. I’ll cover you.’
Then he went back to his paper and wouldn’t look up.
A magazine I was reading spoke of the camaraderie in the Forces, especially among ‘our brave airmen’. Within limits, I think to myself. There’s still Officers and Men, always will be. Could we even have a war without such distinctions? (The CO dropped a heavy hint today I’d be offered a commission when my DFM came through. Don’t think I’m interested. Then again, could do with the extra pay.)
For instance. The other day me and Paddy McNally popped over to Hornchurch to pick up some spares they had and we hadn’t. Their main Mess had been flattened and they couldn’t have me eat in the Officers’, oh no, so the man in charge suggested Paddy ate inside while I had my swill at a table outside the door.
Well there was nothing left to do but spit on their food and leave. So we did. Good bloke, Paddy, for a university type, laughed like a drain all the way home. We got a rocket of course, ‘lack of respect for a superior officer’, but they’re not going to ground us at this stage in the game. We’re much too valuable. So sod ’em.
As I walked into the woods earlier, along the broad path to the church in the next village, there were many rustlings and scuttlings. I saw two red squirrels that quickly turned their heads away as if I embarrassed them. Suddenly I’d had it with flying and the War. I couldn’t do it another day.
At the stile I met a gamekeeper with a shotgun, and as we chatted it hung from the crook of his arm, pointing at my foot. And I wondered what he’d do if I asked him to shoot. I hear
d they did that in the Great War. Now I know why.
It’s not like when Stella’s dad was killed and she was bombed. No purposeful anger, no rage pushing me on. Just weariness at it all. Weariness and habit.
I’m just sitting here till I’m ready to move. It’ll come, whatever it is.
This is how it happened. It’s in the official report, and there were several witnesses to the final moments.
The report says Sergeant Pilot Leonard Westbourne broke away from combat with his ammunition exhausted, claiming a possible Me110. He dived away and became aware of a Me109 following him down. He took an amount of enemy fire, sustaining damage to the port wing. He went steeper into the dive then at the last moment pulled out. He blacked out and came to moments later to discover he was on an even keel and alone.
Sergeant Westbourne took a compass course for his base. He then became aware of another fighter aircraft ahead. On approaching closer, he identified it as a Hurricane, then saw it was the aircraft of his wingman in Yellow section, Sergeant Pilot Tadeusz Polarczyk (seconded 18/6/40; see file RAF/OS(P)/JHP31b). He passed close by him. Polarczyk was flying on a level course, apparently uninjured and in control of his aircraft, which seemed in sound mechanical order. He made a friendly gesture as Westbourne passed close by him, and informed him over the R/T he had shot down a Dornier 17 (confirmed). He then overtook Westbourne and approached the airfield ahead of him.
Westbourne reports that Sergeant Polarczyk approached the airfield low, estimated at less than a hundred feet. He then turned the aircraft on its back and flew inverted over the runway at roughly sixty feet, causing personnel to scatter. (It has to be said that Polarczyk was an expert pilot, one of the most skilled in the squadron.)
Westbourne then landed and waited in his cockpit for his fellow pilot. Sergeant Polarczyk was ordered by his CO to land in good order. No intelligible reply is recorded. He approached the runway very low as before, then went into the manoeuvre known as a ‘victory roll’. He lost height while doing so, and on coming out of the inverted position his starboard wing tip brushed the ground. The aircraft immediately spun out of control, hit the wall of one of the aircraft pens, and burst into flames.
Sergeant Pilot Westbourne had to be restrained from approaching the burning aircraft too closely. There was no possibility of survival. The remaining ammunition began to explode and the fire tender kept its distance till the flames began to die down, whereupon the fire was extinguished.
The remains of Sergeant T. Polarczyk were removed for burial. He has been recommended for a DFC (posthumous). The incident is best seen as a tragic accident that occurred to a very fine but overtired pilot. It has been stressed to the remaining pilots that such unauthorised manoeuvres will be severely disciplined.
In light of the above – the pilot in question had flown twenty-four sorties in the previous five days – it has been decided to withdraw the squadron for a week before returning them to battle.
*
So the report ends. It’s dated 30 September, the last of the massed daylight raids, when the German losses were proving unsustainable and the RAF stronger than they’d been in the weeks before. From then on all major raids would be conducted by night.
The Blitz was to go on for many months, but the Battle, though it officially ended on 31 October, was almost won. That is, it wasn’t lost. The sustained bombing of London hadn’t panicked the population into demanding peace as all pre-war strategists had assumed. Without German air superiority the invasion of Britain was impossible. Hitler cancelled Operation Sea Lion and ordered his Chiefs of Staff to start drawing up plans for the invasion of Russia.
The man who had directed the Battle and whose strategy of limited engagement had defined it, Sir Hugh ‘Stuffy’ Dowding, was summarily retired from his post, and in the first official history of the Battle of Britain his name isn’t even mentioned. His abrupt and uncommunicative manner had made him many political enemies; worst of all, he’d committed the crime of being right.
The Allied pilots (the Poles alone made up more than 10 per cent of Fighter Command in south-east England, followed by the Czechs then Commonwealth and American pilots, many of whom were outstanding) who’d survived the Battle of Britain now had a much better chance of getting through the rest of the War, though this wasn’t clear to anyone at the time.
In a different way that time remains unclear to us. Though we have better access to the records, something in the air, in the flavour of the times and people’s minds, is lost to us. It’s so close yet out of reach, like the dead of that vanishing generation, like the dirt floor below the concrete in Corrour Bothy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Beginning of October
I stand in the empty Mess, the bar is closed but I’ve a half-bottle of whisky in my hand. A big party tonight to celebrate our being rotated off-duty. Someone new on the piano for the inevitable singsong, the CO’s new adjutant, bloke called Bates. Knew all the songs, played fine.
A wingman. Everyone should have at least one. A guardian angel, a right-hand man.
I look down at the piano and open the lid. Brush my hand over the light and dark keys. Hear the old music stir dust in an empty Mess, Sniff Burton playing the rags and popular songs. And Tad’s efforts, more humorous before Maddy died.
‘It’s easy, Lenny! You play the left hand, yes? Don’t they teach you peasants anything? Loosen up, eh! Loosen up, my friend.’
He was a light partner to my dark, he told me that once. Regardless is the word. Regardless and ruthless, the ideal fighter pilot.
The ideal fighter pilot does not try a victory roll fifty feet above the deck.
Who would hear me fingering the black notes at two in the morning? I’ve this notion that Captain Nemo in, what was it, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he used to play the organ, black notes only. I try it. Sounds like a dirge.
I wish I could break into something light-hearted and silly, a ripping ‘Jeepers Creepers’. A quick ‘Boomps-a-Daisy’. But I don’t have the ability. I was never taught. Besides I’ve hugged my life too close. Been full of death, Tad, full of it.
‘One of these days I burn this damn heap …’
I pour the spirit over the keys. I take out my lighter. Now I must be both of us. I must be leader, and the wingman. I must be victor and the victim going down. A pyre for the dead.
The flame is tall in my unsteady hand.
*
Roger phoned me – would I see him before he went off on convoy again? I hesitated, thought about my new seriousness with regards to Len. Then I thought, It’s quite possible he’ll get torpedoed. So let’s exhume the past and give it a decent burial.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Drive on up.’
He picked me up in his brother’s car. He looked supple and intelligent, assured. He looked at me and raised his dark eyebrows. I admit I looked rather swish. I’d put on the party frock I’d danced with John G. in, just to remind myself how foolish I can be (also because it suited me). We went out for a meal in a restaurant that wasn’t serving much. We had a bottle of wine to make up for that, then ordered another.
And we talked. About the convoys, which sounded frankly terrifying. Cold and wet and long drawn-out fear, fear of things you couldn’t even see. Fear that at any time of day or night, the deck might heave up under your feet and the boat be ripped apart, sink and leave you swimming in a sea of burning oil. Horrible. The air war is clean in comparison.
But he also talked of nights on watch on the voyage to Newfoundland, and how the stars were brilliant at sea, how they moved across the sky while the planets went their own way. Of phosphorescence, when the ship’s propellers dug white fire into the water. And the northern lights like pale searchlights meeting at the top of the sky.
He grew quite passionate about it, and watching his face I began to see what I’d once seen in him. The sense of superiority that hung around him like a mist had disappeared, burned away by the War.
I talked about Maddy, our fr
iendship, what she was like and how we’d met. Already it was starting to sound like a story about someone else I’d once known, though she was still sharp and real in my heart. I hoped she would be for a long time. What with the wine, I got a bit emotional, and he put his hand on my arm while I gulped and tried to get some breath.
Then I told him about me and Len. About how it wasn’t that serious at first, how the things we’d been through separately and together had forced a deeper connection between us. How sometimes when I looked at him there was a glow around him, especially in his eyes or his mouth, and at other times there wasn’t but he still seemed emotional, funny and vulnerable. And brave, in his way. I meant, in the way of someone who gets scared but does it anyway.
‘But do you love him?’ Roger asked, and looked straight across the table at me.
I bowed my head and considered. Do I love Len? More than as a piece of rhetoric, or a thank-you for some great sex? I listened to myself for an answer then raised my head and looked my first lover in the eyes.
‘It’s like this,’ I said. ‘I breathe all the time, though I’m often not aware of it. But anytime I ask myself, I can tell I’m breathing. That’s how I love him. All the time, even when I don’t feel it.
‘And these days’, I added, ‘he’s not out there any more. I’ve let him in–’
I broke off. He looked at me, and I thought I saw envy in his eyes.
‘So do I take it you’re, ah …?’
‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘And very well too.’
I thought he seemed slightly put out. Which was gratifying, but I’d said it because it was true. Indeed, as I’d spoken, I began to see for the first time the flight path of me-and-Len, and where it had landed us now.
‘Good,’ Roger said. He raised his glass to me. ‘Just be careful you don’t get pregnant.’