by Andrew Greig
One day there may be a generation without a great war. What will they do then to know themselves?
Len’s deep asleep, I think. I must wake him soon and send him back to his station. He dreams of flying and surviving, of being careful, I hope. We have been careful in every way but one, and that is my fault.
But it’s right. It is, I know.
I know.
Say it straight, if only to yourself as she lies silent by your side. Say the myths we live by.
Planes will burn, but not this plane.
Men will be killed, but not this man.
Loves will sour, but not this love.
These are the rumours that keep us going to the end. Pass ’em on, pass ’em on.
Think clearly now, for there’s no other time. Why should we prove exceptions when the rule’s made up of those who thought themselves exceptions?
But there’s no fear, only this acceptance, vast and calm as the night beyond her blackout blind.
I used to think to love, and to fight this war, were at odds. And now I think I must fight on, not from habit or exhilaration at the adventure or simple obedience to the voices that guide us. Not even in anger any more. But I’ll go up again tomorrow because I believe that what we fight is against life, against love.
So in this case to fight is to love. That’s the only way we can do it and remain human.
Everything we have we lose, that’s for sure. But everything we lose we’ve had. And I must come to take it lightly.
My hand rises and falls on her breathing ribs. The fragility.
18 October 1940
You walk across the grass to the pens, parachute bumping the back of your thighs – yourself, Coco Cadbury and a new wingman whose name you’re struggling to remember, Andy someone. It’s getting harder to remember new info and faces these days, as though your memory is a waiting room that’s full up with earlier arrivals so new ones are left outside.
How well you can picture them, still hear their voices as they eat and read, play cards, wait and drink and sing. Handsome Geoff Prior next to young Johnny Staples, his hair all tousled and sticking up, gentle St John murmuring aristocratic advice, Bo Bateson all hail-fellow and terrible jokes. Sniff playing boogie-woogie, Shortarse Madden with his cheeky grin, cheery Fred Tate. And Tad. Above all, Tadeusz, from his gleaming brown brogue on the fossilized tree stump to the last drunken songs on the piano. And all the laughter and killing in between.
You feel dense with the dead. You carry them all packed inside you. No wonder at times you find it hard to breathe.
But not this morning. It’s a fine morning, dew heavy on the grass and the air cool, almost chill. It’s proper autumn now, you can hear the pheasants cackling in the woods. How good it would be to sit on your sister’s swing, surprise your mother as she went outdoors, meet up with your father, go to the pub and finally have that talk you’ve never had. Next leave, definitely.
These days you try to attend to everything as it happens, so while you talk with Coco about the football match coming up this weekend and keep an eye on Andy and try to include him, you notice the cloud cover building up from the west and wonder whether you’ll find yourself above or below it. At least it’s somewhere to hide in the sky.
As the aircraft are wheeled out of the pens and you nod to sombre Evans, you think of the letter to Stella you left unfinished between the pages of a detective thriller. You were saying how sorry you are you can’t go with her to Maddy’s funeral this morning. You wanted to attend for Maddy, for her above all. You know what it is to lose your closest wartime pal. Then you found yourself writing about after the War. About marriage and children, in a way you haven’t done to her face. You wonder if you should send it.
Your tie is too tight, you loosen it as you step onto the wing and into the cockpit. Respectably dressed for another day’s work at the office. Cramped little office, the bright yellow Mae West a bulky nuisance as always.
Fact is, you reflect as you run through the checks and Evans attaches the accumulator, you and the others may have won a victory of sorts. A breathing space at the very least. For the flow of bombers that flooded across the sky day after day, endless as ripples of the sea, has dried to a trickle, abruptly as if someone had turned off a tap.
At night the cities are still getting a pounding, and there’s very little can be done about that until they sort out RDF carried in night fighters, but the mass daylight raids have stopped and nothing has replaced them but small-scale nuisance raids. Stella tells you she sits in front of her screen for hours on end and next to nothing shows up.
Maybe you’ve made it through.
You fire up the engine and Evans drags away the accumulator batteries then pulls away the chocks. You look across to Coco and Andy, wait for their thumbs up. It’s all very orderly, just another recce patrol. Gone are the frantic scrambles, the bombs raining down on the airfield, the enemy fighters coming in low, the worry about Stella’s safety in the unprotected huts. The invasion barges have been bombed or dispersed, there’ll be no invasion this year.
You think of a game of chess that was really Ludo and you smile, shake your head as you taxi over the grass and turn on to the new concrete runway. At the far end are the trees where you have walked and carved your name. As you gun the engine and begin to roll, for some reason you picture a table tennis bat propped at a slight angle on the little white ball, exactly as you left it. Then the ground is a blur and your speedo needle rises so you ease back on the stick and you come free of the earth one more time and it feels good.
*
(Leaving Mrs Mackenzie’s on the way to Maddy’s funeral, she stumbles then steadies herself, one hand on the garden wall. A brief wave of nausea has plummeted through her, and a feeling like she’s missed a step in the level pavement. She stands in the sunlight with sweat along her hairline, not sure what has just passed, smiling uncertainly at the morning as Len enters the fire he became.)
LASTWORD
She would keep the photograph beside her bed wherever she slept for the rest of her life. He is in uniform but his tie loosened, his cap pushed back, leaning against a tree with his arms folded, his eyes narrowed by the light he grins into.
The leaves above him are thick and dark. High summer, then. Taken by a path crossed by shadows and light. Behind him, a fence then a field of some tall crop, probably wheat.
With such details, it could be anywhere in southern England. There’s no one alive now who can say. Evelyn, steady, patient Evelyn who raised the child as his own, had his heart attack ten years ago. And she has now finally gone into the silence to join the rest of her vanishing generation, whose code was sacrifice and whose quest was a decent normality, though it was one that had never quite existed. Who were so baffled by our turning away from what they made.
All that’s left are the letters, his diaries, the stories she told near the end. The long-delayed stories that told what you came from, that seemed more vivid and real to her than the room she lay in. Also this silver-framed photo, gathering dust and glances through the years. And three dusty yet gaudy bangles. They gleam on the table, blue-green shot through with rose, and at last you know what they mean.
And at the very bottom of the hat box in the wardrobe, there’s another photo. Black and white of course, though their world wasn’t, any more than ours.
It’s of her, taken down by a river. Behind her is a deep still pool, then the far bank dark with trees, and if you look closely a rope swing hangs down from one of the branches. She is wearing a loose print dress, buttoned down the front, and her damp hair is plastered about her head as she moves between light and shade, holding an open bottle of beer in her left hand. Judging by the trees, it is late summer, and she is smiling, by God she is beaming, life streaming from her face towards the viewer andthe fortunate man who raised the camera to his eye in that moment, that summer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel has its origins in the narrative poems ‘A Flame in Your Hea
rt’ by Andrew Greig and Kathleen Jamie, Bloodaxe Books, 1986.
There are many books about the Battle of Britain period, but this story particularly benefited from: Fighter by Len Deighton; The People’s War by Angus Calder; The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary; The Forgotten Few by Adam Zamoyski, a history of Polish pilots in the Second World War.
And the book itself benefited a lot from dedicated editing by Jon Riley at Faber, and the close reading and support of Lesley Glaister.
About the Author
Andrew Greig was born in Bannockburn near Stirling in 1951. He completed an MA in Philosophy at Edinburgh University and then worked in a variety of jobs, including salmon netting, hop picking and farm work. He ‘survived’ as a poet for nearly twenty years thanks to the Scottish Arts Council and various bursaries, as well as teaching creative writing in schools and giving readings. He was Writer-in-Residence at Glasgow University from 1979–81, and at Edinburgh University from 1992–94. Andrew Greig now lives in Orkney and the Lothians. His first novel, Electric Brae, was shortlisted for the McVitie’s Prize and the Boardman-Tasker Award, and his second, The Return of John MacNab, was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelist’s Award and topped the Scottish bestseller lists in 1996. He is also the author of the acclaimed When They Lay Bare (1999) and That Summer (2000). He is recognised as one of the leading Scottish poets of his generation, having written six volumes of poetry. He is also well known for his writing on mountaineering, based on his climbing experiences in Scotland and the Himalayas. His acknowledged classic in mountaineering literature, Kingdoms of Experience, has recently been reissued by Canongate.
By the Same Author
poetry
MEN ON ICE
SURVIVING PASSAGES
A FLAME IN YOUR HEART
THE ORDER OF THE DAY
WESTERN SWING
mountaineering
SUMMIT FEVER
KINGDOMS OF EXPERIENCE
fiction
THE RETURN OF JOHN MACNAB
ELECTRIC BRAE
WHEN THEY LAY BARE
Copyright
First published in 2000
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2015
All rights reserved
© Andrew Greig, 2000
The right of Andrew Greig to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Cover design by Pentagram
Cover photographs: Elizabeth Filbert by Sasha © Hulton Getty; Hurricane © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis; Mansion © Corbis
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–32575–7