Thunder and Lightnings

by Jan Mark

  ‘Swing-wing tactical strike fighter,’ said Victor, crisply. Even his accent had dropped away. He sounded like a teacher. Andrew thought that Victor might not care to be told that.

  ‘General Dynamics,’ Victor went on, executing a couple of swing-wing manoeuvres himself as they went through the gate. Andrew hurried after him.

  ‘They all sound the same to me,’ he said. ‘Just a row.’

  ‘Well, I dare say you could tell them apart by looking at them,’ said Victor. ‘You can always spot a Phantom by the radar cone. They look like they’ve got a dewdrop on their noses. And their wings turn up at the tip. Bit like a Stuka.’ Andrew looked blank. ‘Bit like a rook.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a Harrier?’ said Andrew. ‘Going up and down?’

  ‘Not going up and down,’ said Victor. ‘But I often see them go by. I expect you have too but you didn’t recognize them. Now they make a row. Rolls-Royce Bristol Pegasus vectored-thrust turbofan.’

  ‘I suppose you can recognize them as well,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Of course I can – but I’ve grown up to it,’ he added, kindly, in case Andrew thought he was showing off.

  Andrew did.

  ‘I knew this boy at my last school, he used to do that with cars. He used to walk home with me sometimes and every time a car came up behind us he’d say what it was, before we could see it.’

  ‘Was he any good?’ asked Victor, jealously.

  ‘He was right about half the time,’ said Andrew. ‘But he would make excuses when he wasn’t right. We’d hear this car, see, and he’d say it was a Lotus Elan and then this horrible old Renault Dauphine would come round the corner and he’d say it sounded just like a Lotus Elan that needed its tappets adjusting or something daft like that. I got so sick of him I used to hide in the cloakroom and go home the long way.’

  ‘I’d never do that,’ said Victor. ‘If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t say anything.’

  ‘I didn’t mean you were like that,’ said Andrew. ‘I was just wondering how you learnt it all.’ He saw Victor’s grin droop, slightly, at the corners. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, I just thought you didn’t like learning things.’

  ‘I didn’t learn them,’ said Victor. ‘I can’t learn things, but anything I want to know sticks.’ He still looked worried.

  ‘Is that a Phantom coming now?’ asked Andrew, fairly sure that it wasn’t but hoping to cheer Victor up.

  ‘That’s a helicopter,’ said Victor. The flying long-distance coach appeared above the trees. ‘We get them going over all day. They go to the rigs.’

  ‘North Sea Oil?’ said Andrew. ‘Oil rigs in the sea?’

  ‘I don’t know what rigs,’ said Victor. ‘But that’s where they go.’

  Behind the helicopter, but much higher, came another fighter.

  ‘What’s that then?’ said Victor. ‘Go on, have a guess.’

  Andrew watched the aircraft rolling lazily through the clouds. ‘Another Lightning?’ he suggested, expecting to be wrong. Victor thumped his arm in delight.

  ‘You’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Right first time. See, that’s easy once you start.’

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of them,’ said Andrew. ‘They go round and round all day.’ He watched the Lightning until it was no more than a little dot, but by that time his eyes were full of dots and he didn’t know whether he could see it or not.

  ‘They come from Coltishall. R.A.F. Coltishall, that is. They’re based there. You can stop at the end of the runway and they come in right over your head, yeeeeow,’ said Victor, making a screeching dive with the side of his hand. ‘That’s not far from here. We can go there, if you want. I do, all the time, in the holidays.’

  ‘What do you do there?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Just watch them,’ said Victor. ‘Just watch Lightnings all day long. You get a few other planes but they don’t usually land, they just go overhead. I love Lightnings, they used to be the fastest plane in the world, one time. You ought to see them climb. They have re-heats.’

  Andrew was afraid that Victor was becoming technical again. He had never heard of re-heats. It sounded like a disease. Good morning, Doctor. I’m ever so poorly, I’ve got re-heats. No cure for that, Madam, you’ll have to have them out.

  They had arrived at Tiler’s Cottage. The front door was open so they went in that way. Victor was impressed.

  ‘We never use our front door,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anyone who use the front door, only old Mrs Hemp and she hasn’t got a back door.’

  Andrew went through to the kitchen. Mum and Edward were playing on the floor.

  ‘Hello,’ said Victor to Andrew’s mother. Then he saw Edward. ‘What’s this, then? Is this yours? Is this your brother?’

  Andrew had been afraid that Victor would despise the baby and despise Andrew for being related to him, but Victor knelt down on the carpet and picked him up, each fat hand in one of Victor’s bony fists.

  ‘His arms will come out of their sockets,’ said Andrew, watching Mum out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘No, they won’t. Little gorillas can do this when they’re born. He’s just like a little gorilla,’ said Victor. Edward dangled for a moment and then his arms tautened as he took his own weight and began to swing. ‘He know what he’s doing,’ said Victor. ‘What’s your name, baby?’

  ‘Edward,’ said Mum.

  ‘That’s a funny name for a baby,’ said Victor.

  ‘He won’t always be a baby,’ said Andrew. ‘I don’t suppose you looked much like a Victor when you were born.’

  ‘My mum say I looked like boiled bacon when I was born,’ said Victor.

  ‘Most babies look like boiled bacon,’ said Mum. ‘You have to think ahead. I hoped Edward would suit him later on. I dare say he’ll grow to fit it.’

  Victor sat down and took Edward on to his lap. ‘Haven’t you got any teeth yet?’ Edward took hold of Victor’s finger, examined it thoughtfully, put it in his mouth and began to gnaw it.

  ‘Watch out,’ said Mum. ‘He may not have any teeth but he’ll give you a nasty suck.’

  ‘Don’t you gnash your gums at me,’ said Victor.

  Dad looked in at the door. ‘I can smell burning. Have I left anything switched on?’

  Mum looked round, sniffing. ‘The soldering iron. You left it in the plate rack.’

  Dad went over to the sink and picked up the soldering iron. Welded to the tip of it was a pink plastic egg cup. ‘Very sculptural,’ he said.

  ‘I’d say something entirely different,’ said Mum, prising the egg cup loose. ‘What would your mother say, Victor?’

  ‘No one would leave a soldering iron in our plate rack,’ said Victor. ‘That stays in the shed. So do the vice,’ he added. Andrew looked and saw that their vice was clamped to the table with a piece of wood in it. Under the table was a sheet of newspaper, covered in shavings.

  ‘Mum burned herself on one of my old teeth, once,’ said Victor. ‘When one of the big’uns came out at the back I put that on the hot plate to see if that would split. I wanted to see inside.’

  ‘And did it split?’ said Mum.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t see that. Mum picked that up first and burned her fingers. She said I was mad. I didn’t get that back,’ said Victor. ‘I couldn’t try again, that was my last tooth.’

  ‘I’ve still got a back tooth,’ said Andrew. ‘We’ll toast that when it comes out.’

  ‘Take that soldering iron away,’ said Mum. ‘Why don’t you keep it on your desk?’

  ‘If you remember,’ said Dad, ‘there is a baby bath full of books and old shoes on my desk.’

  ‘Your books and your shoes,’ said Mum swiftly, and took Edward off to get ready for bed. Victor looked as if he might want to help.

  ‘Come and see the guinea pigs,’ said Andrew. The hutch was still in the garden, and Ginger was asleep on top of it. Andrew tipped him off and Victor helped carry the hutch indoors.

  ‘Is that your cat?’ said Victor. ‘Isn’t he
nice? I wish we had a cat. My mum would go mad if I brought animals indoors,’ he added, with envy. ‘What are they called?’

  Andrew pushed the hutch under the sink. ‘This one is King Kong,’ he said, taking out the black guinea pig.

  ‘My favourite gorilla,’ said Victor.

  ‘This one’s Fittipaldi. I call him that because he’s fast, or rather, he used to be.’ He lifted Fittipaldi on to the carpet. The guinea pig began to amble round in circles, getting longer and longer as he went.

  ‘He look like he need a roller skate under him to keep his middle up,’ said Victor. ‘What do Kong do?’

  ‘He whistles,’ said Andrew. ‘That’s about all he does do. He isn’t very bright.’

  Victor stroked King Kong and tickled him behind the ears but he wouldn’t whistle. He folded himself up, very small. Fittipaldi went under the vegetable rack, stole a runner bean and refused to come out. Andrew began to think that guinea pigs were a boring waste of time and felt annoyed by the heaps of books, the pile of wood shavings and the vice on the table among the tea things.

  ‘I wish our house was like this. I wish I could have a guinea pig,’ said Victor.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a gorilla? You seem to know a lot about them,’ said Andrew.

  ‘First things first,’ said Victor. ‘Start with a guinea pig and work up to a gorilla. Maybe no one would notice.’

  7. On the Polthorpe Road

  Dad’a holiday ended on Monday and he went off to his new job in Norwich.

  ‘I suppose it’s a bit like starting at a new school,’ said Andrew, feeling complacent because his holiday was just beginning.

  ‘Not really,’ said Dad. ‘I’m in charge and I’m the biggest. All the others are little chaps. I met them at the interview.’

  Andrew went out into the lane and watched for traffic until the car had backed out of the garden and was safely pointed in the right direction. He waved goodbye and went back indoors. Edward was in his playpen in the kitchen, ripping up a newspaper.

  ‘Litter-lout,’ said Andrew, looking through the bars.

  Edward gave a quiet, milky belch and smirked at him. He was full of porridge and all his problems were over until lunchtime. Mum came in and lifted him out of his paper nest.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ she said to Andrew. ‘Would you go into Polthorpe for the shopping?’

  ‘All right,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Will you take Edward?’ she asked. Andrew knew he was being told, not asked, but it was worth an argument although Edward was already being squeezed into his knitted coat.

  ‘I can go quicker on my own.’

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ said Mum, ‘and if you take the pram you can put the shopping on the tray, underneath. It’ll be heavy, I need potatoes.’

  ‘I don’t mind. I can carry heavy weights,’ said Andrew. To prove it, he took the guinea-pig hutch into the garden, carrying it painfully under one arm. When he came back, Edward was in the pram.

  ‘I don’t want him here this morning,’ said Mum. ‘I’m going to clean the carpets. There will be a lot of dust.’

  Andrew noticed several rolls of carpet stacked against the back door. None of them had fitted the last house and they had been rolled up for years. They were all off-cuts, bought cheaply in sales and they didn’t look as if they would fit this house either. Mum unfurled one and took it into the garden to hang on the line. Andrew fetched a shopping bag and bumped the pram down the back steps. The carpet scraped his neck as he went by. It had green, furry pile on one side and something else green and furry on the other; not pile but growing. Andrew ran his fingernail down it and a little pale powder floated away. Mum came round the side of the house carrying an instrument made of cane, plaited and twisted into curious curves.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A carpet beater, very antique,’ said Mum, flourishing it. ‘I found it hanging behind the door in the coal shed.’

  ‘I thought you were going to play tennis,’ said Andrew.

  Mum made a few practice strokes with the carpet beater. ‘A rococo tennis racket,’ she said.

  ‘What’s rococo?’

  ‘With knobs on,’ said Mum. ‘With too many knobs on.’ She took a mighty swipe at the carpet and green powder came out in an evil cloud.

  ‘The wind’s blowing it away from the house,’ said Andrew. ‘If I put Edward round at the front he’ll be well out of it.’

  ‘You’ll take him with you,’ said Mum. ‘You needn’t be ashamed to be seen with him. Everyone was a baby, once. You were a baby, once. Attila the Hun was a baby, once.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’ muttered Andrew, but he could see that he had lost and ducked away before she could see him off with the carpet beater.

  Andrew and Edward ignored each other for most of the journey. One chewed a piece of grass, the other, his collar. Then Victor, bulging with woolly pullovers, overtook them on his bicycle. Andrew couldn’t hide the pram or pretend that it wasn’t with him, so he pushed it with one finger, instead, as far away from it as he could get.

  ‘How’s my little gorilla, then?’ said Victor, peering under the canopy. Edward jabbed at him.

  ‘He’s a thug,’ said Andrew. ‘Attila the Hun.’

  Victor hadn’t heard of Attila the Hun. ‘Can I have a go?’ he asked.

  ‘What at?’

  ‘The pram. Can I push the pram?’ said Victor. ‘You can ride the bike.’

  Andrew was glad to swop.

  ‘He’s making a rotten old mess of his collar,’ said Victor. ‘It look like wet string.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Andrew. ‘Mum won’t mind so long as he doesn’t swallow anything. You’d better look out for his button, it might come loose.’

  ‘Your mum don’t mind what you do,’ said Victor. ‘Isn’t she tall? I never knew a lady as tall as that. How tall is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Andrew. All he knew was that he often wished she were shorter so that people wouldn’t stare when they were out. He felt they were staring at him. ‘She’s taller than Dad and he’s six foot,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like to be as tall as that if I wasn’t a lady,’ said Victor.

  ‘You aren’t, are you?’ said Andrew.

  ‘I mean,’ said Victor. ‘If I wasn’t a lady I’d want to be – no, if I was a lady I’d want to be shorter than your mum is. That’s right.’

  Edward felt neglected and began to grizzle.

  ‘Shut you up,’ said Victor. ‘I’ll sing to you. No, I better hadn’t do that. Do you like nursery rhymes? I’ll tell you a nursery rhyme.

  Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet

  Eating her curds and whey.

  There came a great spider

  And sat down beside her

  So she ate him, too.’

  They stopped outside the supermarket in Polthorpe High Street.

  ‘Go in and get your bits and I’ll stay out here with Edward,’ said Victor, neatly parking the pram between a basket on wheels and a pushchair.

  ‘He’ll be all right on his own. He won’t choke,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Someone might take him.’

  Andrew laughed. ‘Who’d want him?’

  ‘Someone might. Someone who wanted a baby badly and hadn’t got one. It do happen,’ said Victor. He attached himself firmly to the pram by one hand and balanced the bicycle with the other. Andrew left him to it and went into the shop. He thought that if anyone wanted Edward badly it was Victor, but he didn’t say anything. Victor didn’t even have a guinea pig. When he looked out of the plate-glass window between twin towers of tinned peaches, he saw that Victor had picked up a banana skin from the pavement and was flapping it just out of Edward’s reach. They were both falling about, laughing.

  When he came out, Victor flicked the skin away behind him and started bouncing the pram up and down.

  ‘I saw you,’ said Andrew.

  Victor looked guilty. ‘I didn’t let him touch it. Anyway, that wa
s all old and leathery. He couldn’t get any germs off of that.’

  Andrew let Victor push the pram home again and scooted beside him on the bicycle. As they left Polthorpe behind and followed the lonely road across the beet fields, dark clouds came up from the coast and hung over them. Threatening sounds came from inside the clouds.

  ‘Thunder,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Lightnings,’ said Victor.

  ‘You can’t hear lightning.’

  ‘I said Lightnings, not lightning. Aircraft,’ said Victor. ‘Clean out your ears. You’ve got turnips growing in them. You couldn’t hear a bomb drop. I thought I taught you what a Lightning sounded like.’

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ said Andrew. ‘If I had ears like yours I could pick up radio waves.’ Victor smiled. He was not vain about his ears.

  Two grey aeroplanes came out of the clouds and dived inland.

  ‘Going home,’ he said. ‘Coltishall. I’m going there, tomorrow. Do you want to come?’

  ‘To the airfield? Don’t you have to get permission?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘I told you, you can stop at the end of the runway if you like,’ said Victor. ‘You can’t get inside – well, you can but you don’t – but you can go almost anywhere you like, round the edge. I usually go to the firegates.’

  Firegates sounded dangerous. Andrew didn’t know what they were and didn’t intend to ask.

  ‘I’d like to come,’ he said. ‘If it’s really all right.’

  ‘Don’t I keep telling you, anyone can watch as long as they stay outside the fence,’ said Victor. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t be arrested. That’s not one of those places where you’re not even allowed to stop.’

  ‘When we were on holiday once,’ said Andrew, ‘we passed an airport where the runway was so short there were traffic lights on the road and when they went red all the traffic had to stop to let the planes go by.’

  Victor wasn’t listening. He seemed to have gone into a trance, thinking about Coltishall.

  ‘I haven’t been there since half-term,’ he said. ‘They don’t fly at weekends.’

  ‘What happens if war breaks out on a Saturday?’ said Andrew.

  ‘Leave a note, “Come back on Monday”,’ said Victor. ‘I went to the Open Day there, last year. That was terrific. They had Harriers there, and a Saab Draken, and Nimrod, and Hunters and a Victor. They even had a Vulcan.’