Thunder and Lightnings

by Jan Mark

  ‘What’s a Vulcan?’ asked Andrew. Come to that, what were Nimrods, Victors, Hunters and the Saab Draken? He was afraid to ask Victor too much in case he got a lecture on jet engines.

  ‘Vulcans and Victors are V-bombers,’ said Victor. ‘At least they used to be. There still are Vulcans in service, but all the Victors have been converted to tankers for in-flight refuelling. They had Spitfires and a Hurricane, at the Open Day, I mean, and people jumping out of a Hercules transport.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘With parachutes, of course. There’s not going to be an Open Day this year. I suppose that’s because of the fuel shortage.’

  ‘They still have motor racing,’ said Andrew. ‘Look here, shall I have the pram back?’ He didn’t want to push it but he felt responsible for Edward’s safe return. ‘You keep shoving it up the middle of the road.’ Victor took back his bicycle.

  ‘I reckon racing cars use less fuel than jet bombers,’ he said, weaving about among the cat’s eyes like a skier on a slalom. ‘Anyway, people pay to race cars themselves. Aircraft fuel come out of taxes, my dad say. Last winter, when that petrol shortage was just starting, these four Phantoms came over and started doing loop the loops, just over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘My dad was properly angry. He said it was a waste of fuel and someone ought to complain.’

  ‘Did he complain?’ asked Andrew,

  ‘Not him,’ said Victor. ‘Well, only to my mum. I made up a song about that.

  Brightly shone the moon that night,

  Though the frost was cruel.

  When four Phantoms came in sight,

  Wasting winter fu-hu-el.’

  ‘Was it at night?’

  ‘Of course that wasn’t. I couldn’t have seen them if that was at night, could I? Just little red lights going blink-blink-blink-blink. I saw Phantoms at Bentwaters. That’s in Suffolk. The USAF have them in their aerobatic team.’

  ‘What, like the Red Arrows?’ said Andrew, glad to be able to drop a name himself.

  ‘Red Arrows use Gnats. The Phantoms are the Blue Angels. Oh, you should see them go. You wouldn’t think those dirty big Phantoms could move so fast. Blue Angels, Red Arrows, Blue Eagles, Pink Elephants …’

  ‘I’ve seen the Red Arrows on the telly. Look out, there’s a tractor coming. Is there really a team called the Pink Elephants?’

  ‘No,’ said Victor. ‘There ought to be, though. They could use Dakotas. I’ve seen them at Norwich Airport. They’re so old their wings flap.’ He let go of the handlebars and spread his arms, wobbling along in the gutter, imitating a DC3 trying to take off in a high wind.

  The tractor passed them rather closely, and Victor fell off, into a drainage ditch. Edward, who had been asleep, woke up and wallowed about in the pram, making angry, whirring noises.

  Victor looked in at him. ‘This baby will self-destruct in five seconds,’ he said.

  8. Firegate Four

  Tuesday was a day for staying at home, grey and windy. When Andrew got up it already looked worn out, like five o’clock in the evening at eight o’clock in the morning. Mum was in the airing cupboard, looking for a jumper that would still fit Edward.

  ‘Do you think it’s always like this up here?’ she asked, as Andrew went by. ‘I’ve never known such a miserable summer. Are you still going plane-spotting?’

  ‘I suppose so. I don’t even know how we’re going to get there, yet. By bus, I expect. Victor didn’t say.’

  After breakfast Victor appeared at the gate with his own bicycle and another for Andrew.

  ‘You can ride a bike, can’t you?’ he said. ‘I never thought to ask. That’s my brother’s. He’s in the Navy.’

  It was a very long bicycle, like a greyhound. Andrew wasn’t even sure if he would be able to reach the pedals.

  ‘What’ll your brother do if I bust it up?’

  ‘He’ll bust you up, that’s what,’ said Victor. ‘You’ll be all right with practice.’

  Andrew approached Victor’s brother’s bicycle from behind, in case it shied, and made an experimental turn or two in the lane. Victor leaned against the gate, making minor adjustments to his shirt cuffs – all four of them.

  ‘How big’s your brother?’

  ‘Like my dad. Six foot three up and down and two yards round. He look like a fork-lift truck when he shake hands. Take your arm off at the shoulder. Terrible temper,’ said Victor. ‘No, he’s not. That’s my sister Cheryl. My brother’s a little fellow. Come on, you won’t bust that up.’

  ‘Are you sure about your brother?’

  ‘His bark’s worse than his bike, hey, that’s a good’un,’ said Victor. ‘I didn’t mean to say that. That said itself.’

  When they got to the end of the lane Victor turned left instead of right.

  ‘I know a short cut,’ he said. ‘That’ll save going through the town.’ He meant Polthorpe which Andrew had taken for a village. Compared to Pallingham, it was a city.

  By the time they reached the main road, Andrew felt confident enough to take one hand off the handlebars. He wanted to put it in his pocket, but after trying that he left it dangling outside in case it was needed in a hurry. Victor, on his bicycle, was so much lower down that he had to stand on the pedals in order to make himself heard above the noise of passing lorries. Andrew was glad when they reached a junction and Victor signalled to turn right into a minor road.

  ‘We’ll go cross-country,’ he said. ‘We’ll go through Sloley.’

  ‘Go through what, slowly?’

  ‘Sloley,’ yelled Victor. ‘That’s a village.’

  ‘I thought you mean slowly, like – major road ahead.’

  ‘How can you ride a head?’ said Victor. He was having a witty morning.

  When they reached the next crossroads Victor dismounted and scanned the sky, above and behind.

  ‘Nothing up yet,’ he said. ‘That’s too early for them. Still having breakfast. I hope that don’t rain. They don’t like getting their Lightnings wet.’ He held up his finger to test the wind, although Andrew thought it was quite obvious that it was coming from the left. ‘That’s in the south. Ought to clear up, later.’

  ‘Can you tell?’ asked Andrew. Victor the countryman might know something about the weather that he didn’t.

  ‘That was on the weather forecast,’ said Victor. ‘Anyway, that’s the best direction for us. They’ll be taking off across the railway and landing right overhead, up at the other end. If they land over the railway you can’t really get close enough. Hang on a bit. There’s something up there now. I hear jets.’

  ‘Lightnings?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Victor, nose in air.

  They turned their faces to the wind and rode on until they came to a pub, painted pink and with an aircraft propeller fixed to the wall. Victor turned off the road and led the way down a lane.

  ‘Nearly there,’ he said, but Andrew could see no signs of an airfield. Tall trees grew on either side and there was no sound except for the wind blowing through them. They came to a war memorial and turned right again. By Andrew’s calculations they should now be heading homewards.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Victor. Suddenly they came out into open country and Andrew saw buildings and pylons in the distance.

  ‘Don’t stop yet,’ said Victor, pedalling faster. ‘Wait till we get to the lights.’ They went on to a gap in the hedge and Victor braked without warning, throwing his bicycle into the hedge. ‘There’s one moving now, I think.’

  They had stopped at a field of cabbages. Across the field, in straight lines, stood rows of lights on tall, yellow posts. Although it was daylight and the clouds were beginning to clear, Andrew found that it hurt his eyes to look at them.

  ‘That’s the approach to the runway,’ said Victor. ‘The road go through the middle of them. The rest are on the other side. Now look, do you see that tail?’

  Beyond the lights they saw a metal shark’s fin cruising above the cabbages. As it came closer, it was reveal
ed as the stabilizer of a stocky grey aircraft.

  ‘That’s your Lightning,’ said Victor, with love.

  Andrew was disappointed. He had expected something sleek and elegant. In spite of the dull thunder of its jets, it seemed to have nothing to do with the roaring comets that streaked over his house every day. Except for the roundels and squadron flashes it was unpainted, its metal body not gleaming but leaden. It looked like a rather bad model of an aeroplane made out of bits of cardboard and the inside of a toilet roll. He was about to say as much to Victor when the Lightning reached the end of the runway and turned itself end-on to them. The sudden eruption of sound left him unable to say anything at all. He caught a brief sight of the two exhaust vents, one above the other and then the Lightning vanished.

  He shouted, ‘Where’s it gone?’ and Victor mouthed back, ‘Down the runway. You’ll see it in a minute.’

  The stink of burning fuel oil rolled back to them across the cabbages, and the rows of lights swayed and buckled in the hot air. In the shivering distance Andrew saw the Lightning shoot up and up over the horizon until it was no more than the familiar grey streak which was all he had known of Lightnings, until now. Unnoticed, another had come on to the runway and before the first was out of sight the second was soaring behind it.

  ‘Wasn’t that something?’ shouted Victor. ‘Wasn’t that?’

  Andrew dug his fingers into his ears and riddled the noise out of them.

  ‘Do they meet in the middle?’ said Victor.

  ‘The ground shakes,’ said Andrew. ‘You can feel it shaking.’

  ‘Shook you, didn’t it?’ said Victor. ‘I bet you weren’t expecting that.’

  ‘They’re funny little things on the ground, aren’t they?’ said Andrew.

  ‘What do you mean, funny? What do you mean, little? They aren’t little,’ said Victor. ‘They’ve got a wing span of thirty-four feet, ten inches. They’re fifty-five feet, three inches long and nineteen feet, seven inches high.’ Andrew cut him short.

  ‘The only aircraft I ever saw close to were airliners,’ he said. ‘I mean, it is small compared with one of those.’

  ‘Well, that’s not a Boeing 747,’ said Victor. ‘Do you know, a Lightning can climb to forty thousand feet in two and a half minutes?’

  ‘What happens now?’ said Andrew.

  ‘Not anything, for the moment,’ said Victor. ‘But sooner or later they’ll be in to land. You remember, I said there were some up there, earlier. They’ll land soon. Practice landings, that is. They don’t come right down each time, that wear out the tyres too fast.’

  Over to their right two planes broke out of the clouds and swung in a spacious circle, heading for the runway.

  ‘They won’t be down this time,’ said Victor. ‘They haven’t lost enough height.’

  ‘I bet you say that every time,’ said Andrew.

  ‘One more turn, then they’ll be down,’ said Victor, calmly. He knew.

  The two planes passed overhead and sheared off for a second circuit.

  ‘Losing height, I told you,’ said Victor, revolving slowly to keep the Lightnings in view.

  The second dropped back a little as the first completed its turn and aimed itself at them, rocking itself into position over the central row of lights, on the far side of the road, and then boring down on to the runway. Andrew drew in his head as it went over them and he looked up but saw nothing, only that darkness had passed for a second between him and the sky.

  Victor, unshaken, stood on his toes and reported, ‘It’s going up again,’ and the Lightning, which had momentarily vanished below the line of cabbages, reappeared. Behind it, two bright flares showed in the exhaust vents.

  ‘It’s on fire,’ Andrew shouted. ‘It’s going to crash.’

  ‘Those are the re-heats,’ said Victor. ‘Now, you watch that go up,’ and the aircraft stood on its tail and climbed into the clouds. There was no time to watch it, it had gone.

  ‘But it’s burning,’ cried Andrew.

  ‘That’s not,’ said Victor, and Andrew knew, for a moment, that he had hoped it was: not that he wanted to see anyone killed but it would have been a fine sight, something so large and powerful, burning across the sky.

  The second Lightning came down over their heads. Ready for it this time, Andrew saw the lettering underneath, the flaps, the wheels, the landing lights. Victor was jumping about, trying to see whether it had landed or not.

  ‘That’s down. That’s landed. No, it hasn’t. That’s going up again.’

  And again Andrew saw the red flares and smelled burning.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Victor, noticing him stare. ‘They’re meant to do that. That make them go faster. That’s only fuel burned in the exhausts.’

  Andrew said nothing. It was the same feeling that he had had at Brand’s Hatch, hoping that something would happen and not liking to think what it was: pretending that he wasn’t hoping at all.

  ‘Let’s go round to the firegate,’ said Victor, who thought that Andrew was nervous. ‘That’s not so exciting, but you get a better view if they do land.’

  He took his bicycle out of the hedge and started back the way they had come. Andrew followed him.

  They returned to the main road, riding between fields of cows and fields of wheat, keeping the airfield in view, in the distance. When they reached trees and houses Victor turned back, down a lane so narrow that only one car at a time could have passed along it and grass grew in the middle on the part where no wheels ever ran. The airfield was out of sight again, behind the trees. In the little, rutted lane, there was no way of knowing that war planes took off and landed a hundred yards away. They passed a farm and a field where three quiet horses looked over the hedge and it was a shock to hear Victor say, ‘That’s it, up ahead. Firegate Four.’

  Firegate Four, after all, was just a gate. It stood across the end of the lane, on one side farmland and cottages, on the other, the airfield. It was surrounded by notice boards of a discouraging kind.

  MINISTRY OF DEFENCE PROPERTY

  KEEP OUT

  EMERGENCY EXIT NO. 4

  KEEP CLEAR

  and on the gate itself:

  KEEP CLEAR

  FIRE-FIGHTING VEHICLES

  WILL CRASH THROUGH THIS

  GATE IN EMERGENCY

  Victor got off his bicycle and leaned it against the fence. It was no more than a row of palings, wired together like an ordinary garden fence, but the gate was meshed over and topped with barbed wire.

  Andrew thought that Victor was being rather casual.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here, should we? Won’t someone turn us off?’

  ‘Everyone come here,’ said Victor. ‘This bit is sort of the car park.’ He indicated a cindery patch of ground beside the gate, engraved with tyre tracks. Andrew was not convinced.

  ‘I bet someone’s watching us. We might be spies for all they know.’

  ‘There’s nothing here to spy on,’ said Victor. ‘If there was we’d be moved on, fast enough.’

  ‘You can go to prison for this, in some countries,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Yes, but not here. Look, nobody care if you watch the Lightnings, they’ve been around for years. I can’t remember when they weren’t,’ said Victor. He climbed on to the firegate.

  ‘It says fire fighting vehicles will crash through it in an emergency,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I reckon I’ll see them coming,’ said Victor. ‘I can read words six inches high, you know. Those notices are to stop people parking their cars in front of the gate.’

  Andrew climbed up beside him.

  ‘You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?’ said Victor.

  ‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘I’m sorry.’ He knew he kept hurting the feelings that Victor pretended not to have. He decided only to ask questions, taking care not to argue with the answers.

  Opposite the gate lay the runway. They were looking across it now, instead of down it. Beyond the runway were high buildings which Andrew too
k to be hangars.

  ‘Are those hangars?’ he asked.

  ‘Those big sheds? Yes,’ said Victor.

  ‘What about that thing that looks like a blender?’

  ‘A blender? So it do,’ said Victor. ‘That’s the control tower.’

  In front of the hangars the Lightnings stood in a row and little figures climbed over them. The fire engines waited expectantly in a building on the right.

  ‘What happens if a fire engine meets a tractor in that little lane?’ said Andrew.

  ‘You’d see that tractor move, I reckon,’ said Victor.

  Andrew looked up and down the runway. At either end a radar scanner revolved watchfully.

  ‘Something’s coming in now,’ he said. Over the end of the runway, where he and Victor had stood earlier, a bright light hung in the sky. ‘It’s burning.’

  ‘You and your burning,’ said Victor. ‘You’d like to see a fire fighting vehicle crash through me in an emergency, wouldn’t you? That’s the landing light on a Phantom.’

  ‘So it is,’ said Andrew, recognizing the trail of dirty smoke that drifted behind the aircraft. ‘The lights didn’t look so bright on the Lightnings.’

  ‘Phantoms have bigger lights,’ said Victor. ‘That won’t come down, they never do.’ The Phantom didn’t come down. It passed over the airfield about four hundred feet up.

  ‘There’s a Lightning coming in behind it,’ said Andrew. The Lightning did land. That is to say, it sat down abruptly on the runway and little puffs of smoke spurted up round its tyres. As it raced by them a fragile parachute cracked open behind it and it began to lose speed. Before it reached the end of the runway it had stopped and the parachute dropped to the ground like a discarded skin. The Lightning took itself off round behind a barrier of concrete screens and a Land Rover dashed out on to the runway to retrieve the parachute.

  ‘Do they always need a parachute? Was that an emergency?’ asked Andrew, when the noise had followed the aircraft behind the screens.