Thunder and Lightnings

by Jan Mark

  They waited for half an hour but no more Lightnings went up and the two that had taken off earlier did not return. The only thing that moved was the helicopter. It rose from its pad, crossed the runway and hung about near the trees, neither landing nor flying; dithering in the air.

  Andrew thought that even one take-off was worth seeing, but Victor became restless.

  ‘I don’t like it when they’re not flying,’ he said. ‘Let’s go away for a bit. That should bring something. I bet if we went home they’d all take off.’ He picked his bicycle out of the fence where it had become entangled when he threw it down. ‘We’ll go round to the end of the runway and see if anything come.’

  While they were on their way the two Lightnings returned and circled the airfield prior to landing. In spite of riding as dangerously fast as they could the aircraft had touched down before they had arrived at the gap in the hedge. There was only the smell of burnt oil to show that they had ever been there. The sky, now quite clear of cloud, held nothing but a Chipmunk grinding endless circles overhead.

  ‘I’ve never known that so bad,’ said Victor, glaring into the empty sky above the rows of lights as though by staring he could make something appear. Andrew wandered up and down the side of the cabbage field, picking unripe blackberries out of the hedge. He knew that Victor was uneasy because he was afraid that soon the Lightnings would never fly again. Or because the two that had just landed might have been the last and Victor hadn’t known. He also knew that his own remarks had been tactless, to say the least. Andrew could think of nothing that he could say to please him. He wished it was possible to divert him with talk of racing cars or the Land Speed Record.

  On the other side of the road was a low building with a red light on the roof. He had noticed it on the previous visit but there had been no chance to ask about it.

  ‘What’s that little house over there?’ he asked. ‘Why is there a light on the roof?’

  Victor looked, without interest.

  ‘That’s got a light on because that’s near the runway. I don’t know what that is, though. I never bothered to look, before. There was always so much else to look at. That little bit of ground round it is a sort of cemetery.’

  ‘It’s a funny place to have a cemetery,’ said Andrew. ‘What’s it like? I’m going over to have a look.’

  ‘That’s only old graves,’ said Victor.

  ‘I thought you liked old graves.’

  ‘Not when I’m here,’ said Victor, but he left the gap in the hedge and crossed the road with Andrew.

  The cemetery lay behind a thorn hedge and a tall iron gate. Between the road and the little building the graves lay warmly in the sunlight, bedded in tidy grass. It seemed a nice place to be buried in, if you had to be buried at all. He forgot that it was almost on the runway.

  They went up to the building. Its wooden doors were locked firmly against them. Andrew walked round to the side where there was a window with little diamond panes. He put his face close to the dusty glass and looked in. All he could see was the window opposite, old chairs and a curious vehicle that looked like a wide wooden ladder with high wheels, one each side of it.

  Victor looked over his shoulder.

  ‘That’s a bier. That’s what they put the coffins on.’

  ‘Like the one you met in Norwich?’

  ‘No, that was a little tinny thing. This is like the one they’ve got at Pallingham. You could do all sorts of things with that,’ said Victor. ‘If you got the two of them together you could have bier races.’

  ‘This looks like a fancy sort of shed to keep a bier in,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I think that’s a chapel,’ said Victor. ‘Perhaps when they have a funeral they take that out. That don’t look like they’ve had a funeral for years, do it?’

  Behind the chapel the cemetery stretched away into the fields, shadowed by its high hedges. On one side were more old graves, well settled into the earth. On the other side the headstones were white and upright, all the same; rank upon rank stood to attention in front of a tall cross on a stepped plinth.

  ‘Those are war graves,’ said Victor.

  The stones were arranged in rows of five. Andrew and Victor went to examine them more closely. All were marked with the RAF insignia, carved into the stone, the name of a man and the dates of his birth and death.

  ‘Did they die in the Battle of Britain?’ said Andrew.

  ‘Some of them maybe,’ said Victor, tracing a name with his finger. ‘Not most of them, though. A lot of these dates are much later.’

  ‘They aren’t all English,’ said Andrew. ‘This one came from Canada and flew with the RAF.’ He moved to another row. ‘This one was in the Australian Air Force.’

  ‘Look at these,’ said Victor, up ahead. ‘These are properly foreign. I can’t read the names at all.’ He was standing by a row of stones a little different from the others. Instead of bearing the encircled wings of the RAF they were carved with small crosses. Andrew bent to look at the names.

  ‘I think they’re German,’ he said.

  ‘Germans?’ said Victor. ‘Buried here? The enemy?’

  ‘They couldn’t not bury them, could they?’ said Andrew. ‘They must have been shot down over here in a battle. Once they were dead they weren’t the enemy any more. If they were alive now, they wouldn’t be the enemy any more, would they?’

  ‘Just think,’ said Victor. ‘This chap here,’ he pointed to one of the English graves, ‘might have been killed by that chap there. And now they’re buried beside each other.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Andrew. ‘The Germans are in a row on their own. There are three more over there, but they haven’t put anyone else beside them to finish the row.’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t think that would be right,’ said Victor. He paused by the middle stone of the row. ‘What do this one say? That’s not quite the same as the others.’

  Andrew looked. On the middle stone it said only: Ein Deutscher Soldat.

  ‘They didn’t know his name,’ said Andrew. ‘I think it means, a German soldier. No one ever knew who he was.’

  ‘Perhaps the others were his mates,’ said Victor. ‘I don’t suppose anybody ever knew what happened to him; his family, or anyone. He just didn’t come home. And we know he’s here, but we don’t know who he was.’

  ‘Steve Stone ought to be here somewhere,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Steve Stone? Him in the comic? What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Andrew. ‘That’s the point. Steve Stone and Mitch Mulligan, they’re all explosions and crashes and people getting blown up, but you never see anybody dead. There are never any pictures like this. Ein Deutscher Soldat. In all those stories he’s just the Hun and serve him right.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t want people to think what really happened,’ said Victor. ‘War’s supposed to be fun.’

  ‘It’s only fun in comics,’ said Andrew. ‘But in real life it hurts just as much whichever side you die on. And you’re just as dead afterwards.’

  ‘Let’s go back to the road,’ said Victor. ‘I don’t like that, here. It’s sad.’

  They returned to the gap in the hedge and waited again, but the Lightnings stayed in their sullen rows by the hangars. The only movement was the tireless turning of the radar scanners. Even the Chipmunk had gone.

  ‘Shall we go home?’ said Andrew. ‘It doesn’t look as though anything else is going to happen.’

  ‘Let’s just wait a bit longer,’ said Victor. ‘Something might come.’ But nothing did.

  14. Education

  Dad came home that evening with a thick parcel of records under one arm.

  ‘I caught the August end of the July sales,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all we wanted and a few more. I’ve got something for you, too,’ he said, as he saw Andrew eyeing his briefcase. He took out two books. ‘This one is about aircraft in the Second World War. The other is a bit more up to date. I had a look through it in the shop. I think I saw eve
rything that’s ever flown over this house.’

  Andrew took the books upstairs to look at them. His room was so covered in bits of paper that there was nowhere to sit. He cleared a space among the racing cars and sat on the shelf. From downstairs he heard the sound of music. Mum and Dad were playing one of their new records. In his cot, Edward would be lying back, enjoying it. He liked music, even Mum’s singing. Andrew gathered up all the pieces of paper, put them in the project file and went down again. As he went into the living room each of his parents held up a warning hand in case he interrupted the record. It sounded like bawling and squeaking and twanging bedsprings to him.

  ‘Can I take the books down to show Victor?’ he asked, when the noise died down.

  ‘Do you think they’ll let you in?’ said Mum.

  ‘I’ll clean my shoes before I go,’ said Andrew and he went to do it.

  When he knocked on Victor’s door it was opened by a young woman he had never met before. She looked like Victor, only bigger in all directions.

  ‘Are you Cheryl?’ asked Andrew, holding the books before him as a shield.

  ‘Victor’s in his room,’ said Cheryl, although she hadn’t admitted that that was who she was. ‘You’d better go up.’

  Andrew stepped inside, wiping his feet loudly. In order to get to the stairs he had to pass through the lounge, where Mr and Mrs Skelton were watching television. Worse still, he had to walk between them and the television set. Victor’s mother nodded as he went by. His father made a threatening movement with his head. Andrew closed the door behind him and crept upstairs. Outside Victor’s room he stopped and knocked.

  Victor opened the door cautiously as though he expected hoodlums on the landing. When he saw that it was Andrew he opened the door properly and beckoned him in. Although it was still light, Victor had drawn the curtains and switched on his fifteen-watt bulb. The aircraft hung among fantasy shadows, turning gently in the breeze from the open window. Andrew bent double and followed Victor across the room to the bed. On the pillow stood a model Lightning, detached from its string. Judging by the long dent down the middle of the bedspread Victor had been lying there, looking at it.

  ‘My dad bought me some aircraft books. I’ve got them here,’ said Andrew. ‘Can we have a bit more light?’

  ‘I’ve got another bulb, somewhere,’ said Victor. ‘I put that in when my mum say I’m ruining my eyesight. I take that out again when she’s forgotten.’

  He dug a spare bulb out of the chest of drawers and screwed it into the socket. To do this he had to climb on to the bed. As he stood down again there was a sharp crunch from among the bedclothes. He pulled out a plastic Hurricane with one wing broken off.

  ‘That must have come down while I was out. I didn’t notice. Wizard prang,’ he said, dropping it on the floor. Andrew picked it up again.

  ‘Can’t you stick it together?’

  ‘I’ll hang that up by the tail and pretend that’s coming down in flames,’ said Victor.

  Andrew put the Hurricane on the window sill and laid the broken wing beside it.

  ‘I’ve got the folder here, as well,’ he said. ‘And some tracing paper. These books are full of photographs and diagrams. There’s a whole lot about Lightnings in this one.’

  Victor sat down on the bed and took the book.

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘When the Jaguars come I bet they scrap all the Lightnings. People will forget what great planes they were and they’ll all be broken up.’

  ‘But you said there were lots of them in other countries,’ said Andrew. ‘They might be around for years yet.’

  ‘They won’t be here,’ said Victor. ‘I shan’t see them. That’s just like the end of the war. When the fighting planes were finished with, they scrapped them, because they weren’t needed any more. That wasn’t till afterwards they realized there weren’t any left and they had to go round looking for bits to put together again.’

  ‘Perhaps when the war was ended they just wanted to forget about it. They like remembering now, because we won and anyway, it’s been over for years. I bet people wouldn’t be so keen on that old Lancaster if it wasn’t the only one left,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Lightnings never won any wars,’ said Victor. ‘There won’t be anything to remember them for. When I’m grown up and I tell people that I can remember when Lightning flew over every day, no one will care. They won’t know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘They might not all be scrapped,’ said Andrew. ‘You might be wrong.’

  ‘I might be,’ said Victor. ‘Where have all the Hawker Hunters gone?’ he shouted. Andrew blinked. ‘I don’t know. Where have they gone?’

  ‘I don’t know either,’ said Victor. ‘But there don’t seem to be any left. Not long ago there were still a couple flying about round here. I haven’t seen them in months.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Andrew. ‘Let’s get on with our project. It’ll be something to remind you when they have gone.’

  ‘I don’t need reminding,’ said Victor. ‘That’s all in here.’ He pointed to his head.

  Andrew opened the book at the page about Lightnings, placed a sheet of tracing paper in it and handed it to Victor who balanced the book unsteadily on his knees and began to draw round the photograph.

  Andrew opened the other book.

  ‘Shall I do a Lancaster? We haven’t got one of those yet.’

  Victor didn’t answer. He was muttering his way round the nose cone. The Lancaster had a very simple outline. Andrew had finished his tracing long before Victor had reached the tailplane. His Lightning had been photographed with a full weapon load and it was lumpy with missiles. He gave up before he had worked his way round to the refuelling probe.

  ‘That’s no good,’ he said. ‘I can’t even trace properly. I wish somebody would invent a machine so that you could just think pictures on to paper. I’ve got a lovely idea in my head, at the end of the runway where the lights are. There’s one Lightning coming in and another one levelling out, behind it. It comes screaming down –’ He dived with his hand, to illustrate. ‘I can see it all, even with my eyes open, but I can’t get that down. I’d better do something else.’

  ‘Can you make notes about the Lancaster?’ said Andrew. ‘To go with my tracing. I’ll read them out and you copy them down.’

  This took a long time. Victor wrote very slowly, going back over the letters to make sure that they stayed put. Andrew watched him.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be worth learning to write properly so that you could put down all you know about Lightnings?’

  ‘Why should I put that all down?’ said Victor. ‘I know that already. I’m only writing this lot for the project. I don’t need to.’ He meant, I’m only doing it because you say so.

  ‘Don’t let’s do it then,’ said Andrew. ‘Don’t let’s do a project at all. You were right. As soon as you put it on paper it stops being interesting.’

  ‘I know I was right,’ said Victor. ‘Look at you and your racing cars. You never thought about doing a project on them until old Miss Beale suggested it. I bet you haven’t even looked at that since the end of term.’

  ‘I’ve been too busy chasing aeroplanes,’ said Andrew. ‘I’ve hardly looked at a car since I took up with you.’

  Victor was putting all the papers away.

  ‘If we’re not going to do a project,’ he said, ‘let’s just look at the pictures. I’d enjoy that. You can read out the bits underneath and I’ll tell you what they mean.’

  ‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘You read out the bits underneath and I’ll tell you if you’ve got them right.’

  Victor looked at him, hard.

  ‘That’s no good, you know,’ he said. ‘That’s no good you trying to teach me anything. I’ll never be any use. I don’t think I even want to be. If you start being good at something, people expect you to be even better and then they get annoyed when you aren’t. That’s safer to seem a bit dafter than you are.’

  ‘But you’re not daft,’ sai
d Andrew. ‘I thought you were at first, till I knew you better. The same as the first time I saw you I thought you were fat. I didn’t know you were dressed in layers. Why do you wear so many clothes? Don’t you get hot?’

  ‘Now and again,’ said Victor, ‘but I don’t care. I like wearing all my clothes at once. I felt all wrong on Prize Day, just wearing a shirt and trousers. I felt like I’d come out in my skin. I might just as well have worn everything, no one would have noticed. I didn’t get a prize. I could have come in a hearth rug. You don’t catch me up on the platform winning a book I don’t want to read.’

  ‘But don’t you care if people think you’re stupid?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Victor. ‘Why be miserable just to make other people happy?’

  Andrew went home at nine o’clock, leaving the books behind for Victor to look at. As he left the house he noticed that the light was shining brightly behind the bedroom curtains, but when he looked back, a few moments later, he saw that it had become dim again and he knew that Victor was stretched out on his bed, under the bomber’s moon, watching the aeroplanes as they turned silently against the ceiling.

  15. Clean Sheet

  ‘Someone has put a cryptic message through the letter box,’ said Mum. ‘And it’s got your name on it. It looks like a blackmail threat in code. Have you been consorting with known criminals?’ She handed it to Andrew. It was written on a piece of his own tracing paper and said, ‘lets. go. t. chlotsal Trusdy.’

  ‘It’s from Victor,’ said Andrew. ‘He wants to go to Coltishall on Thursday.’

  ‘Today is Thursday,’ said Mum. ‘Perhaps he means Friday.’

  ‘I don’t think even Victor would spell Friday like that,’ said Andrew. ‘He might mean Tuesday or he might have thought today was Wednesday. He must have been in a hurry, there are no question marks. I’ll go down and ask him in a minute.’

  ‘We haven’t seen much of him this week,’ said Mum. ‘I thought he’d be in and out all the time, looking at his guinea pig. Maybe he doesn’t care about it so much now that he’s got it.’