Thunder and Lightnings

by Jan Mark

‘He was here yesterday, while you were taking Edward to the clinic,’ said Andrew. ‘He’s a bit fed up at the moment, because of the Lightnings going. I wish I hadn’t told him. I should have waited till he told me.’

  ‘I should have thought that Victor would be all in favour of progress, especially in the field of avionics,’ said Mum.

  ‘Well, he’s not,’ said Andrew, thinking that Mum had no business using words like avionics. ‘It’s just that the Lightnings have been here since he was little. He’s not used to changes, not like we are. He’ll feel a bit lost when they’ve gone, I think. When we went to Coltishall on Monday there was hardly anything going on. I thought he was going to cry.’

  ‘He wouldn’t though, would he?’ said Mum. ‘Victor doesn’t like people to see him as he really is. I suppose that’s why he makes himself look so outrageous, to put us off the scent. I wonder, perhaps that’s why you and he get on so well; you are just the opposite.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Andrew, on guard. He usually tried to avoid serious conversations with Mum. She was too old to feel ashamed of herself afterwards.

  ‘Well, anyone can see what you’re thinking,’ said Mum.

  ‘No they can’t,’ said Andrew. ‘You couldn’t see that I was afraid of going to school.’

  ‘Oh yes, I could,’ said Mum. ‘That’s why I made you start at once, instead of next term. You’d have been dead of fright by September. Now you know what to expect and you’ve got a friend to go back with.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something then?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘I did,’ said Mum. ‘I said, “The first day’s always the worst,” and you thought it was a big con. If I’d tried to talk you round, you wouldn’t have taken any notice. You were determined to hate it long before you got there.’

  ‘I did hate it at first,’ said Andrew. ‘It was an absolute muddle to begin with.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mum. ‘One look at your sulky mug as you came up the path on the first day and I could tell exactly what you thought. But the muddle’s over now, isn’t it? You know who you’ll get on with, and which teachers are idiots and who you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.’

  ‘Jeannette Butler,’ said Andrew, at once. ‘I wouldn’t touch her with a pickaxe. She’s just like a scaly dinosaur. Victor said, “Give us a kiss,” and she poked him.’

  ‘You wait till Victor’s a bit older,’ said Mum, ‘and he won’t have to ask. She’ll give at the knees when he goes by.’

  ‘With his teeth?’ said Andrew.

  ‘She won’t be looking at his teeth,’ said Mum. Andrew thought the conversation was becoming rather silly.

  ‘I expect we shall go to Coltishall this afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’ll nip down to Victor’s now and make sure.’

  Victor was out when he got there. His mother answered the door and kept a squeegee mop between him and the kitchen floor, which was being cleaned again.

  ‘I’ll give him your message,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to Polthorpe with the washing. The machine’s broken down.’

  ‘Do you want my father to look at it?’ said Andrew. ‘He’s good with electrical things. He works on a computer.’

  ‘It was a computer that sent us an electricity bill for ninety-two pounds,’ said Victor’s mother, closing the door.

  Andrew went back up the lane and met Victor cycling home with a plastic bag full of washing, jammed between the handlebars.

  ‘Why did you put a note through the door?’ asked Andrew. ‘You should have come in.’

  ‘I was in a hurry to get to the launderette,’ said Victor, sitting at ease with his chin resting on the bag of washing. ‘If you don’t get there before half past nine that’s full of ladies with babies crawling about.’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d like it full of babies,’ said Andrew. ‘You can take Edward along with you next time, if you like.’

  ‘That’s not safe,’ said Victor. ‘They crawl all over everything. I’m always afraid that one of them will get churdled up in the tumble drier. Are you coming, this afternoon?’

  ‘I’ve just been down to tell you that,’ said Andrew. ‘Your mum’s cleaning the floor again. Do you want to come in and have a coffee while it dries?’

  ‘OK,’ said Victor, turning the bicycle round. ‘There’s always coffee going at your house, isn’t there? Do your mum keep that pot boiling all day?’

  ‘It’s not a pot, it’s a percolator,’ said Andrew. ‘I wish she’d buy instant coffee. She fills it up in the morning and just keeps adding water all day. When it comes out grey it’s time for a new lot.’

  ‘We have coffee at eleven in the morning and half past three in the afternoon,’ said Victor. ‘Never in between. I wouldn’t care how grey that was if I could just have that when I wanted it.’

  When they reached Andrew’s house he left Victor greeting the guinea pigs and went in to light the gas under the percolator. Mum was at the table, slapping a foggy piece of pastry on to the top of a pie dish.

  ‘Shepherd’s pie,’ she said. ‘Plenty of vegetables, but not very much shepherd. There was less meat on that bone than I thought.’

  ‘You don’t make shepherd’s pie with pastry,’ said Andrew.

  ‘We’re almost out of potatoes too,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’ll get you some from the post office,’ said Andrew. ‘If you let me buy some instant coffee as well.’

  ‘You should count yourself lucky to get real coffee,’ said Mum, tweaking at the pastry to make it fit.

  ‘The happiest moment of my life,’ said Andrew, looking at the ceiling, ‘was the day we moved out and you packed the percolator at the bottom of the crockery box.’ Mum threw the pastry brush at him.

  Ginger sneaked round the mixing bowl to help remove the pastry trimmings from the pie. Mum hauled him off.

  ‘You watch out, lad, or you’ll be in the pie as well. There’s plenty of meat on him,’ she said, putting him on the floor. ‘We’ll fatten him up for Christmas.’

  ‘Don’t you go cooking our guinea pigs,’ said Victor, at the door.

  ‘Now, there’s an idea,’ said Mum. ‘Guinea-pig pasties: fricasée of guinea pig: guinea-pig au gratin: whole roast guinea pig with an apple in its mouth.’

  ‘A pea,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I couldn’t eat anything I’d looked after,’ said Victor. ‘Rabbits or chickens and that. My uncle bought twelve cockerels and reared them to eat, but when that came to killing them he had to take them down the road to Charlie Hemp. He didn’t mind eating them, though, once their heads were off. He didn’t like the way they looked at him after they were dead.’

  ‘Coffee’s perking,’ said Andrew. ‘Have we got any clean cups?’

  ‘I haven’t washed up yet,’ said Mum. ‘Just run them under the tap.’ She jabbed three holes in the top of the pie crust and put the dish in the oven. A nasty smell floated out when she opened the door.

  ‘It’s the remains of that chicken we had at the weekend,’ said Andrew. ‘They’ve been cooking while the oven heated up.’

  ‘They’ve been burning,’ said Mum, taking a dish of black bones out of the oven. ‘Put them somewhere to cool, will you? If I put them in the dustbin now, they’ll burn a hole in it.’

  Andrew put down the cups and carried the smoking dish into the garden. Ginger followed him and offered to take the chicken off his hands.

  ‘Chicken bones are bad for cats,’ said Andrew. ‘They’ll stick in your throat.’ But Ginger ignored him and dragged the carcase away by one leg. Andrew watched him trying to kill it in the flower bed and went back indoors. Victor was serving coffee. He gave Andrew Edward’s mug with the rabbits on. Mum took the cup with only half a handle and propped herself against the fridge.

  ‘How’s Mutt Michigan getting along?’ she asked Victor. ‘Still winning the war single-handed, armed only with his Stilson wrench?’

  ‘Mitch Mulligan,’ said Victor. ‘And that’s a spanner, not a wrench. I don’t know. I didn’t get that this week.’ />
  ‘What? Aren’t you going to find out if he gets back inside the aircraft?’ said Andrew.

  ‘Of course he get back inside,’ said Victor. ‘That’s the trouble. You know nothing will ever happen to him. By rights, he should have had his head blown off by now, but he still go on, week after week. I’m going off him,’ he added.

  ‘Well, if that’s so,’ said Mum, ‘I’ll let you in on a secret. When I was at school my young brother used to have a comic and Mitch Mulligan was in it, only he wasn’t called Mitch Mulligan then. He was Block Buster the Wellington Wonder, but the pictures were the same and by the looks of it, so were the stories. I recognized him at once.’

  ‘Did you read them, then?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mum. ‘I used to enjoy them, too. They were much more exciting than the girls’ comics. Those were all about how Trudy unmasked the Phantom Hoaxer and saved the school from ruin; or how Sally Stringbag danced her way to fame with a wooden leg and saved her father from ruin. I expect they still are,’ she said.

  When Victor had stopped giggling, he said, ‘I’d better get those sheets back home. I’ll be skinned, else. Shall I see you after lunch, then?’

  ‘I’ll come down with you, if you like,’ said Andrew. ‘I’m going to get some coffee.’

  ‘Spuds,’ said Mum.

  ‘Coffee and spuds,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Mum. ‘Care to take Edward with you? Of course you would.’

  Edward was shadow-boxing in his pram by the front door.

  ‘Hello, gorillakins,’ said Victor. ‘Don’t knock yourself out.’

  Edward smiled at him and put his foot in his mouth.

  ‘I wish I could do that,’ said Victor. ‘I used to be able to. When I was little I bit my nails. When I ran out of fingers I used to bite my toenails.’

  ‘You still do bite your nails,’ said Andrew, looking at Victor’s nibbled fingertips.

  ‘But not my toenails,’ said Victor. ‘I can’t reach any more; I’m getting old and stiff.’

  Andrew put the bag of sheets on the end of the pram and walked down the lane. At Victor’s house he left the pram at the gate and carried the bag round to the back door while Victor put his bicycle away. He held the bag round the middle. The folded top blossomed open and released a soothing smell of clean washing.

  Victor opened the door and took the bag from him. The top sheet was squeezed out of the bag and fell on to the path. Victor sidestepped in a desperate rescue bid and put his foot on it. When Andrew picked up the sheet he saw that one side was freckled with mossy green spots while the other was heavily imprinted with the sole of Victor’s boot. He looked up and saw Victor’s mother standing in the doorway.

  She looked at him, at Victor and at the sheet, then without saying anything, she smacked Victor hard, three times, across the side of the head. Victor rocked on his feet and put his hand to his head, but he said nothing either.

  Andrew was shocked by the silence of it. In his house, any trouble was accompanied by much shouting and table-thumping, all over in a few moments because no one could ever get angry enough to keep it up. He gaped at Mrs Skelton.

  ‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘I let the bag open.’

  Mrs Skelton didn’t look at him. She flicked the back of her hand towards Victor’s face.

  ‘Take that back this afternoon,’ she said to him.

  ‘We were going out this afternoon. Can’t we take it now?’ said Andrew. ‘I’ll take it. My mother will wash it if you like.’

  ‘This afternoon,’ said Mrs Skelton, and took the bag of washing into the kitchen.

  Andrew gave Victor the soiled sheet. ‘I’ll see you when you get back. We can go out afterwards,’ he said, but Victor only shook his head and followed his mother indoors.

  ‘She hit him,’ said Andrew. ‘Only for dropping the sheet; and it wasn’t his fault at all, it was mine. It just came out of the bag by itself but it was me that let the bag come open.’

  ‘I dare say she knew that,’ said Mum. ‘It was probably you she wanted to hit and she took it out on Victor instead. Some people have to lash out when they’re angry. I do. I kick the furniture.’

  ‘Yes, and you only hurt your toe,’ said Andrew. ‘She wanted to hurt him, I could see. And the sheet wasn’t all that dirty. I’ve seen you put dirtier sheets back on the bed.’

  ‘I didn’t say she was right,’ said Mum. ‘I was trying to explain.’

  ‘It wasn’t fair.’

  ‘Nothing’s fair,’ said Mum. ‘There’s no such thing as fairness. It’s a word made up to keep children quiet. When you discover it’s a fraud then you’re starting to grow up. The difference between you and Victor is that you’re still finding out and he knows perfectly well already. He doesn’t even think it worth mentioning. I bet you’ve never heard him say, “It’s not fair,” have you?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Andrew. ‘But she shouldn’t have hit him. I don’t care whether he expects it or not, that doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘What price a clean house?’ said Mum.

  ‘I don’t believe that’s got anything to do with it,’ said Andrew. ‘Some people are just nasty.’

  16. Takeover

  Andrew looked out of his window on Friday morning and saw Victor in a fisherman’s smock and football jersey toiling up the lane with the two bicycles. Andrew whistled and Victor looked up. Having both hands full he couldn’t wave, but he grinned. Andrew observed that the grin was as wide as ever: quite undented. He ran downstairs.

  ‘It looks as though we’re going out this morning,’ he said, as he passed Mum on the landing. ‘Victor’s got both the bikes again.’

  ‘I hope you have better luck today,’ said Mum.

  ‘So do I,’ said Andrew. Thursday afternoon, when they should have been at Coltishall, had been loud with aircraft. He had spent most of the afternoon in the garden watching a tantalizing succession of planes wheeling against a sky already grazed by vapour trails. He felt guilty because he was watching and Victor was exiled in the launderette with the sheet.

  When he went round to the gate Victor was already in the garden, exchanging silly noises with Edward.

  ‘When he get a bit bigger we can take him with us,’ he said. ‘Train him up right. My auntie’s got a seat on the back of her bike to put a baby on. We’ll borrow that for Edward.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d like the noise,’ said Andrew, with an awful vision of himself in the years ahead, carting Edward about on the back of a bicycle.

  ‘Next year, maybe,’ said Victor. ‘Let’s get going. I don’t want to waste any more time today.’

  Mum came out of the front door with a vacuum flask. She held it up like Florence Nightingale and then tucked it into Victor’s saddle bag.

  ‘The coffee was hot, so I put some in here,’ she said. ‘Andrew told me you liked a cup when you could get it.’

  Victor was too surprised and pleased to speak, for a moment. Then he said, ‘Go on, give us a kiss, darling.’

  Mum laughed and waved him away. ‘Hop off, you wicked old man. I’ll have to watch you.’

  Andrew looked at them both. They all knew that the coffee was probably terrible.

  Before they reached Coltishall, Andrew was afraid that today was going to be another dud. The sky was cloudy. There was nothing flying below the cloud and no sound from anything above it. They saw the yellow helicopter droning back to base but after it had gone the sky remained empty.

  When they arrived at Firegate Four there were already several cars parked by the fence and people stood about with field glasses and radios.

  ‘Crowds are gathering early,’ said Victor, looking hopeful. ‘Maybe they’ve got something big on.’

  Over by the hangers the Lightnings stood in a line and figures moved among them.

  ‘Something ought to happen soon,’ said Andrew. ‘They look pretty busy over there.’

  ‘Which way’s the wind blowing?’ said Victor. ‘I can se
e one moving now, but I think that’s going the wrong way.’

  Andrew looked at the windsock blowing fatly from its mast like the nipped-off finger of a rubber glove.

  ‘Same way as before,’ he said. ‘I think that one’s going into the hanger.’

  It was, and a few moments later another followed it.

  ‘That’s as bad as Monday,’ said Victor, looking away. ‘That’s worse. Why get them out at all if they’re only going to put them away again? Why don’t they fly?’ he asked himself aloud.

  Andrew didn’t try to answer but only cursed himself over their lost Thursday.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Victor. ‘Something’s on the move over there.’

  A small tail fin could be seen, zig-zagging in the distance. Then the plane to which it was attached, took off.

  ‘Bloody Chipmunk!’ roared Victor, slamming his hand down on top of the gate. A fang of barbed wire nicked the side of his finger and he swallowed anything else he might have said and sucked it. One or two of the bystanders turned to look at him, unable to tell why he was so angry. They were delighted to see the Chipmunk. They were delighted to see anything, as long as it flew.

  One family had brought along Granny and the baby, which seemed to have been a mistake. Father, who was eavesdropping on the control tower with a radio tuned to the aircraft frequency, suddenly announced, ‘Apparently there is a plane going to overshoot the runway, coming now.’

  Everyone looked towards the runway, expecting fire engines, drama and wreckage.

  ‘That only mean that won’t land,’ said Victor to Andrew, and all that appeared was a small, twin-engined aircraft that went over, rather high up, and didn’t come back.

  ‘I suppose you could call that overshooting,’ said Victor loudly. Father turned away and twiddled the controls officiously, zipping the aerial in and out, several times. Granny took the baby to look at the horses in the next field.

  ‘Shall we go round to the end of the runway?’ said Andrew, as he saw the scowl setting firm on Victor’s forehead.

  ‘Leave that a bit,’ said Victor. ‘Something’s bound to happen soon.’

  They waited and they waited. One of the cars drove away. Father, with the radio clapped to his ear said, ‘There’s a Spitfire taking off.’