Out of the Blue

by Alan Judd

  ‘Box. Pretty hardy but needs a good start.’

  An idea came to Frank. ‘Vanessa says you’ve lost your gardener?’

  ‘Matthew? Yes. Agreeable young chap. Old village family. Steady enough worker as long as you’re around to keep an eye on him. Sort of chap whose Army report would read, “Works well under supervision.” Don’t know how he’ll do in the regiment.’ He took his pipe from his mouth. ‘I served with his father, who was gassed at Ypres. Survived the war but his lungs were no good and he died about ten years ago.’

  They dined in the kitchen on casseroled rabbit and vegetables, preceded by the neatly-divided trout as an hors d’oeuvre. They had a bottle of claret with the rabbit. ‘Unpardonable extravagance in wartime,’ said the colonel as he poured. ‘Vanessa disapproves, of course, but she can’t argue when there’s a guest, can you, my dear?’ His blue eyes twinkled faintly. ‘Got the habit in France during the last show. Unable to drop it, no matter how hard I try. May as well drink what’s left of the cellar before a bomb lands on it. Another lesson from the last show.’

  Vanessa smiled at the colonel and raised her eyebrows at Frank.

  ‘Are you still in touch with anyone from your old regiment?’ asked Frank.

  ‘One or two. Only fifteen of the originals who volunteered in 1914 came back. Out of eight hundred. Some have died since then, of course, like Matthew’s father. I was already in the Territorials and got drafted into the eighth battalion early on so I count as an original.’

  ‘I guess you had it worse than we do, all that hand-to-hand fighting.’

  The colonel chewed slowly. ‘Not necessarily. Your war ain’t over yet, remember. When it is, go back through your squadron records and see what your casualty rate was. You may be unpleasantly surprised.’

  ‘So long as I’m around to do it.’

  ‘I’m sure you will be.’ Vanessa took his empty plate and put it noisily on hers. The colonel hurried to finish his. When Frank made to get up to help she waved him down. ‘Don’t, this is my job. No cheese today, I’m afraid, but there is tea or coffee. What passes for coffee, anyway.’

  She ran water into the sink and put the plates in to soak. Then she put the kettle on the stove and set out three coffees. ‘If you’ll both excuse me, I’ll take mine upstairs.’

  Her briskness felt like disapproval but Frank couldn’t think what he’d done to merit it. It was almost a disease, this English habit of not saying what you thought. It was impossible to know how to respond. As she left the room he rose from the table but she swept out without noticing. The colonel seemed unperturbed, his spaniel features blandly unknowing, or perhaps unacknowledging. He took his pipe and tobacco pouch from the dresser and fished unhurriedly in his corduroys pocket for a battered lighter that looked as if it was made of brass.

  ‘Your father – did he join the Canadian Expeditionary Force or the British Army?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I could write to my mother and find out. He was in the infantry, I know that.’

  ‘Do you know when he was killed at Lens? Could it have been September 1918?’

  ‘Rings a bell. I was born in 1919 and I know he was killed not long after he got to France.’

  ‘When did your mother re-marry?’

  ‘That must have been – let me see – around 1922, I guess. She met my stepfather at a market. Always says she was bidding for some steers and he came with them.’ He was happy enough to talk about his background but it was unusual to be asked. Most people in England showed little detailed curiosity once he’d told them he came from Canada and they’d told him all they knew about his country and named everyone they knew who had gone there, as if he was sure to have met them. But his mind was more on Vanessa. She must have put on one of her records again because dance music – an unfamiliar number – reached them faintly in the kitchen.

  The colonel tamped down his pipe, his thick fingers apparently impervious to hot ash. ‘I think I knew your father.’

  The music ceased and the long case clock in the hall struck. It was raining harder now, beating against the kitchen windows. Perhaps she was turning the record over. Frank paused in the act of taking out a cigarette. ‘You did? How?’

  ‘The Frank Foucham I knew came from a farming family the other side of Tonbridge. Yeoman farmers, but big for this part of the world. Owned a number of butcher shops. He was secretly engaged to a local girl, Maud Ovenden. His father found out, the family didn’t approve and his father bought some land in Canada and sent him out there to turn it into a farm. Then the war came and Maud, despairing of hearing from Frank and thinking he’d given her up, married someone else.’ He paused. ‘She married me. She wrote and some time afterwards he met and married your mother. Then he joined up and was killed. That’s Maud in the drawing room, that’s her portrait. Use this.’

  He pushed his lighter across the table. It was a primitive contraption, with a worn brass body and a top that slid on and off. Frank lit up. ‘That’s a mighty steep coincidence, sir. If it’s the same Frank Foucham. It was my father’s name. I was given it in memory of him.’

  ‘Ask your mother. Very unusual name. A steep coincidence, as you say, but even steeper if there were two Frank Fouchams killed at Lens on the same day in September 1918.’

  ‘I’ve heard say from my mother that he came from near somewhere like what you said, only she called it Tonbridge.’ He pronounced it as spelt.

  ‘Same place.’

  ‘So I might have relatives over here? If there are Fouchams still around.’ He pushed the lighter to the colonel.

  ‘Probably. His parents would be dead but he had two brothers. There’s a butcher of that name in Tonbridge and another in Tunbridge Wells but I don’t know whether the family still owns them. That was his lighter.’

  Frank took the lighter back, rubbing his thumb over its worn surface. It was simple and rugged, qualities he admired. ‘You knew him well, then? You really knew him?’

  The colonel nodded. ‘He made that; made it himself.’

  ‘He must’ve got the flint and wheel and wick from somewhere.’

  ‘From another lighter, of course. He made the case. Fashioned it from a shell case.’

  Of course, thicker metal, which would account for the weight. Frank continued to fondle it, as if it could tell him something. ‘He gave it to you?’

  The colonel hesitated. ‘It was with him when he was killed. On his body. It should have gone to his next of kin, your mother, but – we were friends, you see. I wanted a memento. Keep it, it’s yours now.’

  ‘Well, that’s – that’s kind of you, sir, but I can’t, not after all this time. You knew him, you were his friend.’

  ‘You have it. I’ve got other lighters. You must have it.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Keep it. Your mother will be pleased. Take that as an order from a senior officer.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, she will. I’m very grateful.’ They both grinned. Frank cupped it in his hands, polishing its sides with his palms. He had never been very curious about his real father, whose existence seemed more an intellectual concept, like evolution or the speed of light, than anything to do with him. It would be different now, he thought. He would take an interest, find out things. This piece of metal, worn with age and use, was his father made real. For a few minutes it took his mind off Vanessa.

  The colonel didn’t appear to want to dwell on the last war and so they talked for a while about the present one, until Frank sensed that the old man was tiring. ‘Guess I’d better be getting back.’

  They stood in the hall while he put on his almost dry jacket. The music had stopped but there was no sign of Vanessa. ‘Please thank Vanessa for me.’

  ‘Thank her yourself,’ she said, coming down the stairs. ‘But there’s no need. Thank you for coming and adding variety to our diet.’ She held out her hand. ‘At least the rain has left off a bit. You shouldn’t get too wet. Come again soon and bring one or two with you, if you like. We have a gramoph
one, as you may have gathered, and I know how much you boys like a bit of music.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll do that.’ He loved the way she pronounced ‘gramophone’ and ‘gathered’, almost prissy in their precision yet so sexy. Her hand felt cold and small, but her grip was quite firm. He let go, worried about holding it too long. ‘They – we – do like a bit of music, yes. We don’t hear much. Make a change from the mess piano.’

  ‘Come any time,’ said the colonel. ‘No need to bring a fish. We don’t demand entry tickets.’

  ‘But if there’s more than one of you and they would like to be fed and if you get the chance, do telephone,’ she said. ‘Two-o-two, same exchange as you.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll do that.’ He bent to tuck his trouser bottoms into his socks, wondering how she knew.

  ‘You need cycle clips,’ said the colonel. ‘Must have some somewhere.’

  ‘Long socks do the trick.’ He straightened, hesitating over whether to say it. He looked at Vanessa. ‘The garden – you said you had no help now – maybe I could come and help out. I don’t know much about plants but I can use a pick and shovel.’

  ‘That’s very kind—’

  ‘You mustn’t—’

  The colonel and Vanessa both spoke at once, and both stopped and laughed. She looked at Frank, still smiling. ‘Do,’ she said.

  Chapter Seven

  On the raid the next day Frank broke his rule forbidding good luck charms other than his knife and took the lighter, buttoned in his tunic pocket. He was hit before even seeing the target and forced to turn back, which he did with relief and disappointment equally mingled.

  The target was an airfield beyond Aumale and the weather, with closed cover at 150 feet, was both good and bad. Good because it kept their long approach hidden from German fighters, bad because flying below 150 feet at 340 mph, with visibility of less than half a mile, meant only a split second to spot a target or avoid danger.

  Nevertheless, a low-level approach of thirty to forty minutes towards a heavily defended airfield, even if un-harassed by the Luftwaffe, took its private toll on each pilot. Isolated in his cockpit, strapped in, hood down, his future was narrowed to the dense, golden, skywards rain of 20 mm tracer he was approaching at over 160 yards a second. And between every tracer round there would be all the deadly invisibles, fired from guns bristling like serried rows of dragons’ teeth for miles around the target. Crossing those at tree-top height was every pilot’s dread, worse than any dog-fight. All knew that for some at least there would be no way through the wall of flak they were hurtling towards, no future beyond it. The rest of life, with its hopes, anticipations, worries and cares, simply fell away, pointless to think about, as blank and unfocused as the camp cinema screen when the projector failed.

  Half-way across the Channel, the Dodger wriggled his wings, indicating trouble, then executed a wide homeward turn. Frank envied him. No one wanted to do this raid but everyone wanted to be part of it. The Dodger had been part and now would live to fight another day. Typical Dodger, having it both ways.

  ‘Turning left now.’ Patrick broke radio silence as he rolled and slid beneath Frank, briefly out of sight. They were still ten minutes and thirty seconds from target and would make another turn in three minutes, intended to mislead the Germans as to where they were heading. That was assuming the Germans had located them; with luck, the low cloud, intermittent fog and their low-level approach using hills and woods to shield them from radar would still make for surprise.

  Once they were all on the new course, though a few feet higher because the fog in the valleys had thickened, Frank tried to re-enter the daydream he had kept running in the back of his mind since being woken that morning. It was his way of dealing with the approaching flak, that and concentration on details of height, trim, engine revs and location, precisely paralleling Patrick one hundred yards behind and ten yards adrift of his starboard wingtip. He could do this while running a secret mental film of himself digging the colonel’s garden, with the colonel out of sight and Vanessa very much in sight and saying something to him. The vision was never particular enough to hear what she was saying but he was forever approaching it.

  He was still coming to it when Patrick pulled up sharply to the right. Frank did the same, his vision instantly dispelled and replaced by a glimpse through the fog of a railway embankment and a goods train loaded with huge tarpaulin-covered shapes on every other bogie. Tanks, no doubt, like the one they had shot up recently. This time no one was in a position to fire but the gun crews must have heard them because the bogies between the tanks lit up and Frank found himself flying through fountains of golden tracer. Instinctively and uselessly, he sunk his head between his shoulders. In another instant he was clear and the fountains were all behind him.

  A loud metallic bang shook the aircraft and a shock like a kick in the abdomen loosened his grip on the controls, reverberating in his skull. He was rocked by the waves of passing shells and for a few seconds he didn’t know how or where he flew, his head ringing and his eyes still dazzled by the strings of tracer. A railway signal box leapt up before him and flashed beneath, then he was in cloud.

  The engine still ran and responded, there was no smoke, his gauges were normal, the controls worked. He was panting and there was a bitter, unpleasant taste in his mouth. Carefully, he eased off speed and lost height, aiming to get back below the cloud. Once there, he found himself alone above shallow valleys and dreary wet woods and fields, with no other aircraft in sight. For a few more seconds he considered carrying on; with everything working, there was no obvious reason not to, provided he could find the target. But if he did he’d arrive minutes after the attack, with the defences aroused and German fighters probably off the ground by then. And he must surely have sustained damage; he couldn’t have taken a hit as violent as that without. Maybe it was his undercarriage, which would prevent him landing. Looking out either side, he saw that the leading edge of his starboard wing was holed like a kitchen cullender. He turned due west for home.

  It was a different sort of loneliness now; the solitary secret thrill of one who got away, his mind free to range beyond the wall of flak rather than fantasise in order to exclude it. He found himself thinking about his father, wondering what his wall had been, whether he had seen it coming or whether it had simply dropped on him from above. For the first time in his life he wondered what he was like, this man who had known even less of him than he of his father; at least he knew he had had a father. He had never felt any different to his step-siblings but now he realised he must be. Feeling he had a future again meant he could indulge in the luxury of a past. He would ask the colonel about his father’s life and death. He might know about his father’s wall, if there was one.

  The cloud lifted as he approached the Channel. He ascended with it, keeping just in its base and increasing speed. He looked for his navigation point, an automatic flak post on the cliffs near Étretat. Reliably, almost comfortingly, it saluted his passing with a graceful arc of tracer which curved harmlessly down into the dead calm sea behind him. That meant he could turn north towards Beachy Head. Way out in the Channel he passed a solitary French fishing boat whose crew waved a tricolour flag.

  Back at the airfield he did two low, slow passes so that the control tower could check his landing gear. It came down and everything, they said, looked in place. He landed carefully, dipping his port wing to take the strain off the starboard. Inspecting afterwards, the ground crew could find no hole in that wing nor any major damage, except for myriad small perforations and cracks. It looked as if someone had fired a shotgun into it several times at close range.

  The engineering officer shrugged. ‘Near miss. Probably a 37 mm exploding at the limit of its range. Peppered you a bit.’

  Frank couldn’t forget the concussing shock. He didn’t want anyone to think he had turned back prematurely. ‘I can’t believe there was no impact.’

  The engineering officer clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Believe me, old
son, if there had been you wouldn’t have had a wing and you wouldn’t be here now to argue about it. That was a near miss.’

  In the mess he found the Dodger alone at the piano, an untouched pint of beer on top of it. He was playing something classical, something soft and melodious. Frank knew nothing of classical music but guessed that this subtle and melancholy piece was difficult to play, unlike the Dodger’s usual raucous repertoire. The Dodger was clearly a more gifted pianist than he let on. Alone and unaware of Frank, he played from memory, his broad features softened and abstracted as he gave himself wholly to something beyond himself. It was a moment of stillness for Frank, which he would have prolonged but for one of the mess staff barging through the door with a crate of bottles. The Dodger broke off and looked round, his abstraction vanished and with it his sensitive, questing intelligence. He left one hand to complete a trite jingle on the keyboard, grinning at Frank.

  ‘What-ho, Moose? You back for an early bath, too? What happened?’

  His own turn-back, he said, was due to a mysterious engine malfunction. It would misfire and lose power, then pick up and run normally for a while, then cough and weaken again. ‘I suspect a fuel line problem. Seemed OK when I landed, of course. Just didn’t fancy my chances in the flak if it went into dawdle on the approach.’

  Frank nodded. He was right to turn back. He’d have been a liability to the rest. If they hadn’t crashed into him they’d have had to shepherd him home.

  ‘Have a drink,’ said the Dodger. ‘My call. Tell me about your problem.’

  They drank beer and waited for the others. The Dodger downed his rapidly and got another while Frank was still a quarter of the way through his. The Dodger’s face was flushed when he sat again, sighing. ‘Ever think about what you’ll do when the show’s over? The whole thing, I mean, the big show, the war. Go back to shooting moose instead of Jerry?’

  Frank hadn’t. It was a long while since he had thought more than a day – or the next op – ahead.