‘There you are. Next time, the way to do it is only to add a very little water at first and mix it well in before you add any more. Then you won’t get lumps.’
‘Thank you, miss.’
Peggy spooned the mustard carefully into the little pots and set them on the dining-room tables, together with the salt and pepper cruets. She arranged them in neat groups beside the vases of flowers in the centre of each table. Then she laid out the cutlery, cleaning off any spot marks with the corner of her apron.
When she’d first started a week ago she hadn’t really known how to do anything much and she didn’t think Miss Hargreaves would have given her the job if it hadn’t been so hard to get help these days, with the war on. She had stared at her across her desk as though she didn’t like what she saw one bit.
‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen, madam.’
‘Have you had any experience of waitressing?’
‘No, madam. But I’m sure I could learn quick.’
Miss Hargreaves had frowned. ‘You’re very young for the post. My residents are accustomed to a high standard of service, and so are our non-resident diners. We have high-ranking officers coming here in the evenings.’
‘I think I could manage, madam.’
‘Hmm.’
In the end, she’d got the job and Mum had been pleased. Although it meant she wouldn’t be home to help so much, there’d be a bit more money coming in.
She finished laying the cutlery and put out the table napkins in front of each place. Miss Frost had shown her how to fold them so they stood up like little wigwams. There was a strong smell of frying onions coming from the kitchens, to go with the liver on the lunch menu, and a lot of clattering and banging of pots and pans, too, which meant the chef was in another bad mood. She went round the tables again, checking to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. She checked Mrs Mountjoy’s table three times. Mrs Mountjoy insisted on everything being just so and she made a big song and dance if it wasn’t.
The bombers were busy today. They’d been roaring around overhead while she’d been doing the laying – practising, she supposed. One was going over so low that it was making everything rattle – knives and forks and spoons and glasses jingling and tinkling on the tables. She ran to the window and looked out in time to see it flying past, a great black thing with huge wings and a long tail, like a fish with a fin sticking up each side. She could see guns poking out of the glass bit at the end.
There’d probably be some Air Force officers in again tonight and that made her nervous to think of. They were nice enough gentlemen, but they kept teasing her so she got in a fluster and made mistakes. She gave a last look at the tables and then hurried into the hall to the big brass gong standing in its corner by the stairs. It was her job to ring it for meals and she liked making it boom loudly. Before she could hit the first note, Mrs Mountjoy came stomping out of the Residents’ Lounge, looking at her wristwatch.
‘Five minutes late, girl. Can’t you tell the time? Well, what’s it for luncheon today, then? Not fish again, I hope.’
The cottage garden was a terrible mess: weeds and long, rank grass and overgrown shrubs. Dorothy could hardly see what plants there were for it all. Still, it would be nice to get it a bit tidy, for Charlie’s sake – more like home – and she could watch the bombers coming and going while she was out there working. She found an old fork and spade in a shed near the outside privy, and made a start on the small patch at the front. After a while she began to uncover the remains of what must once have been a pretty little garden with lupins and poppies and hollyhocks. She cleared away the tangled growth from around the plants, making a big pile of weeds on the brick pathway. From time to time she stopped to watch a bomber taking off or landing over on the aerodrome, wondering if it was Charlie’s plane and if it was him up there, sitting in the tail turret with the guns, testing everything like he’d told her they had to do.
The old labourer from the farm up the road went by the gate. He’d stopped to pass the time of day with her before when she was beating the carpets outside, and he did so again, lifting his cap.
‘’Afternoon, Mrs Banks. Warm today.’ He squinted up at the sun overhead. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t have a nice summer.’
She didn’t know his name, but he knew hers. She was a stranger to the area, so they were all curious about her, of course, but she hadn’t said anything about Charlie.
‘Doin’ some gardenin’, then?’ he went on. ‘Bit of a job that for a young lady like you.’
People always took her for younger than she was. She wondered what he’d say if he knew she had a son serving in the RAF. ‘I thought I’d try to tidy it up.’
‘More weeds than flowers, I’d say. I could let you have some seeds, if you like. Fill in the gaps.’
‘Could you really? I’d pay for them, of course.’
‘They’re spare,’ he said. ‘No payment needed. Plannin’ on stayin’ a while, then?’
‘Six months or so, I expect.’
‘Well, safer than down south – long as the Jerries don’t take it into their heads to pay the aerodrome a visit. Too close for comfort, that’d be.’
He went on speaking, but the roar of a bomber taking off at that moment drowned his words. She put up her hand to shield her eyes and watched it climb into the sky.
‘. . . always feared one’ll fall on the farm,’ the old man was saying, as the sound died away. ‘I’ve seen ’em crash comin’ back, all shot-up. An’ t’other week one blew up takin’ off with the bombs. You could see the blaze for miles . . . Weren’t nothin’ left but little bits. An’ there’s lots go off an’ don’t ever come back. More an’ more, so they say, with all the guns those Jerries’ve got. Down they come over there, poor lads, an’ that’s the finish of ’em, ’less they’re lucky.’
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m a bit thirsty. I think I’ll get a drink of water.’ She fled inside the cottage and stood leaning against the wall, waiting for him to go away and for the sickness inside her to pass, the trembling to stop. After a few moments she went to get some water from the kitchen tap and gulped it down. When she felt better she went back outside.
The old man had gone and another bomber was taking off. She remembered something else that Charlie had told her – that they always tested the planes on the day of an operation to make sure they were working all right. It meant they must be going tonight. Charlie might not be going with them, of course. It might not be his crew’s turn, in which case there was nothing to worry about. He might even manage to get over this evening, just for a while. Or he might not. She might never see him again. Lots go off an’ don’t ever come back. That’s what the old man had said. More an’ more of them.
Stop it, she told herself sternly. Stop it this minute, Dorothy. You promised Charlie you wouldn’t worry. You’ve got to stop thinking like this or you’ll be nothing but a nuisance to him. He’ll be all right. He’s got a good crew, hasn’t he? That’s what he said. And he’s got Sam now, and Sam’ll bring him luck.
The waiting around always made them nervy. After the air test there was nothing much to do but hang about the station until briefing in the evening. No leaving base, no phone calls, no outside world.
Van wrote a letter home full of the usual lies. Everything fine . . . great food . . . easy trips . . . home soon . . . He doubted if they’d believe it but he could hardly give them the true facts: everything stinks . . . filthy food . . . suicidal missions . . . unlikely ever to come home again . . .
He’d thought several times of writing some kind of ‘last farewell letter’ to leave in his drawer in case he didn’t come back, but had torn up the attempts. He wasn’t sure what he could say that might make things easier for them and so he’d shirked the whole thing. He wondered if any of the others had written letters. Not Piers, he thought. Not quite the done thing. In the photographs that Piers had shown him of his parents, they had looked typically reserved English to their
upper-class backbones: the mother in evening dress and jewels, the father in some kind of fancy army dress uniform with a row of medals. Not a glimmer of a smile on either face. If Piers got the chop, the upper lips would stay stiff without any embarrassing emotional outpourings from their son. He couldn’t imagine Stew writing one either: what the hell d’you take me for skip? Or Jock, who never spoke of his family at all. Or Harry, whose wife had flown the coop. Or Bert, who’d never been seen writing any kind of letter to anyone. The only one who might have done was the kid, Charlie, to his mother; maybe with one of his poems.
He wandered out later to watch some guys playing cricket out on the Flight Line. Somebody had once tried to explain the rules to him, but he was none the wiser. Football was his game, but American football, not the kind they played over here. Watching the slow progress of the cricket match, he felt an outsider witnessing some unfathomable native ritual, beyond him to appreciate. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt like that.
He biked over to the ops block for the briefing. The crews were already filing in through the double doors, and as he propped the bike against the wall, Stew came freewheeling up to park his with a crash.
‘Got a nasty feeling about this one, skip.’
‘Yeah . . . so’ve I.’
The rest of the crew were already sitting in what had now become their place. The curtain covered the map on the wall, concealing the target, and there was the usual guessing game taking place: Hamburg? Cologne? Rostock? Kiel? Beside him, Stew, cigarette parked in the corner of his mouth, started doodling in his notebook with his pencil, crude female outlines all down the margin.
They smoked and they waited. The Nissen hut buzzed with chat, and tobacco smoke thickened overhead like a London fog. The atmosphere was getting more tense by the minute. Towards the front, Van caught sight of the WAAF intelligence officer he’d noticed at de-briefing: not a hair out of place, not a sign of feeling. She was talking to the senior IO and he could guess how her voice would sound – a female version of Piers.
With the arrival of the Station Commander and Squadron Commander, the crews lurched to their feet, chair legs screeching. The Group Captain made his way between the rows towards his armchair below the platform. ‘Be seated, gentlemen.’
More screeching and scraping and another, quieter, buzz of talk, dying away to an anxious silence. Men waiting to hear their sentence, Van thought. Prisoners in the dock, trying to disguise their dread. The curtain covering the wall map was tugged back to show the long piece of red tape pinned across it from England to Germany. Muttering from all round the room and some groans.
The Senior Intelligence Officer took the stage, pointer in hand. ‘Tonight, gentlemen, you will be making history. The RAF is sending the largest number of bombers ever assembled to Germany.’ The pointer tapped the map briskly. ‘More than a thousand aircraft will converge on the city of Cologne to inflict the maximum possible damage to the enemy . . .’
Stew chucked down his pencil. ‘Stone the bloody crows! Told you so, skip.’
‘Are you for the flying meal, sir?’
‘Oh, yes, rather. Thanks.’
The WAAF waitress smiled at Piers as she set the plate of egg, sausages and chips before him. He didn’t think he had the appetite to eat it, which would be a most frightful waste.
A thousand bombers! Lanes, Wimpeys, Stirlings, Halifaxes, Hamdens, Manchesters. It would be a miracle if they didn’t collide with one of them, and no hope of taking the Huns by surprise. Navigation had given them a route to keep them well clear of the main flak barrage on the run-in. He’d written everything down, concentrating like fury, but if he got it wrong this time . . .
‘Tea, sir?’
‘Thanks awfully.’
They were always nice to you at flying suppers because they knew it might be your last meal ever, and he smiled back to show he wasn’t a bit worried. He gulped down a mouthful of gristly sausage and drank some of the strong tea.
Two-Ton-Tessie drove them out to dispersal. Charlie was squashed up at one end of the bench in the back of the Bedford. They took up a lot of room in their bulky flying clothes, with their parachute packs and satchels. Next to him, Harry took up more than most, being so big, and with the pigeon in its yellow carrier on his knee as well. The pigeon was poking its head out of the hole, having a good look round. Just as well it didn’t know where it was going.
Charlie was sweating uncomfortably in his thick suit, though that wouldn’t last long once they’d taken off. As usual, he’d got the butterflies. To his way of thinking, this was the worst bit: just before you went, when you started to think about everything being the last time for something. Your last meal; your last cigarette – he’d got used to smoking now, and he’d almost got used to drinking beer too; your last view of England.
‘Gum, Charlie, lad?’ Harry was offering a piece of Wrigleys. Sam was tucked inside his Mae West, head sticking out like the pigeon.
‘Thanks.’ He chewed away as they swayed round the peri track. Like a cow chewing cud. Chomp, chomp, chomp. But somehow it calmed you down. He had his own gum, together with his bar of chocolate and his tin of orange juice and his barley sugar, as well as a flask of hot coffee and a sandwich, though last time the bread had gone so dry and curled up, he’d fed it to somebody’s dog when he’d got back.
The Bedford came to a halt by the dispersal pan.
‘All change for Cologne,’ Bert sang out, as though he were a bus conductor. Nothing seemed to worry Bert.
Charlie jumped down out of the back of the truck, hauling his gear with him. D-Dog was waiting for them on the concrete pan, her bomb doors hanging open. Two fitters up on a gantry were still doing last-minute work on her starboard inner. Seen like this, from down on the ground, a Lane always looked enormous. It still amazed him to think that she was going to soar up into the skies and carry them all the way to Germany and back – if they were lucky, that is.
He didn’t know if he really believed in luck, but a lot of them did. When they’d been in the locker room Bert had nudged him and shown him a silk stocking he was wearing round his neck that Emerald, one of the WAAFS in Parachute Section, had given him for luck, and Stew always carried his Zippo lighter on ops. He’d seen other crews carrying all kinds of mascots – charms and rabbits’ feet and toys – and wearing funny things like cowboy boots, lucky scarves, even a top hat. They spat on the tail wheel and peed on it, touched or didn’t touch things, got into the kite in a certain order, and one rear gunner had told him he always turned round three times before he went into the turret.
Harry, who had taken charge of Sam, was going to hang him up just inside the rear door. The idea, he had explained very seriously, was that everybody touched him in turn as they got in, which meant that Harry always had to get in first.
Charlie picked up his parachute pack, about to follow the others, when Two-Ton-Tessie leaned out of the truck window and called to him, beckoning. She wouldn’t get out, he knew, because that was another superstitious thing. The crews didn’t like the WAAFS on the dispersal pans – it was unlucky. He went over to the truck, but reluctantly, because he knew he’d be teased about it.
She smiled at him, but it was a motherly smile. Not the sort that Bert’s Emerald gave. ‘Thought this might help, Charlie. Make it a bit more comfortable for you.’ She was offering him a cushion made of some flowered material with a frill all round the edge. He tried to refuse but she thrust it at him out of the window. From its squashed look he realized she must have been sitting on it when she was driving.
He said awkwardly, ‘Thanks. I’ll give it back.’
‘No, keep it – till the end of your tour.’ She stuck up her thumb with another smile, but she wouldn’t actually wish him good luck in so many words because that was unlucky, too.
The fitters had come down and wheeled the gantry away and Bert was waiting for him by the crew door, crushing his last fag out under his flying boot – one of Charlie’s fags, in fact. Bert seemed to have mor
e of them than he did. They weren’t supposed to smoke near the aircraft, but Bert never took much notice of rules like that.
He looked at the cushion, grinning his monkey grin. ‘Told you she fancies you, Charlie.’ He prodded the cushion. ‘Cor, you know where that’s been, don’t you? Still warm, an’ all.’
He climbed up the short metal ladder after Bert, glad of the fading light that helped to hide his red face. D-Dog had been standing in the sun all day since the air test in the morning and it was still warm inside the fuselage. She smelled of glycol and petrol – the smell of all Lancasters, but her own particular one. Each aircraft, he’d found, smelled a bit different. You could almost tell D-Dog, say, from S-Sugar or R-Robert with your eyes shut, just by your nose.
Sam was hanging there by the crew door and he touched him on his one ear before he clambered his way aft in the darkness of the fuselage, past the Elsan, up over the tail spar and through the flimsy doors to the tail turret entry. He parked his chute and his Thermos flask and sandwiches outside the open turret doors and put the flowered cushion in place on the seat. Then he grasped the two handgrips in the fuselage roof to hoist his legs up and into the turret, ducking his head as the rest of him followed. With the steel doors shut behind him, he felt quite snug, sitting on the soft cushion.
After a while, he heard the engines firing, one after another, and the plane shook and shivered as they roared into life. He unlocked the turret and rotated it, twisting the handgrips to raise and lower the guns and sight. Everything OK.
The skipper’s voice came over, checking the intercom. ‘Rear gunner OK,’ he answered smartly in his turn. As they joined the procession of Lanes trundling along the perimeter track, he swivelled the turret and its loaded guns away from the aircraft behind them. Near the start of the main runway they stopped, waiting in the queue to take off – the part that always scared him most. The tail would unstick when they’d got going full-tilt so he’d be airborne before anybody else, so to speak. But he couldn’t tell when they’d really left the ground, he just had to sit there and say his prayers.
The Crew Page 5