The Crew

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘But I ought to ask your father’s permission, Peggy. I’m supposed to do that.’

  ‘You can ask him later,’ she’d said jolly stubbornly. ‘But not yet.’

  Anyway, she was coming home with him and that was that. And he didn’t care what his parents thought. He didn’t want to marry the sort of girl they wanted him to marry. He wanted to marry Peggy.

  Piers drifted off into a happy doze, imagining the future. He came into his trust fund from the grandparents at twenty-five and that was quite a bit, so there was nothing his parents could do, like cut him off without a penny. He’d be able to buy a decent house somewhere nice . . . in the country, perhaps, if Peggy liked the idea. He wouldn’t go to Cambridge, as planned – no point in that if he was a married man. He’d get a job in the City, or something, and go up and down by train every day. He could picture himself coming back to Peggy in the evening. She’d be waiting for him with the children. A boy and a girl – maybe more, if she didn’t mind – he’d quite like a big family, and they could get a good nanny, if there were any nannies left when the war was over. He opened his eyes. None of this could happen until the war had finished, until they’d beaten the Huns. It might be years before they managed that, at the rate things were going. He might have bought it long before. So he couldn’t possibly marry Peggy yet: it simply wouldn’t be fair on her.

  Van stirred, groaned and came out from under his blankets. ‘What’s the weather like?’

  ‘It’s snowed. Pretty deep.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that. Maybe we’ll be left in peace.’

  But they weren’t. The station commander ordered everyone – desk-fliers and WAAFs included – out onto the runway with spades and shovels and brooms. By mid-afternoon the runway was cleared enough for ops to be on. And it was Essen.

  Trust them to give us a stinker just before we go on leave, Charlie said to himself. Why couldn’t we have a nice ice-cream op? Milan or Genoa, with the Eyeties waving a few searchlights around and not much else. Or an easy bit of gardening. Plant the vegetables off some coast and scarper.

  He swivelled the rear turret and moved his guns up and down. There we were, all looking forward to a nice, well-earned rest, feeling quite bright and breezy for once, and they dump the Happy Valley on us. Essen. Sounded a bit like a snake hissing when you said it. Not Victor, though, he never made a sound. Just lay coiled up in his shoe box, nice and warm in his hay bed, with regular room service. The life of Riley, he lived. Bert thought he was the cat’s whiskers, though he couldn’t really see it himself.

  He shifted around a bit, making himself as comfortable as he could. His cushion had got to be like an old friend. They’d flown together since the third op. It’d been to Duisburg, Bremen, Stuttgart, Cologne, Frankfurt, Kassel, Kiel . . . all over the place, and now it was coming with him to Essen. If Two-Ton-Tessie didn’t want it back when the tour was over, he’d like to keep it as a souvenir.

  All four engines were roaring away, and K-King was shaking about like she was doing the hokey-cokey. They sounded good and healthy. The Merlins didn’t usually let you down. They went on and on, whatever the weather – sun, rain, cloud, ice, sleet, snow. Mr Rolls and Mr Royce were clever blokes.

  The Lane was moving off now and turning out onto the peri track. The tail bumped along the concrete and he watched the amber and blue lights flicking past. He could see the lights on the opposite peri track where other Lanes were heading towards the control cabin from the other side of the drome. Pitch dark on a freezing cold snowy January night, taking-off for Germany! The things you did for England!

  Bump, bump, bump . . . it was a fair way round to the start of the main runway. Plenty of time for the jitters to play you up if you let yourself think this might be your last few hours alive. He stopped himself thinking about that and thought about his new book of poems instead. Good for Mum, finding it for him at the jumble sale. It’d been printed in 1926, but it was in nice condition with brown leather like a shiny conker and gold lettering on the spine. A Selection of English Verses. A bloke he’d never heard of had chosen his favourites and put them all together. He didn’t think much of some, but there were others he liked a lot.

  No coward soul is mine,

  No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere;

  I see Heaven’s glories shine,

  And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

  He spoke the lines aloud. Nobody could hear, so long as his mike wasn’t switched on, so it didn’t matter. He couldn’t even hear himself for the noise of the engines, but he knew what he was saying. He might be afraid, but he didn’t think he was a coward. You were only a coward if you ran away from doing your duty because you were frightened. None of them were cowards. He’d never seen anybody refuse to go on ops, even though they knew they were probably going to get the chop. They went off to their deaths and that was that. They even joked about it. Charlie wasn’t sure whether they were armed from fear by Heaven’s glories – couldn’t see Stew thinking like that, for one. Most likely what kept them going was knowing they were on the right side, fighting for their country. We must be free or die that speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake.

  The Lanc had stopped and they were waiting their turn to move onto the runway. The skipper and Jock were doing their final checks; Harry would be on the look-out in the astrodome, watching for the green light from the caravan, Bert in the mid-upper turret, Stew another pair of eyes in the front, Piers ready with his charts. Any minute now.

  ‘Green, skipper,’ Harry’s voice crackled over the intercom.

  K-King rumbled onto the runway, turning slowly for the take-off, swinging Charlie round in his goldfish bowl.

  ‘Pilot to rear gunner. All clear behind?’

  ‘All clear, skipper.’

  A sudden bellow from the Merlins and K-King leaped forward. The flarepath lights zipped past and he could see great piles of dirty snow lining the runway. Then the tail went up, floating along with him, airborne, and he waited, breath held as per usual, for the rest of the laden Lanc to unstick and haul herself up into the night sky.

  Good old K-King made it all right. She staggered a bit under the weight but up she went; the flarepath lights fell away below him. Mum was down there. She’d be listening to them taking off, standing at the cottage window or maybe out in the garden by the front gate – he knew she did that sometimes, even in the cold. But the good thing was that she never knew if it was him. For all she knew he was at the station, safe and sound. When they got back from Essen he’d try and get down to the cottage and make sure everything was OK with all the snow. No frozen pipes, or anything like that. He’d take Harry too. Play Cupid.

  He’d watched Harry on Christmas day, standing there stiff as a statue and red as a beetroot while Mum had tied the scarf for him. The penny didn’t seem to have dropped with Mum at all, but she liked Harry all right, and with a bit of luck things might work out between them. No sense in rushing it. Not in wartime.

  The drome lights had vanished and there was only blackness around him; no stars yet. He strained his eyes for other aircraft, keeping a constant watch.

  They were up to fifteen thousand when they crossed the Lincolnshire coast and started the long trek across the North Sea – miles and miles of it ahead before they reached any land again. It made Charlie feel colder than he already was, just to think of it. Made him remember what it had been like down there in the dinghy. The heating in his suit must be on the blink because his legs and feet felt like blocks of ice, and so did his hands, and he wasn’t too warm in the middle either. Trouble was, they’d taken out the centre Perspex panel which was always getting misted or frosted up. You could see better, but it made it a bit nippy in the turret, even with the heated flying suit working full blast, which it wasn’t.

  He could see the stars up above him now, keeping him company, like the cushion: Spica, Vega, Rigel, Polaris . . . Piers’ helpers. Clear and bright as anything. Crikey, but he was cold. And another seven hours
of this. One thing, it would warm up over Essen – in a manner of speaking. He listened to them talking to each other up front – the skipper and Jock and Piers and Harry and Stew. Nothing for him to do at the moment except keep on looking out for trouble. Bert would be doing the same, whizzing round in his turret on top of the fuselage. He and Bert didn’t have to worry about their position or courses, wind, air speeds or marker flares, or anything like that, but they had to stay wide awake just the same. Keep their eyes peeled all the time.

  Something was bothering Bert lately. He wasn’t telling any of his stories or making any of his jokes. Women trouble, most likely. That WAAF he went about with looked like she could mean a whole lot of it. He didn’t fancy women like that himself. Not that they’d fancy him either, though his spots had been a bit better lately. Not quite so many. That WAAF in Equipment had smiled at him the other day.

  He heaved a sigh of relief when they crossed the Dutch coast, though that was a bit stupid because the really dangerous part was in front of them. Still, he felt easier, knowing they were over dry land.

  ‘Nav from bomb aimer. Red marker flares ahead.’

  ‘Thank you, Stew. Would you let me know when we’re overhead, please.’

  Funny to listen to those two talking to each other. Piers was always so polite. Lots of thank yous and would yous and pleases. Stew never bothered with all that. Just gave it to you straight. Charlie reckoned it didn’t much matter how you said it so long as you’d got it right. When he came to think of it, it was funny, too, how they all got on so well. It didn’t seem to matter how different they were. The seven of them had stuck together through thick and thin, and that’s what counted. He reckoned the others knew him better than Mum did, really. And he probably knew them better than their mums did.

  As they got nearer the target, K-King started to rock about in someone else’s slipstream and the skipper took her up to clear it. You stooged along alone for hours and then all of a sudden the others were all around, heading for the target with you. It might have been a bit of a comfort if you didn’t have to worry about colliding with them.

  Flak was coming up and tossing them about all over the shop. The open panel in front of him let in the stink of cordite and made him feel sick. He peered out. Bloody bedlam down there by the look of it. Flames and smoke, flares burning, gun flashes, lines of bomb bursts in fours and the brilliant single woomphs of exploding cookies. They were giving it to them tonight all right. He wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of that lot. There was another explosion nearby in the sky, so bright it blinded his vision. When he could see properly again, the explosion had turned into a gigantic firework shooting out stars of flame. He stared at them falling slowly to earth and fading. It didn’t look like a bomber copping it. Maybe it was some new weapon Jerry had dreamed up. Whatever it was, it was scary.

  Their turn now. Stew getting ready to pull the plug. ‘Left, left. Steady, skip. Steady . . .’

  They dropped their bomb load and the skipper got them out of there fast. Never wasted any time over that. They always headed straight for the dark, away from trouble quick as possible. Charlie reckoned that was one reason why they hadn’t bought it long ago. Anybody who hung about was asking for it.

  ‘Rear gunner to pilot. See that big explosion to port when we were over the target, skipper? I couldn’t make it out.’

  ‘I reckon it was one of those scarecrow flares they’ve been warning us about, Charlie. To frighten the pants off us.’

  As if they needed to.

  Stew spotted more flak ahead on the Dutch coast near Rotterdam but the skipper slipped round north of it and out across the North Sea. Now that they were on the home straight, so to speak, Charlie started to feel the cold again. The skipper and Piers were talking to each other about the bad head-wind that K-King was having to battle against. They were crawling along, it seemed to him, and it looked like it was going to take hours to get home. Hours squashed up in his Perspex prison in the bitter cold. Just got to put up with it, hadn’t he? No use feeling sorry for himself. Only this time it was worse than it’d ever been. He found he was sobbing with the cold and the cramp and stopped himself quickly. That wouldn’t do at all.

  When they landed back at Beningby it was still pitch dark and snowing again. Charlie was so stiff that he could hardly crawl out of the turret; his body and limbs felt like they’d locked solid.

  Harry helped him up onto the back of the crew lorry. ‘You look done-in, lad.’

  ‘Bit cold, that’s all. The wiring in my suit’s conked out, I think.’

  Harry was shocked. ‘We’ll get that fixed, no danger.’

  He thought he was going to fall asleep at debriefing and he was too tired to eat more than a few mouthfuls of his bacon and eggs afterwards. Three crews were missing – twenty-one empty places at the tables in the Mess.

  He stumbled back to the hut and fell into bed. The sheets were icy cold and so damp they felt wet, but all he cared about was lying down. The last thing he saw was Harry leaning over him, laying his greatcoat over the top of the blankets, before he closed his eyes and slid into blessed oblivion.

  PART IV

  Fifteen

  JOCK FOUND AN empty seat in a Third Class Smoking. He hoisted his kit-bag up onto the rack and sat down, wedged between two army blokes who weren’t fussy about taking up most of the room or about keeping themselves clean. It wasn’t easy in a bit of tepid water, as he well knew, but these two couldn’t have washed for weeks. Months, maybe. As well as that, the compartment reeked with cigarette smoke, but it was still a lot better than standing. The train jerked forward and steam clouded the windows. He was tired. So tired he’d probably sleep most of the way, bolt upright. He folded his arms and closed his eyes, ready to drop off. Instead, he started thinking about Ruth. No surprise in that. She was on his mind most of the time, except when he was flying. He didn’t allow himself to think about anything else but the job in hand, then. Down on the ground, he thought about Ruth. He knew he was in love with her. Couldn’t get her out of his mind, no matter how hard he tried. Or how hard she tried to put him off. Either she hated him, or what had happened to her had made her hate all men, never mind who they were. He didn’t know the answer.

  He wasn’t too proud of what had happened at Christmas. She’d made him so angry he’d lost control of himself. It’d been close as anything to rape, except that she hadn’t tried to stop him. Not that that made it any better or was any excuse. He’d behaved like a drunken lout. Just like your father. Aye, she’d been right about that, and that was the worst of it.

  There’d been no chance to say he was sorry. To try to tell her how he felt about her. Mr Gibbs had come out into the yard and they’d had to scramble about with clothes and buttons and make out they were busy with the chicken feed. He was never alone with her after that until he left – Ruth had made sure of it.

  One of the Brown Jobs had lit up yet another cigarette and the atmosphere was getting like pea soup. If it hadn’t been so cold in the compartment already, he’d’ve reached across to the window strap and let some fresh air in, whatever anybody else said. He watched the countryside going by. Plenty of snow about still. He’d always reckoned he was pretty tough – inured to the bitterest weather – but it had been terrible at the station lately. The cold had got into everything: their clothes, their bedding, their very bones. They’d looted coke for the stove and when that had run out they’d chopped up chairs and shelves and used those instead. At night they wore flying clothing to bed and piled greatcoats on top of the blankets. Anything to get warm.

  There was snow in Glasgow, too, and a wind that cut into him like a knife as he walked the blacked-out streets from the railway station to the tenement. When he knocked on the door his mother opened it a crack.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Jock.’

  ‘Jock . . .’ She gave a sob and opened the door wide, heedless of the blackout. He went inside quickly and shut it behind him. The light bulb han
ging from the ceiling showed him her face streaked with tears, eyes swollen and red, and a dark bruise on her cheek. He could feel his fists bunching. God help me, I’ll kill that bastard. Kill him. She gave another sob and threw herself into his arms. He cradled her gently against him. He wouldn’t let her stay in this place another day. He’d take her back with him. Find somewhere for her to live. His mind raced ahead. Maybe Charlie’s mum might have her for a while . . . Then, as soon as his tour was over he’d find her somewhere to live, wherever they posted him next.

  ‘I’ll look after you, Mother. I’m taking you away from here.’

  She stopped crying and lifted her head. ‘It’s your father, Jock.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said grimly. ‘I know it’s him.’

  ‘No, you dinna understand . . . He’s ill. They took him to hospital. It’s bad. Very bad.’

  That was why she’d been crying, why she was so upset. Not because the brute had been bashing her about but because he’d been taken sick. He stared at his mother.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘They didna tell me. It was yesterday evening . . . he fell down – here in the kitchen.’

  ‘Nothing unusual in that.’

  ‘It wasna the drink.’ She looked at him with anguish. ‘He lay there moaning and moaning. I didna know what to do at first. Then I went next door and they went round for the doctor. And they took him away by ambulance. Oh, Jock . . .’

  He held her again while she cried some more. ‘Have you been to see him?’

  ‘No. I had to go to work. I was waiting for you . . .’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ he said. ‘We’ll go together.’

  His father was lying in a long, green-tiled ward. The place smelled of Jeyes Fluid and the decrepit flesh of sick old men. It nauseated him, even more than the smell, to see the way his mother bent to kiss his father and to stroke his forehead tenderly. How could she, after the way he’d treated her? How could she care what happened to the pig?