The Keeping of Secrets

by Alice Graysharp

  ‘He can get guided tours from volunteers at the Beaver Club,’ said my mother.

  ‘Well, mine’s a sort of individually tailored tour,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ responded my mother, ‘just make sure you don’t guide him off the beaten track by mistake. Stay in public at all times.’

  ‘Oh Mummy, he’s just an acquaintance really, just someone I was friendly with.’

  ‘Young men starved of female company can get a little out of hand when they’re back in it,’ my mother countered darkly.

  ‘He behaved with complete propriety,’ I protested, ‘and he even made sure I got home safely to the front door after the dance. You’re being unfair to him and reading too much into it all!’

  By now I was seething and resented my mother’s implications. But I wanted her blessing and was afraid that she would pull the plug on the while idea, so I let her have the last word, ‘While I agree he is a most pleasant young man, be careful. You never know what someone else is thinking.’

  I spent an hour or so bathing, dressing, undressing, spreading my clothes out and agonising over what to wear, finally choosing my knee length mid blue worsted skirt and jacket and my sky blue rayon blouse, topped with a silky blue and white paisley patterned scarf below my navy blue overcoat. A sky blue beret perched at a jaunty angle completed the picture. A conscious tribute to the blue in James’ uniform.

  When I arrived in the Club’s foyer I found James chatting to some fellow airmen. He detached himself from the group to greet me with a brief hug and a kiss on my cheek. I smiled up at him, thinking, he’s thinner than I remember, a little gaunt, maybe. His uniform hung a little on his frame and he seemed to have aged more than the intervening four months since our last meeting. He’s been to hell and back, though I bet he’ll never admit it.

  ‘Come and meet some friends,’ he said, leading me over and introducing me to Tony, Stuart and Douglas. Tony, tall, dark and cadaverous leaned down and shook my hand enthusiastically.

  ‘So this here’s my friend’s tour guide for the day,’ he joked. ‘Where do I sign up? Does this Club have any more like you?’

  I blushed a little, acknowledging the compliment with a slight nod, and turned to greet the others. Stuart was the youngest of the trio, fresh faced and seemingly barely older than me, beaming as he shook in turn. Douglas, older, I thought, than even James, stepped forward.

  ‘Hie there, lassie,’ he said in a broad Scottish accent which to my soft southern ears made his next sentence mostly incomprehensible; I took from it only an oblique reference to James being busy the previous day, but an answer did not appear to be required so I nodded and smiled vaguely. I was used to hearing a variety of accents at the Beaver Club as it prided itself on welcoming any serviceman from any background who happened upon it, but was curious as to the Highlander’s comradeship with the Canadian airmen and, as we left the Club and James turned me towards St James’ Park, he told me that Douglas had emigrated to Canada only ten years before and so had brought his ‘hieland’ accent with him.

  As we walked in the Park, warming ourselves in the weak late autumn sunshine, distant Lowry figures tending their Digging for Victory plots of brussel sprouts, broad beans, hardy peas and other autumn vegetables, James regaled me with pen pictures of some of his colleagues and re-enacted incidents they had experienced.

  ‘And one morning after a particularly busy night of sorties,’ he concluded, ‘Douglas keeled over forwards into his porridge and we tried to shake him awake, but he gave us a string of words in his comatose state not suitable for your ears and fell back deep asleep. When he finally woke, the porridge was solid and came up out of the bowl like a brick attached to his forehead. He then complained that we hadn’t wakened him earlier!’

  I laughed at the image James conjured but put my hand on his arm in concern. ‘You told me about falling asleep on landing,’ I said, ‘what if it happens when you’re in the air?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry on that score,’ he replied, patting my hand as it rested on his arm and smiling down at me. He reached into a pocket and extracted a cigarette packet and a lighter. We stopped while he offered me a cigarette out of politeness, smiling at my refusal, lighting up one for himself. ‘The adrenaline rush when the Hun’s taking pot shots at you keeps you wide awake, I promise you. It’s only when it’s all over and you’re down safely you’ll fall asleep anywhere.’

  ‘Pot shots hardly reflect the danger you’re in,’ I said, my voice rising, momentarily forgetting the First Rule of War: only talk about positives, keep it light, keep it bright. ‘You mentioned in a letter that you were shot at and had to crash land. You made little of it but I think you were lucky to escape with your life.’

  James shook his head. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have written to you about that. I was perfectly fine, just the odd scrape and Jerry only holed the webbing, he didn’t hit any of the vital parts. Though I had to make a bit of a crash-landing, I’d made it to the aerodrome and my Patty was mended and back in the air in a coupla days.’

  ‘Patty?’

  He grinned. ‘I re-named her after you.’

  I felt both flattered and alarmed. He hardly knows me, I’m just a friend (I lied to myself), is he reading more into our friendship than I am?

  And I was curious. ‘How can an aircraft that’s just been downed and crash-landed be up and running again in just a couple of days? How can you rely on the repair? Isn’t that very dangerous?’

  ‘Hurricanes are built like biplanes,’ he explained. ‘The fuselage is held together with steel tubes and wooden frames are fixed to these,’ he demonstrated, loosely layering one hand over the other, then lifting his lower hand above and gesturing with it in a widening, circular motion, the cigarette smoke mimicking the vapour trail from an aeroplane, ‘over which a linen covering is laid. So when the rounds hit me all they really did was go through this covering and out the other side, taking some of the wood and steel framing, enough to make her unstable but not enough to bring me right down. The only thing to really worry about are the second and third fuel tanks which you’ll find one each side of the cockpit. If they get hit you’re probably a goner.’ At this point I felt a little faint. ‘I brought her mostly under control and headed back to base, but she was a bit of a devil to land with a chunk taken out of her. Hurricanes are easier to repair than Spitfires because Spitfires’ bodies are completely metal but, hey, my girl’s a fighter, in more ways than one. Like you,’ he added, drawing deeply on his cigarette and exhaling, his left arm circling my shoulders and hugging me a little.

  ‘Me, a fighter? You’re the one on the front line.’

  ‘So are you,’ he said, dropping the cigarette stub and grinding it with his heel. ‘My brave girl, with a bomb blasting off right next to you in the field. Remember, you wrote to me about it? Your Leatherhead doesn’t sound any safer. And London’s constantly under attack. It’s not called the home front for nothing. But at least I can fight back. Here on the ground you’re all sitting ducks.’

  ‘We have the anti-aircraft guns.’

  ‘It’s just pot luck if they get an airplane flying by. I know they fire saturation shots in the direction they think they’re going, but you need a better way to predict these things than the predictors they use at the moment. You need the anti-aircraft guns and searchlights to be as accurate as possible because us fliers can’t stop Jerry at night. Without some form of night radar we’re flying blind. I’m sure in time with proper research and development things will improve. It just isn’t out there right now.’ He paused, tightening his grip further. ‘I hate to think of you so vulnerable.’

  Swinging me round, he kissed me, gently at first, then harder, his arm moving down to my waist, the other somewhere between us, nestled, I realised as his tongue probed my mouth, against my right breast. I was a little stiff in his embrace at first, then melting, kissing him back, my arms around him, my head swimming, my body warring with my accusing mind, you flibbertigibbet, you like this, don’t you
, you shouldn’t let him but you like it…

  James drew back smiling, breathed in deep and tugged at my hand. ‘Come on, I want to see if those ducks we saw last May haven’t been sitting targets and requisitioned for someone’s dinner table.’

  We half-trotted to the lake, holding hands, laughing, while I recovered my poise, grateful for his deft turn of the conversation. There, having satisfied himself of the ducks’ wellbeing, James looked at his watch.

  ‘Not far off lunchtime. I have a table arranged at a place near Piccadilly Circus. Can my tour guide take me there? In return for your tour guide services the meal’s on me.’

  The ‘place’ turned out to be the Regent Palace Hotel, an imposing immediate post-Edwardian building that boasted the greatest number of rooms in any hotel in Europe at its opening. I had passed it many times but would never have had the means to pass over the threshold, let alone eat there. I hung back, daunted, but James urged me in.

  Excusing myself to the Ladies room, promising to meet him back at the restaurant entrance, I welcomed the few quiet moments to draw breath and say to myself in the mirror (fortunately there was no one else there!), stop being ridiculous, he’s just being friendly the only way he obviously knows how. I’ve shown him Lyons Corner House and now he’s showing me his version, that’s all, but a slight sense of panic still rumbled.

  My suspicion that James was not just a simple farm boy but part of a prosperous business-owning family was confirmed when, rejoining him at the restaurant entrance, his confident manner had waiters bowing subserviently at us and one led us away from the restaurant area to a private dining room on the first floor.

  A waiter took my coat, scarf and beret and hung them on a hanger on the hook on the back of the door. James asked formally for my permission to remove his jacket as he was plenty warm, he said. Yet another example of his gentlemanly manners, I thought, feeling flattered at being treated like a real grown up. He laid his jacket and cap on the chaise longue and resumed his seat.

  The food was exquisite, each of the five courses delicately arranged on the plate and the variety was nectar to a ration starved girl. I declined the red wine and stuck to the white despite the move from fish to beef bourguignon, failing in my attempt to appear sophisticated, feeling ignorant and gauche, but afraid of the effect any stronger wine would have on me. Already my head was swimming a little with the unusual amount of alcohol. Thank God for the whisky in my hot milk and for port and lemon, at least I have some experience of it.

  Relaxing a little and curious, as we ate I peppered James with questions about his family and his flying career.

  ‘My mother? Not much to tell really. She died five years ago. I’d been doing my usual selfish stuff and hadn’t bothered to take leave when it was due. Flying was everything to me. All I’d get from my father when I went home was, when was I going to give up on prancing about in the air and get some honest to goodness work done in the family firm instead. So that year I took my leave as a secondment to a training school instead of going home. I fancied working as an instructor and was asked to stay there for a while. We knew that war was likely and needed to prepare for it. We like our fighter pilots not too inexperienced but not too old. In flying terms I was getting on a bit, even at twenty-two. I’d worked my way up to Flight Lieutenant.’ He pronounced ‘Lieutenant’ like the British ‘lef-tenant’, not the American ‘loo-tenant’.

  In answer to my further question, James added, ‘There are two Flights to a squadron, usually six airplanes which are in turn divided into two sections identified by a colour name: red, blue and so on. Promotion within the squadron occurs maybe because someone is moved elsewhere or simply because someone has gone and got themselves killed accidentally.’

  James paused, his mouth turning down, seemingly recalling colleagues lost to momentary inattention.

  I put my hand on his arm sympathetically. He patted my hand and, rousing himself, continued.

  ‘After that I went onto bombers for a spell and back to flying with fighter squadrons shortly before war was declared, where I moved up to Squadron Leader. That was my favourite role. There’s something magnificent and humbling at the same time to see your squadron up there alongside you, high up where you’re above everyday life, with vast tracts of Canada laid out before you.’

  James’ eyes were focused beyond me, as if he was flying high, searching the skies. I asked, ‘What do you like most about flying?’

  ‘When I first flew an airplane I felt as if a missing part of me had been put back. Up there I feel whole. Complete. When I’m on the ground part of me is always wanting to be up there. Down here I feel I’m missing a layer. In my plane I feel properly clothed. Fulfilled.

  ‘I can’t expect anyone who hasn’t been there to really understand.’ He looked at me, refocusing, smiling. ‘But I appreciate your trying.’

  ‘The nearest for me I suppose is art,’ I said. ‘I can be lost in a painting for hours. And I often have an urge to draw things and people, to translate what I see.’

  ‘Would you like to draw me?’

  Our first meeting, his teeth sinking into the gingerbread, my secret I’d like to draw you thought. I smiled. ‘Of course. I wanted to the first day I met you.’

  James chuckled. ‘At the Corner House? I thought you wanted to eat me.’

  ‘Was I that obvious?’

  After a few moments of shared amusement and sipping wine, I persisted. ‘You were telling me about your mother. She died young.’

  ‘She was forty-four. Cancer. She didn’t deserve to die. I’d last seen her about a year earlier. No one told me she had it, that she was dying. My father expected me to come home for leave as usual and so be there in time and was angry when I didn’t come, so didn’t tell me until it was all over. He forbad my brothers to contact me. My mother was deeply upset that I chose not to come home. She didn’t know that no one had told me. Right up to the end she was asking for me. I only know that because I went to the hospital after the funeral to thank the nurses for their care and they told me.’ He was silent for a moment, head bowed, lips pressing together, emotions simmering. He took a shaky breath.

  ‘James, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to churn up old feelings. I was being intrusive. Forgive me.’

  James looked up at me. ‘Not at all. I’m glad you asked. I’m not used to anyone being interested. It took me a long time to find some peace over it.’ He paused. ‘The person we find hardest to forgive is ourselves. For a while I even hated flying and thought about throwing in the towel. Then one day when I took a youngster up he was doing fine with a spin until he sent us into a stall. You’re supposed to pull out of a spin in time but he delayed too long and there we were hurtling towards the ground at an ever-increasing speed and the young pilot blacked out and it was just my instruction sticks, my experience and a large slice of luck between life and death. I pulled us out of the stall as the belly of the airplane brushed the treetops and if the ground had been rising, even a fraction, we’d have been a goner. Fortunately the ground was falling away and I got her on a level course and we made it home. All I could hear in my mind on that flight back to base were my mother’s parting words the year before, Forget your father’s views. Go and enjoy your flying wherever it takes you. There’ll be plenty of time to do other things later. I love you, my son.’

  After a moment James continued softly, ‘It seemed as if she was there with me, next to me in the airplane, as if she was protecting me. Fanciful, I know.’ His face relaxed and I smiled tentatively, in sympathy. He continued, ‘But strangely, I’ve enjoyed my flying again after that.’

  After we finished dessert and a coffee pot and cups were provided, James offered me a cigarette, smiling indulgently when I refused, and said, ‘Come on, Pat, it’s really nothing to worry about you know. I can’t believe you’ve never tried, but if you haven’t, hey, there’s a first time for everything. Here,’ and he lit one and passed it to me, nodding. ‘Go on, try it.’

  I breathed in
hesitantly, not wishing to seem unsophisticated, but also not wishing to look like a good-time girl, and gagged as the smoke caught me at the back of my throat. James laughed, though not unkindly, and said, ‘It gets better as you go on. Try again, give it a good drag then exhale slowly,’ so I tried again and after a few fish-like gasps I found a rhythm and felt an all-pervading sense of sweet ease spread slowly through my body to the very end of my fingertips.

  We finished our cigarettes and James poured more coffee. I stood up a little unsteadily, saying, ‘I think a trip to the Ladies is called for,’ turning towards the door through which I had entered. ‘Through here,’ said James, swiftly steering me to another door in the side wall. Puzzled, I stepped through into a bedroom with a further door beyond. James nodded in its direction.

  This is like Alice in Wonderland, I thought as I sank onto the en suite’s toilet pedestal. I was expecting another private dining room but, hey presto, it’s a bedroom with its own bathroom. I giggled. Whatever will James conjure up next? Leaning my head against the cool tiles the slight tilt to the room gradually righted itself and I felt as if I was returning to earth. I wonder if that’s what flying’s like.

  ‘Pat, are you alright?’ James, knocking gently on the door.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I called back, wondering how long I was sitting in my reverie.

  Emerging from the bathroom I found James standing by the net curtained, tape-strewn bedroom window overlooking the street. I joined him at the window and said,

  ‘Thank you for a lovely meal. Where would you like to go now? We still have a couple of hours of daylight before I have to be getting back.’

  James emitted a low groan and, clasping my waist, span me around to the wall beside the window and kissed me long and hard, his tongue darting between my teeth, catching me unawares. The wall against my back allowed no retreat and already my body was betraying my intention, rising on tiptoe to meet his, pressing breast to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, pubic bone to hardness. The now familiar melting, longing, aching, and I kissed him back, exploring his mouth with my tongue, eyes closed, his cigarette scented nasal breath warming my face, lost in the moment.