The Great Darkness

by Jim Kelly

20–21 October 1939

  Duration of scheduled blackout 21.30 hrs to 6.30 hrs. All troop movements cancelled. All vehicles confined to depots by midnight.

  NO FLIGHTS LOCAL – DUXFORD.

  Air Ministry advises two overflies by RAF reconnaissance, Stanmore.

  Night exercise St John’s Wilderness. Ignore all sound. No plot required.

  EASTERN COUNTIES COMMAND.

  MADINGLEY HALL.

  Office of CO Eastern: COL. SWIFT-LANE.

  ‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’ said Brooke. ‘Why hold a night exercise when we’re all supposed to be tucked up in bed behind our blackout blinds? I doubt our lads need that much practice digging holes in the ground. Did you follow orders and ignore all sounds from St John’s Wilderness?’

  ‘That would have been a challenge,’ said Ashmore. ‘They made a racket, actually. Civilians first, dragging spades down before dusk. They disappeared into town later, promptly replaced by soldiers, and carts … Looks like the civilians dug a hole, and the soldiers filled it up.’

  Brooke studied the order paper. ‘I saw the soldiers. A sergeant and a squad. They’d been working, alright. No other orders like this?’

  She handed him five more notes, all referring to the same location and at similar times, stretching back over the previous month.

  ‘You can keep the bumf,’ she said. ‘If we could produce Spitfires and bullets as fast as red tape we’d win the war hands down.’

  They stood in companionable silence, during which Ashmore checked her watch at least three times.

  ‘I’m waiting for the moon to come up,’ she explained. ‘Which it is due to do – according to my chart – any moment now. Madingley Hall has been on the line to say they’ve lost three barrage balloons.’

  Madingley Hall, a Tudor mansion on the outskirts of the city, was military headquarters for much of Eastern England.

  ‘They broke free from their cable moorings an hour ago a mile south of the station. So they’re headed this way. Three runaway airships out of control – what fun, eh? No one has any idea where they are until we get some moonlight. If I see them I have to phone in a position.’

  Brooke peered into the darkness, disturbed that three sixty-foot-long cigar-shaped balloons could remain invisible right before their eyes.

  ‘Someone will cop it for letting them slip,’ said Ashmore. ‘A week ago, according to the grapevine, they lost six in a storm on the East Coast. Drifted across the North Sea and took down power lines in Norway. Havoc, apparently – it’s the cables underneath and the netting that do the damage. They snare stuff. The sooner we can spot the blighters the better. Once I’ve radioed their position it’s someone else’s headache. Anything for a quiet life.’

  Brooke had never before associated Josephine Ashmore with the quiet life. He wondered what really lay behind her decision to volunteer for lonely work, at night, on a cold rooftop.

  ‘There’s the moon, at least …’ she said.

  A bright light had appeared on a college roof, lodged between tapering medieval chimneys. Within seconds it had revealed an arc of its circle, moving quickly against the silhouette of the buildings. Silver light washed over the Cambridge skyline, revealing the four great pinnacles of King’s College Chapel, the distant, brutal tower of the University Library, the colleges running down to the river, which lay in a great meander opposite open meadows, along a stretch every student learnt to call the Backs.

  Brooke watched the moon rise, imagining the gentle hum of celestial mechanics until it was free, gliding into the sky, the light spilling out and seeming now to ignite the river, which gleamed like steel sliding from a furnace.

  ‘There!’ said Ashmore.

  A balloon, the size of one of the city’s buses, hung in the air a few hundred yards downwind of the cube-like tower of St John’s College Chapel, a network of cables ensnaring the building. As they watched it rippled, waves moving over its surface, as it strained at its moorings.

  ‘And there,’ said Brooke, pointing away from the river towards the open fenland to the north.

  This balloon, several hundred feet up in the air, had got much further and, glimpsed beam-on, was heading swiftly towards the distant coast, impeded only by what appeared to be the remains of a tree held within the net beneath its ‘belly’.

  There was no sign of the third balloon.

  Ashmore plotted the two within sight and phoned in the data, sitting down to make out a report on paper by torchlight.

  ‘Bumf,’ she complained. ‘Bloody bumf.’

  Finished, she lit a cigarette.

  Then they saw the third stray balloon.

  A sudden flare of yellow-blue flame flashed and lit up the sky over the distant railway station. A few seconds later came the strangely elongated pulse of sound, like a hot, jagged hiss. A burning balloon, caught up in power lines, crumpled over the large grain mill beside the station. As the ‘skin’ burnt away it revealed the structure within, crashing towards the ground. The distinctive crump of the collapse shook the rooftops.

  A fireball of escaping gas lit up the night, a pulsing vision in yellow, dripping with flame.

  The pain in Brooke’s eyes was needle-sharp despite the yellow-tinted glasses, and he had to grip the plotting table for support.

  An air raid siren began to wail.

  Brooke pulled the rim of his hat down over his eyes. ‘So much for the Great Darkness.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brooke, climbing down the ladder from Jo Ashmore’s OP, felt momentarily giddy – a delayed effect, perhaps, of several hours without a meal, combined with his nightly swim. He’d left Ashmore on the landline to the Fire Brigade and Civil Defence, trying to direct them to the smouldering wreck of the barrage balloon, which after its brief explosive flare had subsided below the roofline, although a sickly orange sheen persisted in the southern sky.

  By the time he was back on firm ground the sound of fire engine bells echoed in the streets, competition for the wailing siren. His immediate need was food. He set off along Trinity Street, past the Old Divinity School, its pale carved heroes of theology standing in their niches against the red-brick facade. As a lonely schoolboy, he’d cultivated an interest in the city above eye level. He was an only child, whose mother had died when he was young, while his father’s work restricted him to the laboratory. After school, and at weekends, he’d explore the city, finding in its maze-like alleys a puzzle he could gradually master. Wandering the streets, he’d examine the stonework, the statues, the gargoyles and saints. In his mind, he set them upon a mental map of every court, every archway, every cobbled lane. By the age of ten he held the city in his head.

  One favourite was right here at the Old Divinity School; the third figure along the facade was Bishop Joseph Lightfoot. On tiptoe, Brooke could just touch his shoe, a feat beyond him as a child. He’d always admired the way the sculptor had set a heavy book in the old man’s left hand, which seemed to weigh him down. Curious, he’d read a brief biographical note on Bishop Lightfoot’s life in one of his father’s reference books, and memorised one of the cleric’s pithy dictums which he admired: I will not be discouraged by failure, I will not be elated by success.

  The siren died, fading away, to leave a ringing silence.

  Opposite the gatehouse of Trinity College, Brooke saw a car approaching, its headlamps masked with tape but for two narrow strips which gave it the appearance of a hunting cat, down low, dragging itself forward, ready to pounce. As it passed, a match flared, illuminating the driver and his passengers, and Brooke glimpsed a silk scarf, a bow tie, a silver cigarette case. Despite the war, and the blackout, the joys of a night life still survived for some.

  Brooke turned into All Saints Passage, the entrance to that part of the city which had once been the Jewish ghetto: a warren of narrow paths between high walls, incapable of holding a true compass point for more than twenty yards. This labyrinth had been committed to Brooke’s internal map, but it had taken several years of patient study to
survey its full extent. One of his maps revealed the view from above, as it were, like a cross-section of the human brain: an organic, convoluted puzzle.

  In the darkness, he had to find his way by touch, as the alleys led him away from the moonlight. The darkness here was of a new order, making him briefly stop to examine his own hand, just visible, a few inches from his nose. Trailing his fingers along the wall, he made his way to the first corner, turned right, then left at the next. The stonework was damp, slightly wet from the mist which had even found its way into this echoing labyrinth. The bricks were icy too, with that faint glaze which heralded a freezing dawn. At one corner, where a water fountain stood against a wall, he stopped; raising his hand, he was able to touch an iron gutter clamp, cast in the shape of a dog’s head. He patted it once, as he had many times, and walked on, until he reached a small trapdoor, set within a greater door of studded oak.

  His knock, evolved over years of use, consisted of one sharp tap, then two, delivered with his signet ring on the metal hinge.

  A lock turned, then another, before the door opened.

  Stepping over the wooden ledge, he entered the porters’ lodge of Michaelhouse. The light inside made Brooke stop, pinching the bridge of his nose, the pain behind his eyes penetrating his brain. Quickly, he substituted the ochre-tinted glasses for the darker green. He carried four pairs: ochre, green, blue and black, each one affording a higher degree of protection against the light.

  ‘Fire in the sky, Mr Brooke. What’s afoot?’ asked Doric, the porter.

  ‘Barrage balloon alight. What’s the news here?’

  Doric was Brooke’s most reliable nighthawk. But for an enforced two weeks in January when he travelled to his sister’s in Margate, Doric was as much a part of the night as the Pole Star. For a detective like Brooke he also offered the untold wealth that was college gossip, communicated through the brotherhood that was the college porters of Cambridge.

  ‘All quiet,’ said Doric as he switched off the light, leaving the lodge lit only by a glowing coke fire and a small desk lamp over the ledger on the counter. As a student before the Great War, Brooke had often admired this room for its weathered snugness, the wooden panels as polished as a ship’s cabin.

  Doric stood by the kettle on its gas ring, waiting for it to boil.

  ‘Everyone tucked up in their beds?’ asked Brooke, pushing his black hair out of his eyes.

  A sturdy, solid figure, Doric walked stiffly to the counter and studied the open book, whistling tunelessly.

  ‘Phipps, Torrington and Jordan – our three natural scientists – left at eight with Lux, the visiting Yank,’ he said finally. ‘I asked if they were dining out and they said they couldn’t tell me as it was classified. Careless talk, all that. Pompous little arse-wipes. Anyway, I knew where they were headed, which tore the smiles off their smug faces. Porter at Emmanuel put the news round about a hush-hush meeting in the new anatomy building. The Galen?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Brooke. ‘One of my father’s heroes, Doric. Galen of Pergamon, the father of medical science.’

  The mention of Brooke’s father, Professor Sir John Brooke, always stilled the porter, who glanced at a board by the desk, decorated with the gold-painted names of the college masters. Sir John’s mastership, from 1910–1921, embraced the Great War which had almost killed his son.

  ‘Wouldn’t get me in the place for love nor money, not this side of death,’ said Doric, executing an exaggerated shiver. ‘Cutting stuff up. It didn’t suit Phipps, Torrington and Jordan either. When they got back – minus Lux – they didn’t want the cold mutton the cook had set aside, although Jordan ordered three bottles of the Saint-Émilion. Looked like they needed it.’

  Brooke’s hunger resurfaced. ‘Any leftovers about, Doric?’

  The porter lifted a cloth from a tray to reveal cold mutton, potatoes and a chicken leg. The tea was strong and black, although the porter produced a tin of condensed milk, two holes neatly punched in the lid, and set it down beside the mug. Brooke let the steam play on his face before adding the oily cream. The resulting colour, an almost fluorescent orange, was unique in Brooke’s experience to the British Army.

  He placed his glasses on the window ledge and massaged his eyes.

  ‘I saw a platoon of soldiers on the riverbank. East End accents, ’cept for the sergeant. Who would they be, Doric?’

  The porter’s eyes flitted to the shadowy wall by the post room where a military flag hung, pinned out flat, the regimental colours gossamer thin and darkened by fire and shot.

  ‘Can’t be the London Regiment. They’re gone, disbanded like my lot. A scandal that. So, I’d say the Buffs. The East Kent. But that’s odd because I’d not heard they were with us too. Mind you, every other bugger is. There must be two thousand troops on Parker’s Piece, you seen ’em? And more on the Backs. But you say this lot was down by the river, tonight?’

  Brooke nodded. ‘See if you can find out more?’

  Doric sat at his desk, his fat fingers thrumming on the arms of the chair. Retirement, when it finally came for the porter, would spell a kind of death. There were rumours the college night staff were to be laid off for what they were all now calling ‘the Duration’. Doric faced the prospect of enforced retirement, or worse, working days.

  Stillness was not a quality the porter had ever achieved for even a fleeting second. By an effort of will he set his hands down flat, but then the tuneless whistle returned.

  ‘There was a smell, too, on the riverbank. Chemicals, maybe?’ offered Brooke.

  Doric rearranged his feet under the table. ‘It’s gossip.’

  ‘Is it now? Care to share it?’ said Brooke, leaning back, the chicken bone in his hand.

  ‘Story is there’s been an air raid. A bad one, but the papers can’t print it.’

  ‘Scotland?’

  ‘Right, you’ve heard it too, then. Firth of Forth, the docks. But I heard Glasgow too, maybe Liverpool. Streets of rubble, hundreds lost, but not found. London too, the docks. Bodies out in the open they can take away quickly. But there’s no time to search the ruins in a city, and they want it all hushed up. Morale is the thing; you don’t want civilians taking to the roads. So they send in trucks and load up the lot: bricks, window frames, staircases, furniture – and the bodies, or what’s left. All in one. Army’s got to find places to bury it all. There’s pits round the country. They cover ’em up with lime, that’s the chemical. Maybe your cockneys are burying the stuff.’

  Brooke tore a shred of meat from the chicken bone. It was a good explanation, but it didn’t explain why they’d be paid for the work.

  ‘Sounds like a tall tale. What have we had? One raid on the west coast, three aircraft, nobody hurt. It’s not exactly the dreaded Blitzkrieg, is it?’

  Doric threw up his hands. ‘You heard it as I heard it,’ he said. ‘I’m just a college porter. You’re the detective inspector.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Brooke’s nightly swim had let the frosty air get into his bones. Walking along King Street, with its infamous run of seedy pubs, he stopped outside the Champion of the Cam. Putting his ear to the door, he heard the gentle murmur of bar chat. A sharp knock brought the landlord and, recognising Brooke, he let him slip inside. Lock-ins such as this, after time, were one aspect of everyday life which had not been snuffed out by the war, even for the Great Darkness. He sat in a corner with a whisky, watching a group of students arguing the toss on Hitler’s offer of a peace conference with the Allies.

  Half an hour later, out on the doorstep, he still felt chilled, as if a globe of ice was slowly forming in his guts, coalescing, despite the Champion’s glowing coal fire and the onrush of blood from his skin to the pit of his stomach. He needed company and warmth. He needed Claire.

  Walking along Fitzwilliam Street, past the blinded traffic lights opposite Little St Mary’s, he reached the open iron gates of the hospital. Even in the blackout he could still see the steam rising from the ducts and pipes of the gre
at building, as if the interior was boiling over. A single down-light marked the main entrance, where an ambulance stood abandoned, its doors open.

  Claire was the sister on Rosewood, on the third floor. Taking the steps two at a time, he arrived invigorated, gently pushing open the double doors to reveal the full length of the ward, his own silhouette stretching out in an elongated shadow.

  A thin voice chattered in dreamlike conversation, and a set of bed springs grated. In the shadows to the left he could see a pale hand searching for a glass of water on a bedside table.

  At the far end, Claire sat at a desk, a green-shaded lamp illuminating paperwork. On his nightly walks when he wondered how she was, this was the image that came to mind.

  He tried to walk softly down the tiled floor but the Blakey’s marked every step. She watched him approach, checking the time on her pendant watch.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, standing. She was slim and neat, with white-blonde hair cut in a bob which always seemed to fall into place. ‘You’re shivering,’ she said. ‘And you’re as pale as a ghost.’

  ‘I’m cold. The river was chillier than expected. I’m frozen. What do you prescribe, Nurse?’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ she said, walking over to a bed where a side-light revealed a young man lying unconscious, most of his body under a white sheet, his bandaged hands on top, both of them bloody. Claire took his pulse and laid a hand on his forehead.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Brooke, examining the soldier’s pale face.

  ‘According to the pal who brought him in, the lad’s a “winchman”. I didn’t entirely follow the details but he runs a machine which raises and lowers barrage balloons. The cable snapped and he tried to haul it back. His hands are dreadful, Eden, cut to shreds, down to the bone. Each cable is made of thousands of wires, and when it breaks they splay out, like frayed hair. Every one is as sharp as a razor blade. They should give him a medal, but they won’t, will they? He’s just a private. I think he’s a hero.’