‘Huh, you haven’t seen our car. There’s a whacking great dollop of, er, monkey business on the back seat. Good thing it belongs to the RAF.’ They left, Ponsonby giving the two girls a sorrowful parting look over the airman’s shoulder. Shortly afterwards their blue Vanguard with service number plates scrunched away, a childlike face framed in its small rear window.
‘Come on, Rilly, we’re off,’ said Jo. ‘There’s a place down the road where we can get a bite to eat.’
‘Not too dear, I hope. The rent eats up so much and petrol’s a terrible price. Imagine – five bob a gallon for us wretched civilians. Five shillings. No wonder the farmers round here get caught black-marketing their dyed stuff.’
‘It’s on me,’ Jo said. ‘You’ve come all this way and I’m in gainful employ these days. Is that your car?’ she asked as they left and crossed the drive past a small Morris van with wire screens inside the windows in its rear doors.
‘Heavens no – I can’t afford to run a car. It’s Jim’s, my brother’s. He got it in an auction. It used to belong to the GPO and it’s got all these steel bins in the back for tools and spares for mending phone lines. I just borrow it sometimes. I only hope I can get back without a blowout. The tyres are completely bald.’
‘The ones on Amos’s aren’t much better,’ said Jo. They walked up Mossop High Street to the Pretty Polly Restaurant and Tea Room which had a green-edged Luncheon Voucher sticker in its steamy window. The room was quite full but they managed to find a table to themselves beneath a large framed oil painting of a multicoloured parrot perched amid riotous jungle leafage. It looked exactly like what it was: a picture commissioned from the restaurant owner’s eighteen-year-old niece who was hoping to go to art school in Lincoln. The table was covered in oilcloth with a chintz pattern of bloodshot roses on which stood a cruet and a clot-necked bottle of HP sauce. A waitress brought them two handwritten menus.
‘You see?’ said Jo. ‘That’s not too bad, is it? Set lunch for one-and-eleven. That won’t break the bank. Shepherd’s pie and two veg followed by rhubarb tart and custard and, if we really push the boat out, we have the choice of Vimto, limeade or Kitty Cola. Or just a cuppa.’
‘I think I’ll settle for tea with mine.’
The two friends sat catching up with each other’s news until the waitress reappeared with their lunch, which they attacked ravenously.
‘Rather more mashed spuds than mince,’ Jo admitted, plying the sauce bottle.
‘It’s not bad. Funny about the peas. I mean, here we are in an area that produces most of Britain’s peas, so you’d expect them to be fresh, wouldn’t you? But these things are dried. You can tell because they go all floury when they’re cooked. Still, I suppose it is November. Even so, you’d have thought they’d have used tinned ones. You can get those in the Co-op for sevenpence.’
Aware that her friend was wittering, Jo said, ‘Aha, something’s happened, hasn’t it, since we last saw each other.’ She eyed her companion shrewdly. ‘Don’t tell me there’s a bloke.’
Avril took a last mouthful blushingly. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Well yes, I have met someone. Clever you. But I’ve no idea if he’s, you know, long term. He’s got a mobile shop. I mean he owns it and drives it and everything.’
‘He’s forty-five and has three families scattered about the county.’
‘Nothing of the kind,’ retorted Avril indignantly. ‘He’s not yet thirty and he’s unmarried and very nice-looking. He’s sad, too, because he has to work so hard and drive long distances and work long hours so he hasn’t had time to settle down and start a family. He knows all the farmers for miles around and buys stuff directly from them: parsnips, cabbages, carrots, potatoes, eggs, butter, even chickens, but of course those are pretty expensive. Obviously his prices have to take in his running costs in diesel and road tax and everything. But it’s a real service because round us the buses aren’t great and people live stuck out in the Fens and of course hardly anyone has a car. And if you’re elderly or you’ve got small kids like mine it’s quite a palaver going out shopping, it takes up so much time. If you’re on your own you can nip in and out of the shops and do it all in half an hour, but not with kids. So Ted’s a godsend as far as I’m concerned. He turns up at the door and he’s got all sorts of stuff. He can even get bags of slack so I can make my own briquette things for the fire. Dad’s been showing me how they did it in the war. You mix the coal dust with cement and water and pack it into those really small flowerpots and when it’s hard you’ve got little flowerpot-shaped coal lumps. It’s ever so much cheaper than buying proper coal eggs. As I say, old Ted’s got pretty much everything I need.’
Jo dropped her voice still further. ‘Including that?’
‘Does a girl tell tales out of school?’
‘She does if she wants her friend to pay for her lunch.’
‘Well, I must admit he has occasionally parked his van outside the house overnight.’
‘Ooh Rilly,’ said Jo. ‘You lucky thing. But . . .’
‘No buts,’ said her friend firmly. ‘I know Marty would understand. It’s nearly a year now since he went and, well, he’s dead and I go on being alive and I don’t know about you but I’m not cut out to be a nun. Also, I think children need a father, or at least a solid male presence in their lives even if he isn’t their biological father. They’re both still too young to remember much about Marty, anyway. It’s a long time since I last heard Petey mention Daddy. It’s awful, isn’t it? The way things have of being heartless, even though it’s nobody’s fault? But please, Jo, don’t mention Ted to a soul. Promise? I’m scared stiff that if the RAF hears about him they’ll assume I’ve remarried and stop my piddling widow’s pension. They would, too. They’re quite mean enough to.’
After the first, any subsequent cups of tea came free so they both had refills while tackling the rhubarb tart, which had arrived tucked warmly beneath a quilt of brilliant yellow custard.
‘It’s like NAAFI custard,’ said Avril reminiscently. They both laughed. ‘But it’s terrific you’ve got this job, Jo. It must suit you – you’re looking heaps better than when I last saw you. And how’s the new house? And, dare I ask, the old husband?’
‘The house is OK. And Vulcan the rabbit’s really good. Having a bunny hopping around the place makes it feel more like home even though I’m still finding leftovers from previous tenants, funny things. In the cupboard under the stairs, right at the back, there was a collection of dozens of empty brass cartridge cases, all different sizes. I mean, who would want those? I got Amos to give them to whoever collects up scrap metal on the station. And on top of the cupboard in the spare bedroom were boxes and boxes of those long wooden spill things men use for lighting pipes. Thousands of them, all dyed red. Who on earth would ever need so many? And given that they did, why would they leave them behind?’
‘And Amos?’
Jo stirred her tea in a moment’s silence before replying. ‘He comes and goes, doesn’t he? Mostly goes, these days. He comes home at night, pretty exhausted, and that’s about all we see of each other. We’re both out during the day. Ever since he got this special flight I told you about they’re always off doing low-flying exercises. That’s all he’ll tell me but I don’t suppose there is any more to know. It strikes me as pretty dreary, but there we are: he’s only really happy in the air with his crew, all boys together doing their duty.’
Avril looked at her friend intently. ‘You’re sounding a bit different these days. You never used to say things like that. You’re beginning not to sound like a service wife.’
‘It must be this job,’ said Jo. ‘Thanks to Kay Hendry next door I’ve now got my own life and I’m doing something I like as much as Amos likes flying. I’m even thinking of studying to be a vet myself. Craig and Arthur say they’ll help me and when I’m qualified they might even make me a partner.’
‘That’s wonderful, Jo. But suppose Amos gets posted? He’s bound to, sooner or later. Either the s
quadron will move or he’ll be promoted to wing commander and sent off elsewhere. If you’re lucky it might be somewhere nice and tropical. But it’s much more likely to be Germany or some godforsaken station in Scotland. Or if he’s really unlucky the Staff College at Bracknell.’
‘Exactly. And I shan’t be going with him.’
Avril reached a hand across and laid it on the back of her friend’s. ‘Quite right,’ she murmured. ‘There comes a point. Good for you, Jo.’
12
It’s taking stock, Amos thought as he jogged along: that’s what the air force made so difficult. You were so seldom off duty or not surrounded by people or not working in the Vault mugging up targets. These days, come to that, you were spending a lot of time in the air doing low-level sorties over the Lake District or elsewhere in the British Isles. Hi-lo-hi was what everyone else was doing, plus endless rehearsals of the LABS manoeuvre: the low altitude bombing system whereby you flew in low, reared up to toss Blue Steel and carried on up with a half loop and roll-out at the top and away back the way you came but higher. Sooner or later both squadrons would be rotated out to Idris to practise LABS with inert bombs on the Tarhuna range in the Libyan desert.
Yet he and Meeres, supposedly having been earmarked for something special, were still waiting with the top-secret Oilcan radar system and the new laser bomb sight already fitted to both Vulcans and so far untested. Far from being sent off on spine-tingling missions, the two crews had spent most of their time either doing low-level sorties or else stuck on the ground expecting something to happen. The whole thing was actually very RAF. While they were waiting Amos and Terry had got a talented airman to dream up an appropriate device for their two aircraft. He had painted a perfect little Yogi Bear on the grey camouflage stripe just behind the roundel on the starboard side of the Vulcans’ noses. Underneath each ran the motto: Smarter than the average bear. Besides being a near-universal catchphrase on the station at the time, this was felt by the two crews to express quite neatly their own distinction. Their colleagues were predictably disparaging and had already taken to referring to them as ‘Boo-Boo 1’ and ‘Boo-Boo 2’.
Amos, wearing a tattered track suit and plimsolls, was now jogging along the Wearsby perimeter track on an early December afternoon, glad to be off on his own and heading towards his favourite haunt, the fire dump. It was only mid-afternoon but already the light was starting to go: a reminder that the winter solstice, the year’s bottom dead centre, was only about three weeks away. The ambient light had begun to acquire a borderline quality: that moment when runway lights actually define a landing strip rather than being mere bright lamps dotted on either side of it. The red light atop the control tower also seemed to glow with a fraction more intensity as if someone had pushed a rheostat up a notch. The black gantry of the old water tower off to his right was stark against the sky and also carried a warning light. In the distance behind him came the sudden rising howl of a jet engine. It lasted a few seconds then died, almost immediately being repeated. Amos recognised it as a technician doing ‘slam checks’ on a Vulcan’s engines on one of the dispersal pans, slamming the throttle fully open from idle to see how long it took the engine to spool up to full power: four seconds if everything was normal. Out of that sound a heavier drumming emerged and he turned to see a Transport Command Hastings on its run-out a hundred yards away behind him, landing lights glaring. As he watched, jogging backwards, the propellers of the two port engines blurred to grey before the bellow of the Hercules radials reached him, their gruff tone first acquiring a whine and then the whirring sound of the props themselves as the aircraft turned right off the second runway exit and trundled away from him. Amos turned back to his run.
Soon he reached the belt of trees. Behind it the fire dump’s gates were open as usual and the great heaps of ruined airframes welcomed him with their desolate familiarity. He noticed that since his last visit the Coles crane had moved. This afternoon its jib hung, black and menacing against the grey overcast, above some evidently fresh remains. These were so battered it was hard to see what they might have been, but gradually Amos deduced they must be those of the Folland Gnat that had crashed a week previously a couple of miles away. The news had gone rapidly around the station, as such news always did, was laconically accepted and then forgotten. Some poor sod but not me. From uncorroborated word-of-mouth it was said that the Accidents Investigation Branch had determined the Gnat had been travelling at some 350 knots when its cockpit canopy had suddenly fractured and flown off, decapitating the pilot on its way. It would have happened in a split second without warning. Thereupon the aircraft had been seen to glide over Market Tewsbury in a mysterious near-silence, seemingly under control but rapidly losing altitude before stalling and flipping upside down into pasture near Burberton, missing a prize herd of Guernseys by thirty yards. The throttle lever was nearly closed, so maybe a final spasm had jerked the pilot’s hand back. And here his silver coffin lay, scored and dented and with both intakes full of dried turf. He was an instructor aged thirty-three and they were still scouring the local countryside for his head.
Compulsively, Amos reached out and laid his hand on the Gnat’s remains in a gesture he could not have characterised had he been asked. Sympathy? Solidarity? There but for the grace of God? He wondered why the late instructor had taken up flying in the first place. He must have joined the RAF after the war and would have qualified on Meteors and Vampires in the early days of the jet age. He’d done well to survive this long. There was no end to the things that could go wrong and kill you, especially in those days. You could faithfully run down every pre-flight checklist you wanted, you could get Pilot’s Notes for the aircraft off by heart, you could do everything by the book, the Angel Gabriel himself could appear on the apron as you climbed into the cockpit to tell you the aircraft was in tip-top condition. And then twenty minutes later as you were breezing along with all gauges normal, wondering whether you’d be back in time to change and get to the garage to pick up the Riley after its decoke, the canopy shatters and in an instant the Riley and your whole universe vanish, dead circuitry tumbling in a helmet that somewhere falls to earth.
Mind you, Amos thought, there’s an awful lot more to go wrong in a Vulcan than there is in a little Gnat. The electrical circuits alone are awesomely complex. On the other hand you’ve got so much more backup. The Gnat has a single engine. All you need is a flame-out or a bird strike on take-off and wham! you’re probably dead. But a Vulcan has four engines and if one fails on take-off there’s still more than enough power to get you round and safely back to earth. And you’ve always got that enormous wing on your side: lovely low wing-loading compared with the Gnat’s.
Yet skinny swept-back wings undoubtedly held a magic. Like every boy who joined the RAF Amos had wanted to be a fast jet pilot. His adolescence had been filled with the post-war mystique of the sound barrier: that numinous, invisible frontier in the sky beyond which lay an unknown world in which it was said the very laws of physics broke down and no human could survive. Like any other science-minded adolescent he recognised this as journalistic piffle, if for no better reason than because it was perfectly well known that men had been flying faster than sound ever since 1947 and soon afterwards were doing it as a matter of routine. He remembered the first time he had gone supersonic when pulling a shallow dive in a Hunter. It had been over the sea off Selsey Bill and to be honest he’d kept his eyes glued as much to the altimeter as to the Machmeter because flying into the sea at low altitude was quite easily done in a moment’s inattention at 660 knots. Of course it had been a thrill; of course there had been the sense of having joined an exclusive club; of course there was filmic romance in the knightly accoutrements of protective suit and helmet and dangling harness as one posed casually beside one’s beautiful hi-tech steed.
Why then had he later opted for bombers? It seemed to have happened almost by chance: an opportunity to learn to fly a different kind of aircraft with multiple engines that involved sorties
measured in hours instead of minutes. Amos turned his attention back to the Gnat on which his hand was still resting. He noticed that although what remained of the aircraft was battered almost beyond recognition, the landing light in the nose was freakishly intact behind the mud on its unbroken transparent dome. How did these things happen? He remembered doing a Blue Ranger to Edinburgh, South Australia and then flying up to Woomera in an RAAF Canberra. A lorry crew there had just retrieved the remains of one of Britain’s Black Knight rockets being developed to launch satellites. It had fallen from the edge of space and had crashed a hundred miles down-range and here it was, a tangled heap of scrap metal and tubing. But when he looked at it more closely he could see that small sections here and there were completely intact: boxes of relays still with the assembler’s crayon mark on the paintwork of their lids, looking like new; some perfect pipework neatly clamped to a bulkhead, the nuts still tight and sealed with a dab of paint. Amos had been unable to suppress the stupid thought: If I had been that relay box I could have fallen fifty miles from space to the desert floor and would still be in one piece. You just needed to know which piece to be in order to survive . . . It was a child’s fantasy, like the one he could still remember having had when he was ten or so, imagining he was falling in a lift whose cable had broken. If he could gauge the instant before it crashed to the bottom of the shaft he could give a little jump off the floor and would survive while everybody else died.
And so one jogged to these secret elephants’ graveyards at dawn or dusk and tried to take stock. Even so, Amos considered, I’m less bothered by the prospect of dying than I’m interested in what it is I really want. The awful truth is, I’m not very ambitious. I’ve made squadron leader by my mid-twenties and I’m the captain of a V-bomber. I’m not sure I want anything more. I don’t want to end up like Muffin Mewell, a group captain with fearsome responsibilities. The high burn-out rate among senior ranks is no secret. In fact, I don’t want responsibilities at all if they’re all administration and no flying.
Under the Radar Page 13