Bluebirds

by Margaret Mayhew

  She saw that he was perfectly serious now and wished that he weren’t. Fond as she was of him, there was a world of difference between that and being in love with him – a huge gulf that she didn’t think she could ever cross. But everything would have been so wonderfully simple and happy if it had happened with Speedy. There would have been none of this terrible heartache and misery. None of this guilt and despair. None of this wishing for what could never be. She hadn’t seen David for nearly six months now – not since she had told him that what had scarcely begun was finished. His sadness had been hard to bear and it had taken all her strength to keep to her resolution. Now she was far away at RAF Pickerton in Yorkshire, while he had been posted recently to Fighter Command HQ at Bentley Priory. It was very unlikely that their paths would ever cross again.

  She stood up. ‘Come and see our church, Speedy. It’s well worth looking at.’

  He got to his feet slowly. ‘So am I, Titania. If only you would.’

  The willow trees overhanging the river bank and trailing their long, pale leaves in the water, gave a prettily dappled shade. Sunlight filtered through translucent green and sparkled in bright blobs on the water’s surface. Anne, admiring the effect, let her fingers trail too, dangling one hand over the side of the punt. The river water felt blissfully cool and her fingertips made tickly little furrows as the punt glided along. She leaned back against the cushion. It seemed a very long time ago since she had last been in a punt. One summer, before the war, her parents had taken her to visit a cousin who was up at Cambridge. They had gone to his rooms – a mullion-windowed den up a stone staircase at the corner of the quad. Kit had been there too so that he could compare Cambridge with Oxford. Afterwards Cousin Hugo had taken them out on the Cam. They had punted along the Backs and up the river to Grantchester where they had had, not Rupert Brooke’s honey tea, but a picnic lunch with cold salmon, strawberries and cream and Pimms. It had been a perfect, baking hot summer’s day – just like this one. There had been lots of other punts on the river, propelled by undergraduates in straw boaters, with girls in cotton frocks and floppy sun hats lazing back against the cushions and trailing their hands over the sides, as she was doing now. She could remember the sound of their laughter and voices across the water . . . I say, Frobisher, watch where you’re going! Head down, Fiona! I’m taking us under that branch . . . oh God, you silly clot! I did warn you . . . A wind-up gramophone had been playing in one of the punts and she had listened to Deep Purple floating away down the river.

  The weather was the same, and so was the scenery, but all the rest had changed. Gone were the dashing young men and the pretty girls, the laughter and the loud voices and the music. There were no picnicking parties on the banks, no wicker hampers, no pitchers of fruity Pimms. The church clock at Grantchester might stand at ten to three but there would be nobody there for tea. The quads in Cambridge were deserted and military lorries rumbled through the streets. Kit was in Africa, Cousin Hugo had been killed at Dunkirk and in his place at the punt’s stern was an American pilot in uniform. She had never meant to come out with Frank Wallace. After the time she had met him in the Black Bull and refused to do so she had kept on meeting him there again. And he had kept on asking her.

  ‘I’d sure like to see Cambridge,’ he’d said one evening in the smoke-filled, beer-soaked bar. ‘I want to know if it’s all it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘It’s not far. You can get there by train.’

  ‘I’d need a native guide. Someone to show me round and make sure I didn’t miss anything.’

  ‘Don’t look at me. I’ve only been there once for the day and that was years ago.’

  ‘Yeah, but you were born and bred in this country. You know all about its treasures.’

  ‘I can give you a list. Christ’s College, Trinity, Clare, Queen’s . . . well, all the colleges, really. The Bridge of Sighs, King’s College Chapel –’

  He had interrupted her, shaking his head. ‘Won’t do. Not the same thing at all – going round with a long list in my hand.’ Big sigh. ‘Well, I guess I’ll just have to give it a miss if you won’t take pity on me.’

  In the end she’d given in. ‘You realize this is against my golden rule.’

  ‘I know,’ he’d said. ‘But I’ve got a rule too. No strings, so no worries. That’s the deal.’

  I’m a fool to do this, though, she’d thought to herself on the train journey. I don’t really believe that there’s such a thing as a chop girl – that’s just men’s superstition, like not letting women go near an aircraft or down mines, but I do know that I don’t want to get close to anyone else who’s going to get killed and the Yanks are losing plenty. He’s got about the same chance of survival as a snowball in hell at the moment. I don’t want to get to know him or care what happens to him.

  They bought a guidebook and walked round Cambridge, seeing all its glories – the ancient colleges, the quadrangles, the Gothic wonder of King’s, the Backs where the smooth green lawns swept down to the banks of the Cam. After lunch at the Anchor pub they’d hired the punt, to realize another of Frank’s dreams.

  It was an odd experience, Anne thought, as they drifted along the river, to see England through a foreigner’s eyes, especially one from the New World. To watch him marvel over things taken for granted by the natives. There seemed nothing very remarkable to her about colleges being founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – beautiful as they were. Hundreds of ordinary village churches all over the country must be equally old. But Frank had stood spellbound, drinking it all in. Seeing his enchantment had made her glad, after all, that she’d agreed to come.

  She smiled at him. ‘Where did you learn to punt, Frank?’

  He grinned. ‘Here and now. I’m doing it by the seat of my pants. Any moment now I’ll fall in.’

  ‘Hope you can swim.’

  ‘Sure I can.’ He fed the pole upwards through his hands again. ‘This is just great . . . beautiful . . . it’s all just like I always imagined.’

  ‘Pity you’re not seeing it in peacetime. As it was.’

  He dug the pole down again. ‘That’s what everybody keeps on telling me about everything over here. You British all say: oh, but you should have seen it before the war – it looked so much better then. England doesn’t look her best now . . . You all seem ashamed that things are a bit shabby, but that doesn’t seem anything to be ashamed of to me. Just the opposite. You’ve been fighting a war for nearly four years, and most of that time you’ve been going it alone. If it shows, then that’s something to be proud of, not apologize for.’

  ‘Oh, we apologize for everything. It’s a national habit. Even when someone steps on our foot we apologize to them for having it trodden on.’

  He laughed. ‘I know. I’ve found that out.’

  ‘Well, you’re the first American I’ve heard say nice things like that. Usually they tell you how they’ve come over to win the war for you.’

  ‘You’ve been meeting the wrong guys. We’ve come over to give you a hand. So far we haven’t done a hell of a lot, but give us time.’

  He had taken off his jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie. The uniform jacket lay on the cushion opposite her, together with her own. American Air Force olive beside RAF blue. Rather symbolic really. It was a combined effort now. Round the clock. The RAF bombed Germany by night and the Yanks went over in the day and dropped a whole lot more bombs. But the RAF losses had been horrific and everyone said the Americans were having a really rough time without a fighter escort that could go with them the whole way. She wondered what on earth that must be like – going on ops in broad daylight, clearly visible for miles, and with only their own guns for protection. A bit like driving a loaded sledge through a pack of ravening wolves?

  The punt glided gently on upstream, through meadows deep in buttercups, on towards Grantchester. Anne changed hands and cooled the other one. Frank was a pretty decent chap. Very decent, in fact. Good-looking and attractive too, like
so many of the Americans. Had they left all the ugly ones behind on purpose? Send the best-lookers we’ve got to impress them over there. Yes, Mr President. And they seemed so clean and smelled so nice. Hard to resist, and lots of girls didn’t bother to try. But she and Frank had a deal and she, for one, was going to stick to it.

  At Grantchester they moored the punt and walked into the village. They strolled around and looked at the old church and at its clock, and found the Old Vicarage where Rupert Brooke had written his verses. June roses were in full bloom in gardens and rambled riotously over walls. Then they wandered slowly back to the punt and sat for a while on the river bank in the shade of an alder tree.

  She picked up his cap off the grass. It looked as beaten up as most RAF ones after several years hard service. ‘This looks pretty worn.’

  ‘Fifty mission crush, we call that. Guys take out the grommets and then kick them around ’til they look good and old. I wore mine in the shower and then stamped all over it. Did that the day I got here.’

  ‘The RAF do things like that to theirs, too.’

  ‘I guess we’re not so very different. Nobody wants to look a rookie.’

  She put the cap down beside him again. ‘How many missions have you flown, Frank?’

  ‘Thirteen. Twelve more to go. Twenty-five to a tour, for us.’

  ‘Then home?’

  ‘I guess so. Or maybe some other assignment over here. I don’t know. I don’t even think about it. I figure the odds aren’t that great on finishing it anyhow.’

  He lay back on the bank and put his hands behind his head, lacing them for a pillow. She glanced down at him and then away. He was much, much too nice to die. Her throat tightened at the thought. Christ, she was starting to worry about him – just like she’d sworn she wouldn’t.

  ‘We ought to be getting along, Frank.’

  ‘Do you mind if we stay here for a bit? It’s real peaceful.’

  ‘If you like.’

  It was the same old thing, she said to herself, staring sadly at the river. When you knew they could buy it any day you went along with whatever made them happy. And you looked them straight in the eye to show you weren’t actually thinking anything of the kind or feeling sorry for them, though they probably knew very well that you were. And, if they wanted to, you let them talk about it.

  After a moment he sighed and said, ‘Sometimes I can’t figure out what’s real any longer . . . this here and now or being on a mission. I guess you could say that’s reality and this is just make-believe. They sure are two different worlds.’

  Latimer had said much the same thing, only in another way. Anne stopped lobbing small bits of twig into the water and waited.

  ‘This is just pretending the other isn’t happening,’ he went on. ‘Real life isn’t peaceful and beautiful like this. Or it sure ain’t in wartime. Reality’s guys getting shot to pieces, blown out of the sky in front of you, pulped in gun turrets . . . It’s tasting fear like you were eating it because the same thing could happen to you any moment. It’s hours of tiredness and cold and aching arms. Shifting that punt pole was a cinch for me after the muscle it takes to keep a B24 in tight formation without running into the other guys, hour after hour. There’s ships each side of you, and sometimes above and below as well . . . you’ve gotta keep correcting the whole damn time. Toughest trip we ever had – we’d got shot up real bad and lost power in a couple’ve engines – I had to holler out for some help to land real quick. You know: Hallo Darky . . .’

  She nodded. It was the emergency call for aircraft in need of help.

  ‘We were in big trouble. Matter of fact, I thought there was no way we were going to make it down somewhere in time. I kept on calling and then, all of a sudden, this English girl’s voice came out of nowhere, answering me. “Hallo, Yank,” she said – very calm and clear, very British – one of your WAAFS, I guess. “What is your emergency?” She sounded cool as a cucumber, as though everything was just fine, and it sure helped. They got us down OK. Made it seem like it was no problem.’

  Anne was silent. They got us down OK would probably have really meant one of those terrifying landings like she’d seen, coming in on a wing and a prayer – underpowered, controls damaged, skidding and slithering skew-whiff down the runway, liable to burst into flames any second. Horrible.

  ‘Anne.’ He had reached out and touched her wrist. As she turned he met her eyes. ‘Remember the deal? No strings, so no worries.’

  The light was turning to soft gold as they punted slowly downstream. It gilded the brickwork and stone of the college walls along the Backs where the shadows were lengthening across the lawns. As Frank helped her out of the punt he kept her hand in his for a moment.

  ‘Thanks for this day, Anne. It’s meant a heck of a lot to me. More than I can say.’

  She smiled up at him. ‘You’re welcome, Yank.’

  Twenty-Two

  THE LANCASTER CAME in to land almost over the top of Winnie’s head. She clutched on to her beret, looking up into the darkness, as the long black belly and outstretched wings swept by above her. The bomber touched down beyond with a big thud and a loud squeal of rubber against tarmac. She saw it bounce high and then bounce twice again before it settled to earth and rolled on down the runway. Bit of a shaky landing, but then the crew was a new one on the course and the pilot was still learning how to handle a heavy four-engined bomber. At least he’d got the kite down in one piece and without bending it.

  She knew that it was very dangerous to stand so near the runway, but she often did so when she had finished the job of setting out the flarepath. She looked forward to when it was her turn to drive the station tractor up and down each side of the runway, trailing the load of gooseneck flares, and putting them out, one by one, at intervals all the way along. When it was done she would stand and gaze at the glimmering pathway. A way to the stars, that’s how it looked to her. A magic stairway of lights that would take the bombers and their crews up into the night skies, towards those stars, and then bring them down to earth again.

  She had waited, alone and unobserved, in the darkness by the edge of the runway, listening for them to come back from night exercises. It made her spine tingle when they roared in so close overhead. At first she had thought it was the most thrilling thing she had ever done – but that had been before she had flown in one.

  She’d liked RAF Flaxton from the moment she had arrived there, and not only because it was in her native county. The heavy bomber conversion unit trained air crews to fly Lancasters and, from the start, she’d liked the Lancaster too. It had always looked lovely in the air, in her eyes, and she thought it was every bit as beautiful on the ground. Majestic. Mighty. Valiant – like its crews. Forgiving, too, they always said, which was just as well considering the mess some of them made flying her when they first started. She had fallen in love with the bomber the way she had fallen in love with the Hurricane fighter. And the four engines were Merlins – like they’d been on the Hurricanes and Spitfires, so she’d felt at home straight away with those.

  She had been the very first WAAF flight mechanic at the unit. The technical wing commander had looked her over uncertainly when she had reported for duty.

  ‘I feel as though we should put you in a glass case, ACW Jervis. Or wrap you in cotton wool.’

  ‘I want to work, sir.’

  He had smiled at her, amused. ‘And so you shall.’

  The flight sergeant in charge was Scottish – just like Chiefy at Kirkton – and he had given her the same jaundiced eye until she had proved she could do the jobs. The men had teased her the same, too, but she knew all about ‘long rests’ and ‘sky hooks’ and ‘left-handed’ screwdrivers now, and after a while they stopped. It was very different working on a big bomber, though. Luckily, she had a good head for heights because it was a long way down to the ground from the wing of a Lancaster, or from a gantry.

  ‘Seeing as you’re servicing this aircraft, lassie,’ the flight sergeant had told her, soon
after she’d arrived. ‘You’ll be going up when she’s tested. That way we make sure the work’s done properly and nobody cuts any corners – not when it could be their neck too.’

  And so, at last, her dream had come true.

  It had been a grey, overcast day when she’d climbed up the ladder into K-King, heart thumping with excitement, and had made her way forwards and upwards along the fuselage incline, from tail to nose. Ahead, a pool of light flooded the cockpit but it was dark in the main body of the aircraft and she had learned the hard way before to keep her head down and take care to avoid the sharp metal edges and projections all along its length. Getting over the great mainspar, where the wings joined the fuselage, was like clambering over a farm gate.

  She had stood behind the flight engineer’s seat and had watched anxiously as the engines were started up in turn – first the port inner, then the starboard inner, then the port outer and the starboard outer. The last one had been giving plug trouble and she had heaved a sigh of relief when it fired and ran steadily. As the pilot and flight engineer had worked through the checks, all four engines bellowing at full stretch, she had kept scanning the dials for any sign of trouble, but all had been on top line.

  Her heart had still been thumping away as they had taxied slowly round the peri track, but when the pilot had swung the Lanc round to face the long, long stretch of runway that would take them up into the skies, it had seemed to move from her chest to her mouth. She had watched his hand push the throttles forward and K-King had started to roll. The roar of the engines had blotted out all other sound and she would have put her hands over her ears if she had not needed them to hold onto the back of the seat. The bomber had gone faster and faster. Grass had flown by in a green streak and then a clutch of buildings in a grey blur. She had felt the tail lift off and realized that the Lanc was balancing on its main wheels as it tore down the runway. The group of trees standing like a huge race jump at the far end were coming closer and closer. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen the pilot easing the control wheel back towards him and, at that moment, K-King had suddenly risen like magic into the air. Winnie had gaped at the sight of the runway dropping away beneath and at the treetops, slipping past below the wings and, as they had climbed slowly upwards she had seen Suffolk spread out below her like a huge patterned carpet . . . cornfields, pasture, woods, hedges, farms, houses and winding roads, and, in the distance, the cold silver glint of the North Sea.