The Adjacent

by Christopher Priest

  He reached in with two fingers, deliberately trying not to look too closely at what was inside. He touched two small, stiff pieces of card, which felt as if they might be photographs: he glanced in, saw a blur of black and white, a smooth coating, looked no more. Beneath those were the coins: there were about five but he could not tell if they amounted to much. It was unlikely. No one in the forces ever had much money.

  The rest of the purse’s contents were pieces of paper or light card, some of them folded. He shrank from prying any further but he still needed to find out, if he could, the owner’s name.

  Then he noticed that on one side of the main part of the wallet there was a small compartment closed with a zip. Inside was a piece of white card. He guessed it was a service card or a pay chit, but this was different. On the card was an insignia in dark blue ink, made up of two stylized wings. They were similar to, but certainly not the same as, those worn on their chests by serving pilots on the squadron. Between the two wings, circled, were the letters ATA, the two As nestling beneath the top stroke of the T.

  He recognized the insignia at once: the initials stood for Air Transport Auxiliary, the civilian organization of pilots which ferried aircraft from the factories to operational bases. Some of the other fitters said the initials stood for ‘Ancient and Tattered Airmen’, because many of the pilots were veterans of the 1914–18 war and several of them were handicapped in some way. Torrance had heard stories about planes being flown in by pilots with a missing limb or with an eye gone. Some of the pilots were rumoured to be women. Many of the volunteers had escaped to Britain when the war started and barely spoke English.

  They had a mixed reputation amongst the operational pilots, who were instinctively sceptical about civilians getting their hands on warplanes. However, the four-engined Lancasters, which normally carried a crew of seven men, were flown single-handed by ATA pilots, and without the aid of radio or maps. That earned them the respect of other pilots, no matter what their background. The ground crews rarely had any contact with the ATA. On arrival the planes were always taxied to a special dispersal point on the far side of the airfield, and then the pilot presumably departed the base by some other means. The new aircraft were later hauled over to the flight stands by tractor.

  Beneath the insignia was a name, Second Officer K. Roszca, ATA, and the address of the ATA headquarters in London. At the bottom was a telephone number, on the Hamble exchange. The handwriting was the same as Torrance had seen on the sign-off form: clear, round, almost childish letters.

  He stopped thinking, stopped wondering what to do. He decided to act immediately. He took one of the bicycles that was leaning against the wall outside and pedalled quickly across to the NAAFI hut, in the admin area of the airfield. There was a public call-box outside the main door.

  Darkness had fallen and it was raining hard – cold drops stung Torrance’s eyes, and wetted and chilled his hands and face.

  He had never made a long-distance call before and asked the operator what he should do. Presumably used to the young airmen posted to this area, she explained how much it would cost and warned him to have the right change ready. She told him he would not be able to speak for longer than three minutes unless he had more money ready.

  Torrance put down the telephone. He went into the building and braced himself with a half-pint of beer from the bar inside the NAAFI, partly to work up some Dutch courage, but also because he needed extra coins. He paid for the drink with the only ten-shilling note he had, which he had been saving for his next period of leave, then carefully counted some of the change into the amount he would need. It was going to cost him a big chunk of the weekly pay the RAF gave him.

  4

  ‘When the number you are calling replies, press button A to be heard.’ Torrance muttered a thank-you to the operator. He could already hear the phone ringing at the other end. Then it clicked, and a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello?’

  He pressed the button and heard the coins clatter down into the box.

  ‘Hello!’ he said, a bit too loudly.

  ‘Hamble 423. Who are you calling?’

  ‘I want to speak to Second Officer Roszca,’ he said, guessing at the pronunciation. ‘K. Roszca. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Who are you, and what is it you want?’ She had an accent of some kind, pronouncing ‘what’ and ‘want’ with a long a.

  ‘This is Mike Torr – I mean, I am Aircraftman Mike Torrance, attached to 148 Squadron, RAF Tealby Moor. I need to speak to Mr Roszca urgently.’

  ‘You can tell me,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Um – Mr Roszca left a wallet inside a Lancaster that was delivered to our airfield. I have found—’

  ‘You have my purse?’ There was a silence he did not know how to fill. Then she said with her voice rising, ‘My God! You found it?’

  ‘It belongs to a pilot,’ he said, confused in his shyness by her response. ‘An ATA pilot. The wallet is safe. I’m looking after it.’

  ‘I must have it back! I have been searching everywhere for it! Who are you?’

  ‘I told you my name.’

  ‘Say it again. You are in the RAF?’

  Her insistent voice, her strange accent – it all added to his confusion. The call was not going as he expected. He repeated his name, then the squadron and airfield. He had no idea how much of his time he had already used, but three minutes felt frighteningly brief. He wished now that he had found the duty sergeant and handed the wallet in, but it was already too late for that.

  ‘Is Mr Roszca there, and please may I speak to him?’ he said, knowing he was sounding stupid, but the call was completely disorienting him. The fingers of his free hand were clenched immovably into a fist.

  ‘I am Roszca.’ She pronounced the name rozh-ska. ‘It is my purse you have.’

  ‘You were the pilot?’

  ‘Yes. I must get my purse back as soon as possible. How can I find you?’

  ‘I thought I could post it to you if I had an address, or if I knew the airfield where you are based—’

  ‘No, it might be lost. Or someone would steal it. I cannot risk that. Which airfield do you say you are at?’

  ‘Tealby Moor. In Lincolnshire.’

  ‘I was there. Yesterday. I flew a Lancaster to Tealby.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I found the wallet in the cockpit.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you! Oh my God, I cannot thank you enough!’ He heard her draw a deep intake of breath. ‘I’ll come to Tealby, soon. How will we meet?’

  ‘I work on “A” flight. The instrument section.’

  ‘You are not a pilot?’

  ‘No, I’m a fitter.’

  Three interruptive pips sounded, over her voice and his. The operator came on: ‘Your time is up, caller. Do you wish to insert more money?’

  ‘No!’ he said loudly. He shouted to the woman called Roszca, ‘I’ll watch out for you!’, but only silence followed.

  He put down the receiver. He was in the gloomy semi-darkness of the telephone box, while the rain fell unrelentingly on the concrete path outside. Another erk was standing a short distance away, waiting for the call box to come free and sheltering under the guttering of the building. Telephone numbers were scratched or written on the metal pane next to the telephone, where instructions about emergency calls were printed. The kiosk smelled of old tobacco smoke, unwashed clothes and something else – the vague but familiar background smell of a wartime RAF base. He could hear the sound of voices inside the NAAFI, coming through an efficiently blacked-out window. He stood there for a few more moments, feeling the chill, holding the slim purse in his hand.

  ‘Hurry up, mate!’ said the man waiting outside.

  Torrance tried to look apologetic as he dodged out of the telephone box into the rain. He hurried along the short path beside the building. He went inside, succumbed to the noise of voices and the music from the piano. As he passed through the door he glanced once more at the wallet tucked into his breast poc
ket, briefly rejoicing again at the glimpse of its glowing colours. He was giddy with excitement.

  5

  Four nights later 148 Squadron lost two more Lancasters while on a raid over the German town of Essen. Both were known to be destroyed because other aircraft reported seeing them crash. They were crewed by men Torrance had often seen around the base, and he knew one or two of them by their first names. He grieved silently with everyone else, continued with his work.

  A week after that a German Junkers 88, a night intruder, shot down ‘H Henry’, the Lancaster of Pilot Officer Will Seward and his crew as it was returning to Tealby Moor from a ‘gardening’ raid, mine-laying in the Baltic narrows. The Lanc was on its final approach to the main runway, no more than half a minute before touching down, when the night fighter opened fire. Witnesses said that although the remaining fuel in the plane was ignited, the pilot managed to keep the plane level and above the runway. An explosion immediately followed. The crippled plane overshot the runway and crashed down on the farmland beneath the ridge. All seven men on board were killed.

  The next morning, Torrance volunteered to join a work party to visit the wreck and try to recover personal items belonging to the crew. By the time they arrived the fires had been put out and the bodies removed, but the remains of the broken aircraft were heaped more or less where it had landed. One of the wings had broken on impact, and was folded over and across the crushed fuselage. The tailplane had also broken off, and had swung around. The effect, seen from above as they were driven down the ridge in the squadron van, was that the stricken aircraft had ended up in the centre of the field in an almost perfect triangle of blackened wreckage. The six men of the work party completed their grisly job in less than an hour, and returned to their normal duties.

  Three nights later, yet another Lancaster was lost, this one on a raid against Krefeld, in the Ruhr.

  Nothing could numb the upset feelings of the people who worked in the squadron, who had to cope with these regular shocks, but the pressure of work meant that there was little time to reflect. Death became a part of normal life. Mike Torrance was no different, feeling the loss of each man as an acute tragedy, but since the phone call he could not help but think beyond the individual disasters. Every Lancaster lost meant that another would have to replace it, which in turn meant that he might be able to meet the owner of the lost wallet.

  In due course the lost aircraft were replaced. However, when the new Lancs landed, presumably flown in by members of the ATA, they were immediately taxied away to the usual distant dispersal. No contact was made. Torrance still had the wallet, concealed as securely as possible whenever he was in the hut, where privacy was almost non-existent. When he was moving about the base, or at work, he carried it inside the breast pocket of his tunic, buttoned tightly.

  His turn came round for a week’s leave, so he headed home to his parents’ house in Hastings, on the coast of East Sussex. The visit reminded him that this war was not confined to actual combatants: the town was a regular victim of hit-and-run air raids from Luftwaffe bases across the English Channel in northern France, and his parents were at real risk. Two houses in their street had already been bombed out, no more than a hundred yards from where they lived. His father was away from home several nights of the week as he was having to work shifts at a factory which built engines for patrol boats. One morning his mother told him how frightened and lonely she felt whenever his father was away. Ellie, his sister, had been evacuated with her school to Wiltshire, but she was in her final term and would soon be returning home. His mother was torn between wanting Ellie to stay away in safety and having her back.

  The days at home gave him a period of calm. He worked in his parents’ garden, cutting back the weeds so the flowers could bloom. As a child he had spent many happy hours playing in the garden. The work gave him time in which to think about what he should do about the wallet. He knew he had not acted sensibly, but he had meant well. He also knew the woman who owned the wallet was anxious to have it returned. It was a huge dilemma for him, but by the end of his week’s leave he had decided the best thing to do was to hand it in.

  He set off on the slow journey back to the base in Lincolnshire. He travelled all day across England, struggling with his heavy kit, invariably having to take slow-moving trains that halted at every station. He was crammed into overcrowded compartments, found little to eat or drink on the way except whatever could be grabbed at brief station stops. As usual after a period of leave he made it back to the base with aching shoulders and arms, and feeling hungry, parched and footsore.

  This time, though, as he walked into the smoke-filled hut a ragged cheer went up.

  ‘Here he is!’

  ‘C’mon, basher!’

  ‘Copped it this time, Floody!’

  ‘What’s up?’ he said guardedly when the hubbub died down, knowing all too well how easy it was to transgress some simple RAF regulation while away from the base.

  ‘Chiefy was looking for you just now,’ said Jake, the chap who slept in the bunk above his. Chiefy was Flight Sergeant Winslow, who ran the Instruments Section. He never came looking for any of the erks unless it meant trouble.

  ‘Did he say what it was?’

  ‘You must report to him before eight o’clock, and if you’re not back by then, first thing in the morning.’

  It was just after half-past seven. Torrance threw his kit on his bunk, then borrowed one of the bikes and rode at high speed across to the Sergeants’ Mess. Chief Winslow was playing darts and made him wait until his game was finished. He won, which briefly seemed to Torrance to be a good thing.

  ‘Aircraftman Torrance,’ he said. ‘You are relieved of duties tomorrow until eighteen hundred hours.’

  ‘What have I done, Sarge?’

  ‘Nothing I know of. You’re to report to Dispersal 11 before nine hundred hours tomorrow. Know where that is?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge.’ In fact he did not, but was not about to reveal that. He could ask one of the others or find his way somehow. ‘Can you tell me what it’s about, Chief?’

  ‘Search me. Orders from Group. Passed on by the Station Commander. Do what you’re told, then back to normal duties after that. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge.’

  ‘Go on – get on with it.’

  Torrance went to the canteen to try to scrounge a late meal before heading back to the hut.

  6

  The morning was bright. Warm early sunshine flooded across the runways. He was already halfway across the airfield, following someone’s imprecise directions, when Torrance realized that Dispersal 11 was the part of the base where the arriving ATA pilots parked the new aircraft. There was not much to see: just a couple of familiar-looking single-storey brick buildings with flat roofs, square windows, a couple of doors each. A twin-engined Avro Anson was parked on the concrete apron in front of the buildings.

  He left his borrowed bicycle leaning on the wall somewhere around the back of the building, and walked out to the apron. He stood close to the Anson, professionally aware of the smells and sounds of the workhorse plane. The engines were making noises as they cooled down. The entrance to the cockpit bore many scuffs from people climbing in and out – the sun on the perspex canopy was reflected by the myriad of tiny scratches on the surface, testament to hundreds of hours of flying time. It was a bright, warm morning and the early mist had lifted. The sky was cloudless. Somewhere on the other side of the airfield he could hear the familiar sound of a Lancaster’s Merlin engines being run up on test. He found it easy to imagine the scene of activity as the crews went to work on the various aircraft: the engine nacelles open, the bomb bay doors hanging down, the ladders and the trolleys and the equipment dollies scattered all about.

  He noticed a car driving at a moderate speed along the perimeter road, approaching the dispersal where he was waiting. A shift in the direction of the wind made the sound of the Lanc’s engines louder, purer, wafting across the flat airfield. Because he was away
from his usual work area, Torrance’s senses were more acute. He was aware of the smell of cut grass, and of wild flowers. There was a banked hedge behind the buildings, a haze of white and yellow blooms – this was a part of the perimeter he did not know. The sense of the open countryside out there, beyond the edge of the airfield, away from the war, hit him hard, another reminder of past years, imprecise but potent.

  The car curved around and halted outside the building. A WAAF was driving. A young woman in a smart dark-blue uniform stepped out of the passenger seat at the rear. She put on a forage cap and walked towards him. The WAAF driver moved off immediately, turning the car around and back to the perimeter road, accelerating away.

  He thought the young woman was about to salute him, or was expecting him to salute her, such was the ingrained ritual of RAF life, but she came to a halt a short distance away from him. Her stance was completely informal. She seemed transfixed by his appearance, staring towards him with a smile of recognition. Then she sagged expressively, bending her knees, thrusting out her arms towards him. Torrance assumed she recognized him, as if she was expecting him to know her too. She tore off her cap and threw it on the ground, then walked quickly towards him. Both her arms were raised to greet him.

  But she did not embrace him. She said something aloud, a stream of foreign words. He caught only the first, or thought he did. It sounded like ‘Thomas!’, or perhaps ‘Torrance!’

  Then she was standing right before him, her hands reaching up to rest on his shoulders, beaming at him, her face raised as if for a kiss. Torrance froze with embarrassment, not resisting or backing away from her but amazed by her behaviour.