“Kind offer, Adrian. I may well take you up on it, but not for the next few days. We have some flying to do if we are to bring the squadron back to operational fitness. Difficult with so many new faces to fit in, and, of course, we lost two of our flight lieutenants. Three of the new lads have scores from China, which helps a lot. They will be able to fit in with no trouble. The four Poles are used to their own air force’s habits, but at least they flew monoplane fighters and will have the basics, Still, enough of shop, I think.”
“Quite. Not the done thing in the mess, you know.”
“Not at table, certainly, Adrian. Necessary in the evenings, of course, after a busy day. The lads have to get the fighting out of their systems.”
“Possibly. What do you think of the ban on racing they are proposing?”
“Who?”
“The government. They wish to end all race-meetings for the duration.”
“Do they really? What sort of racing?”
Adrian stared as if to establish whether he was completely mad.
“National Hunt at this time of year. Horses?”
“Oh! Didn’t realise. No time for such a waste of fuel. People travelling to meetings to watch and taking the horses there as well. No – no sense racing horses in wartime.”
“But, what about morale? The people have to have some relaxation, you know.”
“The cinema. They can walk to the films and that will amuse them, if they have the time. If they are working twelve hour shifts, six or seven days a week, then they won’t need relaxation, other than sleep.”
Adrian had not been aware that people worked such hours – but, he consoled himself, real people did not, only the plebs in the factories and they could drink their beer and forget their troubles without disturbing their betters’ way of life.
Dinner dragged on for nearly ninety minutes, to Thomas’ increasing irritation.
“Can’t waste time like this every day, you know, Adrian. I have work waiting in my office and I want to get a pint in afterwards. Better cut the meal to half the length, you know.”
Adrian much feared they were going to find cooperation difficult.
Chapter Two
The Breaking Storm
Breakfast was a silent meal, taken at small tables scattered around the mess so that pilots need not - if they were feeling morose or were too hungover - talk to each other first thing.
Thomas was amazed when Adrian joined him, full of news, alert and interested at eight o’clock in the morning.
“Just come through. My adjutant told me – he’s always one for getting up at the crack of dawn. New man taking over in France. Old Branksome’s gone – snuffed it!”
Thomas perked up immediately – this was the sort of thing that made mornings worthwhile.
“Has he really? Couldn’t have happened to a nicer chap! Not so old, was he? Heart attack or a flying accident?”
Adrian shook his head, smile surfacing.
“Not that innocent, old chap! Haven’t heard all the details - the ins and outs of it, you might say, ho, ho! But it seems it was pretty disgraceful. Found in some sort of brothel – with boys in it! Dead in company with an Italian from their embassy, to make it worse. Hypodermic syringes as well! Took some sort of drugs that went wrong on them, so it seems. Bad business! Won’t get into the newspapers, of course, they’ll hush it all up, but the word coming to Michael was that he was found by Provosts who were looking for him because of information leaking. He was known to be a friend of Mosley’s – but there’s nothing much to that – popular chap, a lot of pals from school and university, everybody has met Oswald! Just because one thinks Fascism is right does not mean one has to be a traitor, after all. Very messy!”
“I was told he was under investigation, Adrian. I lost half my squadron because someone – unknown – passed the word that we were due on a specific raid into Germany. We were jumped by three squadrons – two at the site and the third on our route home. Seems as if the informant has been found. I hope he burns in Hell!”
Adrian was horrified – the upper classes could not betray their country. After all, they were the country, or all of it that counted.
“Steady on, old chap! Branksome was one of us. Good family, you know. Can’t remember what school he went to, but it was one of the best – might have been Rugby, or Oundle perhaps. Definitely not Winchester! Not a sparkling intellect but a thoroughly sound chap. British all the way through!”
Thomas smiled and called for more tea.
“Perhaps I’m doing him an injustice, Adrian. I had my doubts about him from the beginning, but I would not like to think of any man as untrustworthy merely because he was close friends with Hitler’s allies.”
Adrian agreed that put like that, his conduct sounded somewhat dubious.
“Still – the poor fellow’s dead and there’s no point to blackening his name now. Better far to keep everything decently quiet. Don’t know who’s to take over from him – too early in the day for the Air Ministry to take decisions. No great urgency at this time of year – nothing happens in the winter.”
Adrian was almost right. The sole activity was the appearance on the station that morning of Group Captain Roberts who had charge of most of the airfields along the Sussex coast.
“Heard the news, have you, Stark? Don’t see any traces of tears on your cheeks, what? Don’t blame you. From all I’ve been told – and I’m damned sure that’s not everything – the man was a bad lot. I want you to take fourteen days leave, Stark. All of the squadron. I can make arrangements in London for the Poles and whatever – there’s quite a few of them who got out and have set themselves up in Town. Be able to take a break there before they come back down to hard training. After the hammering you took, you need time off. When you get back, I want you to bring your people up to scratch and then you will go back to France again, relieving one of the squadrons there. Get rid of those stupid damned Gladiators while we can. Sending them out to Africa and Egypt and India, so I’m told. They might be useful there.”
“Be a good idea to leave their pilots in England, sir, and convert them to proper fighters. Send the Glads to training stations and they can put their boys into them.”
“Not possible for them all, but volunteers are being called for to undergo conversion. Where it can be organised, older men will stay with the biplanes.”
“Good idea, sir. Are these Defiants to stay down here, sir?”
Roberts shook his head.
“Out of my hands, Stark. It is thought that they will do well against bomber fleets. The Spitfires and Hurricanes will tie up the fighters while the Defiants will make hay with the bombers. They carry far more ammunition than a conventional fighter.”
“One can only hope, sir.”
“Exactly. I want your people out on leave this afternoon, Stark. Best thing for you, personally, is to take the trains to Southampton and go to visit your father. I will have a small plane dropped into the strip at the back of his station at Calshot – it will take a Moth – and you will have use of that within reason. Don’t use too much petrol. Do take yourself off to wherever you must go to find your young lady. Noah tells me you should be at his place by Friday afternoon. I was speaking to him this morning. The Moth will be to hand on Thursday.”
Thomas made his thanks, was told that the right sort had to look after each other.
“Knew your father last time, Stark – he got me my commission - and have kept in contact with Noah ever since. Be a poor show if those of us who believe in fighting this war can’t keep together.”
The simplest route to Southampton was to go by way of London, but the trains were crowded with soldiers and unreliable. Rod organised a lorry to Brighton station and then it was the coastal train to Portsmouth followed by a slightly faster run to Southampton itself and a crawling local down to Lymington. There was a single taxi in the town which took Thomas to Calshot, arriving after six hours travel and about seventy miles distance.
He f
ound his father in his office, swearing at the paperwork generated by a squadron of more than one hundred flying crew.
“You look well, Old Man?”
“So I should, Thomas. Married life is agreeing with me. I’ve been lucky, again. You look knackered, boy. I heard you had a rough time of it a few days back?”
Thomas gave a brief outline of events.
“You have been told that Branksome was found dead last night, Old Man?”
“No. Not a word.”
“Thought they’d keep it quiet. In a boy brothel in company with an Italian from their embassy. Some mention of hypodermics. Set up to look as if they made fools of themselves with bad drugs, so I would guess.”
“’Set up’?”
“Probably. Ask Nancy.”
“Not directly, I won’t. No bloody loss to the RAF, or to the country. Bugger the paperwork! An early afternoon. How long can you stay?”
“A couple of days, if it’s right with you. Roberts said there would be a Moth delivered to your strip on Thursday. I’ll go up to Holt for Friday.”
“Makes sense.”
Cissie made Thomas welcome and the cook chose to bake a cake, thinking a celebration must be due for the young gentleman coming home from the wars.
“No rationing yet, Old Man?”
“Not yet. It will come in, of a certainty. Only petrol under control at the moment – and that is severely limited for all except essential users. I have an allowance but Cissie doesn’t. You might get one, but if I was you, I’d leave the car where it is now. They could withdraw the small amount they let you buy at any time. Country doctors have a free rein, fairly much, and vets. Anybody else is heavily restricted and the police are checking usage. Sensible enough, too.”
Cissie took up the tale – the gardener had been instructed to grow vegetables, potatoes especially, and they had a chicken run of their own.
“Easy for us in a little country town. Not so good for factory workers in their terraces in the industrial areas. We may have a more boring diet. They will have a far more limited choice of food. There is word of a ‘national loaf’ which is being worked on by ‘food scientists’, who I had never heard of before. Chap by the name of Drummond is in charge – very able man, they say. All of the big bakeries will have to make it. From all I hear it will contain the essential nutriments – vitamins and things – so that eating two or three slices a day will keep people healthy. Good idea, if it works. Especially for the children.”
Thomas was surprised to hear of such an initiative from Chamberlain’s government but was in favour.
“How will they make the bakeries produce it? What will happen if they don’t want to?”
“DORA.”
“Compulsion? The Defence of the Realm Act?”
“Just that. They’ve taken the Great War act and doubled it, in spades! The degree of compulsion available to the government now is far greater than that officially available to Hitler in Germany. Downing Street has been given power over everything. At the moment, Chamberlain has no idea of how to use it and doesn’t want to. When the time comes that this government is changed and a coalition takes power, then the tools will be to hand for total war.”
Cissie seemed to be much in favour of a dictatorship for the duration of the war. Tommy was less hopeful that it would work.
“It will be a cock-up, Thomas. They may have new powers - but it will be the same idiots exercising them.”
That seemed very probable.
“Any word from Elisabeth Jane?”
“A letter last week. She hadn’t received mine telling her I was marrying again. A three month turn-round for letters to Australia and back. She was pleased to hear you had survived Spain and hoped you would be equally lucky in this war. The military has taken over all of our planes and pilots, with her fullest cooperation. She has retained all our mechanics and is hiring them and their facilities to the RAAF, so as to keep things going; eventually the government will take them over but for the while they have working airfields at their command.”
“That’s crafty! Getting paid for them rather than simply losing everything for the duration!”
“Good head for business, that girl. She’s using the powers I gave her to expand the small arms factory – employing women for the bulk of the labour. She’s also buying into zinc and copper mining to guarantee supplies of the brass she needs. Apparently, she has ‘laid hands on’ some light cannon – Hotchkiss and Oerlikons – and has a team of engineers stripping them down and working out how to make copies in Australia. It’s not lawful but she thinks that the arguments about patents can take place after the war. She’ll be selling them to the government and will plead that she was subject to force majeure.”
“Sounds as if the family money is safe in her hands, Old Man.”
“Far safer than mine, Thomas. She would probably appreciate a letter direct from your hands. A mention of Grace would go down well, I don’t doubt.”
“I’ll do that. Do you know where Grace is?”
“In Holt by Friday, I would imagine. The mail has been hopeless these last weeks – too many soldiers moving about the country for the Post Office to keep up with. Still, what do you think of the house, Thomas?”
He sought for acceptable words. The place was ancient and rambling and thoroughly inconvenient; he could not understand why his father had chosen such a home for his new family. Then he thought of the investment he and Grace had made.
“You should see the place we have bought – well, with your money, of course, Old Man. Out at East Runton, on the cliffs, looking over the North Sea. Bitter cold in winter, I don’t doubt. Space for an airstrip to the front and about six acres of gardens and paddocks. Far too big, of course. Not as old as this one. We’ve taken a leaf out of your book – put in three old couples to keep it up for us. Its not as handsome as this house – brick rather than stone. There’s a lot to be said for history, and this house must have been here for five hundred years in this central part.”
Both were pleased at the praise of their darling.
“It’s inconvenient and awkward and the bathroom is appalling. After the war, when it becomes possible, we shall get the builders into the new wing – which is only seventy years old – and refashion the kitchen and the facilities. For the meantime, put up with them. At least we have mains drainage. The heating leaves much to be desired, but wood fires are easily practical on the edge of the New Forest!”
They ate a massive dinner, the New Forest also providing legal venison.
“Likely to be an amount of poached as well when rationing comes in, Thomas!”
After the meal they sat back by the fire and talked, glasses to hand. Inevitably, Tommy wanted to know what had happened in France. He listened silently then topped up Thomas’ whisky.
“Happened to me on one occasion, my son. I walked home, crawled actually, through the lines. Most of the squadron stayed behind. Ask Noah one day. He was providing cover for me, lost more than half of his squadron as well. That was a boy on the staff who shouted his mouth off in bed with a cabaret girl. Sounds as if this might have been more deliberate.”
“I think so, Old Man. No proof, obviously, but Major Curtis from Intelligence was more than a little upset with Branksome. He was taking the tale back to your brother, Cissie.”
She responded casually, having gained over the years some slight acquaintance with her brother’s occupation.
“And events took their inevitable course, it would seem. Killed in disgraceful circumstances so that there will be no inquiries from outraged members of his family. They will want to cover up – no way they will ask questions. I assume the word will have gone to Mosley and his mob – probably from both sides. He’ll keep quiet too – he won’t want attention drawn to the fact that one of his known adherents was in contact with Mussolini’s people in time of war. Admittedly, Italy is still neutral but is arming fast and hard and waiting for its chance. When Hitler attacks France, Mussolini will wait for
the French army to be fully committed in the north before attacking into the south. Italy has long claimed Nice and its hinterland. The Counts of Savoy held the area and they are Italian now.”
“I didn’t know the history. It does seem likely that anything the Italians know today, Hitler will be aware of tomorrow. Even if Branksome was not a deliberate traitor, he must have known that anything he said would have been passed on.”
Tommy, who was also unaware of any history, agreed.
“Exactly, Thomas. In any case, as an active Fascist, he cannot have been wholehearted in his prosecution of the war.”
“Anything but! He was most upset when we more or less accidentally drifted across the border and found ourselves in the way of a flying training school one cloudy morning. We knocked down fifteen of their Arados. A few days later Red Flight picked up a Junkers 52 over France. He was distinctly cross with us.”
Tommy shook his head, could not imagine what his objection had been.
“When we took out a flying school early in the Great War we were applauded from all sides – except the German, of course. Entirely legitimate target of war. Did you get any instructors?”
“Branksome told us we took down three of them. He was remarkably well informed.”
“Speaks for itself. Make sure Noah knows everything, Thomas. He can pass the word to the right people in the Air Ministry.”
“I had hoped they might send him out to France, Old Man.”
“No. Too useful where he is. In any case, he’ll be due for Air Vice Marshal in a year or two, earlier perhaps, and they won’t want him wandering about treading on the Frogs’ toes. Wouldn’t mind betting they’ll send him to one of the big commands in due time. If the Japs come into the war, they might give him India and South East Asia. He’s young still and has a good brain; still flexible. Unlike poor old Bowhill in Coastal Command! He does his best but he’s sixty and Navy in his background – he’s naturally a by-the-book man. Can’t think around corners, poor old chap. If it’s new then he’s suspicious – likes it proved first. Won’t try an idea out and see if it works in the field.”
The Breaking Storm (Innocent No More Series, Book 2) Page 3