And there was the satisfaction of his new posting to crown it all. When, after three months, he had still not been given the leave he was due, James had written to warn him that the retribution which followed a court martial sometimes continued beyond the sentence. Christopher already knew that his posting to ground duties on that benighted island was part of his punishment. James had warned him to prepare for a posting to some ‘insulting stooge job’ when he was allowed to return to flying.
Christopher had written back ‘Thanks for the tip, but don’t worry. I applied for a posting to beaufighters as soon as I got here. I know the C.O. didn’t recommend it - he’s a four-letter man; in spades - but of course he had no option but to forward it.’
Christopher had always been confident that his above-average flying assessments and his excellent operational record would rescue him from any stooge flying: particularly with the country so hard pressed for operationally experienced pilots. He regarded the vindication for his optimism as one in the eye for his detested station commander, the despised Squadron Leader Admin and the bilious-looking flight lieutenant who ran the Air Traffic Control section.
It was seven months since he had seen Roger, and when he saw his stocky form emerge from the hatch in the Wimpey’s belly, and his broad smile, he felt as good as home already. They shook hands and he looked his cousin up and down.
‘Well, you look as though you’ve made a complete recovery, Roger.’
‘My leg works all right and I’ve put back the weight I lost; but I’m a nervous wreck, old boy. Flying with some of these sprog crews is a damn sight worse than flak or One-o-nines.’
‘What a line!’
‘You look better for the bracing air up here and four months’ rest.’
When he, Christopher and James had been at home on a week’s leave together in March, Roger reflected, there were many signs of the wear and tear that daylight strikes against enemy shipping had wrought on Christopher. He was well-fleshed about the face once more and his eyes had lost their tense restlessness.
‘It’s been like living in a monastery. When the A.T.A. ferry aircraft up here, they daren’t send women pilots: they’d never see them again; even the most hideous old hag would be worth kidnapping.’
‘I’ve no doubt you’ll make up for it during the next nine days.’
‘I’ll do my damnedest. How’s your sex life?’
After his brother, Roger was Christopher’s closest friend and there was nothing offensive about what he had said. Anyway, he had spoken lightly, with a grin. He was surprised by the look that crossed Roger’s face.
‘Come on,’ Roger said, ‘Let’s get your luggage aboard and get cracking back to warmer climes. I never thought I’d rate Yorkshire as warm, but by comparison with this… ‘ He shivered, in his fleece-lined Irvine jacket.
When Roger had introduced Christopher to the crew and they had bought coffee and buns from the N.A.A.F.I. wagon that turned up opportunely, and were airborne, Christopher asked ‘How much longer d’you expect to be at the O.T.U.?’
‘I applied to go back on ops a month ago.’
‘As bad as that, is it?’
‘I’ve quite enjoyed it, actually, but it’s not like being on a squadron. And I don’t want to find myself posted to a Training Command job after this: that would be difficult to get away from. So you’re going on a Beaufighter conversion course?’
‘Yes. And then, with luck, onto a night fighter squadron.’
‘So you’ll get at least half your wish to go on fighters.’
‘That’s right. And once I’m in Fighter Command, I’ll bind like hell about a refresher course on singles and going to a Spit squadron.’
‘I hope it works out for you.’
‘When d’you expect to get away from Mythewold?’
‘Any time now. There are plenty of replacements available. People are being given a rest from ops every day of the week.’
‘But they haven’t all got a couple of gongs. Most of them will go to ground jobs. Gonged-up types like you arc sent to instruct at O.T.Us pour encourager les autres.’
Christopher had spoken his last sentence with a leasing inflection, but Roger noticed an underlying wistfulness. He knew what Christopher was thinking: that, if he had not been so impetuous as to incur a court martial, he would certainly be wearing a D.F.C. himself by now.
*
James said ‘I’m taking a forty-eight. I haven’t had one for two months.’
Christopher knew that nothing would extract an admission from his brother that it was on his account that he was taking a short leave; nor would he himself express any personal pleasure at the news.
‘Mummy and Dad will like that,’ was all he said. ‘What about the Dominie? You can’t keep it at Thorney Island all that time, can you?’
‘One of my sergeant pilots is coming with us. He’ll fly it back here and bring a Maggie over for me to return in.’
A Maggie was a Magister trainer, of which the station had two for various general purposes. It would serve for James to fly back to Dallingfield, but the Dominie was needed for Christopher’s luggage.
‘Are you busy these days?’
‘The Circuses aren’t very productive. We do a bit better on wing Sweeps without bombers: Jerry doesn’t mind sending up fifty-plus One-o-nines to take on thirty-six Spits. Rhubarbs are all right, but I can’t help thinking they’re not what Spitfire Fives are really meant for. I mean, our job is shooting Jerry down, not shooting up his aircraft on the ground or strafing trains, roads and troops. Even the sweeps aren’t as productive as they were: a lot of enemy squadrons have been moved from France to the Russian Front.’ ‘Have you seen Nicole lately?’
Christopher noticed the same look on James’s face as he had seen on Roger’s when he flippantly enquired after his sex life. There had been nothing facetious in his query about Nicole. Why, then, did he have the feeling that he had put his foot in it? He always asked after her when he and James talked on the telephone. For the last couple of months James had been admitting that he had not seen her recently. The last time, now he recalled it, James had dismissed the question rather curtly. What had gone wrong? Had they had a row? Split up? Surely it couldn’t be that someone else had cut James out in her affections? He didn’t know for sure, but he was damn certain there was something going on between them. He couldn’t imagine Nicole preferring anybody else.
‘Nicole’s on detachment somewhere on some hush-hush job where she’s under a tight security clamp just now.’
Hence no communication, Christopher ruminated. It sounded fishy. His quick brain came to the logical conclusion, and, although he did not expect a frank answer, he challenged James.
‘How long has she been in France? When d’you suppose she’ll be back?’
James was driving him in his small staff car from where the Oxford had parked to where the Dominie waited. Dusk had fallen an hour ago but he could see James’s face set in the obdurate expression, rarely seen but well remembered, which he had known so well all his life. Christopher was not aware of it, but it was one of the characteristics he shared with his brother. Neither was easy to thwart once he had decided on a course of action and neither would yield a word about any confidence with which he had been entrusted.
‘You’re jumping to conclusions, Young’Un.’ It was a private joke, their mockery and parody of the schoolboy language in the Victorian and Edwardian school stories that were still in the library in their prep school days: Tom Brown’s Schooldays, The Fifth form at St. Dominic’s, Teddy Lester, Captain Of Cricket. The sort of books in which prefects said ‘Cut along, kid’, ‘Well played, old fellow’, ‘I won’t have you rotters in the Fifth bullying the little chaps’ and other phrases which neither had ever heard uttered in reality. James’s resorting to it now was plain confirmation that Christopher had been right, but he let the subject drop.
‘What’s the Focke-Wulf One-ninety like?’
‘It’s what one would expect from a
fighter with four twenty-mil cannons and two thirteen-mil machine-guns, a top speed of about four hundred and ten m.p.h. and wizard manoeuvrability. I’ll tell you more about it on the way to Thorney.’
‘Have you bagged one yet?’
‘I haven’t even claimed a probable. I damaged one the other day: they’re so damn fast, it had come and gone before I could fire a decent burst. It took a damn great chunk out of my wingtip and I had to nip smartly into cloud to dodge the brute.’ James turned to give Christopher a wry look as he braked to a halt by the Dominie. ‘It made the Spit Five feel almost clapped out by comparison.’
Christopher grinned cheerfully. His high spirits had been completely restored. The Outer Hebrides were hundreds of miles away and he would be seeing his mother and father in an hour or so. He was about to start flying a Beaufighter.
‘It seems I’m going back on ops in the nick of time. F.W. One-nineties getting the better of the Spit; Hitler advancing on Moscow; another cut in the food ration because Jerry’s sinking about two hundred thousand tons a month of our ships. The sooner I’m dicing around in a Beaufighter, the better for all concerned: except the bloody Hun.’
‘You don’t improve with age, do you?’ James sounded resigned but was inwardly much comforted that his young brother had obviously put his court martial and its immediate consequences behind him.
They saw their father’s Flying Standard Fourteen parked by the Flying Control tower when they taxyed past and its masked headlights came on as the car followed them to the tarmac apron in front of the hangars where they would leave the Dominie while they transferred their luggage.
Stephen Fenton emerged through the gloom in battle dress and a Service Dress cap, wearing the badges of a Home Guard captain. Both his sons were wearing Irvine jackets but they noticed, fondly, that he had no overcoat on. It would have concealed his Royal flying Corps pilot’s wings and ribbons of the Military Cross and service in the Great War.
He returned their salutes and shook hands.
‘Thought it would be more appropriate to turn up in uniform than in civvies, as I was coming onto R.A.F. terrain: and less bother with the guard on the main gate.’
‘How many layers are you wearing under it, Dad?’ Christopher was laughing.
Stephen perceived the innuendo. He turned to James.
‘Can’t you do anything with him? Exert your rank?’
James laughed. ‘I’ve already told him he doesn’t improve with age. And 1 must say that’s the most impressive Home Guard turnout I’ve ever seen. It would be a pity to hide it. Group Captain Runcey sends his ‘salaams’ as he put it.’
‘Nip? Yes, he does tend never to forget his five years in India between the wars.’
‘Let me introduce Sergeant Smith, one of my old stagers, who’s going to take the Dominie back.’
More salutes and a handshake were exchanged and Sergeant Smith looked admiring.
‘Now we know where the C.O. gets his flying from, sir: runs in the family. What did you fly, sir?’
‘Sopwith Pups and Camels and Bristol Fighters. All of them about fifty miles an hour slower than this Dominie which you three probably despise as an old crock.’
‘Nobody would have talked me into flying a fighter in your day, sir, not for a thousand quid; not without a parachute… or oxygen.’
‘Oh, we eventually had’chutes; in the last few months. And oxygen: but we had to suck it through a tube held between the teeth, we didn’t have masks at first.’
‘I’ll be bringing a Maggie over on Wednesday to collect Squadron Leader Fenton, sir. You should get him to let you fly it. I’ll come early.’
‘It’s a kind thought, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to spare the time, Sergeant.’
James and Christopher exchanged a quick glance. They knew that their father could take whatever time away from his business he wanted. He had refused the offer because it would only revive his disappointment at being ordered by the Government to continue at his boat-building yard; when he had wanted to rejoin the R.A.F., even though his old wounds made him unfit to fly any more.
*
Sheila Fenton had invited her sister and brother-in-law, Roger’s parents, to dinner. Stephen had brought up two bottles of his 1932 St. Estephe, the Chateau Cos-d’Estournel, a sturdy claret which aged well, to decant that evening before he went to fetch his sons. The reunion, drinks before dinner and the mellow wine had made them as merry as one could be in the late autumn of 1941. Although they would have felt even more elated if Roger could be there, his parents took comfort from the account Christopher gave them of his few hours in Roger’s company that morning and the fact that he was having a respite from operations. James and Christopher had realised that Roger had not told his parents about his application to return to a squadron, and each gave the other a warning look.
James tried to keep everyone’s minds away from Roger, Christopher and himself. ‘It’s four months since Churchill replaced Wavell with Auchinleck. It’s about time he did something. He should at least relieve the Tobruk garrison, even if he can’t shove Rommel right out of Cyrenaica. It’s bad enough to lose Greece and Crete to the Germans, but now Malta’s catching it in the neck and we aren’t moving an inch in North Africa.’
‘If the French had a large enough army in Algeria and Morocco,’ his father said, ‘and if their Navy would sail out of Oran and Algiers and Casablanca, they could attack from the other direction. Any news of Henri Girard, James?’
‘The last I heard from Nicole, he was still with his ship in Oran.’
Denis Hallowes looked dubiously at James. ‘Do you think that brother of hers really has any heart for a light against Germany? Or is he a Vichyite?’
‘It’s hard to say, Uncle. It’s not something I can discuss with her: she’s understandably touchy. When she has mentioned it, she’s been insistent that he would get away if he could and make his way here to join the Free French; naturally. But I have a feeling she doesn’t really convince herself.’
‘When did you last see her?’ Beryl Hallowes asked.
‘Not for three months, Aunty. She’s away somewhere.’
‘Don’t you write?’ Sheila Fenton raised her eyebrows at James.
‘Are you match-making, Mummy?’ James smiled at her.
‘I’ve always been very fond of Nicole. I thought you and she kept in touch quite closely.’
‘We keep in touch as far as we can.’ James hoped he sounded casual. He did not feel it. His anxiety about Nicole had become acute now that over three months had passed since he saw her. Although he thought of her every day, mention of her name rekindled the wrath that had taken hold of him after he had parted from her, knowing that he might never see her again; and been further aroused by the way that Big and Tad had died. The thought of what his father had done in the last war, of what still lay in store for Christopher, Roger and himself, the contemptuous suspicion he harboured about Nicole’s brother, the effect of the vintage claret, created, as in dynamics, an equal and opposite force to the earlier euphoria of having his family around him.
‘Too many people are hiding behind other people’s efforts. Whenever I have the chance, I turf them out.’
Stephen gave him a wondering look. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’ll give you two examples: my fitter and my batman. They’re both young and fit for air crew: I suggested to both of them that they should show some guts and volunteer. They’ve both banged in applications and been recommended. I’m sure they’ll pass the selection board, or I wouldn’t have had a go at them. My fitter wants to be a pilot and my batman wants to be an air gunner.’
‘Want to?’ Again Stephen looked faintly worried.
'‘Yes: when I’d pointed out to them why they should. I can’t understand anyone of military age not having the self-respect to try to join the R.A.F. as air crew, or go into the infantry or tanks or even the artillery, or go to sea with the Navy, as soon as the war started. I mean, what kind of chap is willing to
let other people risk life and limb on his behalf? How will anyone have an easy conscience after the war if he hasn’t really fought in it? I feel the same about conscripts. Most of them go willingly enough when they’re called up, and there are plenty of them fighting in the desert now: but it’s not the same as going of one’s own free will. I told them even women… girls… arc doing things in this war that should put them to shame unless they pull their fingers out… Oh! Sorry, Mummy… Aunty… I mean unless they wake up and make a decent effort.’
‘I’m absolutely with you,’ Christopher said.
Their father - who had changed out of uniform - looked at his brother-in-law. Denis Hallowes, the quiet banker - an inspector now and a lieutenant in the Home Guard - from whom Roger had inherited many physical and intrinsic characteristics, wore an ironical and speculative expression.
Stephen Fenton said ‘You both seem to have become rather fierce and intolerant.’
‘I daresay Roger feels the same way,’ said Denis, addressing his two nephews. ‘In the last war, conscription was brought in rather late. There was a iremendous rush of volunteers. And there weren’t enough rifles or uniforms to equip all the recruits during the first year. I don’t remember us feeling as bitter about the men who didn’t volunteer as you seem to. I think we just despised them, we didn’t detest them. Certainly not in my regiment, anyway. And there was no prejudice against the conscripts, that I ever saw, when they did come out to France.’
‘It’s the same this time,’ Christopher said. ‘We’re a very tolerant nation. But I loathe and despise the types who stay at home or grab at cushy jobs if they do join, or who wait to be called up, not because of anything that I’m doing, but because of what I’ve seen happen to a lot of good types who didn’t hang back.’
James caught his eye and, with a brief frown, made a negative gesture. It was tactless of Christopher to blight the party’s expansive mood by referring to the casualties which were never absent from the thoughts of their parents or Roger’s.
Too Late the Morrow Page 6
