Slipstream

by Alan Judd

  He hid his bike behind the hedge by the humped stone bridge and set off through the orchard. They were old trees, high and awkwardly angled, full of young apples that would be difficult to pick. In a month or two there would be pickers, ladders, baskets and busy-ness, and after them the hop-pickers for the hopping, but now there was no sound apart from the regular soft brush of his boots in the grass and the hum of insects. No birdsong, no aircraft. It was mid-afternoon, warm but not hot, and the fish would probably not be feeding. But he wouldn’t mind that, or not very much. The point was to be there. It was enough that the world seemed peaceful and somnolent.

  A gate in the hedge on the far side of the orchard opened into a field of cow-pats and flattened grass. There were no cows, unless they were behind the willows and alders at the bend of the stream. He chose a pool he had fished before, hidden from view by long grass but with sufficient gap between the trees for him to cast.

  Half an hour after the white flash and still fish-less, he had not moved on. The trembling in his arms had stopped and he was no longer troubled by images of all those earlier flashes. As the afternoon cooled into evening the trout might rouse themselves to feed. Anyway, it was good to feel hidden and private, a time to recollect himself. He cast again and watched his fly slowly sink until soft sounds of champing and swishing announced a dozen reddish-brown and white cows in a semi-circle behind him. Some were twisting and tearing the grass with their long tongues but most stared at him, dark eyes passively curious, tails swinging.

  A while after that the gentle champing stopped. He looked round to see that the cattle had moved farther from the bank and were grouped more closely, facing the orchard. A tall man in a tweed suit and deer-stalker was closing the gate. Frank’s first thoughts were that he looked like a traditional landowner who would not be welcoming then that he must be hot in that suit. Frank turned back to the stream, pretending to concentrate on his line. If the man kept to the field rather than the riverbank he might not see the poacher, but after a minute or two Frank heard footsteps in the grass. There was no point in further pretence, so he turned. The man seemed a walking incarnation of pepper-and-salt, in the pattern of his tweeds, his hair, his mottled white moustache and even the stippled bark of the thumbstick he leant upon when he stopped. He looked old to Frank, at least of uncertain age, his red complexion wrinkled like parchment, his eyes blue and bloodshot.

  Frank began winding in his line. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I guess I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Indeed you should not.’ The voice was deep. If it had a colour it would have been walnut.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m on my way.’

  The man held up a hand and shook his head. His drooping cheeks wobbled like a bloodhound’s. ‘Carry on, carry on. Join you if I may.’ He sat stiffly on the bank a couple of yards from Frank, sighing with the effort. He took off his deerstalker, revealing more of his white hair peppered with flecks of brown, and fumbled in his jacket pocket.

  Frank paused in his winding. ‘If you’re sure that’s OK. Kind of you, sir.’

  ‘My river, your fish, if you get any. Which I doubt.’ He took out a curved pipe and began filling it from a leather pouch as wrinkled as his face. ‘What’s that fly you’re using?’

  ‘An Infallible, it’s the only—’

  The man wobbled his cheeks again. ‘You need a dry fly on this stream.’

  ‘Haven’t got any. Nor any oil for the line.’

  ‘Wet flies never do on the Beult.’

  Frank resisted the temptation to say he’d done pretty well with them so far. ‘You fish a lot, sir?’

  ‘Not now.’ The man lit his pipe. ‘Unless you’re going to tell me you’ve had luck with wet fly here before?’

  Frank smiled. ‘’Fraid I have, sir. Sorry for that.’

  The man smiled, too, showing a full set of discoloured teeth. He flicked his match into the stream.

  ‘What rod is that?’

  ‘It’s an American rod, it’s a—’

  ‘Are you?’

  Frank explained. He had it off pat now: the family farm north of Toronto, aeronautical engineering at university, his decision to interrupt his studies and join the RAF before the war ended. ‘Guess I didn’t have to hurry much after all. I missed the Battle of Britain but that’s about it. Doesn’t look like the war’s ending any time soon.’ In fact, it did; or at least the beginning of the end. Preparations for the landings, the second front, would have been as obvious to the landowner as to him. Everyone was aware of the influx of troops, guns and armour into south-eastern counties, the restrictions on travel and movement in coastal areas, but no one was supposed to discuss what they were for.

  ‘Where north of Toronto?’ asked the man.

  ‘Well, the area’s called Algonquin. It’s not near anywhere really. Lot of lakes.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘You know it?’ If he did, he would be the first Frank had met in England.

  ‘Heard of it.’ He tamped and relit his pipe. ‘You need to drop your fly nearer the bank. They get in underneath it.’

  Frank doubted that. The water there was shallower and faster, with less food, but it was politic to show willing. He didn’t need to re-cast but simply lifted the fly out and dropped it in nearer the bank where the current was rapid, too rapid for any fish to linger. He was beginning to resent the owner’s interest. He wanted to be alone, to float like the dry fly he did not have, unburdened by conversation, his mind drifting on silence.

  ‘Closer in, as close to the bank as you can get it. The water’s slower there.’

  Frank obediently flicked the fly out and dropped it farther upstream, inches from the bank, the tip of his rod just brushing the grass. Another ten or twenty minutes and, with luck, the man would get bored and go away. When the fish bit he was almost too slow with his strike. It was a brown trout, less than a pound, but spirited enough to put up a fight.

  ‘Give it to me.’ The man held out his hand. Frank landed it, extracted the fly and handed the slippery, wriggling thing to its owner who despatched it with a crisp knock on the head with the bowl of his pipe. ‘Same place again. Bound to be another.’

  Within less than five minutes there was a pair lying on the grass between them, silvered and stippled, as streamlined as a Spitfire’s fuselage. After a few more minutes of silence the man pocketed his pipe and got stiffly to his feet. He picked up the fish and wrapped them in dock leaves.

  ‘Come and eat them. About seven. They’ll be nicely done then, with spinach and potatoes from the garden. Nothing special.’

  ‘Well, that’s kind of you, sir.’ Frank normally gave anything he caught to the mess cook, with whom he secretly ate it in the kitchen. It would be a treat to eat out. ‘Where do I come?’

  ‘Carry on over the bridge and down the lane for about half a mile. Take the first right towards the village – no signposts now, of course, but there’s a large oak on the corner. Then it’s the first house you come to, just before the church, set back from the road, behind some trees. Called the Manor but the sign’s not easy to see.’

  Frank fished for another forty-five minutes, with no result. The sun was touching the tops of the elms as he packed up and walked through the munching cattle to his bike. There was no need to warn the mess he wouldn’t be there for dinner – they never knew how many or how few they might have to cater for – and there was no particular time by which he had to be back, so long as he was ready for ops first thing in the morning. The prospect of different people and a different conversation cheered him.

  The lane narrowed after the bridge, funnelling through burgeoning cow parsley and a copse filled with the scent of wild garlic. At the turning to the village the upright of the finger-post had been left in place, with just the arms removed. He didn’t know which village it was and, indeed, never reached it because the manor and church came first. The house was hidden by trees and great cumulus banks of rhododendrons but was indicated by faded white lettering on a crumbling brick gat
e pillar.

  He surprised himself by feeling he ought to dismount at the gate, untucking his trousers from his socks. He pushed the bike up the rough drive, suspecting that if there had been a sign saying ‘Tradesmen’s Entrance’ he might have taken it. Ironic, he thought, given that his family’s farm in Canada was no doubt a considerable multiple in size of whatever the English gentleman owned.

  It was a modest manor of old red brick, gabled in the Dutch style. There was a half-circle of lawn, intersected by the drive, and a wide front door at the top of three steps. The white paint on the doors and windows was fading and peeling and the brickwork needed pointing. An open lopsided wooden shed to one side showed the back of a large black car which looked as if it hadn’t moved for a long time. Petrol rationing was tight for civilians, he remembered.

  He leant the bike against the shed and mounted the steps. There was a rusting iron bell-pull in the wall but no knocker. The bell felt as if it hadn’t been pulled for a long time and made a sound like a distant gong.

  Nothing happened. After a minute or so he pulled again and had just let go when the door was opened by a young woman. She was older than him, he guessed, but still in her twenties. Her shaped dark hair just touched her shoulders. She was dressed as if to go out, in high heels, a tight black skirt and white blouse.

  For a moment neither spoke. Frank realised he didn’t even know the old guy’s name. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t – my name’s—’

  ‘You must be the trout man.’ Her smile was wide and quick. ‘The man who’s going to share them, I mean. He told me about you. Please come in.’

  They were in a large panelled hall with a staircase leading off. In the middle was a round table on which books, magazines, newspapers and letters were arranged in neat piles. An old spaniel ambled over to Frank and began sniffing his trousers.

  ‘Don’t mind Tinker, he’s blind.’

  ‘I don’t mind, I like dogs. I’m Frank, by the way, Frank Foucham. I’m over here with the RAF.’ He felt he was speaking too fast.

  ‘I gathered.’ Her smile switched on and off again as they shook hands. ‘I’m Vanessa. I’ll tell the colonel you’re here.’

  She disappeared through one of the doors opening off the hall, her glossy high heels crisp and decisive on the parquet floor. High heels and stockings, hard to get over here now, he thought. She must be going out but where, with whom? And where was ‘out’ if you lived here – surely not the church or the village pub? And how did you get to ‘out’, wherever it was, in heels like that? You sure as hell wouldn’t walk. Perhaps you got picked up in somebody’s car, somebody with access to rationed petrol. Or the black market. He remained staring at the door she had closed. When she spoke it made him feel she was a generation older than him; she had one of those very clear, cut-glass English voices that sounded as if they were putting you down even when they weren’t, the sort that Patrick had probably grown up with. Yet she couldn’t be much older than him.

  Tinker continued his devoted sniffing of Frank’s trousers. He was a Springer, liver and white, obviously old and pretty overweight. From somewhere within a clock struck the half-hour. The hall smelt of furniture polish and looked clean and well-kept, unlike the outside of the house.

  Another door opened and the old man appeared, minus his deerstalker. As he walked towards Frank, holding out his hand, his resemblance to Tinker was striking. ‘Ovenden, Kenneth Ovenden.’

  Frank introduced himself. The colonel kept hold of his hand. ‘Foucham. How do you spell it?’

  Frank spelt it.

  ‘You were christened Frank, not Francis?’

  ‘Always Frank, sir, never Francis.’

  The colonel nodded and let go of his hand.

  ‘And I understand you’re Colonel Ovenden? Is that right, sir?’

  ‘Lieutenant-colonel. One is always promoted in the vernacular. Last show, though, so nothing for you to worry about now. Call me Kenneth.’

  For the rest of their short acquaintance, Frank never did. It was not a conscious decision, more an unconscious acknowledgement, recognition of an identity the colonel needed to survive.

  The colonel indicated the door he had just used. ‘We’ll go straight in, if you don’t mind. They’re done, the trout. You didn’t get any more?’

  The dining room was also panelled but painted a faded cream. There was a polished dining table with ten or twelve ornate but rickety old chairs, also polished. Above the marble fireplace was the portrait of a woman on a garden seat with a book on her lap. Her green eyes were smiling, focused beyond the painter, and her auburn hair was pinned up in a bun from which one or two strands escaped. Her legs were crossed and her long dark skirt revealed shoes that might have been ankle-length boots. She wore a light shawl over her cream blouse and around her neck a fine gold chain and pendant. There was tension between the formal arrangement of the painting and its execution, the tones, colours and lines of the latter suggesting a life beyond the canvas that the conventional arrangement denied.

  The table was laid at the fireplace end, for two. The colonel gestured to Frank to sit and took a bottle from the sideboard. ‘Little low on wine but I think this should go nicely with river trout. I had hoped my cellar would last the war but now I’m not so sure.’

  The cutlery was engraved, the water was in a silver jug and there were clean white napkins in silver rings. Frank had briefly assumed that Vanessa would join them but, of course, she must be going out.

  The colonel poured for them both. ‘What do you fly?’

  They were not far into the subject when the other door opened and Vanessa entered with two plates of trout, new potatoes and spinach, her skirt and blouse protected by an unmarked white apron.

  ‘They’ve shrunk a bit in the cooking, I’m afraid, but a change from rations, and the potatoes and spinach are from the garden. We’ve got tons of both.’

  ‘Change from stodgy mess food, too,’ said Frank. ‘They’ll be just fine, I’m sure.’ They did indeed seem sadly diminished but they looked good and the smell was tantalising. He raised his glass. ‘I’m very grateful. It’s kind of you to feed a stray airman. Especially one that was caught poaching from you. Thank you.’

  The colonel raised his glass in acknowledgement but his watery blue eyes were on Vanessa, who had turned to the door. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  She nodded and smiled.

  ‘Hope you have a good evening,’ ventured Frank.

  ‘Thank you. And you.’ She closed the door.

  The dinner was full of flavour but Frank had to slow his eating in order not to finish too long before the colonel, who chewed very thoroughly. His questions about the qualities of British and German planes showed surprising knowledge, though he stopped just short of making Frank feel he was being pumped for information he shouldn’t give.

  ‘I gather this latest Focke-Wulf 190 will out-perform even the Spitfire XIV,’ the colonel said.

  ‘In outright speed, yes, but the Spit will out-turn it.’ Frank accepted more wine. ‘We’re about equal in a scrap but you’re right, a well-flown 190 is pretty formidable.’

  ‘How about the Americans – Mustangs, Lightnings, Thunderbolts, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Can’t touch it.’

  ‘And this new one of ours, the Tempest. Any good?’

  ‘I’ve never flown one. Never seen one.’ Frank hadn’t realised that anyone outside the RAF knew of its existence. Patrick had had a test flight and rated it highly.

  ‘Pretty good, I’m told, but hard to handle.’

  ‘That’s what I heard. You meet a lot of fliers around here, sir?’

  The colonel nodded. ‘They come and go.’

  When eventually he had finished, which was a while before he ceased to masticate, the colonel pointed to the sideboard. ‘No pudding, I’m afraid, but there’s cheese, if you like cheddar.’

  It was a hunk of cheddar such as Frank hadn’t seen since reaching England, even in the RAF which, like the other services, was be
tter supplied than the population at large. ‘I guess rationing hits you less in the country than in the towns?’

  ‘It does, yes, and we take full advantage of it, I fear.’ The colonel’s large mottled hand trembled as he cut himself a piece. It reminded Frank of his own hands, which were fine now. ‘No real shortage of eggs, milk or vegetables, in season. Red meat harder to come by, of course, but we eat the chickens when they go off lay and there are no end of rabbits, fortunately. I’ve taken to potting the odd squirrel, too. Ever had squirrel?’

  ‘Can’t say I have, sir, no.’

  ‘Only the greys, one of our less desirable American imports. Quite good, bit stringy. Like cat, I imagine. Think we need another bottle, don’t you?’ Bending slowly, he took one from the cupboard beneath the sideboard. ‘Would you mind doing the honours this time? My hands. Arthritis, I suppose.’

  When they were seated he looked at Frank as if he had said something remarkable. ‘Foucham. Unusual name. Tell me about your family, where it came from.’

  Frank described the farm, his mother’s English descent, his stepfather’s Scottish origins. ‘Foucham is my real father’s name. My mother remarried after the last war. My brothers and sisters are all called McCluskey.’

  ‘Remember your father?’

  ‘Never saw him. He was killed near the end of the war. I was conceived before he left.’

  ‘What was he in?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘It’s bad of me. I should know. I’ve been told.’

  ‘Any idea where?’

  ‘I must ask my mother. Like I said, I did know. His family was French Canadian, from Quebec. His father, anyway. His mother was from England, I do know that.’ He sensed he was disappointing the colonel. ‘How about your own war, sir? What were you in?’

  ‘My war?’ The colonel shook his head. ‘Same as most people’s. Local regiment, Royal West Kents – either them or the Buffs in this part of the world – eighth battalion, a Kitchener battalion. We did the usual things in the usual places, Loos, the Somme, Ypres, Amiens. I was lucky. But you, what brought you all the way from Canada to the RAF? Why not the RCAF?’