by Alan Judd
It was a clear day and the Channel was dotted with ships supporting the invading armies in Normandy. Far off to his left he could make out a flight of Typhoons heading south. As often recently, he was struck by the contrast between the peace of the Downs and the undulating Weald below and what he was doing in his new seven-ton killing machine, which handled – now that he was used to it – with such misleading sweetness.
A red flare shot up from the coast to his right, curving gracefully at the top of its trajectory. He dipped his wing to look inland of it and, sure enough, at about 2000 feet and two miles distant, a small black-bronze cross sped across the green towards London. He wasn’t surprised; they were coming over at about a hundred a day now. Flares were another initiative of Bee Beaumont’s, signal rockets fired from Royal Observer Corps positions around the coast to indicate V1s to any patrolling Tempests. Frank eased into a long shallow dive, aiming to intersect south of Tonbridge.
He was low on ammunition and, not wanting to risk returning to base unarmed, decided to try what several in the squadron said they’d done. He approached from behind but to one side, out of the rocket’s slipstream. He pulled carefully alongside it, close enough to see every detail of its construction but keeping clear of the unwavering flame of the pulse-jet. According to those who’d done it, the trick was to get your wingtip beneath one wing of the flying bomb, then raise it slowly until it disturbed the boundary layer of air around the bomb, causing it to topple away and downwards. You had to do it without any dangerous touching of wings.
Frank descended slightly, increased throttle and edged closer to the Doodlebug until the tip of his right wing was about ten feet beneath the bomb’s left. Then, with silent gratitude to the German engineers for making a rocket that flew so straight and true, he began a gentle roll to the left. He knew he was a perfect target for any of the few marauding German fighters still crossing the Channel, but daren’t take his eyes off the two closing wings. At first nothing happened but when his wing was a mere two or three feet beneath the other, the Doodlebug lifted its wing and turned almost lazily, but irrevocably, downwards and to its right, flashing its pale blue underside as they parted company. Thereafter it curved in a steepening dive eastwards into the fields and orchards of Kent. With luck, it would make a hole in the ground somewhere, but that was all. Frank pulled up to look around before setting course for home.
It had been a hectic two weeks since his return and it was a few days more before Frank was free to call on the colonel and Vanessa. As well as flying several sorties a day, they had to take on night cover and he hadn’t even had time to look up his old squadron, those that remained, anyway. The routine of briefing, standby, flying, debriefing, eating, sleeping and more briefing permitted nothing else, not even writing to his mother. He had managed to get off a letter to her while in Wiltshire and sent the colonel and Vanessa a postcard, after struggling with how to address them. The colonel – Colonel Ovenden – was easy enough, but Vanessa? He realised he didn’t even know her surname. He had never asked in what relation she stood to the colonel, assuming at first she was his daughter, then that she was perhaps a niece or something, latterly that she could be his widowed daughter-in-law. Yet there had been no mention of the colonel having a son, and her referring to him as ‘the colonel’ surely made it unlikely that she was family. A hired help, maybe, to look after him. But she was more familiar than that. Several times he had been on the point of asking but it made him feel clumsy and gauche, particularly as they acted as if it didn’t need explaining, as if it was as obvious to him as to them. He couldn’t decide whether this was English reticence or English nonchalance, this manner of dealing that was at once inclusive and distancing, making you one of them by assuming nothing needed explaining but at the same time making you feel hopelessly different because you didn’t understand.
Eventually, he sent a postcard of a church addressed simply to the manor, saying that he was enjoying his new toy, hoping they were well and that he would see them soon. He included his RAF box number but there was no reply.
One day he had an afternoon free, granted because he was on standby to fly that night between 2330 and 0300. He went over to his old squadron in search of Roddy’s bike but couldn’t find it and the two pilots he met were new boys who knew nothing of it. He would walk, he decided. There wouldn’t be time to fish but it should be walkable provided he didn’t linger too long over tea.
The weather continued fine though with some cumulus. Spitfires and Tempests took off and landed throughout his walk, some passing so low that it felt they were buzzing him personally. But these reminders of the world he would shortly return to did not trouble him. The unaccustomed pleasure of walking more than a few yards to the plane, the leafy bounteousness of hedgerows and elms, the ripened cornfields and the anticipation of welcome focused him on the pleasure of this hour, this day, with no thought for the next. Even the thought of Patrick did not, for once, undermine it all. Everything – leaves, colours, shapes of clouds – struck him with heightened particularity.
He smelt it before he saw it, a heavy acrid smell of burnt materials, smoke and dust that lingered on the lane before he stepped into the drive. He noticed brick dust on the hedge and on some holly leaves just before he turned the corner and saw the end wall of the manor, standing alone and intact all the way up to the ridge point where it met the roof, fireplaces and wallpaper looking as if painted on. The rest was rubble, no stairs, no roof, no other walls but a heap of blackened timbers, smashed slates and strewn bricks. The stone steps to the front door were still there, one end of an upturned bath jutted out from a pile of bricks, an undamaged dining chair lay on its side in the drive and the burnt carcass of the Bentley could just be made out beneath the collapsed garage roof. The garden beyond, visible now, was littered with detritus. The greenhouse and potting shed were intact, but with no glass.
‘One of them Doodlebugs,’ said the woman in the shop. ‘Dawn, who lives next door, she was out with her dog and saw it come down, just tipping out of the sky straight onto its nose, not going straight and lower and lower like they usually do. Another five minutes and she’d have been just by the manor and wouldn’t be here now. Nor would her dog. Looks like we’re out of Senior Service. Just Weights or Woodbines.’
‘Woodbines, please. Were they both killed, the colonel and—’
‘He was, the old colonel, yes. Wouldn’t have known anything about it. And his dog. But Mrs Ovenden was away for the day, thank goodness. She got the early train to London. She was in here the day before, said she was trying to find a job up there. Speaks French, she does, you should hear her, so fast. Fives or tens? We’ve got twenties in Weights.’
‘Tens, please.’ They’d be cheaper in the mess but he wanted to keep her talking. ‘Mrs Ovenden? I thought she was dead?’
‘Old Mrs Ovenden, yes, bless her soul. But I mean young Mrs Ovenden, what lived with him. Vanessa, her name is, was married to his son. Widowed now. Such a lovely boy, he was.’
‘Colonel Ovenden had a son, then?’
‘Oh yes.’ She looked at him, as if he should have known. ‘John, his name was. Shot down in France about a year ago. They hadn’t been married long. Lovely wedding, it was, the church looked so lovely even in wartime. They invited all the village.’
‘When was it, the Doodlebug?’
‘This week, a couple of days ago. No – the day before that, Tuesday, when we got some margarine and cheese in. All gone now, needless to say.’
It was the day he had tipped the V1. So had two others, he consoled himself. There was no knowing which. But he couldn’t stop. ‘What time?’
‘In the morning, it was, before we shut for lunch. If it had gone a bit farther it would have been us and the church.’
The time fitted. But one of the others was roughly then, too. He couldn’t remember where, exactly. ‘But Vanessa – Mrs Ovenden – is OK? She’s still alive?’
‘Yes, such a lucky thing. Mind you, a terrible shock to h
er, coming home to that with nothing but the clothes she stood in. Spent the night at Mary Dobbs’s, what used to clean for them. And her losing her husband only last year, that’s the family gone now: first old Mrs Ovenden in the Blitz doing voluntary nursing in London, then young John in his plane and now the colonel and I don’t think she’s much family of her own, to speak of. Didn’t even have time to have a baby. Will that be all? Any matches?’
‘No, thanks, I use a lighter. Where is she now, still with Mary Dobbs?’
The woman took his money and rang the till, counting out his change slowly. ‘Went back to London the next day – no, day after, it must have been. The day the bread should have come and didn’t. She said she had a friend in London she could stay with, the one what’s helping her find a job. Don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much more of her down here, no reason for her to come any more, not even a roof over her head. Poor thing. She was a nice lady, always so polite.’
‘Did she leave a forwarding address?’
‘Her friend’s, yes, Mary or me will send anything on. And some solicitors in Tonbridge, the colonel’s solicitors, she said. She left their address too, in case anything happens to her.’
‘May I have it?’ The woman looked at him. ‘Hers, I mean. I knew them both, you see, I used to call on them pretty regular. I’d like to write to her.’
The woman’s grey-green eyes, enlarged by her glasses, remained on his. ‘Not a friend of John’s though, were you? Didn’t serve with him?’
He nodded. ‘Different squadrons.’
She paused long enough for him to fear she was going to refuse but then she bent and sorted through some papers beneath the counter. ‘Here it is but you can’t keep it; you’ll have to copy it out.’
It was an address in Pimlico, a part of London he hadn’t heard of. ‘Is there a telephone number?’
She shook her head. ‘Quicker to write, time it takes people to get through to London from here. Cheaper, too. I did give you your change, didn’t I?’
He wrote that night, before standby, but it was a fortnight before he had a reply. Those two weeks were the most intense period of the V1 bombardment, which ended when the Allied armies overran the launch sites. Each time Frank shot one down or flipped one, he thought of the manor. He still didn’t know whether it was his first flipper that had hit it or the one flipped by someone else at about the same time, or simply a rocket that had fallen short as they sometimes did. It might have been possible to narrow the options, given time he didn’t have, but he preferred not to know. The colonel, meanwhile, occupied almost as much of his mind as Vanessa, in an intermittent interior dialogue in which the colonel’s walnut voice was ever present. He didn’t miss him because it was as if he was still there.
Vanessa’s reply coincided with the temporary withdrawal of the squadron’s Tempests for improvements and re-adaptation to the roles they were designed for, fighter escort and long-range intruder. There was also a shortage of spares because of strikes at factories in Preston. It meant he at last had some leave.
Her reply was brief but encouraging. She was pleased to hear from him, had not known how to get in touch, was doing war work while camping in her friend Margaret’s flat, suggested they met in Lyons Corner House opposite Charing Cross station. She had no phone but if he wrote with a date, giving a few days’ notice, she could probably do it. What had happened was a great shock and sadness.
They met on a wet Thursday. His train was late because the V2 rockets had begun to bombard London. Unlike the V1s, they fell without warning and couldn’t be shot down or deflected. One had exploded in Woolwich that morning, killing dozens of munitions girls. More were anticipated and the trains reverted to air-raid drill, creeping along the track at 5–10 mph so that drivers had time to spot broken or missing rails. The V2s were much feared.
Frank pushed his way through the crowd outside Charing Cross station without noticing Nelson’s column to his left. He was unused to crowds and the press of people made the solitude of his cockpit in the sky almost more attractive than frightening. The Corner House was thronged with uniforms, mainly Army, and the noise was oppressive. Every table was taken and the spaces between were cluttered with kitbags, gas masks, greatcoats and helmets. He could see no other officers. A pair of Redcaps – military police who patrolled every major station – eyed diners through the windows from the Strand.
He waited inside the door, where he had thought she would be. Perhaps she was late as well. It was too hot, too thick with smoke, too crowded, they wouldn’t be able to hear themselves speak. He would suggest somewhere else when she came. Then he saw her wave from a table by one of the Strand windows. Suffused with relief, he couldn’t help smiling as he squeezed his way over to her. She wore a tightly belted fawn raincoat with a matching hat, her hair tied in a bun. The table was for two, with two teas and two buns.
‘I’m sorry, the tea’s cold and there’s only a bun because I had to order something without knowing what you’d want in order to be allowed to keep the place. I should have realised how crowded it would be at lunchtime. I’ve only twenty minutes left, I’m afraid. Tell me everything, what you’re doing, how you are. I’m so pleased we could meet.’
He didn’t mind anything as long as she was there. He drank his cold tea and ate the stale buttered bun without noticing. She smiled all the time, as he did. Her crooked teeth were attractive to him now, whiter than most people’s. The smiling stopped when he mentioned the colonel.
‘At least it was quick,’ he said.
‘That’s what we always say. We have to, I suppose.’
She looked through the window at the crowd outside the station. He felt he had blundered, reminding her of her husband. ‘He wouldn’t have known anything about it.’
She shrugged and looked back at him. ‘He was very fond of you.’
‘I didn’t realise that Johnny was his son, that you were his daughter-in-law.’
‘Did you not? Really?’
‘He never mentioned him. Nobody did until I saw those photos.’
‘But the fishing rods he gave you, those were Johnny’s. Did you not realise?’
‘How could I? No one said anything. I wouldn’t have accepted them.’ He had raised his voice and perhaps sounded annoyed, but couldn’t help it. ‘Is it an English thing, not mentioning people when they’re dead? It’s the same on the squadron but it’s more understandable there because you’ve got to go on.’
‘So has everyone. It’s the same for all of us.’ She spoke quietly.
‘He said, “They’re yours now,” like he was anointing me, making me his son.’
‘Yes.’
‘But I didn’t even know.’
‘That was the point. He didn’t want to burden you with the obligation of sympathy. He wanted to spare you that. He probably thought you had enough on your plate.’
‘He told me all about how the other Frank Foucham, the one he kept thinking was my father was killed in the last war as a result of saving him. Just like with me and Patrick.’
‘That may have been deliberate, too, despite his confusion.’
It was not going as he’d wanted. He felt exasperated and at the same time that he was being unreasonable. The smiling intimacy of the first few minutes had evaporated and there was a distance between them now. He held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to be like this.’
‘It’s quite all right, Frank.’
That made it worse, that impossible-to-read social tone again. ‘Another thing, I – that V1 that hit the manor. It might have been mine, might have been me that tipped it. Maybe that was my fault too.’
She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘No, Frank, not you, don’t blame everything on yourself. It’s the Germans’ fault, Hitler’s fault, it’s not you. Stop thinking about yourself.’ She let go. ‘Now, I have to go. I have to be back at my office by two. Will you walk with me?’
It was a quaint way to put it but he could have wept with relief. He
had thought she was about to leave him and that that would be it, no more talk. They had a brief, good-natured argument about the bill, which she let him win, and then walked down Whitehall to the War Office where she worked. ‘What do you do there?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not just being mysterious. I’m not allowed to talk about it. But it’s nothing like as exciting or important as what you’re doing, I promise.’
Walking in uniform along Whitehall proved a minefield strewn with military top brass. He found himself saluting every ten yards and she soon started to laugh. She slowed as they approached the War Office. ‘You’d better not come to the door or they’ll think you’re official.’
‘I am official, just not officially with you.’ They stopped. ‘May I see you again?’
‘Of course.’
It was awkward. Standing on the pavement outside the War Office in uniform, he couldn’t touch or kiss her as he wanted. ‘It’s – I – I can’t say what I’d like to say, here. I’m sorry.’
Her expression was solemn, which made him feel more awkward. ‘What time do you have to be back?’
‘No time. I’m on leave.’
‘Come to my flat at six-thirty. You have the address.’
Chapter Twelve
It was a basement flat in one of Pimlico’s stucco-fronted nineteenth-century streets. Frank had spent the afternoon wandering around central London, looking for famous sights but recognising only Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. The rest, though busy, was tired, drab and colourless apart from the willow herb that colonised the bomb sites and the uniformed servicemen of various nationalities without whom no street scene seemed complete. The civilians looked pale, preoccupied and indifferent.
