The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set

by Melvyn Fickling

  ‘Well, this should be interesting.’

  ‘That’s why I’m watching.’

  The engine noise swelled once more and the Blenheim surged forward, its rudder twitching from side to side to maintain a straight course. The tail lifted and the engines’ roar redoubled as Bryan pushed the throttles fully open. The main wheels left the grass and the aircraft yawed into the crosswind as the landing gear retracted.

  The rigger whistled under his breath: ‘That’s a very tidy take-off. Looks like you’ve got a good one.’

  ‘Flying’s only half of it.’ Tommy lit a cigarette. ‘He was a bit rude with the boffin yesterday.’

  The rigger shrugged: ‘As long as he gets you up safely and brings you home in one piece. The rest you can live with.’

  Tommy wandered off towards the operations hut. The growl of engines approached the aerodrome and Tommy spun on his heel to face the sound. Bryan’s Blenheim broke over the perimeter fence, dipped low to the grass and roared away in a climbing bank.

  When Tommy reached the hut, the adjutant was leaning on the doorjamb scratching his chin.

  ‘Hello, Scott.’ He nodded at the receding aircraft: ‘He can certainly fly.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That he can.’

  ***

  Bryan banked the Blenheim onto the landing circuit and throttled back into his approach. Gear lever down, throttle tweaked to prevent yaw, rudder held steady. The wheels bumped down and the familiar rumble of flying machine over rough grass vibrated the control column in his gloved hands. He taxied up to his dispersal bay and shut down the engines. The flight instructor, wedged against the airframe behind the pilot’s seat, slapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘That was excellent, Hale. Have you done any night-flying?’

  Bryan continued his shut down procedure. ‘Not as such.’ He paused in reflection. ‘I’ve flown through heavy clouds on instruments only. That was never a problem.’

  ‘Right. I’ll come back for your night-flying assessment tomorrow evening. When you’ve finished shutting up shop here, I’ll see you in the ops hut to update your flying log.’

  ***

  Bryan walked out of the officers’ mess into the chill dusk of the late autumn evening. The sound of engines had drawn him out. The noise came from two Beaufighters warming up across the field. Bryan walked along the perimeter track, skirting around behind the aircraft until he reached the end of the grass runway. Here he stood and lit a cigarette in cupped hands to avoid attracting attention to himself.

  This was his first close look at the aircraft he was expected to take into combat against the intruders of the night, and he smiled to himself in satisfaction. It was about the same size as the Blenheim but its snubbed nose sat fully behind the propellers, lending it the pugilistic air of a street-hardened prize fighter. The pilot sat hunched in the centre of the cockpit, underlit by the faint glow from his dimmed instruments. The man straightened up, checked the darkening sky for stray aircraft and knocked the throttles forward, swinging onto a runway defined on each side by a line of small lights. The pilot increased his revs and the propwash tore at Bryan’s hair and flapped his trouser legs like flags behind his calves. The Beaufighter raced across the grass and clawed into the air.

  The buffeting dropped for a moment before the second machine wheeled into position. After a brief pause, its engines screamed to a crescendo and it slid away across the field, climbing into the deepening gloom. Bryan grinned fiercely into the wake of their throbbing chorus as the hunters curved away to hunt their quarry. The lights clacked off on one, then the other side of the runway and Bryan stood alone in the night.

  Saturday, 26 October 1940

  Bryan sat in the corner of the mess, bunched up in a worn leather armchair, staring balefully at the mug of tea going cold in front of him. He glanced at his watch and sighed. Barely 10 o’clock. His thoughts drifted to Jenny. Perhaps she was taking a leisurely bath after a lie-in, looking forward to her weekend. His muscles bunched against the urge to get up and find a telephone box. He lit a cigarette and shifted his weight to relieve his suddenly restless legs.

  The door swung open and four pilots ambled in. They nodded to Bryan in his corner and he followed them with his eyes to the bar. The steward busied himself for a few minutes then placed a tray of drinks on the bar. Three of the men grabbed mugs of tea and squabbled over the sugar bowl. The fourth picked up a pint of beer and took a long draft. This man strolled over to Bryan.

  ‘Flight Lieutenant Alan Carson,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Welcome to Blackbird Squadron.’

  ‘Bryan Hale. Thank you.’ Bryan gestured at the pint. ‘That’s a bit rash isn’t it?’

  Carson set his pint down on the table. ‘I’m not on ops again until Monday. It’s two nights on and two days off, around here. Particularly nice when it coincides with a weekend.’

  ‘Two days off?’

  ‘They say it conserves the night vision. Stops your peepers getting exhausted.’

  ‘And does it work?’

  ‘I have no clue. I haven’t seen a single Jerry bomber since we started this lark. Control tells us one is in our vicinity. My operator tells me it’s in front of my face. But it’s never there.’ He shrugged and picked up his beer. ‘It’s all a bit of a pantomime, really.’

  Bryan’s frown deepened. ‘Is it the equipment or your operator that isn’t working properly?’

  ‘Lord only knows.’ Carson raised his glass. ‘Anyway, chin, chin. No more faffing about for me until Monday.’

  ***

  Dusk descended across the field as Bryan clumped his way through the damp grass to the operations hut. The first of the Beaufighters had left for their patrols, so the runways would be clear for a while.

  Bryan swung into the dimly-lit hut and dropped his kit next to the door. A scuffle of boots greeted him and he made out Sergeant Scott standing to attention in the room.

  ‘Good evening, Flight,’ the smaller man greeted him.

  Bryan waved him back to his seat: ‘As long as we’re working together, you can forget that nonsense.’ Bryan bent to retrieve his logbook and pencil from his kitbag. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here? I thought this was a night-flying test.’

  ‘I’m your navigator as well as operator.’ Scott relaxed into his chair. ‘There’s a radio beacon on the station. It’s my job to get you back here at the end of the sortie.’

  ‘Right.’ Bryan sat down opposite his crew member. ‘What do you make of this Air Interception kit? Is it a goer?’

  ‘I’ve passed all the simulation tests on the ground, and I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, Flight, but it was shockingly easy to get it right. All the operators said the same thing.’

  Bryan leaned back and scratched his chin. ‘It beats me how they can train you to use it when you’re sitting in a hut, when they admit the bloody thing doesn’t work properly until you get to ten thousand feet.’

  Bryan fished out his cigarettes, lit two and handed one to Scott.

  ‘They tell me you served as a gunner on Blenheims before this.’ Bryan pulled on his cigarette. ‘Why the change?’

  ‘I was on leave when my crew went missing on an op.’ Scott’s eyes dropped down for a moment. ‘They would have re-crewed me, but I heard about this night-fighting lark so I volunteered to come here and retrain as an operator.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘I reckoned it would be better for me to stooge around over England trying to protect my wife and baby, rather than fly over to Berlin and drop bombs on other people’s.’

  Bryan considered the other man’s face for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, dropping his cigarette on the floor and scrunching it out with his heel, ‘in that case, we owe it to your wife and baby to make this thing work.’

  ***

  Full darkness blanketed the airfield as Bryan swung the Blenheim onto the end of the runway and waited for clearance. The runway lights ran like two strings of pearls away into the murk before him.

  In the fuselage, behind Bryan and the flight i
nstructor, Tommy Scott sat hunched in his seat, muscles tensed. He reached down and pulled his lap belt a notch tighter as the familiar queasy fear of take-off penetrated his intestines. Finally, the engines roared to capacity and Tommy rocked in his seat to the bump and shudder of the airframe as the craft rushed across the grass. His buttocks tightened with the awful lurch as the twin-engine Blenheim lost the friction of the sod and yawed into the ethereal embrace of the air. Tommy sucked in a deep breath and held it while he ticked off in his mind the ascent through the first two thousand feet, the most dangerous minute of space where little mitigation could be expected if something went wrong.

  The smooth climb continued and Tommy allowed his bursting lungs to suck in the cold, fresh air that whistled its way into the aged fuselage through ill-fitting hatch seals and the holes left by missing rivets.

  ‘Intercom check, can you hear me operator?’ The flight instructor’s calm voice intruded in his ears.

  ‘Operator here, loud and clear.’

  Tommy shivered as the aircraft’s climb reached ever-colder air. His eyes streamed and his nose dribbled into his mask, freezing it to his face. He pulled the mask off, squeezed it and shook out the broken ice. The flat cadence of the flight instructor’s voice, calling out course and altitude changes for Bryan to execute, droned in his headphones. He glanced up at the Perspex blister where the spider legs of sub-zero temperatures weaved their sparkling cobwebs in the lee of the howling slipstream. The cold gnawed through the layers of his clothing and finally sunk its teeth into his flesh in search of his very bones. A miserable lethargy descended on him, urging him to surrender to the warmth of sleep.

  ‘Hello, operator’ – the flight instructor’s voice roused Tommy with a jolt – ‘we’ll have the bearing for the home beacon when you’re ready.’

  Tommy creaked his arms and fingers into protesting motion and switched the AI from standby to on. A dull hum intruded on the intercom as the machine flickered to life. He dipped his head to the leather visor and watched the sullen green glow of the cathode ray tubes resolve into a picture he could interpret. At this altitude the ground returns were flat and the radio beacon stood out clearly.

  ‘Operator here, bearing one-five-five please, Flight. It’s thirty-five miles to a mug of hot tea.’

  Chapter 10

  Sunday, 27 October 1940

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Alice called through from the kitchen.

  Jenny, sitting by the window, broke her reverie to answer: ‘Yes, please.’

  Her gaze focussed on the grey expanse of the city. Away in the distance a snake of sea mist, pulled westwards by the incoming tide, betrayed the hidden course of the Thames. This silken wraith, encroaching inland from the North Sea, subsumed the buildings on the riverbanks, erasing their solid certainty from the world, like the dreams of an abandoned bride.

  Alice put the tea tray on the coffee table and addressed the back of Jenny’s head: ‘What are you doing?’

  Jenny stood and walked to the sofa. ‘Exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t do.’ She sat down, avoiding eye contact.

  Alice stirred the tea. Satisfied it had brewed sufficiently, she poured two cups. ‘I’m sorry, my love. You’ll have to explain.’

  ‘I’m worrying about Bryan.’

  Alice placed the teapot back on the tray and picked up her cup. ‘No biscuits, I’m afraid.’

  Silence hung between them for long moments.

  ‘They won’t know who I am,’ Jenny said. ‘They won’t know it’s me who should be told if anything happens.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Alice ventured, ‘I think most of them write a letter. You know, the one that gets sent if they don’t come back.’

  ‘No’ – Jenny shook her head – ‘Bryan won’t do that. He would never dream of apologising for getting killed, not to anyone.’

  ‘But it’s obvious he loves you.’

  ‘Yes, it is’ – Jenny picked up her teacup – ‘but I’m afraid I told him not to.’

  Alice sipped her tea. ‘How do you fancy a walk across the common? It’s Sunday after all. We should get out into the fresh air.’

  Jenny looked up. ‘Yes, alright. That would be nice.’

  ***

  Bryan and Tommy entered the adjutant’s office and sat down. Campbell offered them each a cigarette from an ornate silver box on his desk.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, you’ve been passed to begin Air Interception training this afternoon. You’ll be going up with another training flight where you’ll take turns flying as target.’

  ‘In daylight?’ Bryan asked.

  ‘Yes.’ The adjutant lit his own cigarette. ‘It makes no odds to the operator whether it’s night or day, he’s staring at his little screens anyway. Just make sure you don’t let slip any clues to him over the intercom.’ He waggled his finger by way of emphasis. ‘You’ll be carrying one of our special signals officers who’ll be marking Scott’s performance, so naturally, as referee, the signals officer will need to maintain visual contact with your target, no matter how far away it might remain.’ He smiled benignly and looked from one man to the other.

  ‘How long before we get onto active combat patrols?’ Bryan asked.

  ‘There’s no guarantee you will, Hale. This whole thing seems to be quite difficult to get right. We’re letting a lot of operators go, posting them back to Bomber Command as air gunners. So, if Scott fails muster, you’ll have to start again with a new operator and take it from there.’

  ***

  The watery October sun banished the last damp tendrils of the morning mists as Jenny and Alice strolled arm-in-arm along Balham High Road. They cut west through the terrace-lined backstreets and struck north towards the railway station at Wandsworth Common. An engine chugged lazily up to the platforms as they approached. It belched thick bundles of hot steam into the chill autumn air while passengers jumped from the carriages and slammed the heavy doors behind them. The driver gave a short toot on the whistle and the train heaved its weight away, continuing its long trek into the southern suburbs. The disembarked passengers flowed around the two strolling women as they crossed the road, skirted The Hope and Anchor and walked onto the common.

  Jenny smiled at the shouts and laughs escaping the pub’s windows.

  ‘It’s nice to hear people enjoying themselves.’

  ‘I don’t think people change,’ Alice replied. ‘The saints will continue with their good works, the sinners amongst us will enjoy our devilments and the drunks will carry on drinking, war or no war.’

  ‘But it’s always there at the back of your mind, isn’t it?’ Jenny sighed. ‘The uncertainty.’

  Set back from the path, a ring of sandbags surrounded an anti-aircraft gun emplacement. The long olive-green barrel protruded through camouflage webbing and gaped its silent threat at the quiet sky. Two soldiers slouched against the sand-filled hessian sacks, rifles slung and cigarettes dangling, their eyes glued to the sway of the two women as they sauntered past.

  ‘It’s a big city to flatten’ – Alice smiled wryly – ‘and if you believe Mister Churchill, we can take it for a long time yet.’

  ‘Leave poor Winston alone,’ Jenny chided. ‘It’s his job to be our lighthouse in the storm. Maybe, in his heart, he’s as scared as the rest of us, but he’s the only one who can never admit it.’

  The path led them to a pond. A motley crew of ducks and geese paddled towards them, hopeful for a gift of bread.

  ‘Maybe this isn’t as bad as it gets,’ Jenny said. ‘Some people say the night raids are meant to keep us on notice during the winter; to keep us hiding in our holes until the invasion comes next spring.’

  Alice remained silent. The waterfowl jockeyed for position, cocking their heads in vain anticipation.

  ‘At least we’ll have one last Christmas in freedom,’ Jenny mused.

  Alice snorted a laugh: ‘Don’t you think Christmas is a bit too German for its own good, what with all the Santa Claus und Tannenbaums?’

  Jenny gig
gled at Alice’s theatrical Berlin accent: ‘No, I believe we’re going to have a brave little British Christmas.’

  ***

  The two Blenheims climbed in loose formation to eight thousand feet and levelled out, heading north to get beyond the range of German fighters. Bryan pulled into a long starboard bank, circling around and back onto the same heading, to put some distance between the target plane and himself. The signals officer clambered back from the cockpit, crouched next to Scott’s position and reattached his oxygen and intercom lines.

  ‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘Switch on and let’s get our pilot onto the bogey’s tail.’

  Scott pushed his forehead against the visor and peered into the green glow. Ground returns blotted out half of each screen and fringes of dancing lines, pulsating from around the edge, obscured much of the rest. Scott pulled away from the visor.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked, pointing at the interference.

  ‘We call that ‘grass’,’ the officer replied. ‘It’s like the background hiss on the shipping forecast. Learn to look through it.’

  Scott bent his brow to the visor and squinted hard at the screens. A faint blip crept out from the ground returns and flirted with the grass on one side of the screen. Scott waited a few moments to be sure it wasn’t a ghost.

  ‘Contact at one thousand yards. Seventy-five yards high. Turn twenty degrees to port.’

  Bryan banked into the new heading and Tommy watched the blip edge across the screen, slowly at first, then accelerating abruptly until it crossed the centre and threatened to bury itself in the grass on the opposite side.

  ‘Reverse turn, thirty degrees starboard.’

  The fuselage rolled as Bryan brought the aircraft onto the new heading. The blip refused to move.

  ‘Add another ten degrees starboard.’

  The blip wobbled, then raced back across the screen.

  ‘Reverse turn, forty degrees port.’ Sweat prickled into Tommy’s eyes as the blip bounced back across the screen and vanished into the confusion of interference at its edge.