The nicotine coursed into his veins, smoothing away the tension in his arms and neck. He sucked hungrily at the smoke and its creeping solace buzzed across his forehead. He crushed the long, glowing end of the cigarette into the ashtray and watched the dying fumes curl up and across the stained roof of the vehicle.
The panic and anger ebbed away, leaving a persistent desire to go to Jenny, to hold her face in his hands and feel her living warmth. He put the Humber into gear and pulled away.
Chapter 22
Bryan drove down Balham’s high street, bumping onto the new black tarmac covering the spot where the German bomb had blasted its hellish crater. It sat like a vast scab over a healing wound, a veil drawn over the memories of horror.
An engine at the station belched steam into the frigid air and the breeze curled it into ethereal fingers that reached down to catch him in their insubstantial grasp as he slipped by under the bridge. Du Cane Court loomed like a tor against the bruised January sky brooding over the rooftops of south London. Bryan pulled into the courtyard and parked against a wall.
Acutely conscious he would be barging into Jenny’s day, he wavered for a moment. Maybe he should leave, take the burden in his chest and exorcise it with booze and killing. But the tight knot of human need that wrapped his heart in horsehair resolved him to switch off the engine. Breathing deeply and steadily to dismiss the close-by memory of panic, he groped in the glove compartment for his comb, seeking the reassurance of a mundane action to restore some oblique normality.
He tilted his rear-view mirror down to study his face. Behind his head, a familiar shape, a cherished movement caught his eye. The hand holding the comb dropped into his lap as he focussed on Jenny, walking arm in arm with a man. She was explaining something, her face animated by a glowing smile. The man, dressed in civilian clothes, nodded and laughed. Bryan tilted the mirror to follow their progress until they passed into his normal field of view, walking towards the building’s grand entrance. He waited for them to stop and say their farewells. He waited for her friend to turn on his heel and stride away, intent on arriving at another place that he needed and wanted to be.
They walked on. The man reached out to push the door.
Bryan bundled out of his car. ‘Jenny!’
The couple turned. Bryan registered the flash of shock on Jenny’s face and the confusion on her companion’s. She said a few words to the man. He asked a question and she shook her head in reply.
Jenny walked back towards Bryan while her friend opened the door and vanished inside. Bryan bit down of the well of rage that brought hot acid into his throat and watched her approach. Her hips moved differently. It wasn’t caution, it wasn’t disdain, but neither was it desire.
She stopped, out of reach, and looked into his face: ‘Hello, Bryan.’
‘Jenny?’ He glanced at the door, the only way he could form the question he daren’t ask.
She dropped her gaze for a moment. ‘I’m sorry.’
Bryan swayed fractionally backwards on his heels, the power of the implications moving him like the shockwave of a distant detonation. ‘Who is he?’
Her eyes returned to Bryan’s face, searching his features and gauging his strength. ‘His name is James. He’s an architect. I met him at work, at The Ministry.’
Bryan’s mouth felt hollow and dry. ‘An architect?’
‘We’re working on plans to rebuild the bombsites. He said he was going to help make London the most beautiful city in the world. I fell in love with that idea.’ She paused and scanned his face anew. ‘He’s the kind of man I believe I could marry.’
‘What about me?’
‘James is part of the peace’ – a sad smile crept across her face – ‘whenever that might come. You’ll always be part of the war.’
Bryan raised his eyes over Jenny’s head and glowered at the building where the architect sat waiting for her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered and turned on her heel.
Bryan listened to her retreating footsteps as hot tears stole his vision.
Monday, 27 January 1941
Anthony Francis dropped the folded sack onto the frost-glittered grass next to his wife’s grave and knelt down. Drops of water dotted the top of the gravestone where the low shafts of early sun melted the rime, each watery bead embroidered the light with refracted rainbows that shimmered away across the hard granite. He lit his pipe and bent to trimming the fresh holly and fir cuttings he’d brought to place in the flower urn; it was the best decoration this spartan season could provide. As he worked, the rattle of a car engine grew louder, finally choking to silence on the road outside the graveyard.
The wrought iron gates creaked open and Mr Francis turned to hail the new arrival. His call of greeting died in his breast; a spectre in an RAF greatcoat, head bowed and hands thrust into its pockets walked slowly up the path. It stopped at his son’s grave, faced the stone and stood stiff and silent.
Mr Francis regained his feet, put his pipe in his pocket and walked cautiously towards the apparition. As he approached, the ethereal quality of the uniformed man melted away leaving a familiar figure, unkempt and slumped in the demeanour of defeat.
‘Bryan?’
The figure raised his head. ‘Hello, Mr Francis.’ Bryan’s voice was vulnerable without weakness, human without emotion.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve killed my operator.’
Wednesday, 29 January 1941
The blue RAF staff car rattled along the country road. The sombre brown of the flat, naked fields stretched away behind the threadbare, winter hedgerows. Rabbits flashed for cover up the verges and incurious wood pigeons tilted their heads at the engine’s grumbling. Eventually the agricultural tableau revealed the chill and turbulent North Sea bounding its edge; a band of dark grey scoring a hostile line across the distant horizon, holding up a sky broiling with the threat of winter storms.
Three men travelled in the vehicle. Muffled in thick blue greatcoats, their breath condensing in the air around their heads. The driver, hunched over the wheel with a map open on the passenger seat, cursed under his breath at the long ridges of stone-filled mud fused onto the tarmac by the incessant passage of begrimed farm vehicles. Behind him, two men sat on the backseat, each regarding the bleak Anglian landscape sliding past their windows through eyes ringed with dark lines of fatigue.
The road dived through a line of trees and past the elegant solidity of a parkland gatehouse, squat and solid behind its green-painted railings. Emerging from the tree line, the car crested a rise and the twisting road revealed the first outlying houses of Wells-On-Sea.
Skirting the landward side of the town, the car cruised past the small railway terminus and laboured up the hill towards the town centre. Outside the station, men with nothing better to do marked its passing with lazy suspicion. At the top of the incline, dominating the travellers’ route into town, stood The Railway Hotel, a three-storey Georgian edifice, its plain brick façade reflecting dependable utility under the belligerent tin-coloured sky.
‘There it is.’ One of the men in the backseat pointed to the Humber parked in the yard. ‘Pull in here.’
The driver slid in next to the black car and the two other men got out to peer through its windows.
‘It’s definitely Hale’s,’ the older man said and moved to ring the doorbell. Almost immediately the manageress opened the door.
‘I saw you pull in. You know, I thought something wasn’t right. You’ll find him in the bar.’
The two men entered the lobby and ducked through a door to the small hotel bar.
Bryan perched on a barstool, slumped and ruffled like a sickly owl, his disconsolate gaze lost in the half-drunk pint pot of amber ale in front of him. He looked up at the new arrivals and greeted their intrusion with a flat, expressionless acceptance, as if the world had lost its ability to surprise.
‘Hello, Madge,’ he drawled, a heavy slur fudged his diction. ‘Nice of you to visit. Sit down
.’ He slapped the bar and cast around for service.
‘Of course, you realise you’re AWOL,’ the adjutant said, pulling up a barstool.
‘I know. Isn’t it wonderful?’ Bryan drained his pint and tapped the empty glass repeatedly on the bar. ‘In any event it’s probably better than being dead.’
The manageress scuttled into the room, her face drawn with disquiet. She caught the adjutant’s eye and he nodded once. She picked up the empty glass and pulled another pint, her cheeks quivering slightly with the stress of the increasingly peculiar situation. She pushed the pint across the bar and looked to the officer for direction.
‘We’d both like some tea, if that’s possible’ – he indicated the orderly standing quietly behind him – ‘it’s been a long drive.’
The manageress hurried to the kitchen and Stiles turned squarely to the shabby figure at the bar.
‘So, what’s it about, Bryan? I believed you were made of sterner stuff than this.’ The adjutant’s voice held no accusation, only regret.
Bryan looked up and a sudden lucidity tightened his features: ‘I could cope when all I had to do was fly and fight. You know that, Madge. I was good at that.’ He scooped his greasy fringe away from his forehead and squinted back into his pint. ‘Even when some kraut just about had my bollocks on a trowel, I could do something about it. But those poor bastards in London, under the bombers… They have to sit and wait for it to drop on their heads. And it goes on and on, night after night while they pray for it to stop.
‘I could’ve carried on, the way it used to be, but they stopped playing fair. They turned it into cold-blooded murder.’ Bryan gazed again into the older man’s eyes for a long moment. ‘I had to come away, Madge, I needed to work it out. I needed to square my place in this unholy mess so I might be able to carry on.’ A ragged edge caught Bryan’s voice. ‘But I’m alone.’
He fumbled for a cigarette. Lighting up, he watched the burning match wobble in his trembling fingertips. As the flame progressed towards his skin, he dropped the twisted charcoal shard into the ashtray to gutter and die.
‘There’s no-one left to be my benchmark… Andrew, George, Alan… all gone…’ His voice trailed off to silence and he shook his head. ‘But even that is alright, in a way. Each of them only had themselves to look after, they were responsible for their own mistakes.’
The manageress brought in the tea tray and placed it on a table against the wall. Bryan averted his face to hide his growing distress. The adjutant waited for the woman to leave and leaned forward, placing a hand on Bryan’s arm.
‘I’m here to help you.’
Bryan regarded the hand resting on his tunic, his face pale and pinched with anguish. ‘Do you know what’s happened to me?’ He looked up, his eyes searching the other’s face.
Stiles nodded: ‘Mr Francis tracked Bluebird Squadron down and spoke to me on the telephone. Of course, he didn’t realise you’d transferred. So, I called the adjutant at Blackbird Squadron, he was kind enough-’
‘I’ve failed everyone,’ Bryan cut across the officer’s velvet discourse. ‘Scott got killed because of a bloody stupid mistake. I practically dangled him in front of their guns. His wife trusted me, Madge. She fed me in her kitchen… in Peckham of all places… corned beef hash… So, I needed to get to her before they sent their bloody awful telegram. I had to explain to her what happened… how he died… try to apologise… anything to soften the blow. But I couldn’t even do that, because when I got there, I found the Germans had already murdered her.’
Stiles moved his hand to squeeze Bryan’s shoulder and steady his increasing animation. ‘You can’t carry the can for all of this. It’s a bloody war. It’s not your fault.’
‘And then Jenny… She wanted me to step down from combat flying. But I didn’t do it. Even for her, I didn’t do it. Now Scott is dead and I’ve lost her to an architect.’ Tears sprang to Bryan’s eyes and trickled unheeded down his cheeks. ‘A bloody architect.’
The adjutant moved the pint of beer away along the bar and put his arm around shoulders that shuddered gently in rhythm with Bryan’s sobs.
‘You need to go and get your things, Bryan. You’re coming with us.’
Bryan scrubbed away his tears with the heel of his hand. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The transfer papers are already on their way to Middle Wallop.’ Stiles smiled at his broken friend: ‘You’re coming home to Bluebird Squadron.’
Chapter 23
Thursday, 1 May 1941
The medical officer picked up the sheaf of documents from his desk and slotted them back into their folder. He crossed his small office, pausing by the coat rack to look through the window. Outside, the strengthening spring sunshine cut sharp shadows through the limpid Scottish air. He decided to leave his coat on its hook and, carrying the papers under his arm, he stepped down the corridor and through the entrance of the station sick-bay.
The faint breeze still held enough chill to tighten the skin on his cheeks and he quickened his pace against it. The medical facility stood on the opposite side of the field to the hangars and administration buildings, so the MO strode around the perimeter track past Spitfires draped in tarpaulins that still glittered with clusters of dew-drops. He hurried past open hangar doors where men worked on stripped Merlins amidst the pervasive odour of ancient engine oil, overlaid now with the sharp tang of recently spilled aviation fuel. Reaching the administration office, he mounted the wooden steps, nodded to the orderly manning the front desk and approached the adjutant’s door. He knocked once and entered.
‘Good morning, sir.’ The MO laid the documents on the desk. Visible in red ink on the cover were the words: Bryan Hale (Flight Lieutenant) – Operational Tiredness.
‘Good morning.’ Harry Stiles glanced at the folder and then up at the medic. ‘How is he progressing?’
The younger man pulled off his cap and sat down. ‘I’m ready to sign him off. I think he should resume active duty as soon as possible.’
‘So, he’s well?’
The medical officer looked down at his shoes for a moment. ‘No, sir. He’s not well. But he’s as well as I can make him.’
The adjutant pointed to the folder. ‘It says ‘operational tiredness’. How can you suggest he returns to operations if he’s not fully recovered?’
‘He still carries a considerable weight of guilt on his shoulders,’ the younger man said. ‘We’ve worked out some of his demons and he’s made real efforts to forgive himself for what’s happened. But I sense he needs the absolution of action. I believe, unless he gets back into real combat flying, he’ll make no more progress. He’s like an eagle in a cage. If we don’t let him out to hunt, he’ll lose his will to carry on.’
The adjutant scratched his chin. ‘And you think it’s safe for him to resume ops?’
The medical officer smiled: ‘He won’t be a danger to anyone but himself and the enemy. But I think that’s always been the case.’
‘Well, Bluebird Squadron will likely be stuck in Scotland until the autumn, at least. They want ample numbers of interceptors up here in case the Germans come after the Navy prior to invasion.’
The medic shook his head: ‘Constant standing patrols with no action will not help him. That’s just putting him in a different cage. He needs to be in the front line.’
The adjutant sighed. ‘There is something… I was hoping to keep it under my hat.’
The younger man raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘They’re looking for volunteers for operations in the Med and North Africa. Hale’s pre-war service in Egypt and his combat record since Dunkirk make him a perfect candidate.’ Stiles looked up, his face scored with concern. ‘I consider Bryan to be my friend. Is this really the best thing for him?’
The medical officer nodded slowly: ‘If you choose to keep him safe, you’ll have to watch him go mad.’
The adjutant pulled on his cap, squared it on his head and stood up.
‘Right then,’ he sai
d. ‘Let’s go and tell him.’
***
Falcons
A Siege of Malta novel
Melvyn Fickling
PART 1
AVVENTURA
Chapter 1
Saturday, 31 May 1941
The vomit spiralled down, reflecting glints of cool Mediterranean moonlight as it twisted past the rows of portholes and splattered unheard into the sea like the guano of a monstrous seabird. Bryan Hale spat the bitter vestiges of bile into the void. Wiping his mouth on his shirt sleeve, he raised his gaze to the imperious bulk of Gibraltar swinging away behind the ship. The flat top of HMS Argus blocked out the sky above his head, but the stars glistened with detached innocence above the Spanish coastline across the water to the north. The emerging moon lighted the carrier’s passage to the hostile eyes that undoubtedly spied upon their departure.
Bryan contemplated the large wooden lifeboat creaking on its warps and squinted beyond its bulk to the inky waters, a fathomless cavern of invisible danger, a creeping threat that escalated with each thrust of the bows. The six Hurricanes lashed to the flight deck and the further six nestled in the hangar below made the Argus an irresistible target whose best defence was to pass through danger as quickly as her engines could carry her.
The bulk of another warship loomed behind the carrier, her bow wave peeling a seductive shimmer of foam from the water’s dark surface as she slowly overhauled her charge. A lamp flashed across a signal as she passed to take up her position as a protective vanguard. Bryan craned his neck to see the second escort cutting across their wakes to take up the starboard station.
Bryan examined his hands. The tremor of previous months had stilled. The commitment to action with all its manifold perils had displaced the brooding fears and doubts that had dangled like hungry spiders around his hospital bed. He was going where the Argus would take him and the iron vessel’s solidity lent rigidity to his purpose.
The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set Page 51
