Inherit the Skies

by Janet Tanner

  Adam. She knew without a word being spoken that it had to do with Adam, just as she had known in her bones that last April morning that he was not coming to see her long before the hands of the clock had confirmed it. Then she had felt sick with disappointment and puzzled, now there was nothing but the suffocating terror of what Gilbert was going to tell her.

  ‘Come in, my dear.’ His voice was level, his attempt at normality almost succeeding. ‘Sit down, Sarah.’

  Sit down, Sarah. That is because he wants to tell me something dreadful. I don’t want to sit down! If I don’t sit down he won’t tell me. It will be all right … But she sat down anyway, leaning forward onto the desk.

  ‘What is it? What has happened?’ No need to tell me. It’s Adam, I know. Is he dead? Please God, don’t let him be dead …

  There was a letter lying on the blotter in front of him. He glanced down at it, straightening it slightly, then looked up at her.

  ‘Adam is missing. We received this letter this morning from Major Marchment. It seems he failed to return from an offensive patrol over enemy territory.’

  Her heart seemed to have stopped beating. But he had said ‘Adam is missing’, not ‘Adam is dead’.

  ‘You mean he is in enemy hands?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t know. No-one saw what happened to him. It could be that he had some mechanical trouble and was unable to get back to the British lines. If that is the case then almost certainly he is a prisoner of the Germans. But we must also prepare ourselves for the worst. It seems the formation was involved in a fierce dogfight and Adam may have been shot down.’

  ‘But surely one of the others would have seen if that had happened?’ Sarah argued, clutching at straws.

  ‘Not necessarily. The formation was split up and I dare say they were all busy guarding their own tails. But Major Marchment says Adam’s kit and trophies are being sent home by way of Cox’s Shipping Agency and I have to say I don’t care for the sound of that. Though if he is a prisoner and going to remain so for the duration of the war they wouldn’t want his things cluttering up the mess for that reason either.’

  Sarah nodded but like Gilbert she was unable to escape the feeling that there was something horribly final about the returning of his kit.

  ‘How long will it be before we know anything definite?’ she asked.

  ‘Anything from four to eight weeks. I shall set various enquiries in motion at once, of course. And I have to say that if the worst has happened we are likely to know the sooner. The Germans sometimes drop lists of names of those who have been killed over our lines and I should think there might be some mention in the German newspapers where a pilot as well known as Adam is concerned.’

  She could not reply. She felt sure that if she opened her mouth her teeth would begin chattering.

  ‘What a time for something like this to happen!’ Gilbert drew out his cigarettes and lit one, blowing a thin stream of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Goodness knows what sort of effect it will have on Alicia. She seems calm enough at the moment – but who can tell?’

  ‘Alicia is a very strong character,’ Sarah said with a flash of irritation.

  ‘Yes but in her condition …’ Gilbert broke off, flushing slightly. ‘I dare say it’s not a delicate subject to discuss but perhaps under the circumstances … Alicia is going to have a baby.’

  ‘A baby?’ Sarah repeated woodenly.

  ‘Yes. It is due in January, I believe. In view of what happened last time, Haley was already concerned about her and anxious that she should scale down her activities as soon as possible. But now … well, frankly, a worry like this is something she could very well do without.’

  Sarah sat motionless. As yet she could barely register what Gilbert was saying. Already shell-shocked this new piece of information had sent her reeling.

  ‘Does Adam know?’ she asked.

  ‘Alicia wrote to him as soon as she was sure herself. He is delighted. Every man wants a son to carry his name and ambitions into the next generation – and I am sure for that reason if for no other Adam will have done everything in his power to take care of himself. So don’t give up hope, Sarah. I am confident we will soon hear that he is a prisoner – and I wouldn’t be surprised if he managed to escape! In the meantime if you can help Alicia through this difficult time I will be very grateful.’

  Back in her own office Sarah closed the door and leaned against it, for now she was alone she did not think she could take another single step without falling. Two pieces of news within the space of a few minutes and both devastating in their way. The first alone would have been enough – more than enough. Adam was missing and if he were dead then she did not want to go on living. In the long dark hours of the night she had faced the possibility often enough and the sheer awfulness of it had made her skin crawl with dread and every muscle in her stomach clench and tighten so that now the reality was a mere echo of it, less real than the precognition. But the second piece of news she had not been prepared for at all and it struck at the very foundations of her world, destroying the base on which it was built.

  Alicia – pregnant with Adam’s baby. After all that had been between them that April night, after all his protestations of love and talk of the future, after all his denials of Alicia he had gone home and made love to her.

  Sarah pressed her knuckles into her mouth, cringing at the thought of it. How could he? No wonder he had not come to see her next morning as he had promised. He had not felt able to face her. Or perhaps he had not wanted to once Alicia had satisfied him. Yet the letters she had received from him in France had made no mention of anything being different – just a brief sentence of regret that he had had to return earlier than he had expected and then words of love – not over-effusive, because that was not Adam’s way, but tender and caring all the same with plenty of references to the future. He had written to her in that vein and all the while he had known that he had left her to go to Alicia’s bed and now Alicia was to bear his son. The pain of it was a knife thrust in her heart, hurting her more even than the fact that he was missing. Whilst he was missing, there was always the hope that he would come back, and even if the worst happened and he was dead then at least there should be memories pure and sweet of a love too great to die. But this … this betrayal destroyed them all.

  Oh Adam, how could you, how could you? her heart wept. And she knew that whether he came home or not Adam was lost to her now as surely as if he were indeed dead.

  As the weeks dragged by their hopes for Adam’s safety began to fade. Enquiries as to his fate by the Central Prisoners of War Committee had drawn a blank, the Berlin Red Cross, usually helpful if enquiries were phrased in the right way, were silent, and not even the Crown Princess of Sweden or the King of Spain whose help Gilbert had enlisted had been able to throw any light on the mystery.

  The uncertainty imposed a terrible strain on each and every one of the family, and even Max emerged from his cocoon of grief to join in the anxiety for his friend. Gilbert was silent and testy, Sarah swung between wildly differing extremes, sometimes so buoyed up with hope that she was almost intoxicated, sometimes convinced that he must indeed be dead and the coming baby was an omen of it, for didn’t everyone say a birth and a death were often closely connected? Only Alicia remained serene, defying all Gilbert’s concern for her well being. The more obvious her condition became the more unruffled she appeared to be as if she knew that whatever happened her own position was now totally secure. There was something almost repulsive in her complacency, Sarah felt, but then everything about Alicia either angered or repelled her, and she was honest enough to admit to herself that perhaps she was influenced by a measure of good old-fashioned jealousy.

  Adam would come home, Alicia told all and sundry. He was too good a pilot to allow himself to be shot down – and too anxious to be a father to miss the happy event. But things were not looking hopeful. Too many aces had fallen – Albert Ball and Arthur Rhys Davids were dead, as was the great Werner
Voss, ‘ The Flying Hussar’. How dare they hope it might be different for Adam?

  At the beginning of November Gilbert went down with a severe bout of influenza – a direct result of the strain, Sarah thought, coupled with work on Max’s new aeroplane which he had christened ‘The Eaglet’ and which was being rushed into production. When he had been absent from the works for almost a week papers which needed his attention began to pile up and one afternoon Sarah motored over to Chewton Leigh to discuss them with him.

  Gilbert was up and about now. He received Sarah in his study and she was shocked to see how poorly he looked. To her, Gilbert had always been strong, kindly and distinguished. Now for the first time she saw in him the signs of ageing and the revelation was disturbing.

  ‘How are things going?’ he asked, shifting himself in the big leather covered chair as if even the effort of sitting was tiring him. ‘I could hardly have chosen a worse time to be ill, could I?’

  ‘We are managing,’ Sarah said briskly. ‘There are just a few things I need to ask you but it shouldn’t take too long.’

  She got out the papers and Gilbert rallied a little as they discussed them. They had almost finished when she realised he was no longer paying attention but staring out of the window, a strange guarded expression on his pinched face. Automatically she turned to follow his gaze.

  A telegram boy was pedalling up the drive, his face a little flushed from exertion under his uniform cap. Sarah’s heart seemed to miss a beat. Dear God, what now? In the space of the time it took for him to cycle out of sight and ring the doorbell her mind went racing over the possibilities but neither she nor Gilbert spoke. They simply sat in an agony of tension listening to the footsteps approaching across the stone floor of the great hall and waiting for the inevitable tap on the door. When it came Gilbert called ‘Come!’ in a voice that echoed his old authority.

  The door opened and Evans stood there, the telegram on a silver salver. His face was expressionless but Sarah saw the salver shake slightly in his hands.

  Gilbert took the envelope and tore it open. Evans retreated to the door but stood there, his own need to know the worst getting the better of his years of training. For a moment Gilbert’s face remained expressionless, then a muscle jerked in his cheek. Still he did not speak and Sarah could bear the suspense no longer.

  ‘What is it?’

  He looked up then and his expression was still faintly puzzled, nothing more. ‘So Alicia was right,’ he said.

  ‘Right about what?’

  ‘About Adam. He is safe. He is a prisoner of war in German hands.’

  And in spite of everything the relief was rushing in. ‘Oh thank God! Thank God!’ she cried. And for the moment it did not matter in the slightest that it was not her that he would be coming home to when the war was over.

  Alicia’s son, whom she christened Guy, was born with the new year for, this time, in spite of all the traumas around her she had triumphantly carried her baby to full term. He was a strong child with a fine head of hair every bit as black as Alicia’s and everyone said he was the image of his father. Sarah could not see it but then as she admitted to herself she could hardly bear to look at him at all.

  Soon afterwards Eric came home. Since his brush with the Zeppelin he had been regarded as something of a hero and in the re-organisation leading up to the merging of the RFC and RNAS to form a new service, to be called the Royal Air Force, it had been decided that Eric, whilst retaining his RFC rank of Captain, should be seconded to the works as Chief Test Pilot.

  Sarah found it difficult to adjust to having him at home and decided that if she was honest she did not like it. She had developed a routine which was now disrupted, and her tidy cottage looked ‘more as if an army had moved in rather than just one man!’ as she put it when she was irritated beyond endurance by his boots and flying jacket cluttering the kitchen, his dirty underwear and socks dropped where he stepped out of them in the bedroom and his shaving kit jostling with her neatly arranged jars and pots on the dressing table. Once she had taken these things for granted, now four years of living alone had forged new habits. But it was his intrusion into her privacy which jarred most and she found it more and more difficult to respond to his lovemaking with any pretence of enthusiasm. When he reached for her in the night her feelings ranged between irritation and an irrepressible longing for Adam, which in turn made her feel not only guilty but wretched and angry.

  Her only respite came when he had to leave Chewton Leigh to ferry Max to France. Max was now working on an up to the minute version of the Eaglet and he liked to see the original in action so as to be better able to judge what modifications were needed. But since he was unable to fly himself Eric piloted him. When he was away Sarah worried about him a little for in spite of everything she was still fond of him but she prized the few days’ freedom.

  It was whilst they were away on one of their trips that the newest blow fell. Sarah went bursting into Gilbert’s office one morning to see him sitting at his desk looking almost exactly as he had the day he had broken the news to her that Adam was missing. But the lines seemed to have set upon his face now, etched deeply into the sallow cavities between nose and mouth and across his high forehead, and when he looked up at her his eyes were blank and staring, the eyes of a man in shock.

  She had thought she had grown used to bad news by now but her blood turned to ice just the same, her mind once more skittering across the possibilities and preparing herself for this latest disaster.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked and knew she had used the wrong word. What she really meant was ‘Who is it?’

  Gilbert’s eyes met hers; in them she saw the depth of his shock and pain.

  ‘It is Hugh,’ he said. For a moment she did not know what to say. Then the expression in those haunted eyes changed to become clouded and unreadable. ‘I only hope,’ he said, ‘that he died a hero.’

  Hugh’s death affected Sarah far more than she would have believed possible. He was, after all, the one who had used and abused her, and if she had thought about it at all she would have imagined her emotions would have been confined to sympathy for Gilbert, who had lost all his sons to the war in their different ways – Lawrence struggling on when a spell in a sanatorium might have saved him, James locked up in a prison with the label of coward, however little deserved, to haunt him all his days, and now Hugh. But to her surprise she found herself haunted by the memory of the young man Hugh had been in the days before his lust had poisoned her image of him, tall, straight, handsome, a daredevil always laughing at danger, a superb horseman. Hugh had been part of her youth. Now he was gone and with him a part of her died though she could not grieve for him.

  It was some weeks before they learned how he had died.

  At long last the high command had been forced to admit that the cavalry no longer had a part to play in battle. Most of the Yeomanry was dismounted and it had been decided that the Life Guards and Blues would take on a new role – they would be trained as machine gunners and be carried into battle not by their handsome long-maned ‘black ’uns’ but by lorries. This news had been received with mixed feelings. It was good to know the horses would be saved from more suffering but the pride of the regiments could not be tossed aside so lightly and they were glad to learn that every man was to retain his tide and badges and even the redundant farriers would still wear horseshoes on their jackets.

  In order to prepare for their new role the Life Guards had been sent to the sands outside Etaples for training. It had been a pleasant interlude for the weather was fine, conditions were good and after the hurly-burly of four long years of fighting the training seemed a little like a much appreciated holiday. But the war had intruded rudely into this near idyll. On the night of Whit Sunday the air had suddenly begun to throb with the sound of approaching aeroplanes and the men had almost no time to set up their anti-aircraft guns or take cover before the bombs began to rain down on them. Forty-three men had died that night on the beach and eighty-two
were wounded and Hugh was amongst them. In the end he had died not in direct conflict but almost in the same way as so many helpless civilians.

  Almost – but not quite. Under the hail of bombs Hugh had managed to fire his gun and continue firing. It was thought he might have been responsible for taking a German aeroplane with him for one had been seen spiralling down out of control and trailing black smoke. The ‘kill’ was never ratified but it made little difference. Hugh had died as Gilbert had hoped he might – a hero.

  It ended just when they had begun to think it never would, the maroons fired at eleven o’clock on a grey November day sounding its death rattle. As the troops laid down their guns the news burst like an unexpected sunrise on a war-weary world and the shout of joy and relief echoed from corner to corner in cottages and castles, in hospitals, and munitions factories.

  The war is over! The war is over!

  Sarah was in her office at the works when it came. She heard the sudden burst of cacophony as the church bells began to peal and looking out of the window she saw the workers come streaming out of the factory, laughing and shouting, dancing and capering and slapping one another on the back. She clapped her hands to her mouth as she watched them, hardly able to believe it was really over. There was something unreal about the scene, something almost theatrical in the wild gaiety. If she believed in it, it would fade away before her eyes and she would know it was just a mirage. For the nightmare had gone on for too long to be dispelled so quickly by a peal of bells and a chorus of excited voices. Then the door of her office burst open and Hazel Rowe, the ‘lady typewriter’ who now liked to be known as a secretary, came rushing in.

  ‘It’s over, Mrs Gardiner! It’s over! Come down and let’s see what is going on!’