I didn’t tell him that I already knew the bar at Blunham: it was where I had first met Albie Grost. When he got drunk he recited reams of beautiful poetry, and the whole bar fell silent to listen to him. That’s why I kept on leaning on him, and that’s how I ended up teaching him how to palm Morse code when your fingers stopped working. What goes around, comes around.
There was still no sign of my missing officer a few days later. I badgered Cliff, but eventually he pulled rank and told me to bog off for pay parade. Everything comes to him who waits, he told me. Then, ‘What’s the hurry, old son?’
‘This doesn’t feel like fighting a war.’
‘I told you before: don’t knock it. The old man will call for you when he’s ready.’
‘Which old man?’
‘The one with the scythe and the long grey beard.’
I asked Frohlich if I could fly with his crew, using the excuse of checking Albie out after I retrained him.
‘No.’ Just like that.
‘No. Just like that? Why?’
‘We like you, Charlie. You fixed up Albie just right.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But your trips have run out. Maybe your luck has. We think that you should stay on the ground until you’ve earned more karma. Maybe you used up all you had, going to Germany last month. Leave it out.’
‘What’s karma?’
‘It’s like directed luck; only you have to earn it, it doesn’t come free.’
‘How do you earn it?’
‘By being good.’
‘I am being good.’
‘Be good for a bit longer. Then we’ll take you.’
‘Is that Jewish. That karma?’
‘No, it’s universal. It’s Buddhist.’
‘But you’re not a Buddhist.’
‘How do you know? Perhaps everyone is Buddhist.’
‘They can’t be. We’re fighting a world war: several of them. Buddhists don’t kill people.’
We were in the recreation room at Hazells Hall, which was our HQ building: it had a nice little bar. Frohlich was thrashing me at billiards. The rest of his crew were sprawled in and over comfortable old leather armchairs with books and magazines. He extended his left arm, and moved it around to include them all.
‘Neither do we,’ he said.
His navigator looked up from his book and smiled at me. He’d heard it all before.
The next pilot I asked was a small guy, like me. A dark Taffy named Tippett. He said, ‘Good idea. Tomorrow night if the light’s all right?’
‘Thanks, sir.’ He was an officer type, and I was doing the asking, after all. ‘This will really help me.’
‘And then you’ll be more help to us. That’s the idea.’
I thought that I could put up with him for six hours. Just.
Frohlich’s crew touched me by coming to see me off. Then Frohlich said, ‘This is a mistake, Charlie.’ In that preacher’s tone I’d come to recognize.
‘That’s what my dad always said I was.’
In the timber-clad parachute shed disguised as a barn, they put us crew through the same routine as the two Joes with the one-way tickets. We had to prove that our clothes bore no labels, and that our pockets were empty of anything except escape gear. I was left with just my old fibre ID tags, and my pay-book, to say who I was. Then we had to wait for the Joes, because the packers had already loaded stores containers into the aircraft. The two Joes, a scared-looking man and a woman, were taken behind canvas screens for the business. I was surprised to hear them both being offered the option of walking away from it. I heard the man say, ‘No. It’s fine,’ too loudly. I didn’t hear the woman.
The telephone rang in the shed whilst they were being checked, and I was called over. It was Goldie, the CO.
‘Sorry to butt in, Bassett, but I thought you’d want to know your papers have come through. We’ll get them ticked up, and you’ll be an officer by the time you get back. Party tomorrow night. Congrats.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll have to spend all that money you gave me.’
‘. . . and the rest of it. Good luck tonight.’
I said Thank you, and put the receiver down. I suddenly tasted bile in my mouth: that was the fear. On my last squadron no one would have dreamed of wishing you good luck, for fear of bringing down the other thing on you.
We trudged to a bloody old Stirling which was more patches than aeroplane. The pilot was cheerful: I’d picked a cretin for my first operational sortie from Tempsford. The pretty WAAF had given me a peck on the cheek and had said adieu: no one had done that to me before, either. I trooped out to the heap with the two Joes and the crew, which included a wisecracking Dispatcher. Nerves. I was last to board and turned instinctively to dog the door shut behind me. Their rear gunner, who hadn’t said a word to me so far, nodded, and double-checked the door. I liked that: always go to war with a cautious man alongside you, not a fucking hero. The Joes were strapped into side-by-side seats against the fuselage skin. I had to sit on the floor of the blanked-off bomb-bay with the Dispatcher, our backs to a bulkhead.
The pilot started and ran up the four Hercules engines one after the other. The last one fired up rough. He shut them down, and then tried again. This time they ran perfectly. I could sense that the Dispatcher was tense. He leaned towards me and shouted, ‘It’s the mag for the starboard outer. Always was a shit. No worries.’ Aussie.
I think I must have nodded. I felt the aircraft begin to move – away from its hard-standing, and around the peri-track. This part of the trip had always seemed the longest to me: I was all right once I was in the air. Through the small square window to my right I got occasional flashes of the full moon over the trees towards Tempsford village. At the end of the huge strip the pilot ran the engines up again, against the brakes, and then there was the sensation of launch: the jerk and the slow thrust forward against the bumps, and the grumbles of the Stirling, as it prepared to throw itself at the sky.
The Aussie leaned forward, and pushed my loose radio connection into a small jack on the bulkhead behind me. I could suddenly hear the pilot’s mumbled monologue above the howl of the motors. The sense of movement ceased, and was followed by the staggered thumps of the main under-carriage wheels into their spaces under the inner engines. At that moment I think that I heard two things separately but together: one of the engines screaming faster and louder than the others, and also the pilot’s unhurried voice.
‘Pilot to crew, take . . .’
Then there was a huge concussion, and my world became yellow and red – I saw the woman Joe, her head on fire. Finally it was black. All over.
For the time being.
Two
If I had dreams, I didn’t remember them. There was a tune running through my mind, somewhere just below the pain threshold. That first time it was ‘Tiger Rag’ played by Bunny Berigan. Mind that tiger . . . it told me, over and over again. It reminded me of a Hindu proverb: Do not curse your god for creating the tiger; bless him for not giving it wings. The music is there every morning now, and although the tunes are different, they linger all day.
My new world was full of shining dazzling hospital whites, which made my eyes water. That was my excuse, anyway. A man’s voice, slow and with that Bedfordshire twang, asked, ‘Can you hear me, son?’
When I didn’t reply he said, ‘You’ve had a bit of an accident. You were in an air crash.’
I shut my eyes. My brain issued orders to move my tongue and my lips, trying to make, ‘How long . . .?’ but my voice dried up. My lips felt dry and brittle, and parts of my mouth seemed stuck together, and not to work too well. I had a raging thirst.
‘Days. You’ve been ill; but they tell me you’re through the worst. You breathed in flames.’
‘Must give up smoking.’
‘That’s the ticket. Hang on half a mo, I’m going to get the nurse.’
I tried to tell him, ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ but my voice croaked out to nothing halfway throug
h.
I must have drifted off again. When I reopened my eyes they still weren’t too useful. There was a nurse in whites fussing about me. She smelled of soap, so at least one of my senses was functioning, but I couldn’t focus on her. I didn’t know if she was plain or a looker. I was pleased to realize that I could still wonder about that when my face, mouth and shoulders hurt so bloody much. I could see the Bedfordshire accent alongside her in outline, and I could see his khaki clothes. Bloody brown job.
He told me later that he was a veteran of the last bash – more than thirty when he was demobbed in 1919. He had presented himself at the hospital in his old Yeomanry uniform during the Battle of Britain, and installed himself as a part-time nursing attendant, despite various medical objections. He just adopted individual fallen heroes, and nursed them through to their discharge – one way or another, if you get my drift. When my eyes started to come back a few days later I saw his stripes: a Sergeant like me. So that was all right then. Once, when the pain of my face overcame me, and I couldn’t touch it for fear of damaging the scorched skin, I cried. I couldn’t help it. He sat and held my hands. After a couple of days one of my periods of sensibility coincided with the bedside inspection of Herr Doktor: I didn’t know her name at that stage, but learned later that her name was Hildegard. She spoke with a husky, strained European accent, like Marlene Dietrich. She smiled a tired smile, sat on a chair beside the bed, and said that my face was all right and that only my shoulders were bad. She said that even they should heal quickly, but that they would always be ugly and scarred and twisted. She didn’t hold back. In later life, she told me, they might give me a spot of trouble.
‘Face?’
‘Not so bad. People might think that you were an inefficient schoolboy boxer, but the skin still looks like skin. You only had a light grilling. I was more worried about your eyes, that was once you had started breathing properly again. You might have to watch your chest for a few years.’
I tried to smile without cracking the crust the skin around my mouth had grown into.
‘I’d rather watch yours.’
The light in her eyes went out: I knew immediately that I’d said the wrong thing. She said flatly, ‘I’m fifty.’ As if that meant anything.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Germany. A big town: you won’t have heard of it.’
‘What is it called?’
‘Krefeld. Why? Do you know it?’
‘No.’
At least I was feeling well enough to start lying again. I had been to Krefeld three or four times and left it burning. Left some pals there too.
The Sergeant’s name was Bernard. He told me afterwards, ‘Some of the men won’t let her near them because she’s German.’
‘Idiots. If the bus-driver has a heart attack, you don’t ask the man who grabs the wheel if he has a driving licence.’
‘That’s quite clever, son.’
‘Someone told me. I can’t remember who. Am I going to get out for Christmas?’
He shook his head.
‘Definitely not, but there’ll be some sort of a party for the walking wounded, and some of the nurses are goers. You want a beer?’
‘Yes. How?’
‘You got a crate of it under your bed. Some Yank rolled in with it for you a couple of days after you arrived. That, and a big box of flat bog paper: the hospital staff nicked that, I’m afraid. We’ve been short for months.’
‘Are you on the squares of newsprint like the rest of us?’
‘Aye.’
‘Does someone always nick the Jane cartoons off them?’
‘Aye. How did you know?’
‘It must be some sort of crime epidemic.’
‘You’re talking crap again, Charlie, instead of shitting it. You must be ready for your snooze.’
My father got time off and came south, and was in the room with me during the worst times, a week after the crash . . . turns out that he and Bernard were in adjacent trenches in 1916, and they got on famously after they found that out, swapping trench-foot stories. The RAF sent me a new uniform with a decent walking-out jacket, peaked cap and the proper badges for a newly promoted officer. Perhaps they’d awarded me the accident in revenge for my having lived long enough to become an officer.
The Christmas party was a light-hearted, gay affair in an indoor squash court. There was dancing to a wind-up gramophone, and a bar. Most of the booze was home-made. My father came down again for it, and when he and Bernard sat in straight chairs out in front and sang ‘The Charlie Chaplin Song’, instead of laughing, everybody started to cry. I disgraced myself by fainting while I was dancing the Beguine with a spotty Irish redhead. Bernard told me that it had looked quite comical, because she had continued dancing with me well after I was out of it: flinging me about like a corpse. Then she realized that I might be, screamed and dropped me.
Bernard told me that when I awoke, which was days later, sometime near January. Dad had gone home earlier, a bit shaken up. As soon as I opened my eyes Bernard slipped out to telephone him. He must have tipped Dr Hildegard off, because as he left she swept in. She made me drink a half pint of water before allowing me to sit up, or speak. When I looked down I could see that I was skin and bone; my pyjama jacket hung off me. I asked her, ‘What happened to me?’
‘If I was a foul-mouthed Englishman I should say Buggered if I know!’
‘But you’re not. You’re my doctor; for which I am grateful.’
‘I am glad we have cleared that up. But it doesn’t alter the case: I don’t know what happened to you. You passed out, and slipped into a coma. We tried for the best part of a day to bring you round.’
‘No good?’
‘No good. You just lay there with a nasty grin. Several eminent doctors from other hospitals have visited you. They didn’t know what to do either, so I feel better about it. Now that you’re back I shall consider you one of my successes.’
‘What do you think happened to me? Your best professional judgement.’
‘I think that you banged your head in the accident, and that we didn’t notice. Bad internal head injuries are often revealed by severe swelling of the head: haematomas.’
‘Yes?’
‘By the time you were brought in here your head was badly swollen anyway – by the heat and your burns. I think that that concealed an impact injury – I missed it.’
‘Will it happen again?’
She shrugged.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, but there is a dying Australian next door who has a phrase for it.’
‘What’s that?’
‘No guarantees.’
‘Situation normal,’ I told her. Then, ‘I think I’ll get up.’
She smiled. It took years off her, but she shook her head, ‘Definitely not. This time we go slowly. I asked Bernard to bring you a perambulator. He will push you about.’
‘But he’s as old as my father.’
‘. . . and he doesn’t go around crashing aeroplanes.’
Bernard walked in preceded by an ancient wooden wheel-chair.
I said, ‘Jawohl, Frau Doktor,’ and earned a scowl from the woman who had kept me alive since December. Bad one, Charlie.
Bernard took me visiting the larger wards, although they depressed me. There were a lot of people with bits missing, and sometimes, when you looked behind their eyes, you realized that there were bits missing there as well. The only positive note was that a nurse sat with me through each night. The night nurses were young, and some of them pretty; and when I couldn’t sleep flirted with me until I felt drowsy.
The spotty Irish redhead was one of them: she wasn’t spotty any longer. She had long, wavy and lustrous red hair, and when I told her that I was in love with her she laughed it off. Late one night she leaned back in the uncomfortable upright chair they used to keep my nurses awake in the wee small ones, kicked off her shoes, and rested her feet on the edge of my bed. I could have touched them, but I think that that would have
spoiled it. The small radio the girls had smuggled into my room was burbling away to a dance station in the background. It was the Glenn Miller Band and ‘String of Pearls’. I asked her, ‘When will they move me out of here, and into the general ward?’
‘I’m not sure they will: you’re too unusual.’
Then I noticed the tears running down her cheeks. My heart gave a huge scared lurch.
‘Don’t be sad. I don’t mind.’
‘What?’
‘That I’m going to die.’
‘Don’t be soppy. What are you talking about?’
‘Then why are you crying?’
She wiped her cheeks with a slightly used handkerchief. ‘I always cry when I hear “String of Pearls”, stupid. I remember him when he was alive.’
‘Who?’
‘Glenn Miller, of course.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes. His plane went down in the Channel in December. Didn’t you know?’
‘No. It must have happened when I was hibernating . . . I’m not going to die then?’
‘ ’course not. Don’t be daft. We’ll discharge you in a week or so if you don’t faint again.’ She sniffed, and prodded my hip gently through the blankets with her stockinged foot. A reprieve, and what’s more things were looking more promising.
‘Does my face look good enough to kiss yet?’
‘Getting there, Charlie Bassett: I’ll tell you when it is.’
The next night she brought me a newspaper she had saved; its front page announced the band leader’s loss in big black words, around a large publicity photograph of him wearing the Major’s cap I had last seen him with. You may not believe this, but the face I recognized was that of a Major I’d once seen going into the American Red Cross Officers’ Club in Bedford with a girl I’d met. Then again, snoozing in the seat behind me, a fellow passenger in a light aircraft, in which he’d offered me a lift to Manchester. I had flown a trip with Glenn Miller, and hadn’t known it: that must have amused him. I told her, and she went all snotty.
Charlie's War Page 2
