When We Fall

by Carolyn Kirby

  PRAISE FOR WHEN WE FALL

  ‘Such a skilfully constructed novel about one of the less well trodden events of the war peopled by complex, sympathetic characters. Compelling and moving – it’s a wonderful read which often sends the pulse rate into overdrive. I loved it’ – Annie Murray, author of Girls in Tin Hats

  ‘An engaging and elegantly written novel on the grim realities of war, and the moral choices that can result. Highly recommended’ – Roger Moorhouse, author of First to Fight and Berlin at War

  ‘It’s a tale of tragedy and brutality, with characters that are so well-drawn they practically get up and walk from the page... I simply wanted to pick it up when I had finished and start over again’ – Jenny Quintana, author of The Missing Girl

  ‘A meticulously researched novel of love, intrigue and betrayal... reveals how in war truth so often falls victim to expediency. In a story where loyalties are called into question, she kept me guessing to the final page. Carolyn’s writing is so vivid and so well researched – I was sitting in the cockpit with Vee and walking the streets of Poznań with Ewa!’ – Anita Frank, author of The Lost Ones

  ‘A vivid novel that stays with you long after you reach the final page’ – Fiona Erskine, author of The Chemical Detective

  ‘The story never let me go for one second’ – GJ Minett, author of Lie in Wait

  ‘Carolyn has an effortless style that transported me back in time’ – Emily Elgar, author of If You Knew Her

  ‘Memorably descriptive prose... Carolyn Kirby is a past-mistress of the little twist, the soupcon of uncertainty that creates an atmosphere of tension’ – Gaynor Arnold, author of Girl in a Blue Dress

  ‘Scores of senior Polish figures including President Kaczyński have died in a plane crash in Russia.

  Polish and Russian officials said that no one survived after the plane hit trees as it approached Smolensk airport in thick fog.

  Poland’s army chief, central bank governor, MPs and leading historians were among at least 90 passengers who died.

  Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the crash was the most tragic event in the country’s post-war history.

  The Polish delegation was flying from Warsaw to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers by Soviet forces during the Second World War…’

  BBC News

  10 April 2010

  10 April 2010

  Air

  Bournemouth, England

  Saturday 10 April 2010

  The radio-voice stumbles over the names of the dead. Foreign syllables are tripping her up, like bodies strewn through wreckage. And at the sound of one of the mispronounced surnames my heart buckles. Did she just mention you? But, no. A lifetime has passed since I last heard anyone say your name. Then the announcer utters a Russian word without hesitation. Katyn. The place in the forest. A sick-taste of guilt rises and I flick the off-switch.

  Outside through the kitchen window, high cloud films the sky like a girl’s well-brushed hair. Those gauzy cirrus clouds are so far away from us that their turbulence seems slight. But if you take your eyes off them for more than a moment, their icy formations will have altered forever.

  You told me this as we stood on a wide grassy airfield that morning you first took me up. Look! you said, your rolled shirt sleeve falling back as you pointed at the clouds, they are moving faster than anything in the sky. In a leather flying-helmet and men’s slacks, I tapped sceptical fingers on my forearm. I don’t believe you, I said, they’re not moving at all. Your grin was still boyish as you squinted into the sunlight. All right then. Let me take you for a closer look.

  And so you did. Up, up went the old bi-plane in a climb so fast and so vertical that it could not last. At the top of the loop, the engine slowed then coughed into silence. We sat suspended in air. Then we began to fall; slowly at first, then faster, faster, into a gut-churning plunge. I forced my eyes to stay open. A farmhouse loomed below, white sheets waving on a washing line. Hang on, I thought, maybe this isn’t a joke. The white sheets grew, filling my goggles. I pictured myself slamming into the farmhouse’s orange roof, saw white lilies on my coffin and tears rolling into my father’s moustache. But then, when there was nowhere left to fall, the engine hiccupped and the plane, as you knew it would, swooped back up into the crisp air.

  You had to help me out of the open cockpit. I couldn’t walk. Did you not like it? you asked, smirking. Quite a thrill, I suppose, I replied, cool as you like.

  You raised an eyebrow, fixing me with your pale blue stare. Then I’ll have to think of something even more exciting. My gaze, always bold, did not waver from yours. And I let my fingertip rise to touch the V of tanned skin inside your unbuttoned collar.

  No photograph of you exists anywhere on the planet. I used to think that I could not bear to stay on earth either unless I could see, just once more, your face squinting up at cirrus clouds. But here, implausibly, I still am. Along with the only relic of you that remains.

  I drag the chair from the kitchen table and climb somehow on to the seat. But even on tip-toes, I seem no longer able to reach the back of the top cupboard. My fingers pat around unseen knick-knacks and forgotten paperwork; a tight wad of thirty-year-old tax records for The South Coast School of English; the crinkle of an aerogram with a West German stamp. My ring taps against the smooth glass curves of a lighthouse filled with multi-coloured sand. Mine is not much of a wedding ring; the plain copper is dull and worn, and it is on the wrong hand. But it tells me, even if it lies, that you loved me more than the foreign girl.

  Reaching into the sandwich of paper, I edge my thumb and forefinger around the logbook and gain some purchase on the grainy cover. Inside, your writing still bounds across the page, through flying times and aircraft types, with such youthful elegance it is as good as a portrait of your face.

  I pull harder and the logbook slides forward. Then suddenly it pops free. The release uncorks a shower of long-paid bills and unanswered letters that rocks me back on to my heels. And then forward. Slowly at first, but inescapably, I lose my connection to the chair and start to fall. I become as free and untethered from the earth as that girl in the bi-plane, although this time the ground hits me and with a force that could have come from a thousand feet instead of two.

  Tiles are cool under my cheek. Black spots dance across my eyes. Then the spots start swelling, joining, almost blotting out the paperwork that is scattered across the kitchen floor. But, just before blackness closes in, something glints at me through broken glass and sherbet sand. For there, on the faded blue cover of a Royal Air Force logbook, are your initials, SB, in still-shining gold.

  Spring 1943

  Stratus

  Low blankets of dense grey cloud with clear air above. If very low-lying, stratus becomes mist or fog.

  Essex, England

  Wednesday 31 March

  The Tiger’s yellow wings slice over sodden fields. Vee glances down then double-checks the map but all appears as it should. Printed red roads still match the pattern of snaking grey macadam on the ground. Ten more minutes and RAF Birch should be in sight.

  But to the east, the air is murky; sea, sky and shore are merging. As Vee squints into the propeller haze, whiteness begins to blank out the earth. Her pulse quickens. Perhaps she should have taken the advice of that watch officer at Stradishall to give Birch a miss. But how would that have looked on her training record? They would think her slack or spineless. Not quite up to scratch.

  Then, through a sudden clear hole, spidery roads sprout from the fat body of a village and Vee’s eyes jerk back to the map. Halstead perhaps? But the mist, damn it, has already shifted, s
wallowing the village up. Cloud tightens around the cockpit and Vee shoves the useless map under the seat. Now that she is flying blind, there is nothing left to see.

  Sweat trickles into her brassiere and a corner of Vee’s brain enjoys the rush of adrenalin – the tightening of focus, the heightening of her senses. This is what she craved, after all, during those dull afternoons staring at a criss-cross of vapour trails through the factory office skylight. And the heat building inside her flying suit comes less from fear than from irritation; irritation with the watch officer whose warning of low cloud near the coast was not forceful enough to make her change course, and irritation with Captain Mills for tutting when she had asked, only last week, whether there would be any training to fly on instruments. Oh no, he had chided, we won’t be worrying your heads with that. You’ll be too busy keeping one eye on the ground and the other on the motoring map on your knee. It was hardly even a motoring map that she’d been given today – more like something that before the war would have come free with a Sunday newspaper. But any map would be useless now.

  The engine drones on, oblivious to danger. Vee’s face, goggles and fleece collar are all soaking. Inside a clammy glove, one hand grips the control stick, trying to keep it motionless and perfectly upright as the other raises her goggles. But it is no better. The ground could be anywhere. Watery air coats Vee’s eyelids but her mouth is dry.

  How long since she last saw the ground? A minute, or three? She has read somewhere that time is the most important thing to keep track of when flying blind, although she has no idea what comes next. She checks the altimeter. 500 ft. Too low. But going up is off limits. Captain Mills had pointed, smugly, at the instruction written in capitals into the ATA rule book: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TRY TO FIND YOUR WAY OUT OF MURK BY GOING OVER THE TOP. Because sunlight may lie just above this layer of cotton-wool cloud, but Vee knows that without reliable instruments or training in how to use them, the seductive prospect of clear air is a deathtrap. Fuel can so easily run out before the cloud that hides the ground ever does.

  But does she dare go down? Her heart beats double time at the thought. Clear air may be only a few feet below the Tiger’s wheels. Or fog may drape right into the corduroy soil. Vee glances at the small wooden instrument panel even though she knows that at this height, the Tiger’s gauges cannot be trusted. She takes a proper breath. Fifty feet down is worth a try.

  With her eyes on the altimeter, Vee pushes the control stick gently forward and feels the familiar downward lurch in her stomach. The needle descends. Five hundred; four fifty. The fog is dense with moisture. Black spots crowd across her vision as her eyes strain into the glare. Is something there, dark and shifting, not far below the plane? Is there? Good grief. Vapour suddenly clears and furrowed black earth looms up. The plane is not at four fifty. Nowhere near. Two hundred feet she’d guess, or less. Instinctively, she pulls back on the stick and the Tiger jumps up, top wings cutting at rags of cloud. But she rights the stick and the plane levels. Just above the telegraph poles will have to do.

  Except that there are no telegraph poles here; there’s not much of anything. Ploughed fields give way to squashy-looking marshland, and then, across a line of listless surf, land turns into sea. The Tiger gives a cough as if to enquire, politely, if this is really the way that she wants to go. Sweat accumulates in Vee’s armpits and behind her knees.

  Here comes land again, dull green and curlicued with marshy channels, and beyond it, another expanse of dark water. Vee’s eyes cast around for the horizon. Water. Marshland. Water again. And in the distance, embedded in a shroud of mist, an eerie green light. She blinks. The glow becomes more solid and more definitely green. It reflects vaguely in the approaching expanse of open water. Something must be illuminated out at sea. But what vessel would be lit up like a target practice for the Luftwaffe? Then the eerie light lengthens to a rectangle of green dots. A flare path. And inside it sits a dead-straight strip of concrete with a squat control tower to one side.

  Vee feels a wave of hot relief pass through her. This is not Birch; too close to the coast for that, but any landing ground is better than a turnip field. Pressing a boot on to the rudder pedal, she banks the Tiger on to a low circuit around the aerodrome. The limp yellow windsock rises in a sluggish salute as she levels down towards the strip. She pulls up the nose into the faint headwind. Wheels skim clean concrete. There is a bump of touchdown but the rest of the run-in is satisfyingly smooth.

  Vee steers the Tiger to a stop but lets the engine purr. On the roof of the control tower, inside a glass observation box, binoculars glint. They cannot, surely, object to her landing here. Anyone can get caught out by fog. She reaches down for the map and scans the jigsaw of green and blue for an aerodrome.

  Then the Tiger rocks drunkenly to one side. An airman wearing a deflated life-vest has put his foot on the lower wing, weighing it down. His hand slices across his throat in a signal for Vee to cut the engine, but he is smiling. She reaches out to the switch beside the half-windscreen and flicks off the ignition. As the engine stutters into silence, she looks at the airman, and when his icily pale blue eyes meet hers, his smile collapses.

  ‘Mein Gott!’

  Colour washes from him.

  Vee tenses and unease needles the back of her neck. That last stretch of water… it could not possibly have been the North Sea, could it? And that bomber beside the runway is surely a Bristol Blenheim, not a Junckers 88… Her eyes search around for a familiar red and blue roundel. And, of course, the RAF symbol is there on the Blenheim’s fuselage. How could she be anywhere except England?

  She turns back to the airman and realises how long she has been all but holding her breath. Her voice comes out clipped and shrill.

  ‘Where is this?’

  Shakily, the airman’s smile returns. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why bother lighting a flare path unless you’re expecting people to become lost?’

  ‘Yes.’ His smile strengthens. ‘You are right.’

  ‘And if you told me to switch off the engine, you could have simply pointed me in the right direction and I would have got out of your way.’

  ‘But the sea fog is too heavy now for take-off.’

  His accent is not strong but there is one, and she cannot quite place it. Could it really, somehow, be German? She hears her voice become brittle.

  ‘You seem rather reluctant to reveal our location.’

  ‘Classified information.’

  ‘What?’

  He laughs. The sound is reassuring as well as infuriating.

  ‘No, no, I am sorry, a joke. Bradwell. This is RAF Bradwell Bay.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She looks back at the map and feels hotness in her face even though he can have no idea that she just imagined herself to have flown into Nazi-occupied Belgium. She hopes the airman might go away but he leans over her and points with a clean white finger. He must be a pilot; they can never resist a map.

  ‘We are here, see. Bradwell. Where did you come from?’

  ‘Sorry. Classified information.’

  He nods sheepishly to one side indicating that they are even, now. But as she tries to look back at the map his eyes hold her. A dark ring around their paleness gives him a striking, foreign look. His smile grows warmer.

  ‘No, I am sorry. And I must give you something to make up for my bad joke. Tea, maybe?’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘Please, just wait here for a short time. Believe me, half of one hour will change everything.’

  ‘With the vis, you mean?’

  He nods. ‘Cloud will soon disappear.’

  Vee taps a finger on the buckle at her waist. He is probably right. And it would not be sensible to get even colder by sitting out here for half an hour.

  ‘All right.’

 
She snaps open the harness straps. The airman stretches to help her from the cockpit but she ignores his hand, hauling out the parachute and overnight bag behind her. She will not risk leaving them. Anything might happen to an unattended aeroplane, especially this close to enemy shores.

  Only when Vee steps down on to the concrete does she realise that her feet are numb. The airman raises his arm, indicating the way and she tries not to let her legs collapse as she follows him. He seems to have thought better of offering to carry anything for her. Vee feels vaguely guilty for her sharpness.

  ‘Stradishall,’ she says.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘That’s where I’ve come from, RAF Stradishall. Or at least, that’s where I last touched down. I set off on my cross-country this morning from Luton.’

  He slides her a glance. ‘So what… what are you?’

  ‘A pilot.’

  He winces and again she senses that she is being too sharp.

  ‘I’m Vee.’

  His eyebrows exaggerate a frown. ‘Like V for victory?’

  ‘V for Valerie.’

  ‘Valerie.’ His tongue rolls around the syllables.

  ‘Vee,’ she corrects.

  ‘Please, excuse me. I must make an introduction.’ He gives a sharp nod and raps his heels together. ‘Flight Sergeant Stefan Bergel, 302 Squadron. How do you do?’

  Vee tries not to laugh. ‘Pleased to meet you. Vee Katchatourian.’

  She walks on and gives him a sideways look as he catches up. He is tall, even for a pilot. Every movement inside his baggy overalls has a hint of coiled energy. His face has an eager look.

  ‘You are Armenian, Vee?’

  She does not miss a beat. ‘No. I’m English.’

  Her voice has sharpened but actually she is impressed. She cannot remember the last time anyone got it right. And it is a perfectly fair question; a good many of the other cadets are from abroad. It is just that her senses are always primed for the usual reaction to her surname; the slight frown of incomprehension, the wince of embarrassment at her foreigness even though, despite her olive skin and hazel eyes, Vee is as English as anyone she knows.