A God in Ruins

by Kate Atkinson

  Kenny should have kept his mangy black cat instead of giving it to Vic Bennett’s baby. A letter had wound its way to him eventually, not from Lil but from Mrs. Bennett, a reluctantly proud new grandmother. “A girl, not much to look at but she’ll do.” A Margaret, not an Edward, and Teddy was relieved that he didn’t have a namesake. Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving?

  The CO gave a few encouraging words, the vice-marshal made some hearty remarks as befitted someone sporting so much scrambled egg, a medic standing at the door handed out wakey-wakey pills as they went past. And that was that.

  There was the traditional last supper, not much of a feast tonight—sausages and a rubbery egg. No bacon. Teddy thought of Sylvie’s pig, of the smell of roasting pork.

  They were sealed off now, a bad time when your thoughts could overshadow everything. Teddy had a few games of dominoes with a flight-lieutenant in the officers’ mess. It was mindless enough to satisfy both of them but it was a relief when it was time to go to the crew room and get kitted up.

  Thick woollen long johns and vest, knee-length socks, roll-neck pullover shirt, battledress, sheepskin flying boots, three layers of gloves—silk, chamois, woollen. Half their items of clothing weren’t even uniform at all. It gave some of them a raffish, almost piratical air—rather offset by the way they waddled around as if in nappies. Then they added even more—the Mae West, the parachute harness—until walking itself became difficult.

  Checked there was a whistle on their collars, dog tags round their necks. Then from the WAAF orderlies they collected their flasks of coffee, sandwiches, boiled sweets, chewing gum, Fry’s chocolate. They were given their “escape kits”—silk maps printed on scarves or handkerchiefs for the countries they were flying over, local money, compasses concealed in pens and buttons, phrase sheets. Teddy had kept a scrap of paper left over from a long raid to Chemnitz when it was feared that if they came down they might be picked up by Russians, who wouldn’t know what to make of them and would shoot them while they were making up their minds. It said (apparently), “I am an Englishman.”

  They picked up their parachutes and a pretty WAAF gave Teddy a silk neck scarf and said shyly, “Take that for me, will you, sir? Then I can say it’s flown over Germany and bombed the enemy.” It smelt sweet. “April violets,” she said. Like a knight taking a favour from some fair damsel in a tale of chivalry, he thought, and stuffed it in his pocket. He never saw it again, it must have fallen out at some point. The time for tales of chivalry was long over.

  They emptied their pockets of everything that might identify them. It was an act that always seemed symbolic to Teddy—crossing the threshold between being individuals and becoming fliers, anonymous, interchangeable. Englishmen. And Aussies and Kiwis and Canucks. Indians, West Indians, South Africans, Poles, French, Czechs, Rhodesians, Norwegians. The Yanks. In fact, the whole of Western civilization was ranged against Germany. You had to wonder how that could have happened to the country of Beethoven and Bach and how they would feel about it if they had an afterward. Alle Menschen werden Brüder. Ursula’s question, “Do you think it’s possible? One day?” No. He didn’t. Not really.

  A WAAF stood at the door of the crew room and called for F-Fox and L-London’s crews and they all piled aboard the old charabanc she was driving. Sometimes transport seemed as haphazard as some of their clothing.

  Lucky had been left in the arms of a particularly attractive WAAF, an R/T girl called Stella. He liked Stella, thought there might be something between them. Last week Teddy had escorted her to a dance in the mess at a neighbouring station. A peck on the cheek on their return and a “Thank you, sir, that was jolly good fun.” Nothing more. There had been a sickening incident the day before at their own airfield, a WAAF who had been decapitated by a propeller blade. Teddy shied away from remembering it even now. It had left everyone sombre, particularly—naturally—the WAAFs. Stella was a good sort, liked dogs and horses. Sometimes the awfulness of war led to sex, at other times it didn’t. It was hard to fathom a reason for the different outcomes. He regretted not going to bed with Stella and wondered if she felt the same. He had had a short-lived—very short-lived—affair with a friend of Stella’s called Julia. It had involved a lot of sex. Very good sex. A secret memory.

  They reached F-Fox at dispersal and dismounted from the bus. Even at this point Teddy was expecting the red light that would tell them that the raid had been scrubbed. But apparently this was not to be, so he carried on, going over the aircraft with the new pilot, the flight engineer and the ground crew. The engineer was called Roy, Teddy reminded himself. The mid-upper was a Canadian called Joe, the tail-end Charlie was—helpfully—called Charlie. He looked about twelve years old. The tail-gunner’s Perspex was getting a final polish with the blackouts.

  Teddy offered cigarettes all round. Only the bomb-aimer didn’t smoke. “Clifford,” he reminded Teddy when he could see him struggling. “Clifford,” Teddy murmured. All of the ground crew smoked like chimneys. Teddy wished that he could take them up on a raid, a safe one from which they would all be guaranteed to return. It seemed a shame that they never experienced what “their” aircraft went through, never saw the view through that well-polished Perspex. At the end of the war, the RAF did “Cook’s tours,” flying the earthbound personnel over Germany so they could see the havoc that they had helped to wreak. Ursula managed to wangle her way on to one, Teddy had no idea how but he wasn’t surprised. The war had proved his sister to be rather good at negotiating the great game of bureaucracy. It was terrible, she reported, to see a country in total ruin.

  Teddy’s sprogs all urinated on the wheel of F-Fox and then looked slightly abashed when they realized that Teddy wasn’t going to partake of this masculine ritual. He was their sadhu, Teddy thought, a guru. He could have told them to climb up to the control-tower roof and throw themselves off in an orderly sequence and they would have done. He sighed and fumbled with his enormous amount of clothing and took an unnecessary piss against the wheel. The sprogs gave each other covert grins of relief.

  Then the ground crew made their usual unshowy, optimistic farewells, shaking hands all round. “Good luck, see you in the morning.”

  Teddy stood next to the pilot for take-off. The pilot was called Fraser, from Edinburgh, a student at St. Andrews. A different kind of Scot from Kenny Nielson. No second dickey flight for him, instead his wing commander riding shotgun. He remembered the crew of W-William. This aircraft took off at 16:20 hours and failed to return. It has therefore been reported as missing.

  The Bristol Hercules engines whined as the propellers made their first few jerky revolutions before catching and turning to the familiar staccato. Good engines, Teddy told Fraser when they were doing their checks. Fraser, of necessity, was interested in the mechanics of bombing.

  Port outer, port inner, followed by starboard inner, starboard outer. Once all the checks were done—the mag drops and oil pressures and so on—Fraser asked control for permission to taxi. He glanced at Teddy as if he needed his approval more than he needed the control tower’s and Teddy gave him a thumbs-up. The chocks were removed and they edged forward to join the procession on the perimeter track, the engines throbbing and rumbling, a vibration that passed through muscle into bone and lodged in the heart and lungs. There was something magnificent about it to Teddy’s mind.

  They were fifth in line to take off and they swung on to the runway, engines to full boost, waiting, a greyhound in a trap, ready to go when the controller’s Aldis light showed green. Teddy was still expecting the red light from the control tower, cancelling the op. It never came. Sometimes they were even recalled once they were in the air. Not this time.

  The usual flare-path farewell party had gathered at the controller’s caravan. Assorted WAAFs, cookhouse and ground crew. The CO was there, the air vice-marshal too, saluting every aircraft as it passed. Those who are about to die do not salute you back, Teddy thought. Instead he gave a thumbs-up to Stella, who was also there,
holding Lucky in her arms, and as they rolled down the runway she lifted one of the dog’s paws and waved it. Better than any scrambled egg’s salute in Teddy’s book. He laughed and Fraser glanced at him in alarm. Taking off was a serious business, especially when it was your first operational sortie and your wing commander was your second pilot. And that same Wing Co was showing signs of eccentric behaviour.

  The green light showed and they began to lumber along the runway like an overweight bird, trying to reach the necessary 105 mph that would “unstick” twelve tons of metal and petrol and explosive from the earth. Teddy helped with the engine throttles and felt the usual relief as Fraser eased back on the yoke and F-Fox strained to drag herself off the ground. Unconsciously, Teddy touched the little silver hare in his breast pocket.

  They roared towards the farmhouse and Teddy looked for the farmer’s daughter but could see no sign of her. He felt a chill. She was always there. He could see the flat fields in the dusk, the bare brown earth, the darkening horizon. The farmhouse. The farmyard. They banked and began to circle, stacking and gathering themselves before heading for the coast, and as F-Fox’s wing dipped to port he caught sight of her. She was gazing up at them, waving blindly, waving at them all. They were safe. He waved back, although he knew she couldn’t see him.

  The squadrons in the north had to take off an hour earlier than those on the more southerly airfields and then had to fly due south to meet at the rendezvous point. It gave them some relatively safe time to get on with their routine tasks. Once they were in the air there were no idle moments, all that gloomy introspection that could take hold on the ground disappeared. The flight engineer was kept busy synchronizing the engines, calculating fuel stocks, changing petrol tanks. The IFF was switched on to identify them as friend rather than foe to the RAF’s own fighters. The spark wound out the trailing wireless aerial and the navigator put his head down, working on accurate fixes, comparing the actual winds to those forecast. Once they were over the sea the bomb-aimer started chucking Window out. They were still flying with their navigation lights on and Teddy could see the red and green lights twinkling on the wingtips of other aircraft.

  They ground their way over the North Sea, climbing all the time. The waves were highlighted by the moon and the wings of F-Fox glinted like polished silver. They may as well have had a searchlight shining on them. The gunners tested their Brownings in short bursts over the sea. The bombs were fused, the navigation lights switched off. At five thousand feet they put their oxygen masks on and Teddy heard the familiar rasping breathing over the intercom.

  They were bowled across Belgium by a following wind. Visibility was so good that they could see many of the other aircraft in the bomber stream. It was as close to a daylight raid as Teddy had ever been. His life took place at night. The wide-awake moon could be seen reflected in lakes and rivers as they passed over them, escorting them, mile after spot-lit mile. There’s not a trace upon her face of diffidence or shyness. Hugh had loved his Gilbert and Sullivan gramophone records. There had been an amateur performance of The Mikado put on in the local village hall and their father had astonished them all by taking the role of Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner. He had relished the complete change of character it had afforded him, leering and prancing and singing around the stage. “Quite the Jekyll and Hyde,” Sylvie said. Mrs. Shawcross had played Katisha. Again, another thespian revelation.

  They reached the first turning point near Charleroi and not long after that the slaughter began.

  There were fighters everywhere, like angry wasps whose nest had been disturbed. It was a shock to meet them so early, and so many of them. Not a nest that had been disturbed but a swarm that seemed to have been waiting for them.

  “I can see an aircraft going down in flames off the port bow,” the mid-upper gunner reported.

  “Log that, navigator,” Fraser said.

  “OK, skipper.”

  The rear-gunner’s voice this time, “One going down on the starboard beam.”

  “Log that, navigator.”

  Teddy, standing next to Fraser, could see stricken aircraft everywhere. The sky was scattered with the bright white stars of explosions.

  “Are they scarecrows, sir?” the bomb-aimer asked. Fraser was “skipper,” Teddy noticed, and the crew had plumped for “sir” for Teddy so as not to confuse them with each other. They had all heard the rumour that the Germans were using “scarecrows”—anti-aircraft shells simulating exploding bombers—but it had always seemed unlikely to Teddy. He saw some of the bright white stars belching the dirty, oily red flames that were only too familiar to him. His sprog crew had never seen a bomber shot down until now. Baptism of fire, he thought.

  Some floated down like large leaves, others plummeted straight to the earth. A fellow Halifax over on their port beam flew past with all four engines on fire, spilling streams of burning petrol, but too far away to see if there were any crew aboard. Suddenly its wings collapsed like a drop-leaf table and it fell from the sky like a dead bird.

  “Not scarecrows, aircraft, I’m afraid,” he said and heard several gasps of horror on the intercom. Perhaps he should have let them continue with their delusions. Aircraft everywhere were going down on fire, or exploding, often with no sign that they even knew they had been attacked. The mid-upper continued to count them and the navigator to tick them in his log until Teddy intervened and said, “That’s enough,” because he could tell from their breathing that the crew were beginning to panic.

  On their port beam an aircraft on fire from aft to stern flew by, straight and level but upside down. Teddy saw a Lancaster erupt in sheets of white flame and drop on to a Halifax below it. Both went cartwheeling down to earth together, gigantic pinwheels of fire. Teddy could see what must be a Pathfinder spooling down to earth, its red and green marker flares exploding prettily as it hit the ground. He had never been a witness to this much carnage. Aircraft went down in the distance usually, stars flaring and dying. Crews simply disappeared, they weren’t there next morning for their bacon and eggs, you didn’t give too much thought to how they disappeared. The horror and terror of those last moments were hidden. Now they were inescapable.

  The Pathfinder puzzled Teddy, it should be at the head of the Main Force. Either it was in the wrong place or they were. He asked the navigator to check the winds again. It seemed to Teddy that they had drifted north of that red ribbon. He sensed the confusion in the navigator’s reply. He found himself wishing for Mac’s experience.

  Down below he could see the blazing wreckage of aircraft on the ground stretching back for fifty or sixty miles.

  Then, as further proof of the scarecrow myth, over on the starboard beam they saw a Lancaster, illuminated by the cruel moon—it may as well have been coned by a searchlight—being stalked stealthily by a German fighter from underneath, invisible to her oblivious rear-gunner. The fighter had an upward-pointing cannon, the first Teddy had ever seen. Of course—that was why so many aircraft were going down so suddenly. The cannon looked as though they were pointing straight into the vulnerable bellies of the bombers, but if they could hit the wings, where the fuel tanks were, then the bombers didn’t stand a chance.

  He watched helplessly as the fighter opened fire before peeling quickly away from its victim. The Lancaster’s wings exploded into great gouts of white fire and F-Fox lurched violently.

  Before they had a chance to recover they were raked by cannon fire, ripping and clattering along the flimsy aluminium fuselage, and without warning they pitched into a vertical dive. Teddy thought that Fraser must be trying to evade the fighter, but when he glanced at him he saw to his horror that he was slumped over the controls. There was no sign of any injury, he could have been asleep for all Teddy could tell. He shouted for help over the intercom—it was almost impossible to get at the controls with Fraser in this position and he had to try to hold his inert body back and at the same time haul back on the controls, while the G-force was like a ton of concrete on his head.

/>   Both the spark and the engineer fought their way forward and started tussling with the motionless Fraser. The pilot’s seat was quite high up in the aircraft and it was a snug fit to cram yourself into it with all your kit on. To extricate someone from that position seemed like a near-impossible task, especially as Teddy was perched on the edge of the seat and at one point he thought he might have to crouch on poor Fraser’s lap. Somehow or other they wrestled the pilot out and Teddy took his seat. There was no blood anywhere, for which he was grateful.

  They were screaming earthward at 300 mph now, F-Fox almost standing on her head. Teddy yelled for the flight engineer and they both wrapped themselves around the yoke and hung on to it for dear life. Teddy worried that the wings would simply be pulled off, but finally, after what seemed like an eternity but must have been a handful of seconds, their combined strength was just enough to actuate the elevators and bring the nose back up again and they levelled out and started a ponderous climb back up.

  There were a lot of expletives on the intercom and Teddy did a crew check and told them rather tersely, “The pilot’s been hit, I’m afraid. I’m taking over. Navigator, plot a new course for the target, please.” The gods alone knew where they were now, and possibly not even them.

  The spark and the flight engineer had dragged Fraser to the crew rest position. “Still breathing, skipper,” the spark reported. He was no longer “sir,” he noticed. He was the skipper. The captain.

  Dismayed muttering from the bomb-aimer alerted Teddy to something he had never seen before. Vapour trails. They were never usually seen below twenty-five thousand feet and now they were everywhere, pouring from the tails of the bombers. The contrails were bright banners, marking them as targets even more clearly than the moon, if that was possible.