Out of the Blue

by Val Rutt

  As the fighters climbed, Mike began to sing, his voice ethereal in the headset. Sammy grinned, wondering how long it would take before Red Leader told him to shut up.

  ‘Keep on doing what you’re doin’,

  your love is driving me to ruin,

  keep on doin’ what you’re doin’,

  ’cos I love what you do to me . . .’

  Mike sang on, his voice as light and happy as if they were heading out for a day at the beach. He got through the chorus and an entire verse of the Benny Goodman tune before Red Leader intervened.

  ‘Put a sock in it, Red Three.’

  ‘Oh shucks, sir, don’t you love me any more?’ Mike whined. ‘What about you, Red Two? You love me, don’t you?’

  ‘Sorry to break it to you like this,’ Sammy replied, ‘but I’ve fallen in love with a girl called Kitty Danby.’

  ‘Son of a gun!’ Mike exclaimed.

  ‘Okay, quit goofin’ around! This is Red Leader establishing radio silence.’

  Sammy’s gut clenched with the first sensation of fear the instant they had crossed the English Channel and entered a drift of thin cloud over the coast. Deeper into Germany and Sammy’s fear heightened a degree or two as the minutes passed. Fear was such a familiar feeling to him now that he found it tolerable. He was checking the sky; over his left shoulder, to the left, in front, to the right and over his right shoulder – his head moving in a continuous sweep.

  They had reached the rendezvous and were flying at twenty-thousand feet when they saw the B-24s a few thousand feet below them. These were the bomber planes they had come to escort and protect from enemy fighter-fire. They were heavy and slow and vulnerable to the German fighter planes, the Messerschmitt 109s, launched to stop the bombers reaching their destination.

  Suddenly, radio silence was broken with the code to tell them that enemy aircraft had been sighted. ‘Bandits at six o’clock, bandits at six o’clock. Over.’

  ‘This is Red Leader, we’ve got two 109s at six o’clock, low. In you go, Red Two, take your wing-man. Good luck. Over.’

  Sammy jettisoned the reserve fuel tank, then set his sights on the Messerschmitts and dived. A quick glance over his shoulder told him that Mike was with him. They had barely closed the gap when the enemy planes parted and dived. Sammy radioed Mike.

  ‘Red Three, this is Red Two, I’ll take the left. Over.’

  ‘I’m on it. Over.’

  As his plane plummeted, Sammy began shouting over the noise of the engine. He yelled out incomplete sentences; a mixture of coaxing and swearing. His brow was tightly furrowed, his knuckles white, he reminded himself to breathe. He felt the pressure in his head and the buzz through his feet as the engine’s work increased. He pulled back and decelerated. Coming through the cloud and sitting just below it, he scanned the sky for the enemy plane.

  Another huge wave of fear coursed through him as he took in the empty sky. Where was it? He was extra cautious for a minute or two, varying his height and speed, but there was no sign of it. He increased altitude and regained radio contact with Red Leader.

  ‘This is Red Two, do you read, over?’

  ‘Copy that, Red Two. You got Red Three with you?’

  ‘He went after one 109 – I took the other.’

  ‘Okay, Red Two. Red Three, Red Three do you copy? Come in, Red Three.’

  Bert watched on as Sammy and a couple of the others waited beside the hut that the ground crew used as a tool store. Their faces were as grey as the sky and streaked with grime. Time passed and reason told them that Mike wasn’t coming back. One of the bomber crews said that they had seen a Messerschmitt 109 pursuing Mike into cloud after he had broken away from the escort party. No one had seen him after that. It was possible that he had made an emergency landing somewhere else. They didn’t discuss it; they just waited.

  Bert had a primus stove in the hut and he passed black sweet tea to the waiting pilots. They knew that it was a pointless wait, but they were reluctant to leave. Eventually, they finished their tea, lit their cigarettes and wandered back to the mess for the debriefing. No one said a word. Later it was confirmed that Mike’s plane had been hit and he hadn’t bailed out.

  Sammy was hanging about putting off going to his bed, doubtful that he would be able to sleep, when he was given a message that his commanding officer wanted to see him. Sammy knocked and entered the small office. Apparently, Mike had left a note in his locker saying that he wanted Sammy to have his books. Sammy took the books, all of them poetry collections, and went to the room he had shared with Mike. Someone had already been in and cleared away Mike’s things.

  Sammy placed the books back on the shelf where Mike had kept them. Then he took one volume up again and sat on his bed with the book in his lap. He didn’t much care for poetry. He flicked through it for a while until he suddenly felt the wakefulness draining out of him. A heavy fatigue and the desire to sleep crept through his body like black ink seeping across blotting paper. Sammy let the book slide to the floor and lay down.

  He woke from a bad dream around two in the afternoon. He was cold and his left arm was beneath his chest and numb. He heaved himself up and sat on the edge of his bed, nursing his lifeless hand. His blanket had fallen to the floor and, as he picked it up, he saw the book. He reached for it and turned it over in his hands. He read the spine, Robert Graves – what a name, no wonder he had had a nightmare.

  Sammy stood and went to the window. The sky was grey and it was raining again. He dressed and, taking Mike’s book, went out for some air. He crossed the airfield and stood for a while just inside the hangar, straining his eyes to read in the gloom. He thumbed through the pages scanning the first lines until he found a short poem that he read in its entirety. It was called ‘Love Without Hope’.

  Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher

  Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter,

  So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly

  Singing about her head, as she rode by.

  And suddenly he found himself thinking about Cory Weston. He saw her, clear as day, walking to school hugging her books to her chest – tall and straight and graceful, the morning sun catching her red hair. And he realised that he hadn’t thought about Cory in a long time. And, remembering all of a sudden that he had once harboured the fantasy of going home a hero and marrying her, he shuddered. The idea of marrying Cory Weston seemed ridiculous to him.

  Sammy had loved Cory all his life. He was the same age as Cory’s little sister, Flick, and she adored Cory too. Together they followed her around like twin shadows. But Cory Weston barely knew that Sammy Ray Bailey existed.

  Sammy found his wallet and took out the picture of Cory that he kept there. He stood for several minutes, sheltering from the English drizzle, studying Cory’s face, trying to remember what it was that he had felt for this girl. And that’s where Bert found him. Sammy was so engrossed that he jumped when Bert spoke to him.

  ‘Is that your girl?’

  Bert nodded at the photograph Sammy held against the open page of his book.

  Sammy blushed to the roots of his hair and Bert laughed.

  ‘She’s a lovely-looking girl. I hope she waits for you, son.’

  Sammy experienced an uncomfortable sensation, a mixture of embarrassment and shame as he imagined what Cory would do if she’d heard herself referred to as his girl. He had been carrying her photograph with him ever since he stole it from the Weston home five years before. It occurred to him now that, if anything happened to him, maybe someone would find the photo and give it to his parents and then everyone would know that he had been sweet on Cory. The thought appalled him.

  He read the poem again and this time he saw the boy sweeping off his ludicrous hat and the birds escaping in a great noisy humiliating spectacle. All at once Sammy realised what a fool he had been. And he realised too that he was a completely different person from the boy who had had a secret love for Cory Weston.

  He thought
then of Kitty Danby and understood with a certainty that he had never felt before that she was the one; she was his future. Kitty, not Cory, was his reason for getting home alive.

  He hesitated about what to do with the photograph and for a moment his hand curled round it as he considered screwing it up and throwing it away. But he could not do that. He reasoned that it wasn’t Cory’s fault that he didn’t love her any more. Instead, he decided that one day he would slip the photograph back in the dresser drawer in the Westons’ kitchen. He didn’t want to carry it on him any more so he put away his wallet and tucked the picture into the snug place where the page meets the spine and snapped the book closed.

  Sammy ran after Bert and caught his arm. He had looked troubled when Bert had first seen him, and Bert knew he had plenty on his mind, but now he was laughing. Bert asked him what was so funny and Sammy told him that he was mistaken about the girl in the photograph. She had been a childish crush, he said, there had never been anything between them.

  Then he went on to tell Bert about finding Kitty in the road and once he started talking he couldn’t stop. He called her his little bicycle thief. He told Bert about her tears. He said he had heard the expression about being in floods and that he now knew it to be true. This girl nearly had them both standing in puddles. He described her prettiness, her gentleness, her beautiful voice. He had noticed her voice even while she was crying – it was not just the lilt of an accent strange to him, but a soft sweetness to her voice that drew him to her.

  ‘That’s the thing about her,’ he told Bert, ‘she’s sweet and funny and pretty, but it just feels so right when I’m with her. She’s the one for me, without a doubt, she’s the one!’

  August 2006

  Bert reaches for his tea while Kitty sits and stares ahead. She has stopped writing.

  ‘He fell for you, Kitty, that lad did – you were such a pretty little thing and he was over the moon about you.’

  Kitty comes back to the present and smiles but shakes her head. ‘No, you’re wrong, Bert – he had a sweetheart back home.’

  Bert waves his big bent hand dismissively.

  ‘No, he told me that he was over —’

  ‘I was very young and he wasn’t much older . . . and the war, you know how things were, Bert. People said a lot of things . . .’

  Bert frowns, his lips move as if he is working himself up to speak, but he says no more.

  ‘You’re tired, Bert,’ Kitty says as she notes his pallor and the loss of light in his eyes. ‘We both are. I should be getting on now if I’m not going to get caught in the traffic.’

  What Bert has told her about Sammy troubles her, but Kitty dampens her feelings by focusing her attention elsewhere. Bert seemed altered to her and she worries that remembering the war has been too much for him. She walks back up the road to her car and wonders whether she should tell June her concerns. She reaches the house and the sound of a vacuum cleaner from an upstairs bedroom window puts her off ringing the bell. June is busy and Bert, no doubt, will be fine after a rest. She drops the key through the letterbox.

  Kitty drives home carefully. She tries not to think about what Bert has told her. The roads soon become busy. There are bigger roads now, thinks Kitty. There are dual carriageways and motorways and yet they still clog up. She remembers the lanes she walked as a young girl. You hardly ever saw a car, she thinks. Then she remembers a time when Kent’s lanes were full of traffic; a winding snake of vehicles that stretched for mile after mile.

  June 1944

  Kitty sat up in the darkness, her heart pounding.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she said, her voice coming in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Look, Kit! Just come and look at this will you!’

  Charlie was standing at the window beside her bed and the next moment he had it open and was leaning out. A loud drone filled the room: a magnified version of the sound that Kitty now realised had penetrated her sleep. She climbed out of bed and reached for her dressing gown.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s the invasion, Kitty!’ Charlie grinned at her as she squeezed beside him at the window. ‘We’re going to kick the Nazis out of France.’

  The sky was beginning to lighten and in the shadows beneath the window, a convoy of monochrome vehicles rolled by.

  ‘It’s been going on for hours,’ Charlie said. ‘I was half asleep and I thought someone was out in a tractor. Then I realised that it had been going on too long.’

  They heard shouts in the distance. Then a shouted order that came relaying towards them and in a moment or two the convoy came to a halt. In the semi-darkness, men began jumping from the backs of trucks, then spilling over the sides and suddenly there were men everywhere. Charlie whooped and ran across Kitty’s bed in his haste to leave the room. Kitty got dressed and went down to the kitchen where she found Aunt Vi bustling around and pleased to see her.

  Aunt Vi had the kettle and two saucepans on to boil. The enormous green enamel teapot was warming on the stove and she was placing cups on to a tray. A mixing bowl on the table stood beside the stone flour jar; one batch of scones was already waiting to go into the oven as soon as it was hot.

  ‘Ah, Kitty,’ she said, ‘pop and fetch the willow, there’s a good girl.’

  Kitty hesitated.

  ‘Hurry up, Kit, there’s thirsty men out there and they’ll not hang around all day.’ She turned and poured the scalding water into the teapot and refilled the kettle from the tap. Kitty went to the dresser in the parlour and carefully took down the willow-pattern china teacups that Aunt Vi reserved for special occasions.

  For the next hour, Kitty carried trays of steaming tea and plates of hot buttered scones out to the gate. She stood in the early morning light, smiling shyly, while a boisterous queue of soldiers downed the cups of sweet tea and helped themselves to half a scone. Kitty watched their hands as the cups were lifted full and lowered empty, rarely raising her eyes to see the faces of the men who thanked her. Occasionally, a ‘Cheers, love’ in a familiar London accent made her glance upward. When her tray was empty, she hurried back to the kitchen and Aunt Vi reloaded it. Uncle Geoff stood at the sink washing and drying the teacups, something that Kitty couldn’t remember him ever doing before.

  ‘Shall I do that, Uncle Geoff, and you can take the next tray out?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘You’re all right, Kit,’ he replied gruffly. ‘I think they’d rather get their tea from a pretty girl than a dry old stick like me.’

  Several soldiers asked her to marry them and, when a young Scot begged for a wee kiss, Aunt Vi, who had come out to the gate with another plate piled high with scones, teased him.

  ‘It’s a spanking not a kiss you’ll get, you cheeky monkey!’ A cheer went up from the men around them and the next proposal of marriage went to Aunt Vi.

  More shouts from up ahead and the soldiers began to disperse. A few last men hurried up and took what was left on the tray and one, a wiry Cumbrian, when he had drained his cup, passed it absently into Aunt Vi’s hand and murmured a low ‘Thanks, Mam.’ Kitty noticed Aunt Vi’s chin tremble at this and saw her bite her lip before wishing him good luck.

  ‘Oh Kitty,’ she said, turning to go inside, ‘I pray to God to keep them safe, I do.’

  Charlie had cycled down the line to see how long the convoy was. Soon after the army was on the move again, he came back carrying an American comic and a baseball magazine. He stood with Kitty and watched them pass.

  ‘I wish I was going with them, Kitty.’

  But Kitty didn’t answer him. She was thinking about Sammy. What would happen to him now?

  August 2006

  At ten to six June lets herself into her father’s bungalow.

  ‘It’s me, Dad!’ She places the Tupperware box she carries in one hand on the hall table and closes the door behind her. ‘Brought you a bit of fish pie – I’ll heat it up for you. Do you want peas with it?’

  As June moves through to the kitchen she hears a sound coming fro
m the bedroom. She calls out to her father again, questioningly this time, and his muffled reply has her frightened. She thinks he has fallen and hurries to the bedroom.

  ‘Dad, whatever’s happened?’ she asks, alarm in her voice. June moves round the bed and sees Bert. He is down on one knee, waving his walking stick about beneath the bed. His breath comes in rasps and wheezes and, as June rushes towards him, he struggles to speak.

  ‘There’s a box . . . can’t . . . reach the . . . blessed thing. You get it, Junie, please.’

  He uses the stick as a prop and slowly heaves himself up from the floor and sinks on to the bed. June goes down on both knees, tips her head sideways to the floor and peers past his slippers across the shadowy carpet. She retrieves a black metal box that was once used for storing cine-film canisters and places it beside Bert on the bed.

  ‘You still got my old school reports in there, Dad? I should take them and show Martin. See if I can get him to do something with himself, instead of lazing around all day.’

  Bert opens the box and begins lifting out documents and placing them on the bed. June sees the reports and picks them up from the pile. Bert continues to look. He is upset but June does not notice yet. At last his fingers fall upon a letter and he takes it up and holds it against his chest. A spell of wheezing becomes a coughing fit, slow at first like a reluctant starter motor trying to bite, then it takes hold and the cough consumes him, brings tears to his blue eyes. He rocks backwards and forwards and clutches the letter to him. The sun, which has been creeping along the wall outside, suddenly streams in at the window and a brilliant shaft of golden light illuminates Bert, but not June. She looks at her father and sees his distress.

  ‘Whatever is it, Dad? What’s the matter?’

  Bert leans forward, one hand on his stick, the other pushing down on the bed beside him.