Runaways

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Other than the fear of the raid, the sound of the bomb.” Elizabeth was too familiar with having lived through the sirens and the shrill sound of bombs falling to believe that her mother had felt no fear. She would have wished the bomb away from her before realising that meant she was wishing it on to someone else.

  “She wouldn’t have known anything.” He repeated, trying to convince himself as well as his sister.

  “Oh bugger.” Elizabeth’s words seemed inadequate. She had lost her mother and the father of her child in one minute. “Bugger bugger bugger.” It didn’t make her feel any better.

  “I’ll get you a drink. A large one.”

  She watched her brother, so much older than she was, with whom she had so little in common, as he waited to be served. She watched as he exchanged words with the bar-maid, and as he took the drinks from her. Somehow focussing on him stopped her thinking.

  “Here. Drink.”

  Elizabeth drank the scotch in one.

  “Another?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  She looked at pilot’s names chalked on the blackout screen by her table and wondered how many of them were already dead.

  “David. What am I going to do?”

  “You’ll forget. In time. You will. Everyone does.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I do. I try.”

  “You can’t. You can’t because I’m pregnant.

  It was only a week since he had given her away to Jim in the quiet wedding in the small village church a few hundred yards from the base. He was not shocked, this was wartime and most of the couples he knew had anticipated their wedding night but he was not sure how best to help her.

  “Are you pleased about that?”

  “I would have been. If Jim… If Jim had been here, everything would have been wonderful.”

  “But he isn’t. But that doesn’t mean you’re on your own.”

  They sat at the table in the window and talked about Jim. About the times they had all enjoyed. ‘Remember the fun, don’t think about anything else.”

  “How did it happen? I need to know how he died.”

  “His crate had been shot up but it was still flying, he was making it home, he was nearly home, he should have made it.”

  She wanted him to say that he crashed avoiding a school or houses, that he saved lives by losing his but she knew it would be more mundane than that.

  “He just ran out of luck. He’d got over the cliffs, he’d nearly reached base but he’d lost too much fuel and too much height. He tried to land but he would have known it was hopeless, he went in hard. It would have been quick.”

  “Like Mum was quick.”

  “No.” David knew he couldn’t lie and he knew it would be kinder to tell the truth. “No. He would have known he wasn’t going to make it.”

  “He would just have looked out of the cockpit at the world.”

  “He loved flying, he loved being in the air. He would just have looked at the ground, his last sights of the world…”

  “Maybe he would have thought about me.”

  “He would have known they were his last moments. He would have seen the fields coming towards him.”

  “But when it happened it would have been quick.”

  “Instantaneous.”

  “There’ll be a funeral won’t there? His parents, his family. They won’t know me. Should I go? I don’t know what to do.”

  “Of course they’ll want you there, they’ll want all Jim’s friends to be there. No one likes the church to be empty at a funeral. Even when...”

  “…the coffin will be.” Elizabeth finished the sentence for him.

  “There will be one. It’s easier with a box, even when there’s nothing in it.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “More often than anyone would know.”

  “So Jim is part of a field in Kent. His atoms will be part of next year’s crops. Someone will eat him.”

  “Is that so bad? To know that there is life after death.”

  “In a way.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “My turn to buy I think.” And Elizabeth stood up and walked to the bar with their two empty glasses.

  “Same again love?” the bar-maid said. “On the house.”

  Elizabeth took the glasses from her and nodded an acknowledgement before walking back to their table in the corner.

  “Are you going to be in touch with his parents? Can you tell them I need to be there? Oh!”

  Elizabeth had cried out, as if in surprise or pain.

  “What is it?” David was full of concern.“

  “It’s my camera, I still have the photographs from … last week … the wedding … they’re still in my camera.”

  There were pictures someone had taken at the church and pictures taken when they had gone back up to the base and told everyone that they had got married. There would be several of the small group of uniformed men laughing at the camera, throwing their caps in the air. There was David and his colleague Kipper, a strange, tall man who looked shy of the camera and surprised to be included with the group. And there was Jimbo who would always be young, who would always be remembered looking just as he did in that photograph.

  “One week. We had one week.”

  And she burst into tears.

  The next day David talked of things he had hoped he would never have to share as he drove Elizabeth up to London.

  He admitted that when he had given her away at her wedding, he had been relieved that she was no longer his responsibility, responsibilities were not what he needed as he headed into the next phase of his war.

  He had liked Jimbo and was pleased that his sister had finally found someone she could love. She was a lot older than most of the unmarried women around the base and the airmen had pretty much their pick. Elizabeth wasn’t conventionally attractive, she didn’t think anyone would want her so she didn’t try. He was older than many of his fellow pilots, had had experience in the war in Spain and had seen first hand what it could do to people so he didn’t join in with the gung-ho enthusiasm of his comrades. They were drawn to each other’s quietness. He had invited her to one of the base dances and in a matter of a few weeks they both knew they had found the person they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. However long or short a time that might be. She had never made love with anyone before and she hoped she would get pregnant, before it was too late for her. She knew for certain the week before Jimbo had proposed and she had answered ‘we’d both like to marry you’. He had understood immediately.

  It was on his unborn child that Elizabeth hoped Jimmy Morton’s last thoughts were focussed and she imagined him wishing the child the best possible life with all of his heart as it burst the instant his plane hit the ground.

  “Elizabeth,” David spoke as the car climbed the steep hill away from the base, “There’s some things we’ve got to sort out before we get to town. Do you feel up to it?”

  Elizabeth didn’t answer directly, she was staring, unseeing, out of the window. After a few moments she nodded her head and David turned the car off the road onto a rough track in the woods. Carefully turning the car to face the road and switching off the engine he stared ahead as he said “I want you to marry Max.”

  She jerked her head sideways, a look of disbelief on her face.

  “You must listen to me. Kipper, Max I mean, would never make any… demands … on you. He wouldn’t be a husband in anything other than name. But as Elizabeth Fischer you would have security, a home for your child, someone to look after you if anything happened to me. He would never expect you to love him, I don’t think he would want that, nor would you expect him to love you, but I’m sure a mutual friendship and regard would develop that would mean that life would not be too uncomfortable for you.”

  He was aware he sounded pompous.

  “You wouldn’t even have to live with him if you didn’t want to. Not immediately, though the wedding
should be as soon as it can be arranged. You can live at my flat. I won’t be there very much in the next few months. When the baby is born, then you could take over Max’s household.”

  She shrugged her shoulders in a gesture of unenthusiastic acceptance, saying nothing as her brother mapped out her life.

  It made no difference to her, she no longer had a life with Jimmy so any life would be as good, or as bad, as any other.

  “There’s one more thing you should know.”

  David had agonised about how much he should tell his sister about his work. He knew that ‘Careless talk costs lives’ and he should ‘Be like Dad, keep Mum’ but he had decided she had a right to know as it was just the two of them left.

  “What do you think I do?”

  She didn’t answer, so he repeated the question. Eventually she spoke.

  “I suppose you do something at some ministry or other. You must be quite high up though, you’ve got the flat in London and the house in the country.”

  “Yes, you could say I am ‘quite high up’ but don’t forget neither the flat nor the house belong to me. David Redhead has done very well for himself, his father would be proud of him.”

  “You say that as if ‘David Redhead’ were someone else.”

  “In a way he is. He is your brother who has had a staid and respectable life in the ministry, looking after his mother and sister as well as he could, as he should have done. But there is another David who has had a far more interesting life.”

  Elizabeth began to listen, she turned away from the window and looked at the distinguished looking man sitting next to her. She hadn’t spent much time with him since he had left home at the end of the previous war. He sent them money regularly, they received cards on their birthdays, he had always spent Christmas with them, but he told them very little about his life. She had assumed there was very little to tell.

  “There is another David, David McKennah is his name, whom you do not know. He performs tasks for the ministry that David Redhead could not undertake. He has a far more exciting life.”

  “Which David does your Max know?”

  “He knows them both.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He is someone who has served this country well over the past few years. You need not know the details, but he is an intelligent and resourceful man. He will look after you and your child well.”

  “He knows about the baby? You’ve agreed this all with him already?”

  “Libby,” David used the pet form of his sister’s name that he hadn’t used for many years. “These are not easy times. Many of us have to do things we could never have imagined only a few years ago.”

  “What will he gain from the arrangement?”

  “It is not easy for him in England. He needs a family, he needs respectability, marriage to you would undoubtedly provide that. Certainly we discussed all the details but he was adamant he would not go ahead if you were against the idea.”

  “Do I really have any choice?”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I get security, as you said, for me and my child.” The words still did not come easily. “He gets a loveless marriage of convenience looking after someone else’s child?”

  “He gets a life story.” David spoke plainly. “When you move to wherever it is you are going to move to, he won’t be a mysterious alien presence. He will have a respectable English wife and a child. People will not suspect that he is anything other than what he says he is, a respectable lawyer who just happens to be a refugee from middle Europe.”

  “Are you going to tell me what you do? What he does?”

  “Of course not.”

  “That answers my question.”

  “Elizabeth, there is one more think I must tell you. It is too important for you not to know. We have lost our mother in a raid, you have just lost your Jimmy. The only thing in life these days is uncertainty. I must tell you something, in case anything ever happens to me.”

  He turned in his seat and took hold of his sister’s hands in his, his long tapered fingers wrapping round hers. “I have a daughter.” It was his turn to turn his head, unable to meet his sister’s gaze.

  “She will be 20 next month. She lives with her mother and her mother’s husband. Her name is Alicia, at least that’s what we call her. I’m not part of her life but I will always be there if she or her mother should ever need me. I keep an eye on them from a distance but it’s unlikely I’ll ever meet her.”

  Elizabeth sat motionless. Her brother had kept this information to himself for over 20 years. Had he told their mother or had she died not knowing she had a grand-daughter? Of all the things she had learned about her brother in the previous half an hour that was the one that shocked her the most. That he led a double life, had two names, was probably a spy, knew other spies, was going to marry his sister to one to provide him with a cover story; that all paled into insignificance in the face of the revelation that he was a father.

  “Which David is this?”

  “At the moment Redhead, if ever I have a chance to be with her I shall start again as McKennah. You must believe me when I tell you, quite simply, Edith is the love of my life. We have never been able to be together for reasons I won’t go into, but I can never love anyone else. If it was meant to be that we were never to be together so be it. But we produced, between us, this wonderful, beautiful, talented young woman. That makes it all worthwhile.”

  He turned back towards his sister and saw she was crying silently, tears rolled down her cheeks. She took her hands out of her brothers and put them on her stomach. “Thank you for telling me. Somehow it makes me feel less alone. Yes, I’ll marry your Max. I can’t have the life I wanted either, I know I’ll never love anyone as I love Jimmy, but I’ll do anything to make the best possible life for this little one.”

  David patted her stomach, an intimacy he would never had presumed two days ago. That’s my girl.’ He put the car into gear to drive back onto the road and towards London.

  Elizabeth let her brother take control. He formally identified the body of their mother, and arranged the funeral in the quiet churchyard in which she had fed the birds for so many years as she sat by her husband’s grave. Neither he nor Elizabeth believed they were ‘reunited in death’, though that was what they agreed to add to the headstone. There were few people at her funeral and most of those who were there had been at the one immediately preceding and stayed for the one following. There had been a long series of bad raids.

  Jimmy’s funeral was arranged by his parents, but they were gracious in allowing Elizabeth to be chief mourner at the service held in the parish church in the Shropshire market town. They had not met Elizabeth before and they never met their son’s wife again. She didn’t think it was sensible to tell them she was expecting their grandchild so she left very little mark on their lives.

  Elizabeth’s wedding to Jimbo had been a joyful ceremony. Two weeks before the girls in her outfit had found a white wedding dress that nearly fitted and there had been a lot of laughter and a blind optimism for the future. For her wedding to Max both she and the groom were in uniform and there were no flowers, no laughter and no photographs to record the event. She hadn’t even met her bridesmaid before that morning, David having asked his secretary to perform any necessary tasks. Elizabeth was contained and dignified throughout the short ceremony, barely looking at her new husband though she very nearly broke down when she saw herself described as ‘widow’ on the Marriage Certificate.

  The four participants in the subdued ceremony were silent as they were driven away from the Register Office down the Marylebone Road heading for Claridge’s where David had arranged a small lunch. The traffic was always difficult the morning after a raid but their journey was even slower than they had anticipated.

  “There must have been an accident.” David said as he heard the bell of an ambulance close by.

  “I’ll see if we will be moving soon.” They sat in awkward silence while their dri
ver went to see what their prospects were.

  “Is anybody badly hurt?” Elizabeth asked when he returned.

  “I’m afraid so, a young woman appears to be quite badly injured.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” David’s secretary asked.

  “I shouldn’t think so, there are people helping and it all seems under control.” The driver wanted to be on his way.

  “Best not to get involved.” David spoke firmly and the awkward silence resumed while they waited for the road to clear. One woman’s accident didn’t amount to a great deal when hundreds were being killed in raids every night.

  It was a week later that David got a phone call in his office and he began to regret his lack of concern the week before.

  “Mr Redhead? David Redhead?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know me, I am a friend of Edith Tyler. She has asked me to phone you.”

  “Edith? Has she been hurt?” Some time before David had given Edie the telephone number where she could reach him in an emergency. This was the first time it had been used.

  “Edie is well.” The nervous voice on the other end of the line reassured him. “She asked me to call you to say that Alicia has had the most awful accident. Can we meet?”

  David followed Alicia’s progress as she was transferred from one hospital to another. He was very discreet and no one was aware of his particular interest in the progress of a young actress who was struggling to walk again. It was weeks before he heard that she was improving but her recovery was being hampered by her not receiving any visitors. She had been transferred to a hospital in Buckinghamshire and none of her friends or family could visit. Again he called on his secretary to help.

  “The daughter of a friend of mine is in hospital and is not getting any visitors. Your sister works out that way doesn’t she? If she can’t do anything perhaps she has a friend who could spend some time at the hospital?”

  “I’m sure she can organise something.” Maureen knew her sister Kathleen would visit once or twice to satisfy her curiosity about being asked but she could be relied upon to find somebody to take over once she had lost interest.