Tides of Valor

by Peter Albano

  Randolph let his hands drop on his chest and interlaced his fingers. Staring at the ceiling he said, “Perhaps we should take a verse from Brooke or Henley. If some bloody drivel is too nonsensical to mouth, make a poem of it.” Suddenly he was a poet, waving a hand effeminately, “‘Some corner of a foreign field forever England,’ or perhaps, ‘England, my England, Take us and break us: we are yours, We shall die to the song on your bugles blown.’” The gaze circled the room, found nothing but shocked, astonished eyes. “Coop and Donovan heard the bugle.” He drank through a chuckle, rivulets running from the corners of his mouth, off his chin and onto the hair of his bare chest.

  Randolph was not finished, “Or why not just forget the poets and simply congratulate them for dying in the clean Channel sky away from doctors’ scalpels, pans, and tubes—free of chanting priests and stinking incense? Salute their freedom from the aches and infirmities of old age. Perhaps we should, celebrate their good fortune by singing, dancing”—he held up his glass—”drinking, find women, bonk ‘em until they can’t walk.” He laughed until his eyes watered. “Yes. That’s it. Celebrate the transformation from flesh to fantasy. Jolly good fun for all.” He held up his glass. “To the freedom of death in the summer of its power.” He drained it, but alone. The other men in the room could only stare at one another in shocked wonder and concern. They had never seen Squadron Leader Major Randolph Higgins in this state.

  Chatfield spoke softly yet with the assurance of one holding all the cards, “Sir, you can’t fly for at least a fortnight.”

  Randolph slammed a fist on the desk. “I’ve got to!”

  “Sorry, sir. I can’t clear you.” He gestured. “With that shoulder you would only kill yourself and maybe some others.”

  Randolph downed another drink and sank back with a long sigh. His sixth drink, the liquor was finally taking affect. Slowly, he turned to his adjutant. The words were slurred and filled with resignation, “You’ll be in charge, Captain Smith.”

  “Yes, sir. We can handle the lot, sir,” Smith assured him. The three pilots nodded agreement.

  Nursing a fresh drink, Randolph spoke to his desk, voice rising again, “I’ve got to bring Major Erich Kochling to book.”

  “Not for at least a fortnight, Major,” the doctor said calmly. “And, sir, keep the lid on. The war can roll merrily along without you.” The bold statement caused an exchange of anxious looks. However, Chatfield had the look of a man who knew his ground and was ready to stand it.

  Randolph smiled. “You think I’m going off my wick, Doctor?”

  “That can happen to any of us—especially you flyers.” Chatfield turned his lips under and spit out his words as if they were rotten fruit, “That could lead to permanent grounding, Major. You know that. If I may suggest, Major Higgins, you’re due for a leave.” He gestured at the shoulder. “And you are in need of rest and rehabilitation. Go home. Nothing is as bracing as that. Your brother is waiting. . .”

  “My brother Lloyd? Brigadier Lloyd Higgins?” He glared at his clerk. Lance Corporal Timothy Evans.

  Evans’s smooth, young face collapsed in a ruin of anguish. “I’m sorry, sir. Group rang us up just before you returned. With your injuries and the rest of that lot it slipped my mind and. . .”

  “Dash it all, man. It didn’t have far to slip.” Higgins turned to the doctor. “A two-week leave—at your orders.”

  Chatfield smiled. “Group is cutting your orders now.”

  Randolph smiled for the first time, “Confident old bugger, aren’t you. You’d send Dowding to blighty, wouldn’t you?”

  Everyone chuckled more with relief at Randolph’s change in mood than at the jest. Chatfield nodded. “Quite so, if he had a shoulder like that.” He began to put his instruments back in his bag. “Get the rest you need, sir. And if I may suggest, you have a beautiful estate. Return to Fenwyck, sir.’’

  “Quite,” Randolph said, rising. “I’ll return to Fenwyck.”

  Driving from Detling to Fenwyck, Randolph gunned his Jaguar SS (Swallow Sports) two-seater, using every one of the 125 horsepower of the big 3.5-liter engine and his gearbox to whip around army lorries, horse-pulled wagons and carts, and occasional civilian vehicles. With the top down, he was lashed by wind that sent his brown hair flying and brought water to his eyes. He smiled, mind wandering back to the open cockpits of Nieuport 17s and S.E.5As. Those were the days when a man challenged the skies with wood, canvas, and glue, and no parachute. Took the flimsy crates to twenty-two thousand feet, sucking on an oxygen tube and not really believing it could all be real.

  Thoughts of the old fighting scouts revived memories of his own youth and the advancing years that were stealing it away. A glance in the mirror showed only minor incursions of gray hair at his temples, his skin, weathered by years in the cockpit, tanned and rough but still unlined. A vital, alert gleam had reinvigorated the brown of his eyes. “Old Wayne Chatfield knew what he was talking about,” he said to himself.

  A stab of pain caused him to wince. His left shoulder was very sore. When he worked the accelerator, brake, and clutch, both knees ached and his right leg throbbed from calf to thigh where his old, layered burn scars had been stretched.

  Despite the horror and rage of the last dogfight and his aches and pains, Randolph’s spirits were elevated by the marvelous performance of the Jaguar and the anticipation of seeing his brother Lloyd. Brigadier General Lloyd Higgins—smart and as clever as a fox. In December his Fourth Armored Brigade had led the rout of the Italian Tenth Army at Sidi Barrani in Egypt, brilliantly flanking the “Eyties” by swinging south into the deep desert and driving them back into Libya. Then Churchill’s intervention in Greece that emasculated the Desert Army, the rout by Rommel, and Lloyd’s near capture when a German motorized column captured General Richard O’Connor’s headquarters. But now Lloyd was home after two years in Africa. And unhurt. Unbelievable.

  Roaring past a stalled Bren gun carrier, he forced a half-dozen soldiers to leap aside. “Blimey! Slow it?” an old sergeant bellowed after the tiny sports car.

  “Why?” Randolph shouted over his shoulder into the swirling dust and staccato blasts of the exhaust.

  Entering Kent the little machine climbed a gentle grade to enter the weald where magnificent stands of oak, beech, hornbeam, and elm crowded the road, making the way ahead appear like a green corridor walling off a brown-black ribbon. “Robin Hood, where are you?” the major shouted. “There are blackguards afoot. In fact, they’re all over the bloody continent.” Wildly, he threw peals of laughter into the roar of the engine, the wind, and the hiss of tires on pavement.

  The beauty around him drove away dark thoughts and brought back the girl. Elisa Blue. Just the thought of her calmed him. She had helped him up after his jarring parachute landing. Took him to her cottage—a tiny, thatched, rock-walled building about as large as his adjutant’s storeroom. But Elisa’s home was immaculately clean, filled with bluebells, primroses, violets, fuchsias, and live ferns growing to the window light. In his dazed state, he had learned little of her except she was apparently alone. She had served him tea, cleansed his wound. There had been pounding at the door, of course, as anxious farmers trooped to see the heroic pilot. But Randolph shouted them off, claiming, “I’m fit.”

  Actually, he had been captivated by the delicate, ethereal beauty who sat next to him on an old but beautifully covered sofa. She moved close, spoke softly to him of the flowers, the animals and crops as she cleaned his face and wiped blood from his neck. The war was not there; not in the cottage, not in her mind. Oddly, he felt like a little boy again, sick, with his mother leaning over his bed ministering to him. And the girl seemed to exude the force of life; contrapuntal to everything he did in the sky. He had wanted her for himself. Needed her like a dying man needs a transfusion. It could only be for a short time, but he wanted that time. Too soon, they heard the lorry. “You’ll come back, Major?”
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  “Of course. But I may not be able to give you any notice.”

  Her smile had been warm, filled with the promise of life. “I’ll be here, Major. Whenever you choose to come. I have made cherry wine. It’s almost ready.” She took his hand. “Please have summer wine with me.”

  He would never forget that magical moment—the moment he had lost himself in the depths of her blue eyes that were deeper than the Channel he had just flown over. “You have my word.”

  A bump in the road and the little motor car was very nearly airborne. Frantically, Randolph fought the wheel and then geared down. “Like a Nieuport in a crosswind, old girl,” he said to the Jaguar. The little car settled down, purring and racing through the woods like the cat whose name it bore.

  The woods gave way to fields of oats, barley, hops, and wheat as the Jaguar charged into the great plain that extended through the counties of Sussex, Surrey, and Kent. Orchestrated by the breeze, hay, oats, and barley undulated gently in waves like swells running from a storm, while hop bines twisted up tall, rigid poles in fields as densely planted as forests.

  Wheat caught his eye, waving its golden heads in the summer sun. Submarines had put it there. Terrible losses to the undersea prowlers had forced the planting of vast new fields. He gritted his teeth. Gripped the wheel tighter and glanced at the golden fields again. Like Elisa’s hair. A much more pleasant thought. Strange, how the girl’s memory endured—could push the war aside; even submarines, Kochling, the lot.

  He passed more lorries and Bren carriers at such a speed, the vehicles seemed to be at a standstill. Then he entered the part of Kent that was free from spring frosts and had sparse summer rainfall. Fruit country. Orchards of orange pippins, cherries, and plums began to appear, branches sagging heavily with the bounty of the fruit. Here and there in pastures nestled in the orchards, sheep and cattle grazed, sometimes tended by young boys and girls. Invariably, they waved at the flashy little two-seater. Randolph waved back. This was England. This was home. How could a man not love it?

  A few more miles and the North Downs were near. Wye and the Romney Marsh would be just over a low rise to the southeast. He smiled. He was almost home. The narrow dirt road to Fenwyck would appear to his left just before Wye. There it was. Almost hidden by beechwood and elms.

  With a squeal of tires, he whipped the small car hard to the left and entered the lane. He smiled. “Home. Home. . .” he said, over and over.

  Turning off the narrow road, the Jaguar entered a circular drive that led to Fenwyck’s Victorian porch and two great oak doors that opened on the huge manor house. Originally a medieval castle that had dominated the entire countryside, Fenwyck had been destroyed by Oliver Cromwell’s ruthless Ironsides during the civil wars of the seventeenth century. Rebuilt in the haphazard Tudor style of the time, Fenwyck was built of brick with stone trim and timbered gables. In the bright sunlight of early afternoon, the blue slate of the saw-toothed roofline reflected the sun like a choppy sea. The impression was that of size; an enormous three-story building with at least two-dozen chimneys—each of the eighteen bedrooms had its own fireplace—massive timbers, and intricate stonework. The house had been designed, built, enlarged, rebuilt, and lived in by men who wanted the world to know they had enormous wealth and did not care one whit how they spent it. Randolph’s great-great-grandfather Henry who bought the house in 1760, great-grandfather Oliver, grandfather Neville, and father, Walter, had been cut from this cloth.

  The grounds were Elysian. The great lawn, which was over a hundred years old and a full acre in size, was cut into rigid geometric patterns by a low maze of hedge. It was the best time of the year for flowers. Rioting with vivid blues, reds, yellows, and muted combinations of all colors of the rainbow, beds of roses, violets, chrysanthemums, and bluebells bordered the walks and nestled in beds close to the house. In the distance, the sun was caught by treetops that reflected the sunbeams in flashes of silver and gold as the gentle breeze swayed the foliage.

  Randolph drank it all in hungrily like a swimmer too long underwater who surfaces to fill his lungs with sweet air. Then joy unbounded as he saw his brother Lloyd and sister-in-law Bernice waiting for him on the porch. Screeching to a stop in a cloud of dust, Randolph leapt from the car and raced up the steps despite the pain in his knees. Lloyd met him halfway. Then Bernice. In a moment the trio was locked in an embrace, the brothers throwing British restraint to the winds. Then Lloyd stepped back, staring at his brother while Bernice clung to Randolph, kissing and hugging him.

  “God, Randolph, we thought you bought it this time,” Bernice said, voice quavering.

  Randolph did not question her knowledge. With friends in high places in the Air Ministry, his every move was well known to every member of the family. Five feet three inches tall, she only came to his chest. She was still attractive, but her flaxen hair had turned gray and years of worry had left lines trailing off in hard slashes from the corners of her eyes and mouth. She was very thin and felt fragile enough to break. He released her and clasped his brother’s hand.

  At six feet three inches. Brigadier General Lloyd Higgins was two inches taller than Randolph. He was one of the few men Randolph ever had to look up to. The desert sun had done terrible things to his brother. Sparsely built since his youth, Lloyd now appeared to have had most of his flesh burned off his bones, leaving him gaunt and slightly bent. Hanging in creases and folds, his uniform looked as if it had been tailored for a man a stone heavier. His wind-scoured and sun-leathered face was a craggy ruin, large sagging pouches like quarter-moons underscoring his eyes. His Roman nose looked larger than ever, bushy gray brows beetling, and his mouth a colorless slash. But the gray-blue eyes were clear, alert, and gleamed with intelligence.

  Lloyd looked Randolph up and down. “Daresay, you look well, brother. At least fourteen stone, I’d wager.” His eyes ran over the bandage extending from the right temple to Randolph’s cheekbone. “Been in a bit of a scrape, I hear.”

  “A little rough going over the Channel—shot up and bailed out.” Randolph touched the bandage gently with a single finger. “Just a nick I picked up when I quit the old girl.” He smiled with a warm new thought. “But it’s healing very quickly.”

  “Oh, God, Randolph,” Bernice said, kissing his cheek gently.

  “It’s nothing, nothing at all, Bernice. Not even stitched.” Randolph gestured at the door. “I need a tot.”

  “I’ll second that,” Lloyd said, mounting the stairs.

  They were met at the door by a trio of senior servants, headed by the old butler, Dorset. Randolph could not remember when Fenwyck had been without Dorset. He had to be at least seventy-five years old, but admitted to only “six decades and seven.” Of medium height, the old butler had a full head of hair as white as an alpine ski slope, clear, almost unlined skin, and the dignified, rigid bearing of a ramrod. Gripping Randolph’s hand, he said in a clear, resonant voice, “Welcome home, Mr. Higgins.” His dark eyes were brightened uncharacteristically by a film of moisture.

  “Good to see you, Dorset,” Randolph said. Then he shook the hand of Andre Demozay, the chef.

  A fiftyish Frenchman from Marseilles, Demozay had joined the family in 1938. The man had a wife and two children still in France and he claimed the Vichy government would not permit their emigration. A former poilu, Andre was a survivor of the horror of Verdun where a million men died in the carnage. The spirit of France died there with the flower of her youth. “They shall not pass,” old Marshal Petain had cried. And the Germans did not, but the cost was the soul of France.

  Randolph always suspected that Andre had left France to avoid military service but his credentials were never challenged. Randolph dropped the Frenchman’s limp hand and moved to the third servant, Bernice’s personal maid, Emily Burns, who curtsied stiffly.

  Emily was a slender, plain, middle-aged woman from Ledbury in Worchester. Flat-chested and narrow-hipped, the wom
an appeared to be as barren as a Dover chalk cliff. She had never married and Randolph had often wondered if she had ever had a man. Men, lust, and sex seemed out of her ken and she appeared content to serve as Bernice’s maid and, often, her confidante. Similar to Dorset, her whole life was the Higgins family.

  Lloyd led his brother through the huge entry, past the grand staircase, a Chinese Chippendale monstrosity imported from Indochina by their grandfather Neville, down a long, thickly carpeted hall past a dining room, morning room, breakfast room, gun room, business room, finally entering their father’s old study just before a turn in the corridor that led to the servants’ quarters.

  Randolph’s mind ran with warm memories. Around the turn in the hallway, the second door on the right had belonged to Brenda’s maid, Nicole, when the girl was still an “underhouse parlor maid.” He had known that door well, the small room, the bed, the French girl’s smooth, hard body and frenzied passion. The first time she had been only eighteen and he twenty-two. She had been insatiable, like an animal, screeching, writhing, and sometimes clawing. It had gone on for over a year and Randolph always suspected his father had placed Nicole so that her room was conveniently located at the foot of the rear stairs that led directly to Randolph’s room on the second floor at their head. Nevertheless, he broke it off after a year, feeling revulsion at the sordid, pedestrian affair. It was 1917 and he commanded Number 5 Squadron on the Somme. The killing on the Western Front was in full swing and he lost himself in wild flings with women he met in London. In those days, they were everywhere, flaunting their availability in Piccadilly, the Palace, Ritz, Berkeley, and on almost any street, if you wanted that kind. Nicole had been brokenhearted, but soon consoled herself in the arms of a young lieutenant. Soon after, she became Brenda’s personal maid and she was moved upstairs into a room across the hall from Brenda; her maitresse.