by Peter Rimmer
“How you know them is Heinkels, Harry?”
“By their engines.”
“How you know about engines?”
“By listening, Fred. It’s going to be a long night again.”
“What did you do in the last war, Harry?”
“Not much.”
Everyone fell silent. With the dim light now on it was not so bad. They could all hear the ack-ack battery start up from the grounds of Buckingham Palace. The searchlights would be looking up in the dark for the Germans. Harry had told them once two searchlights found an enemy aircraft, the aircraft was caught. Then the guns could fire at a target. The crump of bombs started again. Mrs Coombes took Harry’s hand, gripping it for all she was worth. The lights stayed on. The man on the far side of Mrs Coombes was praying. Harry picked up the whine of an aircraft coming down.
“We got one,” he said, as a matter of fact.
The aircraft exploding when it hit the ground made a different sound to the bombs. Harry waited for the second, bigger explosion when the bombs went off that the German pilot had not unloaded before he was hit by the ack-ack. Harry hoped the pilot wasn’t Klaus’s son. Soon, very soon, Anthony would be over Germany doing the bombing. German civilians would then be praying for their lives. There was mayhem up above them. Safe in the bowels of the underground rail system, without thinking, he had eaten Mrs Coombes’s second cheese sandwich.
Half an hour later they heard the all clear. Mrs Coombes got up and went to the ladies toilet to make tea. She kept a Primus stove permanently in there. They all had their own tin mugs in the group they had made of themselves when the bombing on London first started. They were now as close as people ever got to each other. Real people without all the show and all the lies. People Harry liked and admired as they tried to convince each other they were not afraid. Only when the lights went out did Harry tell them a story. It seemed to help. Not only the people but Harry himself. Had Harry his choice he would have chosen piloting his aircraft where he had the chance to fight back. Cowering in the dark was not his first choice.
When Mrs Coombes came back with the tea there was only condensed milk in a tin and no sugar. Sugar was rationed. It came from overseas, if it got past the German U-boats. Spending the war down below in the ground was the worst experience of Harry’s life. When he went to Southampton in ten days’ time he hoped the port wasn’t in the line of fire. The chances were small. The ships ran from Cape Town at full speed, too fast for the slower U-boats. It would be good to see one of the children again.
“That diamond, Harry, was it the size of a chicken’s egg?”
“Just a bit bigger. A perfect blue-white.”
“Why didn’t you sell it and live like a rich man?”
“I’d seen rich men, Fred. You can have all the money in the world and still be poor. One day, someone in the family will need that diamond. Sarah, thank you for the tea. After the tea and a bit of a wash I’ll be getting into my sleeping bag.”
“How do you sleep so well on the hard ground?”
“Practice,” said Harry smiling to himself. “One day I’ll tell you about the Tutsi in the Congo. How I was forced to live with them for two years as their captive.”
“That’s got to be a tall story, Harry. How did you get to the Congo from Rhodesia and not get lost on the way? The Congo is darkest Africa.”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ll bet it is.”
“Next time when the lights go out.”
“Harry sure can sleep sound on the ground. Every bone in my body aches in the mornings.”
In the morning when Harry went out the entrance to the Tube station, the fires started by the night’s bombing were still burning. An ARP warden in a tin hat, his gas mask slung across his chest, told Harry not to go down Northumberland Avenue where the noise of the fire was coming from. Harry could see the water from a fire hose dousing the flames a street away. There was an unwritten rule when they came above ground not to look at each other.
“See you tonight, Harry.”
“Thanks for the tea, Sarah.”
“Thanks for the sandwiches, Sarah. Tonight’s my surprise.”
With the bowler hat back on his head and walking his rolled umbrella, Harry began the short journey to his office. Once in the sleeping bag he had taken off his pinstripe trousers, obligatory for every clerk in London, folded them carefully and put them under his back. His jacket and waistcoat were easier to take off before he went to bed. They were his pillow. Everyone looked rumpled coming out of the public air-raid shelters and no one complained. The fires were half a mile from his office. The early morning was chilly, reminding Harry the winter was on its way. Once October came the weather changed in England and the sun went out.
Back in his office, looking at his desk and the tin tray spilling over with files, Harry asked himself what the hell he was doing.
“You’re too old for this shit, Harry, my boy. Admit it. You should be on the farm tickling behind the dogs’ ears.”
“Good morning, Mr Brigandshaw.”
“Did you hear that, Katherine?”
“Only the bit about the dogs’ ears.”
“How do you arrive a minute after I get in?”
“Practice. Coffee first then take your bath. Mr Bell wants to see you.”
“Everything all right at your flat? I don’t bother to go to mine during the week.”
“They haven’t hit us yet. How do you stop your trousers creasing?”
Harry smiled, said nothing, and drank a gulp of his coffee that tasted as if it had been made from acorns. The Kenyan coffee had stopped coming a year ago when the stocks in London ran out. The acorn coffee revived him. When Katherine was out of the room Harry looked at himself in the small mirror that surrounded the wall clock in its silver case. He looked worse than he felt. Going into the bathroom, his one luxury next to his office, Harry locked the door out of habit, ran the bath and took off his clothes. Katherine would be sending last night’s suit to be ironed. In the bathroom wardrobe were two changes of clothes. The second change was for the weekend when he took the train to Leatherhead before walking the last part home to Hastings Court. The stables and the clock tower were still in ruins. Most weekends he went to the family graveyard to have a word with his Manderville grandfather to buck himself up.
Soaking in the bath at the office was the best ten minutes of Harry’s day. Restored in body if not in spirit, he dressed himself properly and stepped out the bathroom door.
“Tell Mr Bell I’m ready, Katherine.”
Harry sat down at his desk and started to work, mechanically going through his paces. Everything was done with five copies. Everything he did complied with a government rule. There was no point complaining. It was the way it was done in the Civil Service. Rules. Rules. Rules. Quite quickly, Harry was bored out of his mind.
When Harry looked up Ding-a-ling Bell was standing in front of his desk. Mostly, Katherine left the door to his office open. The adjutant looked serious.
“Didn’t you get any sleep last night, Vic? You look terrible.”
“Thank you, Harry. Not much as a matter of fact. If I’d found nothing I was going to take the day off, or at least the morning. During all the nonsense last night I used a key given us by the Yale lock company. Fits most Yale locks for some reason. Mrs Leadman and everyone in the street had gone to the public shelters. Apart from Jerry up above the place was deserted. Having overheard Hirst-Brown in the Crown tell Henry he had two rooms next to each other at the top back of the house I used a torch to go up the stairs. Inside the house there wasn’t a sound. There was nothing of interest to us in the bedroom. In the dark room I found a box full of what looked like small radios. Twelve of them. All exactly the same. Expensive-looking, which made me wonder what our Rodney was doing with them.”
“Did you bring one?”
“Didn’t want to leave a trace of my visit.”
“If they come over again tonight go back to Mrs L
eadman’s house and take one. I want an expert to have a look.”
“Is that all, Harry?”
“For the moment. Just don’t get caught.”
“It was bad last night.”
“Yes, it was. We got one of them.”
Vic Bell closed the door when he left, leaving Harry pondering, his mind searching for an answer in different directions.
“What does an ex-bank clerk want with twelve radios?” he asked himself.
That night Harry told them about the Tutsi. When the worst was over, Harry produced his bottle of whisky and shared it around. Mrs Coombes liked her whisky. Then he slept through the rest of the night, dreaming about radios. He was in a Tutsi hut listening to the BBC. In the morning the fires were still burning. The same ARP warden was on duty.
“Keep clear of Craven Street,” he was calling.
“Thanks for the whisky, Harry.”
“My pleasure, Fred.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“My secret. Thanks for the sandwiches, Mrs Coombes.”
As usual, Katherine arrived at the office a minute after he arrived.
“Mr Bell wants to see you.”
“Good. Send him in the moment he comes. No, go down to his office. I had a bloody nightmare last night. Then I woke in a cold sweat.”
“I’ll get him. Enjoy your coffee.”
Ding-a-ling Bell arrived in the office before Harry had time for his morning bath. The Tube station smoke from the cigarettes had been thick enough to cut. Harry did not smoke despite Elephant Walk being now largely a tobacco farm. With the war, everyone wanted to smoke.
“They’ve gone, Harry. All twelve of them. Along with our friend’s suitcase.”
“Find out Mrs Leadman’s telephone number.”
“I have it here.”
“Katherine! Try and get through to this number. Tell the operator I’m in a hurry. Ding-a-ling, for goodness sake sit down. You look absolutely worn out. No sleep again?”
“Couldn’t sleep when I got home.”
“You’ll have to find him, Vic. Then you’ll have to follow him.”
“I’ve got your call, Mr Brigandshaw.”
“Mrs Leadman? This is the police. Your tenant Hirst-Brown. Where has he gone?”
“Brighton,” she said. “Paid me a week in advance. What’s he done?”
“A close relative died in the bombing last night, we want to inform Mr Hirst-Brown.”
“Didn’t know he had any relatives.”
“We all have relatives, Mrs Leadman.”
Harry put down the phone. People were strange when it came to authority. Mrs Leadman hadn’t asked how he knew Rodney Hirst-Brown was her tenant.
“Get down to Brighton with his photograph. Ask the police to check all the hotels.”
“What’s he up to, Harry? Why Brighton?”
“The Chain Home stations, radar, along the south coast. There are twelve of them. If the Germans can jam our radar before our boys get in the air, they’ll have a clear run into London during the day. We won’t be able to scramble the fighters knowing where and when to intercept.”
“Do you think a radio device would work?”
“I don’t know. Find those radios, Vic, and we’ll soon find out.”
That night and the next day, the radar screens at RAF Poling were snowed over, stopping the radar supervisor from giving his report to the Fighter Command operations room at Tangmere. There was a hole in the radar cover that was not due to bomb damage or any malfunction of the equipment. RAF Poling were out of commission.
When Vic Bell called Harry from Brighton, Harry was certain Hirst-Brown was involved.
“Get the RAF police to surround Beachy Head but wait for him. He’s knocked out Poling. Beachy Head is the next VH unit down the coast. We’re going blind, Vic. Catch the bastard and find those radios. What they do with him after that I don’t damn well care. And it’s all my bloody fault. Teach me to fraternise with the enemy.”
“It’s his cousin. Not your friend. We all have our jobs to do in a war. Can’t they trace that radio at Poling and pick it up?”
“Probably.”
“Then we don’t have a problem. If it’s jamming the radar, it’s sending out a signal they can follow back to the source. Aren’t radio signals two-way traffic?”
“Don’t ask me. They’ll have to search the surrounding area in my logic. It’s got to be above ground to do the jamming. Did you get any sleep?”
“Last night as a matter of fact. Not one bleep from the air-raid sirens down here. Why do people turn traitor?”
“There’s usually a personal reason. He thinks he lost his job at Rosenzweigs Bank unfairly. Some people can carry a grudge for years. He hates the Jews. The Nazis hate the Jews. Your enemy is my enemy. That sort of crap.”
“We should have picked him up at the start.”
“Can’t arrest a man for doing nothing. We do that and we’re as bad as them. Now we can hang Rodney Hirst-Brown for treason when you find him.”
“You think they’ll hang him?”
“Not for us to decide. We all prefer fighting an enemy we can see. I’m tired, Vic. You and I have been through all this once before. It’s all so pointless. You see, no one will be a winner in the end. They never are. Just find the bastard.”
3
Seven days later, while Harry was waiting to greet his eldest son at Southampton, the Luftwaffe attacked the convoy from South Africa as the ships came round the Isle of Wight, just over forty miles from the radar station of RAF Poling. The South African Navy escort put up a blanket of shellfire as the Stuka dive-bombers came down to attack the ship carrying the newly trained pilots. Many were standing on deck in battledress uniform, life jackets strapped to their chests, berets on their heads, taking in their first close-up sight of home for months. Anthony watched, mesmerised, as his baptism of fire came straight at him, not sure whether to jump over the side and swim to the shore. One of the Stukas blew apart, a direct hit on one of the aircraft’s bombs by the South African Navy. The ship’s captain had turned his ship away from the flight of bombs that exploded in the water. As the Germans pulled out of their dive the pilots at the rail began to cheer. There was a different engine noise in the sky.
“Spitfires,” said Felix Lombard, pointing to three aircraft coming out of the sun.
“How the hell did they know who we were?” said Andrew Bathurst, a fellow passenger. “They only went for our ship.”
“There are people in South Africa who don’t like the British,” said Anthony, his fear subsiding. “My cousin Tinus who’s at Tangmere had his grandfather hanged by the British for treason in the Boer War. Many of the Afrikaners still hate us British. Someone told the Germans we were coming in one ship. Poor sods. Don’t stand a chance. They are good in a dive. Worthless everywhere else, according to Tinus. Up there just could be my cousin.”
“I’ll be glad to step on firm land. Why do they call it the Solent?”
“Don’t ask me. The aircraft look so small up in the sky.”
When Anthony saw his father half an hour later, standing by the dock, he was only mildly surprised. With Anthony in uniform they shook hands.
“Ding-a-ling Bell saw the roster. You’re posted to RAF Boscombe Down. Near Middle Wallop. We have an hour before you get on the train. How’s your mother?”
“Crying, last time we spoke. Beth’s in love with Felix. Felix Lombard, my father, Colonel Brigandshaw. Don’t be blindsided by the rank of colonel. Dad flew with the Royal Flying Corps.”
“There’s a cafeteria at the station.”
“Did you see the attack? Not a scratch.”
“Let me carry your duffel bag. Did it frighten the shit out of you? At least our radar was working. The Germans took it out for a couple of days but it would take more than a couple of souped-up transistor radios to bring down those masts. Shows how desperate they are. The last thing they want is reinforcements of pilots. We’re going to win. Last Septembe
r was the turning point. Should have kept up hitting the airfields and radar. Hitler was a corporal. Churchill says it shows, that when he’s in real trouble he can rely on Corporal Hitler to get him out of the mess. Makes the Führer as mad as hell so he attacked our cities to teach us a lesson. You’d better have breakfast with us, Felix. My daughter’s a bit young for love. Nothing like a uniform! Did you stay in the house at Bishopscourt? When you get some leave you will be welcome at Hastings Court despite the holes in the clock tower.”
“How are you, Dad?”
“Bored stiff. Little excitement last week but generally bored. They don’t want me to fly again. You young chaps are in charge. At least it isn’t raining. This island has the worst climate on earth.”
Anthony smiled, watching his father swing the duffel bag. They all walked to an official-looking bar, with Andrew Bathurst following.
“Do you mind if a cadge a lift, sir?”
“Be my guest. I was lucky to get the car and luckier to get the petrol. We had a chap buggering around with our radar. Combined business with the pleasure of seeing my son. I want a full report on Elephant Walk when you get some leave, Anthony.”
“The dam really is beautiful.”
“That much you did tell me in a letter. Since you wrote, the price of tobacco has doubled. How is it some of us make money out of other people’s adversity? The Tender Meat Company I bought in America. Half of it anyway. Best investment in my life. The Yanks are making a fortune out of this war. The radios we picked up to jam our radar we think were made in America. Shipped straight to England into the wrong hands. They didn’t know, of course. The sooner the Americans realise which side of their bread is buttered the better. Cousin George thinks it’s criminal letting us fight the war alone. That second farm in Virginia’s making money. There’s money in food and tobacco. Everyone get in the car. Good to see you, son. You’ve grown. Makes me feel as old as the hills seeing my eldest son in uniform. How’s the rest of my family? Frank still a pain in the arse?”
