by Ken Follett
‘Exactly.’ He was drunk enough to be honest.
She saw her opportunity. ‘How long do you think we should punish one another?’
‘Punish?’ he said. ‘Who’s punishing anyone?’
‘We’re punishing each other by staying married. We should get divorced, as sensible people do.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘But this time on a Saturday night is not the best moment to discuss it.’
Her hopes rose. ‘Why don’t I come and see you?’ she said. ‘When we’re both fresh – and sober.’
He hesitated. ‘All right.’
She pressed her advantage eagerly. ‘How about tomorrow morning?’
‘All right.’
‘I’ll see you after church. Say twelve noon?’
‘All right,’ said Boy.
(iv)
As Woody was walking Bella home through Hyde Park, to a friend’s flat in South Kensington, she kissed him.
He had not done this since Joanne died. At first he froze. He liked Bella a lot: she was the smartest girl he had met since Joanne. And the way she had clung to him while they were slow-dancing had let him know he could kiss her if he wanted to. All the same he had been holding back. He kept thinking about Joanne.
Then Bella took the initiative.
She opened her mouth and he tasted her tongue, but that only made him think of Joanne kissing him that way. It was only two and a half years since she had died.
His brain was forming words of polite rejection when his body took over. He was suddenly consumed with desire. He began to kiss her back hungrily.
She responded eagerly to his excess of passion. She took both his hands and put them on her breasts, which were large and soft. He groaned helplessly.
It was dark and he could hardly see but he realized, by the half-smothered sounds coming from the surrounding vegetation, that there were numerous couples doing similar things nearby.
She pressed her body against his, and he knew she could feel his erection. He was so excited he felt he would ejaculate any second. She seemed as madly aroused as he was. He felt her unbuttoning his pants with frantic fingers. Her hands were cool on his hot penis. She eased it out of his clothing, then, to his surprise and delight, she knelt down. As soon as her lips closed over the head, he spurted uncontrollably into her mouth. She sucked and licked feverishly as he did so.
When the climax was over she continued to kiss it until it softened. Then she gently put it away and stood up.
‘That was exciting,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
He had been about to thank her. Instead, he put his arms around her and pulled her close. He felt so grateful to her that he could have wept. He had not realized how badly he needed a woman’s affection tonight. Some kind of shadow had been lifted from him. ‘I can’t tell you . . .’ he began, but he could not find words to explain how much it meant to him.
‘Then don’t,’ she said. ‘I know, anyway. I could feel it.’ They walked to her building. At the door he said: ‘Can we—’ She put a finger on his lips to silence him. ‘Go and win the war,’ she said.
Then she went inside.
(v)
When Daisy went to a Sunday service, which was not often, she now avoided the elite churches of the West End, whose congregations had snubbed her, and instead caught the Tube to Aldgate and attended the Calvary Gospel Hall. The doctrinal differences were wide, but they did not matter to her. The singing was better in the East End.
She and Lloyd arrived separately. People in Aldgate knew who she was, and they liked having a rogue aristocrat sitting on one of their cheap seats; but it would have been pushing their tolerance too far for a married-and-separated woman to walk in on the arm of her paramour. Ethel’s brother Billy had said: ‘Jesus did not condemn the adulteress, but he did tell her to sin no more.’
During the service she thought about Boy. Had he really meant last night’s conciliatory words, or were they just the softness of the drunken moment? Boy had even shaken hands with Lloyd as he left. Surely that meant forgiveness? But she told herself not to let her hopes rise. Boy was the most completely self-absorbed person she had ever known, worse than his father or her brother Greg.
After church Daisy often went to Eth Leckwith’s house for Sunday dinner, but today she left Lloyd to his family and hurried away.
She returned to the West End and knocked on the door of her husband’s house in Mayfair. The butler showed her into the morning room.
Boy came in shouting. ‘What the hell is this?’ he roared, and he threw a newspaper at her.
She had seen him in this mood plenty of times, and she was not afraid of him. Only once had he raised a hand to strike her. She had seized a heavy candlestick and threatened to bop him.’ It had not happened again.
Though not scared, she was disappointed. He had been in such a good mood last night. But perhaps he might still listen to reason.
‘What has happened to displease you?’ she said calmly.
‘Look at that bloody paper.’
She bent and picked it up. It was today’s edition of the Sunday Mirror, a popular left-wing tabloid. On the front page was a photograph of Boy’s new horse, Lucky Laddie, and the headline:
LUCKY LADDIE WORTH 28 COAL MINERS
The story of Boy’s record-breaking purchase had appeared in yesterday’s press, but today the Mirror had an outraged opinion piece, pointing out that the price of the horse, £8,400, was exactly twenty-eight times the £300 standard compensation paid to the widow of a miner who died in a pit accident.
And the Fitzherbert family wealth came from coal mines.
Boy said: ‘My father is furious. He was hoping to be Foreign Secretary in the postwar government. This has probably ruined his chances.’
Daisy said in exasperation: ‘Boy, kindly explain why this is my fault?’
‘Look who wrote the damned thing!’
Daisy looked.
BY BILLY WILLIAMS
MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR ABEROWEN
Boy said: ‘Your boyfriend’s uncle!’
‘Do you imagine he consults me before writing his articles?’
He wagged a finger. ‘For some reason, that family hates us!’
‘They think it’s unfair that you should make so much money from coal, when the miners themselves get such a raw deal. There is a war on, you know.’
‘You live on inherited money,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t see much sign of wartime austerity at your Piccadilly apartment last night.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But I gave a party for the troops. You spent a fortune on a horse.’
‘It’s my money!’
‘But you got it from coal.’
‘You’ve spent so much time in bed with that Williams bastard that you’ve become a bloody Bolshevik.’
‘And that’s one more thing that’s driving us apart. Boy, do you really want to stay married to me? You could find someone who suits you. Half the girls in London would love to be Viscountess Aberowen.’
‘I won’t do anything for that damned Williams family. Anyway, I heard last night that your boyfriend wants to be a Member of Parliament.’
‘He’ll make a great one.’
‘Not with you in tow. He won’t even get elected. He’s a bloody socialist. You’re an ex-Fascist.’
‘I’ve thought about this. I know it’s a bit of a problem—’
‘Problem? It’s an insuperable barrier. Wait till the papers get that story! You’ll be crucified the way I’ve been today.’
‘I suppose you’ll give the story to the Daily Mail.’
‘I won’t need to – his opponents will do that. You mark my words. With you by his side, Lloyd Williams doesn’t stand a bloody chance.’
(vi)
For the first five days of June, Lieutenant Woody Dewar and his platoon of paratroopers, plus a thousand or so others, were isolated at an airfield somewhere north-west of London. An aircraft hangar had been converted into a gian
t dormitory with hundreds of cots in long rows. There were movies and jazz records to entertain them while they waited.
Their objective was Normandy. By means of elaborate deception plans, the Allies had tried to convince the German High Command that the target would be two hundred miles north-east at Calais. If the Germans had been fooled, the invasion force would meet relatively light resistance, at least for the first few hours.
The paratroopers were to be the first wave, in the middle of the night. The second wave would be the main force of 130,000 men, aboard a fleet of five thousand vessels, landing on the beaches of Normandy at dawn. By then, the paratroopers should have already destroyed inland strongpoints and taken control of key transport links.
Woody’s platoon had to capture a bridge across a river in a small town called Eglise-des-Soeurs, ten miles inland. When they had done so, they had to keep control of the bridge, blocking any German units that might be sent to reinforce the beach, until the main invasion force caught up with them. At all costs they must prevent the Germans from blowing up the bridge.
While they waited for the green light, Ace Webber ran a marathon poker game, winning a thousand dollars and losing it again. Lefty Cameron obsessively cleaned and oiled his lightweight M1 semiautomatic carbine, the paratrooper model with a folding stock. Lonnie Callaghan and Tony Bonanio, who did not like one another, went to mass together every day. Sneaky Pete Schneider sharpened the commando knife he had bought in London until he could have shaved with it. Patrick Timothy, who looked like Clark Gable and had a similar moustache, played a ukulele, the same tune over and over again, driving everybody crazy. Sergeant Defoe wrote long letters to his wife, then tore them up and started again. Mack Trulove and Smoking Joe Morgan cropped and shaved each other’s hair, believing that would make it easier for the medics to deal with head injuries.
Most of them had nicknames. Woody had discovered that his own was Scotch.
D-Day was set for Sunday 4 June, then postponed because of bad weather.
On Monday 5 June, in the evening, the colonel made a speech. ‘Men!’ he shouted. ‘Tonight is the night we invade France!’
They roared their approval. Woody thought it was ironic. They were safe and warm here, but they could hardly wait to get over there, jump out of airplanes, and land in the arms of enemy troops who wanted to kill them.
They were given a special meal, all they could eat, steak, pork, chicken, fries, ice cream. Woody did not want any. He had more idea than the men of what was ahead of him, and he did not want to do it on a full stomach. He got coffee and a donut. The coffee was American, fragrant and delicious, unlike the frightful brew served up by the British, when they had any coffee at all.
He took off his boots and lay down on his cot. He thought about Bella Hernandez, her lopsided smile and her soft breasts.
Next thing he knew, a hooter was sounding.
For a moment, Woody thought he was waking from a bad dream in which he was going into battle to kill people. Then he realized it was true.
They all put on their jump suits and assembled their equipment. They had too much. Some of it was essential: a carbine with 150 rounds of .30 ammunition; anti-tank grenades; a small bomb known as a Gammon grenade; K-rations; water purifying tablets; a first-aid kit with morphine. Other things they might have done without: an entrenching tool, shaving kit, a French phrase book. They were so overloaded that the smaller men struggled to walk to the planes lined up on the runway in the dark.
Their transport aircraft were C-47 Skytrains. To Woody’s surprise, he saw by the dim lights that they had all been painted with distinctive black and white stripes. The pilot of his aircraft, a bad-tempered Midwesterner called Captain Bonner, said: ‘That’s to prevent us being shot down by our own goddamn side.’
Before boarding, the men were weighed. Donegan and Bonanio both had disassembled bazookas packed in bags that dangled from their legs, adding eighty pounds to their weight. As the total mounted, Captain Bonner became angry. ‘You’re overloading me!’ he snarled at Woody. ‘I won’t get this motherfucker off the ground!’
‘Not my decision, Captain,’ Woody said. ‘Talk to the colonel.’
Sergeant Defoe boarded first and went to the front of the plane, taking a seat beside the open arch leading to the flight deck. He would be the last to jump. Any man who developed a last-minute reluctance to leap into the night would be helped along with a good shove from Defoe.
Donegan and Bonanio, carrying the leg bags holding their bazookas as well as everything else, had to be helped up the steps. Woody as platoon commander boarded last. He would be first out, and first on the ground.
The interior was a tube with a row of simple metal seats on either side. The men had trouble fastening seat belts around their equipment, and some did not bother. The door closed and the engines roared into life.
Woody felt excited as well as scared. Against all reason, he felt eager for the battle to come. To his surprise he found himself impatient to get down on the ground, meet the enemy, and fire his weapons. He wanted the waiting to be over.
He wondered if he would ever see Bella Hernandez again.
He thought he could feel the plane straining as it lumbered down the runway. Painfully, it picked up speed. It seemed to rumble along on the ground for ever. Woody found himself wondering how long the damn runway was anyhow. Then at last it lifted. There was little sensation of flying, and he thought the plane must be remaining just a few feet above the ground. Then he looked out. He was sitting by the rearmost of the seven windows, next to the door, and he could see the shrouded lights of the base dropping away. They were airborne.
The sky was overcast, but the clouds were faintly luminous, presumably because the moon had risen beyond them. There was a blue light at the tip of each wing, and Woody could see as his plane moved into formation with others, forming a giant V shape.
The cabin was so noisy that men had to shout into one another’s ears to be heard, and conversation soon ceased. They all shifted in their hard seats, trying in vain to get comfortable. Some closed their eyes, but Woody doubted that anyone actually slept.
They were flying low, not much above a thousand feet, and occasionally Woody saw the dull pewter gleam of rivers and lakes. At one point he glimpsed a crowd of people, hundreds of faces all staring up at the planes roaring overhead. Woody knew that more than a thousand aircraft were flying over southern England at the same time, and he realized it must be a remarkable sight. It occurred to him that those people were watching history being made, and he was part of it.
After half an hour they crossed the English beach resorts and were over the sea. For a moment the moon shone through a break in the cloud, and Woody saw the ships. He could hardly believe what he was looking at. It was a floating town, vessels of all sizes sailing in ragged rows like assorted houses in city streets, thousands of them, as far as the eye could see. Before he could call the attention of his comrades to the remarkable sight, the clouds covered the moon again and the vision was gone, like a dream.
The planes headed right in a long curve, aiming to hit France to the west of the drop area and then follow the coastline eastwards, checking position by terrain features to ensure the paratroopers landed where they should.
The Channel Islands, British though closer to France, had been occupied by Germany at the end of the Battle of France in 1940; and now, as the armada overflew the islands, German anti-aircraft guns opened fire. At such a low altitude the Skytrains were terribly vulnerable. Woody realized he could be killed even before he reached the battlefield. He would hate to die pointlessly.
Captain Bonner zigzagged to avoid the flak. Woody was glad he did, but the effect on the men was unfortunate. They all felt airsick, Woody included. Patrick Timothy was the first to succumb, and vomited on the floor. The foul smell made others feel worse. Sneaky Pete threw up next, then several men all at once. They had stuffed themselves with steak and ice cream, all of which now came back up. The stink was appalling a
nd the floor became disgustingly slippery.
The flight path straightened as they left the islands behind. A few minutes later the French coast appeared. The plane banked and turned left. The co-pilot got up from his seat and spoke in the ear of Sergeant Defoe, who turned to the platoon and held up ten fingers. Ten minutes to drop.
The plane slowed from its cruising speed of 160mph to the approximate speed for a parachute jump, about 100mph.
Suddenly they entered fog. It was heavy enough to blot out the blue light at the tip of the wing. Woody’s heart raced. For planes flying in close formation this was very dangerous. How tragic it would be to die in a plane crash, not even in combat. But Bonner could do nothing but fly straight and level and hope for the best. Any change of direction would cause a collision.
The plane left the fog bank as suddenly as it had entered it. To either side, the other planes were still miraculously in formation.
Almost immediately, anti-aircraft fire broke out, the flak exploding in deadly blossoms among the serried planes. In these circumstances, Woody knew, the pilot’s orders were to maintain speed and fly straight to the target zone. But Bonner defied orders and broke formation. The roar of the engines went to full throttle. He began to zigzag again. The nose of the plane dipped as he tried for more speed. Looking out of the window, Woody saw that many other pilots had been equally undisciplined. They could not control the urge to save their own lives.
The red light went on over the door: four minutes to go.
Woody felt certain the crew had put the light on too soon, desperate to dump their troops and fly to safety. But they had the charts and he could not argue.
He got to his feet. ‘Stand up and hook!’ he yelled. Most of the men could not hear him, but they knew what he was saying. They got up, and each man clipped his static line to the overhead cable, so that he could not be thrown through the door accidentally. The door opened, and the wind roared in. The plane was still going too fast. Jumping at this speed was unpleasant, but that was not the main problem. They would land farther apart, and it would take Woody much longer to find his men on the ground. His approach to his objective would be delayed. He would begin his mission behind schedule. He cursed Bonner.
