Spectral Shadows

by Robert Westall

  No, it was more like the rhythms of speech. Voices talking. A voice . . .

  Suddenly, the voice burst through again, like fire from a hosed-­down plane; a fire the firemen thought they had under control.

  ‘Meissner, Ritter! What’s holding you up? Are you dead?’

  And then the screams, the godawful, burning screams, drowning the noise of the engines, shaking the airframe, tearing at every joint in our bodies. Nothing, nothing left in the world but screaming.

  ‘Heil Hitler! Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.’

  Kit and I clung together, held on to each other in a barricade of arms, of living flesh and bones. There was nothing else to do. It was all that kept us in existence. That, and the slight sway of the airframe that told our legs that Dadda, somewhere – Dadda a million miles away – was still flying her.

  The screaming gave back a little, like an army preparing for a fresh assault. Fell to a sobbing.

  ‘Mutti, mutti!’

  And we felt another movement in the airframe, towards the tail. Something was moving there, coming slowly towards us. Kit reached down and pulled aside the curtain round his navigator’s table. I thought it odd that his little table-­light was still shining. I thought it odd that it still existed at all. It belonged to the real world. He swivelled it towards the tail, and we both looked.

  A man hung there, crucified.

  For a moment, for me, the universe rocked on its pivot. Then I saw it was only Billy the Kid, face-­mask, oxygen-­hose and intercom-­wires dangling down his front like entrails. His face was that white sheet again, with three holes burnt in it now: his eyes and his silently-­screaming mouth. His freckles stood out like blood splashes. And he wasn’t crucified; his arms were braced against the airframe to hold himself up. As we watched, he drew in a shuddering breath and screamed, silently, again. He wasn’t looking at us; he wasn’t looking anywhere.

  Somehow, Kit started towards him. Immediately, Billy let go of one side of the airframe. He had a hatchet in his hand; the little hatchet many rear-­gunners carry to hack their way out of the turret, in case of a crash. I wanted to run away. But a world without Kit was unthinkable, and Kit was still advancing on Billy.

  The hatchet came up; the hatchet came down, on Kit’s head. Fortunately, it struck the upper airframe stringers in its descent and lost most of its force. Kit grabbed Billy’s wrist, and the next second we were all three struggling on the Duralumin walkway, a mass of sheepskin and bony, painful knees, air-­hoses and radio-­cables. Then we had hold of one of his arms each, and the hatchet was lying at our feet. Kit kicked it from where he lay, and it vanished into the darkness. He grimaced at me; his face-­mask had worked loose. Then he nodded up the fuselage to where the rest bed was bolted. Rest bed, ha-­ha. Lie-­and-­groan bed; bleed-­your-­life-­away-­and-your-­mates-­can’t-­stop-­it bed. We got Billy there. He was no longer struggling very hard. His mouth was open and there were long strands of saliva festooning it.

  ‘Hold him down,’ Kit mouthed.

  I buried my head in Billy’s shoulder, wrapped my arms and legs round his and clung on. Now I sensed Dadda was bending over us; I felt better. God, was it Matt doing the ground-­hopping? Could Matt really fly this crate like that? I saw the dim glow from the navigator’s light glinting on the syringe in Dadda’s hand; saw the needle jab into Billy’s rounded, straining backside. His shirt and trousers had come apart, and I could see the pale, shining, girlish skin of his back. Billy stiffened at the pain of the needle, then almost immediately began to relax. Next second, there was an agonizing bee-­sting in my own backside.

  ‘Hey,’ I shouted, ‘that’s not fair!’

  ‘Sorry,’ mouthed Dadda. ‘Meant for him.’ He pointed at Billy.

  I was getting all weak and warm and drowsy, as the morphia took over. I was frightened I would be too weak to hold Billy; but he had had his jab first: he was even drowsier than me.

  That was the last I knew. As the terrible screaming started again, I slipped away from it into warm darkness.

  When I came round there was no noise but the roar of the engines. Billy the Kid was still out cold, snoring gently. I wondered who had drawn the great big blue marks under his eyes with a pencil. Kit was sitting at his table, still wearily doing his sums. He had no need of his navigator’s light now, because sunshine – early, horizontal sunshine – was streaming in through our dirty triangular windows. I made some kind of movement with my arm, and at the third time he saw and came over.

  ‘That noise has stopped,’ I mouthed.

  ‘Halfway across the North Sea. Got weaker and weaker. Then it . . . seemed to give up.’ He held up five fingers. ‘Five minutes to Oadby.’

  ‘Any damage?’

  Kit tried to smile, and gave up. The guy with the blue pencil who’d been drawing on Billy’s face had been drawing on Kit’s too. With a slightly shaky hand, he gave me a flask-top of cold coffee and said, ‘No damage. Not a bullet hole. I’ve checked.’

  ‘We’re going to get this home?’

  ‘Dadda says this crate will always get home.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  But Kit got up and hurried away forward. I heard the note of the engines change, and felt the aircraft tremble as the flaps went down.

  Dadda’s landing was a perfect three-­pointer; never a bounce. We shook Billy awake, got out on to the tarmac and stood round and peed on the tail-­wheel. I caught myself wishing our pee was pure sulphuric acid, and that the tail-wheel would dissolve and all S-­Sugar with it.

  The ground-­crew sergeant came up, glancing at wings, tail, everything.

  ‘Good trip?’

  ‘Piece of cake,’ said Dadda. He grinned; dried-­up saliva wrinkled his lips into strange patterns. ‘But the RT needs seeing to. And there’s no point in arguing this time – it’s smashed to hell.’

  Kit actually laughed, even if he couldn’t quite finish it.

  The debriefing WAAF kept asking me what happened, and I kept on saying, ‘Nothing. Piece of cake.’

  I came up slowly out of the depths of sleep. The barrack-room was cold and empty. Waking up was a mistake. I’d been happy asleep.

  I went to the window. Autumn Fenland mist. Boundary fence. Mud this side and mud beyond, fading away into infinity. Through the fence a few dirty, ragged sheep stared at me, chewing. I despised them for their keen desire to stay alive. Personally, for the first time, I wished to be dead. Oh, not your Pearly Gates opening and St Peter waiting to pin a gong on you. I’d settle for lovely, black-­velvety nothing. Not see, not feel, not think. I tried to remember Clitheroe Grammar School, Mum and Dad, and a girl called Betty who wrote to me every week. But the memory of them stayed grey and remote, like photographs in a tattered copy of the Daily Mail, blowing around the dispersals.

  This, I thought, without much real interest, was the effect of flying in Blackham’s Wimpey. This was the huddled, inert state that Reaper’s crew had reached, and Edwards’, just before they got the chop. In this state, the chop was inevitable. Dieter Gehlen, dead, was claiming more victims than ever. He was deadlier in Blackham’s Wimpey than he had ever been in a Junkers 88. To the glory of the Fatherland. And there was no reason why he should not continue to claim victims. Blackham’s Wimpey, as Dadda had observed, would always come home. Probably unmarked. It could fly two more whole tours. How Gehlen’s ghost managed to keep flak away, and other Jerry night-­fighters, God alone knew. But obviously if Blackham’s Wimpey bought it, Gehlen’s ghost bought it too. And that would not be in the scheme of things . . .

  I realized that what I was thinking was quite insane. The only comfort was that we six could huddle in a group, sharing a common insanity. For a bit. Like Reaper’s lot; like Edwards’ . . . the names tolled in my head like a funeral bell that would not stop.

  Why hadn’t Reaper reported it? He had, the only way anyone would believe. He had told the ground-­crew sergeant to see to the RT. Something was wrong with it. Oh my, was something wrong with it! But
what else could Reaper have done? Told Groupie his squadron contained a haunted bomber? That would have got him one of two rewards: either sitting flying a bomber in Colchester mental hospital, like Blackham, or else found to be LMF – lacking in moral fibre – reduced to the rank of AC2 – the lowest rank of erk – and put on cleaning out the bogs on your own station, with all your mates either trying to look you in the face or trying not to look you in the face. That crafty bastard Gehlen had it all taped. My eyes filled with tears of helpless rage. I’d like to kill Gehlen, for what he was doing. But that wasn’t possible, was it?

  The barrack-­room door was flung open with a bang, making me jump a yard in the air. I hadn’t realized I had that amount of life left in me. It was Kit. He didn’t look as if he wished he was dead. Instead, he looked slightly and gleefully insane. I retired into my pit, and he sat on the end of it, swinging his flying-­boots.

  ‘You look terrible,’ he said.

  ‘I feel terrible.’

  ‘What you reckon to last night, then?’

  ‘Ghost?’ I said feebly.

  ‘That bastard knew what he was doing.’ He spoke as if Gehlen was a living man. ‘He kept on playing himself different ways, for maximum possible effect. Like a dirty old man flashing himself to schoolgirls in the park.’

  ‘How did you cope?’

  ‘Oh, we all got in a bunch. I stood behind Dadda’s seat, with a hand on Matt’s shoulder. Being three together wasn’t so bad. It was being alone in the tail that did for poor old Billy.’

  ‘What about Paul in the front?’

  ‘We kept kicking him up the backside. That kept him going. And he popped away at the light flak and searchlights. He didn’t hit a thing, but he said it relieved his feelings. He’s out there now, fiddling with his motorbike. Doing wheelies up the runway and driving the WO mad.’

  ‘It must help to be mad,’ I said. ‘How’s Billy?’

  ‘No worse than you. He’s still with us; just.’ He stared out of the window. Then he said, ‘That bloody thing didn’t scare Dadda at all, you know. All Dadda said was “poor soul”. That’s what kept me going. That, and the fact that the bastard went on too long. When he was starting to fade, at the end, he sounded like a worn-­out gramophone record. I got up enough nerve to walk to the back of the crate after that. You and Billy were curled up like a pair of babes in the wood. I even took a spell in the back turret. Didn’t see anything. After that thing, what’s a Jerry fighter?’

  ‘Well, Gehlen’s done for me,’ I said. ‘Like he did for Reaper and Edwards . . .’

  Kit gave me a long hard stare. ‘I’ve got news for you, son. Just had a report on C-­Charlie. She’s in need of two new engines. Next time we go out, we go out in Blackham’s again.’

  My world fell in. I didn’t think I could have felt worse, but I did. ‘I’m not going. It’s LMF for me. How do you hold a bog brush?’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Kit. ‘But d’you fancy helping me do something first? I scrounged this out of Paul’s bike.’ He pulled a stubby, flat whisky bottle out of his sagging tunic pocket. It was full of clear liquid. He let me smell it. Petrol.

  ‘You don’t mean—’

  ‘I bloody do! Burn the sod out. If S-­Sugar burns up, Gehlen can waste his time haunting the aircraft knacker’s yard.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare . . .’

  ‘Try and stop me. What can they do to us, even if they can prove it wasn’t a careless fag-­end? How about three years in a nice quiet cell?’

  ‘Bliss,’ I said, feeling suddenly a whole lot better. ‘When?’

  ‘Now,’ said Kit. ‘Before the ground-­crew get to work on her. Dadda brought her home on full boost; there’s hardly a cupful of petrol in her. She won’t blow up and kill anybody, not unless somebody tries to be a hero with the fire-extinguisher – and they can go and hold old Gehlen’s hand.’ His eyes still had that slightly mad shine, but I went with him. Except for Dadda, we all did, even Billy. Especially Billy.

  There seemed not to be a soul about, as we walked to the dis­persals across the wet, misty field. But I suppose there are always mechanics working inside the crates, and cosy, nosy buggers looking out of office windows. Which probably accounts for what happened later. You don’t normally get a complete aircrew walking out to a crate the morning after an op. S-­Sugar loomed up suddenly, as if she were a ghost. From the outside, she looked just like any other Wimpey; that wedgy, faithful-­doggy profile. For a moment my mind did a double-­take about damaging His Majesty’s property. But Blackham’s Wimpey didn’t really belong to His Majesty any more, though of course His Majesty didn’t know it. Matt reached up and pulled down the hatch and ladder. For no particular reason, I climbed in first.

  I’d never smelt a bomber the morning after a raid before. Normally, the ground-­crew hose them out with disinfectant before we see them again. But this morning S-­Sugar smelt as we had left her: petrol, cordite from the guns, a stronger kind of cordite from the German flak, the stench of vomit, the greater stench of the cold, black Elsan, the stink of sweaty socks and another smell that smells like the smell of blue funk. Only a burning Wimpey smells worse, when the crew’s still inside.

  It was dark, too. Thick dark. Not much pale yellow light showed through the smeared windscreen.

  The moment I began to move up the fuselage, I stopped. There was something alive in there. I always know when there’s something alive in a place. We have an old grey moggy which hangs round our barrack-­room. She’s fond of lurking, invisible, among the grey blankets. I always know she’s there, somehow, but she always gives me a fright when she jumps out, purring. Now there was something in S-­Sugar, and it wasn’t a moggy. Much bigger than a moggy. The hair rose on the back of my neck. I tingled all over.

  There was a murmur from beyond the rear of the cockpit. The wind was blowing a bit, rocking the Wimpey on her wheels and keening through struts and aerials, but the murmuring was louder than the keening, though half lost in it. It seemed to be coming from somewhere near the RT; softly, rhythmically. I strained to hear it, and the hair on my neck rose afresh. God, this couldn’t be happening.

  The murmuring was in German . . .

  ‘You have done well, Dieter. You have done very well. Nobody could have asked for more courage and loyalty than you have shown. Now you—’

  ‘What the hell . . . ?’ Kit, coming up the ladder, bumped into my back. One look at my face silenced him. And Matt and Paul and Billy, as they ascended one by one. We all listened, painfully holding our breath.

  ‘It is time to go now, Dieter. It was terrible, dying, but now you are free. You have done your duty. Go now where there is no more Führer, no more British terror-­flyers . . .’

  A ghost talking to itself. No, I just couldn’t believe it. My mind was giving way about once an hour these days; almost as regular as breathing.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, let’s get it over with,’ said Billy savagely from the back. Bravely, from the back, he began to push Paul and Matt and Kit and me up the fuselage. He mightn’t have been so keen, if he’d been in front. I tell you, I was fighting like hell to get back and out of there. Kit was giggling in my ear, wildly.

  But in spite of my struggles, I was pushed nearer and nearer the wrecked RT set. There was a too-­dark shadow behind the set. I couldn’t quite see what it was, because Kit’s navigator’s curtain was in the way, but I knew damned well that that shadow wasn’t shadow, that that shadow shouldn’t be there. It looked . . . leathery. Like a crouched airman in leathers.

  Then, starting with a near-­imperceptible motion, it rose and rose, and looked at us, with a dead-­white face under a rounded leather flying-­helmet.

  I shut my eyes and screamed again. My throat was already sore with screaming. A very solid hand reached out towards me, grabbed my arm.

  ‘Steady, Gary,’ said Dadda.

  He had been there almost since we landed, seven hours before. Just got debriefed, then went to his billet to fetch a couple of things and
straight back into the stinking bowels of S-­Sugar. He clutched the few things against his flying-­jacket now, with one hand. A fair-­sized black book, and what looked like a string of fat black beads, with a little black cross on one end. ‘Relics of Maynooth,’ he said, with a wry, weary grin.

  ‘I thought you’d be back,’ he added. ‘And that will be petrol in the whisky bottle, young Kit? I knew I didn’t have all that much time.’ Kit had the grace to gape.

  ‘Give me that bottle, Kit.’

  ‘I’m going to bloody do it!’ said Kit, very defiant.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Dadda. ‘I’m going to do it. I’m skipper.’ Kit was so shocked, he forgot to argue.

  Dadda turned and looked at the smashed RT set. ‘I’ve tried to persuade him to go.’ He sighed. ‘But he’s very young, and very proud, and very brave, and, sadly, very much in love with his beloved Führer. I don’t think I’ve done any good, with all my talking.’

  ‘Has he said anything?’ asked Billy, curious.

  ‘No,’ said Dadda. ‘Nothing at all. It’s been me doing all the talking. Now let me have one more go, like good lads. Get outside and wait for me. And stand well back.’ He began to kick and scrape together on the walkway the debris of the night: greaseproof paper from the corned beef sandwiches, discarded maps and navigational instructions, my own Morse-­code pad. Then, thoughtfully, he unscrewed the whisky bottle and poured out the clear liquid.

  The sharp, dangerous smell of petrol filled our nostrils.

  We bundled out, suddenly chattering like schoolboys on Bonfire Night, full of a sick sense of a treat to come. There were a few erks cycling past through the thinning mist, and some ground-­crew kicking their heels under A-­Able in the next pan. That sobered us. There were more people about than we’d thought. We spotted Dadda’s old thirty-­hundredweight parked to one side of the perimeter track, and hung about there. A ground-­crew WO approached with steady ringing tread.