‘No.’
There’d been nothing in the word except finality.
*
In his room in the Officers’ Mess of RAF Llandow, Mick scanned the newspaper just delivered by his ‘batman’ – a sort of ‘servant’ to which, as an officer, Mick was now entitled: a young RAF airman who would be taking care of his laundry, uniform and flying kit, a cup of tea with his 5am wakeup call… As Mick read from item to item – the Japs looking unstoppable in the Pacific – he remembered Sergeant Eadie Best’s expert assessment: Five types of shit? It looked more like ten and that was just page one. From the way each story was written, the Allied situation seemed hopeful, each Allied action full of determination and resilience. But put all the stories together, the bottom line was that the Japanese were still just tearing further and further south. Towards Australia. Where Mick’d be headed right now except that prick in Bournemouth said he had to join a bloody squadron here before he could bloody ask!
The airman spoke up as he neatened Mick’s gear locker. ‘’Ow’d y’first flight go then, suh?’
‘Eh? Oh, well enough, I s’pose… My instructor doesn’t say much.’
The airman chuckled.
Mick peered across the top of the paper. ‘What’s the joke?’
‘Dorn’t worry about Squadron Leader Rickard, suh…’
‘Whaddya mean?’
‘Dorn’t take it personal, suh.’
Mick looked squarely up from the newspaper now. ‘…What?’
The airman considered one of Mick’s flying boots, polished it slightly. ‘H’dorn’t like making friends with other pilots is all, suh. Seems he lost a few…’
‘Pilots?’
The airman kept polishing. ‘Friends, suh.’
May 1942
Taking off and landing the Spitfire Mark II demanded the utmost delicacy – the slightest mishap likely to be fatal. Once airborne though, Mick found from the very first, flying the Spitfire was easy. Actually easy. It was effortlessly agile, even more responsive than the Hurricane and that had been a wonderful craft. You could whip the Spit through any hair-raising manoeuvre you felt like with the subtlest movement of the joystick handle between your index finger and thumb – as if you merely had to think about it and the Spitfire did it. After the Wirraway, it was viceless. After the Fairey Battle, a joy. Pure joy – just like the Tiger Moth. Except with nearly ten times more engine power.
And that was all very well, Mick discovered on only his third time up, when, without warning and as usual without a word, Rickard showed him the single reason why the Spit had to be easy for its fully-trained new pilot to fly: Scything down out of the sun onto Mick’s tail in a simulated attack, no matter what Mick did for 15 long and dreadful minutes he could not shake Rickard off. Clearly the minimal mental effort required to fly the Spit was for the simple reason that you had no time to think about flying; you had to devote your whole brain, your whole body, not to flying but to fighting. In Mick’s case, to surviving. Or trying to… Mick flick-rolled into dives this way and that, looped, barrel-rolled, zoomed up into stall-turns, pulling through some turns so tight he blacked out with g-forces for long moments, nothing, nothing worked; Rickard stuck to his tail. Until the moment he was simply no longer there, all around Mick empty sky. Though in those moments Mick knew he hadn’t shaken Rickard; Rickard was simply saying, without a word, ‘There: you’re dead.’
*
‘Hello, RAF Llandow? OTU Adjutant, please… Oh, this is he? Jolly good. Look, sorry to bother you, old boy. My name’s Jessop, I’m attached to the Commonwealth Aircrew Centre in Bournemouth – yes , terrible business… Yes, well I expect I must have displeased some deity or other in a past life… Yes, quite, my dear fellow, but all jokes aside the reason I’m putting this call through to your good self is that a rather troublesome memo has landed in the old in-tray this end concerning one of our dear Colonial brethren, and our file on him indicates he’s currently with you chaps… Yes, an Australian, one Pilot Officer O’Regan, M., 217831, ring a bell? Oh, jolly good… Look, the long and the short of it is he’s recently caused an awful stink…
‘Yes, y’see, he was, of late, at his AFU up in Watton where he finished his training schedule by tangling with a Jerry – when he shouldn’t have, not in training… Yes, a Hun, old boy – a Messerschmitt Bf109F, to be precise… Yes, highly irregular… In any case, the report says young Michael landed his aircraft, a Miles Master, but it was a write-off, as was his instructor. Chap bought it. …Yes, bad business indeed and Fighter Command’s taken a decidedly dim view of the whole thing, as you might imagine, not so much for the loss of the aircraft as of the instructor. …No, I quite agree with you, old boy: Each one of those chaps is a golden goose, turning out all the new pilots they do. …My thoughts exactly; if there’s a single more valuable human asset in the RAF I certainly can’t bring it to mind… No, and I expect the Jerries’d be awarding their chap the Iron Cross for dispatching one, that is, if their chap had survived. Which he did not… No, no he was beating a rather hasty exit, it would seem, but only got as far as the coast – near Caister-on-Sea – where he crashed, or rather, force-landed. Yes, in the Broads. Funny thing is by all reports the chap looked in fairly decent physical condition when they prised open the cockpit except he’d broken his neck…
‘Yes, and that might have been that – as they say in the Classics – except that our crash investigation chaps pulled a spent point-303 machine-gun bullet out of the 109’s engine… What’y’say, old boy? …Anti-aircraft? No, the AA chaps at RAF Marham blasted away at him alright, but they use 20- and 40mm cannon shells – which generally blow their target into little pieces if they hit it – which they evidently didn’t as it flew on for miles. And the 303 slug they dug out of it is the very type used by the pea-shooter on the old Miles Master. So… our young Michael, having fired off at the Jerry – albeit briefly, according to his report – technically, well, he got him. …Yes, it’s a confirmed kill. Of course, it would have been awarded to his superior officer, but, well… Yes, burnt to a crisp.
‘So the stink, old boy, is over whether the whole affair should be deemed a bad show or a bally good one… RAF Training Command would like your chap skinned alive for taking on a German fighter while flying a training aircraft. On the other hand one or two rather high-ranking witnesses at RAF Marham want him awarded the DFC for, well, for taking on a German fighter while flying a training aircraft. Come again, old boy? …Well, one’s own opinion is neither here n’there, is it. What counts is that young Michael was recommended for the DFC but someone up the line put the stoppers on it.
‘But the fly in the bally ointment is the Press got hold of it. … Yes! Yes, seems a veritable throng eye-witnessed young Michael’s “daring low flight”, as the local rag hailed it… Anyway, seems the Plebs were impressed. As were the Air Ministry. Yes, anything for a story; Winston’s very keen on them. So Fighter Command has to give him something; the Air Ministry’s demanding it. So they’re promoting him. I’m sending you the paperwork. Yes, the moment you receive it, it’s official: He’ll be a Flying Officer.’
June
It had been grey murk and drizzle for take-off, though above the cloud layer now – 20-thousand feet above it – Mick saw only a carpet of unbroken white extending to the horizon in every direction far below. High in a world of pristine blue, the cloud seemed the bottom of an ocean. He wondered how he’d react when this ocean became filled with sharks, instinctively craning back right – squinting up into the sun, then straight up, back left, far left, forward left, up ahead, forward right, far right…
Empty blue sky all around. Sun, high back right.
When he saw the speck. Just where he hoped he’d see it: about 10-thousand feet below forward right, moving right to left against the cloud layer about five miles ahead. Rickard. And he was really moving, crossing in front now and out of sight beneath the long engine cowling of Mick’s Spit. He peered hard down forward left, squinting for extra focus…
There!
There he was again, still speeding right to left. With the sun high back right of Mick, Rickard now low front left, Mick was now ‘up-sun’: Rickard wouldn’t see him curving in behind now, diving down to attack – from out of the sun.
In the past weeks of intense air combat training, Mick had learnt that Rickard certainly did not like to speak – in the whole time only a few clipped instructions over the cockpit radio – so Mick learnt not to speak, only to fly and fight. And what he’d learnt from Rickard was how you fought the enemy…
You fought the enemy by sneaking up on him and shooting him in back.
Rickard still speeding out left, Mick let his Spit sink into a shallow dive.
*
Llandow itself being only fields and farmhouses, as the mild Northern Hemisphere summer hinted, more and more Mick took the opportunity with the odd free hour or two to walk into the nearby village of Cowbridge. This had been against the advice of his batman, who warned that the inhabitants of Cowbridge were none too keen on aircrew types. Some made no secret of the fact, he assured, certain shopkeepers pretending, at the mere sight of a blue-grey RAF uniform, to understand no English at all, only Welsh. So Mick was relieved to find that the darker blue of his RAAF uniform and cap seemed to make all the difference. He encountered hardly a pair of eyes whose first look didn’t dart to the white AUSTRALIA lettering on his battledress shoulders, then become welcoming eyes. In fact, it came as no small surprise to Mick how chatty some of the locals were: He heard their Welsh tongue – an odd and striking sound, he thought; these words that seemed to go on forever – though they all spoke perfect English, which they spoke rapidly, though with every single word so distinctly pronounced. When they discovered Mick was from New South Wales they insisted on first-name introductions, which to Mick seemed only practical anyway as they all seemed surnamed either ‘Evans’ or ‘Jones’.
Though it was Mrs Llewellyn, who with her husband ran the high street’s cake shop, who took a special shine to Mick. He wasn’t the first Australian they’d known, she admitted: They had, as it happened, known quite a few; she and ‘father’ always looked out for Australians when they came through, she said, ever since the first ones they’d met, earlier in the war: as far as Mick could make out, a very new Blenheim bomber pilot and his crew.
‘Simon was such a lovely boy,’ the woman smiled towards the light of her shop window. ‘Ahnd such a help touh me ahnd father; we lost our own son, youh see, at the beginning of the war… We had tea with Simon’s whole crew on one occasion.’ She sided her smile to ‘father’, who smiled back, then she looked back to the window. ‘Then their training was finished and they were off touh their first squadron.’ She paused a moment. ‘We never heard anything more of Simon…’ Another pause, longer now. ‘…He was always smiling.’
July
Squadron Leader Peter Rickard flew hot on O’Regan’s tail. Rickard’s left glove full forward on his throttle, right glove on his joystick handle edged slightly left, slightly back, he matched O’Regan’s left-hand corkscrew round the long, long barrel-roll through which their Spitfires powered. Through the bullet-proof glass of Rickard’s windscreen he saw the clouds, the sky, the earth just sweeping, sweeping, the single stationary object in his vision O’Regan’s Spit – near the top of the windscreen yet edging gradually, gradually down it towards the glowing ring of the reflector gun-sight.
Roll two, roll three – still rolling – into a fourth now, marvelled Rickard; the young chap was good but how many more of these could he do? In a slow barrel-roll like this he was bleeding off energy fast, right now just like Rickard on the very edge of a stall, of ‘falling out of the sky’ – like a leaf for long moments – and then Rickard would have him. Still going, still rolling, round towards upright now – Next time upside-down O’Regan must surely dive away, away off the roll and then Rickard would have him; with subtler control of the speed-bled Spit’s fragile aerodynamics, Rickard could pull marginally tighter in the dive down behind O’Regan, creep the gun-sight over him, and if O’Regan was a German he’d be dead… Upright now, the base of a cloud mass planing narrowly above them, Rickard then saw something he did not expect: O’Regan’s wing flaps coming down, his Spitfire whipping up into the cloud mass like a lift. Flicking his own flaps down Rickard wrenched up into the gloom.
Only greyness all around him now, Rickard retracted his flaps, rolled upside-down, pulled level by feel, rolled upright, blind in the cloud, though airspeed returning… Now that, he ground his teeth, had been Against Regulations, dead against: lowering flaps except on landing approach; you could rip the wings off… A chap might do it in combat, yes – you could do whatever you liked in combat; it was your arse – but this was Operational Training, rendering O’Regan’s manoeuvre a ‘dirty trick’ of the first order… And the bugger was still somewhere close by in this murk.
Emerging into bright, clear sky suddenly, Rickard snaked left, then right, and left again, scanning the sky around him in all directions as he did…
Nothing.
Except the reflection of a white propeller spinner that had just risen in his rear-vision mirror. Rickard unclipped his oxygen mask, waggled his wings slightly – combat over.
Clearly had O’Regan shot up into the cloud mass then, unseen, rolled and dived straight back out again. His ‘dirty trick’ had paid off: He’d blinded his pursuer, positioned himself where his pursuer would emerge from the clouds above him, so still blind to him, then shot him in the back.
Rickard knew he could have O’Regan court-martialled for his ‘dirty trick’. But if Rickard had taught a student Spitfire pilot one thing – that you won in combat through dirty tricks – then his job was done.
*
Coasting close over the farms of Llandow, for Mick landing the Spitfire was no longer an ordeal; he could do it smoothly, fluently now, spare attention to take in the countryside that swept beneath – its greens now lusher, more vivid with summer in full bloom. As Mick lowered over it, truly now did Bellingham-Pitt’s ‘green and pleasant land’ scroll by.
Mick remembered the friend he’d now only ever have as a memory. In such a short time, what a good friend he’d been: a world apart from Mick in upbringing, experience, it seemed Jules’s mission to bridge that gap, sharing so much of what he knew with Mick for the simple sake of sharing it – In recent weeks Mick had been a few times to the little public library in Cowbridge, where he’d found books by Jules Verne and the ‘green and pleasant land’ bloke, a poet called William Blake, whose poetry Mick found he liked. He liked it a great deal. He’d never read any ‘proper’ poetry before – just a tiny bit at the end of school and that was a joke. So reading some finally, he was surprised to find he understood it, at least, he thought he did: With lines full of such energy, and mostly regarding the plight of the poor, this Blake bloke seemed to reckon the only decent way of the future was a return to the past. Indeed, he seemed a dead-set champion of the factory worker…
Now curving in on final approach to the strip at Llandow, Mick pulled back the perspex canopy of the Spitfire, flaps and undercarriage down, and straightened. In the subtle descent, Mick was struck with his loss of more than just a good friend: With nine years between Mick and his nearest brother, Joseph, he’d never known a brother like a mate… And that, he now realised, is what Jules was turning out to be.
Right up to the moment he was blown apart.
*
Mick stepped down off the wing-root of the Spit, various ground crew already at work on it, and shed his leather helmet. The walk back to the Mess would take him past Rickard’s aircraft but there’d be no exchange between them. Something that once seemed odd seemed normal now – The one time Mick had seen him in a Cowbridge pub, Rickard hadn’t even looked up. Mick hefted his parachute pack over his shoulder and set out.
As for OTU, evidently that was that: His posting to an operational squadron had already come through: 611 Squadron, based somewhere called Redhill, on the southern outskirts of London evidently, Mi
ck hadn’t checked a map as yet; his primary concern had been what aircraft 611 flew – Spitfire Mark IXs, 1565 horsepower, 390 more than the Mark II he’d just stepped out of: all the information he needed for the moment… With the posting had come a notice of three days’ leave due to him. Might as well spend it in London, suggested his batman; he’d have to pass through it en route anyway.
Drawing about level with Rickard’s parked Spit now, Mick caught the call of a voice.
‘Well done…’
An English voice, cultured but straight-forward sounding, Mick peered sidelong as he walked: About twenty feet off, to a man Rickard’s groundcrew were at their tasks, nobody looking up. Rickard, however, was propped against a wing, looking directly at Mick. With the slightest grin…
Mick slowed his pace. Halted a little awkwardly. His self-indicating gesture and struck brow said it for him: ‘What… Me? ’
Rickard was still looking at him. Same expression.
‘I said well done, Flying Officer… Pint before you go?’
*
As the steam whistle blew on Mick’s train, and it began to pull out of the station, Mick stared out the carriage window. He had to admit, Rickard’s explanation for playing the mute over four whole months of air combat training, it had made sense…
Over their parting drink in the Mess bar at Llandow, it hit Mick he’d never really seen Rickard’s face before, not properly; he’d always had his leather flying helmet on. But even as Mick’s train picked up a little speed eastwards through South Wales’ Vale of Glamorgan, he knew Rickard’s face would stay with him a while: As far as faces went, it was one the young ladies’d go for, alright; it was chiselled. But gaunt. And pale. Against this his eyes were dark, striking, though with a sunken look in their sockets like he was beyond tired and still going. What was he? Twenty-five? His sweep of straight black hair flecked with grey.
His words, regarding his near silence of four whole months, would stay with Mick too; they hadn’t just made sense to him: They’d made perfect sense.
Ghosts of the Empire Page 11
