Ghosts of the Empire

by Justin Sheedy

  Having shaved, showered and dressed in his uniform freshly laundered and pressed, he straightened his tie in the mirror, in one corner of its frame the unsent letter.

  A desk job here in London.

  Teaching blokes to fly up in Scotland.

  Back to the Pacific. Flying against the Japanese.

  Back home.

  He still had the better part of a week to think about it. Yet as to where he might be or headed towards this time next week, in his whole life he never remembered feeling more uncertain about a single thing.

  He thought of Jacqueline. Of the last look he had seen in her eyes. And of her kiss. He switched off the lamp. And crossed the room for the door.

  *

  Cogers Inn was packed.

  To the rafters.

  Having visited the place back on his first leave, for Mick the pub off Fleet Street once again seemed a little piece of Australia with dark blue RAAF uniforms wall-to-wall and icy cold beer. Glenn Miller’s I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo raunched from the radio-phonograph – What sounds, Mick thought: such brassy swagger and sort of laid-back up-beat, though no dancing; no room: Cogers Inn quite clearly about drinking beer, talking with other Australians, and drinking more beer.

  His own finally in hand, Mick saw a face he knew, or thought he did: At just a few tables’ distance, aircrew Sergeants either side of him, the bloke was an officer – a Squadron Leader no less – with pilot’s wings. As Mick strained to remember, the pilot caught his stare, and looked across. And though the face verged on a smile, it promptly sank to bleak recognition.

  Hurst.

  Mick was sure of it: His old commanding officer from Evans Head. What he was doing here Mick couldn’t imagine but it was him… The Wing Commander… But his rank bands indicated ‘Squadron Leader’ – a whole rank less…

  Wending his way through a dozen uniforms, ‘ Sir,’ Mick hailed with a smile, the young faces flanking the pilot focusing on Mick as one. It was Hurst, still that fatherly something in his eyes, the face around them still brittle. But thinner. ‘Good t’see you, sir,’ offered Mick.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Michael,’ returned Hurst after a moment. ‘It truly is.’

  Hurst relayed what he called his ‘career trajectory’ over a round of beer: He had been shafted, just as his predecessor had been. He’d actually managed to lower the accident rate at Evans Head, though not low enough for Sydney RAAF Central HQ apparently, was relieved of command, demoted, posted overseas to fly ops. Which he currently was. He piloted a Lancaster bomber, this was his crew, he was their ‘skipper’, this their last night of a 48-hour leave, back to ops tomorrow.

  Though Hurst wore RAAF dark blue, his crew wore RAF blue-grey and were from all over, the very end product of the Empire Air Training Scheme: From New Zealand the Lancaster’s bomb-aimer/front gunner, from Canada its flight engineer, the nav was from Rhodesia, the wireless operator a dark-skinned fellow from Jamaica, the mid-upper gunner from India – this young man, a ‘Sikh’, wearing an actual turban in RAF blue-grey complete with RAF badge upon it. Cogers being noisy to say the least, Mick spent most of the evening speaking to their tail gunner, a fact that seemed pleasing to Hurst. The crew’s ‘tail-end Charlie’, he was certainly no ‘Charlie’; a tiny Brit from London’s East End and a proud ‘Cockney’ to boot…

  ‘Oh, we’d do anyfing f’the Skipper,’ he swore. ‘’E’s a good one, see. We’re lucky. An’ I’m a good gunner, I’ll give ya that f’nuffing; got five German night-fighters shot down, confirmed.’

  ‘Makes you an “ace”,’ followed Mick.

  ‘Yeah… S’pose so,’ the boy reflected. ‘Ownly problem is the ones that come up from underneaf. No downward vision on the Lanc, see; bomb bay’s so ruddy long there’s no room for a belly turret, is there – That’s where the Lanc, well, sorta falls down, so t’speak… Still, at least we’re not on Stirlings…’

  Mick sipped his beer. ‘Stirling bomber?’

  ‘Yeah. Right cow… Great ruddy heavy bomber wiv this ruddy short wingspan so they can’t get no altitude so they’re fucked.’

  ‘Why the short wingspan?!’ Mick grimaced.

  ‘’Cause the Air Ministry said this bomber had t’fit in the “Standard Hangar”. Which it does. ’Cept in the air, piddling ruddy wings mean they can’t get no height, so the flak gets ’em, night-fighters get ’em, everyfing gets ’em. That’s why we’re lucky, mate… An’ the Skipper’ll see us through… We’d do anyfing f’the Skipper.’

  After more rounds of beer for the table, all paid for by Hurst, his crew clearly grateful and in good spirits, Mick bid them all the very best, and took his leave.

  As he made his way in the blackout back down Fleet Street, and The Strand, Hurst’s quiet parting words to Mick clawed his insides. John Hurst’s face had been perfectly calm as he’d spoken them…

  ‘They’re a great crew. Good boys. Damn good. I’m good. We’re all good. Just that it doesn’t make any difference. Not on the Lanc.

  We’re dead men. All of us. … Goodbye , Michael.’

  *

  From the window of his slowing train carriage, for Crispin Jessop the scrolling slums on final approach to London’s Waterloo Station held a reassuring look, their back-lot hung-out laundry adding colour to the morning that might otherwise be dull: shirts, sheets, even the odd knicker punctuating with simple, wonderful life the grey everything he’d so long detested. He smiled to himself. No longer, Crispin, old boy… No longer.

  He couldn’t help it. He’d fought against it, he truly had. Yet victory went to the sense of pride in achievement which so happily enveloped him. He’d tried hard to find some flaw at the base of his current euphoria – for he was finished with Crispin Jessop the self-assured prig – yet each time he tried he arrived at the same conclusion.

  That he was right. Right to be proud of himself. Finally…

  As a bureaucrat in Royal Air Force costume, so long had he expertly thwarted and obstructed the reasonable intentions of colonial upstarts like young O’Regan. So long had he told himself he was doing it in the name of King’s Regulations. Until young O’Regan had done him the greatest service: shown him something higher than King’s Regulations. In O’Regan’s case what Crispin called ‘A-Grade Fucking Heroism’. Not something Crispin was altogether sure quite lurked within his own self yet he’d settle for something else that did; he knew it now. Something that must have been sleeping within him for years. Something called ‘Decency’. Something now woken and blinking…

  Having single-handedly sought, championed and obtained the young Australian’s coveted ‘transfer’ homeward-bound, Crispin had promptly learnt the poor chap had just been shot down. Having determined where and passed it on to an old school chum, with the lad confirmed still alive his rescue had been arranged and – All care taken, no responsibility, Crispin – pulled off. Et voilà, one shot-down Spitfire pilot was at this moment back in London. And though the chap didn’t know it, Crispin was bringing F/L O’Regan, M., 217831 RAAF his transfer papers in person this time, make no doubt about it! Thanks to the Head of MI9, Crispin had the hotel, the room number, and would be knocking on its door in a matter of minutes.

  Crispin smiled afresh; quite blissfully happy about his brand new self and the way his new self would from here on behave towards others. With simple decency. And though it felt, in fact, its own reward, in all this there seemed an unexpected bonus even now revealing itself: Apparently when one focused on acting for the good of others – for its own sake and obligation-free of course – it had the effect of making one seem more attractive to others, in this train compartment anyway; the pretty young WAAF sitting opposite Crispin had been smiling at him. Several times over the past hour!

  Alright. So it wasn’t quite ‘heroism’ Crispin possessed… No it wasn’t. Al-right then. He had what he had, thank-you-very-much…

  And the WAAF was still smiling, wasn’t she.

  Yes she was.

  This… this ‘helping other people�
�� business…

  Crispin was determined to keep it up.

  *

  The light of noon out over Manly beach was like the glow of early morning, stark and steely. Mick knew it was Manly; he’d spent a lovely holiday there once with his mum and dad – when he was very young, and had been their only child.

  The beach was deserted, except for a small boy standing hand-in-hand between a man and a woman – Mick couldn’t see their faces; they stood facing away from him on the pale sand, looking out to the ocean, its surface silvery rippled all the way, all the way to the razor curve of the horizon.

  Just as he saw the woman let go the child’s hand and seem to float as she walked down the beach towards the water’s edge, it struck Mick that the light of this noon wasn’t shining from high above, nor from the East out to sea but from the West: behind him. Peering back over his shoulder he saw the girl. Mere feet off but just too far for him to reach out and touch; she was beautiful. She was looking past him though, her eyes intense, searching, a great silver tear falling from one of them down her cheek.

  Turning back round to follow her gaze, down the beach Mick now saw just the man and the boy, though still hand-in-hand.

  Looking out at the silvery ocean.

  *

  There was a knocking…

  On a door.

  Where was he?

  Hotel room.

  London.

  He heard it again. Clearer now.

  Who the hell knew he was here?!

  Christ, it had to be…

  Stumbling out of bed, Mick lunged half-awake for the door, unlocked and narrowly opened it: ‘ Bess, I… Oh- Christ.’

  Shielding his own nakedness as best he could behind the door, he just hoped his face hadn’t already gone through five different types of red: ‘…Can I help you, sir?’

  *

  Sitting opposite a dressing-gowned Mick, Crispin Jessop strained not to hang his head in disappointment. If anything helped it was his dumbfounded state…

  He had even played his trump cards: revealing, firstly, and with genuine reluctance, that he, personally, had secured the home transfer at which the young Australian now baulked. When, despite expressing his sincere gratitude, O’Regan still wasn’t swayed, Crispin had removed his spectacles, and played his killer trump: that he – yes, he – had also personally instigated Mick’s rescue: the Resistance op, the Lysander flight, the pick-up, the whole bally production number… When this too failed Crispin flopped back in his chair, spent.

  ‘God save us from the stubborn Irish,’ he pronounced. ‘And pity all those who oppose them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Mick. ‘I really am… And you know how grateful…’

  Crispin sat motionless for long minutes, the whole time never taking his pained eyes off Mick’s. ‘But this is what you wanted,’ he pleaded at long last.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Mick quietly.

  ‘Well excuse my French, dear Michael, but why the fuck the change of heart?!’

  Mick looked at Crispin’s feet. Then hard in his eyes. ‘I owe my life to someone. Someone who deserves her own life back.’

  Crispin released a breath. ‘Someone on this side of the world… And a girl, by the sound of it…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mick. ‘A brilliant girl.’

  Crispin bent slowly, slowly forward, his head in his hands as he continued: ‘And my pulling you out of France… merely affords you the opportunity to go back there for this person.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Crispin reared up: ‘Oh for God’s sake, Michael, drop the “sir”, will you?!’ He then flopped back in his chair once more, drew in a deep breath, releasing it with a sigh towards the light of the window. ‘Well. It seems my good intentions have rather backfired, doesn’t it!’ He shook his head faintly. Looked at the floor. Then back at Mick. And continued just above a whisper. ‘So. What are we talking? Back to ops? Here…’

  ‘They say there’s no way,’ put Mick.

  Crispin drew up his spectacles from the arm of his chair, considered their lenses, breathed on one, polished it. His facial expression now shifted. To something almost relaxed. His tone to match it quite matter-of-fact when he spoke: ‘Oh, there’s always a way…’

  ‘…How?’ Mick strained.

  Crispin Jessop most delicately placed his spectacles back on. ‘Michael… if there’s one thing on which a war runs… it’s paper. As in work. And if there’s anyone who understands paperwork, it is I… And, well, to put it simply, a piece of paper can very easily be mislaid in the middle of a war… Very easily…’

  Mick squinted. ‘But surely the system…’ – Jessop cut him short…

  ‘Michael, I am the system.’

  They sat in silence for some time before the RAF officer continued, and in a whisper.

  ‘When you determine precisely what it is you want, let me know. Nothing over the telephone, mind. We’ll have to meet. Sounds a bit Basil Rathbone and I apologise for that but they have all the lines bugged. As a matter of fact,’ he twirled an index finger, indicating the room around them, ‘less said the better.’

  ‘You’re kidding…’

  Jessop’s head cocked very slightly to one side. ‘The, ah, firm who put you up here…’ He held up eight fingers and a thumb. Then indicated the room again. ‘This is theirs.’

  *

  The Boomerang Club was as packed as Cogers.

  Having wired money home at the pay counter, Mick picked up a cup of tea, spilling most of it into the saucer as he sidled his way out through the throng into the recreation room, on its grand piano an RAAF Sergeant-Pilot ripping out what the Americans called ‘boogie-woogie’.

  Mick passed the reading table, aircrew as ever devouring newspapers and magazines from home, then by the very armchair on whose arm Bess, just days previous, had perched so deliciously close to him. Yesterday, promising to keep in touch with him, though her eyes had been bright, they were sad.

  Saucering what remained of the tea back into his cup, Mick sipped it by the tall window at the vast room’s narrow end, looking down onto The Strand, on its left the bombed-out church past which he’d stumbled the night before, after Hurst’s goodbye.

  In his life up till now, Mick had heard the word ‘bravery’. But now he knew, knew he had seen it. In Hurst’s face: composed despite what he felt certain lay ahead of him. The face he maintained for his crew. As Mick had passed close by so many young faces in the crowded room, each could have been one of Hurst’s boys; each so cheerful, so devoted to their ‘Skipper’, so assured he would ‘see them through’. Then it hit Mick that Hurst and his boys were back on ops this day, probably this moment on some train bound back to their bomber ’drome, up in Lincolnshire, they’d said, just one of the twenty-odd Bomber Command ’dromes in Lincolnshire alone. Lincolnshire. Flat and windswept. Also on England’s North Sea coast directly opposite Holland en route to Germany: to where Hurst could be flying his boys this very night.

  Seated close by Mick at the table before the tall window were two young Sergeants, a pair of wireless-op air gunners, who seemed to have just broken off from quiet conversation. They were now looking at Mick in silence, as one, a strange look on their faces: as if he’d just most inappropriately disturbed them. The moment jarred Mick; ever since being commissioned an officer, his presence had been met with cheerful respect by Australian NCOs. Not by this pair… And they held their seemingly reproachful stare at him…

  ‘Hullo, mate,’ came a voice from over his shoulder, Mick turning away from them towards it.

  ‘Dave!’ Mick hailed.

  ‘That’s my name, use your own,’ grinned Dave Matthews emerging from the throng.

  As he arrived, Mick registered the new Pilot Officer rank bands on Matthews’ battledress jacket epaulettes. ‘Congratulations, old son,’ said Mick, nodding to them. ‘About time.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon it is, mate,’ returned Matthews, his voice a shade serious. Yet he brightened. ‘’Ow’s it goin’?�
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  Mick grinned. ‘Well, it’s standing room only round here…’

  ‘Nah, we’re in luck,’ Matthews gestured towards the window.

  Mick turned.

  To see the table vacant. The Sergeants gone.

  ‘Well my feet are killin’ me,’ said Matthews, dropping his forage cap on the table, and settling onto one of the seats. As did Mick, though a touch uneasily, a rattle from his cup and saucer as he set them down.

  ‘Talented bloke,’ said Matthews, gesturing towards the piano player.

  ‘That he is…’ Mick scanned the room. No sign of the odd pair, he looked back to Matthews. ‘So. What’s going on?’

  ‘Off to 105, aren’t I.’

  ‘105?’

  ‘The squadron,’ said Matthews.

  ‘Oh yeah…’ Mick remembered the expert lecture Dave had woven into his expert flying back from France. ‘…Mosquitos, yes?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Mick felt the very moment in which Bess had left the Yank fighter hotshot in their dust.

  ‘What about you, mate?’ put Matthews.

  ‘Dave, I am buggered if I know.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right…’ Matthews sat back slightly. ‘No more ops…’

  ‘On paper, anyway,’ breathed Mick. ‘But good-for-you, son.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Matthews peered out through the window, ‘…interesting mob, the old 105…’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘And no error…’ Matthews paused, then leaned in a degree over the table, his voice hushed: ‘Look, mate, I dunno quite what I was pickin’ you out of… over there, but I can guess… An’ not that it concerns you directly in y’current situation but I thought y’just might be interested in this…’

  ‘Interested in what?’

  ‘Well…’ Matthews seemed to weigh his words before continuing, and when he did so it was quietly, yet firmly. ‘It goes without saying with all those trips I made that I know who that mob with the torches were… An’ even ol’ Dave Matthews knows who that mob’s opposite number are… over there.’