A Future Arrived

by Phillip Rock

  Derek grinned. “That’s what I thought as I flew over it. A good place to have the electrical system checked out.”

  The pub was in a cobblestoned street near the river and was jammed with RAF and naval officers. A pretty redhead wearing too much makeup brushed up against Colin and gave him a wink as they squeezed their way to the bar.

  “Well, hello, Colin,” she said with a Scotch lilt. “Just lettin’ you know I’m here.”

  “Who was that?” Derek asked.

  “Local tart. I don’t know her name.”

  “She knew yours, old man.”

  “Heck, yes. Everyone knows me.”

  They took their beers to the least crowded part of the pub and leaned against the wall to drink and talk—not that they had much to talk about, Derek was thinking. They lived in two different worlds and had no “shop” in common. And he seemed to wish to avoid talking about Kate.

  “Do you remember Valerie A’Dean-Spender? You met her years ago at Burgate House … a thin, blond kid.”

  Colin frowned and shook his head. “Can’t say that I do. Why?”

  “Oh, just that she’s still blond—and totally smashing. I want to marry her.”

  Colin’s laugh was vaguely uncomfortable. “Marry? Helluva time for something like that.”

  “The more abnormal the times, the more normal one should act—or so it seems to me.”

  “To each his own.” He took a swallow of beer. “Set a date yet?”

  “Unfortunately, there’s the slight problem of an existing husband. A Captain Raymond Monnier, currently in a Jerry POW camp.”

  “That’s tough. Anything you can do about it?”

  “Maybe. We have a solicitor working on the problem, a specialist in divorce and annulment cases. In the meantime, she’s taking a little house in Watford so we can be together at least once in a while. I’ll jot down the address for you in case they ever let you roam out of the Highlands.”

  “Not much chance of that. Leave isn’t a word they use around here.” He watched the redhead. She was talking with one of the navy fliers but glancing past the man at him. He looked away. “Marriage, huh? You sure must have a lot of faith in the future, Fat Chap.”

  THEY COORDINATED THEIR takeoffs the next morning. Colin had just cleared the firth, water streaming behind him, when the Spitfire came low over the hills, Derek waggling the wings in greeting. Colin had Sergeant Pilot O’Conner flash a message with the Aldis lamp as Derek throttled back and flew alongside … NOT … TOO … BAD … FOR … BEGINNER.

  Derek waved, then boosted the throttle and roared ahead, climbing at full power. Colin watched the little fighter do a series of graceful barrel rolls and then turn south over Inverness and disappear from view in the haze.

  They droned on, hour after hour. Mist across the sea as the cold polar waters met warmer currents. They flew seven hundred miles to the Arctic Circle and then turned slowly southwest a hundred miles off the Norwegian coast, flying low and at slow speed, hoping to catch a U-boat on the surface.

  “U-boat to starboard … half a mile!” An excited shout over the intercom. Colin banked to the right, all nerves tense. The sub turned out to be a whale which sounded in fright as they flew over it.

  “Sorry, Skip.”

  It didn’t matter. It happened a hundred times—if not a whale, then a porpoise or a steel oil drum. The gunners looked forward to drums or barrels as they gave them a chance to shoot at something.

  A gunner brought thermos jugs of tea from the tiny galley and packets of sandwiches—corned beef and cheese. The menu never varied. Colin munched, drank, yawned, turned the controls over to O’Conner, and walked aft to stretch his legs, thinking of Derek in his Spitfire … Derek and his “smashing blonde.” A little house in Watford. Why not? Did anyone give a damn these days if people lived in sin? He thought with a sharp pang of regret of the stone house in Glen Garry. Kate in his arms and his breath catching in his throat. The girl wiser than he. The infinite wisdom of the heart.

  “Object port … two … three miles!”

  Colin hurried back to the cockpit and flipped on his intercom. “What have we got?”

  “Can’t tell, Skip. Something jutting up from the drink. Saw it in a break in the mist … gone now.”

  “Could have been a sub crash diving,” O’Conner said.

  “Or that whale’s pals.”

  He banked sharply to the left and then leveled out a few feet above the sea, easing off on the throttles so that their airspeed dropped to less than eighty miles per hour. They seemed to be floating in the mist.

  “On the button, Skip! Dead ahead!”

  Colin could see it now even without the aid of binoculars. A submarine churning along on the surface at flank speed, diesel exhaust and water vapor rising from the stern. On its merry way from Trondheim to the North Atlantic via the Shetland Passage.

  “Not this time, baby,” he murmured. Four small depth charges under the wings. Not the most potent sting, but if they were lucky … if they fell just right … He jigged the plane left. They were coming up astern of the U-boat and he could see two men standing in the open well of the conning tower.

  “Fire whenever you want, Burns,” he called down to the front gunner.

  The man opened up immediately, tracer skipping ahead of them, flicking across the long, dark hull of the submarine. No better than rifle bullets, Colin thought bitterly. Bounce right off the steel. They needed cannon, something with bite. They skimmed over the sub and O’Conner pulled the handle, sending two depth charges dropping ahead of the speeding boat. Colin shoved the throttles open and pulled back on the control column, turning hard right to come around for another pass. Glancing to the side he could see that the men were no longer on the bridge. Dead? Maybe, maybe not. The boat was turning sharply to avoid the depth charges ahead. The round cylinders sinking, set for fifteen feet. As they passed and began to turn again, one of the charges went off, humping the gray sea upward then exploding into a tower of foam and spray that caused the sub to lurch sideways and bring its sharp bow leaping out of the water like a hooked trout. The waist gun was firing now, tracer slapping all along the boat’s gleaming black sides. Waste of ammunition … might as well shoot pellets at it from an air pistol.

  “Turning in for another pass,” he shouted.

  “Only one charge went off,” O’Conner said. “Goddamn dud!”

  “Nobody’s perfect, Billy. ‘Try, try again.’”

  By the time he had made the turn the U-boat was crash diving, the deck gun already underwater. Going down fast … flooding all tanks. The conning tower under now, only the aerial mast slicing the surface. O’Conner’s hand tensed on the bomb release as they roared over it.

  “Down your throat, buggers!”

  “That’s the spirit, Billy,” Colin yelled, the plane lurching upward as the charges fell away.

  Both exploded this time, twin towers of white water. They could feel the jolt at three hundred feet as they made a banking turn. As the fountains fell back to the sea, the boat rose ponderously between them and lay wallowing in the churning wake of the explosions, bleeding oil and compressed air.

  “We ruptured some tanks, Skip!” Someone over the intercom.

  “Down but not out, boys,” Colin said. “Send our position, Sparks. Say we have a U-boat on the surface and in pain.” He glanced at the taut, anxious face of O’Conner. “How long can we stick around, Billy?”

  “No more than fifteen minutes, unless we want to row the ship home.”

  Men were coming on deck now from the front hatch and running for the gun. Other men were appearing on the conning tower and stripping the cover from the twenty-millimeter cannon.

  “Get some of those guys, for chrissakes!”

  The front and the starboard machine guns began firing, the noise pulsating through the plane, cordite fumes forming a thin haze in the cockpit. Tracer whipped the length of the sub as they swept past it and they could see two men stagger and fall on its wet d
eck.

  “Keep sending, Sparks,” Colin called to the radioman. “There must be a limey destroyer somewhere in this goddamn ocean.”

  He was a mile back of the U-boat and beginning another turn when the German gun crews began firing. They could see the blossom of flame as the powerful deck gun opened up and a split second later the shell exploded in the air a hundred yards to their right. Colin began to bore in, but the twenty-millimeter Oerlikon was firing now, balls of tracer rushing to meet them.

  “Screw it,” he said. “Leave ’em to the navy.” He pushed the stick hard forward and dipped toward the sea, cannon shells cracking over them, and pulled up inches above the glassy swells. Full throttle, racing away, the prop wash spewing spray behind them. A brilliant, eye-searing flash of light to one side. The plane rocked, staggering in the blast of the flak shell. There was the hideous shriek of tearing metal.

  “Goddamn!” Colin cried, gripping the wheel tightly.

  Sergeant Pilot O’Conner bent forward, eyes scanning the instrument panel and its multitude of dials.

  “Everything looks okay, Skip.”

  Another explosion, far behind them; a savage reflection of scarlet against the mist.

  “Anyone … hurt?” Colin asked over the intercom.

  The crew reported back. No injuries, but a dozen or more flak holes in the skin. “The old kite’s whistlin’ like a flute back here, Skip!”

  “We did the best we could,” O’Conner said. “Browning guns! Might as well’ve pissed on it for all the bloody good they did.”

  “Yeah,” Colin said. He turned sideways in his seat. “You take over, Billy. Bring her to … ten thousand.”

  He stood up and walked slowly aft as O’Conner eased the stick back. The engines sounded out of sync to the sergeant and he adjusted the throttles. As he did so he noticed the jagged little hole in the side of the cockpit and a splattering of blood on Colin’s seat. “Burns,” he said over the intercom, “… Clark. Skip’s caught one. Get the medical kit … fuckin’ hurry!”

  They found him braced in the galley opening, one hand pressed to his side. Leading Aircraftman Clark lowered the canvas cot from its bracket along the bulkhead and Flight Sergeant Burns eased Colin onto it and began to unbutton his jacket.

  “Heck,” Colin said. “I’m okay, boys. Little … tired.”

  “Sure, Skip,” Burns said. “Let’s just get the old jacket off.”

  There was only a small hole between two ribs and not much bleeding. Sergeant Burns patched it thickly with gauze. “Be right as rain, Skip.”

  But he was already dead.

  TELETYPES

  IT IS A summer of high, blue skies etched with the white traceries of vapor trails. Slowly moving arcs and loops so high above, viewed from summer gardens in Kent and Surrey, the South Downs and the Weald.

  Death in the skies, in the cold, thin air. A line of smoke against the cirrus, trailing down. A black dot … a machine …

  One of ours, you think?

  A nineteen-year-old boy in the seat, dead, plunging to earth.

  Or one of theirs?

  RAF VERSUS LUFTWAFFE

  BIG TEST MATCH

  London (INA) 18 August 1940. In some of the heaviest air fighting so far over southern England …

  Men in white flannels still play cricket in the long shadows of Saturday afternoons. There is tea and toast waiting at Kentish Hill when the Spitfires drop in one by one over the trees, low on fuel, out of ammunition, smoke staining the wings. Honey still for tea. And then up again before the sun sets. To the clouds. To the murderous sky.

  TODAY’S SCORE

  US 68 THEM 6

  The newspapers deliberately exaggerate German losses so as to help British morale. The battle is not a lopsided rout of the many by the few. The losses mount day by endless day throughout August and into September. Fighter Command is not winning, but they are not losing either. They continue to exist. To the dismay of the German bomber crews there are always the slim, deadly little fighters slashing into their formations as soon as they cross the coast. There can be no invasion of England until they are total masters of the sky.

  “The English are filled with curiosity and keep asking: ‘Why doesn’t he come?’ Be calm. Be calm. He’s coming! He’s coming!” says Hitler in a speech in Berlin, in a rare moment of humorous sarcasm.

  But he is not coming. There is no humor to be found in the attrition over England. In the fifty-six planes downed by the RAF on September 15 alone. No humor to be found in the French and Belgian channel ports where the invasion barges are being bombed every night. Hitler cancels all plans to land troops in England. He turns his eyes eastward and pores for hours over maps of the vast steppes of Russia. England he will punish by air—at night only. Bomb the cities. Burn the towns. Gott strafe England.

  The Battle of Britain is over. The Blitz begins.

  LONDON CAN TAKE IT!

  The editorial room here at the Daily Post was bombed last night, gutted by incendiaries, but we are carrying on. Business as usual. We are like Archie Potts of Cheapside. Archie runs a little shop in Winders Lane. He sells men’s boots and ladies’ shoes. He, too, was bombed last night. On the frame of his blown-out shop window he attached a small sign this morning. “Archie’s,” it reads. “More Open than Usual.”

  Hello, America. This is Martin Rilke speaking to you from London. It is midnight here and an air raid that began at seven thirty this evening is still going on. There are Nazi bombers flying high over the city, over the great docks lining the Thames from Tilbury to Wapping, over East End slums and Mayfair mansions. I will bring the sounds of this raid to you in a moment, recorded with our wire recording machines a few hours ago from the roof of Broadcasting House, in Portland Place. You will hear the sharp bark of the anti-aircraft guns, the rolling thunder of the bombs. You will even hear, if you listen closely, the sound of a Nazi plane high over the city—a Heinkel one-eleven—my guest for this broadcast, RAF Squadron Leader Derek Ramsay, Distinguished Flying Cross, assures me. What you will not hear, what cannot be captured on magnetized wire, is the sound of the heart of a courageous people. A people living with the fear of death night after night. Never knowing when they go to the shelters if they will have a home to go back to when the raid is over. And the bombs spare no one. They fall just as readily on the crowded row houses of Stepney and Bethnal Green as they did on Buckingham Palace last week. The little man, the king, all going about their day-to-day business knowing they could well be dead that night. It is the mettle of a people, the spirit of a race. It is England.

  A DAY IN OCTOBER 1940

  CHARLES GREVILLE TOOK the train up from Dorset and his father met him at Abingdon station. Charles was surprised at how well he looked, the bounce to his step, the strength in his handshake.

  “Have you seen the place yet?” he asked.

  Lord Stanmore nodded vigorously. “Drove down early. Been puttering about for hours, chatting with the fire brigade chaps and the staff. They had a frightening time—staff, I mean, not the fire brigade. They enjoyed themselves hugely.”

  The Pryory had been blitzed the night before. A stick of bombs had tumbled down in darkness and light rain and two had slammed into the east wing and one into the stables. The rest had fallen across the lawns and into the kitchen garden. No one had been injured and there had been no horses in the stalls.

  “Jettisoned,” the earl said as he hurried Charles to the car. “That’s the opinion of the firemen, anyway. Some Hun in a blue funk let ‘em drop before scooting for home.”

  “Doubt it,” Charles said. “Probably aiming for the Blackworth plant.”

  “But that’s eight miles away, dear boy.”

  “The type of error one could make on a dark night at twenty thousand feet.”

  “Perhaps so. Still, hardly matters, does it? The old house has been bombed. That’s the main thing. Felt you should see it as well as me. Your ruddy house one day, you know.”

  “I doubt if I’d ever live in it
.”

  “Who are you to break tradition? Been an earl of Stanmore living there since God knows when. You’ll see. You, your lovely Marian, and my little grandson will reside there yet. And a better house it will be, too. I have some excellent ideas in my head. Never really liked that wing of the house too much. Gone now. Blown and burnt to rubble. Chance to start from scratch and build something really grand one day.”

  Charles smiled to himself as he got into the back of the car. Nearing eighty and still making plans. Hope springs eternal.

  “Bought some flowers on the way. From that hothouse chap in Leatherhead. Always bring some when I come down with your mother. She would have come today, but I felt it would be too painful for her. Lord knows there are enough bombed-out houses for her to look at from our windows in London.”

  “You should move out of there, Father.”

  “William and Dulcie tell me the same. If the king doesn’t see fit to run I don’t see why I should.”

  The Rolls-Royce glided up the High Street and stopped opposite the church. The rain was gentle, a floating mist drifting through the branches of the leafless elms in the rectory garden. Charles helped his father from the car as the chauffeur opened an umbrella.

  The earl waved it aside with contempt. “I don’t need a bloody bumbershoot, man.”

  “Her ladyship …”

  “Made you promise,” he said in resignation, taking it from him. “If that woman has her way I’ll live to Methuselah’s age.”

  They walked along the gravel path, the earl holding the umbrella in one hand and a bunch of flowers wrapped in newspaper in the other. There were many old headstones rising from the lush grass, sheened with moss, the inscriptions weathered and worn. There were new stones, startlingly white against the vivid greens. They stopped by one of them.

  COLIN MACKENDRIC ROSS

  1920–1940

  Per ardua ad astra

  “He would have liked that, I believe,” the earl said, unwrapping the flowers. “The motto of the RAF. He was proud being in it. Not a patriot as such. Not love of king and country, Lord knows.”