by Andrew Greig
‘Maybe I’m just useless at it,’ he said and laughed. ‘Still, at least they’re giving us practice. They haven’t come in strength yet, mostly just attacking shipping. I guess the Navy wouldn’t agree!’
They’d shot down seven in the week, plus two probables. A man called Bentley in the next flight had been killed. Prior had been shot down but baled out, was slightly concussed but would be back soon. Tad had got another probable Junkers 87, which translated as a Stuka. Tad hated them above all aircraft, called them the bully boys. Apparently he had memories of them from Poland, screaming down on the infantry and just a few old biplanes to defend with. Tad had this theory that getting close was the key, but you had to be a great pilot or lucky to do that, and in any case the guns weren’t synchronized for close, and it was dangerous …
I let him talk because he needed to. And, yes, because I was interested. Those blips were real. Those squiggles translated to tons of flying metal, to fighters and bombers and, above all, men sitting sweating inside them, soft flesh and blood inside their uniforms as they fired at each other.
It horrified and fascinated me because this man talking quietly beside me, shredding leaves and talking as though he was groping towards some destination, had made it real for the first time. Real and frightening, as I could hear in his voice he’d been frightened. Real and frightening because as I sat beside him while the light faded, I began to care about that particular flesh and blood, those hands, that catch in the voice, that apologetic laugh, and I began to tell myself this was a bad idea. A very bad idea, quite different to but on a par with Roger.
He stopped talking, and looked through the wood and over the field. Then he turned his head and looked at me and it seemed he was really seeing me, not just a woman but me. He took my hand and laughed.
‘Waste of good drinking time,’ he said. ‘Quite unacceptable.’ He got up and pulled me to my feet. ‘Sorry to be a bore,’ he added.
When he laughed he seemed quite different, suddenly light-hearted and young, as he should be.
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m interested, though I am quite thirsty.’
He laughed again as if I’d said something delightful. Then as I smiled uncertainly, he leaned closer and kissed me, just like that, and it was very acceptable.
*
It is really not a good idea to get interested in this man. I have eyes, I have ears. I read the papers. Even if the scores are true, his survival is not, I think, very likely.
In the Darnley Arms I drank gin too fast and laughed too much and kissed him too long as we said good night. What else can we do? In bed my thoughts drifted sleepily towards prayer. Let him at least live first, I thought. Let us live.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mid-July
‘There is reason,’ Tad said.
‘A reason,’ I corrected him automatically.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s a reason why we doing this.’
He was sprawled next to me on the grass in the shade at the far side of the dispersal hut. We were on stand-by after flying twice already that day, no contact made. Every so often one of us would get up and hurry to the toilet block. It was a strain on the guts and bowels, climbing to near 20,000 feet in an unpressurized cabin, then coming straight back down again. The biggest strain was expecting to be shot at any moment, bullets clattering in out of a clear sky, the whole body tense as you wait to kill or be killed. And then – nothing. No contact. Fly home and wait to do it all over again. Exhausting. It’s as well we were young and immortal, of course we were.
‘Remind me,’ I said. ‘Is it for the money?’
Tad glanced up at me sharply as though checking something. His eyes were hot and black, a shock, as if as a child I’d just touched the surface of my mum’s stove. He always seemed relaxed and leisurely, but I’d begun to notice how his knee jumped continuously when he was sitting. Even when he was lying like this he was never quite still.
‘You English,’ he said. ‘Always kidding.’
He nodded and finished laying out his patience deck. Then as his hands moved steadily among the cards, he told me his story.
He was born in Cracow. The most beautiful city in the saddest country. On a childhood visit to his uncle’s estate – he loved his uncle but was bored by adult talking and endless fields – he heard a buzzing-saw sound. Like ripping in the sky. It got louder then came roaring over the house. The wings – it was a biplane, you know – rocked from side to side then it flew on away. Low and level. He stood transfixed, all boredom and impatience shaken away.
A brown haze came from under the plane. Spraying of crops, his Uncle Stefan explained. The family headed back into the house, only Tad stood on the porch, watching the plane turn, come back again, thunder low over the house then rise up and away, all thoughts of knights and heroes driven out of his mind.
‘I could not believe this,’ he said as he moved a stack of cards, ‘that our neighbour owned one of these, bought in France. That he, a man I knew, flew it. I knew we must go to visit him. I do not rest until we do.’
Small boy reaching up to touch the wires. Runs his hands over the strange covering material. Lifted up into the cockpit, feels the stick in his two hands, looks back and sees the rudder turn. Half stands up to see forward, leans into the breeze coming over the fields, feels the possibility of flight. Yes, I could see him all right. It hadn’t been so different with me.
Tad straightened the cards carefully. ‘So I learned to fly when I leave school,’ he said. ‘Happy as Larry boy. My father, he is a professor, you know. He teaches history and he’s not so happy with me. Get a real job, he says. Get education. But I insist. I pass my licence. Started off with commercial work, freight, you know. Then at an air show I meet this American guy, Tommy. He does acrobatics like I have never seen. We talk, we like each other. He shows me tricks. I learn quickly, a pilot falls ill, I join his barnstorming show and we went all over, making folks gasp. This was when I learned better English too. Also I speak German, French, some Russian.’
Right enough, Len thought, I’m a peasant and Tad’s probably the best acrobatic pilot in the squadron. Only he doesn’t do it often in case people think he’s shooting a line.
‘Yes, we went all over,’ Tad continued. ‘First the States and Canada, then Europe. England of course, then France … then Germany.’ He paused, turned over another card, pulled a face and turned over the one beneath. Either this was a new form of patience or he was definitely cheating.
‘That was 1937,’ he continued. ‘Not a nice time. We saw the new Messerschmitt, I flew it once. It was some machine, much ahead of anything we’d seen. Fast, turns quick, lots of gun-power – it’s a bitch to land, though.’
He pulled down a line of cards, laid them as an extra column then turned over the one he’d exposed and played on.
‘We had days off in Hamburg and Vienna and Berlin. Things we saw in the streets …’
He paused, came to a standstill on his patience and cheated again, flipping over another card and carried on.
‘Where I grew up in Cracow then Lvov,’ he said, ‘we had plenty Jewish neighbours. There was an old man I used to visit, you see, a special friend to me when young. A girl I used to play with – I suppose you say I fancied her. Other children in my class at school … They were just people, you know? Lots of Poles talk bad of Jews and gypsies, but my father is Liberal and he doesn’t agree. And I honoured my father, in this I agree. But in Germany all kinds of people are not people any more. My father …’
His hands stopped moving. He leaned forward toward me, bending into his shadow.
‘What we saw there was bad stuff,’ he said. ‘Beatings, breaking windows, making them register and wear … I knew then there would be trouble, trouble for us all. You can’t imagine, Len, not in this falling-asleep country. Nothing ever happens here, till now.
‘Their pilots were OK. You know flyers. Some had been in Spain and learned much. They were open to us about this. What I noti
ce is that for them bombers are the hot number – dive bomber to support ground troops, the twin engine bomber to destroy cities and factories and kill morale stone-dead. The bomber always gets through, that’s what they say.’
‘Not if we can help it,’ I said. ‘Seems to me you can break up a sky full of bombers with half a dozen fighters.’
Tad flipped another card over, shifted it to another column.
‘We’ll find out soon,’ he said. ‘But these German pilots, they are keen. They are hot to trot, you know? And I think: trouble. They say they have best planes, best pilots, best tactics, and I think they are right. They are the best, it is a fact. Look at what they do in my country. Then in France. They destroy our little air force, mostly on the ground. Bombs and bullets and cannon – no defence. We fight in our silly planes but it is hopeless. Many brave friends die. Stukas bomb crap out of Army. We fight hard but every day going back, back. Then we plan a counterattack. Next day, the damn Russians invade. My country is finished.’
‘How did you get out?’ I asked.
‘I flew to Bucharest,’ he said. ‘Last day, I see my father and family. I want to stay but my father say No. I must leave and fight. That is hard, you see? He is Liberal and I fear for him. I fear for my brothers and my sister. My mother is long dead, you know. We all say goodbye outside house in Lvov. It is a fine autumn day, flowers in gardens, and tanks they are coming. We embrace. Many tears. I say I will stay, but my father drags me to the car. I look back and see them for the last time. Later I hear he is …’
A long pause. His big head went down over the cards and the day seemed to get darker. When he continued his voice was quiet but thick in his throat. How much older he felt than the rest of us.
‘The Germans come, round up all Liberals. My father, he is dragged from our house. They tie his hands. They say he is a traitor. He says nothing, just looks at them. All Liberals they take to square. A major makes a speech. Then they are hanged. Takes long time to die, you know, hanged. He tries to speak, but no one can hear what he says. Then he is dead. Each man gets one bullet in head to be sure. End of my father.’
He moved two columns, piled up cards on his aces, working fast now.
‘One brother escape. In hills, I think. The other taken by Russians because intelligentsia, I am told he is sent to Siberia for labour. No news. My poor sister …’
He tailed off but his hands kept moving, sorting, stacking, forcing the game to work out.
‘Think I give a damn about British Empire, Lennie? That’s not why I leave good night life in Bucharest, get to France and steal a plane – a Morane, it’s a heap – talked myself into goddamn Limey air force. I am here for my father and family, my destroyed country. My sister. I don’t want to tell you the terrible thing that happens to her. But all this I will revenge.’
He gave a grunt of satisfaction as he piled on the last jack, queen, king. Then he looked up and somehow smiled.
‘And the chance to kiss some pretty girls! So I say, there is a reason. There’s a reason why we’re shooting at those maybe decent guys who are shooting back at us. Why we must kill them. End of my long lecture. Sorry, my friend.’
There was a long pause between us. Part of me wished he hadn’t spoken. But he had and I could feel it hanging like a sack of dirty water in my gut.
‘You cheated,’ I said at last.
‘Of course,’ Tad replied. ‘What else do we do when we attack out of the sun? Everybody cheats. This is serious, no game. You think I am reckless, but it is not so. You guys are brave enough, but you love the amateur too much. Now let’s play poker, penny a point.’
‘I can’t play poker.’
‘Much the better.’ Tad grinned. ‘I learn from American Tom. Lemme show you.’
I’d never heard him talk about his family before. It made me uneasy, not just because he spoke with such feeling but because it sounded like some kind of last statement he wanted to make. So that someone in this foreign land would know him before he died. It gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach, the way Stella did sometimes.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Always happy to fleece the intelligentsia.’
*
A bunch of us lay on the grass, learning how to bluff in Tad’s poker school. Has to be said some of the blokes were naturals at it, like all good pilots bluff. I’d gone inside the dispersal hut for a brew when the Tannoy clicked. Then the announcement. Scramble!
Running across the grass, into the plane. Strap in, check parachute, the prop catches, revs, becomes invisible. And this has become invisible, has become routine. It tugs us forward like the airscrew, bouncing over the grass, pulls us into the air and tucks us neatly in formation.
This time we actually pick up the enemy around 17,000 feet with height on our side. Their bombers with a fighter escort circling above. We have our instructions: go for the bombers. Let the faster Spits take on the Me109s. No heroics.
For the first time it doesn’t happen so fast. For the first time the shaking of mirrors and cockpit and the aircraft bouncing in the air isn’t so distracting. For once it’s not like trying to thread a needle on a bobbing cork. We dive down past the fighters straight into bombers, taking them head-on. Perfect.
This time my prey is lined up, a juicy thin-tailed Dornier come to bomb hell out of the convoy below, and I’m cool and angry. Think of Tad, his family, father choking at the end of a rope. Check my tail, swerve and come closer till he fills my gun sight.
He sees me, starts to turn. Get in a burst as he comes across, then I turn and follow. Swing to avoid the sparkling burst of tracer from the rear-gunner, then come in from below, give him another. Nothing happens at first. Then a few bits start to fall off, the plane slumps sideways and down. I fly into smoke. Cut away, pull up to avoid the Me109 streaking by, let him go. Lost my Dornier, into light cloud then lost everyone. Empty sky at other end of cloud. Check compass and head for home, thinking of what I’ve done.
A probable? Definitely a possible. Bo Bateson backs me up at the debriefing, thumps me on the back.
‘Good one, my son,’ he says.
‘Wizard,’ St John says as he lights up. ‘They call it a possible, but far as I’m concerned you downed him.’
*
I talked to Tad on the way to the pub that evening, a bunch of us cutting down through the orchards in a light mist. Complained about our lightweight armoury, eight machine guns but no cannons. I’d given that Dornier ten seconds worth for very little effect.
He nodded, reached up and plucked an apple and crunched into it with a big grin.
‘Must get closer, Lennie. Only way, I’m always saying. Two fifty yards maximum. That’s why when I hit a plane, he blows up.’
‘Two fifty!’ I protested. ‘The guns are synchronized at six fifty.’
‘This I know,’ he said. ‘But Mr Tate has reset mine.’
‘Blimey!’ I said. ‘That’s against some rule or other. How did you persuade him to do that?’
‘Bottle Polish vodka,’ he said. ‘That is persuading! I advise you do the same.’
I thought about it. True enough, at 650 yards an enemy plane was a small bouncing toy it took a fluke to hit. But 250! If it was possible to get that close and the plane blew up, it would be very dangerous. Then again, what we were doing anyway wasn’t exactly safe.
‘Three hundred,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it. Got another bottle you can lend me?’
*
Drinks all round that night in the Leather Bottle. Slightest pause as we raised our mugs to the absence of Junior Johnstone who the others had known from France. He’d been blown apart when his plane exploded. Then someone told a joke and from then on the only serious thing we got down to was drinking.
Me, I drank deep as anyone, still flushed and jittering from the day’s events. Longed to phone Stella and tell her, but thought that might be shooting a line and anyway I might have killed someone, which suddenly didn’t seem something to be excited about. Rather think I did, actually. I don’t
see that Dornier getting back across the Channel. Found myself wondering what its crew was – three? four? – and how likely they were to be picked up.
Then it was time for another round. I put my hand in my pocket and called it.
CHAPTER SIX
Mid-July
I lay across the bed in my room, writing up notes for my signals test while trying not to listen to the complaints of Mrs Mackenzie floating up from below. The blackout, rationing, an insolent air-raid warden, the things the young get up to when they’re away from home. If only she knew.
I rolled onto my front, listening to the Scottish accent cut into the quiet morning. I’d once talked like that, protective colouring, automatically taken on during that couple of years in St Ninians. The move had been one of Dad’s bright ideas.
I wondered where they were now, all those people I’d known in my primary class. Shonagh and Betty Inglis – were they in uniform or nursing or in one of the factories? And then, for the first time in a long time, I let myself remember them. Porky Pig and … Fando Fillamon.
It was hot behind glass in the afternoon sun, and I sweated as I gripped my notebook and saw it all again.
*
Fando Fillamon tripped Porky Pig neat as anything when they came into the class just ahead of me.
I was right behind Fando, watching him, and I saw how neatly it was done. I saw his tanned leg twitch sideways, his tackety boot clip Porky’s ankle, saw the fat white legs tangle then blur and thump and Porky went falling into Dewar’s desk. The tall pile of blue jotters began to topple, then Porky was on his knees in tears with books still slithering onto the floor. I reached out and caught the last one in mid-air. Patrick Geddes, English, Primary 7.
