That Summer

by Andrew Greig

  *

  The action is fast, a blur of reflex actions. Later he will sort it out for the Intelligence Officer at the debriefing and state, ‘We engaged a group of Dornier bombers circling in defensive formation,’ but really it is not like that. It’s a frantic, jolting, shambles of split-second decisions and reactions. It’s a world where someone is too old at twenty-seven. It’s like trying to stand upright on a rolling log and shoot flying ducks while navigating the rapids.

  Does the Intelligence Officer know he is not getting the reality as he tries to slow down the torrent of excited young men jabbering and gesturing? Bill Raymond tries to sort out the stories and put them together again into something coherent, a narrative that will tell what really happened. He needs to settle on the likely figures: How many aircraft went down? Of what make were they?

  At times he guesses the same aircraft is being shot down by everyone whose path it crosses. Everyone knocks bits off it, everyone is quite positive they destroyed it. They groan and become vehement as he works through their stories, cutting down the numbers. We were there, mate! We know what happened! But he knows well enough that if their initial claims were correct, the German air force would have ceased to exist.

  At the same time, he is under some pressure to produce good figures, the kind that will cheer in the evening papers. Unlike the German figures, the losses given will be accurate, but the kills will be nearly as inflated, by two or three times.

  It seems in any battle there are phantom aircraft, phantom tanks and troops – those the protagonists saw being blown up, destroyed, bayoneted, yet somehow weren’t. So it is with Len as he’s debriefed in turn. He tells of the phantom probable Dornier whose right-hand engine he saw blow up, the Me109 he gave a two-second blast as it slid past, saw smoke billow from the nose, a probable at the very least. Then he emptied the last of his ammo into the nose cone of another Dornier, saw the aircraft tilt, then another squadron’s Spit moved in.

  He says nothing about the range at which he opened fire. Altering the synchronization of a plane’s guns to converge at any distance other than that determined by the Air Ministry is still a court martial offence. Seeing Tad’s successes, more and more of the pilots are doing it but none talk about it.

  Bill Raymond hesitates then notes down Half probable Do.? Check. Then calls on the next, Sniff Burton. Who openly and cheerfully admits he can’t remember a thing about the action, though he’ll wake during the night shouting out from dreams of it with wide, unseeing eyes.

  Though the pilots are stood down, they will linger a long time by the dispersal hut, drinking tea and devouring cigarettes and waxing indignant, putting together an alternative story, their story, their phantom story. After all, they were there, they did it, they saw it all! And the more they talk, the more they convince themselves, the more their story is set and coherent. And the further it moves from what in their hearts they know to be true: two minutes of blurred intensity, incoherent as a waking dream.

  The lorry comes, they climb on, some wearily and others still jittering with adrenalin. The afternoon sun shines hotly on the grass, their uniforms, their burned faces, until their voices fade. Their replacement stand-by flight ease into deck chairs, pick up magazines and cards and newspapers and settle down to wait.

  Phantom aircraft sizzle and drop below the surface of the Channel as the real ones limp home in a horror of smashed glass, running wounds, dead men and the staring, pale-faced living.

  Such a fuss in the years after the War when the true figures of enemy aircraft shot down were compiled. Squadrons and their aces saw their kills cut by two-thirds. They protest yet, the few who remain. It cannot be. They were there.

  They were there but even they couldn’t see the true losses.

  I sit in my swivel chair and stare into the screen at the little falling blips, and for the first time wonder if there is a young Fräulein on the other side of the Channel looking into a similar screen. Our lecturers said we had to assume the other side had some form of radio wave location, though probably not the same as ours otherwise they would have targeted the masts from the outset.

  In the empty hours I wonder about her. I catch a glimpse of her face in the glimmer reflection off the screen. She looks very like me but turned-around. Her straggly hair like mine is always threatening to bounce away from its perm, she too grins sardonically at nothing, she also rubs the two vertical lines above her nose when she worries.

  What does she worry about? She worries about the blips she sees coming her way – not as many as I see, but enough to be concerned. She worries about her boyfriend who’s a pilot or maybe, worse, one of a bomber crew. Perhaps the rear-gunner of a Stuka, or the navigator/bomb-aimer lying belly-down in the glass coffin nose-cone of a Heinkel. If so, she really does have something to worry about.

  She could as well be my pal or my sister, this woman. We face each other across the miles as we watch our screens, trying to guide or forewarn our lovers so they will meet, and when they meet both of us cannot be happy.

  Fräulein: my twin, my sister, my mirror. My enemy who is not my enemy. I lean closer to the screen and stare into the hollow discs that are her eyes, trying to see what they may see.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Beginning of August

  As I sit at the door of the receiver hut at the end of a fairly quiet day – just the one big build-up – trying to find the energy to cycle home, there’s finally time to think about Evelyn last night and Len tonight.

  Why should I feel guilty? It was good to spend the evening with Evelyn in a corner seat, drinking gin and talking about literature, art, theatre, the new films – all that stuff that is, hah, a closed book to Len. Or at least, not a wide-open one whose every page he’s read. It was so good to have something to talk about other than the damn War all the time, and even when we did we were considering it from a different angle.

  He seemed to have forgiven me for breaking it off – though of course I never put it like that – because I wasn’t in love with him as I had been with Roger (I didn’t exactly put it like that either). And that made me feel so relieved and warm towards him. That he could be so mature. That he still wanted to see me because he liked me. And of course that made me be more likeable.

  In fact I showed off and flirted and thoroughly enjoyed myself. So it wasn’t his fault that I took his arm as we felt our way up the black road. Nor was it his fault that his lips lingered on my cheek as we said good night at my door. And I can’t blame him that he looked down at me from under the deeper darkness of his hat brim and started to speak seriously, sincerely, of how he felt about me.

  I put my hand to his chest.

  ‘I’m touched, honestly,’ I said. ‘But this isn’t fair on any of us.’

  ‘Any of us?’ he said.

  ‘I’m … seeing someone else. He’s a pilot and a bit younger than me.’ (In fact, only two years younger, but I feel safer when I lean on the difference a bit.)

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  He sounded so understanding and sad without making a fuss about it, that I had to open my mouth and say what was also true.

  ‘But we can still meet once in a while. I’ve so enjoyed talking with you.’

  He hugged me carefully then made his way by torchlight over to the truck he’d borrowed. I saw a faint wave, then the pale glimmer of his face, then he drove away. I hesitated then went inside, quietly up the stair.

  And as I thoughtfully peeled off my stockings, I realized with a shock he really does love me. Me, for who I am, not what he gets from me, and with slight shiver knew this would always be rare in my or anyone’s life.

  *

  I get up stiffly from the doorway of the hut, collect my bike round the back and set off slowly home, thinking of the man I’m going to see this evening, assuming he’s lived that long.

  Up to this point, the air fighting had been limited and sporadic if intense. Both sides had been probing and responding to each other
’s strengths and weaknesses. The decisive conflict was about to start as August began with some cloudy days. The invasion barges for Operation Sea Lion were assembled in the Low Countries; as the RAF frantically dug more land lines for their communications network and honed the lessons of their RDF ground control of fighters’ experiences, the Luftwaffe got three gigantic air fleets into place in an arc stretching from western France to Norway.

  In English villages that weekend, the anti-landing obstacles were dragged off the squares and cricket matches were played, albeit by scratch B teams plus local available servicemen. The Local Defence Volunteers drilled and patrolled, shot at some harmless motorists, hopelessly lost since the removal of all signposts and place names. There was a consuming fear of Fifth Columnists (and indeed a few were landed, farcically ill-prepared for their missions), and any parachutist dropping out of the sky was assumed to be German. Many a British pilot got to his feet with relief at being alive to find himself menaced with a pitchfork or an ancient rifle. Worse still if the pilot happened to be Polish or Czech. Lovers in haystacks and parked cars in country lanes were in more danger from the LDV than bombs.

  The mood was at once anxious and business-as-usual. In the factories working 8.00 till 7.00, seven days a week, was becoming normal, with longer hours for special rush jobs. People were falling asleep in canteens and at kitchen tables with the wireless on. The greatest effort was directed at the production and repair of fighter aircraft as it became more and more apparent that the survival of the country lay with them.

  The first evacuees began to drift back from the country as the mass bombing raids hadn’t materialized. Sleep and having a good time were becoming the topmost priorities. Cinemas and dance halls were crowded, and lovers lay, it seemed, under every hedge in England, as people sought to take pleasure in the days that were left.

  So we met as arranged in the High Street. It was a warm evening and I was sweating inside my uniform as I got down off the bus and saw her. Auburn hair piled up in the fashion, some strands escaping already as she studied her feet. Out of uniform in a pale grey skirt and jacket, light raincoat over her arm, she was pretty, but something had subtly altered and she didn’t quite look like I’d expected or remembered.

  I pushed aside any disappointment, checked once again it really was her, then crossed the road to greet her.

  *

  I knew it was him, of course. I’d seen him coming down the bus stairs then felt unaccountably shy or embarrassed. So I kept looking down, giving him my best profile. Trouble was, even in that glimpse he wasn’t quite what I remembered, as if the specialness, the glow, had been stripped away and left just an ordinary young man pressed into a grey-blue uniform. The memory of last night still hung about me, and interfered with my smile as I raised my face to greet him.

  *

  We went to the flicks, something by the Marx Brothers. I wasn’t really in the mood for it but she seemed keen and anyway it was what one did on a date. It let us sit close together in the warm dark and not talk. Though I wanted to talk, the words were log-jammed in my throat when I saw her. So it was easier to go to the pictures instead.

  The newsreel gave the scores for that week. Apparently we were downing them at a rate of two to one. Even if that was true, which I doubted, we could still lose simply by running out of planes or pilots, or if they started hitting RDF stations and airfields on a regular basis. It was a mystery to everyone why they hadn’t. Maybe all this was just a preparatory phase, though it had cost some of our best pilots, and the real onslaught was yet to come.

  I shivered, tried to put it all out of my mind. Then the news cut to a bunch of lads scrambling, all keenness and grins and neat partings as though they were running onto the pitch for the old school. Taking part with laughter on their lips … Far as I could recall, we weren’t laughing as we ran.

  Half of them didn’t have their parachutes or Mae Wests, and as they leapt onto the wings of their Spits – of course it had to be Spits – I noticed they were the old single-blade prop jobs, so the whole thing was a put-up job for the cameras anyhow. It made me wonder just what I could believe these days. Then there was a clip of Mr Churchill talking, and I did believe him because he was saying things were bad, right bad, and we were really up against it, which of course we were. I took her hand or she took mine when he started saying we would win through in the end if we stuck to it and gave everything, but it was going to be hard. Yes, I thought, I believe that, and we gave each other a quick smile in the near-dark and our hands squeezed a little tighter.

  *

  The fighter pilots dashed across the sunlit field and it was all rather heart-warming though Len muttered under his breath. I told myself that was what the man next to me really did, and they (and presumably the Navy) were all that stood between us and invasion. Meanwhile he was trying to explain something about parachutes and propellers then the person next to him told him to shush, and he looked embarrassed and contrite, not like a bold and valiant defender at all.

  I tried to soothe him and explain it was just a picture, just a propaganda image like the German ones but made by our side. Then the old man with the big cigar came on, hamming it madly but as always it gripped you by the throat as he gave us the bad news then the good, and everyone in that crowded picture house stopped talking and smooching, and for a moment we were all joined together in the dark.

  *

  It may have been my mood but the main film didn’t amuse me. It was too far away from what was on my mind.

  I studied her face out of the corner of my eye. She looked serious, attentive, just the corner of her mouth twitching once in a while, folding the tiny mole near her upper lip away into a little valley. As I watched her, looked at those moving lips, she gradually began to grow clearer. She began to glow. She laughed, her teeth glimmered, she glanced at me, realized I’d been watching and withdrew into herself. Then I was annoyed at the film, annoyed we’d wasted time by going to see it, irritated because it was the kind of thing I’d done with Christine, for no better reason other than it was what was done. I shifted and scowled at the screen. What had once seemed fast and wild now looked pointless and laboured. I wished Harpo would stop pulling faces at the camera and pretending he couldn’t speak. I was sick of pretending.

  I glanced again at Stella. She seemed withdrawn, utterly absorbed in the film, smiling slightly as she followed its silliness.

  *

  I’d seen the film before, with Evelyn as it happens. We’d pulled it apart then and it didn’t improve on second viewing. It was one of their poorer efforts. Still, it was obviously the kind of thing Len liked so I made an effort to seem interested.

  Finally, during one of the slapstick routines, I yawned. One of those huge jaw-locking yawns. I covered my mouth and tried to look as if I was convulsed with laughter but it was too late. Len was on his feet, hanked me by the hand and practically dragged me up the ramp and out into the foyer.

  ‘You were bored!’ he said.

  ‘No, not really. It was a bit warm in there and it’s been a tiring day.’

  He laughed curtly like I was speaking nonsense, and I wondered if he was really angry, if he was in fact short-tempered. I didn’t need a short-tempered man.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘This isn’t what I want to do.’

  We were leaning against the poster at the side of the foyer. One or two people were drifting in and out.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  He stared back at me.

  ‘This,’ he said. Then he began kissing me, so hungrily my mouth opened and I forgot all thought of yawning and the fact we were in a public place. My heart was drumming the advance as we finally separated.

  ‘Golly!’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want to do, we’d better go somewhere else.’

  We caught the bus back to my billet.

  ‘What about Mrs Mackenzie?’ Len asked.

  I said something very rude about Mrs Mackenzie and we went inside and quickly
up the stairs.

  *

  ‘This is my room,’ she said.

  ‘So I see,’ I replied.

  It was a change to see her more ill at ease than me, not knowing where to put herself. There wasn’t much to the room – a single bed, a seat, a table and chair, cupboard. A few photos, some books, a gramophone and a stack of records on the floor. I looked through them while she made tea in a tiny curtained-off alcove. A mixture of jazz – Ellington, Basie – and popular songs, plus a lot of classical music that meant nothing to me, symphonies and quartets and the like. A spare box of needles sat by the gramophone.

  ‘Would you like to listen to some music?’ she asked.

  She was standing in the alcove holding two cups and saucers, and as I looked at her there was a glow around her outline and an amount of light coming from her lips and hands and eyes. She looked like the only good thing I’d set my eyes on for months. Indeed it was surprising I wasn’t dragged towards her across the carpet, given the force of attraction operating.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and sat down on the end of the bed.

  She put the cups on the bedside cabinet then knelt down to the pile of gramophone records.

  ‘Jazz?’ she said.

  ‘Yes please.’

  It was hard not to start giggling, there was so much glee in that little room.

  She wound the gramophone then set a pile of records on the floor beside it, put the first one on the spindle. That was promising. She put on the bedside lamp then switched off the main light, hesitated then came and sat beside me. She looked down at her hands then turned her head my way and smiled as Duke Ellington launched into ‘Mood Indigo’ and the light streamed from her eyes.