Thunder and Lightnings

by Jan Mark

  ‘They’d go straight off the end of the runway without it,’ said Victor. ‘That’s like a crash landing every time.’

  ‘Dangerous,’ said Andrew as the Lightning drew level with them again, heading in the opposite direction, towards the hangars.

  Victor gaped at him.

  ‘Of course that’s dangerous. They don’t do this for fun, you know. This is Strike Command. This is real.’

  ‘But what do they do? We’re not at war,’ said Andrew, forgetting his resolution not to argue.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Victor mysteriously, ‘people need seeing off the premises.’

  ‘What premises? You mean the airfield?’ said Andrew. Fifteen jet fighters seemed a trifle excessive for the job.

  ‘Not the airfield. Airspace,’ said Victor. ‘If foreign planes come into our air that shouldn’t be there, they have to be seen out again. Lightnings are interceptor fighters. That’s what they do. Intercept.’

  They stayed at the firegate for another hour. Two more Phantoms passed by and three Lightnings landed. By this time several cars and a motor bike had joined them. People gathered at the fence and made ignorant remarks about the aircraft. Up on the gate with Victor, Andrew felt informed and superior.

  ‘Getting crowded, isn’t it?’ said Victor. ‘Let’s move on.’ They rode away, down the lane. ‘Not enough aircraft and too many thick people,’ he said. ‘That fat fellow with a loud voice, he couldn’t tell the difference between a Phantom and an F-III. If I didn’t know that much I’d keep my mouth shut. Pity we didn’t see any take off. You get the best view of all from there. They leave the ground right in front of you. Do you want to go back to the other end and see if anything else turn up?’

  ‘Anywhere you like,’ said Andrew. Victor was in charge. Victor, who could just about read and barely write, knew more about aircraft than grown men with field glasses.

  As they cycled along the main road they heard the sound of a prop-driven engine, over the airfield. Victor jumped off his bicycle and ran to the fence, leaving Andrew to stagger to a halt behind him.

  Above the trees, a little, blunt fighter plane was banking towards them. Andrew thought he had seen one like it before, though not flying.

  ‘Spit!’ shouted Victor.

  ‘What? Why?’ said Andrew, not understanding.

  ‘That’s a Spitfire,’ said Victor, hugging himself. ‘That’s a lovely little Spitfire.’

  The Spitfire, free of the trees, dipped and looped and circled above them.

  ‘Look how he throw that about,’ said Victor.

  ‘You couldn’t do that with a Lightning,’ said Andrew, detecting a flaw in Victor’s brand loyalty.

  ‘You could if you had enough room,’ said Victor, quickly. ‘But you wouldn’t need to. Perhaps they’ll send the others up. There’s other Spitfires and Hurricanes. They go all over the country to air shows, but we can see them any time we like. They live here. Most people have to wait for special occasions.’

  ‘Every day, could we see them?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Not every day, but quite a lot. Even once a month’s better than once a year. I didn’t tell you before in case that didn’t go up and you didn’t believe me.’

  ‘I’d have believed you,’ said Andrew.

  ‘You don’t very often,’ said Victor. This was too true to be contradicted.

  A motorist, seeing them at the fence, stopped his car and got out to see what they were watching. They all stared up at the Spitfire and it made its final run right above them.

  ‘Specially for us,’ said the motorist, joking.

  ‘That was,’ said Victor. ‘If they see you watching they often do a bit extra. I’ve even seen a Lightning flying upside down when there was a crowd at the firegate.’

  The motorist didn’t believe him.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Andrew, supporting Victor, although he didn’t know if it was true or not.

  The Spitfire went down behind the trees for the last time and the motorist went back to his car.

  ‘If it wasn’t for those, you wouldn’t be here. Never forget that,’ he said as he closed his door.

  Victor looked outraged.

  ‘What on earth does he mean?’ said Andrew.

  ‘He mean the Battle of Britain, what we won,’ said Victor, scowling after the car. ‘Every time some people see a Spitfire they say, “If it wasn’t for that you wouldn’t be here.” I do wish they wouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, they’re right, in a way, aren’t they?’ said Andrew. ‘If we hadn’t won, things might have been a bit different now.’

  ‘I know they’re right,’ said Victor. ‘But I don’t want to be told. I don’t need to be told. That make you feel you should go round kissing their wheels or something. People like that, it would be a sight more use if they’d done something about all the Spitfires being scrapped. Spits and Hurricanes and Wimpeys and Lancasters, all gone. Those at Coltishall are practically the only ones left. Do you know, they’ve got a Lancaster here as well, and that’s the only one left in the whole world that can fly.’

  ‘Will we see it?’

  ‘I never have,’ said Victor. ‘Not here. I saw that go over our house once, but they have to be careful with it, that being the only one. I saw that at Bentwaters last year, and I got the pilot’s autograph.’

  Andrew tried to look impressed.

  ‘Just think,’ said Victor. ‘Just think how he must feel. That’s the only Lancaster left in the world, and he fly it.’

  9. The Grave Fisherman

  When Andrew told Dad about the Lightnings he said, ‘You know, don’t you, that they won’t be there much longer. There was an article about it in the local paper. I saw it at work. The Lightnings are being replaced by Jaguars.’

  ‘E-Types?’ said Mum.

  ‘Not that kind of Jaguar,’ said Dad. ‘These are fighters.’

  Andrew wondered if Victor knew and wished that he had heard it from him and not from Dad.

  ‘When is it going to happen?’ he asked.

  ‘Quite soon, I believe,’ said Dad. ‘I dare say I could find out, if you’re interested.’

  ‘It’s all right. I expect Victor will know,’ said Andrew.

  He met him in the lane, a few days later.

  ‘What’s all this about Jaguars replacing Lightnings?’ he said. Victor looked as if it were something that he didn’t much want to discuss.

  ‘Next year, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Dad said it might be sooner. He saw it in the paper,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Papers often get things wrong,’ said Victor. ‘When my auntie got married they had our name down as Skeleton instead of Skelton.’

  ‘What are Jaguars like?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Tactical strike fighters,’ said Victor. ‘Skinny things. I don’t know why they want them at all. They can’t even go as fast as Lightnings, only about a thousand miles an hour, maximum. A Lightning can reach Mach 2.27 at forty thousand feet. That’s more than twice the speed of sound.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t need Lightnings any more,’ said Andrew. ‘Perhaps they’re out of date. They wouldn’t replace them if they weren’t.’

  ‘If they were out of date they wouldn’t still be using them,’ said Victor. Andrew thought he was defeating his own argument in some way, but couldn’t quite see how. What he could see was that Victor hated to think of a time when there would be no Lightnings over Norfolk. They might be new to Andrew but Victor had grown up with them. He seemed to be fonder of Lightnings than he was of people.

  ‘Come in and see the guinea pigs,’ said Andrew.

  Ginger had lately taken to sitting in the patent, monococque, guinea-pig pen, with the guinea pigs. As he made no attempt to eat them there was really no reason why he shouldn’t. The three of them were sitting in the sun, under the wire netting and too near the ground to feel the wind.

  Victor stuck his long forefinger through the wire and stroked Ginger under the chin.

  ‘I wonder if he’s like
that underneath,’ he said.

  ‘What? Ginger inside as well?’ said Andrew.

  ‘No, I mean, I wonder if he’s got stripes on his skin. If all his fur came off, would there be a pattern on him, as well?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Andrew. ‘Your head isn’t black, under your hair, is it?’

  ‘That is if I don’t wash it,’ said Victor. ‘Hello, King Kong’s waking up. The world’s smallest gorilla.’

  He stood up and went through a few gorilla-moves himself, leaping from foot to foot, beating his chest and searching his armpits for imaginary fleas. Mum watched him from the kitchen door.

  ‘Have you been bitten?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s being a gorilla,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I’ve found the percolator. Can gorillas drink coffee out of cups or do they need a trough?’ said Mum. Victor thought she was offended because he had been performing rude gorilla acts in her back garden. He stood still, looking humble and polite.

  ‘We’ll have it in cups, please,’ said Andrew. ‘With biscuits. Can we take it up to my room?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Mum. ‘I’m putting up curtains. I don’t want you two climbing up them and swinging from the lampshade.’

  ‘Curtains?’ said Andrew, as they went in. ‘Oh my, we are getting posh, aren’t we?’ Mum seized the carpet beater and chased them upstairs with it. Andrew slopped coffee all over his shoes as the carpet beater whistled through the air an inch from his heels.

  ‘Do she hit you with that?’ said Victor.

  ‘All the time,’ said Andrew. ‘Night and morning, regular.’

  ‘Lies, all lies,’ shouted Mum, from the bottom of the stairs. ‘I just give him the odd flick with a cat o’ nine tails to remind him who’s boss. He’s about due for one now, I should think.’

  They raced up the second flight, to the attic.

  ‘There’s coffee, all over the stairs,’ said Victor.

  ‘It’ll dry,’ said Andrew. Victor looked thoughtful. Andrew imagined he was thinking about the consequences of spilling coffee on his own stairs.

  Andrew’s attic looked very bare after Victor’s flight deck. He hoped that Victor might admire the racing cars, or the frieze of old cylinder head gaskets pinned round the wall or even the wing mirrors screwed to the wardrobe, but he went straight to the window and looked out, searching for a Lightning that he could hear, but couldn’t see.

  ‘Why don’t you do your project on aeroplanes?’ asked Andrew. ‘Why do horrible fish when you could do aeroplanes? You don’t even go fishing.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Victor. ‘Yes, I do, though,’ he added, after thinking hard for a minute. ‘If I started doing that for school, I wouldn’t be interested in them any more. I don’t care about fish, so I don’t mind doing them.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you be interested in them at school?’ said Andrew. ‘I thought the whole point of the projects was to do something you liked.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Victor. ‘But it would be having to like aeroplanes instead of just liking them. Every time a Harrier went over I wouldn’t be thinking, there go a Harrier, I’d think, there goes my project. Then I wouldn’t want to look at it. School’s like measles. That spread.’

  ‘Well, then, why not just do it for you and not for school? We could do it together. I can do the words and you can do the pictures,’ said Andrew. ‘You can tell me what to write.’

  ‘You’ll probably have to do the pictures as well,’ said Victor, grinning. ‘I can do clouds, I can’t do anything else. I know, I’ll paint lots of clouds and you draw aeroplanes on them.’

  ‘I can’t draw aeroplanes either,’ said Andrew. ‘Not accurately. I can’t draw anything accurately. I came bottom in technical drawing at my last school.’

  ‘You drew that car in General Studies.’

  ‘I made it up. It would probably fall apart if anyone tried to build it. One of us will have to learn to draw.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Victor. ‘There you go, you see. Just like measles. As soon as you put anything down on paper you have to start learning something. I don’t want to learn things, I’d rather just find out. I tell you what, we won’t neither of us draw things. We’ll cut them out, instead.’ He took the latest number of Action out of his anorak pocket. ‘We can cut Wellingtons out of Mitch Mulligan.’

  Mitch Mulligan was in trouble this week. One of the air crew was an enemy agent in disguise and there was Mitch, trapped on the tail plane at six thousand feet.

  ‘How did he get out there?’ asked Andrew as the enemy agent sabotaged the controls with a filthy foreign smile across his jaws.

  ‘I don’t know. I missed that last week,’ said Victor. ‘There was a strike, or something. Look, there’s a Dornier down at the bottom. Let’s have that out now. Got any scissors?’

  ‘Won’t it spoil the story on the back?’

  ‘That don’t matter. I never read any of the others, only the Air Force ones. Who is it, anyway?’

  Andrew turned the page. ‘The Marvellous Mystico,’ he read. ‘The circus conjuror who became a goalkeeper with Midchester Rovers. His team’s success seemed like magic.’

  ‘Oh, him,’ said Victor, disgusted. ‘He’s properly daft. He take footballs out of people’s ears during First Division matches. I’d cut him up even if he didn’t have a Dornier on the back.’

  Andrew fetched scissors and they cut out the Dornier, half a Heinkel and two bits of a Wellington that appeared in adjacent pictures and almost fitted together.

  Victor tried to draw a Lightning on a piece of paper but it got out of hand and became wider and wider towards the tail.

  ‘I can’t see where I’m going wrong,’ he complained. ‘I know exactly what that should look like, but that won’t come out on the paper. That remind me of something but I can’t think what.’

  ‘A bell tent?’ said Andrew, looking.

  ‘Watch it,’ said Victor. ‘That’s not that bad.’

  ‘Victor Skelton’s Flying Bell Tent,’ said Andrew. ‘If we had some Sellotape we could stick that Wellington together, otherwise the bits will get separated.’

  ‘Where can we keep them?’ asked Victor. ‘We ought to put them away somewhere or they’ll get lost and turn up under the bed in six months’ time.’

  ‘Dad’s got some files in his desk,’ said Andrew. ‘I’ll get one now.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better ask first?’ said Victor. ‘Won’t you get wrong if he find that’s missing?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ll tell him tonight when he gets home,’ said Andrew. He went down to get the file. Victor followed him but hung about in the living room, not wanting to be associated with a theft. Andrew came back with the file and found him looking at the books.

  ‘Are all these yours?’

  ‘Most of them are Mum’s. I told you she worked in a library,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Is that where she got them from, then?’ said Victor. ‘Are there any about aircraft?’

  ‘No, I had a look the other night,’ said Andrew. ‘Isn’t there a library round here?’

  ‘There’s a van,’ said Victor. ‘Come round about once a month, and there’s a library in Polthorpe, but that isn’t open every day.’

  ‘Shall we go and have a look at it, they might have something,’ said Andrew.

  Victor put the pictures into the file and they went out, stopping at his house to collect the bicycles. When they reached Polthorpe they found that the library opened on Tuesday mornings and Tuesday afternoons. Today was Wednesday.

  ‘OK,’ said Victor. ‘Let’s go to Norwich. They must have a library there.’

  ‘Isn’t it rather a long way to go for a library?’ said Andrew.

  ‘That won’t take long,’ said Victor. ‘That’s only about fifteen miles.’

  ‘But supposing it’s shut as well?’

  ‘All right,’ said Victor. ‘We’d better go home again. There’s nothing to do here. The shops are all shut this afternoon. It look like everybody’s died
, don’t it?’

  There were only two roads in Polthorpe. Both were empty and dusty. No cars or people were about, only Andrew and Victor and their bicycles.

  ‘Let’s go back a different way,’ said Victor. ‘I don’t feel like going home yet. My sister’s there. Let’s go down to the staithe.’

  ‘What’s a staithe?’

  ‘Boats,’ said Victor. ‘Boats tie up there. I don’t know what that is, that’s just called the staithe. That’s on the broad.’

  Before they had moved to Norfolk and Andrew had known it only as a bulge on a map, he had at least heard of the Broads.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a broad here,’ he said.

  ‘Polthorpe Broad,’ said Victor. ‘That’s round the back of the station.’

  Polthorpe Railway Station had no railway. It had become a coal merchant’s yard and they cycled between high, black mountains, on gritty, black concrete. Where the line had once been there was a grassy track. As they rode along it they could see water through the trees and on it floated houseboats, motor cruisers and yachts. There were a lot of people about, sitting on the bank with loud radios or standing masterfully on deck with their feet apart.

  ‘Look at them,’ said Victor, with great scorn. ‘Wearing those silly hats. They think they’re on the QE2 and then they get stuck under Potter Heigham bridge.’

  They went on past the houseboats and the trees until they came to a quiet stretch of water cut off from the rest of the broad by a rope boom with oil drum floats. All along the bank sat silent men with fishing tackle. Victor and Andrew went by very quietly in case they were accused of frightening the fish. It was beginning to rain and the anglers put up large umbrellas, orange and blue. Victor took a black PVC raincoat out of his saddlebag and put it on over all his other clothes. It failed to meet at the front by a good three inches.

  They left the old railway line and followed a cinder path back to the church. Just before it joined the High Street it ran along the side of the churchyard. Looking over the fence they saw another multi-coloured umbrella, poking up above the top of a tombstone.

  ‘There’s somebody fishing in the churchyard,’ said Andrew.