Thunder and Lightnings

by Jan Mark

  ‘In that case you can get a few things for me,’ said Mum, hurrying indoors to make a list.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on Queen Kong for you,’ said Dad. Victor bent over the pen.

  ‘Goodbye, Queenie. Goodbye, Kong. Goodbye, Rip van Racing Driver.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Andrew. ‘He’s going to be Fittipaldi until he dies and then we’ll write it on his gravestone.’

  They went down the lane to collect the bicycles.

  ‘I’ll ask my mum if you can come over to ours, this afternoon,’ said Victor. ‘She’s going out. We can sit in the lounge and watch the telly.’

  ‘Don’t you want to watch your guinea pig?’ said Andrew. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to spend the afternoon on Mrs Skelton’s shiny black settee that looked as if you would stick to it if you sat there too long.

  ‘Not all the afternoon,’ said Victor. ‘There’s an old war film on, with Lancasters in. I want to watch that. I bet that’s the same Lancaster all the way through. That usually is. They’ve only got the one.’

  Polthorpe was a busy place on Saturdays. As well as local people, doing their weekend shopping, there were the visitors from the boats; easily distinguished by their seafaring hats and sweaters thick enough to keep out Atlantic gales. Most of the children were wearing yellow life jackets.

  ‘Watch out,’ said Victor, to one boy who shoved past them. ‘The tarmac’s very deep here. I’ve seen people drown, just stepping off the pavement.’

  The visitors behaved as though the local people were cut out of hardboard and propped up in the street as part of the scenery.

  ‘Townies!’ said Victor. ‘How would they like it if we went to Birmingham and sat on their window sills and trod on their feet and pushed them in the road.’

  Outside the fish and chip shop there was a long queue that stretched back past the church. A lot of people who had bought fish and chips were eating them on the pavement and blocking it. The road was barred by a van unloading timber for the hardware shop.

  ‘Can’t get through that lot,’ said Victor. ‘Let’s cut through the churchyard. We can scoot – no one minds. I’ve seen the vicar do it. He ride a lady’s bike.’ Victor glided away with one foot trailing, so that no one could accuse him of actually cycling through the churchyard. Andrew followed more cautiously, but the path was smooth with a tempting chicane between the tower and the war memorial. They took the corner rather too quickly and found themselves riding through a wedding. Andrew saw Victor perform a gravity-defying skid and applied his brakes. The bicycle stopped dead and bounced sideways, several times, finally halting beside a big, powdery lady who looked angry enough to be the bride’s mother.

  A gap opened in the guests and he had a brief glimpse of the vicar and two bridesmaids, in sticky pink satin, skittering about in a blizzard of confetti, and of Victor, making a rapid escape with both feet on the pedals.

  Andrew took off after him, trying to apologize without showing his face. They lost themselves in the crowd of chip-eaters round the gate.

  ‘That could have been nasty,’ said Victor. ‘I nearly went straight through the vicar.’

  ‘Did anyone recognize us?’ said Andrew.

  ‘I kept my head down,’ said Victor. ‘But I think we may be in a photograph. A flash bulb went off just as I came round the bridegroom. I’d like to see that photograph. I nearly broke up a funeral in Norwich, once.’

  ‘Not on a bicycle?’ said Andrew.

  ‘No, I was walking. There’s churches all over the place, in Norwich. You don’t see them coming. I was just walking by when this coffin came round the corner, all by itself on a little trolley. That did give me a turn. I nearly fell over it.’

  ‘Was it off to bury itself?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Someone was pushing the trolley,’ said Victor. ‘But I didn’t see him until he came round after it. That did look funny, toddling along, like in a supermarket, but I couldn’t laugh, not at a funeral. That’s different at a wedding. They all go off and have a drink, afterwards.’

  ‘I expect they all go and have a drink after a funeral,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Yes, but that’s not right to spoil a funeral,’ said Victor. ‘After all, that’s the last party you ever have.’

  ‘Have you ever been to one, not the one you fell over, I mean,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Not yet, but I’m going to a wedding, next month,’ said Victor, becoming gloomy. ‘I told you. My sister’s getting married. She wanted me to wear a suit and carry her train with my cousin Sharon that’s going to be bridesmaid.’

  ‘You won’t, will you?’ The thought of Victor, in a suit, mincing up the aisle behind a bride, was too strange to consider seriously.

  ‘Not likely,’ said Victor. ‘I told her to find some other loony. I said I’d give her away, though. With Green Shield stamps. She hit me.’

  ‘Is your brother going to be there?’ asked Andrew, immediately handling the bicycle more carefully.

  ‘Not him,’ said Victor. ‘He’ll be in Hong Kong. Lucky devil.’

  ‘Lucky to be in Hong Kong?’

  ‘No, lucky not to be at my sister’s wedding.’

  They did the shopping and rode back to Pallingham. When they reached the churchyard Victor said, ‘Let’s take the short cut.’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d had enough of cutting through churchyards,’ said Andrew, but he held the gate open to let Victor through with his shopping bag.

  As they walked round the church they heard the sounds of engines in the distance.

  ‘Is that an aircraft?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘No, that’s on the ground,’ said Victor. ‘There’s that grave I told you about. The one that looks like a bed.’

  Under the spread of a dark cedar tree the grave looked just like a fourposter bed with five people tucked snugly into it.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a grave like that,’ said Victor. ‘Very cosy. Hey, look at that.’

  He was gazing over the wall. Andrew joined him. Advancing slowly up the pea field was a row of top-heavy machines, swaying like galleons above the sea of pea plants. The sound of engines, that Andrew had heard, surged ahead of them.

  ‘Pea viners,’ said Victor. ‘They make a racket. You get lines running up and down the television when they go by. I hope they don’t spoil that film this afternoon.’

  ‘What are they doing?’ said Andrew. Behind them the field was laid waste, strewn with dead and twisted plants.

  ‘Picking the peas,’ said Victor. ‘They have to be done all at once when they’re ready for freezing. A man come down to look at the crop and if he say that’s fit up it come. They won’t take them if they’re left too long. They have to do that at night, sometimes. I bet that one across from your house will be next.’

  ‘We’ve got sugar beet opposite us,’ said Andrew.

  ‘That don’t come up till November,’ said Victor. ‘I meant the one after that, over by Hemp’s Farm. You’ll hear them, clear enough, if they do that at night.’

  The first of the pea viners drew level with them, followed one after the other by the rest of the fleet, spread out in a diagonal line across the field.

  Where they had crossed the footpath it survived only as a dotted line, as it was on the map.

  ‘I’m not going to cross that,’ said Victor. ‘We’ll have to go round the long way.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Andrew, ‘It’s quicker if we do, because we can cycle all the way. It takes another five minutes to walk across that field.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Victor. ‘But you can’t ask people to take a long cut, they’d think you were barmy, so you call that a short cut and they don’t know any better.’

  ‘But why go that way at all, if it’s longer?’

  ‘Because I like that,’ said Victor. ‘And that’s as good a reason as any.’

  That night, Andrew was woken by a newly familiar sound, and the movement of light on the sloping ceiling above his bed. He went over to the window and looked out. A process
ion of lights was moving slowly along the hedge at the end of the beet field and he remembered seeing something like it before. Once, when he was very small, he had stood with his father, beside a river, in the dark, and had seen the riding lights of ships moving soundlessly past them in the night.

  Now he saw the same sight again but attended by the distant drubbing of engines. He supposed that the ships had had engines too but all he could recall was the silent movement over the water: in fact, he wasn’t sure that he could recall it at all. Perhaps he could only remember remembering.

  What he saw now were the pea viners riding out to clear the field next to Hemp’s Farm, as Victor had forecast.

  He stood for a long time in the chilly patch of air by the window until the shuddering line of lights had turned the corner by the straw stack and disappeared behind the hedge. Then he went back to bed.

  In the morning, the field was empty.

  13. Unknown Warrior

  ‘It always rains when we go to Coltishall,’ said Andrew, on Monday morning.

  ‘Not really surprising,’ said Mum. ‘You’ve only been once and it’s rained every other day since we came here.’

  ‘It’s raining today and we’re going today,’ said Andrew. He went to the front door to see if there was a break in the clouds. On the doorstep were fat brown slugs, like hovercraft, with frilly orange skirts, taking advantage of the wet weather to travel by daylight. Ginger sprinted across the road, trying to keep all four feet off the ground at once and trilling his leg irritably when he stepped in a puddle.

  He came up on to the step and interfered with the slugs which immediately became very small, reminding Andrew of a certain type of cough lozenge, half sucked. He picked them up and put them into the iris leaves by the front door, where no one could step on them. Ginger, his fur soaked into cactus spines, pushed past him and ran into the living room. Andrew went out into the rain to search for the prevailing wind. Close to the house it came from all directions at once like a mean child who jeered round corners and disappeared when you followed it.

  Out on the road there was no doubt that the wind was in the south, carrying with it a streak of blue sky. A wind that brought fine weather to Pallingham would bring it also to Coltishall. He went back indoors, for breakfast.

  Edward had been promoted to a high chair and sat in it now, exploring the back of his mouth with one hand and mashing up a rusk with the other. Andrew took his toast to a place of safety on the other side of the table, and settled down to eat. No doubt Victor was also eating his breakfast at this very moment, sitting down to a clean tablecloth, properly laid, in his cold kitchen. Most of Andrew’s kitchen table was taken up with record catalogues and gramophone reviews.

  Mum and Dad had come by twenty pounds, unexpectedly, and were now discussing what records to buy with it. Dad was making a list to take into Norwich with him. Andrew knew that they would spend the evening listening to the records, and discussing them. He wondered, if, by some happy chance, Victor would invite him over to his house, so that he wouldn’t have to listen.

  ‘Is there anything you fancy out of our ill-gotten gains?’ said Mum, aiming spoonfuls of egg towards Edward.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Our money,’ said Mum. ‘Not really ill-gotten. It was my old post-office savings book. It turned up while we were unpacking.’

  Andrew had a savings book. It contained ninety-five pence. ‘Do I have to have records?’ he said.

  ‘Of course not, you tone-deaf monster,’ said Dad. ‘Anything you like, within reason.’

  ‘Could I have a book on aircraft?’ he said. ‘If it didn’t cost too much.’

  ‘Military aircraft?’ said Dad. ‘There are plenty of those about. Or did you want something that deals with everything from Sopwith-Camel to Concorde?’

  ‘It had better have Lightnings in it,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Dad. He went out by the back door. The sad sound of rain filled the room before he could close it behind him.

  ‘You won’t go out if it’s like this, will you?’ said Mum. ‘Oh, Edward, get that into your mouth, do, you noisome baby.’

  ‘It looked like it was going to clear up,’ said Andrew. ‘Have you fed the guinea pigs?’

  The three of them were gathered hopefully in the hutch, looking up at Ginger who was sitting wetly on the wire netting. King Kong and Fittipaldi seemed scarcely to have noticed that they had company. Queen Kong minded her own business and still slept in the lettuce. Andrew lifted Ginger on to the floor and put a bowl of food into the hutch. The three animals converged on it and Ginger tried to climb in as well, assuming that any bowl of food was meant for him.

  ‘Give him some milk,’ said Mum. ‘Is Victor coming here or are you calling for him?’

  ‘He’s coming here,’ said Andrew. ‘Honestly, I think you need a passport to get into his house when his mum’s there. I can hear him coming now.’

  Footsteps sounded on the gravel and Victor came to the back door draped in a ground sheet to protect the raincoat that he wore over his anorak. He carried a bunch of carrot tops.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Mitchell; hello, Edward; hello, pigs,’ said Victor. ‘Do they eat carrot tops?’ he asked, pushing the greenery through the wire. Ginger rushed back to the hutch, took a carrot top and pulled it out again with dainty teeth.

  ‘Unnatural animal,’ said Mum. ‘He can’t bear to miss anything. Last night he was licking pickle off the plates after dinner.’

  ‘Are you fit?’ asked Victor. ‘The weather forecast say sunny periods coming up.’ To prove his faith in the forecast he hung his ground sheet over a chair and removed his raincoat as well. Andrew gathered that he was beginning to feel at home.

  Victor had left the bicycles against the coalshed door, out of the rain. As he and Andrew came out of the house a cold, damp wind slid over the guttering and caught them across the back of the neck, like a guillotine. Victor frisked his bicycle for rust spots before wheeling it out of its shelter, but already the rain drops were falling farther apart and the clouds were pulling away to the coast, leaving a lagoon of clear sky in the south-west. In the middle of it shone a bright yellow spot, a lesser sun.

  ‘Air-Sea Rescue,’ said Victor. The yellow dot was a helicopter, whirling seawards. ‘Here that come, choppa-choppa-choppa-choppa. I wonder if that’s going to rescue someone or only out on practice.’

  The helicopter clattered over on its way to the sea.

  As they were approaching the airfield it passed them on its return journey. They watched it sink from sight below the trees. After the thud of its rotors had stopped they heard the whine of the generator that started the Lightnings.

  ‘Full speed to the firegate,’ cried Victor, accelerating.

  As they raced up the lane to the firegate they heard the roar of engines and a Lightning went by on the runway, rising into the air at the very moment it drew level with the gate.

  Victor and his bicycle parted company. The bicycle dropped into the grass by the fence and Victor flung himself at the gate, craning over it to watch the aircraft climb. By the time Andrew had dismounted it was almost out of sight, a glassy speck in the sunshine.

  ‘I suppose it was using its re-heats,’ said Andrew. ‘If I’d known I’d have got off a bit faster.’

  ‘The one we heard start up, that’s going to take off in a minute,’ said Victor. ‘That’s at the end of the runway now.’

  Andrew took his place beside Victor, on the gate.

  ‘You haven’t seen one take off from here yet, have you?’ said Victor. ‘You’d better cover your ears.’

  ‘I’ve seen them land. It’s not so bad,’ said Andrew.

  ‘That’s a bit different when they go up,’ said Victor. ‘You’ll see. Here she come.’

  The crouching, growling, grey beast at the end of the runway sprang forwards. It moved too quickly to follow with the eye. Before Andrew had really noticed it was moving it was off the ground. The noise
was so enormous he felt as if he was being sucked through the jets himself. He clapped his hands over his ears, lost his balance and fell off the gate.

  ‘Blown over, eh?’ said Victor, sparing him a hasty glance while following the upward path of the Lightning. Andrew picked himself up.

  ‘It’s all right for you, you’re used to it,’ he said. ‘I bet you’ve forgotten what it was like the first time.’

  ‘You ought to do what I say,’ said Victor. ‘I told you to cover your ears. You never believe me,’ he added, smug in the knowledge that his own large ears were equal to the noise.

  After the last rumble of the engines had died away the empty air still trembled above the runway. The grounded Lightnings stood in a quiet row and there was no sign of the mechanics who had crawled over them before. The helicopter stood on its pad with drooping rotors, looking like a dog that has been severely scolded. Victor leaned on the gate and looked worried.

  ‘You know, every time I come here there’s less and less going on. I’m sure they don’t fly as much as they used to. This time last year there were Lightnings going up and down all the time. They even had an aerobatic team of Lightnings at the Open Day.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re falling to bits,’ said Andrew. ‘They look old enough. If they’re not going to be used any more there’s no point in repairing them.’

  ‘That’s not so simple,’ said Victor. ‘They can’t just let them fall apart. They have to be maintained right up to the very last time they’re used.’

  ‘There’s a Lightning moving now,’ said Andrew, seeing a tail fin glide behind the standing aircraft.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Victor, and as the moving aircraft came out from behind the others they saw that it was being towed. It turned very slowly, showing mute exhausts, and disappeared into the hangar.

  ‘Perhaps they aren’t being maintained any more and that’s why they’re not flying,’ said Andrew and then realized that it wasn’t the kindest thing he could have said.