by Ian Whates
“It’s not what he says, exactly. It’s mostly what he doesn’t. Perhaps it’s just me. Or just us. And I can’t – well, I can’t go to the wing commander, or the shrink. Even the padre, he’s RAF to the bone.”
You fold up your papers. You listen. At some point, you realise she’s not twisting her ring any more because you’re holding her hand. Warm against her thigh. After all, you’re aircrew. You’re that close. And she smiles at the end of it without saying much at all. And she leans closer still to peck you on the cheek. Just a small thank you. Then she’s gone. And you’re alone.
Of course, it’s your absolute duty to report any matter of concern up the chain of command. Of course, you don’t. But next day, next exercise, you’re looking at Charlie a bit differently. Next Sunday lunch, through the fragrant steam of the potatoes, you’re looking at Ann differently, too. A gaze avoided. A changed shape to her lightly lipsticked mouth. Twisted geographies of what you want and how you feel – and perhaps it’s already too late.
You’re ready for the exam. Know the shape of the Danube, the lowlands of Poland, the mountains of the Urals, like the back of your best friend’s hand. But you study anyway. Late and alone. Dreaming of things that might not happen until they do. Willing them to be real. The door opening. Letting in the twilight, the cold. Not a poster. Not Brigitte Bardot. But real. Here. Yes, now. Her thigh on the desk. The blonde light in her blonde hair. You listening, not saying much. The thank-you pressure of her lightly lipsticked mouth.
That’s how it is, all that winter, and then into the summer beyond. 1962. Strangers on the Shore and Acker Bilk on the radio. Warm beer in the NAAFI and then to bed alone. The Ruskies making missiles like it’s no one’s business but their own. Then, as late summer slides into autumn, it turns out that they’re deploying the bloody things in Castro’s Cuba, too.
GRACE BROUGHT THE rental car to a stop in the entrance to what had once been the airbase, and turned off the engine. The wire fence rattled in the breeze. On the other side, low-rise buildings flaked grey paint. The top of the control tower loomed beyond, in the mysterious no-man’s land of all airfields. A hoarding proclaimed that the site was destined for redevelopment: luxury two-, three- and four-bedroomed homes ideally located for the M62. It looked rusted and old.
“What are we doing here?”
“I just thought it might be a good stop off point,” said Grace. “How does it feel to be back after all this time?”
“Bloody awful.”
She looked uncertain. “But you must have had some good times? Wasn’t there some camaraderie? The thrill of flying a Vulcan?”
“Am I getting a rush of rose-coloured nostalgia, you mean? No, not really.”
A gust of wind rocked the car. Grace felt vaguely annoyed. After all this was, or should have been, part of her past as well. “Right. Well, do you want to get out and take a look around anyway?”
“I can see perfectly well from here. Besides, it’s bloody well lashing down.” He leaned forwards and looked at the cloud. “Gusty, too. Look at those trees. Thirty-knot crosswind I’ll bet. She’s going to be a handful on approach. Got to concentrate or she’ll bite.”
“Was it scary?”
Bill snorted. “Scary? No. You don’t have time to be scared. Being responsible for the end of humanity. That’s scary. But you don’t think about that. Oh, no. You just get on with the job.”
Grace looked at him. This wasn’t quite what she’d planned. Stop off at Bill’s old stomping ground, loosen him up by chatting about the good old days then maybe steer the conversation around to Mum. But he was as distant and dark as on their first meeting.
“How about something to eat? Would you like one of those sandwiches and some tea?” She reached into the back seat for the flask and Tupperware box.
THERE’S A PARTY at Charlie’s house. Short notice. Just a few last drinks with some people from the base. It’s October but the sky is warm and blue. The kids and some of the adults wander outside in the garden. A pack of Lightnings fly low overhead, hard and quick, afterburners blazing. You can feel them on your face, hotter than the sun. Trundling lines of military trucks. A siren moans somewhere like the pain in your belly.
The last seven days have been nothing but alert, practise, alert. Charlie’s right. You all deserve a break. The Yanks have got their B52s circling Texas as always. Wearing out their engines and wearing down their pilots in their hurry not to miss the start of this world war like they did the last two. But the British planes, the Vulcans, the V bombers, just waiting, grounded. That much closer, see? Part of the game you have to play ’cos it doesn’t pay to show your hand too early and spook the Ruskies. You’d thought you’d be longing to be back inside them by now. Up there. Swaddled in rubber and kerosene. The blackout world beyond turned radar green, then blazed into white.
You join in with the kids playing football. Look up at the window of the house and see Ann watching, smiling from an upstairs window. You go back inside with a sore shin. No one’s talking about the U-2 that’s just been shot down over Cuba, pilot presumed dead. No one’s talking about the stand-off between Kennedy and Khrushchev. No one says, of course they don’t, because it’s top bloody secret, that first thing tomorrow it’s dispersal, which is when the V bombers spread out to thirty-five bases across the country to make a wider, more diffuse, target, and that this is probably the last time, at least until well past doomsday, you’ll ever see this place. That this is the dance of death.
The sky darkens. The kids get crotchety. People depart as evening slips in. No one says much as far as goodbyes are concerned, because – well, what can you possibly say? But Grin’s in the lounge where he’s been for most of the afternoon. Hogging the punch and jiggling his knees and spilling crisps and watching the soundless TV. Now he’s talking in a loud, wavering voice about what the Russian pilots are probably doing, which is much the same as this but with vodka instead of Cinzano Bianco, and couldn’t we just call the whole fucking thing a draw and get on with living? And Charlie, being Charlie, intervenes as only Charlie can. Takes control. Does his Charlie thing. Grin’ll be all right. ’Course he will. And sorry, skipper for pissing all over your last little gathering. But not at all, no problem, and the next thing you know Grin’s being poured into Charlie’s Triumph and driven away by Charlie for some strong coffee and a good long sleep. Yet the TV’s still flickering and you’re still standing here in this empty room of the house of your best mate, amid the squashed sausage rolls and the knocked-over glasses, looking at Kennedy’s greyed and weary face on the silently fizzing TV. And suddenly it feels like you’re incredibly alone, and that every breath is your last.
When you look up, Ann’s standing in the doorway leading to hall. It’s as if she’s always been there. Not Brigitte Bardot. Not even Grace Kelly. But just Ann. Just her. Just that. Which is everything. And she takes a step forward, the way you might into some strange and dangerous other territory from which you’re unlikely to return. And so do you. And she falls into your arms, and the world shudders again as more Lightnings fly overhead, their afterburners blazing.
GRACE HAD BOUGHT sandwiches from the forecourt shop when she’d put petrol in the car, playing safe with cheese salad and ready salted crisps and a couple of Kit-Kats. Bill agreed to bring the flask – milky tea, no sugar, no options.
“You never did tell me what your mother died of,” he said as they ate and watched the rattling fence.
“It was cancer.”
“Cancer.” He looked pained. “And I promised I’d take care of her.”
“Promised who?”
“Charlie, who do you think?”
“You can’t blame yourself for that, Bill.” Men of his age were so chauvinistic, so stupidly chivalrous. “Mum was a strong woman, a fighter. And we have all the facilities in Perth,” she added. “Specialist surgeons, radiation therapy...” Better not to mention how Mum had thinned and paled, how her flesh had grown so translucent the light almost seemed to flow thr
ough it.
“I read up a little about your Vulcan on the internet before I left home,” Grace said as the wind pushed at the car. “There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there about it. Have you seen them? I didn’t realise the significance of it all and the whole Cuba thing. Claims that you were carrying some kind of experimental weapon, another that there was a secret negotiator on board who was going to try and smooth things over between the US and Russia. Another one about a misunderstood message changing what happened.”
“They’re a bunch of cranks. Got nothing better to do than sit around making up stories about other people’s lives. They haven’t got a clue.”
As Bill took looked through the passenger window and sipped his tea, Grace noticed ripples in his cup. She considered for a few moments. “Do you want to tell me about it? Tell me what really happened?”
“I can’t,” he said. “It was all of those things and none of those things.” He shook his head. “Grin was right. We should have left the bloody box alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Grin? He was a boffin as well as a joker. Used to go on about some cat in a box that a physician had invented. I believe it’s called a thought experiment. Something about nothing being fixed until you made it so. He reckoned that if we did our job we’d be the ones to open the box. And then... Well, what then?”
“I don’t understand.”
He shook his head. “Neither do I.”
When he glanced across at her she saw tears in his eyes. Grace reached out. “It’s all right, Bill.”
“We took the piss out of him something rotten,” he said quietly. “But I’ve seen things, Ann. Just glimpses. Things I don’t understand. I need –”
“Grace, Bill. I’m Grace. What kind of things?”
The car shuddered. The wind had grown stronger, howling through the fence, threatening to rip off the sign and send it spinning up like a metal kite. Bill sniffed and shook his head and held tight to his cooling tea and said nothing.
YOU’RE FALLING. SKY over land over sky. This isn’t so unusual. You’re a pilot, after all. You’ve been trained. And something huge and dark and vaguely triangular is turning in flames at every possible angle as it twists away. Then the land comes below again and even up this high nothing about it seems right. It’s blackened. There’s dust in the air. A strange sour taste which reaches even inside your helmet and the blood singing in your head. Sudden light on the horizon, a different kind of sun, as the ejector seat parachute deploys in a tearing flap and rush and you wait for the straightening jerk. But it’s sideways and too weak. You’re still falling. The taste in your mouth becomes nothing but fear and the burning land is suddenly much too close.
YOU AWAKE TO nothing. White sound. White air. You’d think you were dead if there wasn’t so much pain. White faces come and go. White hands unwind white bandages around your head and chest. You swallow white tablets. You try not to scream. Then a man in a white coat sits by you and you can’t see his face because the window behind him is too bright. His head looks shrunken and burned. He could be a used matchstick. He probably is.
“So this is it...” you mutter.
“This is what?” He sounds almost amused.
You struggle to move but nothing happens. “The end of everything.”
After a while you learn how to eat, how to fill the bedpan, how to sit up. The nurses are stern and sweet. Their English seems practised. Much too perfect. You wonder if you’re a prisoner and they’re really Ruskies. Then one day it’s the squadron leader. And the bed tilts and the springs whisper sweet nothings as he sits down beside you. He’s wearing his squadron leader face. If you could you’d stand to attention. You’d try not to cry.
“Was it bad?” you mutter. “I mean, how many died?”
“All the others, Bill, I’m afraid.”
“What? You mean millions?”
His face doesn’t waver. “Just the other four men, Bill, the crew in your Vulcan. We’re surprised you’ve pulled through, to be honest. You looked like a broken push puppet when they brought you in. No other casualties. Khrushchev’s backed off, Kennedy’s lording it and everyone else is stood down and okay. We did the job. We saved the world. You understand me, Flight Officer? That’s how this is. Your parents’ll be along to see you in a few minutes. Believe me, they’re as proud as they are relieved. Then, as soon as you’re fit enough, there’s someone from Air Command for the debrief.”
THE SOMEONE FROM Air Command turns out to be a woman. She’s a major and some kind of medic. She’s wearing a twisted snake with wings on her lapel. All the questions you expect aren’t exactly forthcoming. Neither is she. It’s like talking to your parents. It’s like talking to the enemy interrogators you’ve been trained to face, who know exactly how to twist the knife by not asking you anything sensible at all. Every time you look through the window you expect to see nothing but black ruins, shadows branded into the ground where people once stood. But you’ve learned not to say that now. So you’re cured, right? And she can fuck off back to Air Command. Something about her hands, the shape of her nails, as she unfolds her notebook. Ann a widow now. Charlie, not even buried. The Vulcan drowned deep in some northern marsh. Didn’t really make much in the papers, what with so much else going on, but a bloody war grave. And you’re still here. You survived.
“What exactly do you remember, Flight Officer? I mean, before you woke up here?”
“I’d ejected. I was falling. It was... daylight. There was... ground beneath me. Coming up too fast. The parachute didn’t deploy properly.”
“And before that?”
She’s leaning forward. The air still seems too bright and is hissing away from you like sand. If you could open a box and press a button and put an end to all of this, you would.
“Before that?”
“There was a party at Charlie’s house. We were going to disperse next day.”
“Ah yes.” She makes a note. Looks up once more with her own version of the Squadron Leader’s face, and you wonder if she really is a Ruskie. Well briefed, of course. Knows some personal details and the language. But then they would. And if the Squadron Leader and your parents weren’t wearing masks... “Wasn’t there some problem with Chief Technician Smith — the man you used to call Grin?”
“None at all. We had a few drinks and then we all went home. Although I think Charlie may have driven him.”
“And you remember that?”
“Look... Can’t you just tell me something more about what happened?”
“Well...” She pauses. “To be honest, Flight Officer, the information we have is pretty scarce. You took off at 08.30. Light westerly breeze. Good visibility. No issues reported in any of the checks. You banked east. Still all in good order. We have a visual check on that. Climbed, were followed by the radar, to 15,000 feet. Just a short hop, really. One airbase to another where... the final preparations and loading would, of course, take place. Still standard procedure in a way, although obviously everything was on high alert. Last reported position there were still no problems, and there was no mayday. The theory that’s been advanced, and it is just a theory, is that there was a major electrical malfunction which degraded the controls. And the Vulcan... Well, I’m told she’s a brute to fly.”
“There was smoke.”
“There was an instrument fire? You remember this from inside the cockpit?”
“No, I saw the Vulcan was in flames as I was descending in the ejector seat. She was dropping, spinning. I’m sure Charlie was still doing everything he could to straighten her but she was out of control.”
“Right.” Another note. “That’s very helpful. Anything else?”
The Vulcan isn’t a brute. She’s terrible and beautiful. “No.”
SO THAT’S HOW it is. You get asked these and other trivial questions so many times you give up bothering to answer them. One guy, a different and probably even more senior shrink, he tries to take you through it. Wants you to imagine
he’s Charlie and you’re you. Well it’s worth a try. How you’d react to a fire, malfunction about twenty minutes after take-off at sub-Mach and fifteen thousand feet. Who’d do and say what.
The order to abandon the aircraft, it goes without saying, would be Charlie’s responsibility. But he wouldn’t give it. He’d fight to the bloody end because he’d know there was no way the three guys at the back without the ejector seats stood a snowball’s chance of getting out unless he could keep some control. It’d be the same in any mission. A dispersal hop to another airbase. Or on the way back from Russia with everything you’d trained for finished and the job done. No refuelling, no bloody airfields, no radio coms. Wild thermals. The air roiling with patches of dark and the electrics fizzing. But you go, Bill. I mean, you’ll take care for Ann for me, won’t you? If she’s still there, that is. You’re the one guy I can trust. So you pull the lever and the world rips apart and you’re falling.
You escape.
You’re here.
ON THE PONTOON the rotund figures in hard-hats and rubbery orange suits called and gesticulated. Diesel engines thrummed. Arc lights blazed around the crane. It was already evening and the sky was bloody. On firmer ground there were a couple of ambulances and several satellite TV vans. Grace and Bill stood ignored and unnoticed among the onlookers. There were a couple of military guys nearer the front. Some suits from the ministry. A priest, even.
When the Vulcan’s location had been discovered and its retrieval proposed, both practical and philosophical concerns had been voiced about dragging the huge delta-winged bomber from its resting place after decades in the clutches of the marshland. But exploratory investigations had revealed that the aircraft was not too deep, and the structure seemed sound enough to take the strain as long as it maintained its current, slightly nose-high attitude. Nothing could be guaranteed, but the prognosis was good. And if something could be done, it was human nature to try.
