Under a Wartime Sky

by Liz Trenow

  ‘More than you’ll ever know, little sister. More than you’ll ever know.’ He began to sob again, noisily, interspersed with moans. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’ And then, ‘Go away, Kath. I need to be on my own.’ She’d never seen a man cry before today, and now she’d found herself comforting two of them in one evening. The world had turned upside down, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  When Mark didn’t appear for supper they found him sound asleep on his bed, fully clothed.

  ‘Poor boy,’ Ma whispered. ‘He was ever so fond of Ray.’

  Perhaps a little too fond, Kath thought to herself. ‘We all were. He was a great fellow.’

  ‘I just hope it puts him off, Kath.’

  ‘Off what?’ For a second, Kath was thrown off balance. Surely Mark hadn’t told Ma about their relationship?

  ‘Becoming a pilot.’

  Kath doubted very much that it would deter Mark at all. If anything, it would leave him even more determined to emulate his hero.

  Around death, just as in life, the secrets of the Manor were carefully hidden. No one spoke of any loss and Kath never repeated to anyone, not even Ma, Mark’s unguarded words about ‘one of those Bawdsey boffins’ having been on board the plane that day. Nevertheless, she sensed the pall of grief hanging over the Manor: in the kitchen everyone was subdued. In the dining room, the men queued for their meals in silence and spoke in hushed whispers at their tables.

  When she tried to ask, Mr Brunetti just shook his head. ‘It’s not for us to know these things, Miss Motts,’ he said. But she couldn’t help thinking about Vic, hoping that someone was looking after him. She’d seen nothing of him since that evening and assumed that he’d been given leave, until Ma told her that the man called Scott had requested sandwiches, fruit and other snacks that he took to a room in the Red Tower.

  The only other person who failed to appear was Vic’s friend, the kindly older man, Johnnie Palmer; the one who always had a joke or a compliment as he took his food. Kath reluctantly came to assume that it must have been him who’d been killed in the plane crash, alongside Captain Burrows and the other crew members. She missed his cheery face at the lunch table, and the way he’d showed genuine affection for his friend Vic.

  It was the first time that anyone close to her had died – apart from her grandparents – and she felt the loss keenly. She might not have known these two men well, but she’d come to admire both of them for their vitality and wit and the way everyone had held them in such high regard. What a terrible waste it seemed.

  Just a fortnight later, Kath and the rest of the family attended a service of remembrance for the five navy men at St John’s, the larger of the town’s churches. Although in Kath’s view it was not a patch on St Peter and St Paul’s, the more ancient and atmospheric church in Old Felixstowe, it was just as well they chose this one because it was packed, with standing room only at the back and a full turnout of uniformed men from the seaplane station.

  A naval band played sombre numbers that had Kath and Ma in tears before the service even began. She imagined Ray must be sitting in heaven with his ears burning, so fulsome were the words of his commodore, who listed numerous examples of his exemplary and courageous service and the personal attributes that had made him one of the seaplane force’s most remarkable pilots.

  There were a few familiar faces from the Manor among the crowd, but no sign of Vic Mackensie. Johnnie’s name was not even mentioned, which she thought terribly sad.

  Shortly after this, Mark’s RAF acceptance letter arrived saying that he would soon be advised where and when to report for initial training. Ma was distraught, of course, but Kath knew it was the best possible thing. Although her brother had continued to function, refusing to take any time off – ‘can’t afford to get a poor attendance record now’ – getting up each day and going to work, he seemed to be only half in the world.

  Friends would call by to invite him out, but he always refused. Kath tried to persuade him, saying it would be a distraction at least; but the one time he followed her advice he returned well after midnight, so drunk that he couldn’t even make it upstairs. In the morning they found him asleep on the living room floor, stinking of booze.

  One Saturday afternoon Kath heard a voice calling her name and turned to see Nancy, flashy as ever. Anyone would think she was dressed for a big night out in London rather than a little shopping trip to Felixstowe High Street. ‘Before you sound off, I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about Captain Burrows,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it’s a terrible loss,’ Kath managed to mumble. If only looks could kill, she thought to herself.

  ‘Especially for your brother,’ Nancy said. ‘I’ve heard he’s not been taking it well.’

  Kath turned on her heel and walked away as quickly as she could. Thank goodness Mark would soon be away from it.

  Two weeks later it was Mark’s leaving party at the seaplane station. He arrived home ‘three sheets to the wind’, as Pa put it, and promptly fell asleep on the sofa, snoring loudly for the rest of the evening, but no one really minded.

  The night before he was due to leave for training, Ma splashed out on a joint of beef roasted with all the trimmings, followed by Mark’s favourite, a steamed treacle pudding and custard. He’d been given a bottle of champagne as a leaving gift and they opened it as an aperitif, followed by red wine with the meal. At around eleven, Ma and Pa stumbled unsteadily upstairs to bed, and Kath was about to follow them.

  ‘Keep me company, sis?’ Mark waved the bottle of champagne, still half full.

  ‘Haven’t we had enough?’

  ‘It’s just a little. C’mon. Old time’s sake, and all that.’

  She took the glass. ‘Here’s to your success as a pilot. I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Me too, little sis.’

  ‘But it’ll be good for you to get away, don’t you think?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He sighed. ‘But I’m still so angry.’

  ‘Angry? With Ray? It wasn’t his fault, was it?’

  ‘With those people at the Manor.’

  ‘The Manor?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone. Promise?’

  She was about say ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ but stopped herself just in time. ‘I promise. Whatever is it?’

  ‘That Supermarine has such a good safety record, and it was being flown by our most experienced pilot. The weather was perfect. So what caused the crash?’ He lowered his voice further. ‘Rumour has it those boffins had put some kind of extra wires onto the wings and tail plane, something to do with the research they’re doing.’

  ‘You think their wires actually caused the crash?’ she gasped, the blood turning to ice in her veins. Could this be what Vic had meant when he’d said his friend’s death was probably his fault? No wonder he’d been so devastated that day – no wonder he seemed to have disappeared from view. She hoped he hadn’t left the Manor for good.

  ‘There’s been an inquiry, but we’ll never know the answer. Everything’s so bloody hush-hush up there.’ The strain was marked on his face. ‘If you pick anything up, will you tell me?’

  ‘Of course. It’s unlikely I’ll hear anything because we’re just kitchen staff, and they never seem to talk about work around us.’

  ‘It’d just help clear my mind to know it wasn’t anything Ray did.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t anything like that. Not Ray.’ But what if those wires were found to be the cause? Could Vic and his team be charged with manslaughter, or worse? The implications were so complicated and so terrible, she couldn’t really get her head around it.

  Mark poured the last of the champagne and they drank in silence. He took a breath, as though about to say something, then fell quiet again. Then he whispered, so quietly that she could hardly hear: ‘I miss him so much, Kath.’

  ‘It’s only natural. It’s a perfectly horrible thing to happen.’

  ‘No, I mean I really miss him.’

 
; ‘We all do, Mark. He was a good friend.’

  ‘He wasn’t just a friend, though.’ A further long silence, and then, on an expiring breath: ‘I loved him.’

  ‘We all . . .’

  ‘If only I could make you understand,’ he cut in. ‘I really loved him, Kath, don’t you see? It’s so difficult . . . and I can’t even talk to anyone about it. I thought I wasn’t normal, but then I found him and he’s the same as me. Was the same as me . . .’ His voice broke and then, to her dismay, his face crumpled and he began to cry.

  She went to his side, wrapping her arms around him. He tried to push her away, muttering, ‘Oh just leave me . . .’ but she held him tightly until his shoulders stopped shaking and the sobs subsided.

  Such loss, such sorrow. She hardly dared ask anything more for fear of upsetting him further, but the truth was slowly dawning: Mark’s relationship with Ray had been more than simple friendship. But was it love, as most people understood it? Like love between a man and a woman? Was this what Nancy had meant by that word, the word Kath still found difficult to say, even in her head?

  ‘Oh Mark,’ she whispered, finally. ‘You loved him, and I’m sure he loved you back, so you must try to cherish that memory for the rest of your life. And you do have someone to talk to. I don’t properly understand, but that doesn’t matter. I will never breathe a word to anyone else, and I will never judge you. But I will always be here.’

  He pulled back and managed a weak smile.

  ‘Thanks, sis.’

  14

  All morning Vic had been in his room, fidgeting and unable to settle, gazing out of the window or trying to read. It felt as though he was about to go on trial. He’d written the letter and then noticed a silly spelling mistake, cursed loudly, crumpled the paper into a ball and thrown it across the room before penning it once more. The envelope was now tucked into his inside jacket pocket.

  Just be yourself, Johnnie said. At times he sensed his friend as an almost physical presence, but more often it was just a voice. Tell the truth as far as you can without breaking the law. He meant the Official Secrets Act, of course. The penalty for breaking it was death, and more than once in the past few days Vic had actually wished himself dead. Living with this terrible guilt was almost unbearable.

  At least you’ll know, one way or the other, after this.

  ‘Thanks for the reassurance, mate,’ he said. Johnnie would have laughed at this point, and Vic would have felt a little better. But now here he was, racked with nerves as he waited with the rest of the team outside the boss’s office, like schoolboys steeling themselves for a caning. That would have been painful, but at least it would have been over quickly. He’d have almost preferred it to the grilling they now faced.

  Making it worse was the knowledge that there would be no familiar friendly face on the other side of that heavy oak door. Robert Watson-Watt, the man Vic had seen as his mentor, had recently left the Manor, having been promoted to a more senior position in the Air Ministry.

  Vic remembered so clearly that very first day, being ushered in to the boss’s study: thickly carpeted, with its leather-lined walls and carved woodwork, hard-buttoned leather sofas either side of a grand marble fireplace, and that wonderful view through stone-mullioned windows. What an inspiring vision Watson-Watt had outlined to him that afternoon, filling Vic with an almost religious fervour to use his knowledge for the protection of the country against air attack. The big man’s genial, unfailingly positive presence was already much missed by everyone at the Manor.

  In a typically impassioned farewell speech, he’d said: ‘I cannot adequately put into words my admiration for you all. I brought you together – a motley bunch of brilliant brains here in this beautiful, magical place – but I had no real idea whether we could make this thing work. You have exceeded my expectations, more than I could ever have wished for. So while I leave you with a heavy heart, be assured that in my new role I will be fighting your cause to ensure that this work continues with more funding, more manpower, more recognition. For I firmly believe that our project will become one of the most important defences of our country, our culture and our lives. And without you, it would never have happened.’

  Dr Rowe, who’d taken his place, was an altogether tougher kind of chief: more exacting, more controlling, and much less inclined to encourage the kind of wacky ideas that sometimes led to exciting developments.

  A trio of stern-faced navy men had arrived earlier that morning, their uniforms glittering with braid, and had been cloistered with the new boss for a full hour. What could they have been talking about all this time? It was such a simple piece of kit, and they’d drilled no more than eight small fixing points in the fuselage. The tensions of the wires had all been checked and approved by navy engineers. How could it possibly have affected the flight so catastrophically?

  At last, the heavy oak door opened. ‘Come in, gentlemen,’ Dr Rowe said.

  The dreaded interrogation was, in the end, mercifully brief. They examined the diagrams that had been agreed with the naval engineers, including the fixing points for the dipole wires and the exact size of the holes they were allowed to drill. Vic described the plan for the day: three flights would be made at three, ten and then twenty miles out, passing Bawdsey to the north and then flying southwards towards Harwich. Nothing was said or asked about the purpose of the trials, or where Vic and Scott had been when the plane went down. Nothing was said or asked about Johnnie, almost as though he’d never been there.

  ‘Got off lightly, didn’t we?’ Scott muttered as they went to find a cup of tea.

  ‘We’ll see,’ was all Vic would allow. ‘I can’t understand why they went so easy on us.’

  Half an hour later, when he was full of tea and cake and just beginning to wind down, there was a tap on his shoulder. ‘Dr Rowe would like to see you in his office at five,’ the secretary said.

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘Just you, Mr Mackensie.’ His heart plummeted.

  ‘What does the old man want now?’ Scott said.

  ‘My guts for garters, probably.’

  He’d been expecting this moment, the ‘I think it’s best if we let you go back to your studies in Cambridge’ moment, ever since the crash. As the remaining leader of this disastrous trial, it was only right, and the letter of resignation was in his inside pocket. He was ready for it – had even started to imagine himself back in the lab, cycling to his digs, walking the quads – and perhaps it would be for the best, since there was so much more development to be done to make their system workable, and he could not imagine continuing to lead the team without Johnnie.

  He knocked.

  ‘Ah, Mackensie. Come in and sit down. Tea?’

  ‘I’ve had tea, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind if I indulge?’ Dr Rowe began to pour.

  ‘I was going to say . . .’ Vic reached into his pocket for the envelope and placed it on the table.

  Rowe looked up sharply. ‘What’s this? Your resignation? Whatever are you thinking, man?’ The tea missed the cup and a brown puddle formed on the table top. ‘Dammit, Mackensie. Now you’ve made me spill the tea.’

  He went to the telephone. ‘Get someone to come and sort me out, would you, please? I’ve made such a mess.’ Within seconds there was a knock and Kath, the girl from the Cliff Walk, entered with a cloth and began to clear up the puddle.

  He’d thought about her quite a bit after that evening: how kind she’d been, how calming he’d found her presence, that sweet freckled face framed by startlingly red curls and the charming little gap between her teeth when she smiled; her soft Suffolk accent, and the astonishment she’d expressed when he told her about the Pulhamite. She was the only girl he’d actually talked to, properly, one to one, for as long as he could remember. What a shame he was going to leave just as he was getting to know her.

  ‘Shall I bring a fresh pot, Dr Rowe?’ she asked, avoiding Vic’s eye.

  ‘No, that’ll be fine, thank
s.’

  She was gone as quickly as she’d arrived.

  ‘Now, what’s this nonsense about resigning?’

  ‘I thought, sir, as I am the leader of the team . . . and if they find . . .’

  ‘They won’t, man, they won’t. There is no way that kit could have caused a crash. Hopefully we’ll know for certain when their engineers have finished their inspection of the wreck. But in the meantime, it’s business as usual.’

  Dr Rowe took a sip of his tea, fixing him with a piercing gaze. ‘Though I have to say you’re looking rather grey round the gills, Mackensie. Pale, for you I mean.’ He took another sip, his chubby little finger curled in a clumsy attempt at daintiness. How Johnnie and Vic would have giggled together about it.

  ‘I’m told you aren’t coming down for meals. Is that correct?’

  Rowe’s unexpected sympathy almost tipped Vic over the edge. He took a deep breath, trying to control his voice. ‘I miss Mr Palmer very much, sir.’

  ‘Yes, quite so. Only to be expected. Now listen. I’m going to give you a week’s pass. Perhaps go down to Hampshire for the funeral? It’s on Friday, two o’clock. I’ll organise a travel warrant. Maybe call in to see your father too? He lives south of London, doesn’t he? Tunbridge Wells, if my memory serves. Then we’ll see you back here next Monday, batteries recharged, and ready to resume your duties.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. That is most generous.’

  ‘And you can put that soggy envelope into the waste-paper basket on your way out, Mackensie.’

  On his way back to his room he encountered Frank in the corridor. ‘Any news on what caused that crash?’ he asked, with a snide smirk.

  ‘I dare say you’ll find out soon enough,’ Vic said, pushing past. He had no intention of sharing secrets with a snake.

  Vic had just vague memories of the only other funeral he’d ever attended, of a great-uncle, long ago in India. It had involved a seemingly endless train journey to another city, then watching long into the night as men sang prayers and poured oil into the flames of an enormous bonfire. The following day they’d climbed onto an overcrowded boat where his mother and all the other women, dressed in dazzling white saris, wailed inconsolably as the ashes fluttered on the wind and settled on the brown river, leaving a long slick in their wake. After that they’d had to stay another two weeks among the crowd of mourning women, waiting for the big feast.