There’d been no mistake, promised the Centre clerk. He referred Quinn upstairs, to the office of one Squadron Leader Crispin Jessop.
There Quinn saluted a British officer in his thirties, receding hair, plenty of service ribbons on his tunic yet no wings badge, Quinn noticed.
‘Yes, well normally, old boy, you’d be going to an AFU, then on to OTU, in normal circumstances, yes. It’s just that, in your case, it seems someone’s in a bit of a hurry somewhere up the line… That or the circumstances aren’t normal – who can say? The long and the short of it is this: Your training’s been sort of – what’s the word for it? …Abridged. Yes, that’s it. The word exactly. Let’s have a look at the file, shall we?’
Keeping Quinn at attention before his desk, the officer stood up from his chair and crossed the room to a large chest of wooden index drawers. Pulling one out, he made a clicking sound with his mouth as he ran his finger down a row of cards, stopped at one, and started reading it.
‘Fancy that. 1st of April… Yes… Yes, so many of you coming in, it seems we’re running out of training bases. No, you’re off to Scotland. It’s a brand-new one.’ He pushed the index drawer closed and turned back to Quinn, looking at him blandly. ‘In any case, I’m just following orders, m’self, and so should you. I don’t mind saying you Australians would save everybody a great deal of time, including yourselves, if you’d stop bally-well questioning everything.’
Quinn maintained rock-solid attention. ‘Sir.’
The man sat down again behind his desk. ‘Nevertheless,’ he smiled up at Quinn, ‘I have every confidence you’ll manage admirably.’
Quinn donned his cap, saluted, about-faced, and exited.
‘…I’m sure you do, you flightless fucking wonder,’ he said as he strode down the hall.
*
Back at the Russell Court, he found Mick packing the last of his gear. His posting was in Wales. There was no time for goodbyes to Lucy, or to Victoria, he advised.
‘Take it from me, son. When the Royal Air Force say “At Once”, they mean “At Once”.’ He clipped his trunk shut. ‘You wanna share a cab to the station with me? Then quick smart.’
CHAPTER SIX
Quinn’s initial impression of Scotland was twofold.
Firstly, the place was so dramatically beautiful. Having grown up in Sydney, fogs and mists were a rarity in his experience, and always held a kind of other-worldly quality for him. Here they inundated the landscape, tumbling down through its valleys, shrouding lakes – ‘lochs’, as he’d been quickly corrected. Though the sun shone, everywhere Quinn looked the hills and mountains were cloaked with brooding rainclouds, everywhere a vivid contest of shadow and light.
Secondly, mid-spring in Scotland felt like the depths of winter in Melbourne. Luckily for Quinn, the cold had always upped his blood. That, and his arrival at Number 58 Operational Training Unit…
On the truck in from the train station, Quinn grilled the RAF airman driver on the local geography – for emergency landing purposes, best to have a mental map of the area, particularly given its fogs and gloomy light conditions. According to the airman, established only a month previously, RAF Balado Bridge lay a mile or so west of the town of Kinross, which sat on the western bank of Loch Leven. About ten miles down south-east were the waters of the Firth of Forth, which flowed out into the North Sea. Inland to the west of the airfield lay the villages of Dunblane then Callander – about 30 miles, then mighty mountain ranges. Quinn couldn’t wait to see them from the air.
But jumping down from the truck and onto the grass of the aerodrome that first day, Quinn saw a sight for which, in his own mind, there could be no equal: parked wingtip to wingtip, a long line of them extending in silent formation out across the field.
Spitfires.
The aircraft he would now be flying.
*
RAF Balado Bridge was fifty acres of grass, two runways, two hangars, more under construction, some Nissen huts and a row of tents. On the convoy crossing, Quinn had heard talk of a certain level of comfort, even privilege, now awaiting him on any RAF station in the Officers’ Mess. At Balado Bridge, this was a Nissen hut with some chairs stacked against a wall. Though it did boast a hand-daubed sign out front. As an officer, Quinn was now entitled to his own room-servant, called a ‘batman’, who took care of such things as laundry, maintenance of his uniform and flying kit, thus leaving the pilot free to deal purely with the pressures of flying and training. These ellusive helpers, the RAF driver had informed him, were expected to arrive in the post any day now.
By contrast, one thing that assured Quinn he had not been forgotten by the system was the amount of brand-new equipment with which he was now issued, most welcome of all being a fleece-lined, brown leather flying jacket which, satisfyingly, fit him perfectly and felt like armour against the cold. Over this was to be worn a yellow life-jacket, called a Mae West, inflated by blowing into a tube. These things arrived along with an unbelievable array of covert items comprising the pilot’s ‘escape kit’ – for use, the instruction pamphlet stated, if the pilot had parachuted into and now found the need to escape from enemy territory…
Quinn handled the slender weapon – its blade and handle a single piece of black metal – an actual ‘Commando dagger’ for throwing and stabbing. Disguised within shirt and trouser buttons was a collection of miniature compasses. There was a thing called a ‘heliograph’ – a device of highly polished metal about the size of a cigarette case for signalling a passing friendly aircraft with reflected sunlight. Within a bar of soap was a six-inch wire with a key-ring at each end, according to the instructions on the package, actually a metal-cutting hacksaw that made no sound. There were asprins, water purification tablets, survival rations in tiny flat tins, bandages, and a new set of fleeced flying boots. These, by cutting at the ankle with the dagger and removing the boot-leg, became civilian shoes: It had been deduced that aviator’s boots might be viewed as suspect apparel to a German ground patrol. Finally, items more ominous than comforting, were plastic bags containing a powder called ‘Sulphanilamide’…
You put the bags on burnt hands.
*
‘Pilot Officer Quinn to the Signals Tent…’
The RAF Corporal held out the receiver of the field telephone for Quinn, a concerned look on the young Brit’s face.
‘Personal call for you, sir. Sorry, sir, but I can only give you a minute. Any more than that, the Sarge’ll ’ave me taken out and shot, sir. They may not allow that in your country, sir, but they do ’ere…’
Quinn could hear Victoria smiling as she demanded to know what on Earth he thought he was doing up there in bloody Scotland instead of with her where he damn well ought to be. Though he’d spent the length of the call laughing, he’d felt actual butterflies in his stomach – as well as definite stirrings elsewhere on his anatomy… It was a shameful state of affairs, she vowed, but she would let him make it up to her, and sorely hoped he would, as many times as he wished to, then more. But in order to save the Corporal’s neck, it was time to end the call, and Quinn took his cue. Before they rang off though, Victoria’s voice had changed. For the last few moments of the call, there was a gravity, an almost reluctant tenderness to her words.
‘It was wonderful being with you, Daniel. I know I’m being just awful, darling, but I do mean that…’
*
The world heaved on its head as Quinn whipped bodily over the man’s shoulder. Now flat on his back and looking up at the clouds, he knew only the stiff rubber of the exercise mat had saved his lungs from having their oxygen completely expelled…
‘Right. Now get up.’ The voice remained low yet put on menace as it added, ‘When I tell you to get up, I mean on your feet. Now.’
As Quinn dizzily complied, the Commando Sergeant addressed the surrounding group.
‘That, ladies, was how not to do it.’ He turned back to Quinn. ‘Right, son, get your dagger out.’
Quinn dug deep to remain steady as
the Sergeant continued with the practical lecture – though he would later wonder whether the man’s words had been for the benefit of the group looking on, or merely to allow Quinn’s consciousness, at least in part, to return.
‘Now,’ bristled the Sergeant, ‘I am not a patient instructor devoted to the hopeless task of keeping you pathetic lambs from the slaughter, I am a German soldier. You’ve just been shot down, have parachuted somehow without breaking your stupid neck, and are now completely alone. In my territory. I have you cornered. If you don’t kill me and kill me quickly, I will kill you.’ He focused hard back on Quinn.
‘Right, son. Kill me.’
Quinn had been thrown flat several times already. His body was sore all over, in parts, stinging badly. He’d gone past winded. He’d gone past hoping the group wouldn’t see he couldn’t go on. And even though he knew the man was pulling his strings like some expert puppeteer, it no longer mattered: Quinn had gone past hurting. And come out the other side…
Was that a gleam of delight he saw in the man’s eyes?
Quinn sprang at him, dagger handle cold in his right hand, arm out and pointed straight at his neck.
The man flipped Quinn around the very axis of that arm, immediately had him down, knee in Quinn’s upper chest, in one hand a fistful of hair, in the other, the dagger to Quinn’s throat – frozen there and slightly pricking the skin.
The man concluded to the group. ‘And remember… You don’t slice your man’s jugular, you stab directly into it.’
Every face lifted. They hadn’t heard the Spitfire until it was directly overhead, booming flat out, low down, and gone.
Every face except the Sergeant’s.
And Quinn’s.
*
In full flying kit, Quinn hobbled along on the heels of his new instructor, a diminutive Brit by the name of Griffon, though with the rank of Flying Officer, one above Quinn.
It was a hostile sky at mid-morning, dark clouds above allowing in none but a steely light from low on the horizon – Quinn hadn’t been sure whether they’d be able to fly or not. By the time they reached the aircraft, however, he knew nothing could have stopped him. For, close up, the Supermarine Spitfire would have to have been the most beautiful man-made thing he’d ever seen. Just standing still, it looked like it was moving fast.
He surveyed its lines from stem to stern: overall, olive and grey-blue camouflage paint on a form sleek and elegant, tail-wheel down on the grass, gentle nose-up attitude. Brighter colours punctuated: white propeller nose, its three black blades yellow-tipped. Three black exhaust pipe stubs each side of the engine cowling attested to the V12 Merlin under it, the cowling long and straight back to the clean perspex of the cockpit. Its neat little windscreen was freshly polished, Quinn noticed, as was the canopy, now slid back and waiting open for him.
Aft of the cockpit was painted the RAF roundel – red, white and blue with yellow corona, either side of this, the OTU’s identification letters also in bold yellow. The fuselage slimmed back to a white recognition band round it, RAF colour stripes on the tail. The Spit’s trademark elliptical wings lifted in a subtle ‘v’ to their tips, underneath them, narrow undercarriage spars pale grey down to black rubber tyres.
For a moment, Quinn was struck with a comment he’d caught some months ago, a pilot’s ‘rule-of-thumb guide to aircraft’, an old one, ridiculously simple, yet religiously held: If it looks right, it IS right. This form that seemed to dare him…
‘Get in.’
He did so, an airman ‘rigger’ leaning in to secure his straps and plugs. As this was done, Quinn looked ahead at the instrument panel, and narrowly all around him at the cockpit interior. The Spit’s reputation had preceded it and felt immediately justified: As an aircraft, you really did ‘strap it on’ – Just how a pilot any larger than Quinn’s medium build managed to fit into one, he couldn’t imagine. In any case, they said the ‘snug fit’ only made this fighter feel ‘part’ of you, until it became a mere extension of your own body in flight.
The airman pointed out a few of ‘the taps’, as he called them, and was gone. The ‘fitter’, an old-hand RAF mechanic, hadn’t said anything to Quinn when he’d arrived; just sized him up.
Quinn went through the drill of checks, dials, switches and pumps which, from the classroom hut, he could reel off by now like a mantra. He then looked over the cockpit rim of the Spitfire – at long last, his own.
‘Clear Prop.’
‘Prop Clear,’ came the reply.
Quinn had flown the Wirraway solo, but only after the first three months with Bob Eastwood in the instructor’s seat. Now, Quinn’s first ever time in a single-seater aircraft, there was no other way to do his first ever take-off in the Spitfire except alone.
He pressed the Starter button, the propeller turned, exhaust stubs flaming momentarily as the engine settled into a comfortable roar.
Making the two-handed signal for the wheel-chocks to be pulled away, Quinn saw Griffon’s Spitfire draw ahead, and placed his hands back on the controls. There’d been a tremble in his hands, but only until he drove that throttle forward. Then – he’d never felt anything like it – such acceleration, such throbbing energy all around him, and all at his fingertips. As far as Spitfires went, the Mark II in which Quinn sat was considered ‘last year’s model’ – last year’s model with a Rolls-Royce Merlin XII engine putting out 1175 horse-power. As the speed built, it felt to Quinn as if every single one of those horses was straining to pull him left and clean off the runway. He’d been told to expect it, but had never felt torque-effect like this.
Canopy still open, he kept it straight and true, tearing down the runway behind Griffon. You kept the canopy slid back on take-off as jumping for it and breaking every bone in your body was considered better than being trapped and burnt alive if everything went wrong. Yet it hadn’t, the Spit’s wheels left the ground, before they were even retracted Quinn seeing the earth moving quicker, much quicker than he was used to. The Flying Officer clearly knew the territory, banking them low-level inland about a hundred feet up at three-hundred miles per hour. Quinn pulled the canopy forward and shut.
The 30 miles west to the village of Callander flashed in minutes, Quinn’s focus darting systematically between Griffon’s Spit just ahead, his instrument panel dials, the countryside speeding just beneath them, and the navigational map taped to his knee. The conscious effort of keeping this juggling act a smooth one compressed the minutes to moments, the exhilaration of his senses, extreme – a sensation he’d also been drilled to expect: Time Distortion.
Quinn remained aware of the fact he was still being tested. It never stopped. Test after test after test, handle a million new things at once and keep thy cool. They could still wash him out at any time and – his instructor from Mascot had been as good as his word – Bomber Command held perpetual vacancies for rear gunners. Always welcome: another ‘Tail-end Charlie’.
As Quinn mirrored the lead Spitfire’s shallow climb over the village, the beginning of Loch Venachar and the mountains far to the west came into view. But ahead, directly ahead loomed the mass of Ben Ledi, the ‘Hill of God’, as subtitled on the map. As one now they flew at its summit, elevation, 2800 feet.
Though the pull-up had been a long and graceful curve, with their sheer forward velocity, the G-forces pulled Quinn’s face downwards within his oxygen mask. Through his goggles he saw the mountain quickly filling the windscreen, its peak slightly to the right, then the Flying Officer’s wingspan rolling slowly toward it. Quinn matched precisely, pressed hard in the seat once again. Harder – They were banking round the summit, its peak straight down now at Quinn’s right shoulder and all the way through the turn, until, heading back the way they came in, they levelled out. Though not for long…
Griffon flipped inverted and pulled steeply into a dive, Quinn following suit.
‘I gotcha,’ Quinn breathed into his mask – Shit, too CLOSE! The Spitfire ahead filled his windscreen – Throttle off, throttle of
f in the dive…
Okay…
Quinn knew he’d made a bad mistake. Yet a mistake that had fallen short of disaster: His propeller hadn’t fanned off his leader’s tail – no time to think about it – his leader was still there and rolling upright again in the dive. As was Quinn, and following his long, banking curve down to the left, airspeed needle climbing.
Until there, there it was ahead: Their target – the beginning of Loch Lubnaig…
Jamie Callum should have been in school. On the bank at the head of the loch, his collie stopped wagging its tail. The boy turned back behind him to the forest, and looked up. He’d heard snatches of aircraft a minute ago. Then they’d seemed to disappear.
Over a rise of pine-trees up the bank the Spitfires scythed directly at him.
He ducked under their twin demon noise, spun around to see them straighten, and hurtle away, lowering to the loch and breaking the still of its surface as they did.
Quinn pushed full throttle again to keep up with Griffon. The pines of the valley on either side flashing past, he checked the map: They were headed north through the Forest of Strathyre. Their speed had come way down since the dive, now settling at around 320 miles per hour.
In seconds they closed the mile and a half to the north-west bend in the loch, Griffon lifting them slightly before the sweeping curve – only so as not to dip a wingtip in the water, cartwheel, death in a thousand pieces. It had happened here, Griffon had warned.
Levelling out of the turn, Quinn checked the map: a spot aptly named, it seemed. He hadn’t seen it, but the map said they’d just passed a graveyard by the shore to the left, a mile or so further inland from that, something called the ‘Little Loch of the Dead’. Yet they were already climbing away over the end of Loch Lubnaig, Griffon right banking them wide back around to the east – towards home base once again.
*
Having come in to land at a conservative distance behind his instructor, Quinn at last heaved out of the cockpit, stepped down off the wing root, and onto the grass. The airman rigger promptly stepped up past him with a quiet ‘thank you, sir’ – Just like at home, Quinn noticed: He had pimples. The fitter, very much the career Flight Sergeant, enquired as to any mechanical problems Quinn may have experienced – none – then tramped his way round to the engine. Quinn pulled off his leather flying helmet, and turned round for another look at the Spit as they went about their work on it. Now it was theirs again.
Nor the Years Condemn Page 10
