‘Got it in one. High Speed Launch.’
‘How fast is “high speed”?’
‘Well, 36 knots is the best I’ve got out of her so far. But she’ll do better…’
‘That’s fast on the water.’
‘It’d want to be,’ returned Finlay. ‘Speed’s the whole thing. A few minutes either way spells difference between picking up a live pilot and, well…’ he squinted slightly, ‘…exposure.’
Quinn recalled this as a term the lecturer had used. Another was cardiac arrest. ‘They sound impressive craft. You must be proud of her.’
‘Don’t mind saying I am, Daniel.’ Finlay peered out the window. ‘63-foot of mahogany, crew of seven. Besides,’ looking back to Quinn, ‘I get to order a bunch of Poms around, which is rather satisfying.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll turn them into sailors yet.’
With a chuckle Quinn stared out at the bright morning, and up The Strand. As far as he could see were gaily coloured signs, BOVRIL, sand-bagged building entrances, GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU, red buses, here and there a blackened lot where a building had once stood. And a million Londoners bustling as if it had always been so.
*
A recommendation from Griffon originally, the porter had confirmed the hotel as, though not quite The Ritz, a place right popular with the RAAF boys. He’d also mentioned that Quinn might find its foyer interesting. With Finlay staying with family relatives in London, the two wished each other good luck, and parted.
Duffle bag shouldered and gladly lightened of the trunk, Quinn traced his path back down The Strand. Following the porter’s instructions, he noted the street sign at the end of Australia House as Melbourne Place, continued on, passed the beginning of the Aldwych Curve, and something called the Lyceum. Then there it towered above him.
The Strand Palace.
Where its exterior had been impressive enough, the foyer had him a little agog. Inside, a grand staircase flanked by a symmetry of internally-lit frosted glass led up to a door that glittered as it revolved. Up the glowing stairs, through the revolving door and greeted by the concierge, Quinn enquired as to whether the place had had an architect, or a theatre set-designer.
The middle-aged man’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
‘As a matter of fact…’ he said, ‘Sir’s supposition is entirely correct.’
*
In the early afternoon, Quinn answered the knock at his hotel room door.
Victoria looked even lovelier than he remembered.
Still opening the door, he was about to speak when she put her finger to her lips, silently motioning him inside and closing the door behind herself. She took off her WAAF cap, placed it and her purse on the entry table, lowering her gasmask case to the carpet beside it. Quinn was again about to speak when, having hitched up her skirt to her waist, she sprang at him. Forearms behind his neck, she leapt up, locking her legs around his waist, her whole body clasping his as he fell backwards onto the bed.
*
‘God, Daniel,’ she sighed, reaching across the bed for her cigarettes. ‘You don’t cook, do you?’
‘Not very well…’
‘Another likely story… What time is it?’
‘Somewhere past five, I think.’
‘Say, on the subject of food,’ she rolled back towards him on the bed, ‘I – am – starving. Where would you like to eat? Anywhere you like – I know some places you’ll love…’
Quinn cocked his head: ‘I suppose a roast dinner’d be out of the question?’
*
Once they’d showered and dressed, she took him to a restaurant called Simpsons nearby on The Strand. The place was something of a London institution, she told him, specialising in roast beef and other such traditional fare.
‘We have to keep up your strength,’ Victoria grinned as the door was opened for them.
They were shown to a table by an old waiter – they all seemed very old gentlemen, Quinn noticed, white aproned, gliding trolleys silently between the tables every now and then.
Victoria ordered champagne, which they drank with an entrée of smoked salmon. This evening was on her father, and she wouldn’t hear anything more on the subject: She’d telephoned the Colonel before leaving Bournemouth, and he’d insisted.
Quinn sat back. Looking across the table at her, he felt a sensation he’d never known before, something luxuriously heavy in his limbs, at the same time exquisitely light: Though he wasn’t making love to her in this very moment, within a short and delightful time, he would be. The splendid inevitability of it. In the warm lamplight of their table, his eyes drank her in. On the threshold of girl and woman, that she wanted him inside her right now was, for Quinn, mellow ecstasy.
‘Darling… Hello? Victoria calling Pilot Officer Quinn…’
‘Sorry,’ he smiled. ‘It just… it just feels so good to be with you. It really does.’
Her eyes answered his smile. ‘I’ve always wanted to bring someone like you where he wanted to go.’
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, then grimaced. ‘Someone like me? Gawd, you really should do something about these low standards of yours, Vic…’
Her laughter filled the room for a moment, though her face had become quite contemplative of his before she spoke again.
‘…You’re lovely.’
He raised his glass to her. ‘Here’s to you.’
She raised her own. ‘No… to you. Your first squadron.’
‘Thanks… Nigh on two years and here it finally is.’
‘You’ll be very careful, won’t you.’
‘Always am.’
She hoped he wouldn’t see it in her face – as she remembered a similar toast. And another young man she’d known who’d also promised to be careful. A young man whose care, maturity and talent hadn’t saved him… But she wouldn’t tell Daniel about that. Not tonight.
The roast beef arrived on a trolley, a white chef’s-hatted waiter sliding back a silver cover, then carving and serving it to them with great ceremony.
‘Better have a double helping,’ Victoria hummed, one eyebrow raised in her usual way. ‘…You’ll need it.’
*
The next morning was the first really clear, blue one Quinn had seen since arriving in England. After breakfast, Victoria took him along Regent Street – which Quinn said he thought quite magnificent – their destination, a surprise, she said, but something she’d heard him mention about his childhood.
On its steps, Quinn saw that Hamleys, the oldest toy-shop in London, and bombed no less than five times during the Blitz, Victoria said, was still trading. Now he remembered speaking to her of the brightly-painted lead soldiers posted to him year after year by a family friend. They went inside the great store, where Victoria insisted on buying him some, next stop, the Changing of the Guard.
*
In the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, drums crackled, and the Band of the Welsh Guards struck up. At first, Quinn had been taken aback to see them in khaki uniforms – not the famous bear-skin caps, the red tunics, the immaculate brass and polish he’d been expecting. Still, his state of quiet euphoria rendered disappointment a physical impossibility this day.
‘They only do the toy soldier bit in peacetime,’ Victoria whispered in his ear. She smiled. ‘We’ll come back then.’
After the formation of soldiers marched away, Quinn and Victoria strolled up The Mall, St James’s Park on their right, towards Admiralty Arch. And The Strand.
‘What’s for lunch?’ put Quinn as they neared it.
‘How about Room Service?’
‘I’m not sure they do it at the moment,’ he replied, ‘not for food anyway…’
She squeezed his arm in hers. ‘They do my kind…’
*
To Quinn’s surprise, the telephone rang by the bed. To his even greater surprise, he found on answering it, the call was for Victoria. He handed it to her, she spoke briefly, concluded with a ‘Sir’, and handed the receiver back to him. Once replaced, she expl
ained.
‘I have to go. I told my office where I’d be, of course. I’m needed back there. Some sort of flap on.’
‘I could come with you…’
‘No, darling. Best not, by the sound of it. I’ll be too busy to see you once I’m there anyway. I’ll have to go, a bugger but there it is. Oh, you can always go to church now,’ she grinned. ‘I think perhaps you’d better… Now come here and I’ll give you something really good to confess…’
*
Down on The Strand, they embraced, and she disappeared into an Underground station. They would meet again as soon as possible – She would contact him at his new posting at RAF Hornchurch.
After a bite to eat and a cup of tea at the Boomerang Club, Quinn passed St Clement Dane’s Church, alas, no use to him, Victoria had advised: Since the bombing of the previous year’s ‘Blitz’ raids, though it still stood, it had been gutted.
Up the length of Fleet Street, then down through lanes south-east towards the river, the sky had dulled from its clear blue to a haze, to overcast by the time Quinn saw Tower Bridge, and the barrage balloons floating above it. Each seemed to him an elephantine teardrop shifting reluctantly in the breeze.
They could not have presented a starker contrast to his mood.
He chuckled to himself – He’d long heard blokes warn against the way he felt right now. Avoid it like the plague, mate. Abandon ye all hope who enter here…
In his life so far, Quinn had known joys which, he knew, most people never would: He had scored tries in front of large crowds, won Grand Finals, in the last few years flown high above the Earth and low over it at stunning speed.
But the way he felt right now beat all.
*
On the return train to Bournemouth, Victoria Haimes made up her mind.
She would marry Daniel Quinn.
Though she wouldn’t go the way of so many other girls. No. She hadn’t the slightest intention of marrying a wonderful young man who might be dead in a few months, a few weeks, days. She wouldn’t either: She would get him out of it, out of harm’s way, off operational flying. Quickly. And legitimately. She had a plan. And it would work.
Her father had connections, all the right ones. And at the upper levels of the Military, Victoria well knew, that was how it all happened. Father was close friends – old school friends – with men who were now Generals. These men belonged to the same private clubs as the Air Marshals, the men who ran the Royal Air Force, as they were the Royal Air Force. The very men who could find a new job for a promising young Pilot Officer. Even create one for him… There were many people Father could speak to, his boss, for one – Victoria had holidayed with Lord Mountbatten’s family more than once as a child.
All she needed, after speaking to Father, was Daniel’s cooperation. And all that required was his agreement. Which she would get, maybe not immediately, but she’d get it. She just needed to talk to him again in person, and as soon as possible. For that purpose, she would get him sent on ‘special business’ to Bournemouth.
In this, Victoria’s boss would play the perfect, unwitting part: Yes. The Royal Air Force would summon Pilot Officer Quinn to meet Squadron Leader Jessop, Commonwealth Aircrew Reception and Dispatch Centre, Bournemouth – some matter of liaison between the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian, something to do with the Empire Scheme, a ‘Personnel’ matter which Quinn’s new superiors, at least the ones who actually flew aeroplanes, would be quick to submit to rather than waste time challenging.
Whoever he was, Quinn’s new squadron commander certainly wouldn’t understand it. But he wouldn’t query the Wing Commander above him. And even if he did, Wing level would never ask Group level above them. And Group would never ask downwards as they’d never know in the first place – The directive wouldn’t have come from them, but from Victoria. Even if someone did feel inclined to start asking questions, here ‘the system’ would become Victoria’s ally, for the simple reason that she would use the system against itself, according to the almighty principle of ‘Need to Know’: If any party requested an actual ‘reason’, one only had to be given if the requesting party needed one. Which they did not. Security.
At Victoria’s end, there would be no problem: Jessop was intelligent, but he seemed to regard Australians as jumped-up convicts, and would not stoop to probe into Quinn’s appearance on some Colonial matter that not even Assistant Section Officer Haimes knew anything about… Nothing in my diary, sir. Why don’t they keep us informed, sir? Yes, I agree Australian HQ’s the weak link in the chain here, sir… Jessop would see it as little more than the next in a long line of things sent to try him, relegating it to Administrative Error within a minute of Quinn’s arrival. As a result, so would Quinn, and that would be the end of it, the matter lost in the infinite administration of the War.
Victoria smiled. Business in Bournemouth concluded, a still surprised Daniel would telephone her. She would pretend to be surprised in turn, though she wouldn’t have to pretend her delight. Immediately, she would arrange to meet him somewhere they could talk alone.
When and where it was safe to do so, she would inform Daniel that, through her father’s connections, he could be put forward, as a young Australian of outstanding merit, for a position on the staff of Royal Australian Air Force Overseas Headquarters, Kodak House, central London. As for a reason, the chaps at Kodak House didn’t need to be given much of one – none, actually… The lad has too fine a mind to let slip through your grasp… Be an absolute asset to you and us. Liaison and all that… There’s good chaps… Daniel only had to agree and his new posting would be in the bag.
He would resist her plan, initially. Of course he would – honour, duty, he’d trained too long and come too far not to see some action. He’d probably insist on flying a few operations too, and she’d have to let him, a terrible chance, one she’d have no option but to take. But a short time on ops, and he’d have seen the reality. By then he’d be far more favourably disposed to becoming an indispensable member of staff of RAAF O/S HQ, London. And out of harm’s way. Probably end up Aide-de-Camp to the Australian Chief of Staff. Crikey, does the chap need a personal pilot? This one’s an absolute First Rater!
She had to convince Daniel, or, rather, let him convince himself. When she had him alone in Bournemouth, she would tell him all about the boys who’d died already. In the last years, months, days even. She would give him the numbers. The numbers that she, better than practically anyone else in England, had access to. The numbers that only a fool could ignore, and Daniel Quinn was no fool. She’d tell him where they’d lived, suburbs near his in Sydney – places he knew. She’d tell him where these boys had gone to school. But most of all, she would tell him their names. All of them if need be. Maybe even the name of the young man she had already lost.
She intended to keep Daniel Quinn. And she would.
*
Regarding his London Leave, Quinn had received a tip from Don Charlton: A pub called Cogers Inn, east up The Strand and off Fleet Street, it was a good RAAF haunt. Entering its doors at 5 o’clock, or attempting to, it seemed to Quinn that half the RAAF in London must have heard the same thing.
Just inside the door, Quinn noticed some aircrew boys crowded round a desk by the wall, and in fits of laughter over a large open book. Peering over a shoulder, he saw it was the pub’s Visitors’ Book, an Air Gunner writing in it. Quinn waited until they’d made their way off in hysterics, and took a look at it. May as well; it could be several minutes before he got anywhere near the bar.
The left-hand page thick with entries, Quinn lifted the broad sheet back to the preceding page.
About a hundred at a glance, left and right. New South Wales… Tibooburra… Flight Lieutenant… Simmo… Parramatta… He turned the page again.
Adelaide… Pilot Officer… St. Kilda… Banana-Bender… Roxby Downs… O’Regan, Michael, F/O.
‘That’s Mick,’ Quinn uttered in the riot all around him. ‘He’s here…’ Quinn checked the ent
ry date. Damn. A full week previous. Scanning the page, it looked to Quinn like the whole RAAF had passed through. Peering at Mick’s entry again, he brightened: Hell, Flying Officer? Young devil’s been promoted… As he pondered what for, Quinn turned back to the current day’s page and read the Air Gunner’s entry. One Sergeant Sheehan, Surry Hills, NSW.
I met a London girl, what a wonder.
Who rarely did, but when she did, banged like thunder.
Said she frowned on the act, seldom dropped ’em in fact,
And only ever for boys born Down-Under.
Glenn Miller’s Chattanooga Choo-Choo was half way to Carolina by the time Quinn got anywhere near a beer. Though it was worth the wait for a pint of Cogers’ infinite supply of iced lager – not the warm stuff, Charlton had promised. Quinn guided it very carefully back through the jostling uniforms. As he’d caught no familiar face, he negotiated his way to a corner spot, the only place he could see in the entire pub where he might steal enough room to actually turn round in, gain a view of the room, the crowd, take a quiet sip. Another officer had clearly had the same thought; they’d stepped into the corner and turned back to the horde simultaneously with their beers.
From the grey-blue of his uniform, twin rank bands and no Dominion shoulder lettering, Quinn knew immediately he was a Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant. With caps off there was no need for a salute, too crowded anyway and certainly none of the Australians were saluting each other. Exchanging a nod, they clinked pints instead.
*
He flew a Mosquito.
Mitch Lambert was English, a few years older than Quinn, and only too happy to talk about the aircraft that had been rumour topic No.1 in Bournemouth…
The ‘Wooden Wonder’, with a Spitfire engine on each wing, though in operational service these last eight months was still an ‘official secret’. Which was a shame as that kept it out of the headlines for the time being and the British public were quietly desperate for good news. It was true, Lambert said, the ‘Mossie’ was loved by its pilots for the beauty of its design, but most of all for the fact that, unlike so many pre-war death-traps, this was the plane that would get them home. It was, he confirmed, the fastest thing in the air. In addition, as it was made almost entirely of wood, the British furniture industry was now very happily engaged in War Work. Even a few coffin manufacturers, Lambert grinned.
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