Nor the Years Condemn

by Justin Sheedy

  Quinn fired again – point blank.

  And knew what it felt like to kill a man out of revenge.

  It felt fine.

  Thirteen-year-old Virginie Piquot looked up from dirty knees. Maman had told her to pick some potatoes after school. ‘Sales Boches,’ she spat at the aircraft coming in over the sea: Flying in and out of their base all the time, Virginie hated their sound.

  How she despised these men who’d taken Papa away. To work in their stinking country. She watched them every day as she went to and from school in Nacqueville, watched them strutting through the town like they owned the place now. Their grey uniforms were always brushed, black boots always polished. As she passed them she told herself they were the politest, blondest stinking pigs she’d ever seen. But she must never, ever tell anyone what she thought, Maman had said, not even a good friend. The Germans would find out and kill Papa, even take Virginie away. And when her mother had said this, Virginie knew she wasn’t just trying to frighten her. She meant it. Virginie could see it in her eyes.

  Virginie now saw three aircraft, very high, a few miles out over the water. She would have gone back to her digging except that, even as she looked, one of them started to trail a ribbon of black. It was getting closer, lower too – looked like it might fly overhead. But then she saw…

  Flames coming out of it!

  Even closer now, its sound was nothing like the aircraft coming in to land all the time, more a sort of urgent whistle…

  It wasn’t landing at all!

  She could just make out the black crosses under its wings as it flew over her, a long, thick trail of black smoke remaining above. She spun around, the whistle rising in pitch as the German fighter drew its line of smoke straight as a ruler down onto Monsieur Bonnemain’s potato field, thumping into it in a ball of fire.

  Then came the boom of the explosion, Virginie’s whole body hit by an invisible punch in the air.

  She spun back round toward the sea: The two other planes were speeding right to left across the sky, their wings flat to her like twin knife blades through a long, wide curve away from the coast. But these aircraft had no black crosses under their wings… Towards their tips, Virginie saw them quite clearly: blue circles, a red dot in each.

  These were British fighters!

  And what a sound they made! Deep and beautiful, flying so close together, and so fast! Virginie watched them as they straightened out of their turn toward the horizon, further and further away now, smaller, smaller. As first tears rolled down her cheeks, already praying they’d return, she knew they would, she knew it.

  To kill more of the polite young men who’d taken Papa away…

  To kill more of her blond stinking pigs.

  And more.

  And more.

  She let it out slowly as she watched her wonderful new friends become just dots out over the sea. No one would hear her under their sound, and the noise of the sirens now sounding.

  ‘Bravo, mes amis.’

  *

  By the time they were nearing Bournemouth, Quinn peered out onto one of the most vividly coloured sunsets he thought he’d ever seen. It had first appeared to them as they came down onto a layer of misty alto-stratus cloud, the layer reddening as they lowered through it, to Quinn, as if a city on fire lay beneath. Emerging under it, a glimpse of the Channel below, they flew amongst mountain ranges of purple shot with orange from the dying sun out to the left.

  ‘Blue 4, Blue 3. Still nothing? Over.’

  ‘Blue 3, Blue 4. Nothing in sight, Dan. Shall we continue on this bearing? Over.’

  ‘Roger. North, same service station, then home, light-permitting. Out.’

  He’d seen some beauties over the past two years, but the sky all around Quinn right now was plain arresting: An unbelievable spectrum of darkness and light, colours brilliant, luminous, leaden – as if an infant god had got drunk, then gone wild with too much paint. As the two Spitfires levelled out, a deep blue hinted dusk lay somewhere above, directly ahead a black band of cloud solidifying, and cutting wide across the whole collage.

  The control column spasmed in Quinn’s grip as a jackhammer went through the airframe. The engine wheezed, a sickening whine of compressed energy escaping. More jackhammer, shattered glass on the dials. Controls limp. Lifeless.

  Instrument panel smoking. Petrol tank behind it. Fumes. Must have been hit. FIRE. Fire in the cockpit. Gloves on fire. Flaming!

  The fire flew about Quinn’s face and torso as he ripped off his oxygen mask, straps, cord to the radio – Carroll’s shouting cut – flames now above Quinn’s head as he wrenched back on the canopy. OPEN.

  One foot on the seat, pushing, lifting himself up in the cockpit, and he was out – only space all around him, a brutal kick in the small of his back, a grunt of pain from his mouth he never heard. Just the deafening rush of wind as the tail-plane drew away, the Spitfire a silhouette receding.

  Falling now, he saw the gloves were no longer burning – blown out in the wind. He pulled off the left one. Then the right. Left to right. Left to right the colours rolled. Cloud colours, no, their reflection on the sea. He saw his fingers were blackened. And blistered.

  The rip-cord ring.

  The RIP-CORD ring!

  He heard himself screaming as his left hand grabbed and pulled it.

  And knew nothing more.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Mum…

  Mum…’

  ‘Daniel… Can you see me?’

  He saw only whiteness.

  His skin felt warm. Yet his blood hung on to utter cold, his body rising. And falling.

  He felt the memory of a sound. It throbbed behind his eyes, deep as it gurgled.

  Then he remembered the number – vast over him, yellow on dark blue. A voice spoke firmly from somewhere above it. He didn’t register what the voice said, only the sound. Then the arms that lifted him. Between them, a different voice. Yer alright, guv. Yer alright now…

  ‘Can you see me, Daniel?’

  Quinn tried to focus. Only one eye was seeing.

  ‘What’s wrong with my eye?’

  ‘It’s only the bandage on it, Daniel. You’ve been badly hurt. But you’re going to be alright.’

  The left side of his face seared with pain. Now shapes appeared. Eyebrows. A woman’s hair. Was it blonde? No. Darker. A bobby-pin. A uniform, blue-grey, golden eagle on a cap. ‘…That’s good,’ he croaked. ‘…Where is this?’

  He thought he recognised the face. He wasn’t sure.

  ‘You’re in the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Just rest, Daniel… You’ve been lucky… You’re not in Ward Three.’ She didn’t know if he’d heard her. He’d passed out again.

  *

  Looking down the bedspread with one eye, Quinn couldn’t see his hands.

  He couldn’t understand why. They hurt like hell.

  Attempting to raise his arms, his lower back shot a bolt of pain to every nerve in his body. Eyes wide from the electric shock of it, he saw the face at the end of the bed. Grey hair, spectacles. Smiling.

  ‘Ah. How’s our Latin Scholar, then?’

  ‘Doctor Hailey.’ Words hurt. Yet the man’s mere presence was a relief. A relief that switched to dread: ‘My Wingman…’

  ‘Chap’s fine,’ soothed Hailey. ‘Seems he called up the Air Sea Rescue Service for you. Good show, I hear. Did well.’

  ‘Good old Nick…’ Quinn took as deep a breath as he could, exhaled. Then drew in another. ‘Doctor. My hands…’

  Hailey turned aside. ‘Sister? Alright if we…’

  Quinn heard a female voice answer gently in the affirmative. As with others he’d caught so far, there was a velvety whistle to the consonants – an accent he knew: ‘Am I in Ireland?’

  ‘No, no, dear boy, you’re about half-way south between London and the coast at Brighton. It’s the nurses here. Mostly Irish. And a bunch of first raters they are too. Ready, sister?
’

  ‘Reatty, doctor.’

  Quinn flinched as they raised his arms carefully aloft. He saw each hand was wholly mittened in bandage cloth. He bit his lip as they were lowered like immense eggs back onto the bed.

  Hailey waited until Quinn’s breathing had settled again before he continued.

  ‘You have been burnt, Daniel. But not as badly as you could have been. Your hands are the worst affected, less so, a bit of your face. But you’re in the very, very best of care, believe me. Plastic Surgery, they call it. Chap here by the name of Alisdair McInroe. Terrific type, he’s a New Zealander – You’ll like him. Should be popping by to see you any day now. Does with all the chaps.’

  Hailey paused a moment.

  ‘Look, Daniel… He’s been working wonders with young men far worse off than you.’ His face actually lightened. ‘I kid you not: They call him “the Maestro”…’

  Quinn was starting to feel sick. ‘That’s very comforting, doctor.’

  ‘It should be,’ returned Hailey with another determined smile. ‘Now your parents have been sent a telegram, naturally. They know you are injured, but safe.’

  ‘Doctor…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s Ward Three?’

  Hailey’s eyes held him steadily as the reply came.

  ‘That’s where you’re not.’

  *

  ‘I’m sorry, Daniel.’

  Quinn opened his right eye.

  ‘Nick.’ It hurt to smile. He couldn’t help it. Yet it dropped as he saw Carroll had his eyes lowered, cap under arm. ‘Sorry? What for?’

  Carroll looked up, an expression of perfect incomprehension on his face.

  ‘Why, for letting you down, for goodness’ sake… As your Number 2, my job was to guard your tail. I dropped that guard a moment and he got you. …And me looking at the bloody sunset.’

  ‘We both were, Nick. Forget it. Rather, don’t. Neither of us’ll make that mistake again… And we’re both still here.’

  ‘But your injuries…’

  ‘Could be worse, evidently. And bugger that… You directed Air Sea Rescue onto me. I wouldn’t be here without you, Nick. Simple as that.’

  ‘Well, yes… I suppose there is that,’ Carroll softened. ‘Actually, I got a phone-call from their chap the next day. An Aussie, as it would happen. Name of Finlay. Said he met you in London a while back.’

  ‘… David Finlay?’

  ‘Yes, yes I think that was it. Nice bloke. Wanted to see how you were shaping up.’

  ‘Small world…’ Quinn’s vision had settled vacantly on Carroll’s cap, now resting on the bed. He saw its peak, golden eagle above it. …That was an officer’s cap. ‘Nick… unless you’ve stolen that… congratulations, Pilot Officer Carroll.’ The new band on his tunic cuff confirmed it.

  Carroll shrugged apologetically. ‘I get you shot down and what do the idiots do? Promote me.’

  ‘You deserve it, Nick. Given you a wingman yet?’

  ‘Yes, actually. Another Australian chap, which I was happy about… Name of Maddox. A Pilot Officer himself.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Yes, very, as it happens. Marvelous eyesight… Also highly intelligent, I’d say, oh, and a first class shot. Two kills already. We’re doing rather well with the IX… Funny thing about him though…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well… He stutters.’

  ‘He stutters… Well I… hear some intelligent people do.’ Quinn thought a second. ‘In the air?’

  ‘No, that’s the funny thing, you see… Everywhere but.’

  ‘Well, that’s something anyway. …Any news from the squadron?’

  Carroll faltered, as if hesitant to continue. ‘Actually, there is, Dan.’

  Quinn could see in his face that it was bad news.

  ‘I wasn’t planning on telling you this presently… What with your condition and everything…’

  ‘What is it? Please, Nick…’

  ‘It’s Squadron Leader Eastwood.’

  ‘Bob…’

  ‘…He’s been posted Missing. Presumed dead, unofficially. …It’s not official, Dan.’

  Only after some time could Quinn speak. And then hardly a whisper. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘No one knows. He and his wingman went out. And simply failed to return.’

  ‘Hendrikus too? When?’

  ‘September 15 to be exact.’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Sunday 20th.’

  ‘Where the hell’ve I been?’

  ‘Well out of it, or so I hear.’

  ‘Bob? … Bloody hell…’

  Carroll waited silently until, long minutes later, Quinn spoke up again.

  ‘Anyway, Nick… Nice hat.’ He felt utterly flattened.

  Carroll smiled his quiet smile. ‘Pride of my collection. If only I’d known how nice, I’d have done the whole Commission bit oodles ago…’ Though his eyes lowered once more. ‘Dan, I’ve something for you.’

  He produced a tissue paper parcel from his gas-mask case. And solemnly placed it on the bed by Quinn’s right hand.

  ‘’Fraid you’ll have to do the honours, Nick.’

  Carroll unwrapped the tissue. To reveal an officer’s peaked cap.

  ‘Haven’t stolen another one, I hope, Nick… Whose is it?’

  ‘Well… Yours, now.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It was Eastwood’s.’

  Quinn’s brain was swimming, drowning. ‘But what about his family? Surely Command send his personal effects to them…’

  ‘They were about to. But his parents wired they wanted you to have his cap.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Seems he thought a great deal of you – from what he wrote about you in his letters home to them. Ever since something called

  ‘Wagga’, whatever that was…’

  Quinn flinched. For a moment, he thought he saw Eastwood’s face pass behind Carroll’s. He squinted hard. The sting of pain that answered seemed to sharpen his vision – just another young patient hobbling down the ward.

  Carroll hadn’t missed it. ‘Can I get the nurse, old chap?’

  Quinn remembered Bob’s face clearly now. And how it had changed. How his clever, hazel eyes had become hard. ‘No… Just hard to see… Thank you, Nick.’

  ‘Well, I always said I’d get you a new hat, didn’t I. Do you think you’ll be back with us down the track?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, Nick… Depends on what the surgeon can do for me… The hands and everything… New Squadron Leader then, I guess?’

  ‘Yes. One Roland Huxley.’

  Now, more than any time he could ever remember, Quinn wished to be alone. ‘…What’s he like?’

  ‘Well he doesn’t really say all that much, to tell you the truth. Not what you’d call the chummy type. A lot of people think him rude… Personally, I’d say he’s just very awfully focused… on the job to be done, that is.’

  ‘Yes…’ breathed Quinn. ‘The job… Anyway, m’back’s a bloody nightmare.’ How he wished Carroll would go…

  ‘Yes. Yes, quite. Anything I can get you? Anything you need?’

  Quinn pondered on the face before him. And was struck with shame: What a kind and excellent soul was Nicholas Carroll… ‘Maybe a pack of cigarettes?’ He looked down the bedspread. ‘…’Cept I can’t exactly smoke one with these things on…’ He moved the bandage mittens very slightly.

  ‘No,’ Carroll observed. ‘Look, shall I have a word with the nurses for you?’

  Quinn smiled – Christ, it hurt. ‘You’re a good bloke, Nick.’

  Carroll returned it. ‘Well. I ought let you get some rest. You look like you could use it, old bean.’

  ‘Thanks, Nick.’

  ‘I’ll be back down here to see you as soon as I can.’

  ‘When you can, mate. I expect you’ll be busy with one or two things.’

  ‘Yes, rather. Well cheerio then.’

  He
moved to go, yet turned back by the end of the bed.

  ‘Daniel… The Jerry that bounced us. …I got him. A Focke-Wulf 190. …There was no parachute.’

  *

  ‘Always nice to see a fellow Antipodean on the mend…’

  The face at the end of the bed was stern, though with a good-humoured glint. The pin-striped suit was darkly elegant, hair middle-parted, spectacles.

  ‘My name’s McInroe,’ the face smiled.

  He looked in his mid-forties, in good shape physically, yet the shadows under the eyes betrayed hellish working hours.

  ‘Daniel Quinn, doctor.’

  ‘Yes, I know all about you. Your file says you’ve played a few games of rugby, Daniel.’

  ‘A few. Yourself, doctor?’

  ‘Oh, when I was a lot younger. Not in your class, of course… Though we Kiwis are very keen on the game, as you’d be well aware.’

  ‘The All-Blacks gave us a hiding in the last Test, I’m aware of that,’ managed Quinn.

  ‘Have to agree with you there, Daniel. The ’38 Test had some mighty matches though, didn’t it.’

  ‘Yes, I was at the Sydney Cricket Ground for one of them,’ said Quinn absently – he sensed the man was appraising him as he spoke.

  ‘Were you really?’ The doctor’s eyes sparkled. ‘That must have been marvelous. Our ’37 Test against the South Africans was, of course, another kettle of fish.’

  ‘Springboks are always a tough side, sir.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Well… Not too sure about my next game, truth be told… The pain’s awful…’

  ‘That’s to be expected – We’ll see about getting you some more morphine, don’t you worry. Rest assured, Daniel. You’ll play again. Damn lucky you came down in the Channel; the salt water’s always good for burns. Chaps we pull out of the drink always have a better recovery. That and the fact you’re all so very fit…

  ‘Now. You’ve taken an awful hit in the back – Tail-plane thumped you when you bailed out, most likely. Your kidneys were bruised, so you’ve a certain amount of blood in your urine, which will sort itself out… Amazing, the ability of the human body to mend itself…’ He consulted a clip-board at the end of the bed. ‘…Your x-rays show no spinal damage, thank the Good Lord, though you may experience nasty flare-ups in that area. Feel like heart attacks but they pass,’ he looked back at Quinn now, ‘the important thing being to remember that when they hit you. Oh and you’ve some gashes in each leg, cannon shell splinters, I’m afraid… Nasty… but these too will heal.’