Flightsend

by Linda Newbery

  It was a hazy day, the air still and the sun muted behind a thin cloud layer. Intent on pushing her way through the brambles that clung to her jeans and meshed her feet, she didn’t notice the sound of the aircraft until it had become a persistent drone. She looked up, squinting into the brightness. Her heart thumped. It was like the first time: the small aircraft coming out of the haze, slowly but perceptibly descending over the field. Charlie stood rooted to the spot, staring. She wasn’t exposed on the runway as before; she felt no urge to dive for cover, more the sense of being in a dream, of watching something that had happened before, and seemed inevitable. The engine noise, now a throaty roar, filled her senses.

  ‘Caspar! Caspar!’ She wanted him with her. He’d heard the aircraft engine too, and was facing it like a pointer, ears and tail alert. The little plane circled overhead, and then the pilot aligned it with the main runway. It was coming in to land.

  It must be in trouble, surely! There was no control tower here, no windsock, and the runway was hardly fit to land on. Charlie’s stomach lurched: what would she do if it crashed in front of her? What if it burst into flames? There was no one to help. The plane came down slowly, looking as frail as a leaf riding the wind; it wavered, levelled, touched down. She heard the screech of wheels on uneven tarmac, and the aircraft seemed to leap forward, racing along the runway. She gripped Caspar’s collar, expecting the plane to rush on out of control, to crash in the thick hawthorn hedge at the end.

  The pilot brought it to a halt. She saw the blur of propellers, and then the engine was turned off and they whirred into stillness. She could read the plane’s registration letters, see that it was bigger and more substantial than she’d imagined. With the drama over – no crash, no spurt of flame, no horribly injured victims requiring help – Charlie hesitated, still holding Caspar. A door at the side of the cockpit slid open and the pilot, a slim man, jumped down. Half expecting a Biggles-like figure, Charlie was surprised to see that he wasn’t wearing flying overalls or goggles, just ordinary black trousers and sweater. She had the odd sense of switching from one kind of film – aircraft disaster – to other scenarios all mixed together. Her thoughts raced. Foiled terrorist? Transworld flier makes landfall? Ghost plane returns from World War Two mission? Or even – teenage girl abducted from airfield?

  She was near enough to the stile and the footpath into Hog’s Pond field to make a run for it if she wanted, but curiosity made her stand and watch. The pilot crouched, and touched the runway with both hands – almost caressed it. Charlie had seen this done by Popes, presidents and returning hostages – a symbolic gesture, but here there were no journalists or camera crews to record its significance. Just the pilot, not knowing he was watched.

  Then he stood up and walked straight towards her.

  Caspar gave two sharp barks, and she heard the growl in his throat. The man stopped, stared, as if seeing Charlie and Caspar for the first time. Then he raised a hand, signalling that he was friendly.

  ‘All right, Caspar,’ Charlie said, putting her hand on his head. He was still tensed, watching the man closely. For the first time Charlie thought he might make a good guard dog. No one would attack her while she had Caspar. She hoped.

  She could see now that the man was much older than she’d thought at first – fiftyish, she thought. He had the slim build of a younger man but his hair was greying and his face lined.

  ‘I’m very sorry if I startled you,’ he said. He came forward and stopped, not too close. ‘I didn’t expect anyone to be here.’ He spoke in an accent Charlie couldn’t instantly place.

  Her nervousness released itself in a laugh that came out too loudly. ‘I didn’t expect a plane to land here. I didn’t know the airfield was in use.’

  The man gave a thin smile. ‘Officially it is not. You were here the other day, I think? With your dog?’

  ‘I saw you flying over. Low over the runway. Then you flew on. I thought you were lost.’

  ‘No, I was not lost.’

  She recognized his accent now. German. She realized it with an illogical tingling of fear, thinking of the place’s wartime origins. She thought: I’m here, alone, talking to a strange German pilot. On this airfield where British pilots trained to bomb German cities. Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden. Her mind flashed up images of smoking rubble, of people throwing themselves into the river Elbe to escape the flames. She’d answered a question on Bomber Command policy in her History exam last week. The crazy idea came to her that this German pilot had come back for revenge.

  ‘Is it your own plane, then?’ she asked. ‘You came here on purpose? All the way from … from …’

  ‘From Leicester. I have flown here from a flying club in Leicester, where I live. Yes, it is my own aircraft, the Cessna.’ Then he smiled. ‘Oh, I see. You think from my accent that I have flown all the way from Germany, yes?’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘I have not lived in Germany for many years,’ the man told her. ‘Since a student. For a while I live here in this village.’

  Charlie was confused by the tense. Used to live? Or am living?

  ‘And you?’ the man went on. ‘You live nearby?’

  ‘In the village.’ Charlie pointed. ‘Lower Radbourne. I often walk here. Why have you—’

  ‘Why have I landed here? I am searching for something.’

  He hesitated, looking at her. Then he bent down to Caspar, holding out a hand to be sniffed. Caspar’s demeanour changed instantly from suspicion to pleasure; he wriggled, licking the man’s hand. For the first time, Charlie thought: I needn’t be afraid. He’s a man who likes dogs and knows how to treat them.

  ‘Looking for—?’ she prompted.

  ‘Yes.’ The man straightened. ‘Looking for a cross. When I lived in the village I used to walk on the airfield as you do. The cross was here then.’

  ‘The cross! That’s what I was looking for!’

  He stared. ‘You have seen it?’

  ‘Yes, last week! It’s—’

  Charlie remembered that she’d been unable to find it just now. She turned to point at the perimeter fence, and found that she was looking straight at the ash tree that had eluded her before. That, she realized, was where he’d been aiming, before he saw her.

  ‘It’s here,’ she said. ‘I found it by accident. Well, Caspar did, really.’

  ‘Your dog?’

  He was already walking towards the tree. He knelt on the ground by the cross, and stretched out a hand.

  ‘Still there. I am always afraid it will be taken. Thrown away as rubbish.’

  ‘What’s it for?’ Charlie asked. ‘I wondered.’

  ‘It’s a memorial to my father,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘He died here, in 1943.’

  ‘In the war.’ She was looking down at his neat parting, his dark hair with silver in it. Surely he couldn’t be old enough to remember the war.

  ‘Yes. My father was a Luftwaffe pilot. He flew a Junkers 88. In March 1943 he crash-landed here and was killed. The landing gear of the Junkers was damaged – it was impossible to make a proper landing. The two other members of his crew baled out, but my father did not. The aircraft burst into flames.’

  He stated all this matter-of-factly, kneeling with one hand on the cross.

  ‘How old were you?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I was not yet born at that time. I was born two months later, in Hamburg.’

  Charlie imagined a woman, seven months pregnant, opening her door to receive the telegram she must have dreaded.

  ‘So,’ said the man, ‘I know my father only by my mother’s memories, and his photographs.’

  ‘That’s like me,’ Charlie told him. ‘I never knew my father, either.’

  ‘Your father was killed?’

  ‘No. He left. When I was two he left us and went back to Canada. I can’t remember him. I know what he looked like, from his photo. That’s all.’

  ‘That is very sad,’ the man said. He touched the cross again, with both hands, then stood
up and brushed dried earth from the knees of his trousers. Now that he’d seen the cross, Charlie wondered if he’d climb into his plane and fly away. She’d listened to his story with a sense of confirmation rather than surprise: I knew, she thought, I knew something had happened here. She had the odd notion that her discovery of the cross, her wondering, had summoned him out of the skies. When he took off again, he and his plane would be as insubstantial as thistledown, as a dream. Perhaps she was dreaming. But she looked at the man and saw the stitching around the crew neck of his sweater and the check fabric of a shirt underneath. Un-dreamlike details. His appearance was very neat: grey-streaked hair, well-ironed trousers, black boots, tanned hands, clean fingernails.

  ‘Who put the cross here?’ she asked. ‘Did you?’

  ‘No, I believe the cross was given by the English airmen, the RAF staff who were based here. A tribute to an enemy pilot who faced the same dangers they did.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘From the survivors, the ones who baled out. They were captured, held as prisoners-of-war. But afterwards, when the war was over, they came here to make their farewells to my father, and they found the cross. They told this to my mother.’

  ‘So you came to find it.’

  ‘Yes. When I came to study in Cambridge I made my way to your village, to this airfield. The place has haunted me ever since.’ He said it unselfconsciously, as if stating a simple fact. ‘After Cambridge I work for many years in Nottingham, but I visited here many times. By car, then,’ he added, gesturing towards the aircraft. ‘It is only later that I learn to fly, and get my pilot’s licence. And gradually I fell in love with this village. You live here, you say, in Lower Radbourne? Do you live in one of the old village houses, or perhaps a modern one?’

  ‘Ours is an old house, a cottage,’ Charlie told him. ‘It’s called Flightsend.’

  ‘You live at Flightsend,’ the pilot said slowly, gazing at her. ‘How very strange then that I should meet you here.’

  Charlie stared at him.

  ‘Flightsend was my home,’ he said. ‘It is I who named it Flightsend. Before, it was Glebe Cottage. I’m glad it still has the name I gave it.’

  ‘You lived in our house?’

  ‘Yes, it was my home until six years ago. Is it much changed?’ the man asked wistfully.

  ‘Hardly at all, I should think. Apart from my mum’s polytunnel, for her plants. She’s a gardener, she runs a nursery. Why don’t you come home now, and see? My mother would love to meet you, to hear all about— She’s a History teacher – I mean used to be. She knows a lot about, about the war.’

  ‘I would love to,’ the man said. ‘But I can’t leave the aircraft here. It is unauthorized landing, you see. I have no permission to be here. I am a trespasser.’

  Charlie was reluctant to give up her idea. ‘You could hide it,’ she suggested. ‘Park it –’ she wasn’t sure if park was the right word to use for an aircraft – ‘over there, close to the trees. Then unless the farmer actually comes over here, he won’t know.’

  She could tell that he really wanted to see Flightsend. He smiled and said. ‘All right. I’ll take the risk.’ Then, formally, he held out his right hand. ‘My name is Dietmar Kolbert. And yours?’

  Walking with Dietmar down the lane, Charlie felt anxious about her impulse to bring a stranger home. What if Mum was as rude as she’d been to Sean? What if she spoke only in monosyllables, or retreated into her office?

  She needn’t have worried. Kathy was fascinated by Dietmar, and the fragments of his story gabbled by Charlie in confused order. After showing him the nursery, Kathy offered coffee; Dietmar accepted, and they all sat at the garden table, with Caspar lying underneath.

  ‘So you planted our Frühlingsmorgen rose?’ Kathy asked him. ‘We wondered about it.’

  ‘Yes, I planted it as my own memorial for my father. My mother has one also in her garden in Hamburg, bought at the same time. They are twins,’ Dietmar said. ‘I’m delighted to see how it thrives. It is in good hands, here.’ He looked round at the exuberant borders, the veronicas and hardy geraniums that spilled over on to the grass.

  ‘I can’t take much credit,’ Kathy told him. ‘We’ve only been here since February. Someone else did most of this planting.’ She looked at him. ‘You? Are you a gardener?’

  Dietmar nodded. ‘Not an expert like yourself. But I like to dibble.’

  ‘Do you mean dabble?’ Charlie couldn’t help asking. ‘Or is that ducks?’

  Kathy laughed. ‘No, dibble! Dibble – to dibble – means to make holes for planting. With a trowel.’ She mimed.

  ‘Then I think I meant dabble,’ Dietmar said. ‘To try a little bit, to enjoy, yes? But dibble is right too, by accident. I’m sorry, my English is still not yet fully proficient. Even after so many years. You must correct me when I make mistakes.’

  ‘It’s a lot better than my German,’ Charlie said, thinking that anyone who knew words like thrives and proficient must surely be entitled to consider himself fluent.

  ‘You’re more than just a dabbler,’ Kathy said, ‘if you did this planting. Have some more coffee?’ She proffered the jug. ‘So the name Flightsend came from you? We wondered what it meant, didn’t we, Charlie?’

  ‘Yes. Flightsend.’ Dietmar’s face became serious. ‘The tragic end to my father’s flight, and – I thought then – a happy ending to my own flight, my search for a home, a special place. I thought I would settle here.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ Charlie asked. She sensed a reproving look from her mother: too blunt.

  Dietmar picked up his coffee mug, paused, put it down again. ‘I lived here for three years. It didn’t turn out quite as I planned. I was living alone for the first time—’

  Caspar’s ears twitched, he scrambled to his feet and barked, and Charlie saw two people walking into the yard. ‘I’ll go,’ she told her mother.

  They were customers, wanting herbs. They took some time deciding. Charlie sold them two varieties of fennel and a French lavender, then went back to the garden, disappointed to see Dietmar on his feet and making signs of leaving.

  ‘Oh, you’re going?’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel anxious about the Cessna,’ he explained. ‘I must go, I think, and remove myself before an angry farmer comes along. But’ – he turned to Kathy – ‘I’d very much like to have a closer look at your plant nursery some other time. You are open for customers?’

  ‘Yes, every day. Do come again,’ Kathy said.

  Dietmar shook hands with both of them. ‘It was delightful to meet you. Thank you for your hospitality.’

  ‘It’s been such a surprise,’ Kathy said. ‘And we’ve never had a visitor arrive by plane before.’

  They went with him to the gate and watched him wave and turn the corner. Then Kathy said, ‘What a nice man. Interesting.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie said, half-relieved that her mother hadn’t turned on her with recriminations. ‘I wonder why he left here? Did he say?’

  ‘No, not really. Just that it didn’t work out.’

  ‘I heard that bit. What else did he say?’ They turned back to the cottage.

  ‘Nothing much. Only that he works at Leicester University, as a senior technician. Apart from that we were talking about the village fête. And delphiniums.’

  ‘He left six years ago, anyway, he told me that,’ Charlie said. ‘And I suppose he must have sold it to those mad people?’

  ‘What mad people?’

  ‘The people who lived here before us. They used to sunbathe in the garden with no clothes on and knit their own sweaters from hand-spun Jacob’s sheep wool that absolutely stank. And they used to play Gregorian chants on their stereo all the time, with the volume turned right up.’

  Kathy looked incredulous. ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘From Henrietta in the shop. I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘Well, even if they did do those things, it doesn’t make them mad. I’d expect Henrietta – and yo
u – to have a little more tolerance,’ Kathy said in what Charlie called her schoolmarm voice. ‘There’s nothing wrong with eccentricity.’

  ‘Oh! Sean said that!’ Charlie exclaimed. ‘The same thing exactly. About Henrietta.’

  ‘Did he?’ her mother said flatly.

  Charlie expected her to say more about Dietmar, but she went straight back to the polytunnel. Wondering if there was anything for lunch, Charlie went indoors to look; but before long, hearing the aircraft engine, she came outside again. She saw the plane – frail and white against the sky – as it swept round in a wide, ascending arc. In case Dietmar was looking down, she stood waving until the churchyard yew trees blocked the plane from sight.

  Birthday

  Charlie looked after Rosie on Tuesday afternoon, and again on Thursday. It was fairly undemanding, and less fraught with tension than working in the kitchen. Rosie was a good-natured child, easily amused; Charlie read her stories, took her for a walk in the gardens, played a game with building blocks. With Rosie as an excuse, she made a thorough exploration of the grounds, finding areas she hadn’t known about. At the farthest end, hidden by the strip of orchard, there was a pond or small lake, fringed with trees.

  ‘Look, Rosie, ducks. Next time, we’ll bring some stale bread from the kitchen. And there’s a coot,’ Charlie said, pointing.

  ‘Toot,’ Rosie said obligingly. She was at the stage of labelling everything she saw: tat for cat, Tarlie for Charlie.

  Fay, pleased with Kathy’s designs, told Charlie that she was planning to spend more on the gardens. ‘We could reclaim that whole pond area. Open it up, have another seating area down there.’

  She and Dan had just heard that their National Lottery bid had been successful; they were getting a grant for the improvements. Nightingales was doing well. Dan placed more advertisements in magazines and started planning a smarter brochure for next year, with ink drawings and colour photographs. He commissioned a photographer, and Oliver Locke agreed to do the artwork.