Under the Radar

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  Almost ten years later, on a sofa in his married quarters, Amos fell prey to a melancholy that hovered on the faux-tragic edge of self-pity (yet another side to drunkenness). This desired and breathing body to which he clung in order not to fall represented an impossibility, above all in the service. The permanence that love pretends to claim for itself is victim to many things more banal than mortality. Sooner or later, if he didn’t blot his copybook, Amos would be bumped up to wing commander and sent off to God knows where. In the meantime Gavin could equally well be sent anywhere. It might be years before they ever met again. A hopeless tear ran down Amos’s cheek before he sidled into sleep.

  When he woke again grey daylight had crept into the room. He was alone on the sofa. His head ached. The gas fire was extinct, he noticed. Presumably the meter had run out. Getting stiffly to his feet he went along the corridor into the kitchen and was surprised to find quite a domestic scene. Jo and Gavin were sitting at the table with mugs of coffee and the rabbit was crouched in one corner with a lettuce leaf sticking out of its mouth. There was a tube of Alka-Seltzer and a yellow tin of Bisodol powder together with a white-rimed glass in front of his AEO, who was wearing a borrowed coat over his flimsy mess kit.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Jo. ‘Look what the cat brought up.’

  ‘You see before you,’ Amos said, dragging up another chair, ‘two survivors of multiple assaults by blue nuns. They’re vicious creatures.’

  ‘You look ghastly.’ His wife got up and put the kettle back on the stove. ‘I prescribe black coffee and Alka-Seltzer.’

  ‘And how are you, this fine morning?’ Amos asked Gavin.

  ‘Not as bad as I deserve to be. Thanks for bringing me back last night. Otherwise I’d have been found stiff and stark under that hydrant like one of the babes in the wood.’

  ‘Pity the babe who’s as pissed as you were. How’s the head?’

  ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘I heard you come in,’ said Jo.

  ‘Sorry. We tried to be quiet. I thought it better to sleep downstairs rather than wake you.’

  ‘So I saw. You looked very sweet together when I peeped in on you this morning.’

  Suddenly Amos knew without doubt that Jo understood everything. He also knew it was the formal end of their marriage. In his hungover state it seemed less important than whether his wife would gossip about it and create a scandal to appease her outraged womanhood or something. Yet he couldn’t really find it in himself to care. Infinitely more important was to discover what footing he and Gavin were now on. He dreaded hearing the boy claim not being able to remember a thing, followed by a return to the joshing but respectful mateyness of any close-knit crew member with his captain. He yearned, yet dared not presume.

  ‘Sound asleep as you both no doubt were,’ Jo was saying with one eyebrow sceptically raised, ‘you presumably missed the excitement.’

  ‘Excitement?’ said Amos. ‘What was that?’

  ‘They had to call out the fire tender. Apparently some idiot went and set fire to the marquee. Burned to the ground.’

  ‘Crikey. Anyone hurt?’

  ‘Not according to Kay and Ronald. It must have been one hell of a party.’

  ‘It was,’ said Rickards. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Gavin’s been telling me about it,’ Jo said. ‘To be honest it sounds perfectly disgusting. What kind of behaviour is that for grown men entrusted with nuclear weapons?’

  ‘Pretty much what you’d expect, actually. Somehow, atom bombs don’t leave you much choice.’

  ‘You’re just being silly, Amos. Anyway, heads will have to roll, surely? People booing an Air Vice-Marshal off the stage. It sounds like a mutiny.’ She mixed a couple of spoonfuls of Nescafé powder into a mug of boiling water and gave it to Amos, who ladled in a good deal of sugar before he began sipping.

  ‘Ahh, that’s a life-saver, Jo. Thanks. Yes, well, I expect there will be repercussions, there usually are. Disciplinary hearings. Even fines. If they’ve destroyed the marquee, quite a lot of fines. Any injuries will be deemed as self-inflicted and if they’re enough to stop someone flying he’ll probably get handed a fizzer.’

  But Jo seemed not to be listening. Having made his coffee she had gone over to stand by the back door, looking out of its glazed upper half. ‘Amos,’ she said. ‘Come here. What’s going on at the chapel?’

  Amos and Gavin got to their feet and went over. Jo opened the back door and they went out and stood in the cold where they could see the station chapel off to the right over the low fence. It was an ugly building that had evidently been thrown up to minimal Air Ministry specifications, presumably just after the war: a stylistic hodgepodge that might be vaguely described as Congregationalist Gothic, with broad steps up to an arched entrance, plain brick elevations broken by pointed windows and a flat roof. This Sunday morning it was a scene of activity that had nothing to do with religious observance. A crowd stood in front gazing upwards. Sitting on the roof was a dilapidated little Morris 8 that Amos at once recognised as belonging to the chaplain. Although it made his head ache he couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘That’s Wheezing Jesus’s car,’ he said. ‘Jim’s done it after all. Good for him.’

  ‘Who’s done what?’ asked Gavin.

  ‘Jim Ledbetter. Jo, you remember that house-warming thing that Dominic Purdue and Joy threw for us when we moved in here? Before his wife dragged him home old Jim was suggesting putting the padre’s car on the chapel roof for a prank. It looks like he’s done it. Brilliant. I wonder how he managed it.’

  At that moment the sound of an engine announced the arrival of the Coles crane from the fire dump, its heavy sheave block swinging from the top of the jib. As the driver positioned the crane beside the building it was obvious this same jib was just long enough to have swung the car onto the roof by means of the four wire ropes and hooks dangling from the block. However, it was equally obvious that somebody was going to have to go up in order to fix them to the car. Almost as soon as Amos had the thought the fire tender arrived with its extendable ladder. The crane halted, block swinging wildly, and at that moment a small, squat figure appeared on the roof. It was wearing a little tattered RAF uniform jacket and looked quite distraught.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Jo exclaimed. ‘There’s that poor ape, the mascot, whatshisname.’

  ‘Ponsonby.’

  ‘For God’s sake, what callous bastard put the poor animal up there?’ Jo was suddenly red in the face with rage. ‘Is there no limit to the cruelty of the shits on this station?’

  ‘Maybe it was a mistake,’ hazarded Amos lamely. ‘Perhaps he was asleep in the car when they put it up there.’

  ‘Oh yes, a likely tale. And he never noticed, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, he was pretty sozzled, you know.’

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘Cherry Heering, apparently.’

  ‘Whoever did that ought to be shot. Just taken out and shot.’

  ‘Mm. It wasn’t me, Jo, and it wasn’t Gavin here. We were whacked out in the lounge.’

  They watched the wretched Ponsonby lope around the edges of his confinement, stopping here and there to peer down and evidently concluding there was no way that even a monkey from Gibraltar could climb down sheer brick walls, let alone a monkey with a hangover. Just then he seemed to notice the crane jib swinging beside the car and shambled across. Obviously wondering whether if he climbed onto the Morris’s roof he would be able to reach the jib and shin down it, Ponsonby paused for a moment beside it, looking down. At that moment the heavy sheave block, swinging in, caught the side of his head and smashed him against the car, the impact bouncing the pitiful body outward over the edge where he fell in a tangle of outflung limbs, his air commodore’s jacket fluttering, out of sight to the ground below. There was an awful silence.

  ‘You fuckers,’ said Jo almost conversationally; and Amos had never before heard her say such a thing. It was extraordinarily shocking and he felt a quick embarrass
ment that Gavin should have heard her. ‘You fuckers.’

  19

  Early in the New Year Wing Commander Ops was briefing the two ‘P’ Flight crews while Group Captain Mewell sat to one side, his chair half-turned towards the blackboard. The time had come for both Oilcan and Vector (the code name assigned to the laser-guidance system) to be tested against some realistic opposition.

  ‘With the Admiralty’s co-operation,’ Wingco was saying, ‘we have arranged to run Oilcan against a set-up on one of our nuclear submarines of a pretty good version of the three Soviet acquisition radars used for their Guideline missiles.

  ‘At this moment she’s en route from Faslane to an area a couple of hundred miles off south-west Ireland called the Porcupine Seabight. We’re hoping the trials can be made the day after tomorrow. This will depend to some extent on the weather. January off the Celtic Shelf is not exactly the ideal time for a submarine to dally on the surface, but for reasons the group captain will shortly explain we’re having to get a move on. The other constraint is if there’s the wrong sort of shipping in the area. I’m told we can rely on Shackletons patrolling for twenty-four hours prior to the sortie. We don’t want those famous Russian trawlers listening in, or anyone else, come to that. Sir?’ he glanced over at the group captain.

  Mewell got to his feet. These days he was looking a little careworn, Amos thought, and had been so ever since the Dining-In Party. Naturally, no-one at mere squadron level was privy to the things that must have been said at command level, but Amos and the others thought it safe to assume that poor old Muffin had got a bollocking. In addition, he was known to be sad about Ponsonby’s demise. The animal had spent much of its time in the group captain’s house with his family, not to mention the intimate moments it had shared with him while roaring up and down the airfield in his Allard. Mewell was visibly making an effort to tighten things up at Wearsby, and disciplinary action had recently been taken against several people for offences that before 12 December nobody would have bothered about. These days, even the hairier members of the sergeants’ mess would think twice before demanding their bar stay open after 23:00. The Snowdrops with their dogs had doubled their patrols of all Wearsby’s dispersals.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘as Wing Commander Imber says, this radar exercise will take place the day after tomorrow unless either Coastal Command or the Admiralty reports snoopers or weather conditions that make it dangerous for the sub to remain on the surface. So far the Met boys are giving encouraging signs. You will be on six-hour call in case we decide to bring it forward. The exercise has been code-named “Canteen”. You navigators will find the rendezvous co-ordinates in the Vault so after this you will go and plan your routes out and back. Both aircraft will go with ninety-eight per cent fuel in case there are last-minute changes or for some reason you need to stooge around in the area. We’re not expecting to need it but short-notice tanker backup will be arranged.

  ‘Now, we have recently received an invitation from the Americans to participate in an exercise of their own. This will take place on the Libyan ranges near Wheelus Field. They, too, have set up a mock Guideline missile radar complex and we have had a specific request from USAF’s European headquarters in Wiesbaden that we compete against it. We are ninety-nine per cent certain it’s pure coincidence that the invitation should have been issued at this particular moment, and that it has nothing to do with our new anti-radar system. We’re still confident that nobody apart from ourselves knows it even exists. In any case we’ve brought Canteen forward so as to give you AEOs some final practice.

  ‘We have accepted their invitation to participate, but in the usual spirit we’re treating it as more of a challenge, so we’ve issued them with one of our own as a sort of quid pro quo, if you like. This will be a bomb comp using Vector. We have simply said it will be for guided bombs but we’ve not specified a laser system. They’ll be free to choose whatever kind they like. You’ll be based at Luqa for the duration of the exercise and a supply of the new munitions is already on its way there. So far, the practice runs you’ve been having show consistently impressive results. We’re hoping you’ll be able to score points by showing our cousins that they don’t have the field to themselves and that Britain can still invent and innovate, and so forth. With luck we’ll surprise them by slipping this kit in under their radar, so to speak. I’ve been told that a real success with Oilcan, in particular, would be a very useful bargaining chip, but to what use this might be put only the top brass knows. At our humble level, though, it would definitely go some way towards knocking out a few dents this station’s honour has suffered recently. I need not elaborate, gentlemen.’

  *

  Canteen day duly dawned and found Yogis 1 and 2 in the air and heading for the Atlantic. The two Vulcans flew together, getting regular fixes from stations they passed until Bob Mutton called up Amos on the intercom saying, ‘Just passing Swansea on the left, Boss. Come a couple of degrees right and we’ll be on the money.’ Amos acknowledged and made the course alteration. Soon they were over the Celtic Sea with some three hundred nautical miles to fly to the rendezvous point. Despite this being January it was one of those rare, cold days with perfect visibility. Even the sea below showed little movement. This was perhaps unsurprising from fifty thousand feet; but here and there the odd oil tanker heading towards the Bristol Channel left a wake spreading in a fan still visible even when it was ten miles wide, and where two wakes intersected they made moiré-effect interference patterns that could be clearly seen from the cockpit side windows. This argued an almost flat calm, which was exactly what the Met men had said, based on reports radioed in by ships in coastal areas and further out in the Atlantic. Just for a change, the weather gods were smiling. Amos thumbed the mike switch.

  ‘You still awake, Keith?’ he asked his co-pilot.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Fancy a spell?’

  ‘I could do with the hours.’

  ‘You have control.’

  ‘I have control.’

  Amos leaned back and stretched. Then he got back on the intercom.

  ‘Captain to AEO: how are you doing there, Gavin?’

  ‘OK, Boss. I’d guess another five minutes to radar contact with the sub.’

  ‘Remember each aircraft does three passes: one at high level and one at low level with Oilcan alone, then another one at low level with Oilcan plus chaff and the rest of the ECM while jinking.’

  ‘Roger. Also confirm that Yogi 2 will reverse our first two passes. They’ll go high when we go low and vice versa, but always slightly behind us. That way we also check on possible interference to see if we get running rabbits on our screens.’

  Ten minutes later Vic Ferrit called up Amos.

  ‘Skip, Yogi 2’s started descent.’

  ‘Roger, Vic. Thanks.’ There had been agreement beforehand that radio silence between the two Vulcans was to be maintained except in emergency so that no unnecessary hint of the exercise should be given to the unseen ears that were ever-pricked over every horizon, no matter how empty it looked. It was astonishing how much might be deduced from so little information. Both aircraft had been given a short list of previously agreed code words for brief communication with the submarine, even though it hardly seemed that it would have been a security risk to have wished the boat’s skipper a good morning. Sometimes up here in the cockpit, gazing out over the curved world, Amos felt the absurdity that an ideological confrontation among earth-dwellers nine and a half miles below should also reach up to embrace this thin, sub-zero region and, ever since Sputnik in 1957, even space itself. Thereafter this squabble for temporary world dominance had effectively tainted the planet’s every molecule, and in gloomy mood Amos could see no reason why it shouldn’t eventually spread to the moon and the nearer planets as well. Yet it seemed daft to squabble over territory that no human could inhabit for long. If you baled out merely at this height you’d be dead in seconds without a pressurised suit, your blood within nine degrees of
boiling point, and it wouldn’t matter a row of beans whether you were capitalist or communist or pacifist. For the umpteenth time it struck him as a damn silly way for human beings to organise the terms of their brief lives in their one and only home.

  Amos had always liked to indulge his private thoughts while flying, but on this occasion something was nagging at him. It had to do with the last thing he’d heard, whatever it was . . . yes, about rabbits. With a little adrenal stab he realised the connection: that Jo had taken Vulcan the rabbit with her when she went. She had said nothing and left no note. When he had returned home to Brabazon Close one evening a few days before Christmas he had known at once from the echoes that it was an emptier house than the one he had left that morning. Eventually Kay from next door had come round and told him with some embarrassment what he had already deduced – indeed, must already have predicted, so unsurprised did he find himself to be. A young woman had turned up with a car and she and Jo had loaded it up with various boxes and bags and they’d simply driven away. The vast expanse of sea and sky through which he was now speeding at Mach 0.86 suddenly felt like a world that was dismayingly void instead of supportive. With another pang Amos thought of Gavin sitting only half a dozen feet away. His crew and its bonds of trust and friendship seemed a small thing and flimsy to set against the implacable physics of things far beyond the Vulcan’s windscreens. Not for the first time he wondered if he would still be in the RAF in ten years’ time.