Under the Radar

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  They flew south-east, high above a tossing ocean of cloud that was dumping sleet onto unfortunate mortals below. Baldy remembered the first time he had stood between the pilots in a Vulcan cockpit, astonished at how little they could see from their supposedly majestic vantage point. Not only was the cockpit cramped, with the pilots sitting shoulder to shoulder in their bulky gear. They seemed to be sunk up to their noses in a trough entirely lined with gauges and switches and black trunking. Forward vision through the steeply-raked fan of five small shatterproof panes was squeezed between the high coaming of the instrument panel bulking up in front of them and the low canopy – itself lined with knobs and controls – frowning down almost to meet it. It was only when you stood hunched in this space capsule of a cockpit that you appreciated how vital were the two periscopes the AEO could use to view most of the aircraft’s underside as well as much of its upper surfaces. They were the only way to get any direct sight of what was happening outside.

  At about the trip’s halfway mark, when they had just entered Italian airspace, the rations were broached and various sandwiches, pork pies and chicken legs divvied up, passed around and swapped. There were Thermos flasks of fruit juice, tea, and the infamous ‘NATO standard’ coffee: very hot, very sweet and very strong. Not much more than two hours had passed since Baldy had eaten his monumental breakfast but he found himself quite able to pack down a heroic lunch on top of it. ‘Eating Command’ was living up to its reputation. Crews might be yearning for a crap, and supernumeraries might be accommodated in discomfort approaching that of the extreme confinement used by professional torturers, but no-one was going to starve to death on one of Bomber Command’s aircraft. In point of fact aircrew mostly ate in-flight meals for the same reason that civilian passengers did: to alleviate boredom rather than hunger.

  When everyone had finished Baldy made sure everything was packed away and the Thermos flasks stowed before once more buckling on the survival pack that doubled as his cushion and strapping himself back into his crouch on the wooden box top. Within twenty minutes the AEO was in touch with Luqa and just after they had passed over Agrigento on the south-western coast of Sicily Yogi 1 began its let-down. From the Tyrrhenian Sea onwards the clouds had apparently cleared completely. Now Baldy could imagine a fisherman glancing up to see their contrail fray and stop, the Vulcan’s white triangle still too small to see against the blue of the sky, its jet resonance probably lost in the slap of waves against the boat. A bare half an hour later they came into Malta from the south-east, low over Birzebbuga, and touched down on runway three-two before taxiing to the dispersal area. With a sigh of nitrogen the door opened and foreign-smelling air spilled into the Vulcan: a scent of sun-baked bricks and sea and dusty cement that told Baldy he was definitely abroad.

  *

  The crews were warmly received and happy to leave their chief technicians behind with the aircraft, supervising refuelling and other post-flight checks. Baldy Hodge and Barry Venn were given strict orders to allow nobody aboard unsupervised and never to leave the aircraft unlocked and without an armed guard, which would be supplied. They left Baldy retrieving his bicycle from the bomb-bay pannier, the sight of which caused some amusement among the tassaf erks. Vulcans were still a comparatively exotic sight in Malta and attracted the usual awed attention. It was difficult to associate them with ferrying battered old bicycles about the world.

  Once the men’s own kit had been retrieved and loaded aboard the crew bus it drove them off to change out of their flying gear. This was Gavin’s first time in RAF Luqa and he was surprised by the activity and sheer variety of military aircraft there. Behind the coming and going of RAF Land Rovers, Bedford trucks and fuel bowsers he noted like a boy plane-spotter the parked aircraft they passed. He recognised four photo-reconnaissance Canberras belonging to 39 Squadron with their camouflaged upper surfaces and sky-blue underwings and bellies. His colleagues simultaneously pointed at half a dozen Canberras from Wearsby that would be flying to and from RAF Idris and the Tarhuna range to practise toss-bombing. In addition he counted two Shackletons, three Hunters, a Javelin, a Meteor, two Hastings transports, a Britannia of Transport Command from RAF Lyneham and a de Havilland Devon from the Idris Flight. There was also a USAF C-54 Skymaster he thought might well have flown across from Wheelus. There were a couple of NATO and French aircraft as well as an Italian air force Fiat jet. As the bus drew up a large Argosy transport was lumbering into the air, probably heading for the Middle East somewhere or maybe Changi, Singapore. It was all bustling evidence of the extent of Britain’s military presence around the world. The thought was inseparable from a feeling of pride and confidence. He suddenly felt his future secure.

  *

  At six o’clock that evening Baldy Hodge decided that now was as good a time as any to try for the pictures he needed. Get the thing over and done with. With any luck the reward could bring his savings up to the magic £5,000 mark. With that he would buy the house and see his father and mother properly installed. Then he would serve out his remaining four years while immediately quitting this hole-and-corner stuff which fell so dismally short of any James Bondian romance. There were never going to be Aston Martins and bikini’d temptresses in his life. Not that Baldy had ever expected them. He was content to take the money and keep his head down.

  With the key to XM580 around his neck he transferred the flashgun and battery pack from his duffel bag to a canvas toolkit. The little Minox camera went into a breast pocket. Before closing the toolkit he armed himself with a heavy double-ended spanner that he tucked down the leg pocket of his overalls. You never knew abroad. Then, taking the torch he had thoughtfully brought, Baldy left his quarters, mounted his trusty bike and pedalled off past the brightly lit flight lines. The two Vulcans were parked nose-out in comparative seclusion on the far side, lit by the mournful bluish light cast by two widely separated and very tall mercury vapour standards that made the camouflage stripes on the aircraft’s tail fins stand out starkly. The evening was chilly but dry – a big advance on bloody Lincolnshire, he thought. As he neared the aircraft he could see a white-topped Military Police Land Rover parked to one side. The figures of two policemen with their dogs emerged from each of the shadows cast by the great wings. The one guarding XM580 came up to him as Baldy dismounted and leaned his bicycle against the main landing gear. The MP shone his torch directly into Baldy’s eyes.

  ‘Yes?’ said the policeman curtly.

  ‘I’m the crew chief of this aircraft and I need to look at something. And get that bloody torch out of my eyes, you great moron. I can’t see a thing.’

  ‘You could try to keep a civil tongue in your head,’ the man observed, lowering the light to examine the name stitched to Baldy’s overalls and the toolkit slung from one shoulder. Hodge returned the compliment, learning from the MP’s stripes and ID tag that his interlocutor was one Corporal Wooderson. ‘Anyway, Chief Technician Hodge, nobody’s going into this aircraft tonight, not on my watch. So you may as well get back on your bike. Sorry about that but I’ve got my orders.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Baldy belligerently. ‘I’ve got a lot to do. We’ve got a critical exercise the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve got a critical boss and I’m a lot more scared of him than I am of you. I don’t suppose you’re a Russian spy but my orders are to treat everyone as if they were. So how about you push off and come back tomorrow.’

  And then Baldy Hodge did a very rash thing. He raised his hand and jabbed a forefinger the size of a carrot at the MP, saying ‘Now you listen to me . . .’ but before the words were out the dog went for him, sinking its teeth into his left forearm with a gruff snarl. With a yell of pain and surprise, Baldy did something even more stupid. With his free hand he fumbled the spanner from its long pocket and brought it down on the animal’s back with a savage blow. The dog gave an oddly human cry and fell away.

  ‘Reg!’ the policeman shouted, retreating a few steps as he reached for the flap of his holster.
But his companion was already there, gun in hand, attracted by the raised voices. Seeing the spanner with which Baldy was now prodding at his mate to keep him away and, in the gloom beneath the Vulcan mistaking it for a pistol, Reg shot Baldy in the thigh. Baldy collapsed to the concrete, the spanner clanging away.

  ‘You OK, Timber?’ On a long leash Reg’s dog, hackles raised, was standing guard over Baldy, who seemed to be writhing in a pool of hydraulic fluid.

  ‘I’m all right but the bastard’s hurt Beefy. Shine your torch?’ He slid the loop of his dog’s lead from his wrist and knelt by the animal, stroking its head. Beefy was trying to get to his feet but his back legs wouldn’t work and he only moaned, looking up at his master as though he knew it was the end for him. ‘Smashed,’ concluded the policeman, having gently felt the dog’s back. ‘Completely smashed.’ He unbuttoned his holster. ‘You go and call it in.’

  ‘What about this guy?’ Reg flashed his light over the groaning Baldy and revealed the hydraulic fluid to be a spreading lake of blood.

  ‘Fuck him. First things first.’

  Reg and his dog jogged across to the Land Rover. Before they reached it the policeman knelt behind Beefy, gave him an affectionate pat and shot him in the back of the head. Apart from a twitching forepaw the animal lay still.

  ‘And how I wish I could do the same to you, fuckface,’ said Wooderson chokingly, getting up and going to stoop over Baldy, his boots twin black islands in a crimson sea. But he saw at a glance it would be a wasted bullet. There was far more blood on the concrete than could possibly remain inside the big man, who suddenly began to look shrunken. As Timber Wooderson bent over him Baldy opened his eyes very wide and said weakly, ‘Dad? Is that you, Dad?’ and with a sigh died. Wooderson straightened up and holstered his weapon. In his shock all he could think of was the endless questioning and paperwork this was going to bring. ‘Why me?’ he murmured towards the sky. In the distance flashing lights appeared, converging on the scene.

  22

  Unaware of what had happened in their aircraft’s shadow, the two crews had already left the station for a night on the town. Some locally stationed officers who claimed to know the right places drove them to the Phoenicia Hotel at Floriana on the outskirts of Valletta. Apparently its Pegasus Bar was a favourite watering-place of BEA aircrews – most of whom were ex-RAF – as well as of air hostesses. At any rate it was deemed a good place to start. The Luqa station commander had already been in touch with Wheelus to announce the safe arrival of their guest participants in Praying Mantis and was told they would be expected the day after next. Tomorrow would be a day for nursing hangovers and running yet more checks on the Vulcans to make sure they would not only be fit to fly but capable of giving a good account of themselves.

  ‘Bring on the hosties,’ a flight-lieutenant on Canberras said happily as he parked his battered Singer Gazelle outside the grandiose, triple-arched portico with ‘Hotel Phoenicia’ incised in the stonework along the top. ‘They joined the airline for travel, duty-free and pleasure. Which just happen to be the exact same reasons why we joined the RAF. Right, chaps? Time to get our ends away.’

  In the Pegasus Bar Gavin and Ken Pilcher, his opposite number from Yogi 2, felt themselves gravitate together less because they were both AEOs than out of some kind of resistance to the general atmosphere of extroverted booziness. Ken had recently married a nurse and was maybe still under the restraining influence of his marriage vows. He was also something of a car freak and Gavin was happy to talk about vehicles they had driven or longed to drive. Yet as they nursed beers together at a small table Gavin was conscious of how often he glanced across the room to where Amos was standing at the bar. He was aware also of something like envy for the others in that group: all of them pilots of similar rank. He recognised one of them as a wing commander from Wearsby’s Canberra squadron and couldn’t entirely suppress the idea that together they really did look like an élite. He thought Amos in particular looked absurdly like an Ealing Studios version of a quietly heroic bomber captain.

  Ever since the night of the Christmas party Gavin had tried not to think too much about his increased intimacy with Amos. It had undeniably disturbed the otherwise meshing clockwork of his life. Life in an active squadron was made orderly by ritual and routine, most of it too demanding ever to qualify as boring in any normal sense. Anything that upset this by falling outside the normal round of daily duties and occasional benders was hard to deal with, especially if – as now – it also reminded him of a younger self he hoped had disappeared for good.

  At that moment Ken abruptly broke off a disquisition about Jim Clark’s brilliance as a racing driver, raised an arm and exclaimed, ‘Good Lord, there’s Brian Tatchell. I had no idea he was in Malta. Would you excuse me, Gavin? I’ve not seen him since Swanton Morley.’ He got up with his beer and went off to greet a foxy-looking fellow with a gingery moustache. Gavin thoughtfully finished his own beer and was just considering getting a taxi back to the airfield to make an early night of it when a girl sat down at his table. Her sultry dark looks reminded him instantly of a film actress he couldn’t place. One of the ‘Carry On’ films – that was it: Fenella Fielding in Carry On Regardless.

  ‘Hello, I’m Veronica,’ she said. ‘What’s a nice boy like you doing all on his lonesome? Oh, don’t worry, darling, I’m not on the game. Just bored, basically, as you’re looking.’ Her breath smelt of alcohol as she chattered on about the awful tedium of Malta while Gavin tried to work out an appropriate response. He wasn’t used to girls making the first move. He found himself mildly attracted by the dark hairs on her forearms. ‘Quite a dull place, this bar,’ Veronica was saying. ‘I vote we sneak off and I show you something of the island. You’ve never been here before? Well then, come on.’ Seeing Gavin hesitate, she asked a little satirically, ‘Do you need permission? Get your senior officer’s OK?’

  ‘I was just . . .’ He cast a glance at the rest of his colleagues at the bar, severally engaged in drinking and chatting up various floozies. ‘No.’

  His new friend put on a mohair cardigan and led the way out of the Phoenicia, down the steps and into the night. Parked among the ornamental palms was a maroon Daimler Dart that, in the scattered lights filtering through fronds, appeared almost black. It was an enviable car although Gavin had always found its prognathous grille worrying, like someone whose mouth bulged with too many teeth. Still, as the proud owner of a Bug-Eye Sprite, he reflected that he was probably in no position to be picky or competitive about the aesthetics of British motor designs.

  ‘We’ll keep the hood up, I think,’ she said. ‘It’s too chilly otherwise.’

  Soon they were out in what passed for open country in this small island. He had the impression of stony fields with tumbledown walls topped with prickly pear, an endless succession of small shuttered villages and immense churches. In the distance frequent flashes and showers of coloured balls in the sky were evidence of more than one firework display. It was a clear night with a large moon and there were occasional glimpses of the sea. Veronica drove with what people called ‘flair’ when they didn’t want others to think they were scared.

  ‘I told you what I do but you haven’t told me what you do,’ he said at length, his legs braced stiffly in the dark.

  ‘Nothing yet, darling.’ She flashed him an ambiguous, dashboard-lit smile. ‘Well, Daddy works for Mitchell Cotts. He’s always on the move. He goes to Tripoli to look at their dreary supermarket there, or down to Mombasa or Rhodesia or Tanganyika – whatever they’re calling Tanganyika these days. Or South Africa. He’s hardly ever here. Mum’s bored out of her tiny skull. Freddie’s away at Oxford. I shall be going to the Slade shortly.’

  ‘The Slade?’

  ‘The School of Fine Art. London, you know? The capital of England? I want to design jewellery . . . Sorry – this is a bloody silly car for a place like this. You really need a Land Rover here, something with a bit of clearance.’ She was bouncing the Dart down a stony track towar
ds what looked like a cliff edge where the world stopped abruptly. They halted with a flurry of pebbles beside a small stone house. ‘Mum bought this place for Freddie to study in. That’s a laugh. Boys like Freddie don’t study. So I sometimes use it. There’s a great view of the sea if you happen to like sea.’ She switched off. ‘So what does your father do? Is he also in the RAF?’

  ‘No, he’s a GP. In Devon.’

  ‘Truly rural.’

  ‘It is, rather. But I always wanted to fly and had a knack for electrical things so I didn’t follow my father. Amos says I’m no great loss to the medical profession and I expect he’s right.’

  ‘Amos?’

  ‘Squadron Leader McKenna. He’s the captain of our Vulcan. A terrific sort.’

  ‘A terrific sort? Oh, was he the tall one at the bar? The film-star-good-looks one?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. It’s true, he is very good-looking.’

  ‘He looks queer to me. My brother’s queer and so are all his friends at Oxford. I can always tell.’

  After the initial shock Gavin debated whether to invent a firm defence of Amos as a happily married man but decided it was too late in every sense. Anyway it wouldn’t be worth it. This languid, sophisticated girl beside him clearly inhabited a world so different from his own there could be few discernible points of contact.

  ‘And I’ve yet to make up my mind about you,’ Veronica added.

  ‘If you were in any doubt,’ said Gavin bravely, ‘why did you invite me out?’

  ‘Oh, I like challenges. A girl can get mortal bored on this ghastly Catholic island. You’re not a Catholic, are you? Let’s go in. There should be some bottles and things.’