Antique Dust

by Robert Westall

  Well, the B-17 ‘Lizzie Borden’ was one of the first gunships the US Eighth Air Force used. In their hardest time, the German fighters began flying straight at the front of their formations, head-on, to break them up before they could bomb. The answer was gunships, that would fly ahead of the American formations and draw the fire. They carried no bombs, but more guns and armour plate than a battle-ship. ‘Lizzie Borden’ went out asking for it. Stepanski had left her shiny metal finish, not the khaki-drab the rest were painted. She shone like the sun, like a mirror in the sky. And on her nose, this big impossibly busty near-naked blonde was painted, with long wild hair, busy putting an axe straight through Adolf’s skull. Oh, yes, they went out looking for trouble, all right; and they found it. Which was funny, because they weren’t really those sort of guys. Stepanski was old for a pilot, a quiet, thin schoolteacher from Chicago, with frizzy grey hair. But he was of Polish origin, and you remember how Poles felt about the Nazis . . .

  And Con O’Connell’s family were filthy rich. A little stocky dark guy, a medical-school graduate from Yale, who just couldn’t wait for the War to finish so he could get back and find a cure for cancer.

  And Tex was from Texas, and incredibly enough, he really had worked as a cowboy. He had a few fights about that, when the Yanks first came, because nobody would believe him . . . but he was usually a peaceful guy, on the ground.

  Anyway, they asked for trouble, and they got it, and they coped with it, and came home. As time went by, the German fighters got to know them; they were mentioned four times on German propaganda broadcasts as having been shot down. They drew the enemy like wasps round a jam-pot, got shot full of holes, downed a lot of Huns. In the end, Stepanski had twenty swastikas painted on his nose, big, like he was a fighter plane. They came back on three engines, on two; once Stepanski landed, I swear, on little more than one. And ‘Lizzie Borden’ wasn’t really one aircraft, but four; the first three were written off and towed to the knacker’s yard. But not before the blonde with the axe had been painted on a brand new plane. They had a tracing of it ready; the sign-painters worked in the hangar all night. Next raid, ‘Lizzie Borden’ flew . . .

  And in between, they made the Dumbledore their place, and Little Charlene their mascot. Especially Tex. She was so small, only a kid; and he was so big. He would swing her up on the counter, and sing her sad songs about Dixie and a yellow ribbon, and the siege of the Alamo. On big nights, at the base dance, he would walk round with her sitting on his shoulder. And before they went on a mission, the whole crew would kiss her for luck. Harmless fun, we thought, harmless . . .

  Then came their last mission. Three more, and they’d have been going home. But it wasn’t to be. They got hit on the big raid on the ball-bearing factory, hit bad, two engines out, and still over Germany. The group did their damnedest to cover them. Stepanski came down to zero feet to make it hard for the fighters, and three other un-hit Forts stayed with them, throttled right back. Even a group of Mustangs, fighters, got in on the act. But the Mustangs’ fuel ran out over Belgium, and they had to come home. And two of the other Forts were hit and went down. And still, somehow, Stepanski kept ‘Lizzie Borden’ in the air. But the Germans . . . the Germans went mad. They had to down her, and to hell with the cost. One Me 109 actually tried to ram, but Tex picked him off the prop-blades and he blew up.

  Lizzie crossed the Belgian coast, trailing a deadly mile-long plume of glycol. And still the Jerry fighters followed. She passed outside the range of the German coastal radar, and still they followed. They followed her to within sight of the Suffolk coast, where squadrons of Spits and Hurries were scrambling.

  Too late. Within sight of home, they downed her. But still Lizzie’s luck seemed to be holding; she pancaked neatly into a calm sea, and floated with her wings stuck to the waves, like a trapped moth. It must have been a crazy sight, with the other Fort still circling her at zero height, wanting to help, and screaming for reinforcements over her WT; the English home-defence squadrons starting to be visible dots in the sky, Stepanski and, they said, the whole crew except Tex standing on the wing, getting the dinghies inflated. That was the time for the happy ending . . .

  But somehow Jerry must have known that while her crew lived, ‘Lizzie Borden’ would never die; they came in again, and machine-gunned the crew as they stood on the wings, as they struggled with the bullet-punctured dinghy in the water. They wiped out the lot; except Tex. He was still inside his dorsal turret, firing. Somehow, he must have known. He downed another Jerry, and he was still firing his guns as the water closed over his turret, the last thing to show.

  The Jerries had left it too long, and they were close to the deck, sitting ducks. About four squadrons of Spits caught them, and not many Jerries saw Belgium again . . . when the air-sea rescue reached the scene – and they reached it quick – there wasn’t a thing to be seen bar Major Stepanski’s body, still floating in his Mae West.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember the night they got the chop.’

  ‘Another whisky, sir?’ I nodded; he gave me another double.

  ‘But do you remember a little feller called Jack Milton – little Jackie Milton?’

  I didn’t. ‘Which mob was he with?’

  ‘He wasn’t with a mob, Squadron-Leader. He was a farm worker – directed to work on the land – a conchie – conscientious objector.’

  ‘Oh, him,’ I said. He wasn’t a character I wanted to remember: a pacifist in the middle of a war; a man who chose to keep his lily-white soul clean, when hundreds were dying daily. He hadn’t even had the decency to keep quiet about it: kept arguing with the Yanks that war was the greatest evil the human race was subject to. Clever, too, in a mulish way; argue the hind leg off a donkey. I wondered some of them didn’t thump him, shut his mouth. And yet the Yanks, who were doing the real fighting and dying, were far more tolerant than I was. Part of it was that Tex tolerated him – more than that, made a pet of him. Bought him drinks in the Dumbledore, listened to his philosophical cant with a lazy smile on his face. Made him a pet, like he made Charlene into a pet. I could see Tex now, grinning, with Charlene on one side of him and Milton on the other. Little flaxen-haired Milton, with his khaki shorts and muscular hairy legs, and worn Harris-tweed sports-coat, open-necked shirt, gold-rimmed spectacles and old Scandinavian rucksack. The eternal college student.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I remember Milton. Tex, Charlene and Milton, they always hung around together. We used to call them the Three Musketeers.’

  ‘Well, Squadron-Leader Ashden, you left early that night, as I remember; had some work to do back at the base?’

  I remembered. I hadn’t really had any work, any more than usual. I just hadn’t been able to stand the atmosphere, with crew after crew coming in, wanting to talk about Tex and the way he died. I’d run away, left them, and never gone back.

  ‘Well, after you’d gone, Charlene was sitting in the corner, crying soft-like, and Jackie Milton was trying to cope with her, and everyone else was drinking and trying not to notice them. Only their whispering’s getting more and more violent, and then suddenly Charlene stands up and throws off Milton’s arm, and announces that she’s pregnant.

  ‘Well, her ma goes for her like an old she-cat – the aircrew have to hold her back, and she’s still screeching at Charlene, wanting to know who the father is. And Charlene’s just standing there, dry-eyed, and white as a sheet, saying not a word . . . and the aircrews are getting more and more uptight. Then Randy Leipzig . . . you remember Captain Leipzig, sir? . . . walks up to Charlene and asks her if the father was Tex?

  ‘Charlene stands still an awful long time, with us all hanging on her every word so you could hear a pin drop, then she says, “Yes”, and bursts into tears.

  ‘And you know, when all the uproar’s over, and we come to ourselves again, little Jackie Milton’s nowhere to be seen, and he ups back to his lodgings and packs, and we never see him again in this village. But there’s some as reckons that Tex being the father b
roke his heart, as he was sweet on Charlene himself.

  ‘Anyway, a funny thing happened then. Charlene’s ma keeps going on and on at her something horrible, about being a little whore and getting rid of the baby, and Charlene just going on crying, noisy. But the aircrews, they just keep staring at Charlene’s mum, until the silence finally gets through to her and she turns on them and curses them for being oversexed and overpaid. Then Captain Leipzig . . . you remember what a gentle sort he was . . . but he wasn’t that night. He walks over and takes hold of her mum’s wrist in a grip that’s liable to break it, until she finally shuts up as well.

  ‘Then Captain Leipzig says, “Tex is dead, an’ Tex died a hero, ma’am. An’ this kid your daughter’s carryin’ is all we got left of Tex . . .” And Charlene’s mum shuts up and never opens her mouth again. Then all the aircrews say goodnight to Charlene, real soft, and touch her hand like she’s . . . if I was a Catholic, sir, I’d say like she was the Virgin Mary.’

  Tom took a deep embarrassed swig of whisky, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Well, the next day, the padre from the American base comes to the Dumbledore, and he doesn’t go on like you’d expect from a sky-pilot. No, he says Charlene can have her baby in some big American military hospital when the time comes, and they’ll drive her there in a big staff-car, and she’s going to have a regular American allowance for the kid, of some sort, starting now. I think that had some part in shutting her ma up, if you ask me . . . Charlene thanks him, and goes on serving in the Dumbledore, all pale and strained, but kind of proud too, with her head up. And as far as the aircrews are concerned, she’s St Joan and Calamity Jane rolled into one.

  ‘Then she gets a letter from Tex’s mum and dad in America. There’s a lot of dollar bills tucked inside, and they say they’ll get over to see their grandchild just as soon as the War’s over, and to take care of herself . . . and it just goes on being like Christmas for Charlene and her old mum. I mean, her dad’s dead, and they’re pretty hard-up and just rent the caff. But after a bit, a deputation comes from the base, and all the aircrews have had a whip-round, and they’ve bought the Dumbledore for her, and the empty shop next door. And then the groundcrews chip in, even at the height of the attacks on Germany, and they strip out the two shops and rebuild them like new . . . and there’s a juke-box, and the first neon strip-lighting I ever did see meself outside an American base. And when they announced that Tex had been given the Congressional Medal of Honour – that’s their VC, as you know . . . well, there just ain’t nothing any airman likes better than running down to the Dumbledore and seeing that Charlene’s all right, for old Tex.

  ‘Anyway, VE night comes . . . you’ll remember VE night at the Dumbledore, sir . . . no . . . quite a night that was, sir, and little Charlene eight months gone and as big as a barrel, but still serving behind the counter to the end, like Tex at his guns. Then before VJ night, the kid’s been born, and the Yankee grandparents have come to see Little Tex. They wanted to take Charlene and the kid back with them, but she wouldn’t leave her mum cos her mum wasn’t well. When her mum finally died, they offered to give them a home again, and they could’ve afforded to, they were loaded . . . oil-wells, I think. But Charlene wouldn’t. She said she’d stick to her guns, like Tex stuck to his. And when the base closed, after the War, they gave Charlene a lot of stuff, like the Fortress airscrew on the wall, and them Jeeps that stand outside. Useless stuff, of course – worn-out write-offs – but Charlene always liked anything American . . . said it made her feel at home.

  ‘Well, a few years passed . . . quiet years round here. But Little Tex was a fine little lad, and helped his mum with the Dumbledore from the time he could walk. She never married – he was all she had. He wasn’t big, which puzzled us a bit, ’cos Tex had been six foot two. And he had a mass of flaxen hair, whereas Tex had been almost bald at twenty-three. But we just reckoned he’d taken more after Charlene. Strong little bugger he was, though – you should’ve seen him lift down a full jar of sweets afore he was five.

  ‘And then, of course, the Yanks started coming back, for holidays. Got themselves organized into their various squadron old-comrade associations, and came back by the bus-load every summer, with their wives and kids. We always felt a bit sorry for them, cos it seemed a miserable kind of holiday with nothing to see except that bloody great cemetery outside Cambridge, and the old airfields crumbling away, or lying under the corn. We used to lay on a slap-up tea for them in the village hall, and they’d keep asking, “Where’s old so-and-so?” and more often every year we had to say “Dead” or “Re-married” or “Moved away”.

  ‘So you can imagine how the Dumbledore caught their fancy. It became a kind of shrine, like that Catholic place up Walsingham way, to Our Lady. They kept on bringing things – that bloody great press-photo of Tex in his flying gear – half covered the wall it did – did you see it? And what a fuss they made of Charlene. I reckon that’s why she never married, ’cos she was still a good-looking girl, and she had plenty of offers. But they made an even greater fuss of Little Tex. It sort of . . . twisted him, as he grew up. He was the first kid round here to wear blue jeans. And every day a different tee-shirt: one day it was the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the next it was Notre Dame University. And when all the other lads had their Teddy-boy sideburns, young Tex still kept his hair in a crew-cut, just like the aircrew used to have. Made a lot of trouble for him at school with the other kids, and the teachers, especially when he insisted on speaking American all the time – he could speak every accent in the States by the time he was twelve. Used to have the Yanks in fits. And he chewed gum all the time, even if the Headmistress caned him for it. It only got worse when he got older – used to spend months in the States on holiday. Not just with the grandparents either, though they doted on him and were across here every year.

  ‘It didn’t help, either, how much Charlene prospered. She never said much about it – never bragged – but I reckon she had a tidy pile in the bank. Specially after she bought up the old Holmes house, and turned it into the Dumbledore Guest House, and charged the Yanks fancy prices to stay. Oh, she was into all kinds of things. Postcards – coloured postcards of the old caff – never missed a trick. Didn’t make her very popular with the locals, but she didn’t seem to care. She was all wrapped up in Little Tex.

  ‘He was really bright – got to the grammar school in Norwich, and got a lot of O-levels, in spite of all the chewing-gum and canings. They say he could’ve gone to Cambridge, but he was all set up to go to the University of Texas, like his dad before him. Nothing English was much good to Little Tex.

  ‘And so it might’ve gone on for ever . . . till one night I dropped in to have a word with Charlene – she pushed quite a lot of her overspill guests in my direction, and I was grateful.

  ‘There was a car parked outside, and for once it wasn’t a Chevrolet. It was an old Morris Minor. And inside the Dumbledore was a funny little guy – gold-rimmed spectacles, old hairy suit – Cambridge don written all over him. Stuck out like a sore thumb among the tourists. But he just asked for coffee politely, and then went and sat in a corner, and stared around like he was pussy-struck and couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Then Little Tex came in from school, and got behind the counter to help. I can remember him so clear, the blond crew-cut hair and the University of Texas sweat-shirt, and the little gold hairs glinting on his bare arm-muscles in the sun. And I noticed the little feller in the corner – he was just drinking his coffee when Little Tex came in, and he suddenly slurped it all over the Formica table-top, then started to wipe it up, all confused, with his handkerchief. Little Tex was over in a flash with a clean dishcloth – very fussy he always was, in the Dumbledore. And as Tex wiped the table, he looked down at the bloke, and the bloke looked up at him, and I could’ve died, Squadron-Leader . . .

  ‘Their profiles were the spitting image of each other.

  ‘The little feller went very pale; and Tex himself seemed a bit . . . baffled. I remembe
r he shook his head, as if trying to shake some idea, some memory out of it, like it was a buzzing fly that was bothering him. Then Tex went back to the counter, and nobody else seemed to have noticed anything, but Tex was doing various Yank accents, to amuse the tourists.

  ‘And then Charlene came in, her hands full of lists and things. And she looked up and noticed the little feller. She kept staring at him, and putting her hand to her throat, nervous-like, then looking away as if she was trying to ignore him. This went on quite a bit, and the atmosphere in the place getting worse and worse till even the tourists noticed, and drank up their coffee and left. That just left the three of them; and me.

  ‘The little feller seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. It took a long time. Then he got up, and shrugged to himself, like a man who’s made up his mind, and went across to the counter. To Charlene.

  ‘ “Yes, sir?” she says, all bright and businesslike. But when she looks at him, her mouth seems to fall to pieces and she starts shaking all over, so she nearly dropped the plate she was holding.

  ‘So the little feller says softly, “Don’t you know me, Charlotte?”

  ‘Her mouth falls open, and she does drop the plate. But she won’t say anything.

  ‘ “It’s Jackie,” he says, “little Jackie Milton.”

  ‘ “What do you want?” she asks, her face like death.

  ‘ “To see my son.”

  ‘Well, all hell breaks loose, Squadron-Leader. Charlene’s screaming at him that he hasn’t got a son, and to bugger off and leave her alone, and that he’s ruined her whole life. Then she starts throwing things at him, plates and mugs and stuff. But he just stands there steady, looking at her, trying to fend off the things she’s throwing with his hands, and tea and stuff sloshing all down him. Then Little Tex grabs her to stop her, and starts apologizing for her, because she seems to have gone bonkers.