1940
‘It’s started,’ Dan said. ‘We knew this couldn’t go on – this false normality. It’s the end of this phoney war.’
Amy paled. ‘Why Denmark and Norway, for heaven’s sake? What do they want with those?’
‘They can use the airfields to get at us,’ Dan said. ‘And it puts them close to the iron mines in Sweden. They’re just mopping up the edges – closing in on France – and on us.’
Amy sat down at the kitchen table and held her head in her hand. ‘Poor France. All over again. It’s unbelievable.’
Tessa telephoned. ‘Do you think I should come home, Dad?’ she said. ‘Don’t you think we should all be together now?’
‘No, darling,’ Dan said. ‘The last thing anyone wants is people panicking and running around the country.’
‘I’m not panicking,’ she said. ‘I just want to do something useful.’
‘Stay where you are, Tessa,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know if we think you should come home.’
‘I’ll want her with us,’ Amy said, ‘if it looks as if they really are coming.’ Her voice trembled, but she wouldn’t give words to her fears.
She found it hard to sleep. The Germans wouldn’t stop at Norway. Not now. She dreaded hearing the church bells, the signal that the invasion had begun. Church bells, she thought, that most English sound of a quiet, peaceful Sunday morning, now to be the signal for horror and chaos. She hadn’t heard from Charlie for several days. No news was good news, wasn’t it? She didn’t even know whether he’d yet been in action.
She and Dan listened to the Home Service on the wireless. On 10 May, the Germans took the Netherlands and Belgium, and were advancing into France. Chamberlain had resigned and Churchill was now Prime Minister.
‘Thank God,’ Dan said. ‘It was no good Chamberlain patting us on the head and saying Hitler has missed the boat. He patently hasn’t.’
They listened constantly to the news. The British and French armies were being forced back, retreating, leaving most of their heavy equipment behind them. The roads were apparently packed with soldiers and thousands of French refugees. The Luftwaffe bombed and strafed them, civilians included, as they struggled on.
‘The Germans have reached the Somme,’ Dan said. ‘They’re only sixty miles from Paris.’
Amy was shocked, with a dreadful feeling of déjà vu, with overwhelming memories of her own days in the hospital in Paris in 1914, fearing that the Germans might come any day. She was even more appalled by the realization that the Great War had all been for nothing. Twenty years later exactly the same thing was happening. The next generation, the children of the survivors of that horror, had to go through it all again. Will it never end, she thought? This spiral of destruction and despair?
Every night they sat, tense, beside the wireless. On 26 May the Germans took Calais, cutting off the British forces. Their only remaining escape was through Dunkirk. ‘They’re trapped, Dan,’ Amy agonized. ‘All those boys. Have we lost our army? All our boys?’
She came home from an evening surgery, tired out from the emotional strain of trying to help or comfort white-faced women with their sick children; women whose husbands were on those beaches; they didn’t know whether they were alive or dead. She found Dan packing a bag.
‘Where are you going?’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’
He took her hands. ‘I’m going to Dunkirk, darling. They’re bringing the men off in anything they can get across the Channel – yachts, barges, pleasure boats, anything. They’re ferrying as many as they can to Naval ships lying offshore. I’m joining one of the destroyers to help with the wounded.’
She put her arms around him. ‘Oh Dan.’
‘We’ve got to save as many lives as we can,’ he said. ‘They’ve been bombed and shelled to hell. I don’t have to tell you what’s happening.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ve seen it all before. Is there anything I could do?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You must stay here. The children. Charlie … One of us must be here.’
‘We’ll both be here,’ she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
‘Of course we will,’ he said. ‘I’ll be coming back.’
She kissed him goodbye at the door where a car was waiting to take him to the coast.
The destroyer arrived off the coast of Dunkirk. Dan looked out, filled with dismay. As far away as he could see, the men stood in lines out in the sea, the water up to their chests. Slowly, one by one, they were picked up by the little boats, shuttling to and fro to the bigger ships. Barges and yachts, pleasure steamers and little motor-launches, their decks crowded with men, set out across the Channel for England and home.
He watched, horrified, as the men, silent and patient, waited their turn. He watched as the Stukas dived and bombed and the beaches screamed and exploded and men died and disappeared beneath the sea. Hell, he thought. It’s hell, once again, the horrors of 1914 added to and magnified, but with better weapons, better methods of killing. He went below to help the naval surgeons to care for the wounded until they could reach home and hospital. Once again he was handling the hideous, mutilating wounds of war. He was filled with pure rage. Even in 1914 he had never seen anything like this: men waiting in lines, unable to move, unable to protect themselves, with no cover from the bombers and the machine guns. There was no panic, no pushing or shoving, just patient, selfless bravery. They’ll pay, he thought, the Nazis. They’ll pay for this.
They took aboard as many men as they could pack in; the decks crowded. Dan moved among the wounded, applying dressings, giving morphine, doing what he could. He heard the crump and roar as another ship was hit; he tried not to think of the men aboard. As the destroyer pulled out into the Channel a squadron of Spitfires roared overhead, making for France. Charlie, he thought. One of them could be Charlie. God go with you.
They were to patrol inland of Dunkirk, to attack any enemy bomber formation approaching the coast.
Charlie took off with the rest of the squadron. Am I afraid, he thought? His mouth was dry and he had an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was, he realized, more frightened of being frightened than anything else – too frightened perhaps to do anything, to do his job. The squadron around him was reassuring.
They crossed the English coast. They could see the fires at Dunkirk already – towering clouds of smoke from the burning buildings and from the burning oil tanks around the town. They gained height over France, looking out for any aircraft bearing the German insignia. The hard, vicious outline of the black crosses filled Charlie with repulsion. They were a reflection, he thought, of their nature. He looked out of the cockpit at the red, white, blue and yellow roundels on the Spitfires. Cheerful colours. Nice to look at. Pleasing to the eye and the spirit. They needed to search out the opposition soon, he thought. The Spits could fly for an hour and a half or so before running out of fuel. Sometimes the squadrons came back without finding anything – fed up at the inaction.
The RT crackled into life, ‘Bombers, ten o’clock high.’ Charlie looked up. He could see the formation of bombers above them, heading for the coast, for Dunkirk, for the helpless men trapped on the beaches, to bomb them to blazes. They climbed above them, still undetected. Sitting ducks, he thought. They broke into groups of three to attack.
Charlie chose his target. His heart was racing with excitement, elation, the thrill of the chase. He saw one of the bombers hit, the engine on fire, and wondered briefly who had shot it down.
Then, suddenly, the RT again. ‘God! Messerschmitts – dozens of them!’ The squadron broke off the attack and broke away. In seconds the sky was filled with hurtling aircraft. Charlie, throwing his aircraft around the sky in desperate manoeuvres, could think only of one thing now: taking one of them down. ‘Bastards,’ he found himself muttering. ‘Bastards.’ He latched on to one of the Messerschmitts. He saw glowing tracer coming towards him like a row of tiny, glowing lights. It seemed so slow at first – mesmerizing. He felt fear tightening his chest. He threw the plane into a tight turn and the tracer passed him by. He got the Messerschmitt momentarily in his sights and pressed the firing button. His Spit shuddered as tracer shot out from the wings and he watched the enemy dance away, unharmed. He pulled into a steep climb.
He came out of the climb and looked about him. To his amazement he could see no one – no aircraft at all. The sky was empty. He remembered that one of the pilots who had been in combat before had described this strangeness. ‘It’s weird,’ he’d said. ‘One minute it’s a madhouse and the next there’s nobody there and you just go home.’
He turned for home, keeping an eye on his fuel. Strangely, the encounter must only have taken a few minutes. It had felt like most of his life.
Suddenly, below him, he saw the outline of a bomber, a Junkers. He looked around him warily, his heart in his mouth, but the bomber seemed to be alone, returning to France after bombing the ships in the Channel.
He took it by surprise. His Spit shuddered again as he pressed the firing button and he saw his tracer explode along the fuselage and bits fly off the tail. Then, strangely, although it continued to fly straight and level for several seconds, the aircraft seemed to change before his eyes, as if all vitality was draining away, as if it were a living thing and its soul was leaving it. Then slowly, very slowly it seemed, it fell towards the sea. It crashed into the water with a great gout of spray. There were no parachutes.
‘Got you,’ he shouted, excited and exultant. He could go back and claim a kill. He looked about him again but the sky was clear. He would make it home. He crossed the English coast and blew it a smacking kiss.
How strange that was, he thought, the way that aircraft had died. It reminded him of a film he had once seen of a bull elephant that had been shot by a hunter in Africa. The elephant had been hit – a mortal shot – but it had stood upright for perhaps thirty seconds. Then, its spirit seemed to leave it, slowly and reluctantly, and it fell to its knees, and was dead. The film had thoroughly upset him.
No one had jumped from the bomber. The men inside it had died. He had killed them. He broke out in a light sweat. He must not think of that. They were busily killing his countrymen. He was fighting for his life, for his family, for his country. But the memory of the elephant upset him still.
When he landed the fitters were waiting to help him out and check the aircraft.
‘Everybody OK?’ he asked.
‘Glad to see you back, sir. One missing, sir.’
‘Who?’ he said. ‘Not Tim Crighton?’
‘No sir,’ they said. ‘Mr Crighton got back all right, minus a bit of tailplane.’
Drinks then, in the mess; plenty of beer, raucous songs around the piano.
‘You’ve been blooded then,’ Tim said. ‘Lucky beggar to find that Junkers. Where did you get to?’
‘I don’t know what happened,’ Charlie said. ‘I looked round and everyone had gone.’
Tim downed his pint. ‘Tell me, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Were you frightened?’
Charlie grinned. ‘Terrified,’ he said.
Before he slept, he thought about the day. Had he been frightened when the tracer bullets floated past him? Not immediately; he had been mesmerized. Perhaps a few seconds later, when he realized how closely death had passed him by. But it was all right. He’d got through, acquitted himself OK.
The destroyer docked in Dover. The men were unloaded on to the quay, into the arms of waiting nurses and WVS ladies with cups of tea and sandwiches, and crowds of people cheering their welcome. Dan found that his eyes were filling with tears of compassion and relief. The men boarded trains to take them away, to camp or home to rest. Hospital trains festooned with red crosses took the wounded away to hospitals further north, away from the overwhelmed hospitals on the coast, and away from the expected raids on England.
Dan went back with the ship.
Two days later he came home, exhausted in body and spirit. Amy met him at the door and hugged him close. She felt his tears on her cheek.
‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Oh darling. I’ve been listening to it on the wireless.’
‘They can’t describe it,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you …’
She made him take a bath and go to bed. She brought him a cup of tea and lay on the bed beside him.
‘I saw Spitfires,’ he said, ‘going over. Have you heard from Charlie?’
Amy nodded. ‘Yes. He’s all right.’
‘Was he there?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but he’s all right.’
He smiled and was instantly asleep.
He came down to dinner in the evening. ‘That’s it then,’ he said. ‘We’re on our own. Just us and the Germans.’
‘Do you know,’ Amy said, ‘I’m glad. It sounds an odd thing to say, but I’m glad. We know where we are now. We know what we have to do. And we’ll do it.’
Dan took her hand. ‘That’s more like my Amy.’
‘It was all those months of not knowing,’ she said, ‘and half hoping and fearing the worst. Well, the worst has happened, and it’s all right. We’ll do it.’
He put his arms around her and held her close.
‘We’re on our own, then,’ Nora said.
Amy nodded, eating her sandwich in the kitchen. ‘There isn’t much to stop them in France now. The French seem to be giving up.’
‘What are we going to do, Doctor?’
‘Nothing, for the moment.’
‘Why have the Italians gone in on their side?’
Amy smiled. ‘You know what Churchill’s supposed to have said? “That’s only fair, we had to have the Italians last time.”’
Nora relaxed and laughed. ‘No. They’re not exactly fighters, are they? They’ve only been attacking people weaker than they are. Well, they’ll find it’s a bit different now.’
Amy looked through her post. She picked out a leaflet. ‘Look at this, Nora. The answer to your question. It’s what to do if the Germans invade.’ She read out from the leaflet. ‘“Stay put in your homes; don’t block the roads and get in the way of our soldiers; don’t give anything to the Germans.”’
‘As if we would,’ Nora said.
‘Keep watch and report; no careless talk.’
Nora turned to the sink and began to peel the potatoes. Amy could see the tension in her shoulders. ‘They won’t get here, Nora,’ she said. ‘The RAF and the Navy won’t let them.’
‘My husband and your son,’ Nora said.
‘Quite right,’ Amy said. ‘How’s Sara getting on at school?’
‘Very well.’ Nora paused. ‘If anyone touched her I’d kill them with my bare hands.’
‘Me too,’ Amy said. ‘We’d make a good team.’
Tim and Tessa walked along the Backs beside the river. ‘I’m sorry about the May Ball,’ he said. ‘We were a bit busy.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really want to go anyway. We’re going down in a couple of days. I’ll be glad to get home.’
They walked on. ‘What’s it like,’ she said. ‘Is it awful?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘You’re too busy to think about it at the time, and then it’s all over.’
‘Everybody all right?’ she said.
He laughed. ‘If you mean Charlie, he’s fine. Shot down a Junkers all on his own. We thought we’d lost one pilot, but he turned up. Got shot down and bailed out. Came down in some posh garden and they gave him a brandy and a cigar and he came back in a chauffeur-driven Rolls.’
She laughed. ‘Quite right too.’
He took her hand. There were one or two punts out on the river, but not many people about. ‘I want to kiss you,’ he said.
She turned to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘Yes please.’ He kissed her very thoroughly. ‘We’d better stop,’ she said. ‘Someone might see and I’m supposed to be very respectable.’
‘You are very respectable, dammit,’ he said, ‘and so am I, I suppose.’
She laughed. ‘No hanky-panky with the WAAFS?’
‘No hanky panky with anyone. I’m a one-girl man.’
He kissed her again and they walked on, hand in hand.
After he’d gone she got out her books to study – the anatomy of the brain. Where is it, she thought? Where’s the bit that makes you love someone? She’d been so adamant that she didn’t want to get involved; her career was all she wanted. And now she wanted Tim too, and the fact that he was in mortal danger every day made it stronger and deeper. There was no time – no time to dance and dream through a couple of May Balls, idle together on the river, think about the future. Since they’d danced together at the Café de Paris they’d managed to see each other now and again, usually in Cambridge, where they couldn’t be alone for very long. They hadn’t used the word ‘love’ yet, much less ‘for ever’, but it was there. They both knew it was there. It seemed too frightening to say the words. Too much like tempting Providence.
Sara marched down to the school cellar. They had an air-raid practice every week. ‘Orderly rows,’ the teachers said. ‘No running or pushing, even if we’re being bombed. If the soldiers at Dunkirk can do it, you can.’ Some of the girls groaned but Sara didn’t care. She was so glad to be back she’d put up with anything.
The girls sat in rows on the benches, whispering and giggling, the prefects trying to look serious. Sara glanced at the teachers. They didn’t seem to be concerned.
It wasn’t real, was it? It was like fire drill; it wasn’t going to happen. All those soldiers had come back from Dunkirk. Everybody seemed to be cheerful, and things weren’t much different really, apart from her dad being away and Mum getting a job. The job was nice, and they were all doctors. Tessa was nice; she’d shown her some of her textbooks from Cambridge. Charlie was a pilot and they all worried about him, she could see that. He was nice too. He made her feel a bit shy, though.
‘Gas-masks on.’
Sara put the mask over her head. It smelt horrible and was hot and sweaty. How would we get out, she thought, if the school came down above them? She supposed someone would come and dig them out – her mum, for one. She occupied her mind with a little mental arithmetic. If a falling object accelerates at thirty-two feet per second per second, how long would it take a bomb…?
‘Look at these,’ Nora said. ‘One of my neighbours brought them up from Plymouth. The Germans must have dropped them in the night.’ She put a few leaflets on the table.
Tessa picked one up and began to laugh. ‘Listen to this, “A last appeal to reason by Adolph Hitler. The Führer sees no reason why the war should continue. He means Britain no harm.”’ She handed the leaflet to Amy. ‘I could give him a few reasons – the Jews, Holland, Belgium, France.’
Nora giggled. ‘My neighbour says they’re using them for toilet paper down there.’
‘It’s a dirty trick,’ Tessa said, ‘trying to get us off guard. Well, I’m still going to do firewatching at the hospital.’
It’s extraordinary, Amy thought, how attitudes have changed in the country, now that we are alone. Everyone is much more cheerful. We can see our task more clearly. The British fight best with their backs to the wall. ‘One of my little patients told me a joke,’ she said. ‘What did Hitler say as he fell through the bed?’ Nora and Tessa shook their heads. ‘At last I’m in Po-land.’
They all laughed. There’s laughter again Amy thought. She looked at Tessa’s young, glowing face. And love again, perhaps. They had been seeing a good deal of Tim lately. Perhaps love.
The summer wore on, one glorious day after another. There were raids on the coastal towns and on the convoys of shipping in the Channel. The squadron flew every day, in battle nearly every day, taking off, heart in mouth, a few frantic minutes of hurling their Spits around the skies, perhaps an enemy destroyed. Then home again, survival, and an evening in the pub.
Charlie was woken at four o’clock with a cup of tea. After breakfast they climbed into the trucks to be driven to the dispersal hut. They climbed out of the truck and sat about on the collection of rather broken-down old chairs in and around the hut. Charlie and Tim sat outside in the growing light, watching the stars fading. Dawn came, slowly. The scent of the mown grass and the country flowers drifted around them. High in the sky a lark began to sing.
‘I had a letter from Tessa,’ Tim said. ‘She sent you her love.’
‘You two seem to be getting along very well,’ Charlie said. ‘Is there anything in it?’
‘I hope so,’ Tim said. ‘You know how I feel about her.’
Charlie grinned. ‘So I won’t have to shoot you down.’ Tim didn’t reply. The NAAFI van arrived with the tea.
‘Time you had a girlfriend, Charlie,’ Tim said, laughing. ‘Give you something else to think about.’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Haven’t met one I fancied yet.’
They waited. Charlie felt the usual stirring in his bowels. This was the worst bit – the waiting; waiting for the telephone to ring and the shouting voice – scramble, scramble. Then the run to the aircraft and his bowels would settle as he was strapped in.
‘I expect it’ll be another bloody marvellous day,’ Tim said. ‘Why can’t we have fog and drizzle and spend the day in bed?’
‘What day is it?’ Charlie asked.
‘Tuesday,’ Tim said. ‘August the thirteenth. Not that it makes any difference, does it?’
They waited. ‘I think you might have your wish,’ Charlie said. ‘It looks a bit murky.’
‘Not murky enough. Not enough to stop the bastards.’ Tim went off for another cup of tea.
They waited. At half past six the telephone rang. Scramble! Scramble! The squadron took off, and the fear left him. He glanced at the aircraft around him. There was nothing more beautiful, he thought, than a squadron of Spitfires in the early light.
The mass of the Luftwaffe approached from the south-west. ‘Good God,’ their leader called, ‘there’s hundreds of them.’ Charlie stared ahead of him – Junkers, Dorniers, Me 109s. In the next few shuddering, screaming minutes he threw himself around the sky in a mad mêlée of aircraft, of tracer bullets streaming past, of aircraft falling, parachutes unfolding. Then, suddenly, he found himself alone again, and turned for home.
The airfield was almost unrecognizable; bomb craters, huts burning, people running about. He managed to get down and was set on by the fitters. He was refuelled, rearmed and returned to the skies, to a second wave of enemy bombers.
Every day, every day, they came. Every day, several times a day, they were in battle. ‘You must admit they are gentlemen, the Luftwaffe,’ Tim said. ‘At least they go home nicely in time for us to get to the pub.’
The days became a blur: days of hurtling through the skies, trying not to be killed, and evenings in the King’s Head or the mess, beer in hand, playing the fool; toasting, and then forgetting, the pilots who didn’t make it.
Charlie began to feel as if nothing was quite real. He fell asleep one night over his dinner, his head on the table. He was given a twenty-four-hour pass, he borrowed Tim’s Morgan and went home.
Amy was shocked when she saw him, but she hid it under smiles and hugs. ‘Take your things upstairs, darling,’ she said, ‘and then come down and have some tea.’ Ten minutes later she went up to his room. He was lying on his back on his bed, fast asleep. She slipped off his shoes and he didn’t wake. She stroked the hair back from his brow and kissed him gently. Asleep, he looked like a boy again. My boy, she thought. My merry little boy. The ache in her heart was almost unbearable.
She went downstairs to Dan. ‘He’s exhausted,’ she said. ‘They must all be exhausted. How long can this go on?’
‘As long as it takes, my darling. For all of us.’
Amy opened her post over breakfast. Most of it was from the ministry about GP medical care – diphtheria vaccine, orange juice, free milk for the children. One was to remind them about turning off the gas at the mains at night in case of a raid, another was about how to deal with incendiary bombs. The last one was a shock.
‘Dan,’ she said, ‘this one’s about Kurt. He’s in England, in hospital. He’s been badly hurt. He’s asking if he can see us.’
‘How injured?’ Dan said. ‘What’s happened to him?’
Amy handed over the letter. ‘Burns,’ she said. ‘He’s a pilot, apparently. It sounds pretty terrible.’
‘I can’t go,’ Dan said. ‘I’m sorry about him, of course, but I can’t get away.’
‘I don’t think I can either,’ Amy said. ‘Perhaps the children …’
‘It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’ Dan said. ‘Visiting the enemy? And would they let anyone see him?’
‘Apparently so. They think he’s going to die, Dan.’
‘Oh. Ask the children then. I don’t know how they’ll feel about it.’
Children, Amy thought. We must stop calling them the children: Charlie, a man among men, Tessa, spending nights on a hospital roof, firewatching, looking for killers. Would they want to go? Kurt was an enemy in an enemy country, but he was dying, and dying alone. What if it were Charlie? Would they want Kurt to visit him?
Charlie came home on a forty-eight-hour pass and Tessa found him in the garden. She sat down beside him.
‘Vegetables doing well,’ he said. ‘Nice tomatoes.’
‘Charlie,’ she said, ‘we’ve had a letter about Kurt. He’s in England.’
‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘A POW then. Where is he? One of the camps? I don’t suppose we’d be able to see him.’
‘He’s in hospital,’ she said. ‘He’s been injured.’
‘Badly?’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated. It wasn’t a subject she wanted to bring up. She knew what gave the pilots their worst horrors. ‘He’s been badly burned,’ she said. ‘He was flying – fighters. They think he’s dying.’ She watched him, ready for the wince that crossed his face.
Charlie sat still. He could feel his shoulders tensing and his jaw clenching. This was the nightmare: not death itself, not a bullet in the brain or the heart – not even drowning. The nightmare was burning, trapped and burning. A quick death was far preferable.
‘Mum called the hospital,’ Tessa said. ‘They said we can go to see him if we want, but we’d have to be quick. There isn’t much time.’
Charlie said nothing. He didn’t know that he could face it: going to see someone who had suffered the worst fate there was. The thought of it terrified them all. They had to block it out of their minds. He didn’t want to see it – to look at it. Every part of him shrank away from it. Perhaps that image would never leave him, damage him, haunt him every time he stepped into a cockpit. ‘I don’t know, Tess,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I can.’
‘He particularly wants to see you,’ she said. Charlie had broken out into a light sweat, beading on his forehead. She took his hand. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to go. I can go on my own.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.
He got his bike out, rode to Kensington Gardens and walked about the pathways. The flower-beds had been dug over and filled with vegetables, cabbages mainly. Several men were weeding the plots; they were Italians, he realized as he passed by and heard them talking. There was a camp for Italian prisoners of war, if any arrived, and internees, somewhere in the park. They didn’t seem to be supervised at all. Perhaps the Italians weren’t considered to be too much of a threat.
He had brought Kurt here on one of the half terms from school. He had shown him the fairy tree and Peter Pan.
‘Oh, you English,’ Kurt had said. ‘You are so sentimental.’
There had been rumours that boys from the Hitler Youth had been spying while they were holidaying in England before the war. He couldn’t believe that Kurt had been up to no good.
The week he had spent in Berlin came back to him vividly – the grim faces under the steel helmets, the brutality of it all. And he remembered Kurt’s last words about the oracle at Delphi. If he’d been talking about Britain, he’d got it badly wrong. Or maybe he meant Germany. Weren’t they all just the same, all caught up in this dreadful web of killing? Kurt was just another man. He shouldn’t die alone.
He went back home. ‘I’ll come,’ he said to Tessa.
They travelled to the hospital on the train and the bus. A staff nurse took them to Kurt. ‘He’s in a side room,’ she said. ‘He’s very ill.’
‘I’m a medical student,’ Tessa said. ‘Can you tell me what’s happening?’
‘He’s on M and B and saline compresses,’ the nurse said, ’but it isn’t helping much. He’s on morphine every few hours. He’s very drowsy. The doctors don’t think he’ll last the night.’
A faint sickly smell drifted out as the nurse opened the door. ‘It’s the infection,’ Tessa whispered. ‘Poor Kurt.’
He was swathed in dressings, his face, chest and arms. His hands, painted with mercurochrome, rested on the cover like the claws of a great bird. They couldn’t see his face – only his eyes and his mouth were free.
Tessa bent down to him. ‘Kurt,’ she said softly. He seemed to be asleep, though his eyes were open. ‘Kurt,’ she said again.
His eyes turned slowly towards them. ‘Tessa,’ he whispered, his voice cracked and hoarse.
‘Charlie is here,’ Tessa said. ‘He’s come to see you.’
Charlie bent down. ‘Hello Kurt,’ he said.
Something like a smile flickered in Kurt’s eyes. ‘You’re a flyer, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Like me.’ He winced. ‘Do you remember, Charlie, the good days?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘I remember.’
The smile flickered again. ‘Perhaps it was you who killed me, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it was you who shot me down.’
Tessa began to cry, silently, the tears creeping down her cheeks.
‘It’s a dreadful mistake, Charlie,’ Kurt whispered. ‘It’s all a dreadful mistake.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘After the war,’ he said, ‘will you tell my parents that you were here; that I have been well treated?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘If I can.’
Kurt’s voice faded and his eyes glazed over.
‘I think you’d better go now,’ the nurse said. ‘It’s best if he sleeps.’ Tessa gently touched the clawed hand.
They left the hospital. ‘There’s a Lyons here,’ Tessa said. ‘I need a cup of tea.’
They went into the teashop and ordered tea. Charlie looked pale, Tessa thought, his jaw working. ‘You didn’t shoot him down, Charlie,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t you.’
‘It might have been,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve shot down a few.’
‘You have to,’ she said. ‘Or they’ll get us.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Don’t go on about it, Tessa.’
She saw the strain breaking through his composure, his eyes, hooded, withdrawn. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.
At nine o’clock the hospital telephoned to say that Kurt had died. Charlie went up to his room and closed the door.