14

The airfield was patchily green, overlooked by a stubby concrete control tower, runways pocked here and there with craters, some of which showed signs of ongoing repair. A dense smell of kerosene hung in the air, so heavy you caught a hint of it half a mile away. Makeshift blister hangars clad in corrugated steel sheeting surrounded the site and transport of various kinds came and went, rumbling through the gate and around the perimeter track, throwing up dust. It had been a hot, dry summer and now, late August, the ground was parched. Outside one of the Nissen huts that served as barracks, a flight officer was throwing up into a flowerbed.

‘Lieutenant Styles?’ said the wing commander.

‘Sir.’ Styles straightened and mopped his mouth with a handkerchief.

‘You’ve besmirched the lobelia.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We can’t have that.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Hose ’em down.’

The wing commander was explaining the facts of life to Dougie. ‘Average age on this base: twenty-three. Average life expectancy: eighty-seven air hours. Most of these lads won’t see their next birthday. And don’t think,’ said the wing commander, ‘that I’m a pessimist. These figures come from the Air Ministry and as such are most likely an underestimate. Not something you’ll be able to put in your film, of course.’

They came past an orderly mopping out a latrine.

‘We’re telling a different sort of truth.’

‘Wasn’t aware there was more than one kind,’ said the wing commander. ‘Still, you can spin whatever yarn you like so long as it helps recruitment.’

Dougie was about to deliver his usual lecture on documentary film-making, which was essentially Macleod’s with a few elaborations of his own, then thought better of it.

‘People seem to think,’ the wing commander was saying, ‘that what’s going on fifteen thousand feet over their heads is some sort of sideshow put on for their benefit. Keeping score, as if it were a cricket match. But these boys are all that stand between us and the abyss. And not just the ones in the air. We’re desperately short of ground crew.’

They went round a corner and along a cinder path. On a dead bit of lawn, a group of airmen was sitting smoking in the sun, reading the papers and taking it in turns to throw a stick for a sheepdog.

Twenty-three, thought Dougie. Most of them didn’t look a day over eighteen. The only one who did look a little older was sitting apart from the others.

‘Jerzy Stanisławski,’ said the wing commander, following his gaze. ‘Pole. A little too keen, in my estimation.’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘It can be. A squadron’s a team. You don’t want mad buggers in it any more than you want glory-chasers. In the air, they’ve got to look out for one another.’

The dog, tail swishing, fetched the stick. The stick was thrown again. The dog, tail swishing, fetched the stick again.

‘Lovely day for it, sir.’

‘Indeed it is, Crawford.’

They stood watching the young men in the sunlight for a while and then carried on walking in the direction of the mess hut. ‘Do they know the odds?’ said Dougie.

‘They can subtract. So can their families. I haven’t told you any of this, by the way.’

It was Dougie’s first meeting with the wing commander. Yesterday they had filmed maintenance crews in one of the hangars patching up planes and this morning WAAFs manning the radio telephones or, rather, one WAAF in particular. She was bound to help recruitment, thought Dougie, remembering her. Women would be drawn to the natty uniform she was wearing and men would be drawn to what filled it.

A Hurricane came in to land and taxied to a stop at the end of one of the runways. The base’s current status was ‘Released’. ‘Released’ was a step below ‘Available’ and two steps below ‘Readiness’, steps measured in hours and minutes, not days. They rotated the airfields in and out of action to give the pilots time to rest a bit and train, and to save fuel and wear on the engines.

But this raised questions, thought Dougie. For such a strategy to stand a chance of success, they had to know when the enemy planes were underway, where they were heading and in what numbers. And they had to know these things fast – it took six minutes for a Dornier or a Messerschmitt to cross the Channel, or so he had been told. The script he was shooting made a great deal of lines of communication feeding from sector to sector into central command. Some of the more hysterical newspapers talked about death rays.

When the engine noise subsided, Dougie said, ‘One thing I wanted to ask you, sir.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Detecting the enemy – does it really all come down to ground observers with field glasses? I was thinking in particular about cloud cover. Visibility, and so on.’

‘Were you.’

‘The script’s a little vague on that point.’

The wing commander smiled to himself. ‘Let’s keep it that way, shall we?’

They reached the mess hut. Dougie’s crew – electricians, camera operator, focus puller, key grip, lighting technicians – were making adjustments to their equipment, taping cables, moving track. An arc light had been set up to shine through the window. Fixed to the front was a blue gelatin filter that would simulate a summer’s evening. The idea of the sequence was to show fliers relaxing off duty.

‘All this monkeying about,’ said the wing commander, straightening his tie. ‘I’d no idea. Good job we’re stood down at present.’

Dougie held open the door. ‘They wouldn’t let us film otherwise.’

‘I should think not.’

In the mess hut, Frank was looking through the camera and motioning at the clapper-loader.

‘I hope you know your lines, sir?’

This was not a question to ask a wing commander. ‘Word perfect,’ he said.

Dougie said, ‘Don’t look at the camera.’

The airfield was one operational centre; the studio was another. Denham was a vast complex. Seven sound stages, a dubbing theatre, metal, carpentry, paint and plastering workshops, canteens, vaults, dressing rooms, offices and changing rooms for extras, all powered by the largest diesel-run generator in the country, distributing enough electricity to serve a small town via aluminium bars routed in underground tunnels. Along with a water tank the size of a lake for mocking up sea battles and a huge lot for open-air filming.

The cutting room was in the converted stable block of the original estate, next door to the film laboratories. It smelled of pear drops from the acetate they used to cement the clips together. On the walls were hooks, and from the hooks were suspended lengths of developed footage, their tail ends gathered into black cotton bags on the floor. Smaller lengths of film were spiked around the perimeter of the trim bin.

‘And was he?’ said Basil Meers. ‘Word perfect?’

‘He knew his lines all right.’

Tony, Basil’s assistant, came through from the labs with a can of developed footage.

‘I hope that’s the sequence in the mess,’ said Dougie.

‘Half,’ Tony said. ‘The other can will be ready in about twenty minutes. They’ve had a rush job on Handel.’

Basil threaded the film into the Moviola and switched on the projector. They watched in silence until the film spooled out, flicking.

Dougie began pacing and smoking. ‘I told him not to look at the camera.’

Basil swivelled round in his chair. ‘He’s not an actor.’

‘Clearly,’ said Dougie. ‘It’s an awful performance.’

‘Which is all to the good.’

‘Is this a theory of yours?’

‘It’s something I’ve observed,’ said Basil. ‘You want to stay on a face that recognizes the camera is there. That self-consciousness can’t be faked. But I think you might be missing some shots.’

Dougie stopped in his tracks. ‘Have you any idea how hard it is to film on an airfield? Planes landing and taking off and so forth?’

Tony, sitting at the splicer, raised his head, scenting a row.

‘Keep your hair on,’ said Basil. ‘Let’s see what’s in the other can.’

What was in the other can confirmed Basil’s suspicion. A number of key shots were missing.

‘I’ll never get permission to go back and reshoot,’ Dougie said. ‘Besides which, there isn’t time. Can’t we try it a different way?’

‘What other way did you have in mind?’

‘Montage,’ said Dougie, with the sense he was pushing out a little boat into a very rocky sea.

All afternoon, frame by frame, they hunted for connections, for clashes, for echoes and chimes. At the end of it they had a sequence that worked.

‘Montage,’ said Dougie, quoting Eisenstein, ‘is the nerve of cinema.’

‘Montage covers a multitude of sins,’ said Basil. ‘You’re good at it.’

It was still light when they left for the day. Double Summer Time. The sky was a kind of pearly magnolia colour flushed with faint blue and pink, as if it were trying to pass itself off as porcelain. ‘How’s Barbara?’ asked Basil as they walked down to the station.

‘Learning to waterski.’ Dougie paused a moment to light a cigarette.

‘That’s enterprising of her.’

‘She’s already mastered the winter sports.’ He exhaled and threw the spent match away. ‘I thought Canada would suit her, and it does. She’s always had a bit of an outdoorsy side.’

‘And Julia? How’s she?’

Dougie admired Basil’s impartiality, misreading it as approval. ‘She’s looking for a job. Without much success. She needs money for the divorce.’

A couple of boys cycled past, whooping. ‘Can’t you help her out?’

‘Have you any idea how expensive it is?’

They went on a little way without speaking. But Dougie was unable to keep quiet for long, any more than he could keep still. Some sort of mechanism in him, a wind-up one probably, made this impossible. ‘The trouble with the job hunting is that apart from playing the piano her skills are limited. I’ve never met anyone less domesticated in my life.’ He smiled. ‘I thought women were supposed to pick these things up at their mother’s knees.’

‘Still burning the saucepans then.’

‘She must be the only person who’s pleased when they put something else on ration or there’s a shortage in the shops. It narrows down the options.’

‘Poor you.’ Basil liked his home comforts.

There were compensations, Dougie thought.

They came past the goods yard and went round to the station entrance. No railway signs these days, no road signs either; none since Dunkirk. All painted over or taken down so the Germans would have to ask for directions.

The London train was in. They found an empty compartment and got on.

‘Well, if she’s serious about finding work, they’re looking for people at Sylvia’s outfit.’ Basil slammed the door and pulled down the leather tab to open the window. The light was beginning to go.

Sylvia’s outfit was the Institute of Labour Management, located in Lancaster Gate. Dougie was unclear what they did there. Something to do with labour management, he supposed.

‘No use, I’m afraid. She can’t type.’ Though why not, thought Dougie? Typewriters, pianos. They both involved keys. He flexed his fingers the way he had seen Julia do.

A hiss, a clang and a jolt and the train got under way.

‘She wouldn’t have to type,’ said Basil. ‘It’s clerking in the main. Anyone remotely literate and numerate would suit. Can she spell?’

‘Beautifully.’

‘Then she’s already streets ahead of most of the girls and half the broken-down old boys they’ve got kicking around the place. Shall I put in a word?’

‘What about Sylvia?’

Sylvia’s allegiance to Barbara is what he meant.

‘They wouldn’t be in the same department. Sylvia’s been promoted again.’

‘Good for her.’ Sylvia – now there was a capable woman. Just not someone you’d particularly want to go to bed with.

Then all the way from West Ruislip to Marylebone Dougie carelessly talked about his suspicions that they had some new way of detecting the enemy.

She must have dozed off. A scratch of the key in the lock and she was instantly awake. Dreams – dreams of Peter running down the beach – tumbled away.

‘Sinclair,’ he said. ‘You’re still up.’

‘I am.’ She disentangled her numb limbs from the chair, dislodging the cat.

‘Good.’ He held out his arms; she walked into them and was reminded of that time in the bus queue when he had wrapped his coat round her. He smelled of drink and tobacco and another sweetish, soapy scent she couldn’t identify.

‘You’ve done up your shirt buttons all wrong,’ she said.

He peered down at them. ‘Christ, so I have. No one said all day.’

‘You’ve been at the studio, then, have you?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And I went for a drink afterwards. If that’s quite all right with you.’ He pulled away and re-buttoned his shirt. ‘I think I might have made a bit of a breakthrough this afternoon.’

‘That’s good.’

He was about to elaborate when something in her expression stopped him. ‘How about you? Any bites?’

‘None.’ The notice she had placed in the classified columns of The Times had brought no replies. If there were Broadwoods, Bechsteins, Steinways left in London, there were no children learning to play them.

‘Well, there may be something else in the offing. Basil –’

The telephone rang.

‘Don’t bother answering it,’ he said. ‘People should know better than to call so late.’

The telephone carried on ringing. They both stared at it. It sat on a little shelf whose slope testified to Dougie’s shortcomings as a handyman.

‘Something might have happened.’ To Peter, she meant.

But before she could move, he had snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello? No, no, it isn’t. I’m afraid you have the wrong number. Bloody exchange,’ he said.

Julia was not a fool. The buttons done up wrong, the sweet, soapy scent, the phone ringing at eleven o’clock – she knew she had grounds for suspicion. The difficulty was that she had compelling reasons not to act on them. All she could do was bury them under the rock with the others. It was getting crowded down there.