Three hundred miles to the west, MacGregor had succeeded in landing on the cliff-edge runway at Predannock in Cornwall. Next afternoon, the moment the fog cleared, he flew back to Marshfield.
As he opened the Blenheim’s small side observation window, the usual damp scent of marsh and mud greeted him. But when he taxied round the perimeter there was something else. Something in the faces of the ground crew as they waved him into Dispersal that made him sense that something else had happened.
MacGregor got out of the aircraft and asked straight away, ‘What’s up?’
‘B-Baker’s crashed, sir.’
‘Bates?’
‘Killed, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘And the crew?’
‘Dead too.’
His satisfaction at the obvious success of the attack on the barges had evaporated by the time he led his crew into the Intelligence Officer’s room.
‘Tough luck about Bates,’ he said to Pringle. ‘What about the other crews?’
Pringle looked up from the debriefing reports he was making out. ‘Rawcliffe landed with his wheels up on the North Downs. Lennox and Harris came in from Gatwick this morning. Ashley is still stuck at Northolt.’
‘And Maddox?’ MacGregor asked anxiously. ‘What’s happened to Maddox?’
‘Oh, Maddox landed back here yesterday afternoon.’
‘Yesterday?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But wasn’t there thick fog?’
‘There was.’
‘Then how the hell…?’
Pringle put away the other completed debriefing reports and took out a fresh one. ‘According to him, a big biplane led him here.’
‘Fleet Air Arm kite?’
‘828 Squadron left for Malta a fortnight ago. The nearest big biplanes are seven hundred miles away on the carriers in Scapa Flow.’
‘Then what and whose was it?’
‘Whose it was God knows. From Maddox’s description, the nearest I can think of is that it was a DH 4.’
‘From the last war?’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t know we had any left.’
‘There’s a few in Iraq.’
‘Then how the hell…?’ MacGregor asked again.
‘Your guess is as good as mine. So now shall we get on with your debriefing?’
MacGregor’s crew gave an almost identical account of the attack to those which the other crews had given him. Just as Pringle finished it off and was about to put it with the others, MacGregor said, ‘Oh, by the way, coming away from the attack off Walcheren Island, we saw a strange ship.’
Immediately Pringle was all ears. ‘Tell me.’
‘Wasn’t either a tanker or a merchantman. Superstructure was between the centre and the stern. Odd bulky hull.’
‘Did you take a photograph?’ Pringle asked eagerly.
‘A photograph?’ MacGregor laughed. ‘Didn’t get a chance. Four Me 109s bounced down on us. Lucky the fog was there to dive into.’
For a man who kept his feelings well hidden, Pringle looked uncharacteristically disappointed. ‘Well, if you do happen to bump into her again, Angus, I’d be very obliged to get a good photo.’
‘D’you reckon she’s of some significance?’
‘That size. With that protection. Could be.’
But, secretive as always, he wouldn’t say any more.
‘So how did Wing Commander Cavendish take last night?’
‘Grimly.’ Pringle pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘Heads will roll.’
Flying Officer Stamford was of the opinion that her head would be the first so to do. But surprisingly, Cavendish made no attempt to capitalise on her near-desertion.
He came to sit next to her the following evening at dinner. He actually smiled at her warmly. ‘You’ve had your baptism of fire, Lesley,’ he told her. ‘It was a very distressing duty. But you did it admirably in the end.’
He was less amiable with MacGregor. ‘You’re supposed to be the Training Captain,’ he told him. ‘Both Bates and Rawcliffe made the most elementary of mistakes. Coming down through cloud not knowing where they were. Christ, man, that’s the first thing that should be drummed into them!’
Meanwhile the rest of the squadron quietly licked its wounds.
Maddox had no wounds to lick. Maddox saw himself as cock of the walk, the only pilot who had successfully brought his aircraft home in appalling conditions.
For the next few days, while sea mist smothered the airfield, he was down at Flights strutting around S-Sugar, and engaging the flight mechanics in reluctant conversation. He had, in the face of irrefutable evidence that no other aircraft was in the circuit, relinquished his unlikely story about the good shepherd aircraft that had guided him down. Now it was pilot skill and that sixth sense which only the really gifted natural pilot possesses.
‘I’m lucky,’ he would say modestly, ‘very lucky in having that intuition, that sixth sense.’
‘And he is that,’ Pip told Horner, after listening to Maddox for the umpteenth time. ‘He’s really lucky! He gets into a difficulty and,’ she threw her hands wide, ‘something always gets him out of it.’
‘He gets himself into difficulties,’ Horner grumbled. ‘A good pilot would avoid the difficulties in the first place.’
But she would have none of that argument. She was the most starry-eyed of Maddox’s admirers.
Parachute Pam ran her a close second, and even Ginger was coming round to the idea of Maddox not being all that bad, although the most he would say aloud was, ‘He’s learning.’
Ginger himself was learning, too. About women. Over the years, he and Horner had exchanged accounts of their sexual adventures whenever they had been out on a date. Up until coming to Marshfield, they had both been in the same virgin state, and there had been an unspoken rivalry as to which would kick the ball into the net first, though both were equally frightened of scoring an own goal that turned out to be a baby.
Now, since Marshfield and Parachute Pam, Ginger was setting himself up as something of a sex expert, a real high scorer. But Horner doubted that. Ginger was just as scared of women as he was, and Pam herself, although saucy and sexy-looking, had a religious streak and had said the prime rule of the game was a ring on the finger first.
Pip was different. Pip was a good girl and good fun too, but in a more tender way. What Horner liked best was talking to her, either working on the aircraft or sitting in the NAAFI, or while they walked along the canals. He learned a lot from her. She pointed out the water rat poking its nose from a hole on the river bank, the grass snake wriggling between the reeds. She taught him how to listen to the birds, to identify the thrush, pigeon, robin and warbler.
‘How come you know all this when you lived in the Smoke?’
‘Leeds isn’t the Smoke proper. And you can hear birds even there,’ she laughed. ‘I used to walk a lot in the park. I used to read books. We learned Nature at school. And when it was cold we used to get robins in our back yard, and thrushes, and pigeons. There was one robin would eat from your hand.’
‘No self-respecting robin would eat from my hand,’ he said.
‘Happen not. Because you’re too impatient.’
He was that all right. More impatient than she could ever know. For despite the fun of just being with her he felt something else. He felt an urge, not uncommon in aircrew, to have It before they handed in their dinner plates. To die a virgin like Bates seemed as some dereliction of duty imposed by nature, a denial of their manhood, indeed a denial of their ever having lived at all. In short, there was a strong compulsion to be laid alive before being laid dead.
Then too, there was the matter of not wasting the little packet, and just as bad, the thought of the Waafs from Stores, who collected and sorted the sad little bits and pieces of deceased airmen’s effects, finding that packet.
On the second day of yet another period of clampers, when Horner had finished helping Pip and the armourer to belt the bullets for the Brownings, he suggested diffidently that they might take the Liberty bus to Hythe that evening and have a drink and a bite.
She hesitated for a moment. And then said yes.
The evening started well. He held her hand as the bus rattled and wheezed the six miles into Hythe. Casually, or as casually as he could make it, he remarked that she seemed to get on very well with Maddox.
‘He gets on better with a number of bods these days,’ she agreed.
‘D’you like him?’
‘Yes.’
‘D’you fancy him?’
She clicked her tongue irritably. ‘Why d’you ask that?’
‘Because I want to know.’
‘He’s not my type.’
‘What is your type?’
‘Tall, dark and handsome.’
‘That leaves me out, then.’
She didn’t either agree or disagree.
Just before the bus reached Hythe, clumsily Horner suggested, ‘I suppose girls prefer officers to common-or-garden flight sergeants?’
For a moment she turned her head and looked at him, her brows drawn together as if she was going to get angry. Then she said gently. ‘I don’t know any common-or-garden flight sergeants.’
And he was emboldened to ask, ‘Who do you know, then?’
‘Just one rather special one.’
He didn’t say anything for the rest of the way, lest he spoil that moment. Arriving in a damp and desolate Hythe, he walked with a light and springy step until they came to one of those pink plaster 1920s hotels near enough the sea to smell it, but not so close that you were staring at rolls of barbed wire.
‘How about this?’
Pip seemed impressed. ‘It looks posh.’
In past years it probably had been, but now the pink carpets were scuffed, the wallpaper peeling away, a grumpy receptionist eyed them from a reception desk in need of a coat of varnish. She said she supposed they could have a meal. Meanwhile, yes, the cocktail bar was open.
Open and empty. A very elderly waiter with sore feet brought them their order – a gin and lime and a pint of Bass. They sat on a saggy sofa by a potted palm, stared at unnervingly by empty chairs.
Dinner in the dining-room was some sort of fish, clearly identifiable by its smell, accompanied by cabbage and mashed potatoes with lumps in them like glass. The sweet was a dried egg custard.
But Pip enjoyed it. She had never been in a hotel before, let alone eaten a meal in one. Until she came to Marshfield she had never tasted gin or wine, either.
After a weak and wishy coffee, they returned to the lounge, and Horner prowled around. With the ingenuity of a man with a Packet burning a hole in his pocket, he found double glass doors that led to the garden at the back. There was just enough light to see a tiny path with a summer-house at the top.
‘Looks wizzo out there,’ he reported back to her. ‘And it’s stopped raining. Fancy a breath of fresh air?’
‘You’re a right fresh air fiend,’ she told him drily, but she followed him out into the night. There were little ornamental lamp-posts at intervals down the path, not lit of course, and loops of wire that must have held fairy lights slung between the bushes.
‘I bet in the old days it was lovely,’ she said.
‘A real lovers’ lane,’ he suggested hopefully.
A thin moon had risen and a few stars. The summer-house was open, and there were damp cushions on the bench that ran round the inside.
They sat down together. He slipped his arm round her shoulders, and they cuddled up for warmth.
Then he bent down and kissed her. She had an eager but untutored mouth. He tried to insert his tongue between her tightly bunched lips, but her teeth were clamped. It was the first time he’d seriously tried a French kiss and he clearly needed more gen from Ginger. Pip didn’t seem to like it, and all he got was a sore tip on his tongue.
He tried putting his hand up her skirt, but he didn’t get as far as he had got at the Sergeants’ Mess dance. She slapped his hand very smartly. But not so smartly that he didn’t touch silk. He was amazed and encouraged. Girls didn’t break Air Ministry Orders and wear silk instead of black-outs without mischief in mind.
Pip had in fact been prevailed upon by Pam who did quite a lucrative sideline in knickers. Torn or ripped parachutes which the Equipment Officer allowed them to write off U/S TFWT (unserviceable through fair wear and tear) could be cut and sewn into a vast number of dainty French knickers. Pip had paid her two shillings, a special cheap rate for friends, not because she had any intention of showing them to Horner or anyone else but because they made her feel feminine. She had also bought a new lipstick from one of the cooks – made out of lard and cochineal (another quite lucrative sideline) – and had managed to get hold of a tiny bottle of Evening in Paris perfume from the NAAFI. All in all she had felt good.
What didn’t make her feel good was this fumbling up her skirt, and trying to touch her where she shouldn’t be touched. At the same time, she remembered Pam’s strictures on how young men needed to have It. Pam had confirmed her suspicion that the torch in Maddox’s trousers meant he wanted It. And Pam had expounded on how they all basically wanted It. How it made them feel better, fly better, live longer. And any day now when the weather cleared, these lads would be off on ops again, dicing with death. She was between the devil and the deep blue sea.
So to make up for the slap, she took Horner’s face in both her hands and kissed him lovingly on the lips. Emboldened, he tried stroking her breast, or what could be felt of it under her buttoned-up tunic.
Tunics must have been designed specifically to discourage that sort of thing. Thick serge with thick pockets and many brass buttons. The 1250s, (identity cards) were kept by the Waafs in their top right-hand pocket. Pip’s late pass was in her left. So neither Horner nor Pip had much of a sensation out of the stroking and, after a while, Pip said she was cold and maybe they should go inside.
So back they went and sat on the big pink sofa. Jack ordered a whole bottle of wine. The wine made her talkative. She told him about working in the garage at Leeds, and the gormless lad.
‘He was just like Maddox.’
‘Oh, him! Why d’you have to bring up him?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that the gormless lad caught on quite well after a bit. And Maddox is catching on, isn’t he?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. I wouldn’t call it exactly catching on.’
‘Anyway,’ she said coaxingly, ‘tell me about Halton.’ She gave him a shy, admiring smile. ‘They trained you well.’
‘It was OK.’
‘What did you work on?’
‘Old engines eventually. The DH 4 was my favourite. But first we had this awful exercise. They gave us each this lump of cast iron and we had to build a hexagon out of it. Just using a hammer and chisel. Then it had to be filed till it was smooth and dead accurate. If it was more than a thousandth of an inch out, we had to do it again. We had to hold it up to the light and if a crack of light showed through, that was it. Start again.’
‘Did you pass muster?’
‘Yep.’ He nodded. ‘And d’you know what then?’
‘No.’
Something seemed suddenly to strike him. He gave her a shy smile. ‘We had to make a female hexagon to fit exactly over it.’
‘That must have been difficult.’
‘Difficult to get the two to match just exactly right.’ He suddenly reached over, took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I hadn’t thought about it till now. But…’ he sighed, carefully picking his words. ‘Sometimes,’ he went on slowly, ‘You get people that fit in just right. Like you and me.’
She smiled tenderly. He wasn’t being poetic. He wasn’t saying, ‘My love is like a red, red rose/That’s newly sprung in June’, but she knew what he meant, and what he meant was just as good if not better. And it was romantic and funny and sad.
She squeezed his fingers. ‘My love is like a perfectly fitting hexagon,’ she told herself. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
She didn’t want the evening to end.
And then he spoiled it all. He asked, ‘I suppose you didn’t think to get an SOP?’
An SOP was a Sleeping Out Pass. Pam had warned her. Once a man asked that, it was the same as asking, ‘Do you do It? Will you do It?’
Pip shook her head vehemently. ‘No, of course not!’
Alarmed at her vehemence, he patted her arm reassuringly. ‘That’s all right! Do you want to go back to camp now, then?’
‘No,’ she shook her head again. ‘I’ve got a late night pass. Till midnight.’
‘If you wanted to, we could stay even longer than that.’
‘How?’
‘We could stay here and break into camp.’
‘When? Where?’
‘By the gun emplacements. It’s dead easy. No one would see.’
‘But when?’
‘In the morning.’
‘You mean staying the night here?’
‘That’s right.’
She glanced around, clearly tempted. ‘I’d like to. But in single rooms. And I wouldn’t,’ she hesitated, not knowing how to put it into the right words. ‘I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t… do It.’
He nodded. He had guessed already that the Packet would not be called upon to do its duty tonight. It was, as the RAF would put it, ‘Surplus to Requirements’. He even dismissed the idea of trying to book two single rooms close together.
He poured himself another glass of wine, and after he had swallowed it, he rose and said rather stiffly, ‘I’ll see if they can accommodate us.’
The receptionist watched him approach. She had kept her eyes on the pair of them for the last hour, and she clearly anticipated some impropriety from them.
His request for two single rooms appeared to faze her. ‘We don’t have any.’ Then she leaned forward and whispered confidentially, ‘We do have a nice double room left. Sea view, so a bit extra.’
But he shook his head.
He returned, spreading his hands. ‘No single rooms.’
He sat down and drained the last of the wine bottle.
‘I’m sorry,’ Pip said softly, leaning over to pat his knee. ‘I’m really disappointed.’
‘Not half so disappointed as I am!’ he muttered, and then just as she was feeling a bit guilty, he laughed.
She loved him for that laugh. It was something that she knew she would hold in her memory for all the barren years that she already guessed were to come.