Stepping into the hangar at RAF Mildenhall, I was hit by a wall of pure noise. There had to be a hundred or more people milling around in here, men and women, all in blue uniforms like my own. The huge space echoed with their voices and laughter. There was a stage set up at the front, and folding chairs arranged across the floor, although hardly anyone was sitting down yet.
And I didn’t want to be here.
Don’t be an idiot, Gauthier, I told myself, shaking my head. You’re tired, is all.
I was the wireless operator on a seven-man heavy bomber crew based at Chedburgh aerodrome, fifteen miles south-east of here, and a long run of back-to-back missions, sometimes with only seven or eight hours between them, had a way of doing that to a guy. We’d been granted a couple of days’ leave since our most recent flight, with one more to go, but I hadn’t exactly caught up on sleep yet. Hardly surprising, given what had happened to Des Williams.
I spotted Jonny Grant, our navigator, standing near the hangar doors. He was talking to Amir Singh, our pilot, a wiry twenty-one-year-old Sikh who hailed from the Punjab. With them was our rear gunner Jack Trow, bomb aimer Robert Cauldwell, who was a Canadian like me, and another pilot from our squadron, a Polish fellow called Lukasz Krol. I knew Kenneth Knight, our flight engineer, was here somewhere too, and seeing them made Des’s absence hit home all the harder. I could tell from the serious expressions on Amir, Jonny, Jack and Robert’s faces that they were feeling it as well. Another two flights, and Des’s tour would have been completed. We’d always joked about him being the old man in our crew – he was twenty-seven – due to get married to his childhood sweetheart in August back in their hometown in Wales. Now all that hung in the balance.
Swallowing hard against the sudden tightness in my throat, I gave myself another talking to. Shit happens, Gauthier. We all knew what we were signing up for. Stop being so goddamned windy and enjoy yourself, eh? Des will pull through – he has to.
Forcing a cheerful grin onto my face, I walked over to join the little group. ‘Hey, why so glum, fellas?’ I said. ‘Just wait till the concert starts – then you’ll really have something to be miserable about.’
It did the trick; everyone laughed. We’d all been to concerts put on by ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association, before, and the other version of their name they were widely known by, Every Night Something Awful, was pretty well earned.
‘Think it’ll be as bad as the last one?’ Jack, the youngest member of our crew at eighteen, joked as we began making our way to our seats.
I dropped heavily into one of the hard wooden chairs. ‘Bet you four shillings it’s worse.’
Robert shook his head. ‘It can’t be. Remember the opera singer?’
‘No one is ever going to forget the opera singer,’ Amir said seriously. ‘I will hear that woman in my nightmares for the rest of my life.’ We all laughed again. The question I really wanted to ask – Any news about Des? – stayed sealed behind my lips. If I hadn’t heard anything, it was unlikely any of the others had either, and I didn’t want to bring the mood down.
A man in a dark suit, holding a conductor’s baton, stepped onto the stage and clapped his hands together. When that didn’t work, he coughed into one of the microphones, sending a squeal of feedback through the loudspeakers and making everyone wince.
‘My apologies, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said with a smile, as the noise in the hangar subsided to a low murmur. ‘Thank you for having us here at Mildenhall this evening. I am pleased to present to you Rose Legge and the Reg Brown Orchestra!’
There was a smattering of applause. I quirked an eyebrow at Robert, who was sitting next to me, and we waited as the orchestra, four of them in all, walked onstage, followed by Rose Legge herself.
She caught my eye immediately. She was in her early twenties, about the same age as me. Her dark-blonde hair was arranged in careful waves that just skimmed her shoulders, and she wore a sheer silver dress that left her arms and shoulders bare, and matching silver shoes. She had no makeup on except for her lips, which were bright red. As she smiled out at the audience, complete silence fell. We all applauded again, more enthusiastically this time, and a few men whistled.
Robert and I exchanged another look. I wondered whether now was the time to remind him he was taking one of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force telephone operators at Chedburgh to a dance tomorrow.
The man in the suit turned, gave the orchestra a little bow and raised his baton in the air. When Rose began to sing, I forgot all about Robert; all about Des and that disastrous mission to the Kattegat; all about everything except her voice, soaring up into the vast roof space of the hangar in perfect harmony with the orchestra. I’d never heard anything like it. By the time the concert finished, I felt as if I was in a dream.
Afterwards, Jonny, Robert and I headed to the mess with the others. I spotted the slender figure in the silver dress by the bar straight away.
‘Beer, Skipper?’ Jonny said. He was a quiet, mild-mannered twenty-one-year-old from Trinidad and had the reputation as one of the best navigators on the base.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said absent-mindedly. When he’d gone, I pushed my way through the men waiting to be served to lean against the bar next to Rose.
‘You were amazing,’ I said as she turned and saw me beside her.
For a moment Rose looked startled. Then she smiled – a wide, genuine smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said, then shivered, rubbing her bare arms. ‘Gosh, it’s cold for August, isn’t it?’
I took off my jacket and draped it over her shoulders. ‘Here.’
‘Thank you,’ she said again, pulling it around her. ‘Er…’
‘Flight Sergeant Bill Gauthier.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Flight Sergeant Gauthier.’
‘Call me Bill, please.’
She held out a hand, smiling again, and I shook it. ‘Are you American, Bill?’ she asked.
‘I’m from Edmonton – Canada. Came over here in 1940.’
‘I’m sorry – of course.’
‘How about you? Where do you call home?’
‘Oh, nowhere exciting, I’m afraid – just little old London.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘That would be lovely. A scotch and soda, please.’
I had a scotch too, minus the soda, and we took them over to a quieter corner so we could talk. On the way, I saw Robert and Jonny watching us. Robert grinned at me and shook his head. ‘Jammy bastard,’ he mouthed, then turned and said something to Jonny, who threw his head back and laughed, indicating the two pints of beer in front of him. I rolled my eyes at them. Not my fault they were too slow off the mark.
‘So are you a pilot?’ Rose asked after I’d fetched a couple of folding chairs and we’d sat down.
I shook my head, indicating the badge on my jacket sleeve – a clenched fist with lightning bolts radiating from either side. ‘Wireless operator.’
She gave a silvery little laugh. ‘I’m sorry. You must think me jolly ignorant. I don’t know much about these things, I’m afraid, even after my time in ENSA.’
Already I could feel the scotch starting to spread its gentle warmth through my veins; I’d not had much appetite since the Kattegat mission, and it was several hours since I’d last managed to force myself to eat.
‘No offence taken,’ I reassured her, and shrugged. ‘It’s not very exciting, I’m afraid. I’m basically a glorified message boy, keeping the plane in touch with our base.’
Of course, there was a hell of a lot more to my job than that. As the crew’s Sparks, as wireless operators were nicknamed, I worked in close tandem with Jonny while we were in the air, assisting with the navigation by getting bearings and fixes from transmitters based on the ground; listening for new instructions from base; sending and receiving weather reports, and monitoring the radar warning system. I’d had first aid training and even been prepared to take over from Jonny if there was an emergency. But I didn’t tell Rose any of this. I didn’t know her from Adam, and we’d had it drummed into us from the first day of training that absolutely anyone could be working for the Germans as a spy.
We spent the next couple of hours chatting about safer subjects, with me getting up every now and then to replenish our glasses, although after her third drink, Rose insisted on soda only. I stuck to scotch; this was the first proper chance I’d had to loosen up since that awful raid two nights ago, and every burning mouthful pushed thoughts of Des – how he’d looked when Jonny and Jack helped me lift him from the plane after we’d landed, his skin icy cold, his eyes half open; the memory of the gore puddled all over the floor in the gun turret, soaking into his seat, more than it seemed possible for one human body to hold – further towards a dark, distant corner of my mind where I could lock it up out of sight forever. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I told myself that this happened to other crews all the time, or that it was sheer luck we’d managed to return from mission after mission unscathed; I still felt guilty for not being able to do more. And now Des’s life hung by a thread in a London hospital, the doctors waiting to see if he’d wake up.
No. Stop. Stop.
I shook my head and focused on Rose to try and distract myself. She was easy to talk to. I told her about growing up in Edmonton, and about my parents: how, when war was declared, I’d been working as a clerk in one of my father’s factories; not a glamorous job, but most of the workers there were women and the Edmonton nightlife was fairly lively, so I’d enjoyed an active social life. I also told her how my parents had tried to convince me to stay and help them run the factories instead of enlisting, something I’d never have forgiven myself for. In turn she told me about her family. She lived in London, the youngest of five, with four brothers who were all in the army. Her father was rather domineering, from the sounds of it, and she’d joined ENSA because she was desperate to do her bit too, but he wouldn’t hear of her becoming a land girl.
‘Not that I’m actually all that desperate to plough fields and dig potatoes,’ she said with another one of those silvery laughs. ‘Look at me – can you imagine me in khakis with mud under my nails?’
Smiling, I shook my head.
‘I think Mother and Father were rather afraid I might end up marrying a farmer,’ she said. She made a self-deprecating face. ‘That would be terribly beneath me, of course.’
‘They’d rather you were engaged to an officer, eh?’
Rose’s expression grew distant suddenly, and I got the uncomfortable feeling I’d hit a sore spot. As I was trying to figure out what to say to smooth things out again, she said, ‘As it happens, I was seeing a man in the Navy, but he was killed last year.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I got another flash of Des’s face, pale and cold. Damn. I took a hasty gulp of scotch and some of it went down the wrong way, making me splutter.
‘What about you?’ Rose asked when I’d recovered. ‘Don’t you have someone?’
I laughed. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’ There were women – there were always women – but after a few dances, a few kisses, occasionally more than that, I’d find myself drifting away from them. I couldn’t see the point of forming a lasting connection with a girl when I knew that next time I went out on a mission, I might not be coming back. Some of the fellows saw it as a reason to dive straight in and get engaged, but whenever I met anyone there was always this voice in the back of my head that said, what’s the point in getting attached?
‘Drat, I have to go,’ Rose said, standing up; across the hangar, I saw the man in the suit – the one who’d conducted the orchestra – waving at us. ‘Clive’s the orchestra manager as well as our conductor – he gets terribly impatient.’
I stood too, surreptitiously holding onto the back of my chair – I was drunker than I’d realised. Taking my jacket from her shoulders and handing it back to me, Rose smiled, and there was a moment of awkward silence.
Not getting attached doesn’t mean you never have to see her again, a little voice in my head said, and I took a deep breath. ‘Fancy doing this again sometime?’ I asked her. ‘I’m not back on duty until the day after tomorrow…’
She smiled again, and her cheeks flushed slightly. ‘I’m in Suffolk for the whole week, staying at a hotel in Bury St Edmunds, and I’m free tomorrow afternoon. Have you got a piece of paper and a pencil?’
I did have, in my jacket pocket. I gave them to her and she wrote down a telephone number. ‘That’s our hotel,’ she said. ‘Telephone tomorrow, about lunchtime.’
Clive waved again, looking slightly irritated. Rose waved back. ‘Coming!’ she called.
I watched her cross the hangar with a sudden, unaccountable lightness in my heart.