A Future Arrived (47 page)

“Jacob can come and see you.”

“Either way. I must go back, Jenny.”

“Why?” Her hand shook slightly as she began to shampoo his hair. “You've been through enough.”

“It's the story of the century and I have to follow it up. I saw only one tiny piece of the picture falling back with your father. I want Jacob to fill me in, put it all into perspective. Then I'll go over again. That is, unless the Germans get there first.”

He slept as though drugged. No dreams. An immense blackness. When he woke up it was to see Jacob seated in a chair by the window reading through the copy he had typed in France.

“Meet with your approval?”

Jacob removed his glasses and placed the sheets on a table. “Very much so. Jenny told me you're considering going back.”

“If the army hasn't surrendered.”

“Where did they drop you off?”

“Dover was full up so they took us to Ramsgate.”

“Notice anything in the harbor while you were there?”

“An unusual number of yachts and motorboats.”

“Part of the new plan, Thax. I just left the Admiralty. It's quite impossible to get enough men off the pier … taking too much time and we're losing too many destroyers doing it. They're going to start taking the men right off the beaches. Thousands of little boats are gathering. In Ramsgate … Dover … Folkestone. Everywhere. Yachts, trawlers, drifters, tugs … even large rowboats. All going across the Channel starting this afternoon. Civilians all, Thax. An armada of workaday seamen and weekend sailors … fishermen, tugboat captains, dentists, and clerks.”

Albert sat up in bed. “Christ. Maybe something can be salvaged from the disaster yet.”

“One man's disaster is another man's victory. I wish you could have known my father. He was the last of the press lords. Took an obscure little sheet called the
London and Provinces Daily Post and Times Register
and turned it into the largest paper in the world. He had a genius for putting the right slant to a story. The British army is no stranger to debacles. There was one in the last war … right at the beginning when the Germans forced the BEF to retreat from Mons. My father didn't want a headline that read ‘retreat' from Mons, so he inserted the word
glorious
… the ‘glorious' retreat from Mons. Made quite a difference, don't you think? We have the same situation now.”

“Nothing particularly glorious about Dunkirk, Jacob.”

“There will be if we can save the army.”

“Wars, as they say, are not won by retreats or evacuations.”

“Perhaps not, but the
will
to fight … the courage and pride to go on, can be won by them. We English have always taken a perverse pride in our military adversities—every schoolboy knows that. If those little ships sailing and chugging and rowing out of Ramsgate and Dover this afternoon can pull it off—well, there's a miracle for you. And there's nothing quite like a miracle for giving people faith.”

S
QUADRON
L
EADER
A
LLISON
broke the news before the morning patrol. There had been some idle speculation among the crews for the delay in takeoff and now they knew.

“Ops are canceled for the day, chums. We're to have no part in this Dunkirk show. They're moving us to Beauty Firth.”

“Where the hell's that?” Colin asked.

“Scotland, old chum. Hard by Inverness. It places us nearly three hundred miles closer to Narvik. The air chief marshal of Coastal Command has not seen fit to confide in me as yet, but I would say that our pathetic little force sitting in Norway is on the verge of being withdrawn.”

“When do we leave?”

“After the briefing get your personal gear packed and stowed. We should fly out of here within the hour.”

“What's Inverness like, Skipper?”

“Chilly and wet. And no one, as far as I know, has been laid there since Bonnie Prince Charlie. A spell of celibacy should do you randy chums a world of good.”

Colin fell into step beside him as they walked toward the mess hall for the flight briefing. “Any chance of my ringing Kate? I was supposed to meet her tonight at the Nelson.”

“Sorry. No telephone calls permitted. Leading Aircraftman Jones will be going into Norwich later to pick up the railroad warrants for the ground crew. Dash off a note to her. I'm sure Jones will gladly deliver it.”

Colin strode along in silence for a moment, scowling at the ground; then he stopped and plucked Allison's sleeve. “Look here, Skip, I know that some of the guys screw around with the local tarts, but me and Kate …” He stopped, face red with embarrassment.

The faintest of smiles stretched Allison's thin lips. “That thought never crossed my mind.”

“She's … well, something special.”

“Of course. And I can quite see why.”

“A real … friend.”

Allison's smile broadened. “Ah, indeed yes. A particularly lovely and infinitely desirable …
chum!
”

RAF B
EAULY
F
IRTH
was near Charlestown, across the broad firth from Inverness. It had been a small seaplane base before the war and, although construction was proceeding day and night, was hardly equipped to handle the number of flying boats sent there. A squadron of giant four-engine Sunderlands was moored on the slate-gray waters when Allison's group set down. Their officers, most of whom Allison knew, were crowded morosely in the ramshackle officers' mess.

“It's a real cock-up, Allison,” their squadron leader said bitterly. “It'll be days before our ground crew gets here.”

“The same with ours.”

“Not to mention parts and spares. I think someone at the Air Ministry is running around without a head. Oh, Lord, here comes The Comedian.”

The station commander entered the mess in a burst of ebullient good fellowship. He was a middle-aged, portly man who might have been a hotel manager or golf-club secretary in civilian life.

“That's the spirit, lads. Make yourselves at home. May I welcome you boys from Thurne Mere. Sorry we're a bit cramped here at present, but that will change shortly. I must also apologize for the dirth of maintenance facilities. The fact is, we were not scheduled to expect aircraft here for another two weeks, but we shall muddle through, what? I have just made arrangements to billet most of you in the local hotels and rooming houses. A lot of them about, don't you know. Popular spot before the war for the summer tourist trade, what with Loch Ness and its monster just down the road. If the squadron leaders will pop along to my office we can go over the details.”

“Care to ‘pop,' Allison?” the squadron leader whispered.

“Why not, old chum? He looks the type of man who would serve an exceptional sherry.”

Colin was billeted in a rambling old hotel with splendid views across hill and firth. He put in a call early in the evening to Norwich and it took three hours before the operator in Inverness could put it through. He reached the caretaker who went up to Kate's flat and brought her down. She sounded breathless over the line.

“Oh, Collie, I'm just crushed that you're gone. Are you in Inverness?”

“Near there … Charlestown.”

“But how long will you be away?”

“I can't say. No one knows anything. Quite a while I would think. I'm sorry, Kate. Not much chance of any leave at the moment.”

“I'll come up there.”

He gripped the receiver very tightly. “You can't do that, Kate. Impossible.”

“No it isn't. I could come up just for the summer. My grandfather owned a hunting lodge in Glen Garry … Mama owns it now. I could stay there … bring all my books, study … see you from time to time. It's only forty-five miles or so from Inverness.”

“Getting there would be difficult. Trains … all this Dunkirk business.”

“Don't you want to see me, Collie?”

“Of course I do, you know that. It would be wonderful. I just don't want you to turn into some kind of … camp follower.”

There was a long pause and then she lowered her voice and said: “It's not being a camp follower to want to be near someone you love. There. I said it. And it's not a schoolgirl crush this time. I love you, Colin.”

He looked toward the windows, a mauve light lingering over the still waters of the firth. “I guess I love you, too, Kate.”

O
RDERS
CAME IN
constantly to be almost immediately canceled. A fog of confusion permeated the squadrons. Rumors swept the base and were squelched with difficulty.

“I'll trust the
Daily Post
,” one of the pilots said after breakfast on the last day of May. “This A. E. Thaxton chap has gone back and forth with the little ships. They're bloody well saving the BEF.”

“The ruddy civvies are doing more than we are,” someone remarked bitterly.

Morale in both squadrons had sunk to worrying lows in just a few days. Allison gave a talk to all the crews in the mess later that morning.

“Now look here, chums. There's no point in everyone slouching about with their chins down to their knees. We don't fly the type of aircraft that would be of much bloody use at the moment. We're here because someone at the War Office got terribly windy about our troops in Norway … envisioned an arctic Dunkirk with the poor old brown jobs being hurled into the freezing sea. The fact is, and I have this straight from an uncle in Whitehall and quite close to the situation, that our lads in Narvik are squatting in the town and the Jerry ski troops are hunkered down in the hills with nary a shot nor a cross word being exchanged between them. It is self-evident that our chums in Narvik will be withdrawn as soon as transport and naval escort can be released from the Dunkirk show. The powers that be are resigned to an embarrassing fiasco. What they did not want was another disaster. Our job will be to provide reconnaissance and assistance for the operation. In my own humble opinion, that task will not begin for another week or so. In the meantime, this nasty joke of a station may come to some sort of order and we may as well make the best of it until it does. The weather's good … the beer plentiful … the links at Munlochy available and the girls in Inverness far more acquiescent than I would have thought possible. Go, my chums. Enjoy your off hours with our blessings … but stay in touch.”

Cheers rattled the windows and The Comedian scurried out of his office in the wild delusion that the war was over.

“Ross!” Allison called out. “Don't be in such a hurry to leave. Where are you off to anyway?”

“I don't know, Skip. Golf sounded pretty good to me.”

“I would imagine that Miss Kate Wood-Lacy would sound better.”

He stared at him blankly. “Kate?”

“A phone message of sorts on my desk this morning. None of the station sods know where anyone is. It was sent to my attention. Just her name and an address … Kinloch Lodge, Glen Garry.”

“Jesus, she did it.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Yeah. I mean, I never thought she would actually come up here.”

“Rather nice of her, I must say. Good to have a … chum nearby.”

H
E
BORROWED A
Baby Austin from one of the navigators in the Sunderland squadron, managed to squeeze his legs into it, and rattled off along the road to Loch Ness. A postman on a bicycle in the village of Invergarry gave him explicit directions and he found the lodge with no trouble. It was far larger than he had imagined: a two-story stone house with a slate roof and many chimneys. It stood alone on a rise of heather-cloaked ground overlooking the deep, still waters of Loch Garry.

She came out of the house at the sound of the car and stood stiffly in front of the open door. “I know you think I was wrong,” she said as he walked up to her from the car.

“That's not for me to say, Kate. It's good to see you. I know that. Must have been tough getting here.”

“A trial!” She smiled, her trepidation melting away. “They say that over two hundred thousand men have been evacuated so far from Dunkirk and most of them were going north by rail. Our little train was constantly being shunted into sidings. It seemed an age before we reached Glasgow. I took a bus from there to Fort Williams and the gillie met me with his van.”

“Gillie?”

“Grandpapa's old gamekeeper. He has a cottage down the hill and caretakes the place. His name's Archy Selenius. An unusual name for a Highland Scot, but that's what it is.”

“Okay by me,” he said, returning her smile. “Beats Macbeth any day.”

Clouds, like an endless procession of woolly sheep, drifted in from the west. Their shadows moved across the loch and up and down the surrounding hills.

“We have fishing rights for two miles along the north shore,” Kate told him. “Would you like to get out the tackle?”

“I'm not much for fishing. I like trout and salmon, but on a plate.” He bent down, picked up a flat stone, and sent it skipping across the water. “Are you really going to stay here all summer?”