The countryside is silent and still. The moonlight casts shadows across the open fields. But it is a stillness that conceals some invisible menace. Flames dance and crackle in the night. Move, he tells himself. Move. When he rises his body is heavy, his movements maddeningly slow. Be quick legs. But every step is long and cumbersome as if he were moving under water, and his legs and his body will not be hurried. And all the time the dreamy countryside, just out there, calls get out. Get out. Then he falls from the cabin and is suddenly lying face down on the dewy ground. And somehow, crawling or walking (he’ll never know), he distances himself from the flames.

All around, the silvery, moonlit fields are watching. The trees, a rusted tractor, a passing fox, all witness to the extraordinary event of a flaming object falling from the heavens, from out there where the full face of the moon shines steadily, unconcernedly, frosting the tree-tops. The world at night is its own life form. It remains unmoved by the extraordinary event of this object falling into its midst.

When he is free of the cabin, standing in the smoke and the haze, he absorbs the single, astounding fact that he has come through. That he has survived. Or seems to have. He looks back. There it is, ‘F’ for Freddie. A wing has been ripped off on landing — a tree, a stone wall, a building, who knows? The snout of the plane is burrowed into the ground and the right engine is on fire. He can smell fuel. He hasn’t yet noticed the matted blood in his hair, the deep gash in his skull, the blood still trickling down the side of his face and the broken ankle that will never properly mend. And even when he does he will feel no pain and have no memory of how it happened.

The flames leap into the night sky. The white dove on the fuselage beneath the cockpit is visible through the haze. The white dove that the wireless operator
painted on the plane. And he had never asked him why. Strange. A painted dove in a painted field. Soon it will succumb to the flames and all that will be left of his kite will be a skeleton, the twisted remains of ‘F’ for Freddie, already chalked up on a blackboard back at their base as ‘Missing’.

There is no sign of the tail or front gunners. His eyes strain in the night. They should be out. Surely they must leap free at any moment, or perhaps they already have. He looks round at the silent witness of the country field, but sees no one. Surely they must leap free at any moment. Surely … but no. He is suddenly walking, his legs moving, retracing his steps, slow and heavy, back towards the plane. Back towards the flames and the smell of fuel. Everything murky, as in a fog. And all the time a voice is screaming in his ears telling him that it’s going to go up, any minute. All of it. But still the slow, liquid strides lead him back to the plane. And there, just visible through the perspex window, the second pilot sits slumped in his seat, his mask on, his jacket unzipped, his stomach opened up, intestines falling over his lap like strings of sausages in a butcher’s window. The smell of fuel is everywhere. And the heat, the heat is inescapable. The open,
farming fields watch. An animal props. The world at night remains unmoved. Then everything explodes. And the world turns black.

When he wakes, three weeks later, this is the way he will remember it. He will have no memory of being taken to a military hospital in the Cambridgeshire countryside, not far from his base. Nor any memory of saying goodbye: goodbye to his kite, to ‘F’ for Freddie and all it had been. One day during the following weeks while his broken ankle mends (but never completely), he will learn that he crash-landed in a country field not far away, that all his crew were killed and that he was not expected to live either. And this will become the scene that will haunt him throughout the blurred procession of days, weeks and months that unfolds: a country field, the flames of ‘F’ for Freddie reaching up to the night sky, then everything exploding and the world turning black. And he will nod with an air of numb acceptance, everybody (a doctor, a senior officer and somebody in a suit) agreeing that he is lucky to be alive. That he’d been ‘out of radio contact’ for weeks and they’d all thought he was a goner. But here he was, back on
the air again. Lucky Jim. Nasty bump on the head, though. Smiles all round.

This is the world he will finally wake to. Strangers at his bedside. Soothing words. Nasty bump on the head. Smiles all round, but other people’s smiles. Laughter, but other people’s. A world of other people. The sun will light the trees beyond his window and he will see happy people on a street outside. The sun will beam brightly on the branches of the trees and those carefree people will gaze up at the sky as they stroll beneath the dappled branches and be happy, but never know how happy they are.

A door opens onto a laneway and pale light fans the bare floorboards upon which a young woman stands, gazing absently onto the morning. She is still, paused between opening and closing the door, all movement arrested by thought. Her eyes are open, but her mind is elsewhere, and they may as well be closed. Then she steps from the front door of a small flat just off St James’s Park. The laneway into which she emerges is tiny, barely wide enough for two people to pass, so tiny it only appears on the most detailed of street maps. It is a spring day, but crisp. She wears an
overcoat and trousers. She is carrying a leather bag over her shoulder. Inside the bag, amongst her books, a newspaper and her reading glasses, is her first story to be published, by a small university press. And she knows the story — not only because it is her first to be published but also because she has written and rewritten it again and again — almost by heart. She does not need to consult it in order to mentally repeat it. The story is simply there in her mind to be read, without need of the printed page.

And so, clutching the straps of the bag and mentally re-enacting the story once again, she follows the dark, narrow lane onto the main street as a dirty red van speeds past, the spring sun not yet high enough in the sky to light the shade of the street or lend it any warmth.

PART TWO
May 11th, 1941

2.
A SMALL CHURCH IN MAIDEN LANE

There is a small church in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. While ‘F’ for Freddie is being loaded with its cargo of bombs and being made ready for its operation that night over a southern French railway town, Iris is sitting on a pew at the back of the building. This is not her church; it is, in fact, a Roman church. Her church is St Stephen’s in Gloucester Road. Her regular. Or, at least, it was. The church she grew up in, and grew out of. Sometime after leaving home and going to university, she just stopped going. She occasionally drops into her regular, but it’s a social call more than anything. Just once in a while and she’s not even sure why. An observance of social ritual that lingers after the meaning has gone? Nostalgia? Who knows?
When all is said and done, she doesn’t think about it much now anyway. God and everything. That’s an Iris that once was, but isn’t any more. But she still likes churches. And even though this is not her church, it is her favourite. It’s small. Cosy, even. Not much light. Some might call it gloomy, but she thinks of it as sombre. A good place to bring your thoughts. She’s passed the church often enough but had never seen inside until she stepped in one day, not so long ago, on a curious impulse, for she’d never been in a Catholic church before. And it felt like a betrayal from the start, but an entrancing one. Coming here is a guilty pleasure. A sort of infidelity. She feels like an unfaithful wife, a fallen woman even, irresponsibly following her heart instead of her sense of duty.

But she is not married. Not yet. Earlier in the day a young man offered her a ring and she gasped, and cried ‘Oh!’ or ‘Gosh!’ or something just as forgettable as she stared at it, still in its box. It was expensive and sparkling and must have cost him dearly. And she must have taken in all the implications of the ring — love, hope, war, death, duty, care — at once, all in a concentrated moment. But a moment only. For without further thought she said that she would
keep it, but she would not wear it until he returned. He nodded (a nod like a sigh, for she knows that this young man is unreservedly in love with her in a way that she cannot return or the ring would be on her finger where rings are meant to be), took it from the box and placed it in her palm. And yet with that exchange, with that … what? compact? she now feels as though the young man has become her fiancé. And she his. It all happened so fast. Even now, hours later, she doesn’t know why she did it. Why she said she would keep it. So reflexively, without pausing to think. For it was one of those moments, she knew, that required action, not thought. Best done, in fact, without thought. For she has read all her life. She is a reader. A dedicated one. And she has been, since her teenage years, familiar with all those stories of heroes who just
did
things without brooding over the consequences, and so she knows full well that too much thought, too much reflection, at the wrong time can get in the way. But impulse can get you into trouble too. She doesn’t know now if she’s done the right thing or the wrong thing. For this young man left for the war today. Strange phrase: left for the war. Not quite like leaving for the office or work, but
something similar about it. All the same, he left for the war, telling her that he wanted someone back here. Back at home. That it would be a comfort. Someone to think about. Something to take his mind off things. Which was a strange way to put it, she thinks. And she suddenly wonders if he really
is
in love, as he said he was and has always seemed to be. All the same, he placed the ring in her palm and she swore to wear it when he returned. And that was that.

They’ve known each other on and off for two years, but more particularly over the last couple of months. Long enough for routines and even little rituals to be established, like his waiting for her outside her work whenever he was on leave, and her looking forward to his being there. She, released from a world of papers and files that seemed to bear no relation to reality; he, the solid, smiling earth. His afternoon kiss bringing her back to life; the smell of tobacco on his coat and jumper like caramel. Long enough for little things to creep into their lives, which, she knows even now, she would dearly miss if they ever broke up and the solid, smiling face of earth never greeted her again. And she wonders if this, after all, is love. For love has remained
a mystery. Something, it seems, that other people fall into, but not her.

At Oxford, where she studied Greats and Literature, she went out with young men, had flings and even left her virginity in one of those college rooms (another one of those times when impulse told her just to act, not stand back and reflect). But nothing lasting or serious. Not that she didn’t want that; it was just that it never came along. And this desire for something lasting and serious surprised her friends at university, for she had acquired a reputation as a bit of a bohemian. She went on the stage. Travelled with a troupe of actors around the Malvern Hills in that last beautiful summer before the war. Lots of opportunity there to fall in love or at least fall into something, but nothing came along. Only friendships. Which is how she met Frank, the young man who gave her the ring. He wasn’t one of the actors, but hung around with them. They got to know each other. They talked and drank in college rooms. They discovered Marxism, even joined the party together. And he became a friend. A sort of comrade. But a lover? She couldn’t decide then, and she doesn’t know now. Even though his ring is in her purse. So
love has remained a sort of blessedness that falls upon the secret society of the elect, a society to which she has not yet gained admittance. And if she were to ask someone what is it? How do you know when it falls upon you or possesses you? they would only say you’ll know. Which wouldn’t tell her anything, would only reinforce that sense of exclusion. So she has never asked the question.

All the same, he placed the ring in her palm and now it is done. And she still doesn’t know why she took it. Just as she still doesn’t know if he is a friend or a lover. She has surprised herself, and would surprise her friends — if she told them about it. For she knows that with the reputation for being a bit of a bohemian she has also acquired a reputation for being a headstrong young woman. With a mind of her own. Not one to be carried by events. But the reality is that her head has two minds. Or, as she herself would happily add, at
least
two: the reflective Iris who stands back and the headstrong Iris who barges in, usually at the wrong times. And was today such an occasion?

She has the church to herself. It is peaceful and quiet. He needed, he said — and she can hear him clearly still, at the same time taking in the glow of
the candles at the front of the church — he needed someone back here to think of — and that could mean love or … anything — but she couldn’t let him down. Or at least she told herself she couldn’t, that it was one of those moments that required action, not thought.

She saw him off at a bus stop in Charing Cross Road. Not quite the way she’d imagined she would see someone off to war. But there he was, his two-day leave finished, in his uniform with his kit bag and his gun for God’s sake, off to war. Reporting for duty. And she’d known she’d have to wave him off at some stage, but she’d never thought she’d wave him off on the No 1 bus to Waterloo. Not quite real. But then again, what was? Everything now, it seems to Iris, has that touch of unreality. Life has become like … what? Like going to the cinema and seeing yourself up there on the screen, waving Frank off at the bus stop. But it’s not you, and it’s not Frank, and it’s not life either. It’s a film. And although you’re in it, it’s distant too, like stepping out of your body and watching yourself wave Frank off and saying to yourself all along: that’s not me, it’s her. That’s not us, it’s them. And the thought that Frank might go off and get himself killed seems preposterous. But he
is
gone, and there really
is a distinct chance that she might not see him again.

There is a sudden sense of relief in that — that he is gone, might stay gone, and the riddle of the ring would simply solve itself. But no sooner does she experience that relief, that she may never see him again, than she experiences the guilt that accompanies it. And if she never sees him again will it be because some dark, mysterious part of her (as dark and mysterious as love itself) wishes it so? If he does
not
return after all, would it be because she wished it so? Can wishing, however dark and shadowy and passing the thought might be, do that? And that is why she has come to this church. It is an oasis. A place removed from the world where she can bring this whole mad jumble of thoughts and just sit and think. Clearly. And in peace. For his fate, she truly believes, in some wild, irrational part of her being, is now in her hands. It’s ridiculous. And absurd. Completely illogical. But telling herself all this doesn’t seem to help. And so she rises, having formalised — in some part of her that reason can’t touch — her pact. Despite her reading, despite her studies, despite a voice that tells her again and again that she’s too smart for all this rot, she believes it anyway.

It’s the war. It’s the war doing that. It’s one of those phrases going round. And she doesn’t like it. For she is trained in language and this phrase is sloppy. There’s something wheeled out and mechanical to it. A substitute for thinking. She swears she’ll never use it again. The war may reduce her to using beetroot juice for lipstick when the occasion arises, but she is determined it will not reduce her to cliché.

When she steps out into what, after the church, seems like the blazing light of the street, she passes Rules (which she’s promised herself to visit one day, with the right someone), busy with lunch-time diners, and strolls back towards Whitehall, where she works (a public servant, Treasury, Establishments, the stuffiest of the stuffy, looking after pay, discipline and complaints). When she came back to London from Oxford it was the first thing she was offered, through her flatmate, Pip, who worked there and knew a friend who knew … and although she never imagined herself in a million years as a public servant she became one overnight. There are a dozen or so other women there, and they actually have power. All of them. She makes up regulations with names like ‘1437/6353890m.(14)&c’, which, after a time, acquire
a certain poetic flow. She sends out terse letters to senior civil servants when needed, and is abrupt on the phone when she has to be. It is all a bit unreal there too. But mostly it is a quiet, routine business. And makes her restless. Yet as much as she might long to be transferred just about anywhere else in those moments when the job is just plain boring (and over the last six months there’s been more than enough boredom) she knows she never would be because she is too good at what she does. So that is that. They’ll never let her go. Not till the war is over.

She carries over her shoulder her gas mask. Even though just about everyone she knows has stopped carting their gas masks about with them, she still dutifully carries hers. And today she is carrying more: a helmet and a pair of binoculars. She could have left the binoculars on her desk, but they are her father’s. Something he liked to have for watching passing ships when they drove to the sea (which they don’t any more). Or clouds. Anything distant. Purchased for no reason in particular, really, but a favourite possession all the same. So instead of leaving them on her desk where anybody could pick them up she carries them with her as she follows Maiden Lane
down to St Martin’s Lane. She needs them now, helmet and binoculars, because tonight she will start her fire-watching duties.

All around her young women, her friends included, are doing all sorts of things they’ve never done before — driving trucks and ambulances, even flying planes. And it might sound silly, even childish, but to Iris it looks exciting. Fun, even. While all the time she is stuck in a stuffy office away from the real world. Locked away from everything vital. For when you’re stuck at a desk it becomes a paper war. And she feels as though the whole war could pass, could come and go, and not even touch her. Not really. Which would be wrong. For these are her times, and she must know them. See them and walk through them. Let them pass through her. Let the times fall upon her. But none of it falls upon her in her stuffy office, and life often as not feels small and contracted at her desk (eight foot by ten — and she’s had time to measure it). So for this reason, and because she wants to ‘do her bit’ (although she’d never say it like that), she has asked for these duties — at first to the quiet protests of loving, but overly protective, parents who moved to the country to get away from the bombs. Two fire-watchers ‘received’, as they say,
(which, she notes with that grim sort of irony that is everywhere now, makes it sound like certified mail) a direct hit a few weeks before. But she assured her parents that Bloomsbury was relatively safe. And she prevailed. Of course, she would have done it anyway and her parents understood this. It’s been years since they told their daughter what to do, and years since she obeyed anything other than the dictates of her own thinking. Besides, she knows it’s no great matter. No grand romantic gesture. She knows a woman who flies a Spitfire who knows a woman who was dropped into France. Not only was dropped into France, but came back. And has since been dropped somewhere else. No, it’s no great matter. She’s perfectly aware of that. But it’s something, something that makes her feel as though she’s
in
her times, not hidden away from them behind a desk.

She keeps notes too. An organisation she’d never heard of before, Mass Observation, contacted her a year ago and asked her to write things down. They wanted to hear about life, the war,
everything
, from the point of view of the ordinary person — she thinks the letter even added ‘on the street’, although she can’t remember. She’s filled half a dozen notebooks
already. But not for them. She wrote the first notebook for them, but decided to keep it. Decided it was hers, not theirs. Besides, she was always going to write. That’s what the notes are really for. Iris is going to write a book one day. About
these
days, in all their strangeness. And her notebooks are full of them, these days. A man in a suit and a bowler hat stepping over a bomb crater in the road on his way to work as if it had always been like this. A street that she used to play in as a child, bombed out and sealed off like a ghost town. Her father in the kitchen, before her parents moved to the country, looking up to the ceiling, jittery, when the first sirens sounded. Her mother grabbing their coats for the shelter, plates and cups of tea half drunk on the table — and still there when they got back. And the tired look on everyone’s faces — except for the children, who play on bomb sites because they don’t really know what death is, even though it’s all around them. Or perhaps because they do know, have grown up reckless and deny death the very respect that it thrives on, and are determined to find fun where they can. And the toddlers who cry themselves to sleep in the shelters because they can hear, see and smell fear and know that there are
monsters out there and that the monsters know who they are and are coming to get them. What a jumble. What a mess. What days. Brittle. It’s the word she silently pronounces in the streets, in trains and buses, and in the corridors at work. Brittle buildings, brittle people, and brittle too all those everyday words they mutter (‘Morning’, ‘Evening’, ‘Cuppa?’), always just at the point of falling to pieces in their mouths as they speak them. Words like macaroons. Everyone, everything, just hanging on, but no one saying so. It’s all in her notebooks. And she wants to know more of them, let these days fall upon her, but you can’t know more sitting at a desk all day.

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