Authors: Nevil Shute
They went fishing on Sunday afternoon, and on Monday night the Wing went in full strength to Dortmund, losing two machines by collision over the target. Marshall by that time was at the top of his form; he felt that he had got the whole job buttoned up, that his crew were behind him better than ever before. He was sleeping well and eating well. Gervase was sleeping poorly and was too anxious to be happy. Fifty-seven. Only three more to go.
The evenings were growing long by that time; it was early May. By agreement they slept on into the afternoon the day after Dortmund, and met after a large meal of tea and fried eggs at five o’clock, to go fishing for the evening rise. They had packets of sandwiches with them; they did not propose to get back before dark.
They got to Kingslake at about six o’clock and fished for a couple of hours and caught three fish. Then they sat down by the water’s edge to eat their sandwiches, waiting for the rise of fish that the book told them would come with the last half-hour of daylight.
Marshall glanced up at the house. “What’s she like?” he asked, nodding at it.
Gervase said: “She’s nice, Peter. Very outspoken, but quite nice all the same. I promised her I’d take you up and introduce you one day.” She did not say in what circumstances.
The pilot said: “I’d like to do that. It’s been bloody good of her to let us have this fishing. It’s made a lot of difference to the boys.”
“I was talking to Gunnar yesterday,” said Gervase. “He told me he’s been up to have tea with her twice.”
“Gunnar has? How did he work that?”
“The first time he went up to say ‘Thank you’ for them all when they were fishing here, and she gave him some tea. The second time she saw him from the window and sent her old maid down to ask him if he’d like to take tea with her.” Gervase paused. “I dare say they’d hit it off together pretty well,” she said thoughtfully. “They’ve probably got a good deal in common.”
Marshall stared at her. “What have they got in common?”
She said: “They’re both lonely, aren’t they? I know she is.”
The pilot considered for a minute. “I suppose you’re right. I suppose he
is
lonely.”
“He never goes out with a girl, does he?”
“He does just now and then,” said Marshall. “Not often with the same one. I think he’s got a girl of his own back in Denmark.”
Gervase said: “Poor old Gunnar …”
“Poor old Gunnar my foot,” said Marshall. “If she’s in Denmark and he’s here, he can’t have a scene with her. If she was here he’d be in anguish all the time, not knowing if she was going to marry him or shoot him down again.”
He met her eyes and they smiled together. “Are you in anguish all the time, Peter?” she asked.
He did not answer for a moment. He was looking at the soft line of her throat where it passed below her collar. “I’d like to know as soon as you can tell me,” he said quietly. “I’m not in anguish, because you’ve given me a square deal, and that’s all I wanted. If you decide that you’d be miserable if you married me, I shan’t agree with you. I shall be frightfully sorry, and I’ll want to go away, but I shan’t cut my throat.”
She stared out over the lake. “I wouldn’t be miserable,” she said slowly. “I think you’d be nice to me.”
He took her hand and slid his own hand up her arm to the elbow. “You wouldn’t like to decide now, would you?” he said huskily.
She looked at him gravely. “No, I wouldn’t,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to be a beast, Peter, but I want my month. There’s only ten more days to go.” She sensed the disappointment in his touch. “If I had to give you an answer now, it would be yes, I think. But I don’t want to give you an answer now.”
“All right,” he said gently.
She turned to him. “Being married is for all your life, and you must be quite sure. I didn’t want to marry anyone till I
was much older—and it hurries things so much to marry when you’re in the W.A.A.F.s.” He did not understand her, but he did not interrupt. “I wouldn’t want to marry you unless we could be together like a proper married couple, Peter.”
He smiled at her. “Ten days more?”
She nodded. “Only ten days, Peter.”
They sat together in silence and warm contact as the shadows lengthened; fish began rising in the lake, but their rods lay unheeded on the bank. They did not fish again. They sat on for an hour, deeply in love. Presently they disentangled and got up and took the rods back to the gun-room. In the warm twilight they rode back to Hartley, almost silent, infinitely happy.
Two days later the aerodrome was closed as usual before an operation; at the briefing in the evening the target was disclosed as Hamburg. Marshall and Gunnar Franck had been to Hamburg several times before; they had the outline of the town and the dock area well in mind already. It was familiar to them as a town is familiar that one has passed by in a train on several occasions, but never stopped in; they knew the lay-out of the streets and squares and railway stations well enough, though they had never set foot in the place, nor ever would.
They had as wireless operator that night a Corporal Forbes, a dark lad from Chester; he was painstaking and thorough, and he was deferential to their experience. He was not interested in catching fish, and that weighed against him slightly, but he was only there as a temporary measure till Leech returned to them.
Robert was scheduled to take off at 10.34, by which time it would be very nearly dark. The crew met in the crew-room at about a quarter to ten, and began dressing for the night’s work. Marshall was happy; for him everything seemed to be moving in the right direction. He had seen Gervase at lunch time in the mess and talked to her for a little; he had not seen her since. He had slept quietly and well for a great part of the afternoon, resting with an easy mind.
Gervase had also rested nominally. She had lain down on her bed with the blind drawn, but she had hardly slept at all. Her duty that night was in the control office on the aerodrome, supervising the signallers and keeping track of the machines as the reports came in, marking them up upon the blackboard for the duty control officer to see, searching the country by
telephone for the missing. She would see R for Robert taking off, she would wait hours for the “Mission completed” signal made over the target, and she would wait again. All her work now seemed to be composed of waiting and anxiety and fear. Over her loomed the shadow of disaster, terrifying, monstrous, and incredible. She slept very little.
In Robert the crew were in good spirits as they started up the engines and settled into their places. The moon, a thin crescent, was dying in the west; the night promised to be clear and starry most of the way. They began upon their normal routine of testing the equipment of the aircraft and running up the engines. Once Marshall left his seat and thrust his way down the fuselage, clumsy in his flying-suit and harness and Mae West, to the new wireless operator. He grinned at the corporal. “All okeydoke?”
The boy smiled back at him. “Everything quite all right, sir.”
“Got your card?” The pilot went through the routine with him shortly, and saw that he had spare valves and aerial properly stowed, and talked to him for a minute or two. In the end he said: “Okay. We’ll be moving off pretty soon now,” and went back to his seat and made ready for flight.
He waved the chocks away at 10.25 and moved his hand on the throttles; Robert stirred and moved forward, and turned on to the ring road, falling into line behind the other aircraft moving to the runway to take off. At the marshalling point they waited on the ring road, watching Sergeant Pilot Ferguson in A for Apple move away and go spinning down the track in the dim light, then they moved forward and turned into wind.
“Captain to wireless operator,” said Marshall. “Flash our letter.” He sat staring over in the direction of the control. In there, he thought, Gervase would be sitting at her little desk in the corner beside the door that led into the communications office. Perhaps she was standing at the window watching his flash. He smiled, and as he did so his own letter was flashed back at him in green.
He turned to the work in hand. “There’s the green,” he said. “Captain to crew—stand by now for take off. Okay, boys, here we go.”
He pressed the throttles forward and then moved his right hand back to the wheel; by his side he knew that Gunnar Franck had put his own hand to the throttles as soon as
Marshall had left them, in case they should vibrate back during the take off. He smiled again as he watched the runway streaming up to him; good old Gunnar, he thought, careful as ever. He held the heavily loaded machine down longer than was necessary, slowly raising the tail, letting her gain speed upon the ground; with three hundred yards or so to go he lifted her off. By his side he knew that Gunnar was in readiness. “Undercart up,” he said, and as he spoke the lever moved and the vibration of the hydraulic motors made a new note in the rhythm. He sat with his eyes glued to the dim scene ahead; it was still light enough to see the trees. At a hundred feet he said: “Flaps up.” By his side Gunnar folded up the second pilot’s seat, moved back to the navigator’s table. Marshall put the Wimpey into a slow turn to port; presently he straightened out upon the first leg of his course, climbing slowly.
He levelled out at ten thousand feet, and put the control over to automatic. They had been flying for forty minutes, and were approaching the Suffolk coast; Marshall left his seat and moved back into the fuselage. He stood with Gunnar at the navigator’s table for a while, studying the course, while Sergeant Cobbett stood up at the windscreen, keeping watch for him; in the cockpit the wheel and pedals stirred from time to time, moved by an invisible influence to keep the aircraft on its chosen path. The course that they were steering was to take them most of the way over the North Sea, clear of the fighter cover over Germany; presently they would turn in and come down on Hamburg from the north.
Gunnar said: “It is ver’ clear night. I think we will get good astro fixes over the sea.”
“Want to try one now?”
The navigator said: “Presently. It will be less bumpy over sea.”
The pilot said: “Okay. Give me a shout when you’re ready and I’ll try and hold her still.”
He moved on aft to Forbes. “Everything okay?”
“Lot of German R/T,” said the boy. “I reckon they’ve got fighters up.”
“Is it strong?”
“About Force 5.” The pilot plugged in to the set to listen. In the dim tunnel of the fuselage they crouched together; a spot of light from the hooded lamp illumined the pilot’s hand as he slowly turned the dial. He paused for a time listening to one German voice repeating monotonously words
that he could not understand over and over again. His hand moved and he paused again upon another station. Then he plugged back to the intercom. “There’s nothing much in that,” he said. “I think it’s pretty normal. They’ve probably got fighters up, but then they always have.”
He moved back to the cockpit and seated himself at the controls again. He plugged in to the intercom. “Captain to rear and front gunners. We’re just crossing the coast now. Test guns as soon as you can see the sea.”
Presently the twin guns ahead of him stuttered, and he saw the bright tracer flying out ahead; behind him, through the structure, he felt the vibration of the rear guns firing. Over the intercom he heard Cobbett say: “Front gunner, sir. Front guns functioning correctly.” He replied: “Okay, front gunner. Stay where you are.” He heard: “Rear-gunner reporting guns okay, Cap.” The pilot said: “Okay, rear-gunner.”
He sat quiet at the controls as they moved out over the dark sea, flying in automatic, watching the instruments from time to time to check their course, watchfully peering from side to side. Gunnar Franck came up beside him and let down the second pilot’s seat and sat by him watching to starboard; they flew on in silence into the starry night.
They were not alone in the air; there were other aircraft all around them. Flying at their set height and with all aircraft winging out to the same target, the danger of collision was small. At that time the Wellington was growing obsolete for operations, being superseded by the larger and more powerful Lancasters and Halifaxes; for this reason they had started ahead of the faster bombers, though they were scheduled to arrive at Hamburg when the defences were already heavily engaged. The big machines were overtaking them; from time to time Phillips would report: “Rear-gunner here, Cap. Aircraft coming up on us, same course, port quarter, above.” Pause. “It’s a Lane, Cap.” “Okay, rear-gunner.” Presently the big machine would draw in sight above them and become foreshortened as it vanished into the black sky ahead.
Marshall sat at the controls at peace. He loved the sense of these great starry, quiet nights, when flying was easy and the world serene. On cloudy nights, or on nights of bright moonlight, or on nights when there was icing of the wings—on ninety-five per cent of the nights, that is to say—he suffered from anxiety or fear; he could not tell the difference. You were unhappy on those nights; you reached the target drawn and
with a sense of strain. Usually he was able to relax on the way home however bad the weather might be, when the end meant cocoa and buns and bed with a hot-water bottle. It was the outward journey that he usually found most difficult.
On these serene nights, winging steadily under the bright stars, it did not seem that anything could ever happen that would bring you ill. Sitting there at the controls or in the gunner’s cupola a man was forced to contemplation, to the study of beauty for a quiet hour. The knights of the Arthurian legend before battle spent a night of vigil at the altar; it was hardly different in the Wellington on nights like these. You reached the target in a calm serenity, ready for anything that might befall.
At half-past eleven Gunnar left the cockpit and went back to the navigator’s table; he appeared a minute later, sextant in hand, and nodded to Marshall. The pilot took the controls from automatic, fixed his gaze upon the stars ahead, and concentrated upon keeping the machine steady. Standing in the astrodrome the Dane brought Procyon to the bubble, averaged quickly, and noted time and altitude. He swung round and worked upon Arcturus; then he dropped down to the table and began computing the position. In the cockpit Marshall put the automatic in again, and they went on in the still, starry night.