By the time he was sixteen, James Blackwell had worked it out. He had drawn himself a map to the glittering world that pulsed less than an hour’s stroll from his own poverty-stricken
corral.
But he wouldn’t be walking or even driving to it.
He was going to fly there.
‘A place at Cranwell? I hardly think so, Blackwell,’ the headmaster murmured as he poured himself sherry from his study’s sideboard. ‘I gather that a
lot of RAF chaps pay for their own flying lessons before even joining the service. Cranwell’s a sort of finishing school for them, really. I very much doubt there are any suitable places
available. I’ll check, of course.’
He took a sip of his sherry, then resumed: ‘Anyway, why the RAF? No history to speak of; no regimental traditions – why d’you think they call it the junior service? Because
that’s exactly what it is. Now, I have some connections in the Guards. I could—’
James stood up.
‘I’m sure you have, sir,’ he said carefully, ‘but I’ve looked into all that, actually. It’s kind of you but I think we both know that someone with my
background would hardly have a meteoric career with any of the old regiments, let alone get accepted in the first place. There’s only so much that elocution lessons can achieve. I’m
grateful for the ones you arranged for me, but there’s a limit to how far they’ll take me socially. Certainly not to the rarefied heights of the Guards.’
The headmaster sighed. ‘Ever the realist, eh, Blackwell? Well, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘No, sir,’ said James. ‘You’ll do better than that.’ He produced a sheet of paper from his prefect’s blazer pocket.
The headmaster raised an eyebrow. ‘I beg your pardon? I’m not sure I like your tone, boy.’
‘I’m not sure I care either way, sir,’ replied the teenager. He placed the form on the desk between them. ‘This is a typewritten reference from you to the commanding
officer at Cranwell, explaining that I am ideal officer material, based on my exemplary record with the School Cadet Corps. It also gives details of my School Certificate results this summer, with
special emphasis on my excellent examination score in mathematics. An 88 per cent mark, as I recall.’
The headmaster sat very still.
‘Blackwell, you are barely competent in mathematics.’
The boy smiled, and waited. After a long moment, the man opposite him shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
‘Look, I’m very fond of you, Blackwell – James – you know that, but I’m not signing this. You simply can’t ask it of me.’ He picked up the letter and
tore it carefully in half.
James smiled again. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, sir. I was your star cadet and I did exceptionally well in maths. You must have me muddled with another boy, I think. But you have a
habit of doing that, don’t you, sir? Do you remember when you called me Thomas instead of James? You were very apologetic. Mind you, you were rather worked up at the time, as I recall. I put
it down to over-excitement.’
The headmaster’s voice, when he finally spoke, was barely above a whisper. ‘You little bastard. You
fucking
little bastard. I’ve done so much for you. I paid for
lessons to stop you talking like a barrow-boy, I—’
‘But sir,’ James interrupted. ‘You told me you
liked
me to talk like a barrow-boy. Have you forgotten that as well?’
The headmaster sank back into his chair. ‘You wouldn’t dare. You wouldn’t dare say a word. We’d both go to prison.’
James inclined his head. ‘No, sir,
I
wouldn’t go to prison. I’m much too young – especially when we . . . how did you used to describe it? When we had our . . .
“special lessons”. But you, sir? You certainly
would
end up in clink; there we are in full agreement. And of course, there’s the rather nasty business of corrupting a
minor, too. That’s got to deliver some hard labour into the bargain, I should imagine. But what do
you
think, sir?’
Frightened, shrunken eyes met those of the brightest blue.
‘I think – I think you had better write me another letter to sign, you little tart.’
‘Ah.’ James stood up. ‘Now, just for that, you can stick that one back together again, sir, and copy it out in fair hand. I wasn’t all that happy with a typewritten
version, to be honest, any more than I was happy with our . . . well, transactions, as I suppose we should consider them in hindsight. Anyway, recommendations of this kind are so much more
intrinsically
personal
when they’re handwritten, don’t you agree? And you have such lovely copperplate, sir.’
The headmaster’s eyes closed for a moment. ‘Get out, just get out. You’ll have your filthy letter in your pigeonhole in fifteen minutes. Then you can go back to your pigsty of
a home and your scrubber of a mother, and never come back here. Term finishes next week anyway. If I see your face at this school again I’ll call the police and bring charges for blackmail. I
swear I shall.’
James Blackwell walked calmly to the study door. He opened it and turned back.
‘No, you won’t. You’ll write my letter and then you’ll shut up. Don’t bluster, sir. It demeans you even further, if such a thing were possible. Goodbye,
sir.’
James Blackwell may have manipulated his way into Cranwell, but once there he found himself struggling to keep up with the other trainee officers. Standards were dauntingly
high. With mounting dismay he watched candidate after candidate quietly asked to leave the college after flunking academic or practical tests. His own grasp of mathematics was shaky at best. What
would happen when navigation classes began?
Socially, he stood out. His carefully enunciated words fooled nobody. One night in the Prince Rupert, Cranwell College’s pub of choice in nearby Newark, as he broodily nursed a beer in an
unlit corner, he overheard a Kensington-born trainee pilot in the adjoining booth deliver a damning verdict.
‘Blackwell? The ghastly man’s a fraud, and common with it. He only got in in the first place because this is the RAF. Anywhere else and the bloody little oik would have been barred
at the camp gate. Just wait until we’ve finished theory and start getting up in the air. He’ll be kicked out of here faster than a lance-corporal who’s wandered into the
Officers’ Mess. No
rank
. No
class
. No class at all.’
Later, lying on his iron-framed cot smoking cigarette after cigarette in the dark, James came to a decision. He couldn’t make it through Cranwell on his own. He needed back-up, support.
Someone with standing who would, by association, enhance his own and offer some social protection, even advice.
In other words, a well-placed friend.
A friend. James smiled faintly to himself. He’d never wanted, nor solicited a friend in his whole life. He wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it.
But he wouldn’t have to worry, as things turned out.
John Arnold found him first.
‘Honestly, Di,’ John murmured to his sister, keeping his voice low in case his parents and his friend at the other end of the room overheard. ‘James was
really up against it at Cranwell, poor bloke.’
Together they poured cognacs from the drinks trolley for everyone. John was amused to see that his sister had put on fresh lipstick during the party’s move from dining room to drawing
room, and changed into new stockings after he’d whispered to her that she had a slight ladder in one of them. He was half-surprised she’d not gone the whole hog and put on a different
frock; he was sure she’d been tempted. But she’d returned downstairs in the same dark red woollen dress which she knew showed off her figure at its best.
‘I hope James appreciates your efforts, sis,’ he murmured, nudging her conspiratorially.
‘Steady,’ warned Diana, as she slopped a little of the brandy over the tray. ‘This might have to last. Everyone’s saying the war will be over by Christmas, but
that’s exactly what Daddy says people thought last time, and it was four years. I’ve already told Mummy to go easy on the tinned salmon.’
Five balloon glasses were placed on the tarnished silver tray.
‘Anyway, never mind me,’ said Diana. ‘Go on. What d’you mean about James being up against it?’
‘Not here,’ answered her brother, glancing across the room. ‘Fetch some cigarettes and I’ll smoke one with you on the ha-ha. I’ll tell you all about James
there.’
John had never seen class snobbery at work until Cranwell. It made him deeply uncomfortable. His own public school, Hedgebury, had operated a generous system of scholarships
and assisted places. Most of the boys there were sons of professional men – lawyers like his own father, businessmen, doctors, politicians. The school was run on modern lines as an
uncompromising meritocracy. Assumptions of superiority by birthright were frowned on.
True, there had been occasional bouts of trouble with ‘town boys’ when older Hedgeberians found themselves at a loose end in the local High Street on their half-days off. But these
run-ins were relished by both sides, and had more the flavour of sporting fixtures than class war.
John found the patronising of James at Cranwell unpleasant. His own public-school background had taught him that it was usually best to let others fight their own battles, but even so, he looked
for a way to offer quiet support.
The chance came after an afternoon’s navigation instruction. James went straight to the room he shared with three others and sat alone, surrounded by textbooks on navigation theory. John
passed the open door in time to hear a deep sigh coming from within.
He hesitated, then rapped on the doorframe. ‘Everything all right in there? Not too much doom and gloom?
Nil desperandum
and all that?’
James looked up from the page. ‘Fuck off, mate. Don’t give me all that cheery balls. It’ll take more than a Latin tag to get me through this lot.’ He gestured at the
books. ‘Trigonometry I can just about cope with. It’s these bloody equations that have me floored.’
He rose and moved to the doorway, hand outstretched, to introduce himself. ‘James. James Blackwell.’
‘John Arnold.’ They shook hands. ‘Actually, I’m not really John at all – I’m Robert. Don’t ask. It’s a sort of family tradition. We all change our
names. I have no idea why.’
James laughed. ‘Well, I’ve always been James, though right now I wish I were someone else altogether. Someone who could understand this stuff.’ He gestured towards the books.
‘If I don’t crack it soon, I’ll be out on my arse like those other poor sods.’
John sat down in a battered leather armchair and swung one knee over the side. ‘I could help, if you liked,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ve got the best of
navigation instructors, as it happens. He rattles too quickly through everything. But I’m lucky – it mostly comes pretty naturally to me. I could go over things with you more slowly
until it sticks. You’ll get it eventually.’
The other man stared at him. ‘Why would you do that? We hardly know each other.’
John stood up and stretched. ‘It’d be one in the eye for those braying idiots who think being born into high society makes them better than chaps like you. Or me, come to that.
They’d love to see you booted out of Cranwell; it would confirm all their ghastly prejudices. Let’s give them a kick in the pants, shall we?’
Diana drew thoughtfully on her cigarette in the darkness. ‘You must be a bloody effective teacher, brother,’ she said. ‘Too effective for your own good,
perhaps. He’s ended up a flight commander and you’re a humble pilot officer.’ She giggled and poked John in the ribs. ‘You should show him some respect. Why haven’t I
seen you salute him or call him “sir”?’
Her brother’s glowing cigarette end arced over the ha-ha as he flicked it into the little stream beyond. ‘Oh, James isn’t interested in any of that nonsense,’ he said.
‘Obviously on base we observe the proprieties, but not here. We’re friends. It was a real stroke of luck that our first posting after Cranwell was to the same squadron. Anyway, I
haven’t finished telling you about him.’
James Blackwell, thanks to long hours of private tuition from his new friend, scraped through his navigation exams. The frightful condescension directed at him by
Cranwell’s self-styled social elite eased somewhat, but that had nothing to do with the exams. John was popular among the other trainee pilots and his friendship with James conferred a degree
of social acceptance on the other man – enough, at least, to mute the more contemptuous comments about him behind his back.
‘But here’s the thing, sis,’ John continued. ‘He’s actually got more blue blood in him than the lot of them. His mother used to be in service. James won’t
tell me the name of the family, but I get the impression they’re not just well-connected – they’re the kind of people half those chinless wonders at Cranwell would give the family
silver to be connected to.
‘Apparently, the young Miss Blackwell got herself into a compromising position with Lord Whoever-it-was and the upshot was James. She was chucked out without references, ages before the
birth – the usual story – and ended up waiting on tables in London. She married a no-good who walked out on her and she had to bring James up alone.
‘Now she works in a cinema in Mile End or somewhere. James won a scholarship to a good school and dragged himself up by his own bootstraps. Until he got his commission he didn’t have
two pennies to rub together. I really admire him.’
Diana frowned. ‘But I thought he’d come here for a few days because his parents are in Canada. That’s what you told Mummy on the phone yesterday.’
Her brother took her arm and began walking them back to the house. ‘That’s because James has discovered that telling the truth about his background – well, his real
father’s family, anyway – usually backfires. People think he’s making it all up and either laugh at him or steer well clear from then on. He still won’t reveal his
father’s identity to me and God knows, he knows he can trust me.’
Diana looked up at her brother in the near-total dark as they reached the Dower House’s French windows, and prepared to slip inside the blackout curtains that she, Lucy and their mother
had hastily put up that morning. ‘Yes, but how do you
know
he’s not making it up? You seem to have taken an awful lot on trust, John. And why lie to Mummy about that Canada
business? Why not tell her, and Daddy, what you just told me?’