The Crew (16 page)

‘One gooseberry, then, sir.' She began writing with her pencil.

In a moment she'd be off again. He cleared his throat. ‘I say, do you think—'

‘Sorry, sir?' She stuck the pencil back behind her ear.

‘I was going to say . . . would you come out with me one evening? To the cinema, or something?' The words tumbled out in a rush. He smiled at her hopefully.

Her mouth had fallen open in astonishment. ‘Beg pardon, sir?'

‘I asked if you'd like to come out with me one evening, actually.' His heart was racing away. Was she going to feel insulted and call the head waiter over? Or, worse, laugh at him?

Instead, she looked bewildered. ‘Is it a joke, sir?'

‘No, of course not.' He was dismayed she should think such a thing. ‘I meant it. Would you? I mean, on your evening off . . . if you have one. Do you? You must have.'

Her cheeks were turning bright pink. ‘Well, yes, sir. Wednesdays.'

‘Would you, then?'

‘Oh, I couldn't do that, sir.'

‘Why not?'

‘Well, sir . . . it wouldn't be right, would it?' She started to back away from the table. ‘Thank you just the same, sir.'

He said desperately, ‘Will you think about it? Please?'

‘There wouldn't be much point, would there, sir? So, if you'll excuse me . . . I have to go and give your order now.'

She fled through the swing doors into the kitchens and he sat there miserably, knowing that somehow he must have made a complete hash of it.

Eight

BERT HAD CAUGHT
the grass snake out on dispersal. He'd spotted it slithering off into the undergrowth when they were all lounging around on the grass, waiting for the ground crew to fix some dud wiring in D-Dog.

At first he kept the snake in an old shoe box and fed it on dead insects and milk. It was a friendly little chap and after a while he started taking it around the station in the breast pocket of his battledress jacket. He taught it to poke its head out when he whistled, and it grew rather fond of having a spot of beer in the Mess. He named it Victor because he thought that was rather appropriate.

The only trouble was that Emerald didn't like Victor one bit. First time Victor had poked his head out of his top pocket when he'd whistled, she'd screamed the place down. So had other WAAFS, come to that, and he had to admit he'd done it on purpose just to give them a fright. So, when he went out with Emerald, Victor had to stay home in the hut, shut in his shoe box. He kept him out of sight of the new Flight Commander, too. It would have been OK with the old one, who'd been a good sort of bloke, but he'd got the chop over Bremen and the replacement was a bastard: morning parades, hut inspections, a whole lot of daft bloody bull. What did any of that matter when blokes were being written off before they could even
unpack their kit? What was the point of polishing your buttons and shining your shoes if you were going to be burned to a bloody cinder?

Mostly, he didn't let the constant disappearing acts on the station get to him too much. Best way was to keep saying to yourself that it wasn't going to happen to you – only to the other blokes. Old Titch, for instance, who'd been a regular drinking mate till he'd copped it on his last trip. The shell had taken his head off clean as a whistle, he'd heard. Just like all those horror stories about mid-uppers. They'd had to put him back together again when they'd got him out of the turret. Poor old Titch.

What really bothered Bert was knowing he was no great shakes as a gunner. It seemed to him that he was the only one of the crew who hadn't got any better, and he was scared stiff of cocking it up for the rest of them. He could've sworn he'd seen a 110 that last time and felt a real muggins when they'd gone corkscrewing all over the sky for nothing. The skipper had told him he'd much sooner it that way than the other but, even so, next time he fancied he saw something he was going to make sure of it before he opened his cake-hole. Bloody sure.

The last rays of the setting sun glowed like gold across the corn as they took off. Stew, lying prone in the nose turret, got his usual kick out of the sensation. He stared down through the Perspex blister at the panorama of fields and woods spread out below him in the evening light. Not a bad-looking country sometimes, it had to be said, though you could keep it in winter.

They headed east and towards the night. He
re-settled himself in the compartment and went over the flak positions on his map again. There wasn't much else for him to do for the moment, except keep a sharp look-out. He'd checked everything while the skipper was running up the engines before take-off – gone over his box of tricks. His eye ran across the panel once more: selector switches, timing device, selector box for order of dropping, master switch and camera controls, photo-flare releases, bomb release tit . . .

It always amused him to have to sign a receipt for the bombs when he'd checked the load. As though he might go and flog them, or something. This time they had a lot of bumf packed in among the bombs: bloody stupid leaflets for the Krauts, telling them to blame their leaders for their homes being smashed to rubble and not the nice kind RAF. They might as well load up with a few hundred boxes of Bronco and drop those instead.

He hated things that got in the way of the real job, and that included the load of bullshit dreamed up by that wanker of a Flight Commander. Polishing buttons and shaving, saluting and parading about like a lot of nancies. Not that it had lasted long – no longer than the bloke himself, which hadn't been more than a week. Soon as he'd bought it, they'd all gone back to the good old bad old ways, and Victor, Bert's snake, had come out of hiding. The new Flight Commander didn't have any flaming stupid ideas like that, thank Christ, and it wasn't his fault about the bloody leaflets. Some arsehole pen-pusher at HQ had thought that one up.

The noise of the four Merlin engines throbbed loudly in Stew's ears. Sometimes he fancied he could
hear music when he listened to them. It was always the same tune:
The Warsaw Concerto
from that film about Poland where the bloke had sat playing the piano in the moonlight while the place was being bombed flat. He'd never told anyone that he heard music, though; they'd think he was going off his bloody rocker, or trying to work his ticket.

There'd been a wireless op in one of the other crews who'd gone crackers towards the end of his tour. Not hearing things but seeing them. Been sent aft to find out why their Tail-End Charlie wasn't answering and found him turned to strawberry jam. He'd seemed OK for a while till he'd suddenly flipped one evening in the Sergeants' Mess, rocking to and fro and gibbering and crying like a lunatic. Strewth, it'd given them all the willies! He'd been carted off and sent away, labelled LMF, poor sod. Lack of moral fibre. Stripped of his rank, put to cleaning bogs and marked down on his service record as a coward for ever. If he'd been a bloody officer, they couldn't have done it to him. That was RAF justice for you.

Stew shifted his position again. They were over the North Sea now and it was almost dark, but he could make out the white horses galloping about. Must be bloody rough down there. No chance if you came down in that lot. He listened to Piers giving a course alteration to the skipper. Funny about that business with Piers at The Angel. No sheila after all, unless she'd stood him up, and he didn't think that likely. Not with the posh family and all the cash. Most women knew bloody well when they were on to a good thing, in his experience.

Not long now and Doreen'd be coming up. That'd be something to look forward to, all right. Which
reminded him. He reached for the steel helmet he always brought on ops. When he was lying face-down in the turret, trying to get the target in his sight and with all the Kraut crud flying up, the most vital and delicate part of him needed protecting. Next stop Düsseldorf. They'd never been there before and he wouldn't mind betting it was going to be a bastard. Nothing to be done but get on with it. At the start, he'd shit bricks on every op until he'd stopped worrying about getting the chop and simply thought of himself as already dead. The odds were he would be soon enough. Once you did that it was a whole lot easier.

He could swear he could hear that music again . . . 
da daaa, da-da-da-daaa da da
 . . . Strewth, maybe he really
was
going nuts.

Charlie pointed his guns at the stars. The night sky above was full of them, twinkling away. He found them a huge comfort. There was usually something to look at in the darkness: the changing light and shade of the sky, the passing clouds, the detail on the ground far below. It was when he could see
nothing
– just total blackness all around the turret – that he felt most alone. The stars were like friends, cheering him on. He knew there were billions of them and that their light took years and years to reach Earth so that what he was seeing wasn't really there any more, but that didn't worry him. And he knew there were other galaxies you couldn't see at all because they were even further away. Other worlds maybe.

He liked the words a lot.
Far beyond the stars . . . a winged sentry
 . . . Of course, it really meant heaven, but if there
was
another country beyond the stars, he certainly hoped it would be a better place, without wars and killing and suffering. He swung the turret, searching and searching. They'd be over the enemy coast soon and the fun would begin. The butterflies were already fluttering about in his stomach.

‘Pilot to crew. Intercom check.'

He listened to their answering crackles, in turn.

‘OK Charlie?'

‘OK, skip.' His flying suit was uncomfortably hot but there was nothing much he could do about it. It was either on or it was off, and if he left it switched off he'd freeze. The cushion helped, though. When he'd tried to give it back to Two-Ton-Tessie she'd made him keep it. The others had taken the mickey out of him, of course, but he didn't mind too much because it was a lot better than just having the padded seat. There wasn't room to stretch his legs – he could hardly even move them – and sometimes on a long trip the cramp got really bad.

No flak to worry about yet. Piers must have kept them right on track, so they'd stayed well away from it. Funny to think how he always used to get them lost. Thirteenth op now, so they were nearly half-way through the tour.
Thirteenth.
He'd touched Sam's ear twice for an extra bit of luck.

Stew's voice said suddenly, ‘Christ, look at all that bloody flak!'

His stomach somersaulted. It was going to be a dicey one. The tail began bumping about as they ran into the barrage and the Lane was hurled sideways by a shell bursting very close. For a heart-stopping moment he was sure they'd been hit, but after a bit she steadied. A searchlight beam flicked over the rear turret and he held his breath until it swept on to fix on another Lane to starboard of them. Other beams hurried over to join it, locking together in one great white tower of light. He saw the bomber pinned helplessly in the glare, saw it burst into flames, saw it going down, saw a parachute mushrooming out behind. Just the one.
Only one.

He heard Stew's ‘Bombs gone!' and felt the aircraft lift. Twenty more ever-lasting seconds for the camera to take the photos of the fires raging in the city below then the skipper went into a fast, diving turn, taking them away from the noise and the stink and the flames and the terror.

The stars were there again, still twinkling away quietly above.
If thou canst get but thither, there grows the flower of peace
 . . . If only there was a world like that. Somewhere.

‘Pilot to navigator. What's up with you, Piers? Where the hell am I supposed to be heading?'

‘Hall-o there, Van! How are you? Jolly good. Absolutely super. It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go . . . Never mind. Nothing to worry about.'

‘Pilot to navigator. Check your oxygen.'

Piers giggled. ‘Masses of time . . . I'm putting the rabbit in the sock . . . counting the chickens . . . jolly good . . . absolutely wizard . . .'

‘Take a look, Jock, will you? Sounds like he's lost oxygen.'

Christ, no oxygen at twenty-one thousand! Thank God, he'd called him up.

Jock returned. ‘He's OK now, skipper. A chunk of shrapnel took a bite out of his oxygen tube. Luckily it missed him. I've fixed it and he'll be all right in a tick.'

Piers' voice came on after a few minutes, back to normal. The same old earnest, anxious Piers. ‘I'm most frightfully sorry, skipper. Would you please turn onto two nine six.'

If it hadn't been such a hell of a close call it would have been funny.

Honor Frost was awake when the bombers came back at dawn. She lay listening to the distant rumble of their engines for a while before she got out of bed and raised the blackout blind at the window. Her home was on the east side of the city, up on the hill, and she could see one of the bombers – a long, dark shape sliding in and out of low cloud. Maybe it was the crew who'd come to the hotel – with that boorish Australian sergeant. She watched the bomber descending gradually. Whoever they were, they'd got back safely.

‘One Lane went down over the target area,' the American skipper offered. ‘Charlie saw a 'chute.' Since the apology he'd been quite different.

His rear gunner said, ‘Just the one, that's all.'

Catherine wrote it down. Her hand was steady, her voice as calm as usual. ‘It was definitely a Lanc?'