Lost in the Flames (16 page)

‘Yes, Jacob, nothing can take this moment from us, you know that, don’t you? Whatever happens from here on in, this is ours forever.’

And then she was kissing him, all those feelings she had held within herself, unspoken or half-said for years, were flooding over him, drowning out the war, a dam breaking apart its walls. And then suddenly she was under him, and he was looking at her face, her face dark against the pale of the linen, her eyes and her smile a flare path in the gloom, guiding him in, calling him down, calling him home as if he were lost somewhere up there out of sight in the dark, and her hair thrown back on the pillow, swept back in the gale of love that the war had brought on, and when dawn came the flare path was gone, mist tripping about the open window and the candles spent and Rose sleeping peacefully in his arms, and the flares were burning bright within them now, the war could not put them out even if it might put out their lives.

The following day flung itself away more quickly than was fair, and the next night too blazed itself to pieces in its haste, and Jacob and Rose ate breakfast silently contemplating their parting. After breakfast she sat in the chair by the window and watched him pack his case, then they walked along the river to the road and caught the bus into Cambridge. They stopped for lunch at a café in the market square and drank their ersatz coffee and paid the bill, then sat a while longer, hanging onto each last moment together until the waitress cleared the table.

‘It seems so long until your next leave,’ she said. ‘October, perhaps?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I should get another week after six more weeks of ops.’

They internalised their thoughts of what might happen in the interim.

‘Let’s see if we can make our leave coincide more fully next time,’ she sighed. ‘These two days have been marvellous, but how much better a week would be.’

A week, a whole week, an ocean of time for those accustomed to counting down their lives in hours not days.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A week would be wonderful indeed.’

‘But I don’t know if I can wait until October,’ she said.

‘Will you have any leave at all before then?’

‘Perhaps the odd day.’

‘Come and stay near me for a night. The pub in the village has rooms. If we’re lucky, ops will be scrubbed and no one will miss me then on the base.’

‘Yes,’ she said decisively, her mood lightening a touch. ‘That’s what we’ll do. I’ll send you a telegram as soon as I know.’

They waited together at the bus station and her bus came and took her away, back into the heart of bomber country, dressed again now in her stiff WAAF uniform, her top lip trembling a touch as she dabbed her eyes with a tissue and looked out across the flat countryside dressed in its green summer frock.

Jacob arrived in London that evening and met Harry Pollock at King’s Cross. They found a hotel in the West End and spent the evening in a pub swapping stories of their operational lives so far and catching up on news of people they had known in Canada. They left the pub and walked back to the hotel through the blacked-out streets of London. The night was quiet, no planes overhead, the sky black and the streets lit only by the dim slits in the headlamps of taxis and the occasional car ferrying important officials about the capital.

‘How many ops have you clocked?’ Harry asked.

‘Eight. Should have been nine but we turned back last trip out, engine trouble, and the Wing Commander chalked it off. Skip was bloody fuming. He couldn’t have flown the kite there and back on two
good engines. The Wingco virtually accused us of going LMF.’

LMF – Lack of Moral Fibre – the dreaded euphemism for a failure of courage, a cracking of the will. Jacob had seen a case the previous month, a skipper with three early returns in a row, whispers among the crew, minor trouble with an engine, then the turret hydraulics, and the last one unexplained. Rumours raced around the sergeants’ mess at breakfast, a headless chicken laying eggs.

‘Bugger all wrong with it, by all accounts,’ someone said. ‘Dropped his bombs in the sea and turned for home.’

‘I heard they fell on a village up in Lincolnshire,’ said someone else. ‘They’ve been all over his Lanc this morning like rats, the Wingco and everyone.’

‘He’s had enough,’ said Jacob. ‘That’s all’

‘Poor sod, could happen to any of us,’ said Charlie.

‘Where’s he now?’

‘Getting his brevet unstitched, I expect.’

The following day the squadron had been called to parade. With an economy of words, the man was called before them and dispatched.

‘You’re a bloody disgrace,’ the man heard in his ear as the Wing Commander tore off the wings he had worn on a dozen trips over Germany, lightly tacked back on now to facilitate the drama of the humiliation as the badge was removed. And then he was gone.

‘To the Aircrew Correction Centre,’ said George in the bar that night. ‘Where the shit-house is always in need of a clean and the NCOs are shitty shites.’

‘And the shitty shites have never been on shitty ops,’ said Jacob.

‘The shitty fuckers,’ concluded George.

‘If I start to crack, don’t let me go that way,’ said Jacob. ‘Shove me out of the plane without a chute before you let me go LMF.’

‘You won’t crack, brother. None of us will. Not this crew.’

The next day, Jacob and Harry met up with Jim in London. They caught the train to Oxford, then the bus to Woodstock and Vera looked up as the shop bell rattled and she saw her brother standing in the doorway.

‘Hello Vera,’ he said, taking off his cap and smiling as she ran
round from behind the counter and hugged him to her.

‘Jacob, thank God you’re here! It seems so long since I saw you.’

‘It certainly does. You look great, Vera. I love the pink apron. Here, this is Harry, I told you about him in my letters, and Jim, one of our gunners.’

They shook hands and Jim made a joke about the names of some of the sweets, and Vera opened one of the jars and they dipped their hands inside and were all sucking on barley sugar when Jingle came back from his trip to the post office.

‘Hello, what have we got here?’ he said, laughing. ‘All these uniforms. Have we been invaded? So tell me, which one of you is Vera’s bomber brother?’

‘This is Jacob here, Mr Bell.’

‘Well done, Jacob, lad,’ said Jingle, shaking him vigorously by the hand. ‘Aim those bombs right on the Jerries’ heads, eh? Right on Mr Hitler’s bloody great Teutonic bonce, that’ll teach him to come dropping bombs on us.’

‘Too right, mate,’ said Jim enthusiastically. ‘We’re giving old Adolf a right pasting, no two ways about it. We’ll burn Germany end to end before we’re done and they’ll have bloody deserved it too.’

‘Here you go, lads,’ said Jingle, passing them each a small paper bag. ‘Tell me the ones you want, whichever you like, fill those bags up with sweets, you bloody deserve them.’

They went for a walk around the shops and stopped at a pub for a beer which turned into two and then three, then picked Vera up from the shop and caught the bus to Chipping Norton together.

‘There’s a dance band at the Town Hall this evening,’ said Vera as they walked towards West Street. ‘You’re all coming along, aren’t you? It’ll be great fun. Norman’s coming too. You know how much he likes watching everyone dance, poor man, he so wishes he wasn’t such a rotten dancer himself, feet of clay he has.’

‘Oh yes, we’ll be there,’ said Jacob. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

‘They get so packed out, the dances,’ she went on. ‘Sometimes it feels like there are people from all the countries of the earth in our little part of the world now, American airmen, Australians, Canadians, Poles. They all speak so funny when they’re drunk, sometimes you can hardly understand a word they’re saying – and that’s just the Yanks.’

Jacob and Harry and Jim spent the rest of the afternoon in the
garden next to the orchard as Elizabeth ferried them plates of homemade cake, light on sugar but heavy on the butter made by Vera at the farm, and endless cups of tea, and they sat and smoked their cigarettes and talked with a certain bravado about ops and kites and squadron life while Elizabeth busied herself among the fruit trees within earshot, but when she had gone inside their conversation adopted a more reflective tone and it occurred to Jacob that if one had been eavesdropping now, the true nature of their lives might have revealed a fraction of itself to the listener. Later on, while Harry and Jim were lured by Alfred to the orchard so he could run them through the story of his pigs, Vera arrived with Norman and Daphne.

‘Uncle Jacob!’ Daphne squealed in delight, and threw herself at him. He picked her up and held her under one arm, then spun her behind his back and up onto his shoulders where she sat beaming, her chin propped up on the top of his head.

‘You’re getting to be a big girl now, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘How old are you now Daphne? Six?’

‘Six and a little bit.’

‘Wow,’ said Jacob. ‘Six and a whole little bit! Are you coming to the dance this evening?’

She shook her head and giggled as if she had never heard anything so silly.

‘Really?’ said Jim, ‘So who am I going to dance with?’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Alfred. ‘There’ll be plenty of young ladies happy to dance with an RAF chap like you.’

‘Well what are we waiting for, then?’ said Jim, winking at Harry. ‘Let’s go.’

When they got to the Town Hall the music had already started and they found an empty table and pulled up some chairs and sat and looked at the dance floor where a solitary couple were moving out of time with each other, holding each other in a way that suggested their intimacy was not yet complete. The man wore a uniform that leant him a certain bearing but also a formality in keeping with the music’s sombre tone, and when the music stopped the couple went back to their place on the other side of the room and it was then, in the light of the wall sconces, that the reason for the awkward distance of their waltz was revealed, the man’s right sleeve hanging limp and empty where his arm would have been before it was removed by the war.

Alfred and Norman came back to the table with their hands full of drinks, then Jacob fetched the others on a tray, and Alfred drank half his pint down in one long draw and offered his hand to Elizabeth and they joined the others who had begun to populate the dance floor. Alfred held Elizabeth close to him and Jacob nudged Vera and nodded towards them and they both grinned. Harry and Jim were discussing the details of the second Hamburg raid, comparing notes on their time of arrival over the target and the fighter activity on the way in and out and the planes they had seen coned by searchlights and blasted with flak. The music hammered out now, a strident ringing noise lifting others to their feet, and Jim and Harry struck up a conversation with a couple of Wrens at the next table and before long they had paired up on the dance floor and when their dance was over they sat together as the night slipped by in a blur of music and light and the sound of feet on boards.

‘Let’s dance,’ said Vera to Norman, taking his hand, but he smiled his lack of acceptance and took another sip of his beer.

‘I’m all right here, dear,’ he said. ‘I’m happy just watching.’

‘Oh, come on Norman, just this once. Twirl me round the room, sweep me off my feet.’

‘She thinks I’m bloody Fred Astaire, your sister does,’ Norman said, winking at Jacob.

‘Come on then, Jacob,’ said Vera. ‘Come dance with your sister,’ and they were up and into the crowd and Norman looked on and took another swig of his beer and regretted his leaden feet and his ruggedness. He stood up and went to the bar and got talking to an American who was working as ground crew at one of the nearby airfields, and they found they had much in common having each grown up on farms, in South Dakota and County Durham, and they spent much of the rest of the night comparing breeds of cattle and sheep and methods of preparing feed for the winter, but eventually Vera intervened and persuaded Norman out onto the dance floor and they moved awkwardly around the room, Norman smiling apologetically each time his size 12s missed the beat or dropped themselves onto Vera’s retreating toes, and when the piece ended he beat a quick retreat to the table and lifted his glass again to his lips, a barricade against further humiliation.

‘You were wonderful, dear,’ said Vera, and Norman grinned sheepishly and Alfred put his arm round him and then patted the back
of his head and said something gruff and unintelligible.

They finally got home after midnight and sat up until late in the sitting room as Alfred got out his bottles of twelve-year-old Scotch that he kept for special occasions. By the time they creaked their way up the stairs to bed the birds were anticipating the dawn with their chirpings. The next morning, Jacob took Jim and Harry down to Elm Tree Farm and they went for a walk out across the fields to the wood at the top, past the land girls and the prisoners of war who were helping in the fields. They watched the German airmen as they passed, fighter and bomber pilots who had been shot down three years before in the Battle of Britain, and Jacob recalled the conversation he had had with one of them then, the one who had seemed so old but was probably not much older than Jacob himself. The Germans looked up as the men went by in their RAF uniforms and one of the prisoners made a comment and the others laughed and Jim made a coarse remark that was lost in translation. They went back for lunch at the Arbuckles’ house where Elizabeth was getting the meat out of the oven and they sat down in the dining room and Alfred took up the two-pronged fork and the carving knife and started to slice up the pork. Elizabeth ladled on the vegetables and they began to eat and Harry commented favourably on the quality of the food and how it compared to what they usually got in the sergeants’ mess.

‘Yes, we’re lucky out here in the country,’ said Alfred. ‘Still able to get proper food if we grow it ourselves, in spite of the rationing. I killed this one just yesterday, as I knew you were all coming.’

‘What’s this one called, then, father?’ asked Jacob, and Elizabeth stiffened slightly in her chair.