Lost in the Flames (22 page)

‘We’ve had it, lads!’ shouts Jacob over the intercom. ‘Bale out! Bale out! And get out quick!’

Ralph is in the cockpit now, looking up at Jacob from his place on the floor, then standing and staring at him as the foil strips swirl around and glycol from the tank in the nose sprays about and Jacob shouts at him repeatedly.

‘Get out!’ he shouts. ‘Fucking get out!’

Ralph tries to grab the control wheel, tries to haul it back, but Jacob hands him off and Roland pushes him hard towards the hatch at the front and Ralph goes down the step into the nose, kicks the hatch away, sits on the edge, looks back, drops out into the freezing night. Jacob shoves Roland away too and Roland jumps and Jacob is alone now with the dead men. He stares behind him at the blazing interior of the fuselage. He hauls at the wheel, pulls Beauty level, then stands up and steps back towards the navigator’s desk and slips on something soft that glistens and seems to be moving still, and he bends down and holds his face close up next to Charlie and hears him whimper, or perhaps it is just the gurgle of the blood that bubbles up in his throat, specking Jacob’s face red with spittle as Charlie coughs and tries to say something, then coughs up again and speckles him more. Beauty is pitching forward again now and Jacob lurches back to the wheel and pulls her level and holds her steady then lets her go and returns to Charlie but he
will not cough for him now, does not whimper or gurgle, and the blood does not bubble up in his throat but lies flat inside his mouth, flat black ink inside a well from which no more words can come. Jacob looks now to where George is a dark bundle by the main spar and he steps towards him, slipping in a hot slick of blood and slither that is beginning to simmer and burn, and he takes George’s gloved wrist and tugs, pulls him towards him, feels him light beneath his grip, realises he is pulling only half a man, the hips separated from the waist by a cannon shell or a ripping piece of fuselage, and Jacob lets go and slips, then stands and moves again towards the main spar to get at the gunners, but he cannot get across it, Beauty’s metal burns him, burns him through his flying suit, and the flames really get a grip on him now, force him back, and Beauty is tipping again, tipping away down, and he slithers across to the wheel and hauls it back and Beauty shakes, a great wracking judder as an engine disintegrates and hot shrapnel comes zinging in, and she lurches to one side and bows her head and Jacob is aflame and he takes a last look at the dark shapes that were Charlie and George and he stumbles down the step to the bomb-aimer’s dome and he sits beside the hatch, burning he is, burning beside the selector switches and the bomb-sight through which he has seen his war, nights of criss-cross streets of orange, the city’s lattice-work kissed by the silent crump of bombs thousands of feet below, and he pushes his flaming feet through the open hatch and the wind wrenches his burning boots away and he thinks again of Rose, his Rose, the reason he had to get through this war. Then he drops bare-footed out into the freezing night and is whipped away beneath Beauty’s blazing belly, feeling the rush of the flames that envelope her now, and he tugs at the cord and feels the sharp pain in his groin as the parachute pulls free from its pack and he hangs in the air, suddenly aware that his head is on fire, and he pulls off his flying helmet and sees it tumble away alight, the stink of burnt skin and hair filling his nose, and he watches Beauty slide away now, tipping away down, and he looks for more parachutes to bloom, a mushrooming of hope, but there is only the cascade of flame, becoming smaller now with distance, fading and brightening as it passes through layers of smoke and out again, and then Beauty winks at him, a final acknowledgement as she extinguishes herself against the ground. And then nothing, just the night and the rush of the wind and the ripple of bombs a mile away and the searchlights reaching into the sky and the
voice of the bomber stream overhead.

The winter wind, a biting February gale, sends clouds scudding past and the smoke from the fires drags its way across the burning town where the bombs have fallen, and the suburbs around the benzol plant burn and the wind carries Jacob towards the flames, the buildings clearly visible beneath him now, individual ruined rooms in roofless homes, hurrying figures thrusting out their clod-hopper legs as they run, and bombs exploding still, crump, crump, crump in long lines, and Jacob follows them down, towards a dark space between the buildings, a dead park perhaps, the winter trees black and bare, and he passes the rooftops and suddenly he is down, in the middle of the burning town where dogs are barking among the bombs. He throws off his chute and touches his head, feels the hard bare scalp and the hot place where his face used to be, and he tries to blink but his eyelids are no longer there and the sulphur from the burning buildings stings his eyes and his tears run in streams, and he runs across the park and huddles between a low wall and a bench as the ground jumps and quivers with the continuing blasts, and he covers his eyes with his hands and bends his head down between his legs and he waits. The first wave of bombers has passed over now and he waits for the second, and when they and their bombs have passed he listens to the sound of their engines receding into the distance, the flak belt on the edge of town still pumping shells up into the air, a plane streaming flame coming down a mile or two away, and then the planes are all gone and he is alone with the enemy. The people begin to emerge from their cellars and Jacob runs along beside the low wall to the edge of the park, burning streets in every direction, people milling about, and he looks for a uniform, a soldier to whom he can surrender, his chances of survival greater in their hands than in those of the civilian population. He turns confused down a side-street, dazed by the heat and the light and the thumping in his head and an unidentifiable stabbing pain in his chest and something agonising in his groin, and he sees a woman staring at him and he bows his head and hurries on, hearing her voice behind him.

‘Terrorflieger!’ she is screaming, and he looks quickly back and sees others looking at him too, then a man walking quickly, gesturing to others, and the group is behind him now, shouting, a hubbub in his ears, and he feels the first blow fall on the back of his head, and he raises his arms and another blow knocks him down and he falls to his
knees and he hears the people arguing, one holding another back, then a woman coming in from the side, flinging a brick upon his head, and then a man kicking him down and smashing a boot into his face and stamping on his skull, and another with a crowbar hacking at his legs, and then a uniform nearby, a policeman perhaps, gesticulating, then a sneer and the uniform walking away, and a man with a rope, the rope forced around his head and he is dragged to his feet, the rope pulled tight around his neck, and a man is trying to fling the rope over a pole, but the rope is too short and keeps falling to the ground, and the blows rain down on him again, and then the rope is torn off and a chain is put in its place and pulled tight, and he feels the grating of the chain links as they slip over the top of the pole and he feels the tug on his neck and his feet lift off the ground as the chain around his neck drags him up into the air. As he hangs there he sees the figures a few feet below, furious contorted faces shouting up at him, then some uniforms hurrying in from one side, and he thinks of Rose and he silently begs her forgiveness for having left her again, and he remembers his words, ‘Rose will fucking kill me,’ and then the chain begins to close off his throat and he tries in vain to scream in this place that is grey and hot and broken.

The loss of Jacob’s crew was noticed first by the squadron’s other ops men, smear-faced and smiling weakly, cigarette smoke and banter in the crew room before the earnest debriefing, the reporting of planes they had seen going down, and then the post-op breakfast in the dark as the sound of a straggler roared in, the bacon and eggs swimming in grease on the plate, the chink of cutlery against the white, then the ops room where the padre and the Wing Commander and Squadron Leader stood by the board with its list of names and take-off times and two arrival times not yet filled in, B-Beauty and one other. And then the morning came, the blanks on the board blotted now with FTR and no news of landings at other stations, just the question-mark sky and the forgotten tunnel of night slipping into the past from where secrets were never revealed. Then the closed lockers were forced open, chipping off paint along metal edges already twisted and bent, and the belongings taken away to be posted to those concerned, and the
laundry-bags that had been hanging along the wall outside the mess were removed, their fresh clean contents needed now by others, then the Committee of Adjustment pulling up in their van outside the men’s quarters and the faces at the windows and the other men on their beds as the places were cleared, photos and books and letters collected and put in bags and taken away, the beds stripped and empty, the men erased. Then the telegrams were written and sent and in Chipping Norton the postman walked down the path to Mill View Cottage, whistling and then suddenly stopping as he saw what he was bringing, the crests and the badges, the end of something young, and he knocked on the door and Elizabeth opened it and smiled at the postman, then saw what he held in his hands, took it in her own, and as Alfred came down the stairs he heard the thud as she fainted and her head struck the floor.

Alfred’s footsteps across the gravel, the knock on the door, brought Vera to her feet and he saw her and Daphne at the window side by side, the smile and then the change of look as Vera saw the colour of his face and the hang of his mouth and she sent Daphne upstairs and pulled the door open, and Vera knew, Alfred did not need to say a word.

‘It’s Jacob,’ she whispered. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’

Alfred passed her the telegram and she took it gently, sat on the trunk in the hall and read it through.

Deeply regret to inform you that your son F/O J. Arbuckle failed to return from operations over enemy territory stop pending receipt of written confirmation from the air ministry no information to be given to the press stop letter follows

‘He might not be dead,’ Vera whispered to Alfred. It was more of a plea than a statement. ‘Sometimes they get out.’

‘Not many get out of a burning Lanc, do they? That’s what he always used to say. Not enough room in the bloody fuselage.’

‘How’s Mother?’

‘In bed. The doctor’s given her something to calm her.’

‘And how are you?’

‘Don’t ask …’

Daphne was looking down from the bend in the stairs.

‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ she said. ‘Is it Uncle Jacob?’

‘It’s OK, dear. He’s just going to be away for a while.’

‘For how long?’

‘For a while.’

Daphne ran down the stairs and out through the door and across yard. Vera heard the sound of stones from outside, gravel being flung against the corrugated roof of the log store, Daphne picking up another fistful and flinging it hard against the metal, then again, repeatedly, harder and harder until Vera came out and took her in her arms and carried her back into the house. Then Vera called Norman in from the fields and she told him the news and he sat in the kitchen for a long time in silence and he was there again that evening and it was then that she heard him sobbing.

At Mill View Cottage, Alfred took down his violin from the shelf in the kitchen.

‘I’ll never play this again,’ he said to the doctor as he was leaving. ‘Don’t really see the point any more.’

He removed the strings, placed the instrument back in its case, flicked the catch shut, went round to the out-house, and put the thing in the cage where Jacob’s birds used to be. Then he locked the door of the cage and threw away the key.

In Cambridgeshire, Rose collected her mail from the post room, an envelope with Jacob’s writing in curiously faded turquoise ink, as if left in the sun to pale, and she amused herself for a moment with the thought that it was the brightness in him, the sunshine he represented, that had faded it in the act of writing. She was smiling as she opened the letter as she walked down the corridor, then her hand went to her mouth and her eyes shaded over, the sun going out, her hands shaking now as Jacob had told her Ralph’s used to do. She sat on a bench outside and felt the damp in her bones and her lungs gasp for breath as she read again the letter dated two months before.

Dearest Rose

I write this letter to you from the past, to comfort you in the present, to wish for you a bright future. You will hear the bare facts of this news from others, but from me you must hear what lies behind my going. I know that you could not understand why I left you again when I was at last free to stay. I had done my bit, I know, but I could not let the others go back without me. Because, you see, after everything we had been through together, I would never have forgiven myself if they had gone out alone and failed to return. I know too that this caused you to question my priorities, to question even my love for you. But believe me,
my dear dear Rose, I have loved you, loved you more than words can say, and you must forgive me for going away from you now. I had no choice in the matter, you see, I did what had to be done, to see things through to the end, with hope always that we might build a lifetime together when all this was over. That is the thought I cherished above all others, to survive to the end, to make it back to you, not those temporary snatched nights of leave, but permanently, with all our lives ahead of us still. I have written and thrown away so many of these last letters to you, my dear, throughout my service, each one updating my feelings for you, for I never expected to survive so long and I would not have wished to leave you with out-of-date sentiments, small things compared to that which I feel for you now, this mighty thing that joins us together. But the letter you hold in your hands now is the very last, the thing that must join me to you now, and the one in which I must tell you that I will not be coming back to you after all. So please, Rose, forgive me for going, for leaving you again when I knew I should have stayed. And put me behind you, darling, remember me of course, but look to your future and build another life for yourself, the life that you so deserve. Stay wild, Rose, stay true to yourself above all others, for that is why I loved you before I even knew what love was. And remember that I have lived both my dreams, to fly like a bird and to love you, both equally, and I know my life has been made worthwhile by both, but above all by what you meant to me.