The Adjacent (26 page)

‘Hurry up, mate!’ said the man waiting outside.

Torrance tried to look apologetic as he dodged out of the telephone box into the rain. He hurried along the short path beside the building. He went inside, succumbed to the noise of voices and the music from the piano. As he passed through the door he glanced once more at the wallet tucked into his breast pocket, briefly rejoicing again at the glimpse of its glowing colours. He was giddy with excitement.

FOUR NIGHTS LATER 148 SQUADRON LOST TWO MORE
Lancasters while on a raid over the German town of Essen. Both were known to be destroyed because other aircraft reported seeing them crash. They were crewed by men Torrance had often seen around the base, and he knew one or two of them by their first names. He grieved silently with everyone else, continued with his work.

A week after that a German Junkers 88, a night intruder, shot down ‘H Henry’, the Lancaster of Pilot Officer Will Seward and his crew as it was returning to Tealby Moor from a ‘gardening’ raid, mine-laying in the Baltic narrows. The Lanc was on its final approach to the main runway, no more than half a minute before touching down, when the night fighter opened fire. Witnesses said
that although the remaining fuel in the plane was ignited, the pilot managed to keep the plane level and above the runway. An explosion immediately followed. The crippled plane overshot the runway and crashed down on the farmland beneath the ridge. All seven men on board were killed.

The next morning, Torrance volunteered to join a work party to visit the wreck and try to recover personal items belonging to the crew. By the time they arrived the fires had been put out and the bodies removed, but the remains of the broken aircraft were heaped more or less where it had landed. One of the wings had broken on impact, and was folded over and across the crushed fuselage. The tailplane had also broken off, and had swung around. The effect, seen from above as they were driven down the ridge in the squadron van, was that the stricken aircraft had ended up in the centre of the field in an almost perfect triangle of blackened wreckage. The six men of the work party completed their grisly job in less than an hour, and returned to their normal duties.

Three nights later, yet another Lancaster was lost, this one on a raid against Krefeld, in the Ruhr.

Nothing could numb the upset feelings of the people who worked in the squadron, who had to cope with these regular shocks, but the pressure of work meant that there was little time to reflect. Death became a part of normal life. Mike Torrance was no different, feeling the loss of each man as an acute tragedy, but since the phone call he could not help but think beyond the individual disasters. Every Lancaster lost meant that another would have to replace it, which in turn meant that he might be able to meet the owner of the lost wallet.

In due course the lost aircraft were replaced. However, when the new Lancs landed, presumably flown in by members of the ATA, they were immediately taxied away to the usual distant dispersal. No contact was made. Torrance still had the wallet, concealed as securely as possible whenever he was in the hut, where privacy was almost non-existent. When he was moving about the base, or at work, he carried it inside the breast pocket of his tunic, buttoned tightly.

His turn came round for a week’s leave, so he headed home to his parents’ house in Hastings, on the coast of East Sussex. The visit reminded him that this war was not confined to actual combatants: the town was a regular victim of hit-and-run air raids from Luftwaffe bases across the English Channel in northern France, and his parents were at real risk. Two houses in their street had already been bombed out, no more than a hundred yards from where they
lived. His father was away from home several nights of the week as he was having to work shifts at a factory which built engines for patrol boats. One morning his mother told him how frightened and lonely she felt whenever his father was away. Ellie, his sister, had been evacuated with her school to Wiltshire, but she was in her final term and would soon be returning home. His mother was torn between wanting Ellie to stay away in safety and having her back.

The days at home gave him a period of calm. He worked in his parents’ garden, cutting back the weeds so the flowers could bloom. As a child he had spent many happy hours playing in the garden. The work gave him time in which to think about what he should do about the wallet. He knew he had not acted sensibly, but he had meant well. He also knew the woman who owned the wallet was anxious to have it returned. It was a huge dilemma for him, but by the end of his week’s leave he had decided the best thing to do was to hand it in.

He set off on the slow journey back to the base in Lincolnshire. He travelled all day across England, struggling with his heavy kit, invariably having to take slow-moving trains that halted at every station. He was crammed into overcrowded compartments, found little to eat or drink on the way except whatever could be grabbed at brief station stops. As usual after a period of leave he made it back to the base with aching shoulders and arms, and feeling hungry, parched and footsore.

This time, though, as he walked into the smoke-filled hut a ragged cheer went up.

‘Here he is!’

‘C’mon, basher!’

‘Copped it this time, Floody!’

‘What’s up?’ he said guardedly when the hubbub died down, knowing all too well how easy it was to transgress some simple RAF regulation while away from the base.

‘Chiefy was looking for you just now,’ said Jake, the chap who slept in the bunk above his. Chiefy was Flight Sergeant Winslow, who ran the Instruments Section. He never came looking for any of the erks unless it meant trouble.

‘Did he say what it was?’

‘You must report to him before eight o’clock, and if you’re not back by then, first thing in the morning.’

It was just after half-past seven. Torrance threw his kit on his bunk, then borrowed one of the bikes and rode at high speed across
to the Sergeants’ Mess. Chief Winslow was playing darts and made him wait until his game was finished. He won, which briefly seemed to Torrance to be a good thing.

‘Aircraftman Torrance,’ he said. ‘You are relieved of duties tomorrow until eighteen hundred hours.’

‘What have I done, Sarge?’

‘Nothing I know of. You’re to report to Dispersal 11 before nine hundred hours tomorrow. Know where that is?’

‘Yes, Sarge.’ In fact he did not, but was not about to reveal that. He could ask one of the others or find his way somehow. ‘Can you tell me what it’s about, Chief?’

‘Search me. Orders from Group. Passed on by the Station Commander. Do what you’re told, then back to normal duties after that. Got it?’

‘Yes, Sarge.’

‘Go on – get on with it.’

Torrance went to the canteen to try to scrounge a late meal before heading back to the hut.

THE MORNING WAS BRIGHT. WARM EARLY SUNSHINE FLOODED
across the runways. He was already halfway across the airfield, following someone’s imprecise directions, when Torrance realized that Dispersal 11 was the part of the base where the arriving ATA pilots parked the new aircraft. There was not much to see: just a couple of familiar-looking single-storey brick buildings with flat roofs, square windows, a couple of doors each. A twin-engined Avro Anson was parked on the concrete apron in front of the buildings.

He left his borrowed bicycle leaning on the wall somewhere around the back of the building, and walked out to the apron. He stood close to the Anson, professionally aware of the smells and sounds of the workhorse plane. The engines were making noises as they cooled down. The entrance to the cockpit bore many scuffs from people climbing in and out – the sun on the perspex canopy was reflected by the myriad of tiny scratches on the surface, testament to hundreds of hours of flying time. It was a bright, warm morning and the early mist had lifted. The sky was cloudless. Somewhere on the other side of the airfield he could hear the familiar sound of a Lancaster’s Merlin engines being run up on test. He found it
easy to imagine the scene of activity as the crews went to work on the various aircraft: the engine nacelles open, the bomb bay doors hanging down, the ladders and the trolleys and the equipment dollies scattered all about.

He noticed a car driving at a moderate speed along the perimeter road, approaching the dispersal where he was waiting. A shift in the direction of the wind made the sound of the Lanc’s engines louder, purer, wafting across the flat airfield. Because he was away from his usual work area, Torrance’s senses were more acute. He was aware of the smell of cut grass, and of wild flowers. There was a banked hedge behind the buildings, a haze of white and yellow blooms – this was a part of the perimeter he did not know. The sense of the open countryside out there, beyond the edge of the airfield, away from the war, hit him hard, another reminder of past years, imprecise but potent.

The car curved around and halted outside the building. A WAAF was driving. A young woman in a smart dark-blue uniform stepped out of the passenger seat at the rear. She put on a forage cap and walked towards him. The WAAF driver moved off immediately, turning the car around and back to the perimeter road, accelerating away.

He thought the young woman was about to salute him, or was expecting him to salute her, such was the ingrained ritual of RAF life, but she came to a halt a short distance away from him. Her stance was completely informal. She seemed transfixed by his appearance, staring towards him with a smile of recognition. Then she sagged expressively, bending her knees, thrusting out her arms towards him. Torrance assumed she recognized him, as if she was expecting him to know her too. She tore off her cap and threw it on the ground, then walked quickly towards him. Both her arms were raised to greet him.

But she did not embrace him. She said something aloud, a stream of foreign words. He caught only the first, or thought he did. It sounded like ‘Thomas!’, or perhaps ‘Torrance!’

Then she was standing right before him, her hands reaching up to rest on his shoulders, beaming at him, her face raised as if for a kiss. Torrance froze with embarrassment, not resisting or backing away from her but amazed by her behaviour.

The moment died. Only a second or two passed before she lowered her hands, took a step back, turned her face away.

In English she said, ‘You are Mike Torrance?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am Krystyna. Krystyna Roszca. I am so sorry – I am here to meet you, but the moment I saw you I thought a miracle had happened. I
thought you were someone else. You look so like him –’

‘I heard you say “Thomas”.’

‘Tomasz.’ The long
o
and the soft consonants at the end gave the name a foreign sound. She said, ‘It is almost the same name, I think, in Polish. I was… surprised when I saw you. I hope you did not think that I –’ She stepped back from him, leaned down to retrieve her cap from where it had landed on the grass. She brushed it with the edge of her hand. ‘You see, there is someone I know, still in Poland, a good friend, a close friend. His name is Tomasz. You look so like him. It is astonishing to me! Your hair, your eyes! I could not believe it when I saw you. I am sorry – I should not say these things. You must be wondering what I was doing.’ She held out her hand. ‘I have come for my purse, that you telephoned me about. Do you still have it?’

‘You mean the wallet? Of course.’ He fumbled with the buttoned flap of his breast pocket, found the treasured, safeguarded thing, slipped it out and held it towards her. The bright colours shone in the sunlight. It was the moment of transaction he had been imagining and dreaming about for nearly five weeks, and now it was all but over.

She took it from him, held it briefly against her breast.

‘Thank you again! I do not know what I would have done if it was truly lost.’ She was unwinding the leather laces, her face shining with eagerness. As soon as it was open she slipped her hand inside and pulled out the two photographs he had touched with his fingertips, yet had never actually looked at.

She glanced quickly at them both, then held one of them out for him to see.

‘This is Tomasz,’ she said. ‘You see how much alike you are? You are like brothers, like twins!’

He took the fragile square of card carefully and peered at it. The picture had apparently been cut from a larger photograph, because as well as a head-and-shoulders shot of a young man, there were partial glimpses of other men he was standing among: he was part of a sports team, or a group of friends, or perhaps a squadron like the one he was himself a part of. There was a diagonal crease across one corner. The photo was not sharply in focus but Torrance could see that the young man had an open, good-looking face, high cheekbones, a long forehead, curly hair, dark brown or black. It was difficult for him to tell if there really was a resemblance, but he appeared to be roughly the same age, seemed to be tall, and his hair was a little like Torrance’s, a dark, unruly tangle.

‘You see?’

‘Well, yes.’ He handed the photograph back to her. She glanced quickly at it again, then slipped it inside the wallet once more. ‘I assume he is –?’

‘He is Tomasz, my fiancé. We were planning to be married four years ago, but there were problems. I could explain if we had more time. Tomasz and I had been meeting for a long time and trying to move away from Kraków, where we both lived, and it seemed at last we would be able to, but then the Nazis –’ Suddenly she stopped. ‘You do not wish to know any of this.’

‘I do,’ he said, because he had realized that now he had handed back her purse there was no more excuse or reason to stay there and talk. Soon she would leave. He did not want her to go. No matter what she was saying about her fiancé he wanted to be with her. He was trying to appraise her without appearing to do so, without staring obviously at her, but he found it almost impossible to take his eyes away from her. He could not think of any other young woman he had ever known who was so interesting, so astonishingly attractive. He thought her devastating in her dark-blue uniform, which looked smarter and more assertive than the standard grey-blue RAF uniform he was so familiar with. On the left side of her chest, above the pocket, the double-wing ATA pilot insignia was sewn in place.