Lover (3 page)

‘Yes, you do. Take no notice of him, Adj.'

‘Not fair,' says Davy. ‘I can't help it if they all look alike.'

I can't remember what Tucker looked like, either. Must have been his first scrap—he only arrived two days ago. Webster hasn't said anything, but he must have shaken his head because Balchin squints at him for a moment, then grunts and pulls his cap back over his face.
Pictured on the right is a Dornier crashing in flames
… Bimbo Tanner in the hospital, with his melted face, eyelids gone…Webster's saying something.

‘What?'

‘I said, you're on five-minute stand-by.'

Ginger returns, doing up his fly, sees Webster, and says, ‘How's Whatsisname, Adj?'

‘Bought it. Where've you been?'

‘Putting rouge on his nipples,' says Davy. ‘All for your delight, Adj.'

Webster frowns, but doesn't reply.

‘What's wrong with that, anyway?' Ginger nods at the field telephone.

‘Buggered.'

‘This whole airfield's buggered,' says Davy, irritably. ‘Craters everywhere, no bloody huts left, place crawling with dead WAAFs.'

I picture a dying Miss Air Force crawling on all fours at the bottom of a trench, dishevelled head hanging down, hair full of dust, skirt hiked up round her hips.

Davy looks at me. ‘I don't know what you've got to grin about, Goldilocks,' he says.

‘It can't be,' I say.

‘What can't be what?'

‘The airfield. It can't be
crawling
with them. Not if they're dead.'

‘Jesus, Goldilocks…
Stiff
with dead WAAFs, then.' Davy returns to his paper and Webster fiddles with his pipe.

After a moment, Mathy says, ‘Are they sending a replacement, Adj?'

‘If you can call him that.' Webster shakes his head. ‘Six hours on Spits.'

Davy sighs. ‘Another bloody public school boy, no doubt. Must be a factory somewhere, turning out replacements. Hope he's better than Tucker.'

‘This one's called Sinclair,' says Webster. ‘Gervase.'

‘Gervase, eh?' says Davy. ‘He can keep Holden-Hyphen-Browne company. We don't want him.'

Flint opens his eyes. ‘Well, you've got him. And you're going to take him up this afternoon, show him the ropes.'

Oh, well…what else is in here?
Messages of the Stars… Leave the petty things for others to worry about. Get out of the rut and do not hesitate to try something new.

Try something new
. I'd forgotten about Saturday until I found the brooch in my pocket. Must have belonged to that kid in the pub: no other reason it could be there. I don't know how it got in my pocket; don't remember taking it. Might as well keep it, though. I can always find some girl who'll want it. Give it a story, make it special. They like that sort of thing. Like that yarn I told about my sister—ought to use that line again. Makes me laugh, how they lap it up. Anyone that stupid deserves to be lied to. But that was a queer thing—one minute I wanted to throttle the life out of the silly little bitch, the next minute, I'd lost interest.

When I saw that girl in the car putting on lipstick I wanted to take it from her and do it myself, scrub it all over her mouth. She was pretty full of herself, that one. I should have chosen her—that would have wiped the smile off her face pretty quick. Wouldn't have been so pleased with herself after that, would she? But I thought the younger one would be better. It all started when I saw the girl using the cosmetics; I knew I wouldn't be able to settle until I'd… But then, out there with the other one, I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything. Didn't like her struggling like that.

Waste of time. Not cheap, either—had to hand over a quid to keep her quiet. I thought that flying had put me off all that other business. I hadn't so much as noticed a girl in months, then suddenly that happened. That stupid bint in the car, I'd have settled her all right.
Do not hesitate to try something new,
that's what the paper said. Can't be local, though, and WAAFs are definitely off limits. Too risky.

Bloody fool thing to do. Running low on funds, as well. I shut my eyes. A torso rears up in front of me: loose, pale breasts, pooling out to the sides. You could pull them away and they'd stretch like lumps of dough.

Hear a rustle of paper under my nose and the first thing I see are the sagging, dun-coloured dugs of Corky's Mae West as he bends down to snatch the
Daily Mirror
off my lap.
‘I'm so thankful that at last I've found a powder that's non-detectable, says Lady Cecilia Smiley,'
he reads in a falsetto voice. ‘I just hate detectable powder, don't you?'

‘Can't abide it,' says Mathy, ‘frightful stuff.'

‘Pond's face powder matches my skin colouring so perfectly that it might have—'

The scramble klaxon sounds, and it all falls away as if it had never existed, which, in a way, it hasn't, because compared to this, nothing is real. It's like being lost in a maze, and suddenly finding that all the hedges are flattened and the view is clear. Nothing between you and what you're about to do.

I have spent my life waiting for this. Right from the first time—I was ten years old, and the plane was an old Avro from one of those flying circuses that used to go up and down the country. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and I knew, straight away, that more than I'd ever wanted anything, I wanted to
fly
. The Avro was a rickety old crate, but I couldn't take my eyes off it: the canvas and wires, the propeller, the struts, all seemed to glow with a special light. I loved everything about it, even the way it smelled. I stood there so long that eventually the pilot said he'd take me up for a ten-minute flip, even though I had no money to pay for it. I'll never forget how it felt, the moment of leaving the ground and soaring through the air, up and away from all the people, watching them get smaller and smaller and knowing that I was free, no longer bound to the earth, to my family, to insignificant things. For the first time in my life, the world was marching to my drum.

When I got out of the plane, a boy I knew a little, from school, came up to me. He stood staring, and then he put his hand out and touched me, lightly, on the chest. He didn't say anything, but I knew he wanted to see if I was changed in some way, transformed, from having been up in the sky. It was the first—I think the
only
—time in my life I'd really wanted to talk to anyone. I could see the excitement in his face—a reflection, I suppose, of my own—and I wanted to tell him how wonderful it was, but I couldn't put it into words. You can't, really, not the joy of it, the extraordinary fact of being in the air. Oh, there was the glamour and all the rest of it, and I'd read
Biggles
and thought it was jolly exciting, but that was at secondhand. This was real, a pure, sharp,
true
sensation, and it was the first time in my life I'd experienced anything like it. Anything else one did was dull by comparison, blunted—a meaningless, domestic fog of home and school.

I remember running away from the boy and into the next field and throwing myself down in the long grass so that I was hidden by the hedge. I knew then that I didn't need to talk to anyone about it, all I needed to do was to close my eyes and re-live, over and over again, the sheer wonder of it. That was the best day of my life, and from that time on, I read everything about aeroplanes that I could find. I used to dream about them, too—or, at least, dream about flying. For some reason, there was never an actual aeroplane in the dream, just me, alone in the air, sitting in an invisible machine, but knowing it was there, and I could fly it, and being proud of that, and happy. Powerful, knowing that nothing could touch me. And every time I dreamed it, I'd wake up with a sense of rightness, a certainty I'd never known before. I'd always felt that I was different from other people, but now I knew the feeling was special—something to be proud of, not ashamed. They didn't know what I knew. Only pilots knew, and I swore to myself that some day, I'd be one of them. I felt as if I was being kept in mothballs until then—nothing had a meaning, or a point.

I'll never forget my first solo flight in a Spitfire. The first time up there on my own. She was frustrating at first, flying herself, leaving me behind—laughing at me, almost—daring me to control her, and for a moment I thought I couldn't, I'd flunked it, but then there was a second, lengthened into a minute, then five, ten, when I was her master. More than that: I was part of the plane. Don't know how I could have thought she was too small— she's perfect. No vices: she's all you could wish for. Exactly right.

It was a relief when the war started—finally, the chance to do what I'd been training for, although it was pretty dull at first. Because there can be no better feeling in the world: mind and body attuned to the job, entirely self-reliant. No yesterday, no tomorrow, nobody else, just the perfect clarity of each moment.

In the sky, everything is possible: I know that even if I die tomorrow—
today
—I shall have lived more than the people on the ground.

We start to run across the airfield, towards the planes.

T
hey started at ten past eight tonight. We filled the buckets and turned off the gas and came down here to get settled—if you can call it that—and I'm in my usual place under the kitchen table. Not the most comfortable way to spend the night, but it's better than being under the stairs with Mums. She's in a deck-chair and my sister Minnie is beside her on the cushions from the settee. She's got her head in the cupboard and her feet stuck out in the passage, where Dad is sure to trip over them when he comes in from the garden. I wish he wouldn't go out there because Mums gets so nervous and she keeps getting up and calling out to him to come in, but he pretends he can't hear her. Or maybe he really can't hear—they're making enough racket tonight. We're luckier than a lot of people, living here, but it's definitely getting worse. Dad says it's because of Clapham Junction—the Germans want to demolish our railways, if they can, and it's a big station.

When Mums isn't calling out for Dad, she's fussing over the Anderson shelter. ‘We should have had it the first time when they offered. I told you, Billy, I said this would happen…' I'm positive she didn't say anything of the sort, but of course that's all changed now the bombing's started and the builder's saying he can't do anything for six weeks because the military have taken all the materials and he can only get a pound's worth each month. Or something. Mums goes on and on, and I've got so fed up with it that I don't listen any more.

She's been bad since it started, but recently… I went to Bourne & Hollingsworth last week, at lunchtime, and bought a sweater. When I showed her, she said, ‘What did you buy that for? It's bad luck.' She meant, because it's green. To be honest, it was more than I could afford, but I thought, if I live it'll be a bargain, and if I die, I'll die broke, won't I? When I said this to Minnie she put her hand up to her mouth, and said, ‘Oh,
don't.
' I told Mums I was going upstairs to put it on, and when I came back she said, ‘Anyhow, it doesn't suit you.' Charming! Anyway, I don't think the house is more likely to be hit because I'm wearing a green sweater. The Germans don't know that, do they? I pointed this out, but it didn't make any difference. She's always been one for finding fault. Minnie doesn't seem to come in for it so much, but I've never been able to do anything right: if I'm talking, I'm either fibbing or showing off; if I'm quiet, I must be sulking, and so on and so on… But then I have always preferred Dad to her. He's much easier to talk to, and doesn't criticise all the time. I try not to make it plain, but I suppose it must be—she certainly thinks that Minnie loves her much more than I do, I know that. In any case, I'm trying not to mind it too much, because we're all tired, and that makes everyone irritable. But it's all right for Mums—Dad's a full-time warden now, and Minnie and I have to go off to work in the morning. She can stop in bed and have a nap, if she likes.

I've been thinking about Frank today, a lot. I do enjoy our time together, and I like talking to him, even though he makes me feel an awful idiot sometimes. He doesn't mean to, it's just that he knows so much about politics and everything, and I don't. And I don't mind if he kisses me, or… I suppose that's the problem—I don't
want
him to kiss me, particularly, I just
don't mind
when he does. When we had our picnic on Sunday, I was wearing a short-sleeved dress and he remarked on my freckles. We were side by side on the grass, lying on our stomachs, and I said, ‘Oh, they come out in the sun,' and he said, ‘Perhaps if I look hard enough I'll catch one in the act,' then pounced on my arm and pretended he had, and laughed a lot.

It was nice, but I didn't feel…oh, I don't know. Just that I was laughing right along with him, but I didn't feel part of it, somehow. It wasn't
like that
, more as if he were my brother—or at least how I suppose it would be if I had a brother. He said to me afterwards, ‘You don't respond much.' I said, ‘What do you mean?' and he said, ‘Well, you don't wriggle about much.' He meant when he kisses me and all that. I thought, I don't get the urge to wriggle, that's the problem. Perhaps it's because he's too familiar, somehow. I don't mean in the sense that he's not a gentleman, because he is, but because he's always been there. His family used to live in Albion Avenue, which is only a few streets away. We went to different schools; he was at Larkhall—the Larkhall Lunatics, we used to call them—but he's always been around the place, at the tennis club, and… I don't know. Everywhere. His parents moved to Gloucester a few years ago, but his mother still writes to Mums, and there's a sort of cosiness about the whole thing that makes me feel as if I'm being pushed into a convenient little box before I've had a chance at life.