The Girls They Left Behind (36 page)

serious again. ‘It’s pretty lonely up there in the sky, Betty.’

He took her hand to lead her back into the hall for the last dance. But Betty lingered for a moment to look up at the empty sky.

For once, there were no aircraft to be seen. It rose overhead like a smooth blue dome of glass, unmarked, impregnable. It’s pretty lonely up there in the sky.

For Sandy, the loneliness was the worst part of flying. He hadn’t minded it at first. It had been a joy, the first time he flew solo, to have the sky to himself, the eternal blue all his own, the clouds to play with. But there had been no marauders then, no vicious black Heinkels or Dorniers to appear suddenly from the sun, no Messerschmitts on his tail.

Like all the young airmen, Sandy tried not to think about death. He ignored the possibility that he might be shot down, that he might not return from the next mission. When other airmen failed to return, he said they’d ‘bought it’ and turned away from the knowledge of what had really happened. One day, he would have time to let himself feel, but not now, not yet. Now, it was vital to remain cool, not to feel, to be as much a machine as his aircraft.

But now he had seen too many of his friends and colleagues nosedive to their doom to be able to ignore it any longer, and when he had watched Geoff’s plane spiral out of control into the sea, his coolness had departed and he had felt the shock and horror of it throb like a knell through his body. He had relived it a hundred times a day, feeling himself there with Geoff in the cockpit, injured and in pain, struggling with a harness that wouldn’t unfasten, watching the flames leap around him, feeling his skin scorch, his eyeballs swell and burst, his lungs on fire.

It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t something to dismiss casually with a flippant remark. It was real and it was unbearable, and it had happened to his friend and could happen to him.

Would happen to him…

He had never spoken of it to anyone except Betty. Nobody in the mess talked of such feelings, although you could sometimes see the same fear in another man’s eyes, before he turned hastily away. Anyone who showed the slightest trace of fear was suspect, a danger to the others. You could be taken off ops, grounded, the ultimate shame. You would be treated as a pariah, as a leper who might spread the deadly virus of panic amongst the others.

The loneliness would follow you down from the sky and be with you all the time.

It was a greater fear than the fear of being shot down, and its effect was to produce an addiction in Sandy. The greater his fear, the more he wanted to be in the sky, shooting down enemy planes, wiping them out of existence. Every one shot down was one less threat. Every one destroyed brought the end of the war a fraction closer. He longed to be up there all the time, destroying, destroying, destroying.

His dreams that night were a turmoil of burning aircraft, of the sharp rattle of machine-guns, of screams and yells, of explosions. Through it all, Betty’s face floated like a talisman, but he could never quite see her clearly, never quite hold her expression in his mind. She drifted past and away from him, elusive and unattainable.

He strapped himself into his cockpit the next day in a daze.

Duff and the others were noisily exuberant. They ate a huge breakfast, clapped each other on the back, sat about playing cards until it was time to set off. The squadron set off across the Channel, in neat formation.

Nobody was surprised when they were intercepted. Somewhere over Belgium, the expected cloud of enemy fighters appeared before them. And behind them. Above and below; all around. The squadron was suddenly on the defensive, breaking away to tackle them, to force a path for the bombers.

Sandy was still half in a dream. He thought of Geoff in a nosedive. He thought of his friend, of all his friends who had died, whose lives had been shorn by these very planes, by these men who were shooting now at him. His hatred swelled and burst like a red flame inside his skull and he attacked savagely, blasting about him in the sky, swooping and diving, gunning the planes that swarmed about him, yelling with triumph as one by one they fell away, their sides ripped by his

bullets, their engines ablaze.

He never felt the bullets that hit him. He scarcely understood the meaning of the sudden sheet of scorching orange that exploded around him. His brain was lit by white light, as searingly brilliant as if he had flown straight into the eye of the sun. His ears were filled with the screaming of his own blood.

The plane turned slowly over in the air. In his last few dying moments, he knew that he was experiencing what Geoff had experienced, Geoff and a thousand others. But he could not care now, about Geoff, or about anyone other than himself.

He knew the ultimate terror, the awareness of imminent and agonising death. Amongst the crackling of the flames around him, through the frying of his own skin and the boiling of his welling blood, he heard his voice screaming, screaming for the mother who had once kept him safe and who was now too far away ever to hear his voice again.

And then his eardrums burst and he heard no more. He could only feel. And the plane tumbled slowly, too slowly, out of the sky.

Betty knew the moment she saw two strange young airmen drive the little sports car into the yard that Sandy and Duff were dead.

She came out of the cowshed with Yvonne. They looked at the two pilots in silence. For a moment, it was as if time had run backwards and Geoff was arriving again on that first Sunday afternoon when they had all gone out to tea together.

But Geoff had been killed, and there was no merriment in these two young faces. They were white and haggard, old before their time.

‘You don’t have to tell us,’ she said to the misery in their eyes. ‘It’s over, isn’t it? Sandy. And Duff. They’re ‘

‘No!’ Yvonne gripped her arm so tightly that the nails dug into Betty’s skin. ‘Don’t say it! It’s not true. It’s not true.’

The young men looked at her wretchedly. Betty felt the tears in her eyes. It’s pretty lonely up there in the sky. She looked upwards, as if to see him above, and when she lowered her head the tears ran over and down her cheeks like rain. Sandy dead. Sandy, dead.

‘It was pretty quick,’ one of the boys said. ‘They couldn’t have known much about it, either of them.’

They’d said that when Geoff was killed. But how could anyone know?

Erica came out of the house. She was looking pale, her mouth taut. She glanced at the car and the two men.

‘So that’s another two bought it,’ she said, her voice hard.

‘Well, I daresay there’s plenty more where they came from.

That’s all that matters, isn’t it?’ Her gaze moved across to the cowshed, and Betty saw through her tears that Dennis was standing there, grave and still. Erica’s voice rose suddenly to a shout, harsh with pain. ‘You see? There’s another two gone, gone to save your yellow skin. I hope you’re pleased with yourself. I hope you’re bloody pleased with yourself.’

She turned on her heel and stalked back into the farmhouse and, through the open door, they heard her voice again.

‘I won’t stay here another minute with that bloody conchie!

I won’t…’

Erica wasn’t the only one to take her grief out on Dennis. Iris Blake, too, issued her brother-in-law with an ultimatum.

‘Either he goes or we do. It’s bad for the children, being influenced that way. He was talking to them again yesterday. I told you, I won’t have it.’

‘He was helping them thread their conkers,’ Mr Spencer said wearily. ‘Look, Iris, I’ve talked it over with him and I don’t think he is a bad influence. He’s promised me he won’t mention the war or his ideas to them. He’s a decent chap and a good worker ‘

‘And that’s all that matters to you, isn’t it!’

‘Well, what else is there, for God’s sake? I’ve got to keep this farm going, haven’t I? I’ve got to have help to get the food produced. I reckon I’m lucky to have a strong young chap about the place, especially one as willing as Dennis. And he’s quiet and decent, and not off down the pub every night.’

‘They wouldn’t have him. They know better.’

‘The man’s entitled to his ideas,’ Mr Spencer repeated.

‘They’re none of our business.’

‘Of course they’re our business! He’s a traitor and a coward. He ought to be shot.’

‘It’s the law, Iris.’

‘Then the law’s daft,’ she said. ‘Well, if you won’t listen to reason, we’ll pack our bags and go. Our Primrose has offered to have me and the kids for the winter and I think we’ll go there. I reckon we’ll be a bit safer up north anyway.’

She gave her brother-in-law a defiant glare, as if expecting him to change his mind and beg her to stay, but Jack Spencer said nothing. He put on his wire-rimmed glasses and began to sort through the pile of papers on the dresser, and after a few minutes Mrs Blake made an exasperated noise and flounced out.

Mr Spencer sighed with relief. Neither he nor his wife had welcomed the intrusion of Mrs Blake and her two badly behaved children, but they were family so what could you do?

But if his other sister-in-law, who lived in Lancashire, was willing to do a turn having them, that would be fine by him.

He was more worried about the Land Girl, Erica, wanting to leave. He hadn’t thought all that much of her to start with, with her yellow hair and toffee-nosed ways, but she’d settled down and turned into quite a good little worker. If she left, he’d have to get someone else, and that meant an upheaval.

Jack Spencer didn’t like upheavals.

Dennis had his own solution to the problem.

‘Look, maybe I ought to be the one to go,’ he said as he and Betty finished the milking one evening. ‘It’s because of me Mrs Blake and Erica are leaving. It’d be better if I asked for a transfer somewhere else, where I won’t cause any trouble.’

‘You don’t cause trouble,’ Betty said. ‘They’re the ones who cause trouble. We’ll be better off without them, specially that Mrs Blake. Just because her husband’s an army captain, she thinks we’re dirt.’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking I ought to do something else anyway,’ Dennis said. ‘It’s too safe on the farm. Plenty of COs do other jobs, medical orderlies, Red Cross, things like that.

I’m not a coward, Betty.’

‘I know you’re not,’ she said soberly, thinking of the day the aircraft had crashed. She hesitated, then said, ‘Why did you decide to be a C O, Dennis? I’ve never really understood what it’s all about.’

He smiled slightly. ‘Not many people do. That’s the trouble.’ They walked down the lane towards the little river.

He pulled a piece of dry grass from the hedgerow and swished it back and forth as they strolled along. ‘I don’t think I ever actually decided. It was always there, a part of me. My dad was a CO in the last war and he went through hell for it. But I always thought he was right. He said it was wrong to kill other human beings, whatever the reason, and I agree.’

He looked at her with the hazel eyes she had always liked.

They were often merry and laughing, but now they were serious.

‘That plane that crashed in the field - the men in it were just like me, and Geoff and Sandy and Duff. They’d been called up and sent to fight and maybe they enjoyed it, because it must be fun to fly a plane and exciting to dodge about in the sky with other blokes in planes - like a game of tag. But it’s not fun when you’re burning to death or falling to earth without a parachute. It’s not fun when you’re being bombed or machine-gunned or stabbed through with a bayonet. How can you do that to other people, people you’ve never even met? How can anyone justify it?’

‘But Hitler was taking over the whole of Europe,’ Betty said. ‘He’d take us over too.’

‘I know. I can’t tell you the answers to that. All I can say is, to me it’s wrong to kill. It’s not that I’m not prepared to die for my country, Betty, I am. But I won’t kill for it. Nor for anything else.’

Betty sighed. It was difficult to understand. ‘But if everyone did the same thing ‘

‘There’d be no wars,’ he said.

She hadn’t been going to say that. She’d been going to say We’d all be overrun. But in her mind, ‘everyone’ had meant simply the British. In Dennis’s, it had meant everyone in the world.

And he was right. There would be no wars. But how could you persuade a whole world to think that way?

‘So what happened?’ she asked. ‘When you decided to register?’

‘I had to go to a tribunal. I had to explain why I felt the way I did. Sometimes they accept that and give you exemption, without any condition. Sometimes they say you’ve got to do something, stay in the job you’re in, or work on the land, or go as a stretcher-bearer or something. And sometimes they won’t exempt you at all, and they say you have to join up. If you refuse, you go to prison.’

‘Is that what happened to you?’

‘I was given conditional exemption. I was working in the City Council offices in Portsmouth and I was exempted on condition I stayed in my job.’ His mouth twisted a little wryly.

‘Actually, I wasn’t all that keen on conditional exemption, I thought if the law said COs should have exemption for matters of conscience, there shouldn’t be any conditions at all. But as it happened, the City Council decided that for me, they made their own rule that any COs on the staff would be sacked. So I was out anyway.’

‘But they were going against the law,’ Betty said indignantly.

‘That’s right. There was quite a rumpus about it, the Free Churches had a lot to say. But it didn’t make any difference.

So I couldn’t fulfil my condition and I refused to accept any other.’

‘And was that when they sent you to prison?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Not a lot of fun, prison, especially when the warders treat you worse than the criminals. I was put to sewing uniforms the first day, army uniforms. Well, that was against the law too, they weren’t supposed to force us to do anything towards the war effort. So I refused, and that didn’t help me much. They gave me other jobs instead.’

Betty wanted to ask what jobs, but the look on Dennis’s face warned her to leave the subject alone. Clearly, prison had been a painful experience. He was silent for a moment, then grinned at her.