A Song At Twilight (41 page)

‘You’ve been a very good boy,’ she told Hughie, lifting him on to her knee. ‘We’ll just sit here for a while together before you have your bath, and you can tell me all about what you did when you stayed with Auntie May. Did you have a nice time?’

He nodded and leaned against her, sliding his thumb into his mouth. He seemed to have overcome his suspicion of the baby, she realised with relief, and cuddled him against her, filled with a surge of love for him. I missed him so much when I was in the hospital, she thought. I’m never going to leave him again. I’m not going to leave either of them.

The room was very quiet. For the first time that day, there was no roar of aircraft. If only she could hear Andrew’s footsteps coming down the road, she thought longingly. If only she could hear the gate click as he opened it, and his key in the lock of the front door.

But there was no sound of footsteps. All that could be heard through the open window was the twilight song of the birds.

The days following D-Day were just as busy at the airfield, with both bomber and fighter pilots working round the clock, coming off duty only to eat and sleep while the mechanics worked on the aircraft to get them ready to fly again. The men lost all count of the days and seemed to live in a haze where flying was the only reality and they felt awake and alive only when they were in the air.

Andrew, however, could not forget that he had a wife and two children less than a mile away, and that he had not even seen his baby yet.

‘It’s a bloody farce,’ he said to Stefan as they ate their dinner one night. ‘I could walk there and be back in half an hour. I know the boss says it’d be a bad example to the other blokes, but every last one of them would understand. D’you realise, that baby’s nearly three weeks old now and I don’t even know what she looks like. And what makes it worse is that
you’ve
seen her.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not blaming you. It’s just the way things happen.’ Andrew threw down his knife and fork. ‘I can’t eat any more of this. I’m going outside. A walk round the airfield might cool me down a bit.’

He pushed back his chair and strode out of the room. The other pilots looked up and then glanced at Stefan.

‘He’s upset,’ Stefan said awkwardly, and Robin Fairbanks nodded.

‘Don’t blame him, either. But it’s not good – he’s walking on a knife-edge at the moment, and you know what that means. He could crack up – he wouldn’t be the first. Or he could have an accident.’

Stefan looked grim. ‘It’s so stupid. All he needs is half an hour with his family.’

‘I know, but he’ll get it soon.’ Robin cleared his plate. ‘This pace won’t keep up for ever. We’ll get some leave soon, we’re bound to, and then he’ll be able to go home. At least he
can
go home – there’s plenty of chaps here who won’t be able to. Look at Jock, for instance. He lives right up in the north of Scotland. Hasn’t been home since last Christmas and probably won’t get there till next Christmas.’

‘And I,’ Stefan said, ‘don’t even know if I have a home to go to.’

Robin gave him a quick look. ‘No. Sorry, mate. I forget that sometimes. Maybe Andy does too.’

‘There’s no need for him to remember,’ Stefan said. ‘Everyone sees their own problems. There’s no reason why mine should be more important to him than his own.’

Robin pushed back his chair, rather more quietly than Andrew had done. ‘Well, I’m going to get a bit of shut-eye. I’ve no doubt we’ll be flying again pretty soon. You’d better do the same.’ He walked out and after a moment or two Stefan followed him.

The grey, dismal weather of D-Day and the few days after it, had cleared. The moon was waning now and the stars shone brightly. In the bays, bunkers and blister hangars, aircraft engines grumbled as the mechanics tested them, but nothing could be seen apart from their silhouettes against the dark blue sky. Yet to Stefan, it seemed as if all his senses were sharpened, as if he could hear and see more clearly than ever before; as if the darkness of the night meant nothing. He felt that he could have made his way across the darkened airfield without stumbling, knowing exactly where his feet were taking him, and that when he sat in the cockpit of his plane he would be more bird than man.

He was aware of a strange light-headness, hardly knowing whether he would rather fly or walk. We’re all treading on the edge, he thought. Any one of us could tip over at any time.

He walked slowly between the darkened huts and buildings, past the hangars and workshops, past the inspection pits and the parachute packing shed. He walked past the ammunition store and past the air-raid shelters, past the anti-aircraft guns and the searchlight mountings. Every now and then, he would encounter someone else strolling in the dark – a couple of pilots, a mechanic or two, a group of WAAFs. For a brief space, the skies were quiet. It was as if the world were waiting.

But we’ve finished with the waiting, he thought. The war is more furious now than it has ever been. In a few months, perhaps it will be over. And what then?

What of his family – his parents, his brothers and sisters? Where were they now, and what had been happening to them all this time? And his home: did it still exist, or had it been destroyed?

He leaned against the wall of a hut and gazed into the sky, thinking of the people he had loved so much. Would they ever be able to come together again? Would they ever be able to take up their lives, as they had been before this terrible nightmare began?

Andrew walked all the way round the perimeter fence.

It was like being in prison, he thought. Looking out at the world through barbed wire, watched by sentries, deprived of your liberty and freedom. Out there, only yards away, was the world you were fighting for, yet you weren’t allowed any part of it. A prisoner who had committed no crime.

He wasn’t really looking for a way out. For one thing, he knew that the fence was patrolled regularly and maintained, so there would be no holes or even weak points. But if there had been, he would have been strongly tempted to use it. The frustration that had been simmering within him for weeks now had reached boiling point and he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to keep it from erupting. His only release was when he was in the sky, watching the bombers rain destruction on the enemy, or engaging in deadly battle himself with the Luftwaffe. Then he could use all his fury in the way he had been trained to do, taking a dark pleasure in sending each Heinkel or Messerschmitt spiralling into the sea or exploding on the ground. He ignored the risks he took, wanting only to achieve as many kills as possible, wanting only to get this bloody war over so that he could go back to Alison and his children, wanting only to see the baby whose early days he had already lost for ever.

It made no difference that he was certain to see her before long, that this ban on leave must be over soon. It made no difference that thousands of men – soldiers, sailors and other airmen now in France or Italy, Africa or the Far East – were away for even longer and were missing years of their children’s lives. Andrew was consumed by his own pain and misery. It was like a thick fog in his brain, blinding him to everything else but the need to kill, for only when enough aircraft had been shot out of the sky could he return to a normal life.

He came back to the mess and went straight to his room, without speaking to anyone, and flung himself on his bed. Perhaps he could sleep until it was time to go on duty again. Until it was time to kill …

The restriction on local leave was lifted next morning.

It was announced as the squadron was at breakfast. The attacks on France were just as intensive and duties would be round the clock, but during off-duty time the airmen and women would be allowed to leave the station. Liberty had been restored.

‘Why couldn’t they have said so yesterday?’ Andrew demanded in frustration. ‘I could have dashed over to see Alison before going on duty. There isn’t time now, dammit.’

‘You can go this evening,’ Robin said. ‘Not long to go now. You just need to kill a few more Jerries first.’

‘Don’t worry, I will,’ Andrew growled. ‘Bloody Hun has kept me away from my wife and kids long enough. Anyone unfortunate enough to get into my sights today has a very nasty shock coming to him.’

He got up and marched out. The others looked after him, and Stefan said, ‘It will be a good thing when he has seen his wife and baby. He is in a dangerous condition.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ Robin said sombrely. ‘But at least we’re driving ’em back. If they’re not on the run now, they soon will be. Maybe this time, it really will be all over by Christmas.’

‘They’ve been saying that since the whole bloody shambles started,’ someone else chipped in. ‘I suppose it has to be right eventually. And at least we can go out and have a few beers this evening. I’m for the Leg o’ Mutton myself – anyone joining me?’

They made their way out of the mess, beginning a discussion on the merits of the local pubs as they did so. There was a feeling of jubilation at the prospect of joining normal life outside the wire once more. But there was still a day’s work to get through before freedom was granted; in less than half an hour they would be on readiness, and soon after that in the air. The holiday atmosphere was tempered with the grim determination that gripped them all once they were in the cockpit.

Andrew was trembling as he got into his plane. The fury that had been boiling up inside him had not been lessened at all by that morning’s news; instead, he felt a bitter rage for the time he had lost. When he took off, it was with a burning determination to kill.

The Channel was massed with shipping. Troops were still being taken over, and the injured brought home. The air too was full of traffic as the bombers and fighters flocked to the coast of France and more wounded were brought back in Dakotas. And through them all, like angry wasps disturbed at their nests, buzzed the enemy aircraft, piloted by men as determined as Andrew, fighting as he was for their country and their way of life.

Off the shores of Normandy, he could see the Mulberry harbours, created by concrete caissons that had been towed across. Andrew himself had seen these being built on the South Coast of England months ago, and wondered what was going on. They had looked like huge buildings then, rearing high on the shingle of beaches like Stokes Bay and Southsea, and none of the pilots had been able to imagine what they were for. Now, looking down, he could only marvel at the vision of the men who had thought of such an idea and been able to persuade those in command to carry it out.

The beaches themselves were more crowded than they had been since the very different days of Dunkirk, exactly four years earlier. Andrew was still haunted sometimes by the vivid, sickening memory of thousands of soldiers, stranded amongst the dunes, driven to the very edge by the Germans and waiting for the little ships which were their only means of escape. He had been flying a Spitfire then and had fought desperately to prevent the strafing and bombing coming from the Luftwaffe. It was at Dunkirk that he had first understood the horror of war. Four years ago, he thought with a grinding sense of hopelessness. Four long, hellish years, and still the world seemed bent on destruction.

Death and destruction were still to be seen, down there on the beaches and in the fields, the villages and towns beyond. He could see craters where bombs had fallen, ruined vehicles, buildings ravaged by fire, some still burning. He could see the shreds of parachutes caught in trees and, once or twice, the parachutist himself, still dangling from the branches. And he could see the Army itself, making its purposeful way through the countryside, with every man equally determined to bring an end to this nightmare that had gripped the world for so long.

A voice yelled in his ear and he jerked his head round to see a Junker approaching fast from the sun. Immediately, he hauled on the joystick and the Typhoon’s nose lifted like a rearing horse, so abruptly that it almost stood on its tail. He missed the German plane by a hair’s breadth, passing directly above it and firing as he went, and when he looked down, he saw a ball of flame spiralling earthwards.

That’s one, he thought with savage delight, and turned to search the sky for more. Alison and the children, the reason for his rage, were thrust to the back of his mind, but the fury itself remained and drove him into the attack. He forgot that he was on escort duty, with bombers to defend, and broke away from the formation to search for his own prey. For the next half-hour he hunted through the sky, firing at everything that flew, not even bothering to count his kills. He felt like a fox, let loose in a coop of chickens; nothing mattered but the frenzy of killing, nothing mattered but to leave no enemy aircraft flying, no enemy pilot alive.

There was nobody to see when he was finally shot down. Nobody to see whether he lived or died.

Three fighter pilots failed to return to Harrowbeer that afternoon: Robin Fairbanks, a Canadian by the name of Nick Petrie – and Andrew Knight.

‘They still might come back,’ Brian Summers said as those who had returned gathered in the mess. There was always a period when pilots who had ditched and been rescued, or forced to land somewhere else, might phone in to report. But as time went on, no telephone calls came and they knew that the three men had been lost or, at best, taken prisoner. They looked at each other and knew that someone must go and tell Alison.

‘It had better be you, Stefan,’ Brian said awkwardly. ‘You know her pretty well, don’t you?’

‘We are friends, yes.’ The Pole nodded slowly. ‘I will go. I’ll go tonight. She’ll know that we’re allowed out on local leave again; she’ll be expecting him. We can’t leave her worrying all night.’

He went back to his room and bathed and shaved. He dressed with care in his best uniform; it seemed important to treat this occasion with respect, not to go in flying jacket with open collar and crumpled shirt. Then, with a heavy heart, he walked out of the gate and along the country lane towards Milton Combe.

Alison was waiting in the front bedroom, sitting in the window to watch the road. She knew that Andrew would be with her at the first possible moment. For quite a while, she had kept Hughie up to see his father, but as it grew later she saw his eyelids drooping and put him to bed. At any moment, she expected to hear the ring of Andrew’s bicycle bell and the click of the door as he opened it. Her heart beat fast with excitement and she felt as if she were a young girl again, ready for her first date.