A Song At Twilight (8 page)

He stopped, wondering if he had said too much. Alison knew the dangers he faced, but they seldom discussed them. Like the pilots, she ignored them and pretended to herself that they didn’t exist. But when something like this happened, pretence was impossible and sometimes it couldn’t be recovered. Andrew had known pilots – excellent flyers, too – who had broken down at that point and been unable to face it again. Some had finished up in hospital, some were now working at desks, and one had shot himself.

It was as bad for wives and families, and they had no control over it at all. They just had to endure.

‘You don’t have to worry about me, you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve had my crash.’

Alison was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘You know that doesn’t make any difference.’ She raised her eyes and gave him a steady look. ‘It’s all right, Andrew. I understand the risks. Every time I say goodbye to you, I wonder if it might be the last time. But there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ve just got to go on.’ She paused. ‘What about the party? We can’t possibly have it now.’ She looked at him accusingly. ‘You knew this, and you let me go on chattering about parties. Oh, Andrew!’

‘No,’ he said forcefully. ‘We must have it. Cancelling it would just make everyone even more miserable, and that’s dangerous. A miserable pilot isn’t taking the care he should, and if he’s upset over something like what happened to Tubby, he’s likely to be frightened as well. His reactions aren’t as good, he’s not in the right frame of mind, and he’s at even greater risk. A frightened pilot is a dangerous pilot – how often have you heard me say that?’

Alison stared at him, remembering how she had quoted those very words to Tubby. How she had tried in vain to persuade him to confess his fears, to tell Andrew or to go to the station doctor. But in the end, it hadn’t been fear that had killed him. As Andrew said, it didn’t matter how good a flyer you were, if someone came out of the sun and shot you down.

If Tubby had had time to know anything, he must have known that. He had known, in the end, that he hadn’t died a coward. She hoped that it had been some comfort to him, in those last terrible moments.

‘We’ve got to have the party,’ Andrew repeated quietly.

‘Yes. All right.’ She looked at him, trying to gauge the depth of his own distress. ‘Oh, Andrew, it’s awful. Poor Tubby. He was your best friend.’

‘I know.’ But he was still taut, his sorrow held like a tightly wound ball of elastic deep inside him. She knew that he would not let go easily. He was too used to this, too used to keeping his emotions under control when pilots were killed. It happened too often.

But this was Tubby. This was the man he had started his RAF career with, the man he had stayed with all these years, the man who was as close to him as a brother.

She made up her mind. He would have to hear her own news sometime, and perhaps it would help him to hear it now. She wound her arms loosely about his neck and smiled at him a little tremulously. ‘Well, perhaps I won’t wait till then to tell you who our visitor is. I’ll tell you now. Although I’m not sure we can really call him a visitor. Or her.’

‘You mean there are two of them?’ He seemed relieved to have the subject changed. ‘Why can’t we call them visitors, then? How long are they staying?’ A sudden thought struck him. ‘We’re not getting evacuees, are we?’

‘No – and there aren’t two of them, either. Not as far as I know, anyway.’ Her lips twitched. ‘It’s just that I don’t know yet whether it will be a him or a her.’

‘You don’t know?’ He stared at her. ‘What on earth are you talking about? For heaven’s sake, you must know who it is!’ He gave her a suspicious look. ‘Come on, out with it. What are you laughing at?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ she asked, her joy bubbling up even through the sorrow she felt for Tubby. ‘Someone coming to stay – not a visitor but someone coming to
live
with us – and I don’t know whether it’s going to be a him or her?’ She laid some extra emphasis on the words. ‘I don’t know if it will be a
boy
or a
girl
.’

There was a brief silence. Then Andrew said, ‘Are you telling me that we’re – we’re having another baby?’

‘
Yes
!’ Her smile spread over her face. ‘Yes, we’re having another baby, Andrew! It’s due next May. Or early June.’ Her smile turned to laughter. ‘What do you think? Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘Yes, it is. It’s wonderful.’ He kissed her and rested his cheek against her head. ‘Another baby. Another little boy or girl that
we’ve
made … it’s terrific news, darling. And an even better reason for having our party.’

Alison wasn’t the only one to wonder if they ought to be having a party so soon after Tubby’s death.

Ben and Tony discussed it as they sat in the mess over a pint of beer. Neither had been in the air at the time, but they’d known as soon as the squadron came back that they’d lost someone. Often, when this happened, the missing pilot telephoned from somewhere else in the country where he’d been forced to land, and returned – with or without his aircraft – to jeers and catcalls. But this time, everyone knew that Tubby would not be coming back.

‘He was Andrew’s best friend,’ Tony said. ‘I don’t know how he can still laugh and joke with the others. I don’t know how anyone can.’

‘No, but we’ve got to do it just the same,’ Ben replied. ‘You know that as well as I do. We’ve seen it so many times already. There’s no time to sit around weeping and wailing. We have to get up there and fight, and thinking about what happened to Tubby – and what might happen to us – isn’t going to help.’

‘I know.’ They were silent for a moment or two, then Tony asked, ‘Have you lost anyone yet, Ben? Friends, or anyone in your family, I mean?’

Ben shook his head. ‘We’ve been lucky so far. But there are four of us in it now …’ His voice faded slightly as he thought of the odds against all four of them coming through the war unscathed, then he said, ‘What about you?’

‘I had a cousin in the Navy. He went down in the
Hood
. My aunt, his mother, died soon afterwards. She was widowed in the ’flu epidemic in 1918 and he was the only child. She just didn’t seem to be able to go on living.’

Ben could find nothing to say. Behind every death, there must be an equally tragic story. It wasn’t just the men – the soldiers, the sailors, the airmen – who lost their lives, it was the huge gap they left behind, in the lives of those who loved them. And some of those people would never recover.

‘I know a girl whose fiancé was killed,’ he said after a minute or two. ‘She was pregnant – they’d been going to get married, but he went away without even knowing about the baby. Her parents turned her out and she came to live with my people as a maid.’

‘I suppose she had to give the baby away,’ Tony observed. ‘That’s what usually happens, isn’t it?’

‘No, she didn’t, as it happens. She kept it – it’s a little girl – and they’re still with my father and mother.’ Ben hesitated. ‘I’m her godfather, actually. She’s rather a nice girl – the mother, I mean. And Hope’s a little sweetheart.’

Tony gave him a curious look, but before either could speak again, Andrew came over, bringing a tall, fair-haired man in the uniform of a Polish pilot. He was very upright and correct, standing almost to attention as he came to a halt beside their chairs.

‘This is Stefan Dabrowski,’ Andrew said, and they stood up to shake hands. ‘He’s joining the squadron.’ He didn’t need to add,
in Tubby’s place
. The three men nodded at each other and sought for something to say.

‘Have you been in England long?’ Ben asked at last.

‘Since just after the beginning of the war. As soon as Hitler invaded, we came here so that we could fight him and win back our country.’ His English was very precise and he spoke with a quiet purpose that slightly startled Ben. He was used to the jovial bravado of the British and Canadian pilots he had met, with their breezy enjoyment of flying, as if it were still all rather a game, despite the fact that the ‘game’ was deadly enough to kill their fellow pilots on a regular basis, and he shared their desire to score as many ‘kills’ as possible. But this Pole seemed to have a deeper motivation. It was as if he understood more than Ben about war and its meaning.

‘I can’t imagine what that would be like,’ Ben said at last. ‘Losing your country, I mean. I know we’re fighting to stop Hitler invading us, and I know he’s nearly done it once or twice, but he’s not succeeded and I hope to God he doesn’t. But for you …’

Stefan Dabrowski nodded. ‘It’s different when you have seen your neighbours overrun, and know that it’s your turn next. The march of jackboots through your streets – the raiding and the killing, having nowhere to hide.’ His pale, ice-grey eyes glittered. ‘I mean to kill as many of them as I can,’ he said quietly. ‘And so do my friends. They may have taken our country from us, but we shall take it back, and with interest.’

There was a brief silence, then Andrew said, ‘And good luck to you, Stefan. Now, the reason I’ve brought you to meet these two characters is partly to get it over with as quickly as possible, and partly to invite you all to my house for a bit of a knees-up on Saturday night. It’s time you saw civilisation again. My wife’s going to lay on some bread and jam, maybe a sausage or two, and we’ll put on some music and roll up the carpet for some dancing. Not that there’s much room, but I dare say you won’t mind having to cuddle up a bit.’

‘So long as you ask some girls as well,’ Robin Fairbanks observed, joining them with a pint in his hand. ‘I’m not cuddling up to any of these oiks.’

‘Oh, there’ll be girls,’ Andrew said airily. ‘I’m asking a few of the WAAFs. But no hanky-panky, mind. This is to be a refined party, not the sort of brawl we have here in the mess.’

Ben grinned. He’d been startled at his first encounter with a mess ‘brawl’, with the airmen hurling themselves at each other rather as they hurled their planes about in the sky, somersaulting over rows of chairs and tables and ending in a struggling heap on the floor. It had all seemed rather juvenile to the eighteen-year-old not long out of school, who had expected a little more gravitas from senior officers. But he’d soon come to recognise that this was a vital way of letting off steam, recovering from the strains and tensions of risking your life in the air, watching a plane you had destroyed explode beneath you, and coming back to find that yet another of your friends had lived his last day.

‘Will your wife mind having a lot of idiots invading her house?’ Robin enquired seriously. ‘Does she realise what she’s letting herself in for?’

‘Oh yes, she’s got plenty of experience. We’ve been married four years now, you know – been at Manston and Tangmere and one or two other stations. She’s well used to RAF types.’

‘And she’s
still
prepared to let us into her home?’ Robin said, shaking his head in mock wonder. ‘Well, so be it. I’ll do my best to keep order.’

Andrew grinned. ‘You won’t have to. Alison can keep order. In fact, she’d make a very good Group Commander. Now look, I’ll leave Stefan here in your capable hands. Treat him gently, mind – they’re damned good flyers, the Polish.’ He went off, leaving the small group to settle themselves in armchairs and look at each other.

‘So how long have you been flying?’ the Pole asked Ben and Tony. ‘You look very young.’

‘I’m twenty,’ Ben said with dignity. ‘And Tony here’s an old man of twenty-one – had his birthday on our last station. Got the key of the door and everything. We’ve been flying two years.’

‘Only just joined here, though,’ Tony added. ‘Haven’t started ops flying yet. Hoping to do so next week.’

‘I don’t think there’s any question about that,’ Robin observed, filling his pipe with tobacco. ‘All three of you will be up.’ He glanced at Stefan. ‘It’s unusual to have one of you chaps in with us, though. You usually stick with your own squadrons.’

Stefan looked across at the far corner of the mess, where some others wearing the same uniform were drinking steadily, as though competing for some prize. ‘Andrew asked if he could borrow one of us. I volunteered.’

‘Volunteered!’ Robin exclaimed. ‘It’s easy to tell you’re not English. That’s the first thing we learn when we join up – never volunteer for anything.’

The Pole gave him an unsmiling glance. ‘I volunteered because your squadron is the best on Harrowbeer and I want to fly with the best. There is then much more chance of killing Germans.’

‘Well, yes, of course there is,’ Robin said, slightly taken aback by the pilot’s intensity. ‘That’s what we all want to do.’ He glanced at the other two and then said, ‘I’d better be off too. Things to do, you know. Find a clean shirt for Saturday night, that sort of thing.’ He stuck his pipe into his mouth and sauntered off, leaving the three newest members of the squadron together.

Stefan watched him. ‘I’m afraid your friend doesn’t like me. I take it all too seriously – I let my feelings show too much. I don’t have the British stiff upper lip.’ He drank from his glass and then set it down with a small thump. His voice shook a little. ‘But if he had seen what I have seen – people forced to wear yellow stars on their sleeves and live behind brick walls, people shot down in the streets, just for daring to walk along them – then perhaps he would take the same attitude. You don’t really know what war is in this country. You have no idea at all.’

‘Hold on,’ Ben protested. ‘We might not have been invaded, but we’ve been through some pretty foul times. Our cities blitzed almost out of existence, thousands of civilian casualties, men lost at sea. And Dunkirk too, when our whole Army could have been lost if we hadn’t managed to rescue them. Not to mention the Battle of Britain. I think we’ve got a pretty good idea of what war is about.’

They regarded each other for a moment, and then Stefan inclined his blond head. ‘Yes. You have an idea, certainly. But at least you know your families are as safe as everyone else. You don’t live with the fear that they may have been taken to concentration camps. You can write them a letter and they will answer. You can pick up a telephone and hear their voices.’ His voice shook a little, and he stood up and clicked his heels together. ‘I’m sorry. This is not the place for such talk. We’re supposed to relax here, not upset each other. I’ll go to my room.’