Day (28 page)

‘Are you cold?'

‘No.'

‘Do you . . .' You rub your thumb in the curve of her palm and start again. ‘I would . . .' Hands and her forearms brown with the sun, but everywhere else so pale, so more naked and she may want you to be this way, too, but you maybe can't, can't undress in daylight, because of being not an oil painting by any means, not a handsome man – but then her mouth makes that shape again and you kneel on the bed and you bend and you bow to her and hide your face in kissing her breasts, the one and the other and back and forth – little breasts, an upward tilt in them and pretty enough to make you cry, although you don't: you kiss and lick which you never dared till now – had only heard about it, nodded while Dickie Molloy said the ladies enjoyed it, told you this often in several bars – and this is her nipple in your mouth and it tastes of her smiling and makes you have to bite while she cups your head in both her hands and she does seem to enjoy it, does breathe and live and shiver underneath you, hot skin at your hands, and her legs rise in, hug in, around you so that you die of her nicely, you go away.

My Best Blue covered with her.

And then me. My best me.

Pretty enough to make you cry.

Keeping still for the thoughts to hit him, letting them find his range. Sometimes he'd do it for company – let in just enough hurt to make himself seem alive.

And then it's very easy to run and press against the wire links of the fence, hook in his fingers clear above his head and hang.

Asking for it, you are, cocker.

Ar, but I won't get it – never do.

But it wasn't his fault, not entirely, this lack of evasive action. He'd started the day badly with a dream of the crew bus: hearing it draw to a halt outside the hut and then the footfalls, the heavy, messy sound of his boys quite unmistakable: his crew walking up in their flying boots, climbing the steps and then pausing.

Cold in his sleep, he'd watched himself slip from his bunk and listen, ease forward, listen again until he was beside the door, no more than a half-inch of wood between him and his proper family, his dear friends. But he couldn't hear another sound from them. He couldn't hear their breath.

They'd scared him.

Nothing to it, of course, when you were awake, back in reality. Not that reality wasn't a funny word: that which exists and is real, but also that which underlies appearances, that which is true. So that which you see, but also that which hides inside it.

This made things slippery, meant you could take a while to shake your dreams – even once you were stood on your steps and awake in the daylight and your bare feet warm on the wood and the usual bods binding off towards the showers and everything as it should be, or as near as you could hope.

Alfred supposed bits of dream would always work out through him now – the way that tiny shrapnel splinters would sometimes break up through his skin, finally leave him.

He shook himself, rattling the fence, and then let go, sat in the dust with his back against a post and the camp growing quieter ahead of him, preparing for another night.

So think yourself lucky while you're awake and remember a happy crew.

Think of Hamburg on the Magic Night.

22.50 and they went out neatly, just as they should – you couldn't fault Parks, he was always on his route.

‘Burton Coggles, Carlton Scroop, Sloothby . . .' But he never tired of reeling off place names as they drove for the coast. ‘Mavis Enderby – it's great that you guys really would call anywhere Mavis Enderby. Sounds like a librarian . . .'

Skipper let him run for a while and then closed him down. ‘You get two more and then you shut up.' It was all part of how Alfred started – checking RT and oxygen, pressing the cheek piece on his reflector sight, the comfort of it – feeling the wool of Joyce's hat comfy on his head and thinking of her, just the once, before he hides her all away – and hearing random offerings from the map.

‘Worlaby Carrs.'

‘And this from a man born in Nanaimo – wherever the bloody hell that is. One more. Then it's business.'

Lincolnshire a still, dark fabric sweeping back from Alfred and B for Beer singing out well, lively as she twitched and sprang in the busy air – her squadron up with her: her wing and her group and those beyond hers: maximum effort. Other Lancs and Stirlings, Halifaxes, Wimpies – the thought of them rising with Alfred: silhouettes that made him faintly homesick, more distant gleams and shades, everyone turning, finding their ways.

‘Thorpe in the Fallows and Spital in the Street.'

‘That was two. Now shut up.'

And the idea of being watched, expected. All day they'd tested radios, flown circuits – squadron upon squadron, giving their game away. And now the higher they climbed, the quicker they'd be seen. Twenty-three ops completed: that could tend to make you feel anxious for your thirty.

Then came the long moment – Alfred knew it every time – when the Lanc drew herself out and over the coast, crossed the line – it shivered in her spine and rocked him.

The skipper told them, same as always, ‘Here we go then.' Far-off voice, but to Alfred gentle-seeming, sure, and tonight it was Mablethorpe that dwindled out from under Alfred's feet and left him to shrouded water and to air.

‘Fuck the lot of you. The whole pack.' Molloy breaking in on the RT – the weight of Lancsound receding for a breath.

Alfred quiet in his turret, but smiling while the Skipper asks, ‘I said, are you ready?'

‘On my way. Then five, four, three, two – here goes fucking nothing. Don't thank me.'

‘Chiefy will give you the nails for your cross when we get back home. Shut up and go.'

And nothing more as Molloy heads back along the fuselage and starts his work.

No discernable difference as they jostle on, the enemy coast slicing closer in to meet them and Alfred turning, searching, turning, quartering his sky. This feeling, though, this kind of flurry in his mind.

What if it works?

Light from the route markers tumbling, spilling down yellow-golden – like a tree that grows out from its crown and not the root, like a liquid that is air and fire, like something wonderful against nature. But keep your eyes away, don't want to be night-blinded – and the shimmer of something new, the secret cascading from the shapes of other planes, a storm of metal strips that deepened every minute.

The first Alfred knew about the magic was when he heard laughing – Skip laughing – sounding like somebody else, a boy – and then Hanson and the rest and they're shouting to Molloy and laughing.

Then Alfred sees why – there rolling back from him: this strange, dark channel, searchlights with their beams laid and twitching along the ground, as if they've fallen – others further off that have frozen, tipped straight up: these blue-white columns that cannot harm them, cannot find them. One to port swings and dithers and then drops, exhausted. There is a distant shake of flak, but Alfred can feel there's no sense in it, more a little burst of panic.

Jesus.

He doesn't laugh, is too happy for that.

They leap as the bombs go down, B for Beer feeling giddy, and the job done well tonight, right on the green TIs, slap where they should be. Shorten the war, that's what you want. Hurt them. Hurt them enough and then more than enough, just make an end of it.

The turn for home lets Alfred watch the naked city: small, straight glimmers from canals, shine of the lake, the white scatter of incendiaries as they bite, redden: thick folds of smoke like panels of night, of nothingness, and a cookie folding open, hooping itself round with shock and shock, bright and then settling into fire, more smoke. He shouldn't look, but this is Magic Night and so he does.

And for the first time he didn't feel they would come after him for this, because they couldn't. Even dazzled, with dull ghosts in the black wherever he looked, he was sure that nobody was going hunt up and catch them. Not that he didn't still search, blink, get himself back to normal and concentrate, keep watching his skipper's back. But tonight they could do what they liked, he understood: they could break everything and burn it.

And go home.

‘You will light'

Singing as they cross the English coast.

‘My way tonight'

Suddenly wishing hard, almost praying, staring so far into the black that his eyes are tearing, because getting careless now would be so stupid, such a waste of their finest raid. Everyone maybe thinking the same and very quiet now as they circle and then make their most delicate landing.

Before they gather up their gear and then come tumbling, scrambling out to the dawn, the sky that's one huge glow, a wide promise of morning that still smells hot and summerish from yesterday, but yesterday he'd done twenty-three and now it's twenty-four.

Hardly one of them making sense in the debriefing and the intelligence bods wanting gen on their secret weapon, on code name
Window
– them and their bloody code names – and questions and questions, but even they were hearty, satisfied, quite patient – and you're hungrier than ever in your life and Molloy is singing – face and hands blacked up like Jolson from the strips he's been chucking about all night and singing something Irish that you don't know, but you love it, you love him, you love the skipper, you love bloody everything.

And when they let you go you got washed, had a good, long swill and fitted down into your bed, clean in your bed and tired, but you couldn't sleep, the light inside yourself too raw to let you rest and so you only lay until you knew it was some kind of a decent hour and the phone box would be unlocked and you ran, you pelted out and called her.

‘Hello?'

‘God, you'm a good wench.'

‘Alfie?'

‘I was reading this . . . in Shakespeare. I was reading . . .
If then true lovers have been ever crossed
. . . I was thinking . . . You all right?'

‘I was up rather late, watching for fires.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry. I just . . .' You can't talk about what you've done, it's not allowed. ‘I wanted to hear you.' You can't talk about what you're going to do. ‘That's all. And to say good morning.'

Be like Dad, keep mum.

Lousy bloody line.

‘Did you have a hard night?' Then checks herself, because that's a bad question and she's sensible, responsible. ‘I mean . . . bad dreams.'

‘No. No, I didn't. I didn't.' Sick and hot and golden with needing her. ‘You go back to sleep now. Get your rest.'

‘Yes, I'm sorry . . . But yes – you, too.' Noise of her hand on the receiver. ‘And I –'

‘Yes.'

‘It was nice to hear from you.'

‘Good.' Sick and sick and sick with needing her. ‘And I love you.'

‘I know.'

‘
Wishing will make it so, just keep on wishing and care will go
.'

They'd been walking home, missed the bus, and Hanson warbling on, ‘
Dreamers tell us dreams come true, it's no mistake.
' Widening his hands and paddling them free in the night, dragging and skipping across the smooth width of the road.

Twenty-five.

Window keeping things sweet.

Twenty-five done.

You could see it in the crew: all of you starting to brace against that final five and trying not to mither about Window and when the Jerry boffins would work their way out to a cure.

Twenty-five. Essen not so easy, not so wonderful – but easier than Essen should be. Landing with a little ventilation knocked through the port vertical fin. You'd seen the line of that: the thick glow of the fragment sniping in to hit.

Landing with a lot more ventilation knocked into the Krupps works – because we're good at what we do – we know our business.

Twenty-five.

The thought of those other five woke with you, was ready and rubbing your mind before you could even think of Joyce.

Molloy not himself about it. He'd got this blank, stiff grin most evenings and you could almost hear something hinging in his mind. ‘Shut up with that fucking nonsense, willya?' Molloy yelling at Hanson, but his eyes finding Alfred: wet and large, bewildered.

And maybe he saw the same in me – all right when we didn't have a hope. But then we did. We genuinely had a chance. There's nothing more unbearable than knowing you might have a chance.

Molloy swinging his boot at the wall, giving it his weight. ‘It never made anything so.'

‘Very clever, I'm shewer. Fuck you.'

‘You can fucking wish yourself . . . you can wish yourself . . .'

Alfred could see that Molloy was limping, had hurt his foot, but still he was off running.

‘
And wishes are the dreams we dream when we're awake
.'

Molloy seeming taller as he leaves them, thinning into the grey light.

Alfred wanting to follow, but Skip catching his arm, telling Hanson, quite sharp, ‘Hanson, that isn't a song that we like. And don't try another, please, old man. Let's get some peace.'

‘Skip?' The country round about them busy with sounds in a way that troubled Alfred.

‘Yes, Boss?'

‘I was . . .' Beyond their footfalls there was scurrying in the ditches by the road and a cry that might be a fox or an owl, might be something hurt, he didn't know – too much going on, so you couldn't relax. ‘The way things are now – it's safer, ay it – with Window?' Beer making his tongue unreasonable. ‘I mean.'

The skipper clasped an arm round his shoulder. ‘I know.'

‘I was –'

‘I know – we need to be quick about it. Really bloody quick.' Skip nodded heavily and his hand reached round and tugged at Alfred's hair, dropped back to his collarbone again. ‘Get the ops in. I know. Doing the best I can, Boss.'