Flightsend (17 page)

* * *

That afternoon Charlie walked with her mother,
Dietmar and Caspar over to the airfield. Back at
Flightsend she'd found her mother and Dietmar still
at the table in the garden, sharing grapes and a bottle
of wine; it had been a long, leisurely lunch.
Afterwards, Kathy suggested the walk.

'You come with us, Charlie. I'll put the
Closed
sign
up.'

Charlie couldn't remember her mother ever doing
this before at a weekend. It marked the day as special.

'Oh, by the way, Rowan phoned,' Kathy said,
clipping Caspar's lead on. 'She's just got back. She
wants you to play tennis one afternoon next week, with
her and Russell. She thought you might ask Angus.
And Angus rang, too. Not about tennis, about
something else. You're in demand today.'

'But Rowan's hopeless at tennis! And Russell's
brilliant, the school's number one player.'

'Angus is your Morris-dancing friend, with the hat
and bells?' Dietmar asked. 'Is he a tennis-player also?'

'Yes, that's Angus. At least, he was a Morris dancer
for
that
day – you never know what Angus is going to
do next. He's about the same as me at tennis – that is,
average but not spectacular, but there's nothing he
can't have a reasonable go at – so if the two of us play
Rowan and Russell it'll even out. I'll phone them both
later.'

They took the shorter way to the airfield, down the
footpath that led beside the Post Office, and into Hog
Pond field, soon to be transformed into Honeysuckle
Coppice. The earth-diggers had moved in during the
week and begun clearing part of the field. Abandoned
now for the weekend like yellow beached whales, they
marked the division between freshly-dug earth and
the wild, untouched part of the meadow, where white
butterflies hovered over the thistles and ragwort.

'Oh, it's awful,' Charlie said. 'All this'll soon
disappear under concrete.'

'Charlie has secret NIMBY tendencies,' Kathy said
to Dietmar. 'You know – Not In My Back Yard? Come
on, Charlie, it's not that bad. It'll look a sight for a
while, but when the houses are finished it won't make
an awful lot of difference to the village. Hey, there'll
be new gardens to be designed and planted—'

'
Mum!
' Charlie reproached. 'You're turning into a
hard-headed businesswoman! Never mind the
destruction of the environment – all you see is a career
opportunity!'

'Besides,' Dietmar said, 'it looks as if this field has
been furrow.'

'No, I think you mean . . .' Charlie knew that
furrow
wasn't the right word, but couldn't think what was.

'Furrow? You mean after it's been ploughed up?'
Kathy said. 'No, I don't think it's been ploughed for
ages.'

Dietmar stopped, frowning. 'No. Farrow. That's
what I meant.'

'But farrowing is to do with pigs,' Charlie said. 'It's
when a pig has piglets. You say a pig has farrowed,
don't you? That's right, isn't it, Mum?'

'No, I wasn't meaning pigs,' Dietmar said. 'Even
though you say this field is named Hog Pond.'

'
Harrow
,' Kathy said. 'That's when they trail a
sort of wiry or discy thing over the ground, to break up
clods. And you say something was a
harrowing
experience
.'

Dietmar still wasn't satisfied, shaking his head,
puzzled.

'Got it!' Charlie said. '
Fallow
. The field's been lying
fallow. It hasn't had anything grown in it.'

'Yes! Thank you, Charlie. That is what I meant to
say. If the field is fallow and not used for farming, then
a few houses are perhaps a reasonable use. But
fallow
is also deer, I think?'

'Yes, it is. Fallow deer. Furrow, farrow, harrow, fallow
– no wonder we're in a muddle,' Kathy said, laughing.
'It's a tongue-twister!'

'Tongue-twister?' Dietmar queried. 'A twisting of
the tongue, to say something very difficult, yes?'

'That's right.'

'All these words so similar. Now German is such a
simple, straightforward language.'

They reached the stile and climbed over into the
airfield. Dietmar walked straight to his father's cross
and they all stood there for a few moments. Charlie
thought: people were here, doing their jobs, watching
from the control tower, while it happened – the aircraft
burst into flames and Dietmar's father burned to
death within a few metres of people who'd have saved
him if they could. Even though he was enemy. His
mission, Dietmar had told her, was to destroy the
bomber planes on the ground. Instead, his own plane
had been destroyed, and him with it. She was
surprised and moved by Dietmar's attachment to the
father he'd never known; Dietmar had followed him
not only to the place of death but also into the sky, in
the Cessna. If the airfield ever
were
taken over for a
housing development, she thought, at least the story
had come to light. It wouldn't be lost, churned up by
the earth-movers and dug into the ground.

'All those years ago, I could not have stood here like
this,' Dietmar said, breaking the silence. 'A German. I
would have been interrogated as a spy and clapped
into an internment camp.'

'And yet you came to live here,' Kathy said.

'Yes. But now I feel more at home here than I did
then. In the village, and at Flightsend. Perhaps, now,'
he said, looking at Kathy, 'the name really means what
I wished for.'

Flight's End.

Charlie understood that with this remark Dietmar
had said something rather wonderful to her mother.
She also remembered Kathy's words when they first
saw the cottage: 'That's what it is, isn't it? An end to
everything that's gone wrong.' And she had made it
so, in her own way, with determination and courage.
Not the way Charlie would have chosen, but nevertheless
it was working.

They walked on, Dietmar and Kathy hand-in-hand.
Pretending not to notice, Charlie knew that her
mother, if challenged, would say that they were just
good friends.

Why do people say that, she wondered? What's
just
about a good friend?

She thought of Sean, who'd send her postcards
from Turkey, who'd come back and take her to the
Peak District; who'd remain her friend, though he
didn't have to. She thought of Rowan and Angus. Her
friends. She'd see them soon.

Caspar scouted ahead, nose to the ground, tail high.
Although the airfield was only slightly higher than the
village, Charlie had the feeling of being above everything,
distanced in the strange timelessness of the
perimeter tracks and runways. The church tower was
squatly huddled into its yew trees, the houses packed
close around the green. The day had turned cool, a
breeze ruffling the grasses. In the triangles cut by the
runways, the barley crop had been harvested, leaving
the ground dry and stalky. Swallows skimmed low.

'Swallows, or house martins?' Kathy said. 'I always
forget how to tell the difference.'

'They're swallows,' Charlie said. She knew because
Sean knew. 'They've got a reddish bit under their
throat. House martins have white rumps and shorter
tails.'

'Martin is also a small animal, like a polecat?'
Dietmar asked, and they were off again, sorting their
way through words and meanings.

'Marten,
E
– N. As in pine marten,' Kathy said.

Charlie walked ahead, letting them talk. She
whistled Caspar and he waited, turning to grin over his
shoulder. She was amazed by her own mood swing.
Not three hours ago, when Sean left, she could have
hidden in the toilet and wept for the end of her silly
flight of fantasy. But now she saw that it had been
replaced by something better and stronger. She
thought of all she had to look forward to: the flight in
the Cessna next Saturday, and seeing Rowan, and
tennis with Angus; Sean coming back, and the start of
the sixth form. Even getting the exam results in two
weeks' time was probably something she could look
forward to, rather than dread.

'Come on, Caspar!' She picked up a stick and
hurled it for him. She loved to see him galloping fast,
stretched out like a cheetah in a surge of pure speed
that was thrilling to watch. She ran after him without
a hope of keeping up. He caught the stick, pinned it
to the ground with a forepaw and fastened his jaws
round it, then trotted back to her.

'Good boy!' She hurled it again, watched him leap,
capture and tussle. She was on the main runway now,
at the highest part of the airfield, with Dietmar and
her mother walking slowly towards her. From here she
could see the dipping, weathered roof of Flightsend
itself, beyond the church yews.

It was still August, but the landscape was taking on
the mature colours of autumn. Clusters of elderberries
were forming on wine-red stems; the rowan in
the hedge was decked with orange berries. Charlie
thought of autumn: of misty, cobwebby mornings, of
long shadows, of bonfires and Hallowe'en. Things
would happen in their proper order.

She looked down at Flightsend. She thought of the
table in the garden, with the remains of lunch. Her
mother's rows of labelled plants in the nursery, the
seedlings and cuttings, the smell of fertile, watered
earth. Frühlingsmorgen in the garden, soon to be
joined by Rose's rose. Her own bedroom, with its
clutter and its secrets and its window overlooking the
garden and meadows.

Home.