The Adjacent (27 page)

While they had been talking the distant engines on the Lancaster had continued to roar, a familiar accompaniment to his day’s work out there in the flights, but now, unexpectedly, they fell silent. He and the woman were standing next to the Anson, and they were both resting their hands lightly on the leading edge of the wing.

‘Do you like to fly?’ she said.

‘Of course I do! But I’m not allowed, unless –’

‘I have the use of this Anson all day. Would you like me to take you on a flight? I want to show you how grateful I am to you, how much it meant to me when you found my purse. We don’t need permission. It is all taken care of.’

THEY FLEW ACROSS THE COUNTRY TO AN AIRSTRIP SHE TOLD
him was a satellite field, only used in cases of returning night-time emergencies or diversions because of bad weather. She said she had learned about it when she was forced to make a landing when fog closed in on her destination. It was in the low-lying country
between Shropshire and the hilly Welsh interior.

She made Torrance sit in the co-pilot’s seat on the right-hand side, the starboard, beside her in the cockpit. On a Lancaster this was where the flight engineer sat and was considered by all to be a privileged position. Torrance was familiar with the cramped cockpit in the Lancs, but the Anson’s felt about half the size. When he squeezed himself on to the hard metal seat his shoulders were pressing against hers. She seemed not to mind. She pulled on a flying helmet, then gave him a pair of brown Bakelite headphones so they could communicate with each other in flight. He discovered how close and intimate her voice sounded in his ears, but it also lost direction and gained a tinny, almost mechanical quality. When he replied to something she said, he felt her reacting.

‘No need to shout!’ she said, emphasizing the point with a friendly nudge of her elbow.

He sat back and tried to relax, determined to enjoy the flight. At first he assumed she would be going to do a few circuits of the airfield, the sort of short test flight on which the airmen sometimes took a few of the ground crew as a favour, but it was soon clear she had other plans. After running rapidly through the pre-flight check, and a brief radio-telephone conversation with one of the controllers she taxied the Anson to the end of the relief runway, then without any delay opened the throttles. With a roar the plane rolled down the concrete. They were in the air in what seemed like moments. She banked steeply and turned towards the west.

‘Are you sure we should be doing this?’ he said, suddenly nervous of what might happen if any of the NCOs in the Instruments Section should find out where he was.

‘I told you not to worry. I have this aircraft for today.’

‘But you can’t just borrow RAF planes when you feel like it.’

‘Sometimes I can. Later I will tell you how.’

She levelled the plane out, not at a great altitude. He could easily pick out houses and fields, roads and woodlands. At first Torrance was so enthralled by what they were doing that he could barely take in what he was seeing. He felt hypnotized by the movement, the sensation of height, the oily smell inside the plane, the noise and the vibration. As soon as they were in the air it was much colder inside the cockpit, but the sun dazzled down through the canopy. When he asked her about their height she pointed to the altimeter on the instrument panel in front of them – it was of course an instrument he had fitted or adjusted many times, but it had not occurred to him
to look at it in flight. It showed they were at just over 2,000 feet.

The Anson was a famously slow aircraft but they were in the air for less than an hour. She carried no maps, and navigated by constantly watching the ground as she flew. She told him that all the ATA pilots had learned to memorize landmarks: mainly canals, rivers and railway lines. She said she had a route-map of England in her head. She spoke from time to time on the radio-telephone, obtaining permission to cross from one control sector to another, reading from a series of codes which were scribbled in an exercise book, folded open at the page and strapped to her right leg just above her knee. It was the same open handwriting he had seen before. The casual way she pulled back the hem of her skirt, or moved her leg against his to read the codes, had a perturbing effect on him.

All too soon she told him on the intercom that the airfield she was heading for was in sight. She pointed down and to the left, but because of where he was sitting he could not see the ground ahead. She throttled the engines back, making the plane seem to brake in the air, then went into a steep turn. The sky, now scattered with a handful of bright-white cumulus clouds, deep blue above, circled around them. The steeply inclined glimpse of the ground made it feel as if they were about to tip right over. He was terrified and thrilled by the sensation, somewhere between soaring and tumbling. The turn caused him to lean against her, but she did not seem to mind. Soon she levelled the plane out and he could see a long section of yellowing grass mowed flat to form a landing strip in a field ahead.

The plane landed, bumping and rocking on the turf. She was calm, matter-of-fact, taxiing the plane across the uneven ground. As the plane swayed from side to side, his arms and shoulders bounced against hers.

THERE WERE FORMALITIES. A SOLITARY RAF WARRANT
officer was on duty, in a caravan parked on the side of the field. He accepted her inward flight plan. Something written on it made him start with surprise – he immediately began addressing her as ‘Ma’am’. There was no problem with the return plan, which he filed with obvious haste. He asked if she would need a car placed at her disposal, or would be requiring lunch. She politely turned down both offers, and the W.O. looked disappointed. She asked if the airstrip
was on emergency stand-by that night, and he confirmed that it was.

‘Ma’am, I have to be sure to clear your Anson for take-off well before nightfall.’

‘It will be,’ she said.

‘Does it require refuelling?’

‘No, thank you.’

Torrance’s ears were ringing from the endless racket of the Anson’s engines, heard inside the cockpit. He followed her as she walked away along the path behind the warrant officer’s caravan, through a wooden gate and out into a narrow country road. She was carrying a canvas bag, which she had slung over her shoulder. The lane ran parallel with the edge of the small airfield, but as soon as they had passed through the gate it was almost as if the airstrip was not there. Tall hedges grew on both sides, and a calm silence rested on the land. A haze of light scents drifted through the air. The sun shone down on them and Torrance unbuttoned his jacket.

‘You are not a curious person, are you?’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ah, now then, you have asked a question. I thought you would not. But you ask no others.’

‘I don’t like to,’ he said. ‘I mean, I have nothing to ask.’

‘Yes, you have. You want to know why I have taken you for a flight, and where we will be going now. You want to know why I am Polish and what I am doing here in England. And most of all you are wanting me to tell you how I can borrow an aircraft from the RAF and fly it about wherever I please, all day. Is that not true?’

‘Well, I was wondering – should I call you “Ma’am”?’

She laughed. ‘No, you must please call me Krystyna. I am not a senior officer. I am not even in the RAF. And you, Mike Torrance – I wish to call you by your first name. Is that right? Mike?’

‘Mike, or Michael. Since I’ve been in the RAF everyone I work with calls me Floody.’

‘Floody?’

‘Floody Torrance.’ She was looking puzzled, so he added, ‘It’s a nickname. Flood, Torrents. Torrance.’

‘No, I do not understand. I will call you Michael.’ She pronounced it
Mee-chyal.

‘But why did that warrant officer call you Ma’am?’

‘I showed him my orders and he saw who had signed them.’ She pulled some papers from inside her jacket. ‘Do you recognize the name?’

The orders were typewritten. At the bottom was a large rubber stamp, showing that the orders had come from
No.1 Site, Bomber Command HQ, High Wycombe.
The signature was an indecipherable scribble, but beneath it was typed
AVM Hon T.L.A. Rearden (Bart).
Torrance stared at the name, aware that it was familiar, but at that moment, as he walked slowly along the sunlit lane with this amazing young woman, it was impossible to make sense of it.

‘Air Vice Marshal Rearden,’ she said. ‘Does that help you with the recognizing?’

‘Rearden! He’s Harris’s second-in-command!’ Torrance said. ‘How on earth did you get Rearden to sign this?’

She was laughing again, but it seemed to him that it was with the delight of surprising him, not from making fun of him.

‘His name is Timothy, or as I know him, Tim. I have a room-mate where I am living, Lisbeth. She is in the ATA as well. We share a house in Hamble. That is where our ferry pool is based, close to one of the aircraft factories. I’m not allowed to tell anyone what kind of aircraft they build there, but that’s why we stay where we do. My roommate’s name is Rearden, Lisbeth Rearden… her father is the Vice Marshal. Sometimes she takes me home at weekends, and once or twice the Marshal has been there and we played cards and we drank gin and whisky and he would tease me and once he made me sing for him, and he always tells me long stories about flying in the last war.’

‘You know Rearden?’ Torrance said, stunned by this news.

‘I know Rearden, yes. So sometimes, if I do not do it too often, I can ask Lisbeth’s father if he will do me a big, big favour. And for today I asked him if I could borrow one of his training aircraft for a few hours. I did not tell him why and he did not ask. So here I am and as long as I return the aircraft to Hamble by nineteen hundred hours, I can go where I wish and take who I like with me.’

‘May I remove my jacket?’ Torrance said to her. ‘I’m feeling awfully warm.’

‘Yes, Michael. If I may also remove mine.’

THEY CAME SHORTLY TO A VILLAGE. THEY WALKED PAST A ROW
of terraced cottages and small shops, then at the point where the lane joined a wider road she took him through a lych gate and into a churchyard. Torrance had noticed a pub in the village and would
have liked a beer, but she said she never touched alcohol when she was flying. The churchyard was shaded, with bright patches of sunlight where it broke through the shadowing trees. Many of the old gravestones were overgrown with bushes or weeds. Birds sang, insects flitted about. There was no one else in sight.

‘I discovered this place last summer,’ she said. ‘I come here whenever I can, which is not often. I like it because it is so beautiful and it reminds me of a place in the hills near Kraków which I knew when I was a child. It was somewhere I liked to walk by myself, then later I would go there sometimes with Tomasz.’

‘You say Tomasz is still in Poland?’ Torrance said. He felt a stirring of quiet jealousy whenever she mentioned him.

‘I will tell you about Tomasz soon, but before that I must have something to eat. I did not have any breakfast. I brought a little food with me, which we can share. Are you hungry too?’

They walked through to the far side of the churchyard, where there was a small cleared space between three raised, ancient catafalques, the engraved names and tributes long blurred away by time or the elements. A low bench was here, facing back towards the grey walls and tower of the church. Cows were grazing in the field behind. Torrance stood beside her as she sat on the bench and pulled two or three packages and a bottle from her bag.

‘You like cheese?’ she said. ‘Hard-boiled eggs? I have brought some very English sandwiches for us.’ She also produced a glass jar of pickled cucumbers, which Torrance had never seen or tasted before.

They sat side by side, eating in silence, then shared the bottle, which contained lemonade squash. Now that the flight was over and he was alone with her, sitting quietly in the peaceful churchyard, Torrance felt tongue-tied. He did not want to hear any more about Tomasz, the newly discovered rival. Yet he hardly knew anything else about her: how could he claim anyone to be his rival for a young woman he had met barely more than an hour ago? And he was acutely aware that her work in the war, ferrying operational aircraft all over the country, was far more interesting and daring than his own modest job, adjusting compasses, cleaning out Pitot tubes and replacing faulty instruments. What could he tell her about himself that would interest her?

She kept glancing sideways at him while she ate – once he caught her eye, and she smiled.

As she screwed up the paper food bags she had brought, and stuffed them back into her bag, she said, ‘You will never know what
this has meant to me, Michael. I know you are not Tomasz, I know it is a big mistake to think the way I am thinking, but I was so shocked to see you.’

‘How long is it since you last saw him?’

‘Four years ago, in 1939. You are what, twenty-two?’

‘Twenty-one.’

‘Tomasz was about that age when I last saw him. You look exactly as I remember him – it’s uncanny to see you. But of course I don’t know what has happened in four years. He will be different now.’

‘Have you heard from him?’

She said, ‘Not since the Nazis invaded. I must tell you. Today – I wanted only to meet you, only to ask for my purse back, and I thought I would take you for a short flight to show how grateful I am to you. I brought food because I would be hungry, and I brought enough for you too. That was all that I intended: a short flight around your airfield, some sandwiches to share, maybe a little walk and some conversation. Very British, just as I like it. But until I saw you I had no idea the effect you would have on me. I have to tell you.’

MICHAEL TORRANCE WRITES:
IT IS 1953, TEN YEARS SINCE I
met Krystyna Roszca. The Second World War is long over, the past has gone, everything is different in the world, in my life, in everybody’s lives. I am no longer, I hope, the callow young man I was then. But on that warm day in the early summer of 1943, Krystyna told me the story of how she travelled to Britain and became a pilot for the ATA. Of course, she told me in her own way, in her lovely, accented English. I cannot reproduce that, but I was so infatuated with her that everything she told me burned into my consciousness. I have never forgotten her story. It is of course not so different from many stories from that time: a lot of young people met each other briefly during the war, but were then roughly parted in some final, often distressing way. As soon afterwards as I could I jotted down a few notes on what she had told me, but in fact her story was vivid in my memory. I remembered, or I believed I remembered, everything. I have always intended to write down what she said, and at last I have done it. It is as true as I can make it. I have tried to write it in her words,
although all I can do is offer my remembered version.