He got to his feet, a little ashamed of that remark. “All right, Franck,” he said. “I shall remember what you’ve said. I want you chaps to stay together if you can; it makes a big difference to the other crews. But I do realise that you can’t if things become unpleasant. Leave it with me.”
Gunnar Franck got up and went towards the door. “He is a ver’ good captain, sir,” he said. He looked up, smiling boyishly. “It is perhaps the spring. I think that you must lose a lot of aircraft in the spring.”
The Wing Commander said: “Get on with you! Have you got somewhere to go for your leave, Franck?”
“Yes, sir, thank you. I have ver’ good friends from my country living at Blackheath.”
“All right. Have a good time.”
Dobbie dropped back into his chair and sat deep in thought, staring at the nude. It was tricky, this—too tricky to be handled in a hurry. By giving them a fortnight’s leave he had given himself time to think. When he had thought about it for a day or two he would have a word with Chesterton, and they would decide together what was to be done; he had a great respect for his Squadron Leader (Admin.), old enough to be his father. Perhaps, too, he would talk it over with his wife. Dobbie had married during his first tour of bombing ops in 1940; he well remembered the distraction from his work. But his had been a straightforward affair; he had asked Joan to marry him and she had said yes, and they had been married—just like that. She had not kept him in suspense, but even so he had found courtship in the intervals of night raids over Germany to be a severe nervous strain. He had a joke with Joan about “the happy couple”; they had proved by their experience that no one could be happy while they were engaged. Now they had a baby fifteen months’ old, and had just embarked upon another one. Peace of mind did not come till you were married, once the trouble started. The surest shield that any bomber pilot could possess was peace of mind.
He sat there for ten minutes, deep in thought.
Gervase met Marshall in the ante-room before lunch. He came into the room, hesitated, and then crossed over to her. “Morning,” he said. “I’m going off on leave this afternoon. I did want to ask you one thing before I go.”
She said: “What’s that?”
“Someone slipped a message to us on the W/T, when we were in a spot. Did you do it?”
“Yes. I’m glad you got it.”
“I’m glad you sent it.”
There was a pause; neither knew how to break it; they stood awkwardly together in the crowd, not caring whether anyone was looking at them or not. “Where are you going for your leave?” she asked.
“Just home, to Northwood.”
She said awkwardly: “I do hope you have nice weather.” And as she said it she thought despairingly, “This is absurd. Last time we spoke to each other it was about getting married, and now this stupid talk.”
They moved away, both miserable.
Gervase went through her afternoon routine restless and troubled. She went back to the mess for tea, and, passing the letter rack and looking for her post, she found a sealed envelope with her name, unstamped. She opened it and saw it was from Marshall, and thrust it in her pocket unread. She had tea quickly and went back to her quarters to read it in peace, unreasonably excited.
It said:
As from, Crossways,
Oakleigh Road,
Northwood.
Dear Gervase,
I’m not sure that I shall be coming back to Hartley. I’ve not been doing so well lately, and I think perhaps it’s time I had a change. But what I want to say is this, I’m sorry I didn’t thank you better for that message you sent with the fix. I made about six different mistakes that night, which wasn’t quite so hot. Up till the time I got your message I did every bloody thing wrong. After that I did every bloody thing right.
This doesn’t need any answer, but I just wanted you to know.
Yrs.
PETER MARSHALL.
She sat on her bed staring at this letter with a lump so high up in her throat that she could hardly swallow. The tone of if was so unlike the Peter Marshall that she knew, the brisk young man who went out catching pike and shooting pigeons. Gunnar had told her bitterly that Marshall had been different in the last few weeks; the letter told her he was different indeed. All the self-confidence was gone. The superman who had brought his crew through fifty-four or fifty-five raids over Germany and Italy hadn’t been doing so well lately.
She sat staring at the carpet at her feet, sick with a new feeling of responsibility. She had done her best to put it to him nicely in the wood that day; she had done everything she could to avoid hurting him. But she had hurt him; she knew that, inevitably. She now knew that she had hurt him far more than she realised. He had grown sharp and bitter with his crew; she knew that from Gunnar. He had grown casual and ineffective in his work; he had told her so. Unhappily she realised that she now knew what had happened to R for Robert.
She got up presently and put on her cap before the glass; she felt that she must get out and get some air. She went out in the evening light to walk round the ring runway; it was nearly three miles round the aerodrome past the dispersed bombers; she could cover it in fifty minutes. She went striding out of the camp into the quiet stillness of the field. There was no flying going on that night; the Wellingtons stood gaunt and spectral and deserted on their concrete rounds, their great wheels shrouded with the canvas drip covers.
She walked on, hard and earnestly. The quick exercise eased her mind, preventing concentration; reason was dulled, but instinct was alive. She entered the last reach of the broad tarmac track forty-five minutes later feeling that action from her was required. Matters in R for Robert had gone desperately wrong. Unknowing, she had started up the trouble; it was for her to put it right. The next move lay with her.
As luck would have it she ran into Sergeant Phillips as she walked back into the camp. In the last light of evening Sergeant Phillips was mowing a little bit of lawn outside the control office with a motor mower. He enjoyed mowing with the motor mower; it was gentle exercise and pleasantly mechanical; the putter of the little motor pleased him, and the smell of new cut grass. He had hung about idle all the afternoon, cursing the close season that prevented fishing, till he had remembered the motor mower and the spring grass that had been growing up where they had had the lawn the year before. For an hour and a half he had been happy. Now it was time to pack up; it was getting too dark to see. But that would do till he got back off leave; he could have another go at it then.
Gervase walked past him, hesitated, and turned back. She said a little diffidently: “Aren’t you Sergeant Phillips?”
He straightened up, surprised. “That’s right,” he said.
“I thought you were all going off on leave. You’re in Robert, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “I got further to go. There’s only one train in the day goes from Oxford to York, where I come from. I can’t go before to-morrow morning. They won’t let me go through London on the pass—and it wouldn’t be no quicker, anyway.”
She said: “I was sorry to hear you had that trouble after Mannheim. Tell me, what happened?”
He had been all through this in the sergeants’ mess, several times. He grinned. “Seems like the captain and the navigator added in the date when they was working out the course,” he said. “I was back in the turret, so I didn’t see nothing of it. But we weren’t going the right way at all.”
Gervase said: “I thought you didn’t do that sort of thing in R for Robert.”
“We didn’t used to,” said the sergeant dryly.
There was a time, she felt, for plain talk to be used and this was one of them. She had a Yorkshire background, and she was talking to a Yorkshireman; spade called to spade, although they did not realise it. “I had a word with Sergeant Franck the other day,” she said. “He had a moan about Flight Lieutenant Marshall. He said that you were all getting fed-up with him. Is that right?”
“We ain’t fed-up with hi
m,” the sergeant said. “Best captain I ever been with, up till recently. Then he got a bit awkward, but we all do that. We’ll be all okeydoke when we get back off leave. I said so to the Wing Commander—I don’t want no shift, I said.”
“I see,” said Gervase thoughtfully. So Wing Commander Dobbie was in on this.
Sergeant Phillips leaned against the handles of the mower, confidential in the half-light. “ ’Course,” he said, “this is a bad time of year, when you don’t know what to do, and that don’t make things easier. Up till March there was the fishing, ’n that made a lot of difference, because we was all keen on that, ’n we used to go down to the river and do it all together, captain and all. It was when the fishing finished things seemed to go wrong. I know I hadn’t got nothing to do with myself, afternoons, and Leech neither, nor Gunnar Franck. And I guess the captain, he was same as all the rest of us and he hadn’t got nothing to do either. It’s weary when you don’t know what to do.”
She said, wondering: “I never thought of that.”
The rear-gunner said: “Well, it makes a difference when you have a bit of fun together, all together, like.”
She felt that she had to know everything now. It was nearly dark, and darkness gave her confidence. She said: “Is that all that’s been wrong with Marshall? It doesn’t sound much.”
Phillips said: “I was talking to Gunnar. Seems like he had a bit of a dust-up with one of his girl friends, and she gave him the works. That’s what we thought.”
Gervase said: “You’re right there. That was me.”
The sergeant laughed, suddenly and boyishly, relieving the tension. “Better not tell Gunnar Franck that, or he’ll wring your neck.”
She said indignantly: “I didn’t mean all this to happen!”
There was a long pause; there was no more to be said. The sergeant stooped and fiddled with the Bowden at the carburettor; Gervase stood awkward for a few minutes, not knowing what to do. “Well,” she said at last, “I must be getting on. Thank you for telling me what you did.”
“Okay,” the sergeant said. He hesitated, and then said: “If I can do anything, any time, just say.”
The girl nodded. “I’ll let you know. I hope you have a good leave.”
She walked up to her quarters, and up to her little room. She pulled the chair up to the table and sat down to write a letter; it seemed to her to be very urgent that she should do so. In spite of that she sat for a long time before beginning, trying to sort out her feelings into concrete terms. In the end she wrote:
R.A.F. Station,
Hartley Magna,
Oxfordshire.
Dear Peter,
I got your letter and it was nice of you to write. Before you do anything about leaving Hartley I think we ought to talk it over, if you think it’s anything to do with me, because it seems a frightful pity to break up your crew and not so good for the war. I’ll meet you anywhere you say if you’d like to talk things over, if you give me a ring. But anyway, don’t do anything in a hurry; things may seem different when you’ve had a holiday. They do, you know,
Yours sincerely,
GERVASE.
It was nearly time for supper when she had finished this, and sealed it in an envelope, and stamped it. The last post had left the station, but there was a collection at the post office in Hartley Magna at eight o’clock if she went quickly. She put on her raincoat and got out her bicycle and rode down to the village and posted her letter; she rode back with a mind that was at ease. Supper was over when she got back to her quarters; all she got was a small slice of Spam with luke-warm potatoes, and some bread and cheese. But she had her chocolate ration, and her letter was on its way, and she was happy.
Her letter travelled quickly, too quickly for her to have rehearsed her part sufficiently. She was called to the telephone during lunch next day; squeezing into the stuffy little box and shutting the door carefully behind her, she wondered what on earth she was to say. She lifted the receiver and said: “Section Officer Robertson speaking.”
“Peter Marshall here. Hullo, Gervase.”
She said: “Oh—hullo.”
“I got your letter.”
“Oh—fine.” And then she said idiotically: “It’s been frightfully quick.”
He disregarded that. “Look, would you like to have tea with me in Oxford one day, Gervase? We could meet at Fuller’s in the Cornmarket, where we went before.”
She said: “Isn’t it a frightful bore for you coming all that way?”
“No, it’s not. What about to-morrow afternoon?”
She said: “That’s all right for me if I’m allowed out. You know what I mean.” Before an operation the station was hermetically closed, without notice.
He said: “I’ll take chance on that. If you don’t turn up I’ll ring up again and we’ll have another shot.”
“All right. Half-past four?”
“I’ll be there.”
There was little doubt about that, she reflected. She said: “All right. Good-bye, Peter. See you then.”
“Good-bye, Gervase.”
She travelled into Oxford by the bus next afternoon, reaching the confectioner’s at exactly half-past four. She found him at a table in an alcove, a table flanked by tall oak screens designed to prevent eavesdropping, designed to hinder a young woman from getting away before she had listened to what a young man had to tell her. She viewed it with misgiving as she crossed the room, thinking that he must have got there in the middle of the afternoon to have secured that table.
She said shyly: “Hullo, Peter.”
“Hullo, Gervase.” She slipped into the seat beside him and took off her cap. “What are we going to eat?”
She asked for tea and cakes and waited while he ordered them, and till the girl had gone away. Then they turned and looked at each other.
He said: “This is frightfully awkward, isn’t it?”
She laughed nervously. “You don’t know what I’ve been feeling like on the way in.”
“I do. I’ve had further to come.”
They laughed together, and the tension was reduced. She said: “Have you done anything about a transfer yet?”
“Not yet. I was going to write about it in a day or two.”
“I do think it’d be an awful pity to break up your crew.”
He smiled faintly. “That’s what you said in your letter. I don’t think that matters a bit; as a crew we aren’t so hot just now. And you said something about the dear old war, too. I don’t care two hoots about the bloody war.”
She stared across the room, feeling that he wasn’t in a very easy mood. It occurred to her that possibly he had a point of view that she had not appreciated, that she did not completely understand. She said:
“If you put in for a transfer, what would you do?”
“I’d ask to be put back on Coastal. I was there to start with, so I know the work.”
“Would they let you do that?”
“I think so. I’ve done a good long spell in Bomber Command, and with a lousy show behind me like this last one I could say my nerve had gone. I think they’d let me go.”
There was a pause.
Gervase said: “We should miss you frightfully at Hartley.”
“Who do you mean by ‘we’?”
She turned to him: “Everybody, Peter. I don’t mean me especially. We’ll talk about that later, if you want to. I mean everybody else upon the station. Everybody would miss you terribly—I mean, all the flying crews.”
He stared at her. “Why would they miss me? There are lots of other pilots.”
“But, Peter, not with your experience.” She struggled to express herself. “I mean, all these raw young men who come in, when they’re too young to know what it’s all about, before they’ve got real confidence in themselves, all pimples and pink cheeks. They see people like you and Pat Johnson, and half a dozen others who have been on scores of raids, and they hear the way you talk amongst yourselves. You don’t know what it mea
ns to them. It gives them confidence.”
He thought about it for a minute. “That might be an argument for keeping me in Bomber Command,” he said at last. “But it’s no reason why I should stay on at Hartley.”
“Your own crew would be lost without you, Peter.”
He said bitterly: “My own crew would be glad to see my back.”
She said hotly: “That’s not true, and you know it.”
He grinned, and pushed forward a plate of highly-coloured pastries. “Have a bun.”
She stared at him, laughed and relaxed. She chose a pale éclair, and transferred it to her plate. She said: “Do you want to leave Hartley, Peter? Is that it?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said, irresolute. “I used to like it there, but it’s gone ropey in the last few weeks.”
She said in a low tone: “Is that because of us?”
He nodded without speaking.
“I am sorry, Peter. I’ve given you a lousy time.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s just the way things have happened. But I think a change might be a good thing, in a way.”
She took a mouthful of her éclair, and stared across the room, avoiding his eyes. “I feel I’ve been frightfully clumsy over this,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you miserable, Peter, when I said we oughtn’t to meet any more. If I’d known that it was going to do all this to your work I—I’d have thought of something different, perhaps.”
“Because of the dear old war?” he said gently.
The suggestion confused her. “Not altogether,” she said uncertainly.
“I’d like to think it was because of the dear old me,” he said.
“I know you would,” she replied. “But you mustn’t.”
“All right,” he said quietly.
She turned to him. “When I said we oughtn’t to meet at all, I thought it was the best thing for you, Peter. Honestly, that’s what I was thinking. It’s not that I don’t like coming out with you—I do. But I thought it would be better for you if we didn’t.”