But I didn’t have too bad a time of it in the second war. I’ve got fond memories, like gallons of sweet hot chocolate, when it was available, and bloody great wedges of bread covered in golden syrup, nights out under the stars, and those lovely bossy girls from the WVS bustling about, and the searchlights criss-crossing the sky, and those little bints on the anti-aircraft guns with their blonde curls escaping from under their tin hats, and the Duke of Kent coming up to visit and strolling about being interested with his hands behind his back. Mrs McCosh would’ve been impressed.
After the war I began to think about Baldhart again, and I couldn’t get her out of my head. It was like being haunted.
50
The Temptation
On the morning after his return to Tangmere, Daniel received a letter from Gaskell, saying that she had applied to join the Air Transport Auxiliary, and his first thought was that she would have made a very fine fighter pilot, given the chance. Gaskell said that she was positively crowded out at the house in Hexham, what with all the children, and Sophie and Fairhead, and she needed to get up into the air alone, preferably for hours at a time. She was planning to travel with a pad of cartridge paper, and make a great many sketches that she could work up to canvas after the war.
He folded the letter up, put it in his pocket, and reported for duty to Wing Commander Woodhouse, hoping to be sent off somewhere in his Hurricane, only to be told: ‘I’ll need you to report back here at 1700 hours. There’s someone who very badly wants to see you.’
‘Can I take the bus up for a spin, sir?’
‘Yes, but make sure you’re here at 1700. It’s very important, very hush-hush. Don’t go looking for trouble. This wouldn’t be a good time to get shot down.’
Accordingly, Daniel took the bus up and went to buzz his mother’s house in Partridge Green. It might give her a little pleasure to know that her son was back aloft, and not going to give up old habits just because there had been a tragedy. Then he went and stunted over Beachy Head for the Canadians and the Free French and Captain Raphael, if he was still down there. Stunting still made him feel nauseous, but it was a habit that was impossible to give up if you had ever been in the Flying Corps, and you never admitted to the nausea anyway, even to yourself.
That early evening he went to the Wing Commander’s office, and found him there with a middle-aged man in the service dress of the Royal Engineers. He was grey-haired and silver-moustached, but plainly still very fit. Daniel guessed that, like him, he was a survivor of the last war, and still sound enough for this one. He was introduced as Colonel Ericson.
After the ritual exchange of salutes, Wing Commander Woodhouse invited the two men to sit, and remembered not to offer Daniel a cigarette. He said, ‘Colonel Ericson has a proposition for you, Daniel.’
The Colonel coughed to clear his throat, and leaned forward. ‘First of all, I am truly damned sorry to hear about your daughter. I’ve got two myself. One’s a land girl and the other’s ATS. With any luck they’ll never go to sea.’
Daniel nodded dumbly, and the Colonel continued. ‘I understand that you can speak German. Are you fluent?’
‘Not really. I wouldn’t say so. I’m on the cusp of fluency, really. I can understand it all quite well and I can say what I want to say, but my accent is pretty poor. I learned it in Westphalia.’
‘But you can get by. Could you get by as a Frenchman who speaks German? No pretence of being German at all? As if you were, let’s say, from Alsace?’
‘Yes, that would be pretty easy. You do know that I’m half French?’
‘Of course. And incidentally, it’s a great honour to meet you. I’ve been an admirer since 1918. Since you captured that Gotha, in fact. Quite a feat. A David and Goliath exploit if ever there was one.’
‘Thank you. May I ask what you’re leading up to?’
‘Well, you’re a bit long in the tooth, but clearly very fit and active, with a long record of resourcefulness and courage, and you speak three languages.’
‘Five, sir. I used to speak Pashtun and Tamil, and could pick them up again quite quickly.’
‘Hmm, well, we’ll bear that in mind, but at present we need people for the European theatre. Did you do Greek? At Westminster?’
‘I hated it, sir. I didn’t pay any attention, and now I regret it.’
Wing Commander Woodhouse intervened. ‘I’ve got a young man here who you might talk to. Warren. Bunny Warren. He’s a classics scholar, very fit and confident. Knows how to use a parachute. Rowing blue at Cambridge. He recites the battle scenes from The Iliad when he’s three sheets to the wind. I wouldn’t want to lose him, but he doesn’t really have the makings of a great flyer. He’s the kind who breaks the undercarriage and clips trees. It won’t be the Huns that get him.’
‘Ah, really? I’ll speak to him later if I may.’ Turning to Daniel he asked, ‘Have you ever flown a Lysander?’
‘No, but I imagine it would be exactly like flying an RE8.’
‘It’s a great little plane, the Lysander. It can land and take off on a sixpence, just like a Sopwith. How are you with night flying? Mainly by moonlight?’
‘I’ve never tried it, sir. The Night Camels did all that sort of thing last time. I’ve always been a daylighter.’
‘Are you willing to try?’
‘I’m not keen, but I’m willing.’
‘And how about parachuting? I know you’ve never done it. Are you willing to learn to do that? At night?’
‘In the dark? Good God. Well, I’ve always wanted to try it. It looks like tremendous fun. Are you asking me to become a spy?’ Daniel felt his stomach churn with fear and excitement.
‘Well, as far as possible you would always be in uniform.’
‘So they can’t shoot me when they catch me?’
‘Precisely. But they probably would anyway. The Huns seem to have fewer principles than ever this time.’
‘Don’t you think I’m too old for this?’
‘No. There would be extensive training. And when you’re not in uniform, it will be less suspicious if you’re older rather than younger.’
‘So I would sometimes be in mufti?’
‘Yes. Sometimes.’
‘And then I could be shot as a spy?’
‘Yes. Indeed you could.’
‘I think you’re asking me to commit suicide.’
‘That’s what one’s country always demands in time of war.’
The Colonel leaned forward and said, ‘There’s necessary work, and very few who are capable of doing it. You’re one of them. And I’m guessing that after what’s happened…your terrible loss…you might be ideal for us.’
‘Ideal?’
‘I apologise if this sounds cruel, but you have less to live for now,’ said the Colonel levelly, ‘and in addition to all your other qualities, that’s a hell of an asset to an enterprise like ours.’
‘I’ve realised that I do have people to live for,’ said Daniel, ‘and I do have some conditions.’
‘Hmm, I thought you might. Everybody does. Some people demand a decent store of cyanide capsules. What do you want then?’
‘I want to be based here at Tangmere.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, you would be. You must have noticed all the Lysanders going in and out. Or heard them at night. You don’t even have to move your billet.’
‘Secondly, I want to keep my Hurricane, fully armed, and no one else is to use it.’
‘No one would want to use it,’ said the Wing Commander. ‘It’s completely obsolete. We’re all in Spitfires now.’
‘It isn’t obsolete to me. It’s a hell of a lot tougher than a Spitfire. I’d rather crash a Hurricane any day.’
‘You’ll really have to stop taking on the enemy.’
‘My orders are not to initiate an attack. I can’t help it i
f they keep turning up on my tail.’
‘It is generally believed that you interpret your orders somewhat flexibly,’ said Colonel Ericson. ‘But do we have a deal? If so, you have until Monday to change your mind. No one is ordering you to commit suicide. That remains entirely voluntary. By the way, I have some news that might interest you. Your old mucker, Fluke Beckenham-Gilbert, has returned from Argentina. He’s back in, at Hendon.’
‘Flying?’
‘Well, he’s doing the same as you. Flying around giving pep talks. Apparently he wouldn’t fly a monoplane or anything with a retractable undercarriage, so they’ve given him a Gladiator. His pep talks are a little oversimplified; he repeats the word “attack” rather a lot. They’re hoping to make him shift over to the ATA, but then he’d have to reconcile himself to monoplanes.’
‘Good old Fluke,’ said Daniel. ‘I haven’t seen him since about 1919. I’ll have to look him up. Do you need anything delivering to Hendon?’
On the way out Daniel passed somebody coming in, a slimly built man in middle age, with a long face and a salt-and-pepper moustache. He looked strangely familiar. Both men did a double take, and paused in their step. ‘Skipper?’ said Daniel.
‘Good God, Pittsy, it’s you. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m flying around in a Mark 1 Hurricane, doing pep talks.’
‘And I’m flying around in a Hurricane organising training.’
‘How do you like the Hurricane?’
‘Hmm, very solid and reliable. Not as much fun as a Bristol Fighter, though. You were a Camel man, weren’t you?’
‘Pups, Camels, and then Snipes. I’ve got a Snipe and a Pup rotting in a barn in Hexham. They’re a pitiful sight.’
‘I wish I had a Bristol Fighter.’
‘You never went back to New Zealand? You’ve still got a whiff of the accent.’
The Air Vice Marshall shook his head. ‘I’m reckoning on retiring there after the war. In the end, a man has to go home. And I’m getting sick of banging my head against a brick wall. The higher you get in this game, the less of a soldier you are, and the more you have to be a bloody politician. I had Bader and Leigh-Mallory throwing this entire sector into confusion with their damned Big Wing, and instead of them getting a bollocking for bloody-minded perversity, I got shifted downwards and sideways to a training group.
‘They’d take hours to form up, and by then the enemy would have dropped their eggs and gone. It’s like Richthofen’s bloody flying circus, but half as effective. How come Richthofen did it twice as fast, and didn’t even have radio? Leigh-Mallory thought he was in some kind of competition with me, and I never could get on with Bader. He’s…well…I can’t think of a diplomatic way of putting it.’
‘An arrogant espèce de merde, un vrai couillon,’ said Daniel.
‘Very diplomatic. I suppose you heard the rumour, about how he got shot down?’
‘I’m almost certain it’s true. It’s what the Huns are saying.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. What’s the news with you?’
Daniel thought of saying nothing, but blurted out, ‘My daughter just got killed. Torpedoed. She was a Wren.’ He suddenly wished he had kept it to himself.
Keith Park’s shoulders drooped. ‘Oh, Pittsy, empty chairs. I’m so sorry. Makes my troubles seem a bit piffling. Come and have a drink. You can tell me all about the time you captured that Gotha.’
‘We can talk about the times we got shot down.’
Keith Park put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and said, ‘Look, we don’t have to talk at all. I don’t mind just sitting there saying nothing. I’m at Goodwood. My driver’ll bring you back.’ He paused, then said sympathetically, ‘There are so many ways to get shot down, eh?’
Three hours later, Daniel went out for a long walk in the darkness to clear his head, setting off in the direction of Chichester. It had been very strange, but also comforting, to sit with Keith, mulling over old times. They had never been particular friends, but had often bumped into each other during the last war, and had occasionally got drunk together in Amiens. Daniel reflected somewhat ruefully that if he had stayed in, as Keith had, he too might have been an Air Vice Marshall by now. He wondered if Keith had thought they were all worth it, those intervening years. If you have been embroiled in a war in which you confidently expected to die, what were you supposed to do with so much life unexpectedly left over? There were so many ways of passing the peace, and you would never know what they would have been like, those roads not taken.
A Lysander flew slowly overhead, like a rumbling owl, on its way to Normandy. They only ever went out when the moon was bright. Daniel shivered, and talked to himself and the moon, imagining it to be a visible manifestation of Esther. He had always thought of it as young and virginal. He could see the black silhouette of the cathedral spire against the deepening indigo of the sky. He still had Keith Park’s advice repeating itself in his head: ‘Look, Pittsy, the only thing you can do at such a terrible time is keep yourself as occupied as possible. Keep yourself busy. Busy busy busy.’ He thought about all the comrades he had lost in the last war, and of the women he had loved, of Rosie, Samadara, Christabel, Mary; of his mother, alone and grief-stricken in Partridge Green, and of his brother, rotting slowly from self-hatred in Brighton; of solemn Felix and sparkling Felicity, both still at school, who would never know that he was their father; and of his truculent legitimate son who would soon be a sitting duck in a tank with a derisory six-pound gun.
He thought about how, if you have no faith, there is no meaning in anything unless you put it there yourself.
And he made his decision.
Acknowledgements
My heartfelt thanks to Sanath Ukwatte, chairman of the Mount Lavinia Hotel, Colombo, and to Merrill J. Fernando of Dilmah Tea; their hospitality and helpfulness were beyond anything I could have deserved or hoped for; also to Professor Kingsley da Silva, of Kandy, for giving up so much of his time to enlighten me about Ceylon under British rule; also to Shevanthie Goonesekera, who greatly facilitated my second research trip, and ensured that we were always full of tea.
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Louis de Bernières, So Much Life Left Over
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