A Future Arrived (48 page)

“If you'd like me to.”

“I'd feel happier if you were back in Norwich. Going to school, making friends … filling your days.” He gazed out across the slate-smooth loch, the empty hills. “This is a lonely spot, Kate. I hate to think of you being out here by yourself.”

She pressed against his side and held his hand. “But you'd be here whenever you could. I wouldn't be lonely.”

“It would be different if we were married, Kate. I don't feel right about it.”

“I understand, Collie. Really I do. And that's quite a wonderful thought. I'd make a marvelous wife.”

“Yeah, you can make an omelet … and toast.”

“That's a beginning, isn't it? I can also brew tea, don't forget that. And speaking of tea, I could go for a cup. The wind is always cold here.”

“Another reason to be in Norwich.” He gave her Junoesque figure a pat and a squeeze. “Your delicate health.”

They strolled up the hill toward the house, arms about each other's waist. “Have you heard anything from Derek?” she asked.

“Just a short note a couple of weeks ago. He didn't say much. I know his squadron's in the Dunkirk battle. A guy at the base has a kid brother flying Spits out of Kentish Hill. They're teamed with Derek's bunch. I worry about him.”

“Yes, so do I. I worry about everybody.”

“Not about me, honey. I'm a bus driver.”

She made tea while Colin wandered about the one large ground-floor room. The stone walls were covered with antlers and the stuffed heads of Highland stags.

“Somebody liked to kill things,” he said as she brought the tea in on a tray.

“Grandpapa. He was in the army when he was very young—Prince Albert's Own, the lancers. Fought in the Zulu War … or liked to say he fought. Daddy told me that was all humbug. He came down with fever in Durban and never even saw a Zulu. I suppose he took out his martial frustrations on the deer.”

She sat on the edge of a sofa and poured the tea. She had made sandwiches of potted shrimp and ham and had sliced a Dundee cake.

“Quite a feast.”

“I hope you're hungry,” she said.

“I'm always hungry.”

She leaned against the cushions and watched him eat, one hand toying idly with the locket at her throat. “Collie, would it be such a daft idea if we did get married?”

“Crazy.”

“Is it because you're not sure if you love me? Please be honest. I won't be hurt.”

He munched slowly and swallowed some tea. “It's got nothing to do with love. It's … oh, I don't know, responsibilities. When people marry it's to build a life together. A home … kids … sharing everything. I have no control over my life right now, Kate. A leaf in the goddamn wind. There's even a rumor that now that we've occupied Iceland we might be sent there, to patrol the convoy lanes from Canada. It could be just talk, but what if it isn't? What sort of marriage would that be? You couldn't hop a train to Iceland.” He placed his cup on the table and turned to face her, his hands on her arms. “I do love you. I want you to know that and believe it. I knew I loved you when I woke up that night in your flat. Three, maybe four in the morning. Me in my shirt and pants … you in your robe. Your back was to me and you were sleeping like a baby. I stroked your hair for a minute and then rolled over and went back to sleep. You know what some dope asked me in the mess that next day? He wanted to know if I'd found a nice bit of fluff in Norwich to sleep with! Some … nice bit of fluff you are.”

Her eyes never left his face. “Please kiss me, Collie.”

How soft her lips were. And her body soft beneath the cashmere sweater, her breasts pressed tightly against his chest. To love her, he thought. To have her naked beneath him. To be inside of her. Buried deep in the warmth of her. He sat back and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Kate rested her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed.

“Allison expects me back by four,” he lied.

“So soon?”

“I'm afraid so. A … training flight.”

“When will I see you again?”

“I can't say. I don't know when I'll be able to get down to Norfolk. Go back, Kate. Don't miss any more classes. If you love me you'll do what I ask.”

He stopped on the way back, by the banks of Loch Ness, and got out of the car. The water looked immeasurably deep and cold. He wondered idly if there really was a monster down among the sunless reeds and idly tossed pebbles into the depths.

T
HE NEW SQUADRON
leader of 624 had lasted exactly four and one half minutes into his first fracas. A cannon-firing Messerschmitt had blown his tail to bits and he had bailed out, floating down into Belgium and captivity with an abashed wave of the hand. Flying Officer Derek Ramsay was made permanent/temporary leader.

“It's that type of gobbledegook that just makes me boil,” Jolly Rodgers said after hanging up the telephone that evening. “What in God's name is a permanent/temporary when he's at home? Now answer me that. The wing commander should have given you the squadron and raised you a notch. It isn't fair.”

“It doesn't matter,” Derek said. “There are only ten of us now. Hardly a squadron if you come to think of it.”

Jolly tilted back his desk chair and looked at the hollow-eyed young man standing before him. The 624 had gone over twice today and had shot down two bombers and a Messerschmitt 109 and damaged a couple more with only the loss of the squadron leader to mar the trips. Incredible, considering the losses in the past few days. “I'm restricting all men to base tonight, Ramsay.”

“Because of what happened at the Red Bull last night? We didn't start anything, Jolly. Just a loud-mouthed, half-drunk infantry lieutenant. No one hit him, you know. Just a push or two.”

“That's hardly the point. If any of your chaps want to know why I'm doing it they can gather in the mess in half an hour. First round on me.”

It was a sullen bunch that greeted Jolly when he strolled in. He signed a blank tab for the first round of drinks and then leaned back against the bar and looked at the silent pilots. Twenty-two of them from both squadrons—and not many of them older than that.

“No point in your looking at me as you would at some wicked uncle. What happened last night has been happening all over southern England. And I think you know why. The brown jobs don't like us. The ‘Brylcreem Boys' they call us. That's the army for you. They can't grasp what they can't see. They didn't
see
us over the beaches at Dunkirk. Ergo, we couldn't have been up there helping them out. Those that have come back can't wait to vent their spleen on anyone in RAF blue. That's a pity, but true. At the moment, only you know how bloody hard you've been fighting … and against what incredible odds. In time, when the true story comes out, the army will probably feel like shits. Until things cool down, avoid them before someone gets his head knocked in and
really
bad blood builds between us. And that's all I have to say. Drink up.”

They were scrambled at seven in the morning, taking off two at a time and thundering up into the pale, clear sky of this first day of June. Sector Control vectored them to ten thousand feet and joined them with a Polish squadron that rose to meet them over the South Foreland. They were a wing now, three squadrons, thirty-five fighters in three waves heading across the Channel for the Belgian coast. Dunkirk, as always, lay to the south of them, the never ceasing black pall above it drawn across the sky like a smudge of soot across soft blue paper.

Radios began to hum and crackle as they leveled off at thirty thousand feet, the Kentish Hill Spitfires five miles ahead, squirting thin vapor trails from the edges of their graceful wings. Words snapped through the ether …
Cobra leader calling Fox … calling Zebra. Bandits below
. Thousands of feet down, dots of shadow across the checkerboard of fields. Junker 87s … Stukas … wave after wave of them.
Tally Ho!
And down they went.

T
HE
624 S
QUADRON
returned later in the morning, gunning their engines and sideslipping slightly over the trees. Jolly stood outside the ops building and counted seven. Three, he was thinking, were late. There had been nothing coherent coming over the radio for the past half hour. Some sort of minor malfunction in the receiver. Technicians were working on it. He shielded his eyes against the sun and counted more dots circling to the east. Spits forming their landing pattern. They were two shy. He turned his eyes back to the Hurricanes. All had fired their guns … the patches blown off, smoke trails along the wings. One was in difficulty, its hydraulics shot away. It landed belly down on the grass, spewing chewed turf and dust in a plume behind it before finally grinding to rest, one of the prop blades whirling on ahead like some monstrous boomerang.

The Spitfires came in, touched down, taxied to their end of the field. Jolly stared at the sky for ten minutes. Nothing marred its purity.

“Hello, Jolly.” Higby coming toward him, a lumbering, tow-headed farmer's son from Lincolnshire. “Ramsay bought it. Went down flaming near La Panne.”

“Ramsay,” he said thickly. He was getting used to it. He tried not to put a face to the name. “Bad luck.”

“And Sergeant Logan. I didn't see him, but Chester said he went into an awful spin. And Ginger ditched two miles from Dover on the way back. He climbed out on the wing and inflated his vest. The Dover lifeboat was on its way when I stopped circling, so he's all right.”

“That's good. Go get a rest-up. Something to eat.”

Jolly stood there and watched the sky. Larks darting and zooming. A hawk, motionless, very high, holding in the wind. It was certainly a glorious day.

He was dead because he was stupid
. That was all Derek could think when the shock of the cannon shells jolted the stick from his hand. Flame licked from under the engine cowling and then the cowling tore away in a geyser of black smoke and great globs of steaming oil which splattered against the windshield to obscure his view.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
He had been so intent on giving one final burst to an already smoking Stuka that he had failed to take a glance behind him. A 109 must have followed him down and been right on his tail.

“I'm
dead!
” he screamed.
“Shit!”

The stick was useless, it wobbled in his right hand. Hand and arm useless too—a numb block of meat from fingertips to shoulder. No feeling at all. Smoke drifted into the cockpit through the firewall, choking him. He managed to slide the hood back with his left hand and gulped air as he peered over the side, clots of oil slapping against the side of his helmet, scorching through the leather. He pulled back in a hurry, in pain and terror. He was horribly low. Roofs beneath him … streets of a village flashing by … people looking up at him. Five hundred feet. No more than that. Too bloody low to bail out. Stick flopping back and forth. Rudder pedals mush under his frantic feet. Engine dead and burning. The plane was a glider now at the wind's whim and fancy. He steeled himself for the final
coup de grâce
from his destroyer. The spurt of cannon shells did not come. The rearview mirror was empty of all images except placid sky. Good pilot, he thought crazily, burst them till they bleed then break away and look for another. His idiotic mistake for not doing the same. The plane glided on, losing speed, dipping and soaring. The flames had died out, only thick black smoke streaming past and white feathers of glycol from the cooling tank. A dead aircraft. A coffin on wings.

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth …” he muttered, remembering a long forgotten childhood prayer. The Hurricane quivered on the point of stall, then rose, sailed over the spire of a church … dipped again. A paper plane tossed across a schoolyard. Swooping … banking … heading in for a landing on the mud-churned football ground.

The plane hit with a terrible crash and groan of smashed wood and snapping metal. Derek flew up in the seat, held cruelly by the safety harness, the straps cutting into him like steel bands. The plane bounced … wobbled … hit again and turned over. He blacked out as something slammed the back of his head. When he came to he had no idea where he was. An awful stillness … something gurgling close by. He closed his eyes to calm himself, then opened them and looked about. He was upside down, head a few inches from water. The gurgling sound was fuel pouring from the ruptured tank behind the engine, the stench of it filling his lungs. Please, God, don't let it explode …
please
. He fumbled with the release catch on his harness, tearing away the oxygen tube and the radio wires from his helmet and mask as he did so. The harness slipped off and he fell headfirst into the brackish water below.

The water was less than four feet deep. He went down to a bottom of sand, crawled through the tangle of broken wing, and then stood up in sunshine. He was in a pond ringed by sand dunes and could hear the ocean and the cry of seabirds. The plane lay belly up with its nose under water, the cracked fuselage hanging down like the broken spine of some prehistoric bird.

“Over here, mate!”

The words were indistinct on the wind. A soldier with a rifle crouched on the dunes, waving at him. He took off his flying helmet and rubbed his eyes. Hard to tell at this distance what he was. German? A tommy? Another soldier appeared over the rim of the dune, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted … “Get a bloody move on, carn't yer!”