tried Monica again, though I knew it was pointless.
Nothing.
Even Dadda banked the crate left and right, to get a look underneath.
Nothing. But we all shuddered, waiting for the death of the unknown Wimpey. Was it one of our lot? Probably we should never know.
And then a new voice broke in, loud, a shout, full of fear.
‘Blackham – corkscrew port – fighter below you!’
‘For God’s sake, stop shouting, Gary!’ said Dadda abruptly. I didn’t answer. It was my voice; but I hadn’t opened my mouth. It was my voice, a month old, coming out of the dark, out of the past. Calling to Blackham, who at this moment was lying in a bed in Colchester mental hospital. And no wonder the night-fighter’s voice seemed familiar. It wasn’t just a German voice. It was Gehlen’s voice. Burnt Gehlen, who we had seen blown in pieces all over Germany.
Then another voice, exultant. ‘I got the bastard! I got him!’ Geranium, dead a month, with a hole in his chest.
‘You sure?’ Blackham, very Yorkshire-tyke.
‘Sure I’m sure. See him burn!’ Geranium.
Wild cheers. From Coade, Spann, Brennan and Beales. Dead in a turnip field near Chelmsford.
‘Bullfinch Three to Bullfinch. Abandoning aircraft. Port wing on fire. Get the hatch open, Meissner . . .’ Gehlen. Dead, burnt Gehlen.
‘Shut the bloody RT off, Gary!’ Only slowly, I realized it was Dadda talking to me, in the present day. But it was Kit who reached over and turned off the intercom, plunging us into the blessed silence of the engine’s roar. When he looked at me, his blue eyes above the oxygen mask were showing white all round. I was shaking from head to foot. My hand shook so much I couldn’t undo my mask. Then I was sick, and the spew built up inside it and cascaded over the top. At least it was real and warm and alive.
The next thing I knew, and that, too, came to me very slowly, as in a dream, was that Dadda had put the Wimpey into a hell of a dive. Either that, or we’d been mortally hit. Frankly, I didn’t care. I just hung on like a drowning man to a lifebelt. But we pulled out, and I could tell from the movement of the crate that Dadda was ground-hopping. What else could he do to stay alive, with the intercom gone and all his crew, gunners and all, sitting in a paralysed funk? Any night-fighter could have come up behind and stolen our braces and we wouldn’t have noticed.
Kit recovered first, as he always did. Bundled past me with a new course for Dadda to fly. That kid was incredible. I sat huddled, cold and still shaking, over the end of the heating-hose; I held it up my jacket, against my crotch. It was a help. I watched the odd trail of tracer flying past the triangular windows, with the innocent wonder of a small child on a railway journey. Nothing came very near. Dadda was giving Jerry very little chance, as usual. Kit came bundling back to his navigator’s table and settled to a problem, face very serious. As usual, it was a comfort to watch him. How did people get to have guts like him and Dadda? I must have been at the back of the queue when they were handing out guts.
It was then that I noticed that my RT dials were starting to glow up again. Had I knocked the switch back on, without knowing what I was doing? I reached to switch it off again.
It was switched off.
But the dials continued to glow up. I gave a noiseless moan, as sound filtered into my earphones. Faint cheers.
‘Burn, you bastard, burn!’
An incoherent scream from Gehlen. Kit shoved me aside and reached for the off-switch. It was still off. His eyes creased up over his mask. He tried the switch the other way, and the sound of Gehlen’s screams grew louder. He turned it to the off position again. Back and forwards he twisted it, back and forwards, faster and faster. But still the voice of Gehlen grew.
‘Mutti, mutti.’
Kit went berserk then. He grabbed the heavy-duty cables that led to the radio set from the crate’s main batteries. Tore them out of their housings on the airframe. Tried to pull them out of the radio with brute force. Then he reached for a pair of rescue shears.
God, he would go up in a blue light! We’d all go up in a blue light, if the naked