Command makes you nibble. They looked middle-aged; quite a number had balding heads. But none of them looked as if he was on the chop-list. It was so hot and flowery-smelling, I fell asleep twice. But I wouldn’t go to bed. I was too busy absorbing the possibility of having some sort of future.
And that’s the way it’s been, the last ten months. It’s not a soft life in Coastal. Try crawling out of your bed in a five a.m. blizzard and trying to keep your perspex frost-free with your heating-hose and fingernails. And our lot have lost three crews in ten months. We often wonder what happened to them. Maybe they met one of those Junkers that get into the north end of the bay; maybe they met a wind that read 120 knots on their API. But that’s the point: we have time to sit and wonder what happened to them, and that’s quite a luxury. We sometimes stay in the air for thirteen hours at a stretch with extra-load tanks, and that’s a lot of time to wonder, while you’re watching the radar screen for the tiny blip that means a U-boat schnorkelling.
Meanwhile, we too have turned into fishermen and shepherds. We’ve dropped plenty of depth-charges, of course, but as far as we know killed nowt but blossoming white circles of belly-up fish. We met a U-boat once, on the surface off the Skellig, when we were coming home with no depth-charges left. Paul exchanged a few words with it, and it left the scene of the crime rapidly. We weren’t all that bothered.
Otherwise, we see a lot of sunrises and sunsets from high up, and study the flight of birds. A storm-petrel came through the windscreen once, and wrapped itself round Dadda’s neck. Paul reckoned it had been trained by the Japs in kamikaze tactics. We had it stuffed for the billet mantelpiece. And we fly round in big circles and little circles, just like herring-gulls, but a bloody sight colder. But when we leave a convoy and their Aldis winks ‘thank you’, we feel a bit warmer.
Everything says we’re going to finish the war here; the forgotten army. They’ve taken away Tinsel and the H2S. Dadda wouldn’t let them pinch Monica. They’ve covered our black paint with a lovely coat of Coastal white, with two black bands round the fuselage. And we haven’t burnt any more crates. Dieter is great; he’s not grown much, but he’s put on weight and got this glossy, all-black coat that makes him look a proper Nazi. Which is a laugh, because he’ll lie down for anybody to tickle his belly. He likes riding in the front gun-turret, slobbering over Paul with excitement. He flies every op; Coastal understand about mascots; they’re nearly all ex-bomber anyway.
Oh, and we’ve got this new game. Dadda disclosed that his family have a ruined castle and estate at a place in Eire called Castletownsend. We’re all going to live there after the war, as gamekeepers and illicit whiskey-distillers and things. He did a zero-feet raid on the Republic last month, to show us the castle from the air. The Irish authorities complained, but Dadda just told the Wingco he had an Irish passport. I don’t know if any of Dadda’s story is true, but it helps to pass the time.
Yes, we get a lot of time to think, in Coastal. Think about the old squadron; all new faces by now, nobody left who remembers the end of Dieter Gehlen. Think about all the English ex-schoolgirls filling bombs till their backs ache, all the German schoolgirls making shells. Think about the guts of German mothers in Hamburg, sheltering their kids with their own bodies from the fire-typhoon we started. Think about the craftsmen’s skill in a Rolls-Royce Merlin, and a German medieval cathedral. All those people with all that guts, and our top brass are just turning them all into one great big rubbish tip that’s slowly covering Europe. While we watch seagulls.
I sometimes think, towards the end of a thirteen-hour flight, that we died after all, that we’re in some kind of peaceful grey Valhalla where good little aircrews go. But where are the rest? Blackham and Reaper and Edwards? And Dieter Gehlen?
Don’t ask me. It’s May 1944, and I think I’ve got the little WAAF in the radio stores interested.
Two more pints, please, George.
THE WHEATSTONE POND
Chapter 1
All London feels lonely after dark now. But few districts feel lonelier than Wheatstone. It’s the size