Now skippers react differently to clouds. Some get inside and stay inside, even when the clouds are cu-nimbus. The buffeting inside cu-nim can bash a damaged plane to bits, and all that static electricity doesn’t exactly mix with a crate full of petrol fumes . . . And you might meet somebody you know inside. A Wimpey’s wing-tip can kill you just as dead as a cannon shell. And the fighters can still track you on their radar and jump you when you come out blind.
Other skippers fly up the cloud canyons, as visible as a black fly on a tablecloth. OK, black night-fighters are easily spotted, too, but who’s biggest and most visible, and who’s looking for who?
Dadda sort of flirted with the clouds; up and down the slopes, around the pinnacles, in and out like a flipping skier. It was fascinating and almost cleansing, after the flames and smell at the target. A bit like having a cold shower after a rugger match. Not a soul in sight; might as well be flying over the North Pole.
But believe me, Dadda wasn’t flirting with the clouds to refresh his soul. Unless we were getting a star-fix, Dadda never flew in a straight line for ten seconds at a time. They said he’d once scrounged a ride with RAF Beaufighters and knew just what makes a night-fighter careworn; besides, he said his constant stunting kept the crew awake. It’s fatally easy to doze off, once you’ve left the target, and many a poor rear-gunner has departed this life lost in a frozen dream of hot crumpet. Other idiots play dance-music on their WT.
‘Dadda, you’re getting too far south – out of stream. Steer 310.’
Dadda banked to starboard, and there was a twitchy silence on the intercom, apart from Billy muttering, ‘Nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing,’ to himself as he swung the rear-turret from side to side.
‘We bring nothing into this world,’ said Kit, making eyes at me over his oxygen mask. ‘And it is certain we shall take nothing out.’ Honestly, that kid would roller skate round the jaws of hell, laughing.
‘Shut up,’ said Dadda.
‘Wimpey at three o’clock,’ said Billy. ‘Beneath you.’ It was lucky he said Wimpey, and not crate or kite, because before he could have corrected his mistake Dadda would have corkscrewed down a thousand feet, and we’d have lost the Elsan again. I stuck my head up into the astrodome alongside Kit’s. Dadda was banking the crate to get a good look, so we got a good look too.
‘S-Sugar,’ said Matt.
‘Blackham,’ said Mad Paul. ‘Seven hundred bombers out tonight and we have to get Blackham.’
‘Anyone watching the rest of the sky?’ asked Dadda sharply.
There was something compelling, eye-catching, about that black Wimpey stooging straight up the cloud canyon, its big squadron letters glinting in the moonlight, its blue moon-shadow skating across the cumulus below.
‘Looks like a ghost ship . . . like the Mary Celeste,’ I said out loud.
‘What d’you expect them to be doing – holding a candlelight dance?’ said my good and honoured oppo.
On and on we flew three hundred yards apart. It was protection of a sort. If a night-fighter found us, he couldn’t attack both at once. Raised the odds to fifty-fifty. I saw the other Wimpey’s rear-turret swing towards us once or twice, winking in the moonlight. Whether he was just keeping a good watch, or putting up the two fingers of scorn at us . . .
Dadda was still dodging in and out of the clouds. We kept losing and finding Blackham. I had a terrible temptation to turn up the intercom and say something to them.
People have died for less.
But it was company in a way, in all that empty sky. If I’d been pilot, I’d have wanted to huddle close.
People have died for less.
‘This astrodome makes your ears bloody cold,’ said Kit, and went back to his navigator’s table, leaving me to it. We could fly on and on for ever, under the moon, I thought. Across the Atlantic and breakfast in America. If the fuel held out . . . which it wouldn’t.
It was a moment before I saw it; and another moment when I didn’t believe my eyes; then a moment when the blood pounded into my head and I sweated all over. Blackham’s Wimpey had two blue shadows now; flitting beneath it on the cloud floor. How could a Wimpey have two shadows, when there weren’t two moons?