The Green Gauntlet (26 page)

Claire settled for saying he was not and the girl seemed surprised. ‘They mostly are,’ she said, ‘or they soon get married to one of us, or one of the ack-ack A.T.S. or a WREN maybe. Friend of mine has been married twice and is now a widow again at twenty-two. That takes some beating …’ and then, suddenly recollecting herself, she actually blushed and mumbled, ‘Sorry. I was a clot to say that to someone with a son still on ops. Think I’ll have another shot at fighting my way down the corridor,’ and she left very abruptly.

The bombardier said, grinning, ‘That’s what they call a clanger, ma’am,’ and for the next hour Claire pondered the girl’s gaffe and wished she could reassure her. Nothing much would happen to Stevie. Like Andy he was indestructible—his sort always were. It was the Simons of this world who ‘bought it’ as they said, in their quaint, callous slang.

The interminable journey continued and presently, mercifully, she dropped off and snored gently, her head resting on the shoulder of the tolerant bombardier.

III

B
erlin, Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, on overnight ‘bus stop to Turin, Leipzig, Dresden: Stevie had ploughed his way to and from them all but the one they feared and hated most was Essen, where the flak was vicious and the nightfighters had X-ray eyes. Once, a month or so back, he had been caught in a searchlight beam over Essen and had floundered about the sky like a singed moth, convinced that this was it, but it wasn’t, for here he was with bombs gone circling over Essen once more, the cockpit lit by intermittent flashes winking from all quarters of the compass, and his tongue as dry as a dead stick. Over in the east pencils of searchlight beams wavered, sometimes striking the underside of clouds so that they suddenly turned into the over-filled ice cream comets he had once bought for a penny a cone at High Wood tuckshop. Then, far to the north and below him, he saw the soft orange ball of a burning kite that went skittering down the sky and was lost in the great belt of darkness beyond the winking landscape of the tormented city. He said over the intercom, ‘Who’s for home then?’ and Wiley, the only member of his original crew, said, ‘Me for one, Skip, and don’t stop for hitch-hikers.’

Wiley, he reflected, was another Andy, someone who would glide in and out of trouble all his life and emerge, jostled and bruised perhaps but emotionally intact, not because he was hearty and unimaginative but because he had learned how to discard the apparatus of successive phases or professions and focus the whole of his attention on something new. Right now he was a radio operator in a Lancaster, and a very good one at that, but before transferring to the R.A.F. he had been a gunner in a territorial unit, and before that a garage operative, a salesman of leather goods, a gas-fitter, and a grocer’s assistant in a country town in the North Riding. He was twenty-eight and had somehow got through his life without a serious attachment to anyone, and would probably stay single until he was in his mid-thirties when he would start looking for someone with a fat stocking. After that, Stevie supposed, he would settle down and grow a paunch at the local, and forget all about moments like these hauls into the south-east, and longer hauls back to a cheerless airfield where the dawn wind cut you in two.

He got a fix from Gibbins, his navigator and began to climb, settling down to make another attempt to isolate himself and fly by a complicated assortment of reflexes. He had made rare progress in this respect, telling himself that it was high time he did, for this was the seventeenth operation of his second tour.

Lately, ever since the autumn, he saw himself as a kind of steel filing orbiting a central point that was Margaret, and Margaret’s improbable little cottage, ‘
Ty-Bach
’,
and it seemed to him that he circled on three separate planes that remained permanently equidistant from one another.

The outer circuit was his flying, regular sweeps that carried him into the endless vistas of space and were not, looking back, very exciting in themselves. The inner circuit was a very tight one, as tight as a pre-war fighter’s turn, and its core was the thickening woman who waddled out to greet him whenever he drove along under the old woods to the sagging fence, announcing his arrival by a toot of the horn. It was more than a fortnight since he had withdrawn into this inner circuit and it seemed much longer, for the child she was expecting was overdue according to her and there was no means of contacting her other than by letter. She had told him over and over again not to worry, that she was booked in at a nursing home in Criccieth and had made arrangements to go there in advance and stay in a hotel until the doctor told her it was time to go. He had, in fact, checked these arrangements himself and was satisfied that they were adequate, but somehow he could not see her voluntarily turning her back on ‘
Ty-Bach
’
and locking the door on the place that had been their lair and refuge, not only from everyone else in their lives but from their own thoughts.

Here, through the late spring and summer, they had been unbelievably safe and happy. From his airfield in Shropshire he had been able to get over almost every weekend and once or twice for odd days, but their meetings became less frequent when he moved back to Yorkshire and began his second tour. He had tried, without success, to get a telephone installed at ‘
Ty-Bach
’
and had been obliged to be satisfied with jotting down the number of Jones the Milk on his identity card, Jones the Milk being their nearest neighbour who thought of them as man and wife.

Tonight, now that they were on their home run, he settled for his outer circuit, thinking of the trip and how near their cookie had dropped to the target, of other Lancasters throbbing through the darkness above and below him, and what the men who flew them thought about, and whether their lives on the ground were as complicated as his own. From time to time he exchanged a word or two with his crew and when their voices reached him over the intercom he visualised them individually, as a man wrecked on a desert island might itemise his few possessions. The Lancaster was rather like an island, with seven castaways thrown up by the breakers of the offensive. There was Wiley, the extrovert, who sometimes talked cock on the way home, and there was Gibbins, the worrier, who gave information grudgingly, as though it was small change and he was living on a fixed pension. There were the three sergeants, Gooding, Kitson and Awkwright, all married, two of them with kids. Gooding and Kitson had flown with him on every trip of the tour but Awkwright was a survivor from another crew and Stevie had a suspicion that his nerve was almost used up. Remembering this he called him up, making a facetious remark and getting a facetious answer.

So far so good. They were well on their way now. To starboard he saw a long strip of light and veered off to port. If it was the German night-fighter flarepath at Gilze-Rijen he was going to give it as wide a berth as possible, and the possibility of night-fighters made him remember Young Pidgeon in the rear-turret, whose nineteenth birthday they had celebrated by getting uproariously drunk—all but the sober Gibbins that is—in the Turk’s Head. Pidgeon had had to be given a fireman’s lift back to camp and had come to outside the guard-hut and started singing ‘Roll me over, in the clover.’ Then, gravely, and with a certain dignity, he had been sick.

He called the rear-turret: ‘How’s tricks back there, Kiddo?’ and Pidgeon said, ‘Cold as a frog on an ice-bound pond, colder than charity—that’s bloody chilly …’ Stevie knew the ditty. It used up every low-temperature simile in the book and finished, ‘Colder than all is poor little Willie’. It was the sort of chestnut any nineteen-year-old would use to an older man to assert devil-may-care masculinity and help to bridge the gap.

They flew on, endlessly it seemed, Stevie’s thoughts switching to a central circuit that took him back to places like the Valley, and old Franz Zorndorff’s festering scrapyard south of the Thames. He remembered little things about Franz, his white, Habsburg-type whiskers tinged brown by the nicotine of his cigars, his wheezing laugh, and the amiable contempt he had for Paul as a man with a horror of cities, all cities …’ As if a man could get rich anywhere else!’ Franz would say, when his father tried over and over again to launch The Pair on agricultural careers.

Then the circle of his thoughts contracted and he found himself on the inner circuit, usually closed when he was flying and he could contemplate Margaret, not as he had last seen her, with swollen belly and legs that carried her clumsily from dresser to fireplace, but as she had been the second time they met at the Smith Street flat, a woman who could be kissed into a frenzy. She had frightened him on that occasion and must have realised it because, later on, their love-making had adjusted to the rhythm of an affectionate married couple, particularly after they had moved into ‘
Ty-Bach
’
,
where the seasons never hurried and seemed reluctant to give way to one another. He found he could contemplate ‘
Ty-Bach
’
in a way he had never learned to contemplate inanimate things, its stones, its low ceilings, its pokey little kitchen-scullery that smelled of bran, soap and ancient woodwork, a smell he would always associate with Wales.

Gibbins said, carefully, ‘Dutch coast coming up. Vlieland to port …’ and a few minutes later it happened, a long, rattling thud that might have been caused by anything at all, by the sudden seizing up of one or more engines, by a blind discharge of heavy flak pouring up at nothing and searching them out, or the raking burst of a fighter that had followed them all the way from the Ruhr. He didn’t know and he never had a chance to find out for, although voices clamoured over the intercom, he ignored them, concentrating the whole of his attention on the heavy starboard drag. He saw the coastline and realised he must have lost a great deal of height and was still losing it, for the altimeter read eleven thousand feet and when he had last looked at it it was over fifteen thousand. The Lancaster was acting like a young stallion turned loose in a field full of mares, bucketing and half-stalling, lurching and frisking as though determined to spill them out into the sky. He fought it madly, knowing it would defeat him but buying time while he made his decisions and the field of choice was not wide. Their words came to him like drops of rain, dashed in the face. ‘Flak … for Christ’s sake …!’ ‘Going to ditch … this far out …?’ ‘Where are we? Can we make it?’ This last from Wiley, surprisingly cool, so that it helped to steady him and ask Gibbins their position. Gibbins said, glumly, ‘Wait … can’t be absolutely sure … West-northwest of Vlieland—that’s about it—watch it—there’s another bloody flak-ship …’ and a series of flashes exploded almost immediately below, a stream of little red balls trundling into their wake.

A few miles off the Dutch coast at ten thousand, and losing height all the time. They could ditch, he supposed, but what were their chances out there, in December? Then, Wiley spoke again, weighing his words one by one. ‘The kid … rear-turret … he’s hit …! Kitson’s seeing to him …’ and finally Kitson’s voice, ‘Got it in the leg. Not too badly I think! Stopped the bleeding. Bloody shambles!’

That decided him. With Pidgeon injured there could be no question of ditching. Neither was there any question of returning to base. They would have to fly as long as possible and then a bit longer, and when the nearest piece of coastline showed he could order the able-bodied to bail out. From then it would be every man for himself and for him and Pidgeon a miserable attempt to pancake. That, in fact, was Pidgeon’s only chance and it wasn’t much of one, no better than his own.

Miraculously the Lancaster remained airborne. Minutes ticked by and every part of a minute increased the chances of each of them except the rear-gunner and pilot. Seven thousand feet, six thousand five hundred, and the drag becoming heavier with every flick of the needle. He gave his orders crisply and nobody questioned them. He could imagine them clipping on their parachutes, swearing continuously under their breath. Then Wiley said, ‘How about the kid? He can’t make it, Skip,’ and Stevie snarled, ‘For Christ’s sake, I
know
that. Do as you’re told and bale out! I’ll stick with it.’

The coast, when it showed up, was like a thin, curving blade laid along the end of a moonpath and Stevie wondered fleetingly where it was, but before Gibbins could tell him the altimeter needle flickered its ultimate warning and the aircraft, that seemed now to be flying on its side, began to slip so that he called ‘Everybody out!’ and Wiley’s voice said ‘Good luck, Skip, good …!’ and left the sentence unfinished.

He saw nothing of their going, if indeed they went, for a pattern of subdued light showed directly ahead and it looked as though it might be a flarepath although he could hardly believe it was. A man, flying a disintegrating bomber with an injured tail-gunner aboard could hardly expect luck of that kind.

In the moonlight, at almost zero height, the countryside looked as neat and patterned as the Valley at harvest time. Frost rime sparkled down there and there seemed to be very few trees, just rectangular fields divided by hedges. Pushing with all his strength on the rudder bar he felt little or no response and called into the intercom, ‘We’re coming down, kid, brace yourself …!’ but there was no answer and he wondered if he was crash-landing a dead man. Then he saw that it was a runway, some kind of runway, although it looked hopelessly short and the few buildings close by seemed to be no more than sheds. He struck the surface, bounced, struck it again, bounced again, and tried to think of something to fortify him against the impact but on the third touchdown the aircraft slewed violently and hurled him sideways so that landscape, instrument panel and moon merged into a confused, whirling Catherine wheel and there was a roaring in his ears, the roaring of breakers and falling chimney stacks in brickyards that he and Andy had prospected for scrap when they were Zorndorff’s apprentices.

Chapter Ten

A Kind of Confrontation

I

T
he village near the airfield had a pub, The Prince Rupert, named, she supposed, in honour of the battle near here in the Civil War. Paul would be interested in this but then, she remembered, Paul must never learn she had been within two hundred miles of the place. Now that she was here and it was dusk she was uncertain of her next move. She had a telephone number Margaret had given her but did not know whether it was permitted to ring an operational airfield. She booked a room, washed and went down to the visitors’ phone booth, a little glass box at the foot of the stairs. No one questioned her call and a girl’s voice said, ‘Who is it? Who do you want?’

Her wits cleared suddenly and she said, ‘I’m the mother of one of your pilots. I was in the district and wondered if it would be possible to see him. He’s called Craddock, Flight Lieutenant S. Craddock,’ and she gave his Service number. The telephonist said, ‘Wait, I’ll put you through to the officers’ mess,’ and after a series of clicks a male voice said, ‘Officers’ mess. Someone asking for Flight-Lieutenant Craddock?’ There was, she thought, a note of surprise in the voice but that was understandable. It was not often that a fond mamma called at the camp as if it was a prep school. She said, ‘I hope I’m not bothering anyone, I’m Mrs Craddock, his mother. I was in the district …’ The mess steward said, carefully, ‘Hold on a moment, Ma’am, I’ll find somebody who can help you!’

‘They’re all very polite and pleasant,’ thought Claire, and waited patiently until another, rather grating voice spoke. It said, incredulously, ‘
Mrs
Craddock? Crad’s
mother?
’
and she said yes and was he off duty or likely to be? She added that she was spending a night at The Prince Rupert in the village and it would be nice if he could come over for a meal.

The voice said, hesitantly, ‘He’s … er … he’s not around right now, Mrs Craddock. This is P/O Wiley speaking, his radio-op—a member of his crew. I wonder if I could pop over right away? I could be there in about ten minutes …’

He sounded, she thought, bashful and apologetic for being unable to produce Stevie out of a hat. She said, ‘By all means … perhaps you could leave a message for him and he could join us. I’d like to meet you, Mr Wiley.’

It was, she decided, the least she could do. He sounded as if he very much wanted to come and she supposed it was rather like a school after all, where it was nice to be taken out once in a while by the parents of a chum. She was disappointed, however, that Stevie was not available and supposed she would have to hang around until he was. Perhaps Mr Wiley might talk freely and help to build up some kind of background for her. At all events she had almost run him down and that, after such a journey, was an achievement.

He came hurrying into the foyer in less than ten minutes. Apparently the camp was very close and none of them had to walk anywhere. He was a spare, good-looking young man, with a sharp nose and pointed chin and there was a long strip of pink adhesive plaster on his cheek. He greeted her very diffidently and then asked her if she would join him in a drink. She said she would have a sherry if they had any and he said, ‘They’ve got everything here, we see to that!’ and disappeared with surprising alacrity. She took off her gloves and waited, opening her bag and peeping into her mirror. The feeling that she was paying a visit to a school grew upon her. She wouldn’t have been surprised if a group of elderly men had appeared in the lounge in shredded gowns and honked at her in that assertive manner schoolmasters usually employ when addressing parents. Wiley came back, carrying a tankard of beer and a tall sherry. He said, rather helplessly, ‘About Crad … er … have you been travelling Mrs Craddock? What I mean is … did you leave home today?’

‘No, as a matter of fact I didn’t,’ she said, wondering at his rather distracted manner, ‘I left yesterday and spent last night in London. Stevie had no idea I was coming.’ Then, seeing him look away quickly, ‘He’s all right, isn’t he? I mean, not sick or … posted?’ she had been going to say ‘Hurt’, the word prompted by the sticking plaster on Wiley’s cheek, but she changed her mind because it occurred to her that she might sound like a fussy old mum and downgrade Stevie in his eyes. It was rather absurd, she thought, to behave like this about a son who had been married nine years and was now in the process of being divorced and acknowledging the child of his brother’s wife, but there it was. He startled her then with a kind of groan, as though the beer in his tankard was particularly unpleasant medicine. He said, bracing himself, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Craddock … two nights ago … down south … we were belted from a flakship crossing the coast. Five of us made it … bailed out a couple of miles inland. But Crad stayed with the kite … the aircraft; he had to, because the rear-gunner was wounded. He got down all right at a satellite, a ropey one it was, and they got the rear-gunner out. He’s in dock now, and in pretty good shape all things considered, but Crad …’

He dried up, looking away and through the curtain of shock she could see the silhouette of his embarrassment and misery and this, surprisingly, gave her something to hold on to for a moment so that she was able to push her hand across the little round table and enclose his, finding it cold and moist.

They sat there for a moment without moving and then his free hand came up and settled on top of hers and she found it wonderfully comforting. She said at length, making a tremendous effort to sound natural, ‘You knew him well, you’ve flown with him a long time?’ and he said, eagerly and gratefully, ‘Two tours. We were pretty close, Mrs Craddock. He was a terrific guy. None of us would have got back if he hadn’t nursed the kite the way he did, and held on until we all had a sporting chance of getting down in one piece! Young Pidgeon, the rear-gunner, wouldn’t have had a hope in hell. Like I said, that’s why Crad stuck with it and pancaked. He almost made it. It was a bloody miracle really. I only got back today.’

‘You hurt your face.’

His hand left hers and went to his cheek. He seemed surprised to find the plaster there. ‘It’s only a cut. I just missed landing on a bit of fencing. The other four were shaken up a bit but nothing serious. The R. G.—rear-gunner—is the only one in dock.’ Then, cautiously, ‘I think the C.O. would like to know you’re here, Mrs Craddock. They sent a wire earlier yesterday, as soon as the gen. came through on the blower, so I daresay someone at home is trying to get in touch with you now. Would you like me to find the C.O.? He’s stooging around somewhere.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’d sooner just talk to you if you don’t mind. It’s odd, I’ve got three sons and two sons-in-law on active service but Stevie is the only one I never worried about. He always seemed to come out of it at the last moment.’

‘He almost did this time,’ Wiley said and after a pause, ‘Won’t you finish your sherry? Would you like something a bit stronger?’

‘No thank you. You’ve been very kind, Mr Wiley. I’m so glad for my sake you were the one who had to tell me, although it must be dreadful for you.’ Then, as she felt her eyes filling with tears, ‘Excuse me … please don’t go … not for a minute,’ and she turned aside and opened her bag while he waited, no longer embarrassed but patient and resigned.

‘You knew he was getting a divorce?’

‘Yes,’ Wiley said, ‘he did tell me that. But there was someone else, wasn’t there? A girl living in Wales? He left a letter. We do that, most of us that is, just in case. I brought it with me. Just the one letter. It seems to be addressed to his wife, not the girl in Wales.’

He groped in his pocket and handed her a clean, stamped envelope. It was addressed to
‘Mrs Margaret Craddock, ‘Ty-Bach’, Llanstynwdd, Merionethshire, Wales,’
and below, in brackets,
‘If not received please forward to St. Just Nursing Home, Criccieth, N. Wales.
‘I was going to post it tonight,’ he said, ‘but maybe you’d like to take it.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll deliver it personally. It would be better that way.’

The sight of the letter, with its two addresses, gave her a surprising access of strength. She no longer felt worn out by the journey. She said, ‘I think I will have that something stronger, Mr Wiley. A large brandy, but let me pay for it.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘certainly not! I’d much rather, Mrs Craddock. I’d be very happy to,’ and she let him. When he returned with the drinks she said, ‘I’d like to make a start tonight. There’s no sense in hanging around up here and I don’t want her to find out from anyone else. Could I hire a car somewhere? I don’t mean to the station. Could I hire one that would take me all the way to Criccieth?’

He seemed doubtful. ‘It would cost a packet,’ he said, ‘even if it could be arranged. Probably a tenner or even more. Wouldn’t it be better to stay on overnight and get a train from York in the morning?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it wouldn’t, because I’m not likely to sleep, am I? I’d sooner do something. Something useful.’

He nodded understandingly and went away again. Five minutes later he was back. ‘The gaffer says a hire car firm in Flaxton will do it. God knows where they get the gas these days. Maybe it’s because they’re undertakers as well. It’ll cost fifteen pounds. I daresay they’d cash a cheque here. I could vouch for you, Mrs Craddock.’

‘That won’t be necessary. I have enough money and if I need more I can cash a cheque when I get there. Did you order it for me?’

‘Be here in twenty minutes or so.’

They sat on, saying little, until the landlord came and said the car was waiting. He looked at her gently and she thought Wiley must have told him who she was. ‘I’ll get your bag down, Ma’am,’ he said, and padded away. Wiley said, ‘Do you mind if I say something else, Mrs Craddock?’ and when she shook her head he went on, with a vehemence that brought a flush to his narrow face, ‘I think you’re terrific! I never thought anyone could be so terrific, but knowing old Crad I’m not all that surprised, not really! You know something else? I wish to God you were my mother!’

‘So do I,’ she said, and leaning forward she kissed him on the cheek that wasn’t sealed by plaster. Unlike his hand, that had been so cold, his face was very warm.

II

T
he sea-front of the little town at that season was bleak and uninviting. Everything about it was slate grey, the sea, the stone Victorian houses, the sky, even the distances. She had slept after all, under a rug tucked around her by the elderly driver who must, she thought, be a hearse-driver, for his gestures were excessively dignified and he seemed to her to drive the entire distance at a steady thirty. She had decided to take a chance on Criccieth first and dismiss him if she located Margaret. Once that was done she could find a room at a hotel if one was open at this time of year, and brace herself to do what had to be done.

The nursing home was at the end of the long street, a tall, narrow building built of stone blocks and she asked the driver to wait while she made enquiries. It was a few minutes to eight o’clock and a maid was polishing the hall floor behind the locked, glass-panelled door. She signalled to her to open it. The girl looked surprised but she pulled the bolts and when Claire asked if she would make enquiries about a patient she said, in the strongest Welsh accent Claire had ever heard, that she would have to fetch Sister Pritchard who was having breakfast in her room.

Sister Pritchard came bustling up looking even more surprised and vaguely indignant. She held a napkin in her long, bony hand and dabbed her mouth with it as she descended the stairs. ‘It’s far too early to visit,’ she said, ‘visiting is not until after lunch. Who is it you want to see?’

‘I’m not even sure she’s here yet,’ Claire said, ‘but she’s booked. It’s Mrs Craddock, Margaret Craddock,’ and was relieved to see the look of irritation vanish from the Sister’s face as she said, almost genially, ‘Ah yes … yes! She had her baby last Thursday and we’ve all been wondering why nobody called!’ She opened a register that was lying on the reception table. ‘Thursday, that was it. She came in on Tuesday. False alarm. But they’re both bonny. It all happened rather quickly. However …’ her face went stiff again, ‘I’m afraid you can’t see her yet. She won’t have had breakfast and then Doctor has to see her. I could tell her you’re here of course. I expect she’ll be pleased; she hasn’t had any messages. Not even a telephone call or letter,’ she added, rather reproachfully.