Landfall (14 page)

He turned to Chambers: “Do you want it?”

The young man shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t care much either way. It sounds as if it might be interesting.”

“Bloody sight too interesting, if you ask me,” said the first. “Fighters are the thing to go for. Nice to fly, and you get a chance of acting on your own. They’re safe, too. Ruddy great engine in front of you to keep the bullets off, and eight guns for you to hose him with. Safest job in the war, these Hurricanes and Spitfires. I wish to God they’d ask for volunteers for them.”

The other said to Chambers: “Are you putting in for it?”

“I might do. Do you want it?”

The other shook his head. “I’d go if I had to, of course—if the CO. picked me. But I’d rather stay
here.” He hesitated, and then said: “I’m getting married in the spring.”

Chambers said: “Are you? Have a beer. The young people—they will do it. Can’t stop ’em. That lets you out of it, anyway.”

The other said: “You want to get into a fighter squadron if you’re getting married. Safest job in the war, old boy.”

Chambers sat down in a long arm-chair before the fire with a copy of
Picture Post
. He did not dislike the idea of a change. The monotony of sitting on the ground week after week waiting for orders for a raid was irking him, as it was irking all of them. After the continuous patrol that he had been used to on the Coastal Command the inactivity was galling. The thought of more work was attractive, and test flying should be interesting. He had been at Market Stanton for about six weeks, and he did not care for the station. It was too far from a picture-house for his liking. It was twenty miles from a decent grill-room. As he thought about it his heart ached for the Portsmouth scene, where there had been grill-rooms and pictures, and Mona, all within ten miles of the aerodrome.

To hell with it. This place was no damn good. He’d put in for this job and get away.

He presented himself before the group-captain that afternoon. “I think I’d like to put in for that job, sir,” he said. “Can you tell me where it would be?”

The CO. said: “I don’t know that myself, Chambers. I rather think it’s on the Clyde.”

The boy nodded. Anything was better than Market Stanton. “I think I’d like to have a stab at it,” he said.

“All right. Are any of the others putting in for it, do you know?”

“I don’t think so, sir. Neither of them seemed very keen.”

“I’ll give them the rest of the afternoon. If they don’t show up by then I’ll put you forward for it.”

“It means going pretty soon, sir, I suppose?”

“Almost immediately, I should think. We’ll probably get a postagram about it in the morning.”

“I’d better start putting my things together, then?”

“I should think so. I know they want somebody quite urgently.”

Chambers went back to the bedroom-hut and began to collect his scattered belongings ready for packing. Before dinner he met the group-captain in the mess. “I put you in for that job, Chambers,” he said. “I sent off a signal about it. We should hear by the morning.”

The boy said: “I’ll get ready to go, then, sir.”

The CO. said: “I’m sorry you’re going, Chambers. You’ve done quite well here. I was going to send you as first pilot, in charge of a machine, next time we had a show.”

“It’s very nice of you to say that, sir.”

“I mean it. I’m sorry you’re going.”

Chambers went back to his bedroom and began to dismantle his wireless set.

Next morning he was summoned to the C.O.’s office. The group-captain said: “I’ve got the postagram about your posting, Chambers. You’re to report to Titchfield aerodrome at once, to the Marine Experimental Unit. Titchfield—that’s somewhere down by Portsmouth.”

The pilot swallowed something. “I—I’ve just come from there, sir.”

“Have you? I thought you came from the Coastal Command.”

“Yes, sir. I was at Emsworth aerodrome.”

The group-captain smiled: “Well, you’re going back again to the same part of the world. I hope you’ve enjoyed your trip to Yorkshire.”

The boy stood dumbfounded. It was clear to him that
the group-captain knew nothing of the reasons that had caused him to be moved from the Portsmouth district. Now the die was cast, and he was shifted back there again. In the stress of war the papers in his personal record had been overlooked by Postings, if indeed his personal record had been consulted at all before the appointment had been made.

Now was the time to make a protest, if one was to be made.

He thought of Market Stanton, and he thought of Portsmouth. It was two months or more since
Caranx
had been lost. There would be embarrassment, perhaps, but he would be with a different unit on a different aerodrome. In all probability he would meet none of the same people. He hesitated, irresolute.

The group-captain eyed him keenly. “What’s the matter?”

“I didn’t much want to go back to Portsmouth, sir. For a personal reason.”

The commanding-officer said: “Well, it’s done now, Chambers. Is your reason very serious?”

The pilot hesitated again. If he braved it out and went back to Portsmouth, he would see Mona. He said slowly:

“I don’t think so, sir.”

The older officer stood up. “Well, you’d better take it and get off to your new job. I’m sure you’ll do well in it. In war time we can’t pick and choose the postings as we used to do, you know. I’m sorry if it’s not quite what you wanted, but one has to take the rough with the smooth.”

Chambers nodded: “I know.” And then he said: “What does the Marine Experimental Unit do?”

“I haven’t an idea—you’ll find out when you get there. I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Is it a new unit, then?”

“It must be. It certainly wasn’t in existence before the war.”

“It sounds as if it might be interesting.”

He said good-bye to his commanding-officer, and went over to his bedroom-hut. His packing was very nearly finished. He strapped his bags, and gave a tip to his batman: then he drove the little sports car round and loaded everything he had into it. He went over to the mess and paid his mess bill, and then to the adjutant’s office to get petrol coupons for his journey south.

He got on to the road directly after lunch.

Although his little motor-car made a good deal of noise, it did not get along the road very fast. It was getting dark when he arrived at Barnby Moor; he stopped there for the night. Next day he went on down the Great North Road, skirted round London in the early afternoon through Watford and Slough, and came to Titchfield aerodrome on the edge of the darkness. He drove straight to the adjutant’s office and reported.

The adjutant said: “You’re the Wellington pilot for the Marine Experimental Unit, then?”

Chambers said: “Yes, sir. Can you tell me what it is I have to do?”

The squadron-leader said: “I’m not supposed to know anything that goes on over in that hangar. But I can tell you, more or less.”

He did so. What he said really doesn’t matter a great deal. It was very technical, difficult to understand, though interesting in its way. So far as I know Chambers never spoke of it to anyone, even to Mona. It was purely by chance I came to hear what he’d been doing. I found it in a file at the Air Ministry when I was looking for something else, and my tea got cold while I went chasing up that side alley. But the file was marked SECRET and I had to sign for it, and so I think we’ll let it rest. It had nothing to do with
Caranx
, anyway.

That evening Mona walked to the snack-bar in the grey dusk. It was the first time in months that she had gone to work in daylight, but it had been a fine light evening, and she was a little early. As she went she was wondering whether to change her job. The snack-bar was all right, but since Jerry went she had been restless. Now, with the prospect of light evenings once again, specially when daylight saving came in in the coming week, it did not seem to her a good thing to be starting work at six o’clock.

She was restless with the spring. It might be fun to try it in a shop. If she could get into a big shop, now, in the perfumery or the ladies’ gowns…. It might even be she could become a mannequin, and that led to the films, or so she thought.

She arranged her glasses behind the bar. A few officers came in at six o’clock and she was mildly busy; by half-past six the place was starting to warm up. There was a lean, saturnine lieutenant in the R.N.V.R. there that she knew as Mouldy James: she was not sure if the mouldiness was his nature or whether it meant that he had specialised in torpedoes. As a Portsmouth girl, born and bred, she knew it might be either.

Mouldy was with one or two others: they had a paper in their hands that they were laughing over. At first sight she took it for a rude story in typescript, such as she knew men liked to circulate. Then she saw it was a cutting from a newspaper. She caught the eye of Lieutenant James, who grinned at her.

Business was slack for the moment. She said: “What’s that you’ve got there?”

The officer took the cutting and flipped it across the bar to her. “My uncle in America sent it to me,” he said.

She took it, wondering. “Is this a bit of an American paper?”

“That’s right. He lives in Norfolk, Va.”

“Just fancy.” She looked at the print. “It’s really just the same as our papers, isn’t it?”

“God forbid.”

She smiled politely, not quite understanding what he meant. “What did you mean by saying that your uncle lived in Norfolk, Va?”

“Virginia. Just like you might say Portsmouth, Hants.”

She said again. “Just fancy …” Then she read the cutting.

Somebody came up to the bar, and said: “Two half-cans, please.”

She served him and returned to the cutting. “I don’t see what the joke’s about.”

Mouldy James took the cutting back and put it carefully into his notecase. “There isn’t any joke, really,” he said. “Only, I know that captain. I was in the Contraband Control when they brought him in. He’s the
biggest liar that we ever got. He said the rubber was for contraceptives.”

She sniffed. It was the sort of joke the barmaid has to sniff at.

One of the others said: “His U-boat story is a bloody great lie anyway. We never got one in these parts till January.”

Mona opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again. In a sickening moment she realised that the date was the date when
Caranx
had been sunk: December 3rd. These officers had not appreciated that; quite possibly they had none of them been in the district at that time. She must keep her mouth shut, because of Jerry. He had gone out of her life and she would never see him again, but she would not rake his trouble up in idle talk.

She turned away and began rinsing out her glasses.

When she turned back to the bar, Mouldy James and his friends had gone away; she saw them sitting up at the grill-bar, eating. She served her drinks listlessly, depressed. For some time now she had forgotten about
Caranx:
the reminder of the submarine increased her restless urge to make a change. Outside in the street there might still be a faint glow of sunset in the blackness of the sky. It was too bad to be cooped up in the snack-bar every night.

In a slack moment Miriam said: “You look proper down, tonight. Anything wrong, dear?”

She said: “Everything. I’m getting to hate this work.”

The other girl said: “Well, I don’t know about that. It’s regular. I thought you liked it here.”

“I did used to. I don’t now.”

She looked round the long room. In a far corner a group of three young ladies, officers of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, sat together at a table, looking a little out of place, and self-conscious. Mona said: “That’s what I’d like to be. Join the Wrens.”

The other girl followed her glance. “You won’t get a uniform like them. The ordinary uniform isn’t half so nice as the officers’. I do think they look ever so smart.”

Mona considered this. There was good sense in what Mariam had said. After all, it would be lovely if she got a job in the perfumery…. She had a great craving for beautiful things, for silks, perfumes, and beauty creams in elegant white alabaster pots, all wrapped in cellophane. She was sick of handing sloppy cans of beer across the bar.

Miriam was still looking at the Wrens. “You see that one in the middle? That’s Miss Hancock.”

Mona looked idly across the room. “Who’s she?”

“Her pa works in the dockyard, or used to do before the war. He was captain of the navigating school. They lived inside the gates, just this side of Admiralty House.”

“How’d you know that?”

“My cousin Flora—she’s in service with them. Before the war, I used to go and have tea in the kitchen. But they won’t let you in the dockyard now, not without you’ve got a pass.”

Mona was mildly interested. “What does an officer do, like that Miss Hancock?”

“I dunno what they do, I’m sure. She works in Admiralty House, along with the Commander-in-Chief, so Flora says.”

Mona said: “They get all the good jobs, officers’ daughters and that. I believe I’d like to try it in a shop, in the perfumery or something.”

Her friend said generously: “Well, you might get in that. You make up ever so pretty, really you do.”

Mona shot a brilliant smile at her. “You do talk soft.” A very shy young pilot in the Fleet Air Arm saw it, and his heart turned over. But his grill was ready, and in any case he would have been far too shy to go and talk to the barmaid. Romance was still-born.