Mad Joy (12 page)

Strands of pink on the eastern horizon were growing paler and brighter. I sat at the steering wheel of my truck, gauging the chill air with my breath as I waited at the barracks for my crew members to emerge. They piled in, nervous and cheerful, heads full of dreams.

‘Morning, Haps!’ said one of them, whose name was Ken. ‘How are we fixed today, then?’

I told them my predictions for the day, which were almost always accurate: ‘It’s gonna be a corker.’

‘You real, lovely Haps? Or am I still dreaming you?’

They always teased me, and I always let them. There had been one pain-in-the-neck who rattled me a bit, called Roy. He always tried to make me promise a dance or a kiss at the weekend as lewdly as possible, and then he would say things like, ‘You couldn’t deny a condemned man, could you, Haps?’ And it broke my heart not to hear him now, because his Hurricane had gone down the week before.

It would be in the months to come – in the July and August of 1940 – that I would begin to feel I was driving them all to their death. But on this particular morning at the end of May there seemed little to panic about. The weather was set to warm up, the pilots were joking about the food and the bombers and
British tactics. We bumped along the Gloucestershire lanes, which had just burst into an incongruous summer. The trees formed great canopies of fragrant green and the sheep-speckled hills, rolling like soft green waves, seemed a gentle balm before the fear. I could always sense it in the back of the truck when we reached the airfield. There would be a silence as we turned off the lane, a terrified and provisional goodbye to the charms of nature.

I set them all down at the dispersal huts and was about to drive away, when an eerie noise came from nowhere.

Up ahead, a thunder gathered with an enormous black shape heading towards us. Looking up, I could see it was a stray Hurricane with thick black smoke trailing from the tail. It was trying to land on our airstrip, but it was too close already.

‘What the …!’

Suddenly it dropped, hit the airstrip and burst into flames. It was a dual-control training plane, for two men wriggled out of their harnesses and fell on to the tarmac. The first disappeared behind the fuselage, shouting to the second. The other, having tumbled out, began to stagger around the ground near the front of the plane, clutching his chest.

‘Jesus Christ!’ said one of my crew. ‘There’ll be some fuel in there. She’s gonna go!’

I started running. I could see the man still staggering by the front of the wreck and I ran towards him, the concrete pounding up through my rubber soles, the cries behind telling me to stop, to look out, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, to bloody well stop.

I reached out for him and pulled him towards me by his arm. He seemed to pull away, to try and crouch down in protest. ‘My pilot!’ he wailed. ‘My trainee!’

‘It’s going to blow!’ I shrieked, and yanked at him as hard as I could, but he resisted again. It was like a tug of war. I looked
about for the other man, but I couldn’t see him. ‘Come on!’ I screamed, and his obstinate feet suddenly started to walk.

We were halfway back to the truck when the plane went up. They let me drive him to the hospital myself, with medical help in the back.

As soon as I had my next time off I went to the little field hospital where I had taken the injured pilot. The hospital was merely a country house that had been requisitioned. There were steps up to an ivy-covered gothic porch; a patient was being pushed around the grounds, and in the early June sunshine the hospital looked a pleasant place to be.

Inside, the smell of polish and the echoing noises of
efficiency
made me feel queasy. I was told he was ‘Flight Sergeant Bird’ and directed to a ward upstairs.

It was a curious room, with thick cornicing and a wide ceiling rose, a vast intricately carved fireplace and one or two tall plants redolent of grand hotels. I looked at the two rows of beds. Nearly every head turned to face me, and those that didn’t turned their eyes on me. I felt I had walked into a prison or a zoo, only instead of bars there were iron beds holding them down. And then in other ways it could have been someone’s living room – clearly had been until recently – with an exclusive, quiet parlour game going on, which I had burst in upon unawares. I wanted to turn and run. A nurse padding around on the creaky floorboards was the only noise, and I realized that my every step upon the stair had heralded my arrival.

The nurse approached me, and I said who I wanted to see. Wordlessly, with a swift smile, she guided me down to the last bed.

He followed me with his eyes, but his head remained stiffly directed in front of him. His chest was heavily bandaged, and he wore a neck brace.

‘Hello,’ I tried.

He raised one hand slightly. I sat down tentatively on the bed.

‘Bit of a close shave you had there,’ I smiled.

He propelled some breath sharply through his nose, which could have been a laugh or a sneer.

‘My name’s Joy – but you can call me Haps, if you like …’

I was determinedly cheerful, but there was no response. ‘What’s yours?’

When there was still no reply, the man in the next bed, who was leaning on his elbow looking at me, said, ‘He’s a bit depressed, love. Won’t get much sense out of him.’

I smiled. Then, as if in defiance of his neighbour, Flight Sergeant Bird spoke: ‘Philip. Philip Bird.’ Then he sighed deeply.

I repeated it gently. Then I folded my lips together, not knowing what else to say. I wondered if he remembered who I was.

‘Do you remember me? I was the mad idiot who pulled you away from the plane.’

The man in the next bed got himself very comfortable now, as if waiting to hear the rest of the story. It felt suddenly very self-congratulatory of me to spell out my role in his rescue, and I shut up. In any case, Philip Bird did not seem in the slightest bit happy to have been rescued, and, after all the heroism I’d enjoyed amongst the men at the airbase, I now began to feel quite disconcerted and deflated.

‘Well, it’s good to see you in one piece, Philip. I hope you make a speedy recovery.’

I stood up to go, and he suddenly grasped my wrist. He held it very, very tightly, belying the weakness he seemed to present. I swallowed hard. Then he pulled hard at my wrist and drew me towards him, hissing in my ear: ‘I’m a coward, you know!’

I shook my head furiously, and sat down again. ‘No … no, you can’t say that!’ I spoke in a whisper too, so that the man on the next bed turned over and started reading a newspaper with his back to us. ‘No one flying a Hurricane can be called a coward.’

‘I left … He’s dead, isn’t he?’

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said, ‘I’ll find out for you.’

Then he asked me where I was stationed, how he could find me, where I lived. I assured him I would come and visit again, although privately I wasn’t sure if the trainee pilot had escaped unharmed.

‘So you’re from around here? Woodside … where is that, then?’

In my relief to talk about something easy I started gabbling on. I told him all about Woodside, how I lived with Gracie near a bubbling spring, and how the sheep wandered into the streets sometimes, and how no one from Woodside thought there was anywhere else better on earth – although, now that the war had come, lots of them had been forced to find out.

By the time I left, his spirits seemed to have lifted. The nurse even made a point of asking me if I would kindly come again, as I had done him a ‘power of good’. Nonetheless I was pleased to go, and skipped down the steps into the sunshine, planning to have some afternoon tea in the nearby village with Dot and Reeny.

The following day when I drove the men back to their barracks, there was a sombre mood amongst them. I didn’t ask why, but I think there had been some near misses, and some bad news from another airfield.

When dawn came I made myself some sweet tea but couldn’t drink it, and I went to sit in the truck until the first yawns of the squadron.

Before the others emerged, Ken got into the passenger seat. He looked as if he were trying to broach something important. I felt uneasy, because he was usually so chirpy, and now that he had stopped being chirpy, I became fully aware that we were a man and a woman sitting alone in a truck, young, lusty and full of longing.

‘I was wondering if I could ask you a bit of a favour …’

‘Try me.’

‘I need some petrol urgently.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well … I’ve got some leave tomorrow and I need it for a honeymoon.’

‘Honeymoon?’

He raised his eyebrows slightly, as if to study the effect this had on me.

‘Yep. Sister’s getting married in Southampton. Only the honeymoon’s in Dorset. His father’s got a car they can borrow. Just need the petrol, that’s all.’

I sighed and got down from the truck, fetching my spare can from the back. ‘She’d better be worth it.’

He got out of the truck too, and came to stand next to me. He took the can, and for a moment we were startlingly close. ‘You know I’d do anything for you, Haps.’ He was smiling now, and I knew he was teasing, back in chirpy mode again. Although something in his eyes, and the way he lingered over the petrol can, suggested he might have been serious. I felt very peculiar, because it made me wonder if Ken was the sort of man who, in other circumstances, could make me very happy. I suddenly wanted him for myself and – just for that brief moment – I knew that was possible.

‘You were pretty impressive the other day, you know,’ he said.

‘So I’m told.’

‘A man could feel safe with a girl like you.’ He was smiling again now and I felt almost relieved.

‘Safe?’

‘Well …’ he smirked, ‘not
that
safe!’

The moment was over. He promised he’d return the can the day after next, and he owed me one. This debt he would repay in the form of a dance. I feigned immense gratitude, and he took the can into his barracks.

The truck filled up quickly. Ken tumbled back out of his barracks and into the truck, perching himself behind me. He said I smelt of fresh apples and looked like a peach. He asked – as he always did – if I would save every dance for him on Friday. There was always an RAF dance somewhere on a Friday. I surprised him by saying I would. I surprised myself. And once again an urgent desire for him took me by surprise. Now the sun was gleaming through each blade of grass, and a dew was
steaming gently off gateposts and hedgerows. The sky was a picture book blue, and wrens and tits were twittering prettily in every direction. As we drove through the lanes, the cows – who always looked as if they’d never seen us before – gave little honking noises on cue, the fat lambs we had followed from birth were so chunky they were hardly distinguishable from the heavy sheep who gave deep brays now and then to keep them in order. The hedgerows were bursting with blue and pink and yellow and white. It was warming up. It would be hot. It was a day for love.

‘See you Friday, then,’ he said as he got down, holding my eyes while the others whistled.

‘Okey-doke!’

He raised his eyebrows in astonishment, and went off humming ‘Walking my baby back home’.

I leant by the truck for a while, watching them go and feeling the sun warm me. Love suddenly seemed easy. It was just a case of letting go. And at that moment, following Ken’s happy rhythm as he foxtrotted into the dispersal hut, humming and smiling at me, I loved him.

I took a couple of days’ leave as well. Although Woodside was only five miles away, I had to go by bus.

Gracie was overjoyed to see me. I felt like a film star when I opened the door. She had made a caved-in cake with ‘
Welcome
Home Jog’ in wobbly piped icing, and Mrs Mustoe popped round with a perfect fruit pie. Gracie and I chatted for hours, sitting in the garden on some dining chairs, lapping up the sun. Nothing had changed. I thought it would all be different, now that I had done so many unusual things, been to so many places, tricked death, saved lives. But to Gracie I was still her little Joy, and try as I might, I could not help but revert to her little Joy as soon as we were together. It was deeply frustrating, but I’d heard the other girls talk about it too. The changes I’d made were for me, not for her. She would always see me as the small girl who walked out of the woods, and nothing – not wars nor bravery nor maturity nor death – could change that.

I had a delicious lie-in the following morning, and was woken by Gracie sitting on my bed and saying there was the oddest man slumped by the fountain.

‘You ought to come and see, Joy. There’s something funny about him.’

I stretched, and seeing that it was gone nine thirty I followed her heavily into the front bedroom, where she held back the curtain for me to look out. There, on the opposite side of the road a few yards down, was our village spring. Like a sheet of ribbed glass it gushed from the side of the bank and bubbled into a stone enclosure. Sitting on the grass next to it, his arm draped over the stone edging, was a young man. His head lolled on his chest, and he was wearing a coat that was too small for him.

‘He’s wearing a woman’s coat!’ I said. ‘And—’

‘Oooh! I don’t like the sound of that at all!’

‘—pyjamas! I know who he is! It’s the man I pulled away from the plane. I was going to visit him tomorrow. What on
earth
…?’

I ran down the stairs, then I ran back up and pulled on some clothes. I asked Gracie to come too, and between us we managed to pull him up and walk him back to the house. It wasn’t difficult. He could walk well enough. But he was cold and weak.

‘I was hoping I’d find you,’ he said later, after a cup of tea and a giant wedge of my coming-home cake. ‘I remembered you lived near the spring.’

‘Did you walk all the way?’

He looked at me, his eyes drooping with sleep: ‘Slowly.’

We put him to bed for a few hours, but I paced around, unable to settle to anything. Gracie was put out. She treasured this time with me, and I could see she felt it had been sabotaged by this uninvited guest, even though she was at pains to make him welcome.

‘Won’t he get picked up for desertion?’ she asked. ‘If he’s just walked off like that?’

‘I’ll have to take him back.’

‘Not now!’

‘Later. We’ll let him sleep.’

We tried to pretend he wasn’t there. I did some weeding in the vegetable beds, and we made dinner together. The smell of steaming vegetables must have woken him, for when we took him a tray he was sitting up in bed, gazing in front of him.

It was hard to get him to speak, and he seemed to have become the silent man he had been when I first found him at the hospital.

‘I’ll take you back later,’ I said gently.

He began to scratch at the coverlet nervously. ‘Can’t go back,’ he mumbled. ‘Can’t … can’t … no! NO!’

Gracie was really startled, and looked at me as if to say we might be in too deep.

‘They’ll be looking for you,’ I said.

He scratched more rapidly and started to shake his head from side to side, making strange groaning sounds. Then he closed his eyes tight shut, as if to see anything was too painful.

‘What is it you’re afraid of? Why can’t you go back?’

He opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘Her – I don’t want to see her!’ He closed his eyes again and grimaced in pain.

‘Who?’

More shaking of the head. Deep breaths. ‘My mother. She’ll come and visit. She made me do it. I never wanted to. She made me!’

I stroked his hand and said nothing. There was a long silence.

‘I left him! He died. He died.’

‘You mean the co-pilot?’

He nodded. ‘I walked away.’ His voice rose to a very high pitch. ‘I walked away.’ There were tears rolling down his closed eyes. I had never seen a man cry before, and I wasn’t sure what to do. So I stroked his hand some more, and waited a little.

‘You didn’t walk away. I took you away. You were going to be blown up, otherwise.’

He swallowed, and whispered: ‘Walked away. I did. He … he begged me to save him. He called for me. I could see him, crying out – waving. He was crying out to me from the tarmac – didn’t you see him?’

‘You mean the other man who got out?’

‘Yes!’

I remembered the first man who had tumbled out of the plane, and then seemed to disappear. Ken told me he had survived, and gone on to hospital later when the ambulance came.

‘He survived,’ I said.

‘No – I left him.’

‘He survived.’

‘Even if he did – I left him. He called out to me, and I left him lying there.’

He started to sob again. ‘Please don’t make me go back … I can’t face them … I can’t …’ He cried bitterly for a full ten minutes, and the dinner went cold.