Something Dangerous (Spoils of Time 02) (69 page)

‘You could hardly have left them, could you?’

There was a long silence: then, ‘No. I suppose not. But – ’ she sighed, ‘well, maybe he will be all right. Dear God, I hope so. He’s – well, he’s a great survivor.’

‘He’ll need to be,’ said Venetia soberly, after a careful check that the children were properly asleep. ‘Do you still feel – in love with him? Guilt and everything apart?’

‘I don’t know. It hurt so much. When I found out. So maybe I am. But I don’t think I could ever trust him again. And that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Venetia, ‘yes it is. Much the most important thing.’ And she pulled the car over to the side of the road and burst into tears.

‘Venetia, I’m so sorry. How stupid, how tactless of me. I just didn’t think. Oh, darling, don’t, don’t be so upset, and anyway, you’ve done the sensible thing at least, drawn the line—’

‘There’s more to it than that,’ said Venetia, blowing her nose.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Than – doing the sensible thing. Getting divorced, drawing the line.’

‘What? There’s something the matter, isn’t there? Something more than – than all that. I know there is. What is it?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ said Venetia.

‘I’m really sorry. But I’m going to – go.’

She smiled at him; saw him dragging his mind from his petition – that blessed petition about the purchase tax on books that was keeping him and Celia so busily occupied – watched him smile back at her. He had such a lovely smile; she had always noticed that smile, its sweetness, ever since the first time she had met him, when Celia had brought her to Cheyne Walk and introduced them to one another. Even then it had made everything much less frightening; it still seemed to work.

‘Go where, Barty?’

‘Wol, you know where. To join up. Don’t look like that, I’ve simply got to. I’m getting more and more miserable now, not doing anything useful. I’ve just got to.’

‘But—’

‘Look.’ She pulled a chair up to his wheelchair, took his hand. ‘Giles is here, quite safe, in England. For a while longer, Helena says. Adele’s come home. I know Kit is still – in danger. But you must be feeling better. Both of you. So I want to be released from my promise.’

There was a long silence as he looked at her. Then he said, ‘Well, you only promised to stay for a while. You were very careful about what you said.’ He smiled again. ‘As you always are. Dear Barty, you mean so much to me, you know. Don’t look at me like that, I just wanted to be sure you knew.’

She felt the tears, hot and sudden. ‘Oh Wol. Of course I know. And you mean so much to me. That’s why I’ve come to tell you first. So you can get used to the idea.’

‘You mean before Celia gets going. Bless you. Yes, of course we feel better and of course you must go. What are you going to do?’

‘I’m joining the ATS.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘I like the idea. It’s real soldiering. And you know how I love machines, well cars and things, anyway. I just feel it would suit me. Goodness knows what exactly I’ll end up doing.’

There was a silence; then Oliver said, ‘Whatever it is, it will be very well done. We can be sure of that.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me. Will you be going for a commission?’

‘Haven’t even thought about it. Honestly. I’ll see what happens. Anyway, look how brilliantly Giles is doing. You must be so proud of him.’

‘I am. Desperately proud. God knows I wouldn’t have asked for it to happen as it has, but this war has really put Giles on his feet.

Extraordinary, isn’t it, how things turn out. Anyway, back to you: when – when will you go?’

‘I’m not sure. I can only tell you I’ve passed my medical. They said I’d hear when they were ready for me. Should be quite soon.’

It was – very soon. Ten days later, an envelope came for her, from the MoD. She was to be at King’s Cross Station with an empty suitcase the following Friday.

She stood, smiling down at the letter, feeling a rush of excitement and relief. At last. Something she could do; something she could offer; and something to distract her from the sense of futile misery and emptiness that had haunted her so relentlessly for what seemed to her now most of her grown-up life.

There was a story – no one knew if it was true – of a German pilot’s parachute getting caught on an RAF wing – and the pilot wriggling frantically to set himself free. That must have been very strange, Kit thought; to have the Luftwaffe, that great, impersonal machine, become a man, an ordinary man in dreadful danger. Because that was the whole point really. People, girls usually, often asked him how he felt when he hit someone; not much, he said, it was planes you were fighting, not a person. You didn’t think about that person, bailing out from a plane on fire; you’d silently wish him well and hope he’d escape. You didn’t feel any animosity towards him, none of them did. Why should you? You were doing what you were trained to do, you couldn’t let yourself do anything else. You were fighting for freedom, for your country’s life. If you thought too much you got the jitters. It was the same as when your friends were killed; you’d feel a tremendous sense of loss, but you didn’t let yourself dwell on it. It affected you too deeply if you did.

Keeping ahead of the game, hitting before you were hit, that was what counted. And concentrating; nothing could be allowed to distract you from that. One of the oddest phenomena was the way you could be in a sky full of planes, Spitfires, Hurricanes, 109s, Stukas, and the next minute, you’d be fighting just one other plane and the sky would seem quite empty.

They had become the heroes, the darlings of Britain, all of them; idolised for their courage, their dashing charm and looks, their extreme youth, their careless, irreverent lives. They’d walk into the pub in the evening, and everyone would buy them drinks and of course the girls were tremendously friendly. If it hadn’t been for Catriona, he could have had a different girl every night.

They’d laugh off the day’s struggles, talking about them as if they’d been playing cricket. If you got hit, they’d say airily, downing the third or fourth pint, you got down as fast as you bloody well could and then went straight up again in a new plane. (No one even discussed the loss of planes: literally hundreds of them. There always seemed to be more.)

They’d spend the evening in the pubs; or go haring up to London in overpacked cars, four or five of them in each one. Kit’s little two-seater MG had often held as many as five chaps. There was, after all, no shortage of fuel.

They’d go to a nightclub, the Kit Kat was a favourite, to dance and drink and return at dawn, over-excited, wide awake; Kit had got into the habit of taking four or five aspirins, which together with the alcohol would get him off to sleep. And then in the morning, he’d take benzedrine to make him feel wide awake, keep him going. It all seemed to work pretty well. If you had a really bad hangover, the doc would give you a whiff of oxygen, that worked like a dream. And then straight down to dispersal for dawn readiness.

As long as you didn’t think too much.

‘But sometimes,’ he wrote to Catriona, ‘at the end of the day there’s something special. You come down into the countryside, and it’s so quiet and you have this feeling of tremendous peace. It’s as if there’s something with you. Perhaps there is. Actually I do like to think there is.’

She wrote often; sweet, tender letters, telling him how proud of him she was, how much she loved him. Just the thought of her there gave him courage when he needed it, made him feel he wasn’t alone.

‘The Battle of France is over; the Battle of Britain is about to begin.’ So Churchill informed the nation; without actually saying so, he was admitting the acute likelihood of an invasion. The beaches on the south coast were all lined with barbed wire down to the low water mark, signposts everywhere had been pulled up or turned round, factories were working round the clock, seven days a week, restocking the British armouries, ‘all lost, defending the bloody French,’ as Lord Beckenham frequently remarked. Lord Beaverbrook, brilliantly in charge of building up the fighter force, put out a call for everyone to give whatever metal they could to aid the war effort: saucepans, old bikes, tin baths were willingly sacrificed, so that they could, by some magical process which nobody quite understood, become planes, tanks, guns.

A hundred Spitfires and Hurricanes a week were being built. They were needed; the Battle of Britain was still at that stage being fought in the air. All summer it went on: the relentless pounding of the coast by the Luftwaffe. Dover was known as Hellfire Corner.

In the middle of August, Kit was granted a forty-eight-hour leave; he came home to Cheyne Walk looking exhausted. Celia, looking at him, seeing his boy’s face hardened, his intense blue eyes shadowed, wondered how he could endure it.

‘Oh you just do,’ he said cheerfully, pouring himself a second very large gin and tonic. ‘Nothing else to be done really.’

‘Have you lost – many friends?’

‘A – few. We’ve been pretty lucky, really.’

The veterans like himself had; the new boys often only survived a week. Training had been cut to an all-time minimum; there were stories of people learning to use radio information by riding bicycles round the airfield.

‘Look at me: not a scratch. All this time. Guardian angel, I’ve got, out there on my wings.’

‘But darling—’

‘Honestly, Mother, if you know what you’re doing, you’re pretty damn safe. The biggest danger is from G not the Germans.’

‘What on earth is “G”?’

‘G-force. It’s what happens if you cut the throttle to throw the plane into a turn. Usually because there’s someone on your tail. The blood literally drains from your head. You black out, your eyesight goes, you can’t use your arms or legs.’

Celia tried to envisage this happening in a small plane travelling at five hundred miles an hour with several guns trained on it.

‘Kit! And you tell me it’s not dangerous.’

‘No, it is. I just said so. But somehow you still know what you’re doing and you get away from the bugger. Sorry. Once you’ve done 180 degrees, he’s in front of you and you’re all right.’

‘I see,’ said Celia. She took a large swallow from her own gin and tonic.

‘Let’s change the subject. What news of Barty?’

‘Oh, she’s up in Leicester. Doing lots of drills, she says. Very happy.’

‘I think it’s marvellous. And have you met Tory, Jay’s Wren girlfriend? She’s a corker.’

‘Is she indeed?’ said Oliver. ‘No, we haven’t yet. He took her home to meet LM and Gordon though, so it must be quite serious. They liked her very much. Jay’s doing intelligence work, apparently.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Kit. Something in his voice caught at Celia.

‘Kit, isn’t that right?’

‘Mother, I don’t know. How should I? If that’s what he says, then I’m sure it’s true. He’s still in England, anyway. LM must be pleased about that.’

‘She is. Oh now, here’s Sebastian. He wanted to see you. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Of course.’

He stretched out his long legs and smiled at her, then stood up as Sebastian came into the room.

‘Hallo, Sebastian.’

‘Hallo, my boy. Good to see you. Still not a scratch, I see.’

‘No,’ said Kit, reaching out and touching the small table that held his drink.

Celia looked at the two of them, smiling at one another, chatting easily, and carefully fixed the picture in her mind as she always did at some particularly happy moment, allowing herself to hope that perhaps it was true, that as Kit had so often told her, if you’d survived a few weeks of flying, you’d survive them all.

‘Darling, you’ve got to tell him.’

‘I can’t. I feel so stupid.’

‘But why? I don’t understand. Takes two to—’

‘I know that but—’

‘And if he really said—’

‘Yes, he did, he did. But even so I don’t know if he meant it for – well, for ever again.’

‘And if he—’

‘Yes, I think I would,’ said Venetia carefully. ‘Well, I know I would. I haven’t thought about anything much else. I do still—’

‘I knew you did. Does he write much?’

‘Not a lot. Too busy. But when he does, very—’

‘Well, there you are. He’ll be thrilled. I’m sure. Have you been writing to him?’

‘Oh yes. Just silly, light-hearted letters. Nothing – heavy.’

‘But why not? If he’s—’

‘I just don’t want to worry him. He’s got enough on his plate, surely.’

‘Have you thought it might cheer him up?’ said Adele lightly.

‘Not really. It’s not as if we hadn’t got any children. We’ve got too many—’

‘But he loves them. He’s a wonderful father.’

‘I know, I know. But—’

‘Tell you what. Wait for one more letter and then tell him. How about that?’

‘Yes, all right,’ said Venetia, visibly cheered by this plan. ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’

In the officers’ mess of their training camp in the furthest point of the Orkneys, Captain Mike Willoughby-Clarke poured Boy Warwick another large whisky and then watched him slightly anxiously as he downed it at one go. He had seemed disproportionately upset by the news that his ex-wife had been dancing cheek-to-cheek at the Dorchester with a handsome young officer. Funny, really. They’d been divorced over a year after all.

Barty often said afterwards that the primary qualification for life at Glen Parva Barracks – ‘and every other branch of the services, I daresay’ – was patience. Patience for the queueing. It was hardly exciting. You queued for everything: for uniform, blankets, medical inspections, hair inspection – ‘I have been pronounced lice-free, you’ll be pleased to know,’ she wrote to Celia and Oliver – eye tests, hearing tests, and worst of all, for endless inoculations. The further down in the queue you were, the blunter the needle; there was no question of changing one until it literally wouldn’t puncture the skin. Lots of the girls reacted quite violently to the inoculations, with first large sores and then scabs appearing on their skin, but Barty had nothing to show for hers. She worried about it until the MO told her she obviously hadn’t needed the jabs in the first place; remembering the excruciating pain of some of them, this was not entirely welcome news.