The Aerodrome: A Love Story (7 page)

aerodrome were the people whom I knew. Nearly all the men who worked on the Squire's estate (and they were most of the village) had been given a holiday so as to attend the funeral. Some of them would be, I knew, already drunk, and many of them had never entered the church since the days when they were married or confirmed. But for the duration of the service they would behave with the utmost scrupulous correctness, for they were united in their respect for the church itself and for the man who had been for more than twenty years a leading character among them. Wives, sisters, and mothers sat with the men. Some were endeavouring to make their children sit straight in the pews; some looked, as I did, reverently and with a sense of loss at the wood of the coffin shining between the wreaths. Some of the older women were already dabbing their eyes with pocket handkerchiefs. We took our places in one of the front pews and soon the bell ceased to toll. The cessation of sound seemed to me like one of those strange silences that one notices in the summer, sitting in the woods, perhaps, when the birds suddenly stop singing and the sound of insects dies away and one strains one's ears after what is inaudible. I could think of nothing now but my grief for the dead man whose body, however unlike the living it might be, was soon to be taken wholly away from us. I turned my head involuntarily towards the Rector's wife and saw that she was looking at me. Her lips were tightly compressed. I had no idea of what thoughts were passing through her mind. We heard the clergyman's voice raised in prayer. The organ began to play and the choir filed out of the vestry to their places in the choir stalls. At the end of the procession came the Air Vice-Marshal, walking slowly and deliberately as though he were unconscious of those who preceded him. He took the place that had been occupied by the Rector during his lifetime, while the officiating clergyman sat at the reading desk which faced him. I listened intently to the words of the funeral service, for their beauty and even their harshness seemed to soothe; but from time to time I found my attention distracted by the straight figure of the man in uniform, standing where I had seen stand so often the man whom I had believed to be my father. His face was impassive, his attitude correct, and yet there was something in his bearing which showed a complete withdrawal from and rejection of the ceremony in which he was taking a part. I felt his very presence to be incongruous and almost threatening, and when I found myself watching him or thinking of him I turned my attention back indignantly to the words which the clergyman was pronouncing. When the time came for the address to be delivered, I felt no curiosity but some distaste, as I watched him proceed to the pulpit. He stood there stiffly, most unlike any occupant of the position whom I had ever seen before. The congregation remained standing, waiting for the usual prayer and, after a pause of a moment or two, the Air Vice-Marshal made an impatient movement of his hand and said: "Sit down, please." There was something shocking in the peremptoriness of his manner, but the congregation sat down devoutly and turned up their faces to the pulpit as they had been accustomed to do when listening to a minister of religion. The Air Vice-Marshal spoke without any hesitation, and rather in the manner of one who was delivering important instructions to his subordinates. "We are here to-day," he said, "to bury a man. His body is in that coffin, and his death was the result of an unfortunate accident. Death is often a matter of accident, and there is no reason to be particularly dismayed by the fact that your Rector's death was accidental. He might just as well have been run over by a passing car or fallen off a precipice as have died in the way in which he actually did die. We need, I think, feel no pity for him, as far as the manner of his death is concerned. "As for his life, he himself best knew whether it was well or badly lived. If he has friends among you, let them reflect that the objects of this kind of affection are not immortal. If he has enemies, they would do well to remember that hatred of individuals is invariably a waste both of time and energy. The man is dead. His family is, I believe, well provided for. That, on this subject, is all, I think, which needs to be said." Here he paused and I felt, as I am sure the greater part of the congregation felt, a kind of impotent rage at the inhumanity of the words which we had heard. Yet far stronger than this rage was my consciousness of the body lying behind me, over my right shoulder, on the hearse in the centre of the aisle. The thought flashed through my mind of making some protest against what had been said; but to do any such thing would have seemed to disturb the peace and dignity of the dead which was wholly unaffected by our words and movements. But the old gentleman, the uncle of the Rector's wife, who previously had commented adversely on the Vice-Marshal's manners, evidently did not share my feelings. I heard a noise of coughing behind me and then a voice. Turning round, I saw that the old man had risen to his feet and was shaking his fist in the direction of the pulpit. He was breathing heavily, opening his mouth with labour like a fish, and struggling with his emotion to produce words. Before he had time to speak, however, I heard the Vice-Marshal's voice. It was as calm and deliberate as it had been throughout his address. "Will someone kindly remove that man?" he said, and immediately two airmen rose from their places at the back of the church, stepped smartly down the aisle and, gripping the old gentleman firmly by the elbow, escorted him to the church door. The old man was still incapable of forming words, but emitted a kind of spluttering sound as he was being forced out of the building. There were restless movements among the congregation, but no open demonstration was made. People were affected, I think, as much by surprise as by indignation, and this surprise took away from them the immediate impetus of anger which might otherwise have caused something like a riot. I glanced at the Rector's wife beside me, and saw that she was looking intently at the Air Vice-Marshal. Her eyes were narrowed, but there was something soft about her mouth. Had not the notion seemed so absurd, I should have thought that the expression on her face showed pity. The rest of the congregation continued to stare at the figure in the pulpit. There seemed to me something dumb and ox-like in their attentive frowning faces. The Air Vice-Marshal went on speaking as though no interruption had occurred. "I have made these preliminary remarks," he said, "because it is customary at a funeral to make some mention of the dead man. But I would have you know that what is customary among you--sentimentality, mawkishness, and extravagant praise of those who are already sufficiently well known--is considered amongst us of the Air Force neither customary nor proper. The fact of death itself is of such far-reaching significance that neither the manner of dying nor the person who dies can, at such times as this, be considered of much importance. Nor would I be among you to-day if it were simply a question of an old clergyman shot accidentally by one of my officers. As it happens I have much more important things of which to speak to you." Here he paused again, and now it was curiosity rather than anything else which kept his audience silent and attentive. What was perhaps most remarkable was not the outrageous manner in which the service was being conducted, but the complete self-assurance of the speaker. In no way whatever did he show any consciousness of offending almost every ear by the words he used. "Whether any of you," he said, "is yet aware of what is shortly to happen in this village, I do not know. Briefly, it is to be taken over by the Air Force. The property of your leading landowner, who gives most of you work at very low rates of pay, will be bought up by the Government. We shall install an Air Force padre in the place of your deceased Rector. You will be given work to do which, in many cases, will be different from the work which you have been in the habit of doing. Your pay, as long as the work is done conscientiously, will be increased. All this will be explained to you later. Now I merely wish to point out to you that you would do well to prepare for a great change in your lives. We in the Air Force look upon things very differently from those who have been used to dictate your ideas to you. Muddle, inefficiency, any kind of slackness are things which we simply do not tolerate. You will be given your instructions later. At the moment I have done what I came here to do, namely to prepare you for considerable changes. That is enough for the present. Now we shall bury the dead body." He glanced towards the coffin in the aisle and descended the steps of the pulpit. If the first part of his speech had outraged the congregation, by the second part they were quite dumbfounded. Men stared at one another as though they had been listening to something incredible or mad. There was already some muttering to be heard, when the visiting clergyman, pronouncing in a loud voice the words "Let us pray!", brought back an illusion of normality. The service continued as though the Air Vice-Marshal's speech had not been made; but there was a weakness and faltering in the singing and an air of uncertainty and desperation among us all as we followed the body, borne by four aircraftsmen, to the grave in the churchyard. Most conflicting feelings succeeded each other in my mind. At one moment I felt impelled to jostle one of the aircraftsmen out of the way and to take the handle of the bier upon my shoulder; for it seemed the last indignity that no friend should carry for the last time the man who had been to me as a father. But still his rest seemed to me more complete and solid than our agitation; and, as the coffin was lowered into the ground, and the earth scattered upon it, I seemed to see before my eyes the figure of the bearded man standing, as he had stood at the dinner party proposing my health. I could think of nothing then but of the finality of what was happening. I felt the Rector's wife grip my arm as we heard the earth falling upon the wood of the coffin. We turned away from the grave together and were confronted by the Air Vice-Marshal, who was looking at us gravely. The Squire's sister was standing at his side. He turned to her and, addressing the Rector's wife and me together, said: "I think we have accepted this lady's invitation to lunch." Both the ladies smiled, nervously, but almost as though they were discounting his behaviour at the funeral. "I don't think that I shall come," I said, and looked angrily at them from face to face. The Rector's wife had an imploring look in her eyes. The Squire's sister was staring at the ground. "No doubt I shall see you later," the Vice-Marshal said, "that is, if your mother will be good enough to put me up for the night." I could find nothing even approximately polite to say; so I turned away from them and walked quickly out of the churchyard.

CHAPTER VII

New Plans

I WALKED slowly up the hill to the pub and, when I had entered the door, found the bar more than usually full of men who were talking animatedly, still wearing the suits which they had worn at the funeral. Those who noticed me stopped talking and one or two came forward and shook hands with me. They looked hard into my eyes with set jaws, and I saw in their faces, even though some of them were already drunk, more affection and more respect for the dead man than anything else which I had seen that day. We said nothing; indeed I knew that my presence had momentarily constrained their conversation; and I went to the bar, behind which Bess was serving, to order myself a drink. Bess, too, was wearing the dress which she had worn at the funeral, but her face was alive with a gaiety that rather surprised me. As she handed me my tankard she leant her head close to mine, so that the yellow hair brushed against my cheek, and whispered: "I'm free at two o'clock." She blushed as her eyes met mine, and I nodded my head. All the distress which I had felt that day, all the humiliations which I fancied I had suffered seemed to be lost in the concentration of my desire for her. I thought again, as I had thought that morning while watching the blackbirds on the lawn, of how it would be if she and I were always together, always eager for each other, and the thought made me feel faint. By now she had turned to another customer, and I took the cold handle of the tankard in my hand and turned back into the room. The men around me were still silent, evidently at a loss as to how they should speak to me of the funeral. At last Mac placed his tankard on the bar and, looking round him as though he anticipated contradiction, said: "Say what you like, the old Rector was a good man." There was a chorus of "He was that", and only Tony, the village carpenter, a thin wizened man who rarely said anything at all at these gatherings, spoke up suddenly and said: "More respect ought rightly to have been paid." "It's a fact," came from some of the others. "It's a bloody fact," and now I noticed in their faces both bewilderment and anger. "What do you think about the Air Force occupying the village?" I asked, and at once everybody started speaking. George Birkett elbowed his way forward through the others until he faced me. He must have drunk much before the funeral, and now his face was oddly flushed in patches of red between the pieces of sticking plaster. "What do you think, Mr Roy?" he asked. "Was that chap mad? The old Squire wouldn't allow it, would he now?" There was something pathetic in the tone of voice used by the big half-drunken man. The others clustered round waiting attentively for what I had to say, and I told them briefly what I knew, that the Squire, however he might wish to do so, could not resist the demands of the Government, and that in all probability everything which the Air Vice-Marshal had said was strictly true. When I had finished there was a silence of consternation. Then nearly everyone started speaking at once in a hubbub of high and angry voices. Fred made himself heard above the rest. As I remember him he was young, slight, with a quizzical look in his eye. One had usually to strain one's ears to hear what he was saying, but now he was shouting at the top of his voice. "I shall bloody well leave the bloody village," he was saying. "Work for a lot of soldiers! Not me!" "That's right, that's quite right!" said the others, and most of them looked at Fred with admiration, though mingled with it was some regret, for those who had wives and children knew that it would be impossible for them to leave their houses, and the older men knew that the habits of their lifetimes could not be transplanted. A general conversation, eager and bitter, took place, and the hard words used of the aerodrome seemed gradually to relieve the men's pent-up feelings. More and more beer was drunk, and soon some of those who had been standing close to each other in eager talk sat down separately and lit their pipes. First one group and then another would begin to talk of subjects other than the aerodrome, and from time to time short bursts of laughter would arise to mark the conclusion of some story. Mac strolled slowly towards the dartboard and Fred followed him. They tossed up and Mac, having won, took his stand on the rubber mat that marked the throw. Several others turned their heads to watch the players. "Cross-bred puppy!" Mac said, as his first dart missed the double. He took the second dart between his fingers, kissed it, and murmured, "Come now, my little sucking-pig", but it too missed the mark. Then he shook his head and shouted out what we had come to regard as his especial battle cry, "Come, fever, from the South!" His third dart fixed in the double twenty. There was general laughter and Fred, taking his place on the mat, swore as he spilt some beer over his trousers. Jollity was, for the moment, restored. The landlord came into the bar from an inner room. He nodded towards me gravely and leant over the bar, puffing at his pipe, surveying the dart-players with satisfaction. He was a large man, kindly in his way, and with determined views on politics. He had nothing in him of his daughter's grace of manner. I inquired after his wife, and learnt that she had been ill and was away, staying with a friend. That morning I could not join in the general merriment. I ordered some bread and cheese and sat down in a corner away from the dartboard, watching Bess as she went to and fro filling and washing out the glass tankards. From time to time she would look at me and smile with her head twisted round, perhaps, while she measured out whisky with her back to the room, or staring up at me from beneath her eyebrows as she bent down to replace glasses on the shelf below the bar. But I felt insecure and her beauty only left me weak. Though I knew the people here well, and loved them, I was disgusted and frightened by the contrast between their quick anger, their sudden levity, and the undeviating precision and resolution of the Air Vice-Marshal. I longed for the time when the bar would close and I could put my arms round Bess, for I fancied that in her love there was some security, and I wished to tell her of my feelings at the funeral and to discuss with her plans for the future which I now began to hope that we would share together. It seemed long to wait before the landlord removed the pipe from his lips, stared solemnly at the clock, and in his ringing voice cried out: "Time now, all you gentlemen, please." There was a decent pause, and then the men, now mostly drunk, began to walk or stumble out into the road. Some shook my hand on their way out, and I could see that now, in their drunkenness, their original impressions of the dead Rector and of the funeral were returning to them. I followed them out of the pub and walked up the hill to the stile leading into one of the fields below the aerodrome. The air was warm in spite of a light breeze that chased a few high clouds over the spring-clear sky. From the stile I could see a portion of one of the large hangars at the top of the hill curved in a way so like the natural roundness of this land, and yet in its perfect regularity so unlike. I looked back towards the white and empty village street and soon saw Bess coming up it to meet me. She had changed her dress for the one which she had worn at the Agricultural Show and, as I looked at her, I felt that all that had happened to me since then had in some way deepened my love for her and made it more vivid and exacting. When she came to the stile I took her hands and kissed them. There was a more than usual gaiety and frankness in her eyes; and, though we were in full view of the road, she pressed her body against mine and kissed me lightly on the mouth. We turned round, crossed the stile, and began to walk over the field. Her first words to me were: "Wasn't he marvellous?" and, when I inquired of whom she was speaking, she said it was the Air Vice-Marshal, and then paused, embarrassed perhaps because it had occurred to her that she had said something to offend me, as indeed she had. I replied indignantly, asking what consideration the Air Force had ever shown for the village, and in particular what right had one of their officials to come down and speak with such inhumanity at a funeral; but as I spoke I saw that she was hardly listening, and the absence of her attention had the effect of confusing my own ideas, so I found myself saying the same things over and over again, amazed at her lack of comprehension, for at this time I fancied that her ideas and feelings must be, by some law of nature, not unlike my own. "I see what you mean," she said at last, in a slow voice, "but all the same he was marvellous." She turned to me quickly and gripped my arm. "Oh, how wonderful it would be," she said, "if you were an airman." Her smiling face and the vivacity of her voice dissipated at once the feelings of dismay and indignation which had filled me a moment before. I laughed and, stopping in the middle of the field, held her in my arms and kissed her. "Would you marry me, then?" I asked. The idea seemed to her a new and exciting one. She clapped her hands and then laid them on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. "Oh, yes!" she said. "And live at the aerodrome." I remember now the delight that her face showed then, and I remember hearing a lark singing high up above us and above the dark stubble field where we stood. Bess's proposition was far from disgusting to me. There was a wild excitement in all my limbs, and I laughed upwards at the lark in the sky. It was not exactly that her freshness, her beauty, and her exuberance had charmed my wits away from thinking as I should have thought. I had changed none of my ideas and was still, in some part of my mind, bitter and indignant against her for her admiration of the part which the Air Vice-Marshal had taken at the funeral. I was not even at that time blind enough to believe that love in itself was a sufficient diet for two people to live upon, and yet something in me impelled me to act as though this were precisely what I believed. Now the sweetest and most desirable of all things seemed to me to throw down before her feet all my ideas, all my plans, all my hopes, and to act exactly as she would have me act; nor was I wholly conscious of this impulsion, but felt simply as I looked at her that, whatever might be done, our complete happiness was already assured. I squeezed her arms, and said: "But in the Air Force they are not allowed to be married until after several years' service." Bess shook her head. Her face was very serious as she looked at me with an expression of tenderness that I had not seen there before. She was like a child waiting in a shop patiently for some present to be delivered to her. "No," she said, "that's not true. It's just that only the wives of officers are allowed to live in the aerodrome. Even if you sign on for training you can get married by a special chaplain with a special licence, without banns or anything. Oh, Roy, we could be married secretly. Wouldn't it be fun?" Her face lit up again with anticipation and delight. As I looked at her I thought calmly of my long preparation for the Civil service, and of the assurances which I had received that I was likely to receive good marks in the examination. I remembered how often I had envisaged life in one of the big cities where I should probably have to work. This was what the Rector had planned for me, and what he would still have advised, had he been alive. I hardly know now why it was that the prospect of such a life suddenly seemed unattractive to me. It was certainly not that I shared any of Bess's ideas of the glory of flying in the sky or of the dignity of an officer's uniform. I had little respect and no liking for the organization which she was urging me to join. Nor was I by any means in the position of one who is inclined to make a conscious sacrifice for another person. I began to think, almost automatically, that her plan was by no means so mad as it might seem at first sight. My qualifications for the Civil Service examination would stand me in good stead in another profession. I had already received what amounted to an offer of assistance from the Air Vice-Marshal. Nor, indeed, if I signed on for training, was I even then irrevocably committed. As a rule several months elapsed before those who had signed on were even called up. In those months I could be married to Bess, and when they were over there would be more time still before finally adopting the Air Force as a profession. I was young, and there was time enough for us to decide what life was best suited to us. So I thought in my vanity, my wish to please, and the abandonment of my desire. The Rector's speech at the dinner party, the Squire's confession of failure, the indignity of the funeral, the cordiality shown by the Rector's wife to the Air Vice-Marshal, the irresolution of my friends in the pub--all this, too, may have contributed to the complete and joyful recklessness with which I now faced the future. Having lost the security in which I had been bred, I now looked at Bess, weak and childish as she was, as at a new and certain world. I fancied that my own love was strong enough to withstand all the shocks that time and circumstance could bring; and here, perhaps, I was not wholly wrong, although at this time I did not imagine it to be possible that I would have to face any very serious setbacks. I looked deep into Bess's eager waiting eyes. "Why not?" I said, and we remained silent for some moments, our eyes drawn together, each knowing that already the resolution had been made. The lark still sang above our heads, and I looked deep into the face in front of me, seeking there, perhaps, some of the strength and certainty of which I stood in need and with which, in my mood of recklessness, I already imagined myself to be filled. The face was soft and timid in its relaxation. The beginnings of a smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. As I bent forward to kiss her, her eyes grew wet with tears and her arms were loose about my neck. She pressed her face into my shoulder and said: "We shall be like this for ever. For ever and ever." My arms tightened round her, and I felt a lump rise in my throat. My thoughts about the aerodrome, about the funeral, and about my parentage seemed suddenly unconnected with me, and yet menacing. "For ever," I said, and so we stood for some time. Bess drew away from me and shook my arm. Her face was alight again with animation. "Let's talk about it," she said, and half dragged me towards the hedge, in the shadow of which we sat down and began to plan with laughter and excitement our future, breaking off the talk every now and then to kiss each other's hands and faces or to look long and with astonishment into each other's