The Crew (8 page)

Blimey, what was he doing, dreaming about that now? He was supposed to be keeping a sharp look-out for enemy fighters, and anything else that could get them into trouble.

He put Emerald out of his mind and rotated the turret slowly. Trouble was, when you went on staring out into the dark for long you started imagining all sorts of things. What was only a cloud started looking like a whole lot of Messerschmitts, and you could fire away at nothing and put the wind up everyone else, not to mention waste ammo. Sometimes he felt sort of trapped in the turret. You had to be a bit of a Houdini to haul yourself up into it, and getting out in a hurry'd be a bloody sight worse. And once he was there, there he had to stay unless the skipper ordered him to leave. He tried not to think about the turret having no armour protection, or about the RAF roundels painted just below and making a nice convenient bull's-eye aiming point for Jerry fighters, or about the fact that he couldn't wear his parachute and had to stow it down below. Most of all, he didn't think about all the stories of mid-uppers coming back from ops without a head.

Still, he wouldn't have swapped places with Charlie for anything – all on his tod at the blunt end there, out in the cold. Not for all the tea in China.

Piers couldn't see much until his eyes adjusted from the light of his chart lamp to the darkness of the
cockpit, and when they did, it all looked far, far worse than he had expected. He stood behind Van, staring in horror at the glittering wall of exploding flak and searchlights ahead. Christ, they had to go into
that
! It was sheer suicide. They'd have no chance at all. He wanted to dash back behind his curtain, but a dreadful fascination made him stay and watch it all come closer and closer. A shell burst somewhere beneath them and he grabbed for a handhold as D-Dog plunged about wildly and shrapnel rattled hard on the fuselage. A searchlight beam swept the sky only yards away, and a second beam followed so close he thought they must surely have been spotted. Another shell exploding even nearer almost flung D-Dog onto her back. God, they'd never get out of this alive. It was hopeless.
Hopeless.

A stab of orange fire flared suddenly away to port. As it grew he saw that it was a bomber on fire, flames flickering furiously along its wings. An almighty explosion lit up the sky and dazzled his eyes. Mesmerized, he watched blazing brands of wreckage spin earthwards.

‘Bomb doors open, skip.' Stew's voice sounded perfectly calm.

‘Roger, bomb aimer. Bomb doors open.'

‘Right . . . steady. Left, left. Left, left. Steady . . . steady. Bombs gone, skip.'

D-Dog turned away from the target, heading for the dark. Back at his charts, hands shaking, Piers somehow pulled himself together.

Charlie could see the glow from the fires for a long while on their route back. They'd clobbered the place well and truly. Given the Jerries a taste of their own medicine.

It didn't do to think too much about the women and children and old people they might have killed and maimed in the process. The Jerries had done the same, after all. They were the ones who'd started it. That was what he told himself when he saw the burning buildings. He watched the crimson smudge getting further away until it vanished. Only another couple of hours and they'd be home. Another op done. He was looking forward to his egg and a nice long kip.

‘Fighter! Fighter! Corkscrew port! Corkscrew port – Go!'
Bert was yelling from the mid-upper turret; the skipper rolled D-Dog left. Charlie knew what was coming. They'd practised it lots of times. They'd dive port, then climb port, roll, climb starboard, dive starboard, roll and then dive port all over again – trying to get away from the enemy fighter.

They went down in a dive that turned his stomach worse than anything he'd ever been on at a fairground. His head was jammed up against the turret roof, vomit spewed up into his mouth. He screwed his eyes tight shut until he felt the Lane slowing, levelling out.

‘Climbing port, gunners.'

‘He's still there, skipper. Two o'clock high.'

Bert's guns clattered from the mid-upper turret. ‘Missed him, skipper. Going low astern. Watch out for him, Charlie.'

Charlie couldn't see him. Had never seen him. Where on earth was he? His night vision was good enough to see anything. Maybe the fighter had scarpered after Bert had taken that shot at him. Maybe Bert had only imagined him?

Then he saw a dark, winged shadow flash past below
the turret and skid into a turn. ‘Rear gunner to mid-upper. I see him now.'

It was an Me110 – coming straight for them – still out of range, but closing fast. A stream of brilliant tracer snaked by the tail before he had him properly in his sights: lined up, smack on. Ready to fire. Then all of a sudden his fingers seemed to freeze on the triggers.

Bert's voice yelled in his ears. ‘Shoot the bugger down, Charlie!
Get him!
'

He opened fire and the bullets from his guns curved away in a line of bright beads. He thought he saw a chunk of the Messerschmitt's port wing fly off before it flipped over on its back and dived away, vanishing into cloud below.

‘Rear gunner to pilot. I think I hit his wing, skipper. He's cleared off.'

‘Well done, Charlie. Good shooting.'

Bert was crowing away in his turret and the rest were really chuffed. He should have been feeling a bit pleased himself, too, but all he could think of was that if Bert hadn't yelled at him like that he might not have fired until it was too late, and the Jerry would have got
them
instead. And if he'd fired sooner, when he should have done, he could've scored a direct hit in the nose and finished him off good and proper, not just clipped him. He didn't know why he'd gone and frozen up like that. Gone rigid for those few seconds. He'd always thought it would be easy to shoot at the enemy but when it'd come to it, he'd funked it.

They crossed the English coast at Dungeness and flew north to Beningby in the cold grey light of dawn. Piers got it on the button this time, thank Christ, but they had to wait their turn to land, circling slowly over
the fields with other returning Lanes. This was the ball-breaking part that Van hated most of all. He was tired. They were all tired. And they had to go around and around and around, waiting for the OK from Control before they could get down on the ground.

At last it was their turn and he brought D-Dog in a curve onto the downwind leg. He made himself concentrate hard. Wheels down, half flap, then full flap from Jock – pronto as ever. D-Dog sank obediently. Van brought the nose up a fraction as they crossed the threshold lights and she floated on down the runway. When he could feel her on the point of stall, he dropped her the last few inches onto the concrete. The wheels touched down all three together and with hardly a sound.
Wow, a greaser!

Jock put his thumb up, eyes above his mask creased in a grin. First time that had ever happened. The grin or the greaser.

In the truck on the way back from dispersal, Piers spoke up bashfully. ‘I say, chaps, it's my birthday. Would you mind awfully if I stood you all dinner?'

Four

‘
I HOPE THAT
new girl is going to ring the dinner gong on time this evening, Miss Frost.'

‘I'll see that she does, Mrs Mountjoy.'

Just because there's a war on, it doesn't excuse unpunctuality. We should keep up standards, not let them slip.'

The telephone ringing saved Honor from another lecture from Mrs Mountjoy. She had listened to them on all subjects: the decline in good manners, the inefficiency of the Royal Mail, the vulgarity of ITMA, the laxness of morals, the disgraceful amount of noise made by the Royal Air Force . . .

By the time she had dealt with the call, Mrs Mountjoy had gone off into the Residents' Lounge where she would sit in her usual chair until dinner. Colonel Millis was already in there, slumped in
his
chair, but there would be no conversation between them beyond ‘Good evening' and the colonel's inevitable comment on the weather which Mrs Mountjoy would ignore. Conversation with the colonel was difficult, in any case, because he was so deaf, but he had not lost his sense of time. In ten minutes, at six o'clock precisely, he would emerge to shuffle across the hall to the Oak Bar for his first gin and tonic.

She was busy in the inner office at her typewriter when he appeared at the reception desk and rang the
bell. With his drooping moustache and mournful expression, he looked very like a bewildered old walrus.

‘The bar's shut. It's after six and there's nobody there.'

She leaned across the counter and spoke into his better ear. ‘I'll come and open it up for you, colonel.'

Ron the barman was late yet again, which meant she'd have to hold the fort for him, as usual.

The colonel followed eagerly at her heels across the hall into the Oak Bar, and she poured the gin from his private bottle of Gordon's. She knew how he liked it – up to a certain mark in the glass, just a splash of tonic and no ice. Sometimes he reminisced wistfully about the pre-war days when he had also had a slice of lemon. No more lemons now, or oranges or bananas . . . She carried it over to him at his place in the corner, careful not to spill any on the way. He raised the glass to her in his courtly fashion.

She was replacing the bottle in the cupboard under the counter when a party of RAF men came into the bar, making a good deal of noise. Two were officers, she saw, but the rest of them were sergeants – which Miss Hargreaves wouldn't care for at all. One of the officers approached her.

‘I say, could we possibly order some drinks?'

‘What would you like, sir?'

‘I don't suppose you'd have any gin or whisky, or anything like that?'

She closed the door on the colonel's gin and locked it. ‘I'm very sorry, sir, there's only beer or sherry available at the moment.'

‘Oh, that's all right. I'll have a sherry, please.' He turned to the others. ‘What'll you have, chaps?'

One of the sergeants asked for lemonade, but the rest all wanted beer. The officer paid for everything with a nice smile. ‘It's on me. My treat. By the way, I'm Pilot Officer Wentworth-Young. I telephoned earlier about a table for dinner.'

‘It's reserved for you, sir. A table for seven.'

Mrs Mountjoy was going to have something to say about sergeants in the dining-room, but she could hardly refuse them admission.

‘Jolly good. We're a crew, you see.'

These, then, were men who were in the bombers that she listened to going overhead. She'd never seen a crew all together before – just the RAF officers who came to the bar and to dinner at The Angel and odd airmen she passed in the street.

‘You wouldn't happen to have any champagne by any chance, would you?' The pilot officer blushed as he spoke. ‘It's my birthday. Twenty-first, actually.'

Champagne
, for heaven's sake! Some hope! ‘I very much doubt it, sir, but I'll ask the head waiter for you in a moment.'

One of the sergeants came over to the bar. His uniform was a different blue from the others – royal blue – and the buttons were black. She'd never seen one like it.

‘Got any matches, miss?' He looked her over as he spoke.

‘I think so – somewhere.' She had to hunt hard for a box as Ron never kept anything in order. The sergeant was watching her all the time, irritating her. ‘This isn't my usual job.'

‘Yeah, I could tell that by the way you did the beer.' He pushed the pennies across the counter towards
her. ‘Thanks.' As he turned away she saw
Australia
on his shoulder.

Ron came hurrying in with a long story about a puncture on his bike – it was always a different excuse. She left him flitting about behind the bar and went off to see about the unlikely champagne.

Pity about the limp, Stew thought, watching the girl leave the room. Looked like something wrong with her right foot.

Not that she was his sort. All prim and proper in that frumpy blouse and skirt, hair done like a schoolteacher's, no make-up. He went for the type that sent the message loud and clear, like the one he'd picked up on leave in London last time. Met her in the hotel bar, bought her a few drinks and taken her straight up to his room. Easy as that. They hadn't wasted time with the fooling around beforehand that some sheilas expected. Jesus, that'd been a night to remember, all right, and he could remember a few.

He lit his cigarette and stowed the box of matches away in his pocket. Bloody lighter! Still, so long as it brought him luck . . . He was feeling pretty pleased with himself after that last op. No dummy run this time. Dropped the bombs smack on the main target, or as near as he could get the buggers. Then the kid had clipped that Jerry that Bert had spotted, and Piers had even managed to find the way back. And to cap it all, the skipper had gone and done a three-pointer. Maybe they weren't such a mug crew after all. He looked round the bar, at the dark oak panelling and the pictures of foggy landscapes and long-horned cattle, the brown leather chairs, the drab velvet curtains. Strewth, what a mausoleum! Not a patch on the hotel his parents ran back home. This place looked as
though nothing had been touched for a hundred years. Fat chance of any decent tucker, but with Piers footing the bill he wasn't going to grumble. He was going to drink, eat and be as bloody merry as possible.

There was no champagne in the cellar, of course. Cedric looked at Honor as though she'd asked for the moon. If there had once been any such thing left, she knew he would have polished it off long ago. She went back to the reception desk. There were more people in the Oak Bar now and a lot of male laughter reaching the hall. Fortunately, Mrs Mountjoy had gone into the dining-room and would be out of earshot. The colonel's ears wouldn't hear much anyway and besides it was nearly time for him to go in for dinner. On the dot of seven-forty, after slowly spinning out his customary three gin and tonics, he would come out of the Oak Bar and head towards the dining-room. And, sure enough, as the grandfather clock hands edged towards that time he appeared. Passing the desk, he paused and shook his head sadly.