We'll Meet Again (17 page)

She laid the flowers on the grave, then rose and went to pay Janet a flying visit. Her friend was wearing an engagement ring and was full of wedding plans. Sheila hadn’t the heart to mention Chris. She congratulated her and left to meet Prue.

The war ground on. Everyone was exhausted and fed up with it, but the end was nowhere in sight. Prue and Sheila would read the newspapers but because of the shortage of paper they only consisted of four cramped pages. It was better to listen to the
wireless. They heard how the poor people of Malta were struggling to survive as ships sent to supply them were sunk. And in the East the relentless German advance into Russia continued; the important city of Leningrad was under siege and it looked as if Moscow would be next. Prue wondered whether Tim had changed his mind about what he was doing, since only the bombers were having any sort of success. But even here, doubts were being raised about the accuracy of the bombing, something Tim had told her on that night in Huntingdon. But most people didn’t care what was hit so long as something was.

The stark situation was played down by the propagandists, but Prue was only too well aware of how bad things were. The signals came in thick and fast and the analysis, decoding and translating went on day and night. With the help of the bombes, the German army and air force traffic was being decoded and translated. The German naval code was more difficult. The people in Hut Eight, which included Hugh and Alice, had only been able to crack some of it with the help of an enigma machine and codebooks found on a captured enemy U-boat. The result was that losses at sea were not quite as bad as they had been and the navy had scored a great victory against the Italian fleet at Cape Matapan off the island of Crete. Information supplied by Hut Eight also helped locate and sink the German battleship,
Bismark
, in May, although BP’s part in that was not made public, though the rumours were flying around BP and Hugh confirmed it. Successes like that were few and far between and hadn’t stopped other British ships being sunk.

Everyone at Bletchley Park was working flat out and looking exhausted. After a visit by Mr Churchill in September, more resources were put at the disposal of the Bletchley Park chiefs and a new tennis court built for everyone to enjoy. The dilapidated huts were slowly being replaced with brick buildings, though they were
still referred to by their hut numbers; it was, according to Prue, a sure sign they were in for a long haul.

By November it was being reported that German guns could be heard in Moscow, the fighting in the North African desert was as fierce as ever and the news from the Far East was worrying. At the beginning of December the Japanese attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbour and brought the United States into the war. ‘Thank goodness for that,’ Hugh told Prue on one of their evenings out. How long it would be before they made a significant impact on the war situation in Europe was anybody’s guess.

Sheila was busy rehearsing hard for a wartime take on
Aladdin
. The traditional story was being embellished with contemporary jokes about the war and the characters at BP. ‘It isn’t malicious,’ she told Prue. ‘We just want to cheer everyone up.’

She needed cheering up herself. A young man had contacted the
Daily Express
and identified himself as the boy in the picture and it was not Charlie. The newspaper bosses had been less than sympathetic when they realised their uplifting story was nothing of the sort. They more or less accused Prue of attention-seeking. The Earl and Countess were annoyed with her too, especially since she had claimed Sheila was one of their employees and she could not explain why she had done it.

For Sheila, the disappointment, coming on top of the news about Chris, was a real blow. She had been so optimistic and now she felt deflated and forced to listen to all those people who said Charlie could not have survived, including her aunt who had seen the article in the newspaper and been incensed that Sheila had resorted to such a cheap trick to gain publicity. ‘I am surprised her ladyship demeaned herself by agreeing to it,’ she said.

‘It was my idea, Mrs Tranter,’ Prue said. ‘Sheila was sure the boy was her brother.’

‘How could he have been? If Charles were alive, we would have known about it long before now.’

It was an argument that seemed unanswerable.

Christmas passed with no pause in the work, though there was the usual party and that was followed on Boxing Day by the first of two performances of
Aladdin
. Sheila put her misery behind her and sang her heart out. She sang for Ma and Pa and her siblings, for Chris whom she had hurt and for Charlie who was lost. She sang for all the people in the audience taking time off from their gruelling work to listen to her. She sang ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ and ‘You Made Me Love You’ and a rousing rendition of ‘Bless ’em all’ in which the audience joined. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. She fell into bed as soon as she arrived home and was soon asleep.

Prue, who had been one of those lucky enough to go home for Christmas, returned on New Year’s Day. It was bitterly cold and snowing and her train had been held up several times because snow was building up on the line and they had to fasten a snow plough to the front of it. In spite of that she was in a cheerful mood and brought a big bag of sweet chestnuts stored since the autumn, some chocolates and two bottles of wine. ‘We’ll scoff them later,’ she told Sheila, who was sitting on her bed watching her unpack. She still seemed to have a mountain of good clothes and hardly needed her clothing coupons.

‘Were your parents still cross with you?’

‘No, of course not. They were fine when I explained everything to them, though Mama is still a bit peeved that I won’t tell her what I’m doing here. Anyway, I’ve been told to take you home with me when we manage to have leave at the same time. I told them all about you and they are keen to meet you.’

Sheila wasn’t so sure. She thought the Earl and his wife might
be fearsome and she would let herself down by not knowing how to behave. That’s what Aunt Constance said anyway. She smiled. ‘So Christmas was all right, was it?’

‘Yes, except Gillie wasn’t there.’

‘What about Tim? Did you hear from him?’

‘No, I assume he’s flying again.’

‘Why don’t you try contacting him?’

‘And risk a put-down? I think not. If he wants me, he knows where to find me.’

‘I wish I’d made it up with Chris before it was too late,’ Sheila said wistfully.

‘Don’t dwell on it, Sheila, you can’t change anything.’

‘No, but you can.’

‘Leave off lecturing me. You’re as bad as Mama.’

‘OK, not another word.’

Tim was flying again, but his old crew had settled down with a different navigator and he was assigned to a new crew. He was glad in a way because the new men would not know how he had so nearly failed. They were young and inexperienced and he was looked up to as a kind of patriarch, though he was only three or four years older than they were, a lifetime in a bomber crew’s life. They were given one of the new Lancasters, which had a seven-man crew, and with new navigational equipment on board and with the role of navigator separated from bomb-aimer, he felt a little happier about it.

In March, when the long, cold winter was coming to an end, they were off to Hamburg again and he could not help thinking of the last time he had gone there. He had not realised at the time what was wrong with him, nor that it would take several months to put right. He could have been taken off flying altogether, since
added stress could bring on a recurrence, but he had insisted on coming back. He had to prove to Prue and, more importantly, to himself that it was not cowardice that had caused his breakdown, but a physical ailment. It didn’t alter what he thought about the accuracy of their bombing. He hoped the new radio device, code-named Gee, would help him find the target more accurately.

He wished whole-heartedly that he had not written that stupid letter to Prue. ‘You can’t do this to me,’ she had replied. ‘I am not some pick-up to be discarded when you tire of me. I deserve an explanation. If it is something I have done to make you turn against me, then I want the right of reply.’ Oh, she had been angry and he didn’t blame her. He had replied, trying to tell her that the fault lay not with her but with him. He had been unhappy, confused, unsure of himself, sick and very, very tired. He had asked her forgiveness. He loved her and always would. He had asked for her continuing support and patience.

She had not replied and had evidently taken him at his word and considered their relationship severed for good. Perhaps she had found someone else. She was beautiful and popular, so had he been kidding himself to think she would wait for him? His mother had sent him a newspaper cutting of the search for Charlie Phipps which had made him smile. It was typical of Prue to take up arms for the underdog and he wondered what the outcome had been. He also wondered why she had said Sheila was her maid and nothing about her own war work. It confirmed his belief that what she was doing was considered top-secret. How had she come to be doing it? There were some aspects of Prue’s life and character that were a complete mystery to him.

The Lancasters were able to cruise at a height that the coastal guns found difficult to reach accurately but they still had to keep a sharp lookout for enemy fighters. It was while losing height towards
the target they became really vulnerable. He had to get them to it with as little delay as possible and then out again and on their way home. He had the assistance of the gunner-cum-observer in the nose turret. And it would be the bomb aimer, on the floor peering through the bomb sight, who would guide the bomber in and call out, ‘Bombs gone!’ He was glad he had been relieved of that task.

They were accompanied by Wellingtons, Stirlings and Halifaxes, together with a fighter escort some of the way. His pre-op nerves left him as they left the ground behind them and made off over the Wash to the point where they would meet up with other squadrons to form one huge formation. Sitting behind the pilot and flight engineer with his lamps shielded from the outside world by a curtain, he set about plotting the course given to them at the briefing. Opposite him sat the wireless operator, listening in for signals. The night was clear and there was a good moon.

Searchlights swept the skies in a wide arc and it was then the guns opened up from the ground. He felt the familiar thumping in his chest and his mouth drying up as the bursts of light and puffs of smoke told them the aircraft had been seen, despite Colin, his pilot, throwing the heavy bomber about in an effort to stay out of the glare. Tim calculated they would be able to see the target visually before too long and they began the descent.

‘Hold her steady on course,’ he told Colin, as they approached the run in, then handed over to the bomb aimer to do his work. After a few minutes which seemed like hours, during which flak was exploding all around them and their hearts were in their mouths, the bomb aimer called, ‘Bombs gone.’ The sudden lift of the aircraft as the load left it also served to save their lives as a shell caught the bomb doors before they could be closed, ripping them off. If they had been a few feet lower, it would have hit the fuselage or perhaps a wing and its fuel tanks.

Colin climbed as fast as he dare, leaving the burning city behind them, but Tim didn’t have time to set course for home before the night fighters were onto them. Colin corkscrewed the aircraft down and then up again in an effort to throw them off. At first they thought they had escaped, but just as they were breathing again, another Messerschmitt came at them from nowhere and raked them with cannon fire.

‘Port wing on fire!’ the gunner in the mid-upper turret called out. Tim knew they had been hit because the force of it, just behind him, had slammed his back into his instrument panel and sent a sharp pain through his shoulder blade.

Colin tried diving to put it out, but that failed and he reluctantly gave the order for everyone to bail out. The bomb aimer went out through a hatch in the floor of the nose cone and the tail gunner rotated his turret and dropped out through the rear turret doors. Everyone else made for the side crew door, scrambling over the wing spars as they did so. The heat in the aircraft was intense, the noise of its faltering engines loud in their ears. Tim helped the younger ones out before following. He felt a jerk that momentarily knocked the breath from his body as his parachute opened.

He was floating down apparently unharmed except for the pain in his shoulder, while the Lancaster, with Colin still on board, flew on in a steeper and steeper dive. Tim watched it, hoping and praying to see Colin come out and parachute to safety, but he did not appear before the aeroplane hit the ground and exploded. He had no time to dwell on the loss of his pilot because he had to prepare himself for the landing. There were trees below him and a river and he could, in the dawn light, just make out a building, probably a farmhouse. It was Germany below him, not an occupied country, and he wondered what his fate would be. He did not expect mercy.

Prue heard Tim was missing on a raid through her mother, who had been told by Tim’s mother. ‘Mrs Mortimer is hopeful he is alive, and either a prisoner of war or being looked after by the people in the underground,’ the Countess had written. ‘A lot depends on whether he managed to bail out and where he came down. It will be a few days before they hear for sure. I know you quarrelled with Tim, but I think it would be a courtesy to write to Mrs Mortimer.’

‘I don’t need Mama to tell me how to be polite,’ Prue murmured to herself when she read it. ‘Anyway we didn’t quarrel, he ditched me. I don’t suppose he told his mother that, nor the reason, which I never understood anyway.’ Nevertheless she did write and asked to be told when there was any news.

After several days of uncertainty, Prue heard that Tim had been taken prisoner and, apart from a cracked shoulder blade, was safe and well. She couldn’t help feeling that Tim might even be relieved that he would take no further part in the bombing. The new Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, was convinced the war could be won by air power alone. He maintained that if sufficient bombs were dropped on German cities to devastate them and demoralise the inhabitants, they would turn against their rulers and insist they make peace. It was a controversial strategy but, over-ruling the doubters, he had put his theory into practice and a thousand bombers at a time were setting fire to German cities. Tim would hate that. For the moment he was relatively safe. She sent a parcel to the address the Red Cross had given Mrs Mortimer.