We'll Meet Again (22 page)

‘Just shows it can be done,’ Tim said. ‘Accurate bombing, I mean.’

Pat laughed. ‘Yes, one in the eye for the yanks and their precision bombing.’

‘I’m getting out of here.’

‘When?’

‘I’ve thought of a plan.’

‘Let’s hear it then.’

They left the cricket match and dawdled round the perimeter of the camp. ‘We change places with two of the other ranks and make our escape while we’re on the road to the factory. They will dress in our clothes and take our place at roll call and we won’t be missed.’ Unlike the other ranks, the officers did not have to work and so were never taken outside the camp.

‘How do you know we can get away from the march? The men are closely guarded. And I bet it’s been tried before.’

‘So what if it has? We’ll get the men to create a diversion on the bridge, just long enough for us to vault over the wall and hide. Then we wait until the column has gone into the factory and make our way across country to the railway line. If we follow that, we might be able to hop on a train.’

‘We will need identity cards, permits to travel, all that sort of thing. And a good cover story.’

‘We can get all of that.’

‘Have you put the idea to the Escape Committee?’

‘Yes. They’ve approved. But they won’t keep the men for more than one roll call and then they go back to their own quarters and pretend they’ve been sick and never went on the work party. It might be a day or two before Jerry puts two and two together, time enough for us to get well away.’

‘But what about the men? Will they agree?’

‘If it’s put to them nicely and we compensate them. I’ll give one of them my wristwatch, he can sell it to the goons to buy whatever he fancies. It’s a pity because Prue gave it to me, but needs must. You’ve got something you are prepared to sacrifice, haven’t you?’

‘My last Red Cross parcel and my harmonica.’

Tim laughed. Patrick and his mouth organ were a bane to the men in the hut because he insisted on practising when they wanted to sleep. ‘So, are you with me?’

‘You bet.’

Later that afternoon, he was lying on his bunk, pretending to read but mentally rehearsing what he would say to Prue when he saw her again, when the air raid siren went. He joined the crowd in the doorway to look up at the sky. Above them they could see the dark outline of heavy bombers. ‘Flying fortresses,’ someone said. ‘I hope they don’t mistake us for a factory.’

The fortresses, coming from bases all over East Anglia, had assembled over the Wash into the tight formations they employed to maximise safety. Johnnie had taken up his position just behind the leader’s left flank. Behind him other fortresses were lining up. Around them buzzed the fighters, who would escort them as far as the German border, when they would peel off to return to their bases. While they were there, everyone felt comparatively safe. No one liked it when they were left to fly on alone, deep into enemy territory.

They had been woken as usual at four in the morning, had their breakfast and gone to the briefing, where they sat smoking and speculating about what lay behind the sheet that covered the map. Their curiosity had been satisfied when the base commander came in and pulled it aside. Schweinfurt and its ball bearing factories. A groan went up from everyone when they saw the red line, beginning at the Wash and stretching over Europe deep into Germany. This would be no milk run.

Cloud cover would be light over the target, they had been told,
but a little heavier over the assembly point and they would need to be careful making up the formation. Johnnie hadn’t liked the sound of that; hundreds of bombers arriving from all over East Anglia milling about to take up their correct positions was bad enough when the skies were clear, but in cloud it was asking for collisions. He said nothing of his fears to the crew, but he didn’t need to, they all knew the score.

No one had said very much while they got into flying gear and went out to the fortress. It was Louis, the ball turret gunner, who spotted the name painted on the side of their fortress. ‘What’s that?’ he queried, pointing at it.

‘You can read, can’t you?’ Johnnie said. ‘It says “Songbird”.’ He had asked the ground crew to paint it on in white letters. They had illustrated it too, with the picture of a colourful bird sitting on a twig.

‘I didn’t know you were into ornithology.’

‘He isn’t,’ Vernon said. ‘His songbird don’t have feathers.’

‘Oh, right. I see. Let’s hope she keeps us flying.’

‘Bound to,’ Martin said, laughing. ‘She’s a bird, after all.’

He ignored their banter. Most of the fortresses had names painted on them, though they hadn’t chosen one before, but he had suddenly wanted to let the world know that his songbird was special. ‘Get aboard,’ he told them, then walked all round the aircraft accompanied by the chief mechanic, before climbing into his own seat and doing the routine pre-flight checks.

The sun came up over the eastern horizon and lit the sky in a golden glow as the formation finished assembling and headed out east. While the fighters were there and Martin was busy with his charts, he could relax a little and his thoughts turned to Sheila.

They’d hit it off right from the start, falling into a comfortable
companionship. She was easy to talk to and he found he could tell her things he wouldn’t have told anyone else. He was aware of the dangers of reading too much into a chance acquaintance; many of his buddies had come unstuck when they discovered the girls were only after what they could get. It worked the other way too, when English girls had taken the easy-going generosity and flattery of the America GIs at face value, only to realise what they had thought of as love had no more substance than a puff of wind. He must be careful not to do that to Sheila. A chaste kiss was all he had allowed himself.

Besides, he still didn’t know exactly who he was. After three days with the Fletcher grandparents, during which they fed him well and introduced him to almost everyone in the village, he knew no more. He had wandered round the village on his own on one occasion, exploring and thinking: this is where Mom grew up, where she went to school, people here must have known her. ‘Pretty little thing, she was,’ he was told by one chatty old lady standing at her house door. She had just finished whitening the step. ‘We were sorry when she left, but there is nothing for a young girl round here and nothing much for the men to do except go down the mine or on the railways. No doubt she was better off in America.’

It was a coal mining area and he had seen the black-faced miners coming off their shifts. Grandpa Fletcher had been a miner before he retired and he had told him tales of what the miners had to endure underground that made flying bombers sound like child’s play. ‘Did you know my father?’ he asked the old lady.

‘When he was a young lad, but he didn’t fancy the mines, so he went away and we didn’t see him again until just before the wedding. Bit of a surprise that was, him being so much older than your ma and them getting married in London an’ all instead of
here and then clearing off to America.’ She looked him up and down. ‘You are like him to look at.’

‘So I’ve been told.’ Did that mean Pops wasn’t American but English? This mystery, far from being solved, was becoming deeper and he didn’t know what to believe.

‘How is your ma? Well is she?’

‘Yes, very well.’

‘Good. Perhaps now you’ve broken the ice, she’ll come home. Not until after the war, of course. Not much point in coming here now.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, and left her.

The conversation had given him food for thought. He had never known where his father had been born and brought up. It was a revelation to think that his parents had known each other in childhood; the way the woman had spoken and looked at him made him think she believed Mom had given birth to him before the wedding. There had been both curiosity and disapproval in her voice. Was that the general view?

On his last day, when his bag was packed, the jeep’s gasoline tank filled from the cans he had brought with him and it was almost time to go, he found his grandfather feeding the pigs in the field. ‘Time to go if I’m to reach London by nightfall,’ he said. ‘It’s been swell meeting you.’

‘Yes, for us too. You must come again.’

‘I will if I’m given the chance.’ He paused. ‘You said ask again before I left. You know about …’

‘I was hoping you’d forget all about it. Can’t you see, it won’t do a ha’porth of good to go poking about?’

‘I need to know. I’ll keep it to myself.’

‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know the ins and outs of it. The only people who knew the whole truth, apart from your dad, is your
mother and your other grandmother and she’s in a nursing home. She’s ga-ga and you won’t get much sense out of her, if any at all.’

On the way to London he had called in at the address he had been given. Although it had once been a substantial mansion, it reeked of urine and carbolic. The entrance hall had polished black and white tiles, the doors leading off it heavy-stained oak, the stairs wide and shallow, with a half landing halfway up. Johnnie could hear noises, shouting and singing, but could see no one. The receptionist he had spoken to had disappeared along the corridor to see if Matron was available to speak to him. He stood in the middle of the floor, cap in hand, waiting.

When the receptionist returned, he had followed her along the corridor and was ushered into an office. A plump woman in a nurse’s uniform and a huge white cap rose from a desk and came towards him, hand outstretched. ‘How can I help you, Captain?’

‘You can see Verity, by all means,’ she had said when he explained his errand. ‘But I doubt you’ll get much sense out of her.’

‘How long has she been here?’

‘Some years. She was here when I arrived in 1936.’ She went to a cupboard and extracted a heavy ledger. ‘Let me see, it was soon after the last war, I think.’ She began turning pages. ‘Ah, here it is. She was admitted in June 1921.’

He whistled. ‘Twenty-two years. Who put her in here and who pays for her keep?’

‘She was referred to us by her general practitioner and her husband. He set up a trust fund for her before he died.’

‘Did she have a son, more than one perhaps?’

‘If she did, I never saw him.’

‘I think I must have the wrong lady. According to my
information she had a son who emigrated to America. That’s where I come in.’

‘Oh, I see. Do you still want to see her?’

‘Yes. I need to be sure.’

She had conducted him along a corridor to a large room in which dozens of women sat in a circle round the edge of the room. Some were shouting, some singing, some silent and seemingly unaware of their surroundings. Feeling more like turning on his heel than staying to talk to any of them, he stood uncertainly just inside the doorway while the matron spoke to one of the white-coated attendants. ‘We’ll have her brought to the interview room,’ she told him. ‘It will be more private, but a nurse will have to stay with her. Her behaviour can be somewhat unpredictable. Follow me.’

In a trance-like state he had followed the ample back of the matron to a small room which was barely furnished with three chairs and a table. He sat down and a few moments later a nurse wheeled an emaciated woman into the room in a wheelchair. She was simply dressed in clean clothes and her white hair was cut short and combed back from her face. He stood up.

‘Verity, this gentleman has come to talk to you,’ the nurse told her.

He drew up a chair next to the wheelchair and sat down. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Clifford, of course.’

‘I am not Clifford. My name is Johnnie. Johnnie Howard and I’m in the United States Air Force. I come from America.’

‘Liar.’ She spat the word. ‘Liar and scoundrel. You think putting me in here will shut me up, do you? Well, it won’t. I’ll tell the world.’ Her voice rose to a scream and she began beating her right hand on the arm of the wheelchair. The left lay useless in her lap.

It was all he could do to remain calm. ‘What will you tell the world?’

‘You know.’ She continued to rant but although most of the words were incoherent, he did catch some of them: evil, judgment day and sins of the fathers, then something about her dinner which had displeased her and an argument she had had with someone that seemed to have no bearing on his presence. Then she suddenly ran out of steam, fell back in her chair and shut her eyes. ‘I’m tired. I don’t want to talk about it any more.’

He had realised the futility of going on with the interview and stood up to leave, still unsure whether she was his grandmother or not. He suddenly remembered the little teddy bear he had put in his pocket. He pulled it out and touched her shoulder. ‘Do you recognise this?’

She opened her eyes wide and, seeing the toy, made a lunge to grab it and in doing so fell out of her chair. He put the toy back in his pocket and helped the nurse to haul her back. ‘I think she’s had enough, don’t you?’ the nurse said.

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ He touched the old lady’s wrinkled hand. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I truly am.’

On the way out, he tapped on the matron’s door. ‘I appreciate your help, Matron,’ he told her when he had obeyed the call to enter.

‘Did you find out what you wanted to know?’

‘I’m not sure. She seemed to think I was someone else. Her son, I think.’

‘You think her son was your father?’

‘I’d been told that, but Pop’s name wasn’t Clifford. Have you any other documents that might help?’

‘One or two. I looked them up while you were with her. Would you like a cup of tea while you read them? I can’t let you take them away, I’m afraid.’

An hour later he left, his head in a whirl of contradictions. Was she or was she not his grandmother? She had been admitted to the home after a stroke which left her partially paralysed. Her husband, who had been badly gassed in what had become known as The Great War, was already an invalid and could not look after her. He had died himself soon afterwards, but had left her well provided for. They had a son called Clifford but they had lost touch with him. He had never heard the name Clifford, so it couldn’t be his father, could it? On the other hand she seemed to recognise that little teddy bear. A grainy, sepia photograph had been among the documents, of a man, a woman and a child. The woman was just recognisable as the Verity he had just left and he supposed the man, standing stiffly at her side, was her husband and the boy their son. He was about three years old and still in the dresses they put on little boys in those days until they were old enough for shorts. Could that be his father? He would have to go back to Grandpa Fletcher and make him talk.
Do wrong to do right
, those words echoed in his brain. Someone had done wrong.

‘Dutch coast coming up.’ Martin’s voice came to him over the intercom. ‘Watch out for flak.’

From then on he was too busy to think about anything but getting his fort to the target and safely home again.

There was pandemonium on the bridge. The orderly column of prisoners had inexplicably started to fight among themselves. Fists were flying and some of the men were wrestling on the floor. While the guards tried to separate them and restore order, Tim and Patrick took the opportunity to vault over the wall, scramble down the bank and under the bridge.

They hardly dare breathe as they pressed themselves against the wall and waited. After a while the noise died down and they heard
the men singing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ as they formed up to continue their march to the factory. ‘It worked,’ Tim said. ‘They’ve gone. Let’s get out of here before we’re spotted.’

Crouching and running, they crossed a field and flung themselves into a ditch. As soon as they had regained their breath, they set off again. Tim had studied the map which one of the navigators had drawn after being recaptured, but they hadn’t brought it away with them. It was too useful to be given away. Once they went too near a farmhouse and set the dogs barking, which had them running for their lives, but apparently they hadn’t been seen or heard and they took more care after that.

‘Shall we risk trying to buy a ticket?’ Patrick said, as they found the railway line just short of a station. By then they were ten miles away from the camp. They had forged identities as Hungarian workers. Neither Tim nor Pat spoke Hungarian but they were gambling that few Germans did and they could communicate in German if they had to. But were they far enough away from the camp for their disappearance to have been discovered and railway staff alerted?