Will is vomiting into a zinc bucket behind the Mess tent. That’s what he does before a contact patrol. It’s quite routine and the best way of dealing with things. By the light of his hurricane lamp he sees that the inside of the bucket is spattered with orange and beige particles of the food he ate last night. It seems not to have been digested at all. Will’s stomach heaves again and releases a last jet of vomit.
That’s it. Done.
He picks up the bucket and walks to the far end of the field, where the stream runs away from the camp. He empties the zinc bucket, sluices it, sluices it again and listens to the water splash away.
Dawn’s coming. Dawn is approximately twenty-three minutes off. Now he is on the earth with his boots in dew-wet long grass. He bends down and wipes his hands on the wetness, then cups his hands together, dips them into the stream and lifts clean water to his mouth. He rinses his mouth, spits into the grass, dips his hands again and drinks. The water tastes cold and fresh. The feel and taste of the water is startlingly clear, as if separate from every other experience he’s ever had. His head aches slightly and his diaphragm is sore from vomiting.
On his left the hedge is a grey bulk. It’s a hawthorn hedge. Will stretches his hand and brushes it against the leaves. They have lost the skin-softness of early spring, when they burst out of their packed buds.
He thinks of the granite hedges at home, on a grey morning with the cows moving to be milked. At this season the granite is swallowed up in fuchsia, foxgloves and young bracken. The fields slope towards the sea and there he is, walking the lane between them, hidden, with a switch of bracken in his hand.
But this hawthorn hedge is grey. When the sun rises it will be green, and he’ll be gone. A blackbird calls, then falls silent as if she might have made a mistake. But she hasn’t. Another day’s coming, nearly here now.
That sound that the stream makes: it really is babbling. Quick water over small pebbles. Twenty-one minutes.
Will walks back across the field, swinging the bucket. He’s empty now but he won’t eat anything. Once you’re in the sky there’s too much adrenalin: you can’t digest. He takes out a flask and opens it. Two silver capfuls of brandy-and-water, that’s the measure. You have to know these things and not drink blindly or too much. Just enough to help you to know what you’re doing.
There is a letter in his breast pocket, from his wife. Why did he put that letter there? It was a lie to make it lie over his heart. She was anxious in her letter. She hadn’t heard from him and she’d wanted to know that he was well. She always wants to know that he is well, as if the war is an illness that he might catch.
How the minutes jump. He’s in the Nieuport now and Spit’s telling him to take the engine up to full rev. Spit listens. He hears things in the texture of the engine’s roar that Will can’t hear.
Six hours ago he was in bed with Florence. They lay side by side. Claire woke up and Florence disappeared. When she came back and slid her cold feet into bed he said to her, ‘Make a mark on me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A mark. Haven’t you got a little pair of scissors, Florence? Or a knife?’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You can. You can. I want it to be there when you’re not. When I’m up at eight thousand feet. When I think that this isn’t real.’
She was silent for a long time, lying beside him so quietly that he thought she’d fallen asleep. He was on the edge of anger with her for leaving him alone, awake, when she said quietly, ‘Very well.’
She got out of bed and lit the candle. He watched her rummage in a drawer with her back to him and the nightdress fallen around her again.
‘They’re in here somewhere –’
She showed him a pair of ornamental scissors with mother-of-pearl handles. He couldn’t fit his fingers into them, but Florence could. Her long hair made a shadow but under it her face was intent.
‘Make a mark, Florence,’ he said.
‘Where?’
He thought for a few seconds. ‘Where I can see it but no one else can. On my hand. No. On the underside of my arm.’
‘We’ll have to be careful,’ she said.
He turned his arm over. The skin was pale and the veins clear.
‘There,’ he said, pointing to a place on the inside of his wrist, to the right of the tendon.
‘There,’ she repeated. The scissors jerked nervously in her hand. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s perfectly safe.’
The scissors wavered. ‘I can’t do it,’ said Florence.
‘Why not?’
‘It’ll hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s stupid.’
He almost felt how stupid it was. The candle flame was trembling too.
‘Let’s go back to bed,’ said Florence.
Suddenly he leaned across her and took the scissors.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Listen, Florence, tomorrow –’
‘What?’
‘If I’m late – or if I can’t come – it’s because there’s another show.’
‘Come however late it is,’ said Florence. ‘You’ve got the key.’
‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ he said, and he took hold of her and the thick bunch of her nightdress.
It wasn’t right. She pressed her body the length of his, but awkwardly. He fumbled with her nightdress. Their bodies moved clumsily together, then apart.
‘We want a little house to ourselves,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, but not as if it was a possible thing. He knew what was in her mind. The rooms and rooms beneath them. The bedrooms where men had come. Officers. It made him want to spit, though he was one of them. He’d come here and sat in the salon downstairs and eaten cake with the rest of them.
She was clumsy with him, like a girl with no experience at all. He wondered again if he had the power to seem something different to her, separate from the men who had rooted in her body for satisfaction.
If we had a place of our own to go, he thought. In his mind he saw a house with Florence sitting at the window, looking out.
And where will the war be then, you fool, he thought. One more enemy advance and they’d evacuate the aerodrome. Madame Blanche’s house would be shelled until it looked like all those other houses he flew over at four hundred feet. Part of a chimney sticking up from the collapse of the roof. A crater of mud where the carp pond was. It would all be obliterated.
‘Would you be glad, if this house was shelled?’ he murmured.
He heard her sharp draw of breath.
‘All of it gone,’ he said, ‘and everything that’s happened here. Should you like that?’
She’d put her scissors away without them touching his skin. He’s got no mark of her on him, he thinks, as the Nieuport judders, trembles all over, begins to climb.
Up, up through the wet white softness of cloud. Mist. Whiteness closing in and making him dizzy. Only the angle of the Nieuport’s nose makes him believe he’s climbing at all. He’s in a tunnel of blankness and his heart pounds with the terror it gives him each time, as unfailing as the vomit in the zinc bucket. He counts the seconds. One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and –
So soon may I follow
When friendships decay,
And from love’s shining circle
The gems drop away…
Frizell by the piano, singing while Will played. Frizell’s red mouth open and shining. A beery, swaying hush as Frizell sang.
He went down in a flamer. All that way down, seven thousand feet of it. Are you conscious all the way down?
‘Fact of it is, old man, (yes, he really did talk like that) you’re scared every second and you love every second. But that’s it. That’s flying.’
Bastards don’t give us parachutes. Why don’t they? Do they think we’ll jump out over the German lines?
There’s cloud in his throat. Maybe he’s falling. Six-and-seven-and-eight-and-nine-and –
This is flying, thinks Will, as his plane s
hoots out of the white like a cork from the bottle. And here he is. Beneath him the choking white fog has resolved itself into fleecy cloud. The sky is blue. The clouds are tipped with dawn pink. He is flooded with light as he turns to head east.
And the sky is empty. He has it all to himself. He is himself, alone, as he likes it.
But what am I doing here? For a second he blanks. He cannot remember his mission at all.
He volunteered, that was it. There’s a Fokker that keeps coming over at dawn on bombing raids. Three times this week already. The squadron could spare a plane to deal with it. Why he volunteered he cannot now imagine. Maybe for a sensible reason – to avoid something worse?
Everything was breaking up. Soon they’d be retreating to another aerodrome. No one has said it yet but everyone knows. The camp that looked so sure and permanent when he arrived will be packed up in a few hours. As soon as you tried to put your hand on the war’s tail it twisted inside its skin and became another animal.
No sign of the Fokker. The fleece of cloud below him is beginning to break. Beneath it, showing through the holes, there’s the scar of the front. But what he can see, can also see him. White puffs blow at him like dandelion clocks.
He wants that Fokker. He wants the bastard to appear before it has laid its eggs, heavy and lumbery with bombs.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A mark. Haven’t you got a little pair of scissors, Florence? Or a knife?’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You can. You can. I want it to be there when you’re not. When I’m up at eight thousand feet. When I think that this isn’t real.’
*
Florence stirs in her sleep. Is it Claire? No. Stickily she opens her eyes to a square of dawn in the window. There are streaks of red. A bad sign. Already the guns are firing. So close now, closer than they’ve ever been before.
But the house will stand. Florence believes in it. The cherry tree, the orchard, the pond with the carp. Even the bedrooms. She hates them and yet she’s afraid to be without them. The big kitchen where Solange used to make chicken broth for Claire. All the rooms are empty now. The girls left a week ago.
The guns sound. The noise of them vibrates in the floorboards and the frame of her bed. The door of the attic bedroom opens and Madame Blanche stands there in her grey linen travelling dress.
‘Get up, Florence,’ she says. ‘Pack everything of value into a basket that you can carry. There’s a cart waiting in the yard. We must leave.’
‘But we can’t leave,’ says Florence.
‘But of course we can,’ says Madame Blanche, and her face breaks into a curious, ironic smile.
It comes at him out of the blue. An Albatros, diving from the east. It got behind him and caught him. It’s onto him, emptying its drum.
Florence scoops Claire out of bed. She presses the child close to her, telling her it’s time to get up, they’ve got to get dressed and go out early today. Claire’s heavy head lolls. There’s a red crease on her cheek where the pillow has marked it. Florence sets her upright on the bed and Claire staggers drunkenly. Her eyes are open but really she’s still asleep. Florence lifts her again and Claire burrows her head into her mother’s shoulder. She’s damp with sweat and sleep.
‘You must wake up now, Claire. We’ve got to go.’
There’s Madame Blanche out in the road, in the dust, gesturing to Petit Paul to hurry. But Petit Paul is having trouble with the mare. The guns are firing too close for her. The thump of shells makes the earth tremble. The mare throws up her head and her long yellow teeth show as she whinnies in terror of the earth that’s betrayed her. Petit Paul struggles with her bridle. He hauls her forward but she won’t come to be harnessed to the cart. She shudders all over and throws back her head again, spitting the froth of her mouth at him.
Petit Paul has got to get her forward, into position, and then back her into the traces. How will he do it with his lean, scant strength? Florence knows he will not. He’s lost the heart for it. He’s afraid of the mare now, and afraid of Madame Blanche and of the sounding of the guns he thought he’d got away from, working in this house. He looks a long way off in the dust that the mare’s hooves kick up.
But Madame Blanche won’t take no for an answer. She catches up her skirt and runs at the mare. The mare sees her coming and backs, blundering into the cart shafts. Madame Blanche raises her strong arm in triumph, to beat the mare about the eyes and then to beat Petit Paul. No one, nothing, will get away from her like that. Florence, clutching Claire in her arms, moves backwards.
*
A zip of bullet catches the fuel tank. Will understands it almost faster than it happens. The tank will leak and a few drops of benzine on the red-hot engine will start a flamer.
The plane comes in low. Florence neither sees it nor hears it: it is too close for that. Every fibre of her flesh vibrates to it. She throws herself face down in the dust, covering Claire with her body, as the plane swoops the length of the dusty road, spitting out bullets. She doesn’t look and she sees nothing. Only the dust and small stones beneath her face where she strains to cover every inch of Claire’s flesh with her own.
The tank will leak and a few drops of benzine on the red-hot engine will start a flamer. He knows what to do. The Albatros is coming in again, sure of its kill now and careless of its approach. He sees pilot and gun coming at him. He fires until his drum is empty and the Albatros sheers away, as if falling off a shelf of air.
Florence looks up from the dust. The plane has passed over. At eye-level she sees the bulk of the mare down on her back. Her hooves thresh the air. Petit Paul and Madame Blanche are invisible. They do not speak or get up or scream. The engine’s noise is in the distance. It will come back again, thinks Florence. It will turn and finish what it’s begun. Already she hears the engine note changing, beginning to bulge again in the distance.
Florence scrambles to her feet. She hears for the first time the sound of Claire’s screams. She is not hurt, no. The grip of her legs winding around Florence’s waist is too strong for that. Her fingers dig into her mother’s flesh. Florence runs to the side of the road but the ditch is too shallow to hide in. There’s a gate. But she cannot climb with Claire in her arms. She peels the child off her while Claire’s screams rise to a frenzy. She lifts her daughter and drops her into the soft long grass on the other side of the gate, then clambers after her.
Florence runs bent forward over Claire, so that her body shields the child. Her breath comes harsh as she runs the length of the field, in the shadow of the hedge, hidden from the road. She runs parallel to the road, westward, to where England is.
He must switch off the engine, quick, before a drop of benzine hits the red-hot metal. Will switches off the engine and sudden quiet rocks him. The Albatros has gone, somersaulting into the cloud below. Maybe the pilot will pull out of the spin, but if he does Will won’t see it. Now he is really flying, eerie, solitary, up in the blue.
If your fuel tank’s pierced, switch off your engine immediately. No, Ackroyd, you won’t fall out of the air. You’re not sitting on a bloody tin tray, are you? Another one who wasn’t listening in my lecture yesterday. Can any of you gentlemen tell Ackroyd what will happen if he switches off his engine?
Wind rushes through the ailerons. Without the engine the sky is huge and it bulges with all the silence his engine has kept away from him. A white vapour streams behind Will’s machine as he descends, and as the vapour spreads across the blue it seems to form itself first into letters, then words. The words hold steady in the sky for a second, but there is no one to read them.
Epilogue
A field is enough to spend a life in.
Harrow, granite and mattress springs,
shards and bones, turquoise droppings
from pigeons that gorge on nightshade berries,
a charm of goldfinch, a flight of linnets,
fieldfare and January redwing
venturing westward in the dusk,
all are folded in the dark of the field,
all are folded into the dark of the field
and need more days
to paint them, than life gives.
We’ve been walking side by side for a long time. I’ve said so much: too much, maybe. Joe was right, we are brother and sister, reader and writer. If you only knew how much I’ve wanted to keep your presence, and your attention. But sometimes you’ve smiled, or nodded, and I’ve had the feeling that you’re accompanying me. Or that your imagination is accompanying mine.
I am grateful for it. Without your imagination the story would die.
Maybe you know this stretch of the coast path. It’s very beautiful. Far below there is white sand under deep water, and it produces a shade of turquoise which you see nowhere else. The power of these colours brings me to a standstill.
There’s a farm collie running in front of me. Sometimes he stops and waits for me to catch up. His body quivers, tense with willingness. He’s shepherding me. He does it to everyone who walks this way, if they let him.
You can go two ways here. One path continues along the coast, following the sculpt of the cliffs. The other forks right and leads you back across the fields.
This is where we’ll separate. You’ll frown or smile for the last time. Maybe you’ll even say something, though I’m beyond imagining what those words might be. And then you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.
Epigraph Acknowledgements
Prologue: ‘A car comes up, with lamps full-glare…’ from ‘Nobody Comes’ by Thomas Hardy
Part One
Chapter One: ‘She was a good-looking girl, too…’ from Chapter One of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Chapter Two: ‘the wife wants a child…’ from ‘The Farmer’s in His Den’ (Traditional)
Chapter Six: ‘For the sword outwears its sheath…’ from ‘So, We’ll Go No More a-Roving’ by George Gordon, Lord Byron