His two friends came steaming in, angry – hell, they were insulted – because I was on my own, one against three, and they’d thought they’d have some fun with me.
They’d assumed they had me when I levelled out. A Spitfire might have gotten away from the Focke-Wulfs, but my Hurricane, with its eight Browning machine guns in its wings, was a clumsier animal and I knew I’d have to take desperate measures. There was only one way to outfly the Germans, but they’d have to follow me. I headed upwards, into the blue, taking the Hurricane to the limits. And the Focke-Wulfs came after me.
Thirty-eight thousand, cockpit rattling around me, and I levelled, took her into a dive. Thirty-seven thousand feet, thirty-six, -five, and my belly’s pressing against my spine. Picking up speed, though, control column vibrating in my hand. Can’t hear them, but I feel the bullets tearing into my left wing. Diving faster. No more gunfire – the Krauts are beginning to have problems controlling their aircraft as all three of us pick up speed.
Thirty thousand feet and my speed’s up to four hundred miles an hour, considerably more than the Hurricane’s limit. Diving, faster, faster, everything shaking around me, engine’s screaming, my goggles are fogging up, sweat’s beginning to blind me.
Twenty-five thousand.
Twenty.
I manage to twist my head, look behind me. Can only see one pursuer, and he’s pulling out of the dive, giving up the chase. Where’s his pal? Can’t see the other Focke-Wulf. Have to assume it’s still on my tail.
Nineteen, then eighteen.
Too fast. Christ, much too fast. I tear off the goggles. Can’t believe it when I look at the instrument panel. Everything’s quivering, but still I can see the speedo’s needle. Not possible. I’m approaching six hundred miles per hour. Nobody’s gonna believe this. If I ever live to tell the tale.
And now it happens, the thing I’d dreaded. They call it compressibility. It’s when everything gets dampened, nothing works as it should. The plane is out of control, the stick’s all over the place.
Jesus H, I’m down to twelve thousand.
I grip the control column, try to pull the Hurricane out of its dive, but it won’t listen, it won’t obey. Pulling harder, both hands clamped around the stick. The plane won’t haul up. Oh dear Lord…
Eight thousand feet.
Seven.
Six.
That’s it. I’m done. I’m locked into that seat by pressure, no way can I get out of the cockpit. Not giving up though. Too much to live for. I pull harder.
Five.
I begin to pray.
But forget the prayer and start to scream.
Everything becomes white, like the centre of an explosion…
And I woke up. Thank God, I woke up. And as I sat there, bolt upright in the bed, body wringing wet, limbs trembling, I realized it wasn’t the imminent dream-death that had awakened me. The light knocking on the door came again.
Moonlight flooded the room so that the walls, the furniture, the rumpled bedsheet, were bathed ghostly white. I stayed where I was, still in shock, my mind completing the dream that was, in fact, a memory: Coming out of the dive at the last moment, skimming over the treetops, the Fw 190 which had remained in pursuit not so lucky; it’d hit those same trees and exploded into one huge fireball. The German pilot’s screaming face, imagined by me as I sat there in the moonlight, resembled Wilhelm Stern’s. Fortunately for me on that day almost seven years ago, the rest of my squadron hadn’t been far away, and the wing commander himself had hurtled towards me along with two other Hurricanes and chased off the surviving Focke-Wulf, giving me hell over the radio for wandering away from the main battle as he did so. It wasn’t the first time I’d had that dream, but it was no worse than any of the others that disturbed my sleep almost every night, drunk or sober.
The rapping on the door came again, still light, but more urgent this time, as though the person outside were becoming impatient. Or desperate. The doorhandle turned, but with no effect – I always kept the door locked at night
Tossing back the sheet, I snatched my chinos from the foot of the bed and pulled them on. Before going to the door, I picked up the .45 from the bedside cabinet and cocked it. Index finger outside the trigger guard, barrel pointed at the ceiling, I padded barefoot over to the bedroom door.
As if sensing me on the other side, a muffled female voice called softly: ‘Hoke, please let me in.’
Quickly turning the key, I opened the door a few inches. I could see only a shadow outside in the hall.
‘Please,’ she repeated, and I could tell she was close to tears.
I stood aside, pulling the door open a little wider, and Muriel slipped through the gap. The moment the door was shut tight again and I’d turned to face her, she was in my arms, her slender body shivering despite the night’s warmth.
I resisted at first, remained stiff, unyielding, gun hand still raised towards the ceiling, the palm of my other hand wavering inches from her back. Then I smelt her sweet perfume and I remembered what a woman’s embrace was like. My hand closed against her back, pulling her towards me, and I lowered the gun to my side. I breathed in the aroma of her freshly washed hair, then the scent she’d used on her skin, on her neck, her breasts. I even enjoyed the faint taint of wine still on her lips. A pressure inside me was released, the tightness in my chest loosened. I held on to her for a moment, maybe a few moments, and closed my eyes. My mind reeled in her presence.
It had been so long, so very long…
But the numbness within returned, the rejection of true feelings that was my only defence against the terrible thing that had happened to the world and to me overrode those stirring emotions: I stepped away from her. In the silvery light from the window, I saw the glistening of tears on her cheeks and I saw the confusion in her eyes.
‘Hold me,’ she asked in a hushed voice.
I couldn’t I didn’t want to. I knew if I took her back into my arms I’d lose something that had kept me together these past three years, the detachment I’d come to wear like a suit of armour. I did not want to become vulnerable again.
Her bare shoulders were trembling still and the moonlight shimmered off the silk slip she wore. She watched, her tears catching that same light so that crystals seemed to shine from their trails, then slowly lowered her head.
‘I’m so afraid,’ she said.
And I gave in, so easily, so goddamn willingly.
Her weeping dampened my naked chest and I felt tiny spasms jerk her whole body with each sob she uttered.
‘Take it easy,’ I said to her quietly, at a loss for any other words of comfort. ‘We’re safe here.’
Her hair was sensuous against my skin. ‘I saw them, Hoke,’ I heard her say. ‘There were so many.’
‘Who? Who did you see?’
She lifted her head to gaze up at me. ‘I saw their spirits. The people who died in this hotel – I saw their spirits wandering the hallways and corridors. I saw them on the stairways, lost souls, just drifting, with nowhere to go. It was so sad, Hoke, so pitiful – and so frightening.’
‘I told you all not to leave your rooms tonight.’ My anger was false, a diversion from what she was telling me, because I didn’t want to hear such things. Memories were enough to cope with.
‘I had to get out. I needed to see more of this place, perhaps only to revisit better days. Can’t you understand that?’
I shook my head. ‘It was a stupid thing to do.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘I went as far as the main stairway, the one by the lift. They were just shadows at first, a shifting in the dark, until they began to emerge, slowly at first, as if my own concentration was helping them take form. Then they were all around me, drifting, floating, and oblivious to each other. Even for those who were together, elegant women in long, flowing dresses on the arms of men in dinner jackets and winged collars, there appeared to be no contact between them. But the anguish in their eyes, the misery in their features…’ Her head rested against
my chest once more. ‘Was it only my imagination, Hoke? Or were they real…?’
‘A dream, that’s all,’ I told her as I held her tight, my arms pressed against her back, the gun now awkward in my hand.
‘But I wasn’t sleeping,’ I heard her murmur.
‘Illusions, then. Don’t you get it? The shock of seeing all those corpses earlier today is still messing with your head. Believe me, I know about it, Muriel, I’ve been there myself. You, me, Cissie, old Albert Potter, and the German – we’re the only living, breathing things in this hotel.’
‘I didn’t say they were living –’
‘There are no ghosts.’ She jumped at the anger in my voice. ‘The dead are dead. Anything else is fantasy. You understand, Muriel, you understand?’
My free hand was gripping her upper arm and she flinched at its sudden pressure. She tried to pull away.
‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry,’ I soothed, annoyed at myself for letting her wild talk get to me. ‘Just relax now and try to put those thoughts out of your mind. They’ll fade away eventually, I promise you. They’ll fade away for good.’
Her body seemed to sag and she leaned back into me, her hands down by her sides, her weight against my chest. I let her weep, my hand stroking her hair, and soon I became aware of the hardened tips of her small breasts through the thin silky slip, nudging my skin, arousing feelings I’d long since subdued. I fought against it, against yearnings that had been denied for so many years, aware that it was wrong, the wrong time, the wrong circumstances. And afraid she would be repelled.
Her weeping had stopped and she suddenly became taut once more, as though aware of what was happening. But instead of pulling away, she relaxed into me and the contact between us took on a new intensity. The very air around us seemed charged, as though an electric storm was gathering inside that cluttered bedroom. Impossible, but it seemed so real, and I soon realized that energy was building inside our own bodies and not in the atmosphere outside them. For me it became a kind of agony, an ecstatic craving that battled against other emotions, feelings and memories that would not be cast aside, not just for this, not just for – the image appeared stark and horrifying in my mind, her body lying there on stone steps, her belly torn open…I tried to block the thought, but still the horror of it lingered.
‘Hoke?’
Now I was the one who trembled, the one who fought back tears and turned away.
Muriel held my arms and shook me gently. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘It’s okay,’ I lied, suppressing the dread inside. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘For a moment I thought you’d seen the ghosts too.’
‘I told you, there are no ghosts.’
‘Then why were you afraid just now?’
‘It wasn’t fear.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you shivering?’
There was only one way to stop her questions. I kissed her. Hard. Angrily.
And she responded, pressing her lips just as hard against mine, as if there was a fury in her longings also, a fierce aching that had been there for a long time. We fought against each other in a battle that was for fulfilment, not conquest, each of us clinging so that flesh touched flesh and desire met with desire. It was a struggle that required an outcome and we both knew it.
She drew her head away and whispered something. I became still and looked at her questioningly.
‘I need more,’ she said, her voice barely audible over our gasps for breath. ‘I need to lie next to you.’
I hardly hesitated, because any resistance was gone, lost in those first few moments. After wiping away the rivulets of tears from her cheeks with the thumb of one hand I led her to the bed and lowered her onto the wrinkled sheet. She kept her arms around my neck as I left the gun on the bedside cabinet and I took in her scent, not the perfume she’d found in her suite, nor the soap she’d used on her hair, but the aroma of her womanhood, of her arousal. The sheet beneath us was an unblemished white in the moonlight and her skin was of that same whiteness; the slip she wore was a shade darker, its reflections soft and silvery. Only by closing my mind to the past could I release myself to the present, and the vision of Muriel lying there, her arms outstretched to receive me, her legs slightly parted, one knee raised, helped me banish that other time. We needed each other badly and any reservation was swiftly put aside.
I sank down onto her, taking most of my own weight on my elbow so that I could gaze into her moon-bleached face and into those eyes that sought more than just passion. There was an urgency there, but also – or so I told myself at the time – a need for some kind of security, maybe a commitment
My fingers, still trembling, slipped beneath the strap on her pale shoulder to ease it aside. Resting my hand there, curled around her shoulder, I lowered my face so that our lips brushed against each other. The touch was deliberately delicate, unlike the bruising kiss of moments before, and it excited us both; still we kept the encounter tentative, moistening each other’s mouths with tiny stabs of our tongues, resisting the impulse to crush, to give ourselves completely, the restraint soon becoming unbearable, the years of abstinence heightening the tension, increasing the pleasure.
It could only last a matter of seconds and when finally we pressed into each other, teeth clashing, our lips hurting, I felt a roaring inside my head, a rush of charges surging through each limb, each part of my body. My hand left her shoulder to find her small, firm breast, and my fingers tightened on its solid core. I heard her gasp at the sudden pain, but the sound became a moan, and this was of pleasure.
Her hands slid round my neck, kneading its flesh and the hard ridge of my spine, her fingertips retreating so that they could come between us to work themselves against my chest, digging into the muscles there, smoothing over the ridges. It was my turn to gasp when her fingers probed the bruising. She quickly took her hand away, afraid she’d hurt me too much, and I felt those fingers flatten against my stomach, causing the muscles there to shudder involuntarily.
Our kisses were equally wild, our breaths equally as desperate, and when her tongue entered my mouth and pressed against my own tongue, I became even more aroused. One of my hands tugged at the slip, pulling it down, away from her breasts, and I took time to drink them in with my eyes, because they were so naked, so bare, so sensual, like delicate spheres carved in marble; and then I drank them in with my mouth, taking each nipple in turn between my lips and drawing them in so that they stood wet and proud as Muriel squirmed beneath me. I heard the quiet rustle of the sheet as her legs parted and when I rose from her again, I saw that the smooth material of her slip had ruffled up over her thighs, leaving a deep, alluring shadow between them. It was another flawless sight, an image that set my mind reeling as all control, all reason, slipped away from me.
Muriel’s chest was rising and falling with her own breathlessness and her hair framed her sweet face on the pillow. Her hands suddenly busied themselves with the waistband of my pants, and then I was free, her fingers closing around me and drawing me towards her so that I cried out with the wonderful shock of it. Her thighs opened wider as she guided me down between them and her cry was louder than mine when I entered her body, the resistance only slight, the hesitation only minimal. Again her cry turned to a moan of pleasure as I travelled further, the journey now smooth and easy, like gliding through warm butter, and her narrow hips rose up to meet me, her hands, her arms, pulling at me fiercely, urging me on, never, it seemed, wanting that journey to end. But quickly I reached the furthest point, and we clung to each other, her tears dampening my chest and shoulders once again.
Only then did we pause, and my own tears fell into her hair. She felt the wetness and held me tightly, but now with a tenderness that had nothing to do with passion. It couldn’t last though, that moment of caring and compassion – our physical demands were too great, our sexual needs too critical. We began to move against each other again, each thrust becoming wilder, o
ur senses rushing towards that point in our bodies where our juices could fuse and our energies meld. When my flow finally streamed from me I buried my face against her shoulder and groaned, and I stayed that way until the fluttering spasms grew less in intensity, ebbed away, left me exhausted.
Slowly my body and my mind relaxed. And for the first time in three years I found a temporary peace.
I lit another cigarette with the one I’d just finished and settled back against the bed’s cushioned headboard. The shadows in the room had altered as the moon beyond the high windows had drifted upriver, and it was hard to make out Muriel’s form as she lay beside me beneath the single sheet, her hand resting lightly on my thigh. The scent of spent passion lingered between us, a sweet-sour musk that was both calming and sensual at the same time, and I remembered how Sally had called it ‘love-fragrance’, believing it was some kind of invisible shroud that enveloped lovers after the act, bonding them for a little longer. Yeah, I’d laughed at the time, laughed like a hyena, making her mad at first, until she’d joined in the laughter, but punched my arm all the same. I’d liked the idea though, despite my teasing. At least, I’d liked it with Sally in the picture. Now the thought only stoked up my guilt.
‘Hoke?’ There was a quiet huskiness to her voice. ‘Are you all right?’
I could just see the outline of her hair and her arm in the darkness, the vague glint of her eyes. As I drew on the cigarette she was briefly bathed in its warm glow.
‘Sure, I’m okay,’ I replied.
‘You were telling me about your parents.’
Lighting the fresh cigarette had interrupted the flow; the aroma of our lovemaking had rekindled a memory.
‘Like I said,’ I went on, ‘Ma was English, with a touch of Irish thrown in. Peggy. “Peg o’ my Heart” Dad liked to call her, naturally enough. They first met when he was over from Wisconsin for an agricultural fair – he dealt in farm equipment, bought ‘n’ sold anything from machinery to fertilizers. Had a fair little business going just after the Great War and he was kind of anxious to get a head start with all the new technology for farming.’