‘From the aircraft itself?’
‘We picked up a tew hits and pieces, me and Ted. There’s not much left now, though.’
‘Ted’s your brother, is that right?’
‘Aye. He was four years older than me. 1 followed him round like a dog, the way kids do. I must have been a right nuisance to him sometimes.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Long gone/ said Malkin.
Near the hrc, a wooden rack was draped with washing left to dry. There was presumably no spin drier in the house, and if left outside on the line, any garment would soon freeze to the consistency of cardboard.
‘Let me get the box,’ said Malkin. ‘Stay by the fire and keep yourself warm.’
v
‘Thanks.’
While Cooper waited, he worried about the drying clothes. They seemed to be a little too near to the fire. Wisps of steam and a warm, foetid smell rose from the lines of damp socks and white Y-fronts. Cooper thought that in another few minutes there would be singe marks on the cotton. Across the room, he could see a short passage into what might have been a kitchen or an old-fashioned scullery. There was an earthenware sink with an enamel drainer and a cold tap, a geyser on the wall for hot water, a cupboard with a flap that let down to create a work surface.
When George Malkin came back with a little wooden box, the first item he produced from it was a photograph. They were always the most treasured items among anyone’s collections of mementoes, those little snapshots taken on box brownies.
This photo a tiny black-and-white snap with a wide border dated from 1945. One corner was turned over, and when Cooper straightened it out he discovered a cobweb
o( lines formed by dust ingrained into the creases in the
^ &
paper. The photo showed a section of the crashed Lancaster shortly after the accident, when it had become a focus of attention for sightseers. The wreckage was almost unrecognizable: bits of ripped and crumpled metal, trailing strands of
101
wire, scattered with dark soil thrown up from the peat moor by the impact.
In the background, two men in trilbys could be seen peering into a section of fuselage through holes torn in its side. But in the foreground was another figure — a small boy. He was only about ten years old, but with that curious look about his face of far greater age and knowingncss, a look that seemed a peculiarity of old photographs, as if children in those days had grown up long before they should have done. People often said that modern youngsters grew up too soon. But their knowledge these days was mostly about sex and drugs, a streetwise awareness that set them apart from their parents and the older generations. Children growing up in the war years were wise about other things. For a start, they knew all about death.
o ‘
The boy was dressed in knee-length shorts and a pullover with a white V-neck collar and elasticated cuffs. His socks had crumpled around his ankles, and his heavy boots were laced up tight. A lock of hair fell over his forehead, but at the sides it was cut short and his ears stood out from his head. He was staring directly at the camera with an intense look, striking a self-conscious pose, his left hand raised to rest on one of the huge engines that protruded from the debris. The engine was still intact, and each of the curved propeller blades was taller than the bov. It seemed incredible that souvenir hunters would later cut away those propellers from the engine and remove all trace of them from the moor. It must have taken at least two men to carry one blade, and they would have struggled over the rough ground and the steep slopes to get it back to the road. What motivated them to go to such trouble? And where were the propeller blades and the other aircraft parts now?
‘Who is this boy?’ asked Cooper.
‘Who do you think?’ said Malkin.
Cooper looked from the photograph to the man across the table. Though the hair was grew now, and no longer fell over his
O O j ‘ O
forehead, the style was much the same as it had been in 1945, and so were the protruding ears. And the direct stare was the same, too - then, as now, it was the stare of someone who had grown too old too soon.
102
‘So you walked up to Irontongue to look at the crash?’ ‘It was a great hit of excitement in those Jays. There was no telly, of course. These days they wouldn’t shift themselves away from the goggle hox or their computers, would they? My dad was too busy to hother with us, hut we went up with our Uncle Norman, who lived just outside Glossop. I talked ahout it at school tor months afterwards. I was a real centre of attention for a while.’
‘Did you come awav with any souvenirs yourself?’
‘Well, of course. Everybody did. Only a few mementoes, you know. We used to swap them with other lads; the American stuff was what we wanted most, unless we could get hold of something from a German plane. There were plenty of hits and pieces lying around then. But 1 got rid of nearly everything.’
‘Did you happen to find any medals?’
‘Medals?’ Malkin looked surprised. ‘Medals would have been worth something. I reckon. Rut they would have been on the
O’ V
bodies, probably, wouldn’t they?’
