‘I’m just a humble pilot, one of a new breed,’ he always said, pleased that he wasn’t conceited like some, and he would be ready as the girls melted into him.
His family home was in West Coker, a small village two miles out of Yeovil. It didn’t have its own railway station, you had to go to Yeovil Junction for the train, but it did have three pubs, a town hall, a post office and St Martin of Tours Church, which everyone called St Martin’s. The church had eight bells and an organ that had cost five hundred pounds when it was bought a good thirty-five years ago in 1885, so just imagine what it was worth now. West Coker was farming country, it was undulating hills that sloped to rivers on whose banks dairy cows idled away their days.
Overseeing West Coker sat Ashgrove House, bought by Reuben’s grandfather, who had contributed most of the cost of the church organ even though he never stepped foot inside the church. Unfortunately the contribution of the organ bought him a smaller level of acceptance than he had hoped. Some locals were never going to accept Jews in Ashgrove House. The house stood three storeys high with two double-storey wings; it had five ponds and a rose garden and three hundred acres behind large brick and stone gates. Beyond the grounds of Ashgrove Hall the family’s land was tenanted out to farmers. Reuben thought that if it didn’t rain all the time and his parents weren’t there, it would be quite a lovely place.
On weekends when he had leave, he and his mate Holmes would find a dance to go to. Reuben would stand in the entrance of the dance hall as his eyes adjusted to the dim light cast from the hanging lamps hand-painted with scenes from Japan or China. There would be a vocalist on the stage singing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ but slow and low and mournful, like jazz. There would be a band wearing suits behind the singer, and behind them wafts of white curtains like the clouds he flew in. There would be a pianist at a grand piano and tables with drinks and sandwiches and staff serving in tails. Mothers would sit at linen-covered tables along the sides of the hall sipping tea and sherry and keeping an eagle eye on their daughters to protect them from men like him.
Reuben was fantastic, standing at the top of the steps in his uniform, a cigarette held suggestively between his lips, his eyes hinting at the immorality he was so eager to share with any young lady who had no chaperone in sight. He would see the young women glancing furtively at him as their dance partners twirled them about. They could sense the danger in him. He was irresistible. Soon the young women gathered around him and when the pianist stopped playing he would walk over to the piano and the girls would lean their delicate elbows on the piano top, sip their sherry, their lips wet and slightly parted, and Reuben would tell them flying stories with such vigour that the blood rose to the young ladies’ cheeks as they gasped at the peril he faced daily as he fought the Huns. The mothers would eye him warily from their perches along the walls. The fathers who huddled together discussing the turns and twists of the war didn’t notice him entrancing their wide-eyed daughters and the men glared at him jealously.
‘I love the forbidden,’ Reuben would say quietly to the girls, and they would gasp at his daring and then he would talk about flying and they would be calmed because that’s what his words did to people. His voice was mesmerising and the way he told stories took the girls to another world where there were no rules and the skin on their arms turned goosepimply and their heads were filled with thoughts of what a man like Reuben Rose could do and at least one of them would disappear into some dark corner to give him hope before his next flight.
Reuben didn’t view the war the same way Theo did. Reuben didn’t see the panic and fear. It was all about victory to him, conquering the skies and glorying over his enemies. Life came easily to him, and success fell into his lap. There was never any thought that he might not win. The Australians were beaten, worn out; some had given up and were waiting for death, some threw themselves into the sea pleading for the Turks to do them in right there and then. Reuben’s optimism slapped them in the face. He was a champion. They weren’t. He was another careless heavy boot stomping the ground over their graves. The Australians could sense his blindness and kept their distance.
Reuben crouched over the dying Aussie. His flanks began to ache so he sat in
