‘Why would they have killed him?’
‘He once told me something about the death of General Sikorsky: he was there. On the plane. It was some sort of political thing. Now that the war’s as good as over, and governments-in-waiting are popping up all over the shop, I think that someone was cleaning their stables. Pete was just a piece of horse shit that might have been stepped in.’
‘You really think that, Charlie?’
‘What?’
‘That the war’s as good as over?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I think it’s just beginning. Ask me again in 1950.’
Then he leaned forward and tapped the altimeter, which had stuck stubbornly at 175 feet. The indicator hands spun up immediately to over six thou, and he said, ‘On oxygen, Charlie; let’s see how you do. Big deep breaths now.’
I noticed that he didn’t, and had a quick moment of distrust and misgiving, before I thought Oh hell, and Who cares? and filled my lungs to capacity. Cliff pulled his mask up again, mumbling to me just before he did so, ‘OK. Let’s put you under some pressure.’
Then he spoke into the mask for everyone’s benefit, and said, ‘Hold tight chaps. Here we go,’ and dropped the bugger’s nose until we were pointed at the ground.
What I learned that day was that Stirlings fall very fast. We still had a thou on its unreliable clock by the time he pulled her out of it, but he must have had 350 knots on the speedo at some time in that dive, and Stirlings weren’t designed for that. Neither was I. The old kite creaked and trembled. By the time we were flying straight and level again I was breathing deep breaths. Cliff said, ‘Off ox, Charlie,’ and, ‘You’ll do. Your lungs didn’t burst.’
‘No thanks to you.’
‘That’s no way to thank the officer who’s just saved you from an internal inquiry and a court martial, Charlie boy, is it? Anyway: the sun’s over the yardarm – fancy a bevy?’
We walked back from dispersal to the sheds. I was remembering I had seen the ground coming up to meet me at more than 300 knots, and on it was the big accommodation hut at Bawne where Pete had shot one of the policemen who’d come after him. It was from Bawne airfield that I had paid numerous nocturnal visits to the Thousand Year Reich. How could Cliff have known exactly where we were in that big sky? How could he have known that? I told them a long and complicated joke about Don Bradman, and was pleased to raise the dutiful laugh. Bravo Charlie.
As we dumped our parachutes and flying clothes he asked me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’
‘I fancy being a journalist on a sports paper, living somewhere where the sun never sets. My mum always had her heart set on one of the professions – doctor, teacher, civil servant. That would never work out though.’
‘You’d make a good civil servant.’
I said, ‘Fuck off, Cliff.’ It wasn’t to be the last time.
Whenever I think about Cambridgeshire or Bedfordshire I think of rain: oceans of the sodding stuff. In Cambridge they have more names for rain than Eskimos have for snow. Which is why it is so odd to remember that during all the visits that I made to Crifton House – during the war, and since – the rain held off. Crifton is a honey-gold Palladian mansion bigger than the Admiralty Building. It straddles the county boundaries like your childhood: a place in your memory where the sun always shines.
It was also where Grace lived. The last time I had arrived there I had been a strung-out Sergeant on a borrowed motorbike, wearing a tatty collection of RAF uniform parts, and giving sweet f.a. about anything. Herr Death in Germany had been knocking on my door, and reorganizing my values. Now I came back as an officer with his own car, and money in the bank. Grace’s mother also lived there, with a few vintage retainers who dated to the turn of the century, I’d guess. She kept court, and suffered the occasional visit from her husband, Grace’s stepfather, a bullets millionaire. The phrase we would have used about them in those days was ‘They didn’t get on.’ The old man got on with making money though: if there is a surer recipe for success than making the bullets for the winning side in a major war, I don’t know of it. Grace’s mother got on with visiting heroes. It was a complicated household because her husband had rogered Grace before he got round to the old lady, and that was all of six months after he had killed Grace’s original old man in a drunken duel in Germany. That was before we fell out with the Kraut, of course. You see what I mean. Complicated.
Barnes, the butler, was about seventy and divided his time equally between the house, the lady’s maid, and listening to the radio traffic from our bomber raids on a cat’s-whisker radio he’d built himself. He usually looked shagged out. He said, ‘Good morning, Mr Charlie,’ and, ‘Nice car.’
‘Thank you Barnsey. Has Miss Grace shown up yet?’
‘No, sir. It’s been some time now. We hoped that you would turn up sooner or later, to look for her.’
I let that lie.
‘Is Mr or Mrs Baker at home?’
‘Mrs Baker, sir. Sir Peter is at the small office at Blunham, and asked me to call him if you came by.’
‘Would it be too difficult to stop the sirring Barnsey? It’s making me twitchy.’
‘I expect it goes with the new uniform, Mr Charlie.’
‘Bugger off, Barnsey.’
‘At once, sir. I’ll take your case from the car. Mrs Barnes and the staff will be pleased to know that you’re staying again.’
I hadn’t exactly intended to. Damn him.
‘What about Mrs Baker?’
‘Not as pleased, Mr Charlie: she’s grieving for her last American.’
I had met the man. He was another one with the 306th at Thurleigh, a USAAF station. I had known his
