Operation Thunderflash Read online

  *

  “I love you, Margaret.”

  “You’re very sweet and dear, Bill...darling Bill...”

  “I love you.”

  “I’m afraid I think I’m going to fall in love...”

  “I’m not afraid...and I don’t think, I know...I’m madly in love with you...”

  “Because this is your first time, my love...”

  “I didn’t say that...”

  “You didn’t need to, darling...”

  “Was I as bad as all that?” I felt hurt.

  “You were very sweet... and this time you’re going to be even...sweeter...”

  “You mean better.” I knew I was sounding sulky.

  “I said sweeter and I meant sweeter...and it’ll go on getting better every time...for both of us...darling, take it easy!” Her joyous chuckle, “ ...Or we won’t survive to get better together.”

  I kissed her eyelids afterwards. “Why are you crying? Was I so bloody incompetent.”

  Her arms tightened across my back. “Darling...you were wonderful...” She laughed in a teasing, libidinous way and put on a mocking voice: “Super...wizard...well clobbered...” We both collapsed into happy laughter.

  “But you were crying, Margaret...why?”

  “Tears of happiness.” A long pause and when she spoke again she was so serious-sounding that I raised myself on an elbow and peered down at her in alarm. “Darling...things you ought to know...first about Tim and me...I don’t sleep with him, you know...”

  “I thought not.”

  “Am I so hungry?”

  “It’s not that: it was when you fetched that book from ‘my bedroom’.”

  “You’re very observant. You’re going to ask me why I married him. Simple: because I thought I loved him. He’d had a rotten first marriage, I knew she played the fool pretty blatantly...now I understand why she did...anyway, I felt sorry for him and he was madly handsome and charming, and then the war started and there he was all glamorous in uniform...and got a DFC almost straight away, which made him a big hero...what girl could resist it? I’d been married, for a few months, to a friend of his, on the same Auxiliary squadron...he was killed in a flying accident...I suppose, in a way, I was on the rebound...anyway, it never worked for Tim and me...not from the first...”

  “That should make me feel less awful, I suppose...but it doesn’t, really.”

  “I’m a modern girl...was, I should say...modern woman, now...” I kissed her to silence and then she went on, “One grows up fast in a London teaching hospital...I took what I wanted...then I met Jack and fell truly in love and married him and knew I’d never want to look elsewhere ever again. And then he was killed...and Tim came along and I felt the same about him.”

  We kissed some more and I made clumsy endearing noises, wishing I were not only nineteen.

  Margaret said, “I’ve never let Tim down...I’m not a tart...but I have been a little naughty...once...a purely physical thing because I was so repressed and randy (I had never heard a woman use that word and I instantly responded to it by becoming exactly that myself; she felt me against her and laughed)...don’t be so eager, for a moment, darling...presently. I was almost climbing the wall with frustration...so I weakly gave way to temptation and had a fling with someone on the squadron...he was much older than you, darling...and married...and his wife was in the Orkneys...and he was just as repressed and randy as I was...so there it was, and it happened...and we both enjoyed it for a couple of months, and there was absolutely no emotional involvement at all...” I moved away and she jerked me back to her. “I swear to you, Bill...it was an utterly shameless...wanton, if you like...affair of the flesh that we both needed.”

  Margaret moved suddenly so that she was above me and with surprising force she pinned my shoulders to the bed, forcing the weight of her eight stone into her arms. She put her face close to mine and peered into my eyes with great intensity and a tragic look that clouded her own. “Bill, darling...we must be very careful...”

  “Of course...”

  “You don’t understand. I mean for your sake, not mine. My...my lover...I didn’t know Tim even suspected, let alone that he knew about Ian...until Ian was shot down over the Ruhr and killed and I saw the triumphant look in Tim’s eyes. I knew, then, that he’d made sure of it. Ian had been doing an awful lot of ops. all of a sudden...all lousy ones...his getting the chop was inevitable...”

  She flung herself down on me and with her cheek pressed to mine cried silently for a while.

  I tried to comfort her, awkwardly stroking her hair and kissing her face. “It wasn’t your fault,” I told her.

  “I’m not crying because of Ian...I didn’t love him...he was a fine man, but there was nothing substantial between us...I’m crying for myself...and what could happen to you...”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Yes, Bill, I do...I truly do...and don’t feel guilty, my darling...Tim was no good even on our honeymoon...Oh, God!...Can’t you guess what I’m saying?”

  Wild ideas chased through my mind. I remembered Hemingway’s hero in “The Sun Also Rises” who was emasculated by a bullet, and wondered if the same tragedy had struck Leatham: not in the last war, for he was too young, but in some accident...or through some sudden illness.

  “Was he all right before you were married?”

  Margaret smiled, her eyes still wet, calm now. She looked mischievous. “I wondered why he didn’t try anything on...then I thought it was just old fashioned chivalry...waiting for The Wedding Night...” she said that with mock pomposity.

  “N-not any good at all?” I faltered.

  She laughed weakly but with a touch of near-hysteria. “Darling, can’t you guess? He doesn’t...like...women.” She spaced the words out deliberately, like an elocution teacher.

  “Good God! How horrible for you...”

  “Your gallant, decorated Commanding Officer, my darling, is as queer as a coot...as queer as a three-bob piece.”

  Eight

  Leatham returned from the conference with a head seething with plans. On the drive back to their station he and his fellow Squadron Commander, who had driven themselves and were thus uninhibited by the presence of an MT driver to eavesdrop on their secrets, went endlessly over the subjects that had been discussed.

  “I know Norway pretty well,” Leatham had said at the conference when the final topic was tabled, and the keen eyes of the Air Officer Commanding had dwelt on him for several moments; but no allusion was made to this claim until, when the meeting broke up, the AOC muttered something to an Air Commodore on his Operational Planning staff, who took Leatham aside and said he would be visiting him soon.

  Now Leatham’s companion asked, “How well do you really know Norway, Tim?”

  “What is most important is that I know the particular place which I’m sure they have in mind, old boy. I know all the ski resorts in Norway and I’ll lay ten-to-one I’m right.”

  “If you’re right, then, you’ll be just the chap to lead the raid.”

  “That had occurred to me,” Leatham said with a smile. It would be a spectacular raid and not conspicuously dangerous: it should, added to his existing record, be good for a DSO.

  “Are you going to tell me about it?”

  “Why not? There’s a place called Nesdal which must be the one they were referring to. It’s a popular holiday resort and very high in the mountains, so the snow falls early, lies thickly and doesn’t thaw until late. The only way up there is by rail, and the line is protected by a series of long snow tunnels, in the worst places. They’re simply wooden sheds built over the line...”

  His companion interrupted, “And if we bombed them at the right time, Nesdal would be cut off for several weeks.”

  “That’s it. You know how over-confident the Jerries get and how dedicated they are to routine. By now they must be completely certain that no one is bothered about Nesdal.”

  “As soon as we get word there’s a really juicy clutch of their
senior hods up there, we clobber the place. I like that.”

  “It’s an ideal spot for them to use as a tit-bit rest and leave centre for chaps who have done outstandingly well, and as a high-level conference centre: Hitler obviously having a complex about mountains, with Berchtesgaden and his Eagle’s Nest.”

  “I’m sure you’ve hit the nail on the head.”

  If I can get myself involved in the planning, Leatham was thinking, I’ll have to take myself off the regular ops. roster for quite a long time. He said, “To get the crews used to high altitude flying over mountainous country, I think it would be a good idea to get ourselves in on the shuttle raids on Italy: that wouldn’t give away our intentions.”

  “Very good idea.”

  Operations against targets in Italy had produced low casualties. Leatham would not at all mind taking part. He arrived back at Belton full of beans.

  Operations were on and he had lots to keep him busy. It was dinner time before he went home. Margaret came to greet him in the hall and he wondered why he was being accorded this rare favour. She looked glowing, as he had not seen her for a very long time. Not, he reminded himself angrily, since that bloody man Monroe had been making a fool of him. For God’s sake, did he have another situation on his hands? He had a stronger sense of intuition than is found in most men...normal men...and her dreamy-eyed, contented air of mental and physical fulfilment alerted him at once.

  The butler was hovering, so she dutifully offered her husband her cheek and he as ritually stooped and kissed it.

  “How long have you got before you have to go back to camp?”

  “Don’t think I will, tonight. Donk isn’t flying; he can stand in for me, for once.” He watched for any sign of disappointment on her face but she gave nothing away.

  He remembered her lover and how he had twigged that something was going on because she had twice let slip her anxiety for his own absence. That, coupled with her almost torpid demeanour on some occasions when he had been away somewhere or flying — and Ian Monroe hadn’t — had led from suspicion to certainty. And now Flight Lieutenant Monroe was spattered all over the German landscape somewhere in the Ruhr. People who saw it happen had reported that his aircraft had exploded with a cull bomb load and disintegrated into particles that could have passed through a sieve. Leatham was grateful to the German night fighter crew who had taken revenge on his behalf. He had made sure that either they or the flak would take care of his wife’s lover.

  He asked himself if there really was someone else; and, if so, who it could be.

  He shouldn’t really give a damn, he supposed. He had married — twice — for the sake of appearances and she soon found out what the score was. But he was determined that appearances would be maintained; she owed him that, for the luxurious life he gave her and the freedom he allowed her to get on with her medicine, her music and her painting.

  Nobody on camp must have the chance to impugn his honour by seeing the horns she had already planted on him once; and once was too often.

  *

  Moakes had, out of kindness, given Bracken’s crew an easy task. It counted towards their 30 operations without demanding much of them. The job of sowing mines off enemy-held coasts was called “Gardening”. It entailed no danger from flak and crews stood a good chance of escaping interception by night fighters. If they operated within range of German shore radar they did invite some attention, but enemy fighters were much more concerned with the overland bomber stream. Their current technique was to mingle with the RAF bombers and choose their victims at leisure; it was more rewarding than hunting a few minelayers off shore.

  Moakes felt that the best introduction for a new crew was a normal type of operation. Bracken’s had done that and had no trouble. Their second sortie had been rougher than he would have wished for such novices. A spot of gardening would do them a world of good.

  Young Bill Bracken had been looking preoccupied during the few days that his aircraft was grounded, and he would break the crew in again with a light hand.

  He and Ivy couldn’t entertain lavishly, but they made a point of inviting each crew to the house at least once. Too many of them didn’t live long enough to get a second invitation.

  Bracken and his boys arrived for what Ivy called “a fork supper” on an evening when a heavy summer shower had brought out the garden smells and Moakes had gone out, when the rain stopped, to look with pride on his vegetables.

  He heard a car draw up with a muscular exhaust roar and grinned although there was no one to see: Ivy was indoors, fussing over a giant fruit pie stuffed with their own produce. That would be Feldman. Bet he’d given Hill and Gray a lift: Hill had the cheek of the devil and Gray followed him like a shadow. He went down the path at the side of the house and saw that he was right.

  Ivy stood beaming plumply on her well scrubbed front step. “Hello. I’m Ivy Moakes...come along in and help yourselves...there’s a barrel of beer here in the porch, and we’ve got three kinds of homemade wine.”

  They saw him and hesitated politely, but he ushered them in and said, “We always keep a barrel of beer in the porch, and a row of mugs, so anyone can help themselves: if we’re out we leave the front door unlocked, so anyone on the flight who pops in can sit down and have a drink.”

  Dan Feldman said politely that he would very much like to try some homemade wine, and Ivy beamed. “Parsnip, apple or redcurrant ?”

  Dan smiled back. “I’ll leave it to you, Mrs Moakes...”

  “Ivy, dear.”

  “Ivy. Whichever you think is your best vintage.”

  “That would be the three-month-old,” Moakes said with a laugh. Through the window he saw Bracken heading a procession of four cyclists. “Here come the rest. Comes to something when the captain rides a bike and his sergeants drive around in luxury.” He winked. “Wasn’t like that in my day.”

  “He had a smelly old motor bike when I first knew him,” Ivy said comfortably. “I used to think pillion-riding was fun, at first, but I soon found it was a bone-shaking business. Jim always insisted on pumping his tyres up iron-hard.” She bounced off to the front door and the others heard her going through her welcoming ritual about the beer in the porch and the unknown delights of homemade wine in the larder.

  Bracken was the last to enter, and he also asked tactfully for a glass of wine; redcurrant.

  Moakes, looking keenly at him while his attention was distracted, thought for the thousandth time how quickly people matured in the forcing-house of war. Callow youths became self-assured men sometimes in a matter of days, certainly within a few weeks. The signs were many and he saw them in young Bracken now.

  The three operations this crew had flown had made them all grow up, even the eldest of them, the leathery Ron Emery. Their capabilities had been tested, their courage called upon, they had faced death. Not only had their characters developed under the pressure of experience but their attitudes to each other had also changed.

  He had known from the start that Bracken was not the type to force his leadership on others. Rather, he led by quiet example and imperturbability. If all his instructors had found his flying ability above average, he must have a great deal of confidence which he kept modestly hidden. His crew had evidently learned his capabilities by now, for they looked up to him: Moakes could see that.

  The two youngest members, naturally enough, gave the most obvious signs of being impressed by their pilot. They watched him with proprietorial pride as he chatted to Ivy. Feldman, who had depths of subtlety beyond his comrades’, gave him glances which betrayed respect and affection: poor chap, he must live in dread of being shot down and taken prisoner; being flown by a pilot of Bracken’s evident quality must be a great reassurance to him. Not only was Feldman’s name Jewish but his racial characteristics could also have been spotted by a blind man: the prominent nose, the lustrous black eyes, the black curly hair. He would have a thin time in the hands of the Nazis.

  Emery treated Bracken with a genuine respect t
hat told Moakes volumes. Emery’s attitude to authority was ambivalent: as a regular Other Rank he had been trained to defer to it; as a champion featherweight he had learned to demand a display of guts equal to his own before he accorded respect. Moakes knew that Emery was as hard as nails: life in the ranks was spartan and survival demanded a mental toughness equal to the physical. While men like Emery went punctiliously through all the outward forms of submission to discipline, they had vast mental reservations about those who gave them orders until these had proved themselves. Moakes was reassured that Bracken must have passed whatever personal tests Emery and others like him applied.

  Compton showed signs of change, too; of improvement. Moakes had not cared for him over-much at first: he seemed a bit cocky, and in an undefinable way a trifle patronising towards his pilot. There was no patronage evident now.

  This, Moakes told himself, was a crew that was shaping outstandingly well and with the experience of another eight or ten ops. would be capable of taking on anything. Which was just as well, because they would certainly have to before the war was much older. He was old enough in the Service to pick up the scent when anything special was in the air. Something was brewing, something momentous was in the wind, he knew. Leatham had been going around with a preoccupied look for the last few days; and there had been a visit from an Air Commodore who had spent a long time in Leatham’s office.

  Moakes reminded himself that the object of inviting these lads to his house was to entertain them and make them forget the war for a spell. He set about playing the genial host.

  When they were going, he said quietly to Bracken: “Everything all right, Bill?”

  Bracken looked startled. “Yes, thank you, sir. Everything’s fine.”

  “Good. Well, don’t beat it up too much, will you? I know how one gets swept into parties in the mess. You look a bit tired. Get plenty of sleep.”

  He wondered why young Bracken coloured so suddenly.