Chapter Eleven #2
‘A couple of planes from another squadron bought it,’ he said, not without feeling, but also not without that disconcerting pragmatism with which every airman seemed to speak about death.
‘I don’t know about our blokes.’ He returned to the window, raising his binoculars back to his eyes. ‘They all got split up.’
By five that morning, they were still missing two planes.
Mabel’s Fury was one of them.
Hamps Heroes – V for Verity – was the other.
Don’t worry, Robbie had told Iris, back in the woods.
But she was worried.
Her stomach was by now liquid with terror; her ears felt ready to burn with the strain of listening to her silent headphones.
Hamps Heroes were newcomers, like herself and Clare. They’d arrived just that morning, sent to replace the only crew that hadn’t come back from Cologne the night before. According to Browning, that crew had flown under V for Verity too.
Iris had never used to be superstitious, but this war had changed that for her.
Back in Norwich, P for Peter had been the code letter everyone had feared.
Any plane given it had lasted one, at the most two, operations.
Eventually, the station commander had struck it from use.
It had been the same with one of the billets.
For a spell, no one had slept in it for longer than a week before disappearing.
Was V for Verity to be the same?
Please not, she silently entreated the empty search beams roving the sky. Please let them come back.
Please let him.
And, as though in answer, the static in her ears fractured, sending her heart into her throat.
Clenching her shaking hands into fists, she waited for a voice.
From beside her, Clare reached out, touching her wrist in a gesture of solidarity.
Iris knew how hard she must be thinking about Hans – whether he’d been piloting one of the fighters that had sent those two planes down – but didn’t for a moment doubt that she was rooting for Robbie and the rest of them, too.
The static cleared, and the radio operator spoke.
‘Hello, Tower, Verity here.’ He sounded ecstatic. Jubilant.
And why shouldn’t he be?
Iris didn’t begrudge him it.
But nor could she bring herself to answer him.
‘Hello, Verity,’ said Clare, doing it for her. ‘Pancake, over.’
And Browning marked them off on his board, too.
He didn’t smile.
Nor did Fred at the window.
Not with Mabel’s Fury still missing.
Clare removed her headphones. She hardly needed it explained to her that, if another call did come, Iris would be the one to take it.
A minute passed.
Then another.
It was somehow ten past five.
‘We’d better get down to interrogation,’ Browning said to Clare, heading for the door, beckoning Piper with him, but leaving Iris where she was.
‘Keep the faith,’ Clare whispered to her, before she went.
Fred didn’t leave with them.
He remained with Iris.
Waiting again.
He was married, Robbie had told Iris. His wife, Miriam, had moved to Heaton when Fred had been stationed here. They had a baby daughter called Margaret.
I’ve told him about you, Robbie had said. I told him months ago, back in Kent. I wanted to. You’ve always been the person in my life I’m most proud of having.
Iris watched Fred’s frown as he looked down at his watch, then checked it against the clock.
‘Let’s give it another five minutes, shall we?’ he said to her.
‘Yes, sir,’ she agreed, her voice hollow to her own ears. ‘Let’s.’
They waited nine.
And, at precisely twenty-five minutes and thirty-two seconds past five, the switchboard flickered, Iris’s headset crackled, and, in the sky, distant wing lights appeared, blinking into view.
‘Hello, Tower,’ came Henry’s voice. ‘Oscar here, over.’
‘Hello, Oscar,’ Iris said, and it wasn’t just her hands that trembled any more. Her entire body did. ‘You took your time.’
‘Rob made us stop for ice cream. Over.’
She laughed, then nearly cried.
She’d been so scared.
‘In fact,’ Henry said, ‘we had to escort another plane home. Someone got angry with them. We’re quite low on fuel so would like a pancake please.’
‘Pancake,’ she said. ‘Absolutely pancake. Over.’
Exhaling a shuddering breath, she leant back in her chair, and, fumblingly, removed her headset.
Then, looking up, she caught the expression on Fred’s face.
‘Absolutely pancake?’ he said.
‘Sorry.’
‘You know, I suppose, that the airwaves are meant to be kept as clear as possible?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.
But she knew he wasn’t annoyed.
He was smiling.
He turned back to the window, watching them come in, and she followed his stare.
Their wing lights were getting bigger now. Lower. The morning was still like night, the sun wouldn’t lighten the horizon for another hour, but they’d be here to see it when it broke.
They were home.
‘Might I ask a favour?’ said Fred.
‘Of course,’ she said, not lifting her eyes from Mabel’s Fury, landing now, without a bounce.
‘That lot –’ he nodded at them, speeding to a stop on the runway – ‘are a shade late for interrogation, and so am I.’ Leaving his post at the window, he moved to the door. ‘You wouldn’t run out to them, would you? Hurry them along?’
She looked at him, wondering if she’d heard him right.
On-duty WAAFs weren’t meant to go racing out to the runway to welcome crews home.
It wasn’t done.
But Fred’s lips twitched in another smile.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘that’s an order. Best not mention it to Ambrose. He’s a stickler.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, pushing herself to her feet. ‘Thank you so much.’
They didn’t have long together.
And they weren’t alone.
When she caught up to him – crossing the meadow’s frosted grass as the runway flares were extinguished – he was surrounded by his crew, the seven of them already making their way to the motor waiting to take them to interrogation, their parachutes slung on their shoulders.
They of course hadn’t needed any hurrying along.
‘Iris Winterton,’ called Tim. ‘Just look at you, all grown up, and still doing what you shouldn’t.’
‘I’m not doing what I shouldn’t,’ she called back, laughing, because he – tall and boyishly handsome, in the way he’d always had in him – had grown up too. And it was so very, very good to see him again. After all these years. Safe. ‘I was sent.’
‘By Fred?’ said Robbie, coming to a halt before her.
In touching distance.
Meeting his blue gaze, she nodded.
‘I’ve a present for you,’ said Tim, tossing her something small and round.
She caught it, then laughed more, seeing it was a boiled sweet.
‘From your mum?’ she asked.
‘From me,’ he said. ‘It felt like a lucky charm in my pocket, knowing I’d be back here, giving it to you.’
‘Are you absolutely pancake?’ asked another, older man, joining them. She placed him instantly as Henry from his gritty voice.
‘I’m afraid so,’ she said, with a grimace.
‘Don’t be afraid about it,’ he said. ‘You made my night.’
And, with a chuckle, he walked on, trailing the flight engineer, gunners, and Jacob, who, casting Iris a weary smile, waved Robbie and Tim onwards.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I want to make sure they know that yard’s no more.
I don’t really fancy getting sent back there again tonight.
’ He glanced up at the moon. ‘I don’t fancy getting sent anywhere.
Maybe you could get your uncle on the blower, Tim.
Remind him that it’s not actually much fun flying in a plane with a torch shining on you. ’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Tim. ‘I intend to.’ Then, with a salute to Iris, and a last look from her, to Robbie, he went.
Robbie remained where he was.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked Iris.
‘Am I all right?’ She shook her head. ‘Are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ He stood very still, seemingly fighting the urge to move closer to her. ‘We were attacked, but they didn’t get us. We couldn’t leave the other plane, though, in case they had to bail out, or were attacked again.’ His face, all in shadow, moved in a frown. ‘It’s been a long night.’
‘It has,’ she agreed. ‘When was the last time you slept?’
‘I don’t know … ’
‘You should sleep. You need to sleep.’
‘I’m sure you do, too.’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t want to sleep, though.
Nor did he.
‘Will you meet me back at the cottage?’ he said. ‘After interrogation.’
‘Yes,’ she said, without consideration.
‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘Straight there?’
‘Straight there,’ she agreed.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘See you then.’ He set off to join the others, but walked backwards, still looking at her. ‘Who knows,’ his smile grew, becoming a grin, ‘maybe we’ll do something stupid.’
But they didn’t do something stupid.
What happened between them, a little under a half hour later – after he’d given his report to intelligence, and she’d been dismissed by Browning – felt, to Iris, the least stupid thing possible.
She’d done plenty of thinking over the course of the night she’d just spent, waiting for him to come home.
In her fear that he mightn’t, it had struck her just how easily this gift that the two of them had been given of finding one another again, might be snatched away, in this world run amok, where minutes might bend, and seconds might stretch, but they nonetheless always passed.
I don’t want us to waste any time, Robbie had said to her yesterday.
I don’t want to waste it either, she’d told him.
She’d meant it.
She’d been determined about it.
But she was even more determined now.
So was he.
He was already waiting for her when she reached the cottage, standing at the gate, still in his flight gear.
She was still in the uniform she’d worn all night.
They didn’t say hello to one another.
They didn’t again mention how tired the other must be.
They didn’t speak at all.
Iris simply went to him, and he reached out to her.
Looking into her eyes, he pulled her close, and, touching at last, she leant into him, resting her head for a moment against the beat of his pummelling heart.
Then she moved, raising her face to his, looking into his intent stare.
A light wind rustled, shivering through the trees.
High above, a formation of fighters soared, soundlessly.
From closer to earth came that goshawk’s call.
At the sound, she watched his expression move in recollection.
Get out of there this instant, Lord Heaton had shouted at them, almost a decade before, interrupting their almost kiss.
No one shouted now.
No one interrupted.
He dipped his head in the same moment that she reached up to him.
As their lips touched, the hawk called again.
But neither of them were listening.
Not any more.
They were too wrapped up in one another.
Not doing something stupid.