Chapter Twenty-Two #2
Faintly, I hear whispers beyond us: of other gasps.
More laughter.
Perhaps, if I turned to the mirror, I’d catch a glimpse of two further forms: shadows moving in the glass.
But I don’t turn to the mirror.
I make room on Iris’s bed as Emma moves, sitting beside me, wrapping me in her arms.
‘Promise me we’ll do this more,’ she says. ‘Promise me we’ll do it lots.’
‘I promise,’ I say, hugging her back.
You were an exceedingly lonely and vulnerable little girl, Ellen told me earlier.
You had no real-life friends.
‘You’re gonna be ok, Claude,’ says Emma. ‘It’s all gonna be ok.’
She’s already left by the time I wake the next morning, off to catch her plane home.
It’s Thursday, 22 November, and by the end of this weekend we’ll also have said goodbye to the last extras remaining with us.
This time next week, the rest of us will be packing to leave too.
We have just seven days of filming left, including another night shoot this evening, and only one day off remaining – tomorrow – which I’m determined to spend with Tim.
I call Roger from my trailer at bang on 9 a.m., telling him I need to talk to Tim about the night Mabel’s Fury went down.
I’ve decided to be candid about that now.
I can’t afford not to be. We’re almost out of time, and increasingly it’s looking like Imogen’s ending is the one we’re going to be going with.
As things stand, I’ll be shooting Iris’s final words to Robbie next Thursday morning, mistakenly giving him the coordinates that lead Mabel’s Fury into the sights of a Nazi warship.
Over in LA, special effects will create the moment that that ship’s guns destroy Mabel’s Fury’s engines.
And, on Thursday afternoon, the boys will film the panic of their final moments as they realise that they’re going down with their parachutes damaged.
They’ll jettison all their equipment, shedding weight in a desperate bid to reach England, until, realising how hopeless it is, Nick, Robbie, will fix the plane’s steering to keep it flying straight, and he and the others will jump, parachute-less, through the escape hatch, freeing Mabel’s Fury of their own weight too, so that Tim – unconscious, bleeding out since Berlin – might have a chance of gliding to land.
The next morning, I’ll wade into the North sea.
Even now, a location team’s out, confirming arrangements for the beach we’re using.
‘I need Tim’s help,’ I tell Roger. ‘I spoke to a friend of his, Eleanor Norland, and she’s certain he can give it to me.’
‘Can you hold for a minute?’ Roger says. ‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘Absolutely,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
And I do hold.
I hold for several minutes, pacing my trailer, trying to guess what Roger and Tim are saying, growing more agitated the longer the classical music playing into my earpiece goes on.
Then, ‘Claudia, I’m sorry,’ comes Roger’s voice: embarrassed, awkward. ‘Tim’s not feeling up to visitors tomorrow.’
No, I think.
‘Please,’ I say out loud. ‘I won’t keep him long … ’
‘I’m afraid it’s not going to work. Maybe try again over the weekend?’
‘Tomorrow’s my last free day,’ I say heavily.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats.
So am I.
But I’m not giving up either.
As soon as I hang up on Roger, I reach for my script, tear free the final pages, grab a pen, and, on the back of this scene that Ellen said Tim should never have permitted, I write to him, begging him to let me visit.
I don’t take my time over what I say – I don’t have time – but write from my heart, without inhibition, hoping to touch his.
You believe that the past is always happening, I scribble. So do I. After the weeks I’ve spent here, recreating this beautiful, terrible chapter of time, I believe it utterly.
I carry on, talking of my father, just as I did to Ellen, relaying his certainty that none of us ever truly go, but remain always present, fated to live these lives we’ve been given over and again.
I tell him of all I’ve seen and heard of Iris’s world, and finish by entreating him to help me understand her end.
Turn off the lanterns illuminating my stage one final time, I beg you.
Let me see what you saw on this November night in 1943 so that I can try to make it right.
Then, folding my hastily scrawled note up, I seal it shut with garment tape, and head out of my trailer into the morning’s glare.
The skies have cleared, the temperature’s once again plummeted, and the glinting fields around me are buzzing, hectic with everyone getting ready for this next scene we’re about to shoot, back in the control tower.
The actor playing Sergeant Browning is coming out of make-up, ready to go, but it’s not him I look at.
I look at Nick, who’s sitting on the step of his own trailer, cradling a cup of steaming coffee, wearing jeans and a sweater – he’s not working until this afternoon – staring right back at me.
I hold tight to my letter, and consider asking him to deliver it for me.
He’d do it, I know.
But I can’t ask him.
Can’t keep trying to depend on him.
I’m afraid it will only disappoint and hurt us both more.
So, I give Nick a pinched frown and head for Felix’s trailer, since he’s not working until later either and I need, belatedly, to show him I do still trust him.
That I know I can depend on him.
‘Don’t you dare,’ I say to him, when he opens his door and, seeing me, draws breath, without doubt to apologise again. ‘You’ve said it too much. So have I. But I keep messing up, and I really am sorry for being so awful.’
‘I deserved it.’
‘You didn’t. You were trying to help.’
‘Pretty ineptly.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have let it matter. You’re one of the most important people in my life, and I haven’t deserved you, but –’ I grimace – ‘I do need a favour.’
His eyebrows shoot up. ‘A favour?’
‘I know, it’s rich, but –’ I hold out my letter – ‘can you please take this to Tim?’
He frowns. ‘Is this about the ending?’
‘What else?’
‘Claude –’ he shakes his head – ‘it’s getting very late in the day for this. Maybe give it up. Focus on—’
‘Please,’ I say, cutting him off before he can say, you. ‘I’m asking you to do this for me, as my friend. Watch Tim read it, if you can.’
He sighs, but doesn’t protest further.
He doesn’t go alone to Tim’s home, either.
Nick drives him there.
‘He offered,’ Felix tells me, once he’s back and comes to find me on the soundstage, just as I’ve finished my scene and am re-entering reality. ‘He saw us talking, asked me what was up, so I told him.’
‘If I’d wanted to tell him, Felix, I’d have done it.’
‘He’s trying to make things right too. And we both watched Tim read your letter.’ He gives me a suffering look. ‘About fifty-five times.’
‘Did Tim show it to you?’ I ask, and hold my breath.
‘No,’ says Felix.
I let my breath go.
‘You made him cry, though.’
‘Oh God,’ I say, pressing my hand to my head.
‘Yeah, I felt pretty ordinary about it. Roger mentioned you called earlier, wanting to see Tim. That Tim said no … ’
‘Has he changed his mind?’
‘Nick told him he should. He laid it on actually, saying how much you’ve been through, and that it will mean everything to you if he agrees.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
I sigh, aching over him doing that for me.
And, however inadvertently, for them.
He’s trying to make things right, Claude.
‘What did Tim say?’ I ask.
‘Nothing. He fell asleep, like last time. But I’d keep an eye on your phone if I were you. Nick was pretty persuasive. Your letter obviously packed a punch too. I think between the two of you, you might have convinced him.’
I do keep an eye on my phone.
I keep an eye on it all day long, checking it between takes as we decamp to the fields, filming Clare’s send-off: Joshua bugling another last post, the rest of us toasting Clare with brandy, just as Emma and I toasted her last night.
I leave it on loud when I return to my room for a nap before nightfall, but don’t nap, because I’m waiting for it to ring.
I’m still waiting for it to do that when I’m sitting back in make-up, ahead of the night’s shooting.
But it’s not until I’m down at the base, getting into position with Nick and the others for our first take, that it lights up with Roger’s name.
We’re at Mabel’s Fury’s dispersal point, by the plane’s model replica, and about to film Iris and Robbie’s final goodbye, seventy-five-years – almost to the minute, in linear time at least – after they uttered it.
They were surrounded then by the rest of Mabel’s Fury’s crew, just as Nick and I are surrounded now.
Tim was there.
They were all of them still there.
The runway flares would have been burning.
Effects have them burning here: too uniform, too orderly, but nonetheless glowing with smoky, mesmerising heat.
The dark sky above is moonless.
And although the starlit night is a still one, a strong, icy wind is blowing, care of huge, industrial fans.
Rusty, held on a leash by her wrangler, is barking.
Trucks are motoring all around, full of extras: groundcrew, servicing the other model planes.
It all feels devastatingly familiar to me.
Not real, but real enough.
Apologies for the late message, Roger’s said in his. Please do come by at 9 tomorrow. Tim’s told me he’ll extinguish your lanterns, if that makes any more sense to you than it does to me.
‘Thank you,’ I say to Nick, joining him under the vast shadow of Mabel’s Fury’s wing. ‘He’s said he’ll see me. Felix told me you helped.’
‘Not really. All I did was tell Tim I can’t stand to see you crushed again.’ He gives a short shrug. ‘I guess he can’t stand the thought of that either.’
I nod, and feel my hand tense with the urge to reach for his.
I don’t give into it.
He doesn’t reach out to me either.
But his eyes, glinting with cold, hold mine.
And for a second, all is silent.
All is still.
‘All right,’ says Ana, slicing through that fragile moment of peace between us, scattering it. ‘Let’s get going.’
The scene doesn’t take us long.
It’s not a late night.
The perfect, heartrending aptness of this goodbye that Iris and Robbie share has, unlike everything following it, never been in dispute, and the words, the emotion, come readily to all of us.
I live it here.
I live it then.
‘You’ll guide us in,’ Nick says.
You’ll guide us in, Robbie says.
Their faces, their voices, morph, filling my sight, my senses.
‘Get us home.’ Get us home. ‘Do you believe it?’
Do you … ?
Silently, unable to talk, I nod.
I nod.
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Say it, please.’
I need to hear you say it.
So, I say it.
‘I believe it.’
I believe it …
And Nick smiles.
Robbie smiles.
I breathe, I breathe, my chest feeling as though it’s about to explode with everything I’m containing within it.
And Ana calls cut, wrenching me back to here, to now.
But I know it’s all still happening. I feel it still happening – within me, around me: such boundless pain and fear and love and longing pulsing on, on and on and on, in the gusting cold; the smoky, frozen night.
I raise my face to it, pulling in another deep breath, filling myself up with this goodbye that I want more than anything to have never ended, and which I can’t, I just can’t, accept was the end.
Everyone heads to the dining room for a late dinner as soon as we’re done.
‘Will you come?’ Nick asks me.
‘You should come,’ Felix says.
I don’t.
I’m not hungry.
And there’s only one place I want to be.
The attic’s atmosphere feels more charged than ever as I make my way down the dark, creaking corridor: its whispers, louder; its layers, very close.
I don’t lie on Iris’s bed, when I reach her room.
I don’t look in her mirror.
I go to her window, where I don’t so much see as sense the world around me shiver.
I stare down at the security-lit set, so hard it blurs, and feel no alarm as the planes and buildings plunge into blackness, becoming dark shapes in a darker sky, only a certain conviction that the air I’m breathing no longer belongs to the night of 22 November 2018, but the dawn of this day in 1943.
I can’t be sure what’s happening – whether I’m in a past that’s already happened, or a moment that hasn’t yet been decided – I know only that I’m about to break under the weight of my own trepidation.
Do something.
The words sound in our minds.
He needs your help.
Help him.
Closing my eyes, I press my fingers to the window frame.
Help him.
I feel a chill on my face.
The icy touch of a tear, snaking down my skin.
I bite the insides of my cheeks, another tear falling.
How do I help?
I don’t know.
I still have no idea what to do.
And now, I hear a different voice: neither Iris’s, nor mine, but a young man’s.
Familiar, somehow.
They couldn’t get to their chutes. They were burning. Everything was burning.
My eyes snap open, a rush of adrenalin coursing through me as it comes to me that I do know something.
I know that when Mabel’s Fury was found, seven damaged parachute packs had been left inside it.
Wherever Robbie, Jacob, Henry, Ames, Gus and Danny were when they disappeared into thin air, they did it without those parachutes strapped to their backs.
I know this.
I know it.
But I’ve left Iris.
I’m terrified I’ve done it too soon.
I remain at her window, staring down at the base, willing myself to return to her, but Jeff’s security lights remain stubbornly on, and I stay maddeningly here.
Hoping, hoping, that she heard.