Chapter Twenty-Four #2
I look from Tim’s embattled face, to his strained expression in the picture, and for the first time see the fear he’s fighting to contain beneath his handsome, stoic facade.
How have I not noticed it before?
I don’t know.
But, in a rush of clarity, it comes to me that, whoever else he might have consoled about this photograph, he’s also been trying to console himself.
‘She was so uneasy, she nearly dropped the camera,’ he says, his eyes once again open, staring at his friends. ‘Then, she took the shot too soon. No one was ready. See how Rob’s smiling? He was trying to cheer her up. He made a joke … ’
‘A joke?’ I say, replaying that glimpse I’ve held on to of him, coming to life. His lips moving, about to speak. ‘What did he say?’
Even now, I half fear Tim will clam up, claim he can’t remember after all.
But there’s none of that today.
‘He said, “Clarence, come on, you’re only worried because you’re going to have to finally give me an answer tomorrow.
”’ He gives me a desperate look. ‘He’d asked her to marry him.
She told him she’d only talk about it after our tour.
’ His eyes fill. ‘She wouldn’t talk to him about it that afternoon either.
She said to him, “Oh, do be quiet, Robbie,” but she was laughing.
He had such a knack for making her laugh.
’ He fumbles for his mask. ‘I was jealous.’
‘Is that why you pretended you couldn’t remember who took this?’ I ask, getting up and moving to crouch beside him, helping him with his mask. ‘Were you afraid Imogen would guess how you felt?’
‘I think she guessed anyway,’ he says, through the plastic.
‘Yes,’ I agree, ‘I think she did.’
Tremblingly, he pulls the mask away.
‘I don’t know why I lied about it,’ he says. ‘There’s so much I’ve hidden, I got myself mixed up with where I should start, and where I could stop. And I’ve been so ashamed. So … terribly … ashamed.’ He stares at me. ‘I took everything, from all of them.’
‘What do you mean?’ I say, my mind racing to keep up.
‘It was my fault.’ The words choke him. ‘It was all my fault. And I’ve tried to fool myself that by sharing their story I might make myself near to them again.
Repay them, by making them live again, here.
Now. But I can never repay them.’ His face strains.
‘I’ve hurt them. I’ve hurt Iris. Let Imogen make it her fault.
Ellie’s been so angry about it, but I never meant for it.
Never … ’ His eyes implore me to believe him.
I don’t know what to believe.
I still don’t know what actually happened.
So, I ask Tim again to tell me what he remembers.
And, this time, he does.
‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’
Iris looked up from her untouched mug of tea, stunned.
Prim looked back at her, calmly.
They were alone in the breakroom. The others on duty were all elsewhere, trying to sleep.
The overhead lamp buzzed. The blackout blinds tapped against the windows, gusting in the cold draught, bringing the scent of ice, petrol, and salt.
It was just after one in the morning. A sea mist had blown in from the coast at eleven, and had been getting thicker the last time Iris checked.
She was resisting the urge to keep looking, trying to trust that it would blow away again in time for everyone’s return.
‘It’s in the hands of the gods,’ Browning had said as he’d gone off to rest. ‘Nothing any of us can do. Get some shut-eye, Winterton. That’s an order.’
She’d ignored that order.
So, here she was, staring at Prim.
Trying to think what to say.
‘How did you guess?’ she asked her.
‘You keep touching your stomach,’ said Prim. ‘And it’s getting a little round. Be careful, won’t you? Ambrose is just waiting for an opportunity to dismiss you. I suspect he’d relish the chance to overrule Robbie too.’
‘I know.’
‘Why on earth haven’t you got married? Any fool can see it’s what you both want. I have to say I’m rather disappointed in Robbie.’
‘He doesn’t know. I haven’t told him.’
‘What?’ said Prim, eyes widening. ‘Whyever not?’
‘I didn’t want him to have to worry about anything else.’
‘But he wouldn’t have been worried.’ She sounded incredulous. ‘Have you even met your beau, Iris?’
‘Yes, Eleanor … ’
‘You can call me Ellen, if you like. Or Ellie. Anything, frankly, but Prim.’
‘All right.’ Iris grimaced. ‘Sorry.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘I am, actually, Ellen. And I have met Robbie.’
‘Then you should know you’d only have made him happy, telling him this. You must do it the first chance you have.’ She folded her arms, and her woollen stockinged legs. ‘Don’t cheat him of happiness. Iris. Iris! Are you even listening to me?’
‘Shh,’ said Iris, moving to the door, opening it to the dark, uninsulated corridor, letting more cold air in. ‘I thought I heard something.’
‘Heard what?’
‘That,’ said Iris, running now, at another beeping. ‘Someone’s trying to radio in.’
‘We never got to Berlin,’ Tim says. ‘I made a stupid mistake, a rookie mistake, and didn’t allow proper provision for the wind.
’ His eyes empty as he leaves me, reliving it.
‘There was a flak field near Frankfurt. We all knew to avoid it. But it was a dark night, and I was in a panic. Blind panic, they call it, don’t they?
’ He doesn’t pause for me to respond. ‘Rob asked me to request another rest leave, after we lost Clare. I didn’t want him and the boys to finish their tour without me though.
’ His scarred cheeks work. ‘I fooled myself that I could keep going for them, keep switching my fear off up there.’ Wheezing, he once again grapples for his mask, shakily lifting it to his face.
I do my best to hold it steady for him, but I’m shaking too.
‘By that night, I’d directed us through one-hundred-and-four sorties,’ he says.
‘All I needed was to bring us home from that last one. It was our third tour. I doubt we’d have been asked us to do another.
Even Bomber Command had its limits. But the wind was strong, and I was in too much of a rush to get us home, so I didn’t allow proper provision.
’ His face works. ‘I didn’t allow proper provision. ’
I lay my hand to his arm, trying to calm him.
‘I led us straight into that flak field,’ he says.
‘They coned us with their lights, and Rob was a good pilot, but he wasn’t good enough to get us out of that.
They tore us apart. God –’ he closes his eyes – ‘the hell of it.’ He takes a shallow breath.
‘I got hit.’ Weakly, he touches his ribs.
‘We lost all but one engine, and nearly lost Danny too, out the rear-turret. Ames dragged him in. Knocked his chute out though. A lot of the others were damaged.’ He swallows. ‘There were extras … ’
‘Extras?’
‘Yes.’ His eyes peer into mine. ‘You know about them?’
‘No.’ Slowly, I shake my head. ‘I just … hoped.’
‘Ellie’s always said we had Iris to thank for them.’
Even as he speaks, my mind fills with that voice I heard at Iris’s window last night.
They couldn’t get to their chutes. They were burning. Everything was burning.
It felt familiar.
I couldn’t place why.
I can now.
It was Tim’s voice, of course: younger, clearer, full of panic, but unmistakeably his, sounding in Iris’s memory.
Was he the reason then, that she smuggled those extra chutes aboard?
Or did I play a part?
I don’t know.
I really don’t.
But what I am becoming crushingly convinced of is that it doesn’t matter.
‘The chutes didn’t do any good, did they?’ I say to Tim.
‘They might have,’ he says. ‘The boys could have bailed over Frankfurt, taken their chances on the ground. But I was in a bad way, I’d never have survived the fall, and they knew that.
’ His eyes brim. ‘Somehow, Rob and Ames got our fires out, and us away. We turned back to England still a mission short of our full tour, with one engine running, failing electrics, and all our bombs and incendiaries jammed in our bay doors.’
‘They’re not releasing,’ said Robbie, his voice crackling over the weak connection.
He’d brought Mabel’s Fury back to England, but was still some distance away: close enough to radio, but not nearly close enough for Iris to be able to hear the plane’s engines, or see its lights blinking through the thick fog.
They’d been trying to jettison their bombs all the way home.
Robbie had ordered Jacob, Ames, Gus, Danny and Henry to bail out whilst they’d still been over France, but they’d refused to abandon him and Tim, and, with little fuel left, they’d now sunk too low for their chutes to have enough time to open up and save them.
Robbie couldn’t take them low enough to chance a jump, not with all their bombs ready to detonate at a touch; even if they survived the fall, the plane would explode within a second, obliterating them, and who knew who else on the ground.
Their only hope was to try again to offload their bombs over the water so that Robbie could attempt to bring Mabel’s Fury into land.
They had enough fuel remaining for one last go.
And what if that doesn’t work?
Iris hadn’t asked Robbie that.
She knew the answer.
They all knew the answer.
And maybe, on a calmer, clearer night, he and the boys might have a slim hope of surviving a leap into the water.
But the November seas were high, the temperature perishingly cold, and no patrol boat would be able to find them in this visibility.
Not quickly enough.
So, no, she didn’t waste their time – their racing, disappearing time – by asking him that foolish question.
She had only one thing she needed to say to him.
Do it the first chance you have, Prim had told her.
Don’t cheat him of happiness.
‘Robbie,’ she said, gripping her hands into fists, fighting her panic, her grief, ‘can you still hear me?’
Her earpiece fizzed with static.
‘Robbie?’
Nothing.
‘Robbie, please … ’
‘Iris,’ he said, his voice travelling to her from his pitch-black cockpit, much fainter now. ‘I hear you. Can you hear me? Iris?’