Some Day I'll Find You Page 9

  ‘Yes.’ Her brother sat up beside her, patting his pockets. ‘Do you have the cigarettes? I can’t find them.’

  ‘Yes. Here.’ She lit one for each of them. ‘Go on.’

  John lay back on the grass. ‘I think I’ve killed three men, actually. Well, that’s stupid, I know I have.’

  A shooting star flared across the sky and Diana grabbed her brother’s hand. ‘Make a wish, quick!’

  He tensed, and then slowly relaxed. ‘It’s done . . . anyway . . .’

  Diana waited. When her brother remained silent, she sat up and considered him in the gathering dusk.

  ‘We’re living in extraordinary times, aren’t we, John? I can hardly conceive of my big brother killing anyone, let alone three men. Tell me about it, if you can.’

  After an even longer silence, he put an arm around her waist and rested his head on her lap. When he spoke, his voice was muffled.

  ‘It’s awfully mechanical, actually. Automatic.’

  She let him gather himself. Eventually he pulled clear of her and finished his cigarette.

  ‘Let’s see . . .’ he started. ‘There were about six or seven of their dive-bombers headed for our men on the beaches late one afternoon. I think it was last Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday. They were Stukas. Vile things. They have two men on board, you see, one flying, the other operating the machine-gun, shooting up the blokes on the beach. Stukas are bloody terrifying if you’re on the ground; they’ve got sirens fixed to their wings and they make a ghastly wailing noise when they dive to attack. But actually they’re slow and vulnerable in normal flight and I smacked one of them down in my first pass. It was easy. I saw my bullets smash through his cockpit canopy and . . . well, there was lots of blood. I mean a lot, sis; it was only a momentary image, but blood was spraying all over the shop. It was horrible.

  ‘There weren’t any flames; their plane just flipped over and sliced straight into the sea. The whole thing took less than ten seconds from start to finish.

  ‘A couple of days later I nearly copped it. We were about six miles inland from Calais and suddenly I saw flashes all over my wings and engine casing. Cannon strikes. Terrifying. Next moment, a German fighter roars about ten feet above my Spit and there he is right in front of me. He was a good shot but a lousy flyer. Reflex – I pressed the firing button and he went up like a Roman candle. Foom! Sheer luck.

  ‘I have no idea why his rounds didn’t do for me. They just went straight through or bounced off without exploding. Duds, I suppose. When I got back to Upminster they patched up the holes and I was in the air again by teatime.’

  Diana was silent for a long time before speaking again. She was trying to form pictures from the words he had spoken. She felt rather foolish: over the last few weeks when she’d tried to imagine what John and James might be experiencing, it hadn’t once occurred to her that blood – real, human blood – would be a prominent feature. Now she remembered the strange stains she’d seen on her brother’s boots.

  ‘Is that blood on your boots, James?’

  ‘Yes. It’s not mine though. I helped a chap down from his cockpit after he’d landed. He’d taken a shell in his shoulder and his arm was off. God knows how he landed in that state. Anyway, we managed to stop the bleeding right there on the grass and he’s going to be OK. Says as soon as he gets his new arm he’ll be back with us. Knowing him, he will.’

  Diana considered this new image; her brother fighting to save a man’s life bare minutes after straining every nerve to keep his own and take those of others. She felt a wave of compassion for him, and tears suddenly began pricking her eyes. She bit her bottom lip, hard. Crying would not do at all.

  By now the faintest of the stars were joining the brighter ones above them. Diana stared up at them, blinking hard. When she felt able to speak in a normal voice, she cleared her throat and asked: ‘Are you all right, Johnnie? I mean, really all right?’

  ‘Yeah. I think so, sis. When it’s happening you don’t have time to think, and when it’s over it seems like a completely insane dream. But I am worried about James.’

  ‘What do you mean? You told me he was fine.’

  Her brother turned to her. ‘He had a very narrow squeak, Diana. I’m sure he’ll tell you about it himself when he gets here. He’s hiding it well, but I think it left him pretty shaken up. It bloody well would me. I’m hoping that seeing you again might give him a bit of a boost.’

  He paused. ‘Can I ask you something, sis?’

  ‘I think I can guess the question,’ she said. ‘And the answer is “yes”. Yes, I believe I’m in love with him.’

  30

  From inside the cockpit, the engine of James’s Spitfire sounded to him like a mighty church organ, majestic chords pulsing and vibrating around him. The sound was oddly comforting. He glanced to his left and right. Both the other Spits in his group of three were in position either side of him.

  One of the other pilots turned and, catching his glance, flicked him a cheerful V-sign. James laughed and turned back to his instruments. They were almost at the end of what had been an uneventful patrol over the Pas de Calais. The French countryside rolled slowly under their wings and the Channel gleamed seven or eight miles to the north. In five minutes they could turn for home.

  His cockpit exploded in fury all around him.

  Holy fuck!!!

  Instruments evaporated in a spray of glass and smoke as a cannon shell burst with a deafening bang through the canopy just above his head. There were more ear-splitting explosions behind him as his fuselage was raked with fire, and to his horror he saw his aircraft’s left wingtip blown clean away by another shell. The plane slewed drunkenly to the right and the joystick was snatched from his grasp as if by a giant invisible hand.

  He looked around frantically, but to his astonishment the other Spitfires had vanished. He was seemingly alone in an empty blue sky, his plane beginning to plunge into an uncontrolled dive.

  He grabbed at the stick and pulled it back, hard, into his stomach. The aircraft’s nose lifted reassuringly.

  Thank Christ. Still flyable.

  The thought had barely registered when more thunderous explosions rocked and shuddered his Spitfire, and there was a blinding flash just behind the propeller.

  Stop it! Bloody stop it, you vicious bastard! You’re going to kill me!

  His canopy was hit again and this time most of it was blasted completely away. The airstream instantly tore at his eyes and nostrils and mouth: he could scarcely see or breathe. Where the fuck were his goggles? Vanished, along with his flying helmet and oxygen mask. The nose of his plane dipped down again, more sharply than before.

  Right. You want to dive? Good. Let’s bloody well dive then. I’ll show you what a dive is.

  He ducked his head as low into the shattered cockpit as he could, thrust the stick forward and boosted the throttle all the way open. The engine responded instantly with a throaty roar and the Spitfire arced into a near-vertical plunge. The whole aircraft began to tremble, whether from the increasing speed or more enemy strikes, he couldn’t tell. Jesus, he must be pushing 500mph, easy. The bloody wings would strip off at this rate. He didn’t care. All he wanted was to get away from the maniac who was trying to murder him.

  Very close to the ground, he levelled out and for the first time twisted his head to look behind him. Nobody there. He must have outrun the bastard.

  He peered along both wings. Hell, the one with the missing tip had definitely been bent backwards in the crash dive. It didn’t look right at all. The other had several terrifyingly large holes, and it looked to him as if he’d lost a chunk of propeller – its whirling arc had a peculiar shimmied pattern to it that he’d never seen before.

  But, incredibly, the plane was still responding to his controls, and as a long sandy beach flashed under his wings and he shot out over the sea, he began to think he actually might, just might, get back. All his instruments were gone – there was a great gaping hole under the remaining jagged shards
of his canopy – but the weather was clear and he could already see the white cliffs of the English coast lining the horizon ahead.

  He pulled up a couple of hundred feet and took another quick look around, as best he could in the raging slipstream. Not another aircraft in sight, friend or foe.

  All the same he slammed his battered aircraft down again until the Spitfire was almost skimming the waves.

  He was bloody well going to make it.

  31

  Diana heard the sound of tyres crunching up the gravel drive and ran to the front door. The little MG was pulling up next to her father’s garage. Its hood was down and there was James Blackwell sitting in the sunshine and grinning at her from behind the wheel.

  She ran across and threw her arms around his neck as he climbed out.

  ‘I’ve been so horribly worried about you! I thought you might be d—’ Her words were cut off by his kiss.

  ‘Very much alive, as you can tell,’ he said softly after almost a minute.

  She laughed. ‘So will I be, if you let me breathe.’

  He laughed too. ‘Sorry. Just making sure you were real.’

  ‘What do you want to do, James? Come inside, or . . .’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I want you to myself for a while. Come on, it’s a beautiful day – let’s go out for lunch.’

  ‘That’s a wonderful idea. Let me get my hat. You can say hello to everyone when we get back later.’

  He watched her as she ran inside the house. Christ, she was lovely. She was wearing a short-sleeved emerald-green silk dress that matched her eyes, and summer espadrilles. When she reappeared moments later, she was busily setting a red beret to the side of her head. She looked, he thought, enchanting.

  ‘There. Will I do?’

  ‘You’ll more than do,’ he said. ‘Come here.’

  A while later she pulled away. ‘That’s only our third kiss, James,’ she said a little unsteadily, ‘and each one’s been longer than the last. I think we may need to start making appointments.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m at your disposal round the clock, now and forever more. Well, as long as my leave lasts, anyway. Come on, let’s go. I’m absolutely ravenous, and not just for you.’

  They found a pretty pub-cum-restaurant tucked under the Weald, and took a table in the apple orchard at the back.

  ‘I’ve been here before,’ Diana told James as he came out of the thatched, half-timbered building with their drinks. ‘Daddy brought us all here when he was made a senior partner. I was about twelve and John would have been fourteen, I think.’

  She looked around her at the fruit trees, now wearing their freshest green of June. ‘That seems like another world now. Sometimes I still can’t quite believe that we really are at war, and that it’s all gone so horribly wrong, so quickly. Do you think we’re going to lose? I suppose I shouldn’t ask you that, not after what you’ve just been through.’ She reached out and put her hand on his arm. ‘John has told us a bit about what it’s been like for you all. He said you very nearly . . . that you almost . . .’

  ‘Got killed? Yes, I did. It’s all right, I don’t mind talking about it. I was jumped by one of their fighters over France and very badly shot up. I never even saw the other plane. Actually, I think there were probably two of them. It was the most terrifying experience of my whole life, Diana. God knows how I managed not to have my head blown off. My Spit got me home somehow but it was like flying scrap metal. I think they’ve broken it up for parts. I have a new one now, anyway.’

  She stared at him. ‘I don’t know what to say, James. I can’t even imagine being in a situation like that.’

  ‘Neither could I, until it happened. And to think that until a short while ago I actually decided that I was impervious to fear. I truly did, Diana. Impervious to imagination, more like.’ He lit a cigarette.

  ‘As to whether we’re going to lose – we might. In fact, we probably will. The Belgians have gone under already and the French are obviously getting ready to throw in the towel. The Dutch are out and Norway’s clearly had it, so it’ll be just us left. Not exactly a reassuring prospect, is it?’

  A waitress came to take their order. When she’d gone, Diana got up and went round to James’s side of the table. She sat next to him on the wooden bench and kissed his cheek.

  ‘Listen . . . there’s something I want to tell you right away. I’ve been thinking a lot about this while you’ve been away and I’ve come to a decision. What you just told me makes me even more certain it’s the right one.’

  Bloody hell, if this is what I think it is, thought James, she’s moved a lot further and faster than I could have dreamed.

  ‘It’s what we talked about that night at The Eagle – about how the war changes our perspective; how we can’t take things for granted any more. Especially time. How we might find ourselves wanting to . . . speed things up.’

  She twisted the ring her parents had given her for her twentieth birthday earlier that year. ‘I mean, what if you had been shot down that day? Even if you’d survived, you might have ended up in a prison camp, and God knows when I’d see you again. What I’m trying to say is . . . is . . . if we want to – and I do want to – we should . . .’

  He took her face in his hands. ‘It’s all right, Diana, I know what you’re saying. I feel exactly the same, you’ve known that since April. And yes, I want to as well.’

  She kissed him lightly, then sat back and considered him for a few moments. ‘So – you’ll come to me tonight, then?’

  ‘My goodness.’ He stared at her. ‘You really have made your mind up, haven’t you?’

  She started laughing.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve just thought of something I said to you back at the house this morning. Remember?’

  ‘Um . . . no, I’m not sure I do.’

  ‘I said we’d need to make an appointment. And so we just have!’

  32

  They got back to the Dower House in time for tea. It was another fine afternoon and Lucy, helped by Gwen, had set out sandwiches and cakes on the garden table near the French windows. Gwen woke her son soon after James and Diana returned.

  ‘Darling?’ She gently shook his shoulder. ‘Diana and James are back. You’ve been asleep for nearly seven hours. Wouldn’t you like some tea on the lawn with the rest of us?’

  He was near-catatonic. ‘Mmm, thanks. I’ll be down in a minute.’ His head flopped back on his pillow and by the time Gwen had quietly closed the bedroom door, soft snores drifted from the bed again.

  Even though it was now late afternoon, the day seemed to be getting even hotter. Diana had gone upstairs to change into a cooler dress while Mr Arnold joined their guest on the lawn. James was drinking tea from a cup balanced on his chest just below his chin, long legs sprawled out from the deckchair he’d sunk into.

  ‘Evening, Flight Commander. No, no, don’t get up,’ Mr Arnold said as the younger man struggled for purchase against his canvas seat. ‘As you were, as you were.’

  James sank back. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Oh good God. Call me Oliver.’ He sat down in a deckchair of his own. ‘Well, how are you, James? Our boy seems utterly drained.’

  ‘We all are, sir. I mean, Oliver. You’ll know what it’s like. As long as you’re in action you have inexhaustible reserves of energy. When you stop . . .’ he made a pantomime of a puppet whose strings have been comprehensively cut. ‘You flop to the floor.’

  ‘Yes, I certainly remember that,’ Oliver said.

  Lucy emerged from the French windows and poured them both more tea. ‘Madam says we’ll not be joined by Mr John until dinner,’ she informed them. ‘He’s still catching up on his shut-eye, she says.’

  ‘Thank you, Lucy.’

  James and Oliver sipped their tea.

  ‘Why aren’t you sleeping too, James? You must be as exhausted as John is.’

  James put his cup down. ‘For two reasons. I slept like the dead all day yesterday, while
John was coming down here, and . . . well, I wanted to see Diana today, as soon as I woke up. More than anything.’

  Mr Arnold nodded slowly. ‘I see. And, if I may be allowed to sound somewhat old-fashioned, what are your intentions towards my daughter?’ He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I’m sorry, that sounded terribly Victorian and pompous, didn’t it? But really, James – what are your plans?’

  The question caught James completely off-balance. He realised with a slight shock that, for the first time since he’d met the Arnold family, he was no longer calculating his every move concerning Diana. Even on the drive down to the Dower House that morning, there had been no plots or strategies turning over in his mind. His only emotion had been one of genuine excitement that he was going to see her again.

  The admission just now about how much that meant to him had been no careful stratagem to impress her father. It was the simple truth. He had woken that morning desperate to see Diana, and for no other reason than . . . than what?

  Perhaps it was something to do with his desperate encounters in the air above France. Maybe brushes with death did this to a man – everything was greatly simplified.

  Mr Arnold coughed. ‘Well, James?’

  He looked at Diana’s father. James Blackwell was nothing if not an opportunist, and this was a golden opportunity. It didn’t matter that, for once, he hadn’t manipulated it precisely into being.

  He stood up.

  ‘My intentions are to marry Diana, sir. Do I have your permission to ask her?’

  33

  John was drowsy at dinner, and after only half a glass of wine his head was nodding.

  ‘I’m sorry, good people, I have more serious sleeping to do,’ he announced apologetically, rising from the table before dessert was served. ‘I’m off. Tomorrow let badminton, tennis, and all other vigorous pastimes be unconfined. I shall be re-invog . . . re-onvig . . . damn! . . . Re-invigorated.’

  ‘Diana,’ he turned to his sister, ‘you may, if you so wish, undertake a game of skittles with me on the lawn after breakfast. It will atone for my selfish past behaviour on this matter. It is time. The sins of my youth shall be washed away – and yours too, scourge of the family crystal.’ He gave an enormous yawn, and bowed to his friend.