Vanessa de Haan - The Restless Sea

At Paddington Station, Betsy is pushed and pulled into one of the many groups of children. They all have the same wide, staring eyes. Some of them are crying. Betsy bites her lip and swallows, but she won’t cry. Jack feels his heart break. It actually breaks in two right there. He stands next to his mother. He feels her coldness. She is their mother, but she’s a shell. She steps forward towards her daughter. ‘Betsy love, I’m sure you’ll be back by …’ She cannot finish her sentence. The word ‘Christmas’ is too gay and bright and precious to exist at this moment. She tries to bend down and kiss Betsy’s pale cheek, but she is split from her by the ample figure of a buxom woman in a tweed suit.

‘Where are they going?’ Jack asks the woman, who is checking off a list.

‘We’ll tell you when they get there,’ she says, without looking up.

Jack smacks her clipboard, making a sharp sound. Now he’s got her attention. ‘Tell me now,’ he says.

‘You’ll find out in due course,’ she says, glancing at him as her lip curls. She is not intimidated. ‘Now hurry along. You’re only making it more difficult for your sister.’ She is right. He can see that Betsy’s bottom lip is quivering. He lets her usher Betsy towards a group of children who are then herded down the platform by more women in tweed suits. Betsy doesn’t even turn to wave goodbye, she just lets herself be carried away on the tide of other bewildered children. The battered gas mask box bumps against the back of her legs.

His vision blurs as she is ushered up into the train. The platform is an empty space, devoid of life as he is devoid of feeling. His fingers close over Betsy’s piece of glass, and he feels the familiar rage trickle into his bloodstream. The woman with the clipboard is still here, ticking things off her list. He grabs hold of the top of her arm. ‘You can’t just send them off and not know where they’re going,’ he says, his voice rising. ‘You wouldn’t do it to your own kids …’ He wants to crush her. He feels so impotent. The woman struggles to shake herself free, but Jack won’t let go, and she makes a strangled yelp for help, and suddenly there are people descending on him from all sides, and his mother cries out and there is a policeman, his helmet bobbing above everyone’s heads, his buttons a neat, shiny row down his front, and Jack’s mother has a hold on the policeman and they are talking and pointing, and Jack’s rage turns to fear. Would his mother turn him in? She has sent her only daughter away. Perhaps she will do the same to him. And he cannot take it any longer – the relentless inevitability of it all.

Jack does not stop running until he reaches Carl’s door. He hammers and hammers, and eventually it opens, a narrow crack through which Mr Mills is peering. The man is not happy to see him, but Carl is there in the corridor, and he whispers quietly to his father, who eventually moves aside.

Jack does not care that his eyes are red and his grubby face is streaked with tears. He reaches out to Carl. ‘Can I come?’ he asks. ‘Can I still come with you?’

And Carl pulls him inside, where it is bright and warm and he feels the weight of his friend’s arm across his shoulder.

Charlie braces himself against the heavy swell. The Atlantic Ocean stretches mile after choppy mile in every direction – every crinkle in every wave could hide a U-boat. The first British ship was sunk out here in the North-western Approaches, just hours after Chamberlain’s radio broadcast, and not much later than the sleeper train was pulling away from London towards Inverness all those days ago. It was an unarmed passenger ship, torpedoed as the evening meal was being served.

He scans the flight deck, flat apart from the island with its shiny black pom-pom guns. What a sight an aircraft carrier is! She carries the might of fifteen hundred men and more than fifty folded planes anywhere in the world, transporting them safely in her enormous belly like a battle-ready whale.

Charlie steadies himself again: even a ship this size bounces like a cork on these waves. The planes are being brought up on the lifts from below. This is what he’s been waiting for. No more exams. This is the real thing. Squadron 843’s stumpy Blackburn Skuas appear first. He scratches his head and runs his fingers through his hair. He’s glad he’s not flying one of these new fighter planes. Give him a good old-fashioned bi-plane and an open cockpit any day.

He shakes his legs and arms out to get the circulation going. His sheepskin-lined clothes are warm but cumbersome. He smiles to himself as he remembers target training. He has always been a good shot. Calm and steady, like his plane. And she may be slow, but boy, does she respond to his touch. He can make her do whatever he wants with the lightest pressure from his hands and feet. They can swoop and climb, turn and stop, bank, dive, soar, roll, loop the loop … although that’s a court martial, of course – if you’re caught.

‘Either you’re young and brilliant or young and stupid,’ one of his instructors had said.

‘A little bit of all three, I suspect, sir,’ he’d answered, grinning. But he isn’t. The one thing you can’t call Charlie is stupid. He’s sensible, and he can assess a situation in a split second. He knows what he’s capable of and he knows what his plane’s capable of. That’s why the training was a doddle.

‘Thinking about a pretty lady again, boyo?’ says Mole, his words whipped away by the wind.

‘You could say that,’ says Charlie. And actually, he has allowed himself to think of the girl from the train, but not out here on the flight deck. Here, he needs to focus. He slips his arms into the Mae West, wriggling to make it more comfortable on his shoulders. ‘Bloody thing,’ he says. ‘Too many damn straps and buckles and safety clips.’

‘Mind your language in front of young Billy the Kid,’ says Mole. He nods at the boy standing next to them. Bill is actually a little older than Charlie, but he seems younger without Charlie’s breezy self-confidence. He is their TAG. The plane’s telegraphist–air gunner. He is quiet and respectful. But then, he is only a lower-deck rating. He is also perpetually unflustered. Important if you find yourself in a sticky situation.

Bill smiles and makes a gesture like firing a gun with his hands, before he slips on his leather gloves.

‘Come on, Billy. Let’s do this,’ says Mole. The Welshman has taken the Kid under his wing. He takes everyone under his wing. He’s an astute observer, and has a gift for making people feel at ease. Both traits useful when you’re the navigator in a cockpit flying at almost two thousand feet.

The fleet has received a distress call from an unarmed and lonely cargo ship two hundred miles away. It is being chased by a German submarine. It is too far for the fleet’s ships to get there quickly, but the pilots will.

The airmen were immediately at the ready. They are always at the ready, whether they are standing by in the ready room or writing letters in the wardroom or asleep in their cabins. The flight deck crew indicate that the Skuas are good to go. Charlie says a silent prayer for them. There is ribbing in the wardroom about Charlie’s squadron’s old Stringbags, but out here on the wind-lashed flight deck, there is nothing but respect for each other.

Charlie shivers: part anticipation, part wind chill. There is no dread: this is what it’s all about. At last he can put the training into practice.

‘Number four crew, stand by to scramble!’

Charlie nods at Frank and Paddy – the other two squadron pilots – and their crew. The Fairey Swordfish have been run into place. They rise and fall at the far end of the ship. The flight deck crew unfurl their wings as the airmen lumber towards them like bears in their thick boots and Irvin jackets – but in a moment they too will be weightless, as graceful as the most delicate of insects.