Derek Robinson - Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

“I am the Lord thy God,” said Air Commodore Bletchley. “I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh… Do sit down. Cup of tea?”

“No thank you, sir.”

“Good decision, it’s pure poison. How d’you fancy a posting to Greenland?”

Bletchley had an office in the Air Ministry. If he lost any more weight he would be too thin. His hair was grey and years of brushing had beaten any insolence out of it. His hands rested on his desk, one of top of the other; his body didn’t move. His eyes were as bright as his buttons and his voice was crisp and brisk. He made Silk nervous.

“I don’t know much about Greenland, sir.”

“It’s towards the north. Somewhat icy. Sunstroke is not a problem. You’d be an airfield controller. Last chap got killed by a polar bear. They stand nine feet tall and run like the wind.”

“Good God.”

“The chap before him went insane. He kept seeing animals at the foot of his bed. Guess what they were.”

“Um… pink elephants?”

“Polar bears. With green spots. Imagine that.” Still Bletchley was motionless. “Or I could post you to Bombay, India. Our psychiatrist there needs help in assessing the dementia of aircrew. Does that interest you?

“All pilots are a bit demented.” Silk was beginning to get the measure of Bletchley. “You’ve got to be a bit demented to want to fly.”

“Bombay is unlike Greenland. The Indians have twenty-nine words for typhoid fever and seventeen for malaria. The flies breed by the billion.”

“If they like it so much,” Silk said, “they can have it, sir.”

“That leaves the Aden posting. Crash investigation officer. Right up your street, Silk. Lots of action, thrills, drama.”

“Action, sir? At a crash site?”

“From the Arabs. They regard the wreckage as their property. You have to fight them for it.”

At last Bletchley moved. He cocked his head an inch to the left.

“So either way, it’s death,” Silk said. “Just a matter of deciding whether to be frozen, baked, or shot into little pieces by ten thousand fanatical fuzzy-wuzzies. Sir.”

“Or I could post you to Washington, DC, and you could make a morale-boosting tour of American war industries.”

Silk had had enough. He didn’t care what the air commodore said or thought or did. He relaxed, and looked away, and spun his hat on his forefinger. “You’re pulling my pisser, aren’t you, sir?”

“I am the Lord thy God, Silk, and when I say to thee, Go to Washington, thou goeth. Starting now.” He clapped his hands, once.

Silk stood up. “Washington. Bloody hell. Why me?”

Bletchley left the desk and took him by the elbow. “One: you’re a double-tour-expired decorated hero, so we’re not going to let you kill yourself. Bad publicity. Two: the US Air Force sent James Stewart over here, in uniform, flying bombers. We need a counterweight over there. You’re not James Stewart but in a bad light you might be David Niven’s younger brother. And three: if you stay here you’ll only make a thundering nuisance of yourself. Off you go.”

Silk went into the outer office. An elderly flying officer saw the look on his face. “Polar bears?” he said. “Everyone gets polar bears.”

“Is there a reason?”

“He spent too long with the Desert Air Force. Too many good types bought it in order to help win a bit of desert that looks like any other bit of desert, and in the end he went sand-happy. Wore a loin cloth, told everyone he was Florence of Arabia. Desert Air Force sent him home to be cured, Air Ministry gave him a desk which he hates. And now he plays his little games.”

“So… am I going to America, or not?”

The flying officer gave him a large envelope, heavy with documents. “Sailing from Liverpool, the day after tomorrow.”

“He knew that, all along.”

“Look, Bletchley’s no fool,” the flying officer said. “He gets the postings right. He does it in his own way, that’s all.” He glanced at the purple-and-white ribbon on Silk’s tunic. “Nobody gets a medal for cracking up, do they? Give your life for your country, and you might get a gong. Give your sanity, you get damn-all.”

On the train back to Lincoln, Silk thought about that. He wondered if Bletchley had known what was happening to his mind as he became sand-happy in the desert. Or was madness like malaria, a thing that took charge silently and secretly? Crept into your mind like an earwig crawling into your ear? Nothing lasts forever. Keep stretching an elastic band, and it snaps. Maybe Bletchley’s sanity simply wore itself out. Could a weakness like that be inherited? There was great-aunt Phoebe on his mother’s side, rumoured to be only tenpence in the shilling.

Silk was glad when he reached Lincoln, drove to the cottage and told Zoë he was posted to Washington. She wept.

It startled him. Women were so damned unpredictable. But after two minutes her tears suddenly stopped, and she was back to normal. Proved nothing, of course. Great-aunt Phoebe looked perfectly normal when she wasn’t hiding the spoons up the chimney. What a day.

That was in 1943. A bleak year everywhere. The U-boat war in the Atlantic was a brutal business. In Russia, both sides counted their losses in whole armies. Fighting in the Pacific had developed into a bloody slog. In Britain, US bombers were attacking Germany by day and paying a heavy butcher’s bill for it. RAF bombers raided by night. They’d been in action for more than three years, so the job prospects were well known, although not advertised.

There was a large element of luck. Bomb Berlin or the Ruhr and you might suffer ten per cent losses; keep that up and ten raids would wipe out the whole unit. On the other hand, leaflet raids over France were easy meat: you might lose only one per cent, perhaps none. But an operational tour in Bomber Command meant thirty missions, mostly over Germany. The grim arithmetic of war meant that only a minority of crews survived a full tour. A second tour was twenty missions, and the odds against surviving both tours were not worth thinking about. Silk never thought about them. Waste of time. From the start, he let life and death happen all around him, and that included Tony Langham marrying Zoë. The wedding was in Lincoln cathedral. Silk was his best man. Obviously.

Silk and Langham were a double-act. Joined the RAF together, trained together, got their wings on the same day, joined 409 Squadron in nice time to fight World War Two. Silk thought Tony was very lucky to get Zoë, she being intelligent and young and rich, with a figure that made grown men on the other side of the street walk into lampposts.

Their happiness was a poke in the ribs for Silk. Life was for living, not flushing down the toilet. 409 was based at RAF Kindrick in Lincolnshire; Langham and Zoë rented a nearby cottage and kept open house. Silk dropped in whenever ops allowed, took his meals there, played cards, had a bath, slept on the couch, left some clothes. “It’s fun,” Zoë told him. “Find yourself a popsy, Silko. Get married, be happy.”

“Someone like you?”

“Someone you like. And don’t frown. It gives you wrinkles.”

“Signs of maturity and wisdom, darling. Don’t worry, Tony will never get them.”

He was right about that. A month later, Langham went down over Osnabrück. No parachutes were seen.

Silk drove to the cottage. Empty. People told him she’d gone to London. 409 was glad of that: nobody wanted a black widow hanging about the airfield: it was bad luck. He tried to write a letter, couldn’t find the words. A terrible shock? Not true: crews got the chop every night. Awfully sorry? That wouldn’t make her feel any better. He gave up. Best to forget them both.