Graham Swift: Out of This World

And as operations progressed, the statistics grew larger, the images more other-worldly, more crater-ridden, more lunar.

Frank Irving came to ‘the Manor’, as we called it, in the summer of ’44. I was delegated to show him the ropes. He and I were two of the youngest on a staff dominated by men over forty. When I think of Frank, even now, I still think of Lincolnshire in the war. Of the broad, grassy Lincolnshire countryside, of draughty Lincolnshire pubs, and the strange stigma and exclusion of being junior Intelligence officers in a region littered with airfields and serving airmen. I think of the saloon bar of the Crown Hotel in Grantham, where there is a dearth of female company, let alone unattached female company, and where Frank, on his fifth pint and in fluent voice, is announcing the voluptuous procession that is shortly to enter through the amazed hotel portals: Hayworth, Lake, Grable, Lamour …

He arrived with a limp in his left leg (two fractures and a damaged tendon), the result of a motor-cycle accident that occurred before he had even begun his pilot’s training. The story he told the Ladies of Lincolnshire (for we had our moments) was that he was shot down in his Spit back in ’42 — hence the wretched desk job. While the story he conferred on me was a legendary and invisible head wound. Marvellous what these surgeons can do now. My friend Harry here — you won’t believe it: totally blind in one eye.

False pretences. Of more than one kind? Did I intend it from the very beginning?

That summer, during fine weather, as the bombings intensified, we would sometimes be attached to the airfields themselves, working at all hours to monitor the raids and keep the crews effectively briefed. One hot July afternoon we were watching the tenders lumbering out to fill the bellies of the Lancs, and I said to him: ‘Do you know who makes those bombs?’

He looked puzzled.

I said, ‘My father.’

He looked puzzled still.

‘You’ve heard of Beech Munitions? Robert Beech? BMC? Cannon balls by appointment …’

I think what he said then, and what he’d say still, though in a hundred subtle ways, was: ‘Somebody has to make them.’ But his eyes lost their puzzled look and after that day they acquired an ever-alert expression. Some weeks later when we both had three-day passes I asked him if he’d like to visit Hyfield. And I might have guessed that his eyes would become even more alert as we drove through the gates. As I might have known (had I wished it?) that Dad, tired and irascible as he was looking, would take a shine to him, would be the soul of affability, would take advantage of the situation to knock volleys into the air I had no way of returning.

‘Now Harry will tell you … Now when Harry takes over …’

I pretended to be nonplussed.

That must have been in the early autumn of ’44, after the liberation of Paris and before they sent me on that sudden photography course. They had decided by then that the war would be over before long and it was thus a historical phenomenon worthy of documentation. And my gauche enthusiasm back in ’39 must have stuck on my file. I was sent to London where I was taught the parts and use of a camera in much the same manner as rifle drill. Then I was sent back to Lincolnshire, with equipment, a special pass and papers that would oblige senior and fellow officers to give me assistance, and told to get some pictures.

As if they might have said: You know, atmosphere, action, human drama stuff. Editor’s desk by midnight.

So I went round the bases. And up (oh, just a few hellish times) at night with the crews. I flew. Saw. The whole works. Flak and tracer and vomit and kerosene and rear-gunners turned to meat. The photos on the desks, under the lamps and magnifiers, came alive and polychrome (so I could turn them into photos again), and I watched the light-show of Dresden burning, far below, in the dark.

Half my pictures, of course, they buried. You aren’t supposed to see, let alone put on visual record, those things.

A photographer is neither there nor not there, neither in nor out of the thing. If you’re in the thing it’s terrible, but there aren’t any questions, you do what you have to do and you don’t even have time to look. But what I’d say is that someone has to look. Someone has to be in it and step back too. Someone has to be a witness.

‘Let’s go back, Sophie, shall we? As far back as we can. Tell me about your earliest memories.’

‘But that isn’t a fair question.’

‘How come?’

‘Because how do you know, when you go back that far, that it’s really memory? Not what you were told later, or what you’ve invented. Or just sheer fantasy.’

‘Okay. Tell me your fantasy.’

‘If you tell me yours.’

‘You first.’

‘Oh — you know — that everything was just fine, of course. That everything in the garden was lovely. Hasn’t it got to be that way? So we can believe we come from Paradise? Then it gets fucked later. You’re not going to tell me that the first thing people are going to remember, even if it is the first thing they remember, is the first Bad Time they ever had?

‘You see, I had this wonderful Mummy and Daddy. Straight from a fairy tale. He was English, she was Greek. She was beautiful and he was handsome. And they’d met long ago, in Germany, and fallen in love, and got married all in a rush, and he brought her back with him to live in London.

‘Shouldn’t that be the most beautiful story there is? The story of how your mother met your father. The story of how you came to be. You know that line in the song? “Your Daddy’s rich and your Momma’s good-looking. So hush little baby …” Save that Harry wasn’t rich. He was — but this is Harry’s version, not mine — disinherited. Isn’t that a great old word, Doctor K — “disinherited”? And Grandad, according to him, was just being kind because of Mum and me.

‘Okay, so he used to go off now and then, I never knew why, for a week at a time maybe. But I always thought that was a necessary process. Like he was some faithful knight-errant. He’d always come back to Mum. They’d kiss. And one day we’d all settle down together at Hyfield. That was what Mum wanted. I know. She loved the place. And I think that for a while Harry even wanted it too. He took me up to where he worked once, in Fleet Street. I couldn’t have been more than four — how’s this for a first memory? There was this big room with men and telephones, and another down below with machines rolling and thumping. I guess I cried. He held me tight. And he said something like: Everything from all over the world comes here.

‘Or how about this? We’re all sitting, the four of us, out on the lawn at Hyfield. Mum’s wearing a blue dress. She has big, dark, wide eyes. (Do I have big, dark, wide eyes?) She says things to me in Greek and I can understand them. “Élado poulákimou, chrysoulamou.” “Come here, my little bird, my little golden one.” She’s talking to Grandad and Harry’s sitting there, just listening. I can see that Mum and Grandad are fond of each other and that this somehow brings Harry and Grandad together. They’re drinking something out of a big glass jug with bits of fruit floating in it. They all laugh and I laugh too.

‘Holidays. That’s what I remember. We went down to Cornwall — two, three years running. Last time with the Irvings. A hotel on a cliff. Steps down to a beach. (Jokes about the Beeches on the beach!) I was supposed to have nearly drowned there once, but I don’t remember. Just Harry rushing suddenly into the water, and shouting at Mum who was swimming, further out, and grabbing me and carrying me up the beach. He held me so tight. Then Mum and Uncle Frank and Auntie Stella came clustering round and he held me so tight, as if he didn’t want to let me go, even when Mum wanted to take me, and I cried. But I don’t remember nearly drowning.