That Summer Read online

  ANDREW GREIG

  That Summer

  To the vanishing generation

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Firstword

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  LASTWORD

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  FIRSTWORD

  Above my bed, when I was young, the Airfix kits, the Hurricane, Spitfire, Messerschmitt, spun on their threads in the draught.

  One by one they will return, throttling down over perimeter wires of forgotten airfields, then taxi up to abandoned huts. Down the bramble-choked lane come the women and men on bicycles, others on foot, the sound of their voices light and drifting as a summer swarm as they pass through the rusting gates, waving to the CO gliding by in his Lagonda.

  The pilots jump down from their planes, knees bending as they hit the ground. A few stumble, awkward with their parachutes bumping at the back of their thighs. Some wave, some call, but their voices are so light they are borne away on the summer breeze. A faint rain is starting to fall and clings, shimmering, to their grey-blue uniforms.

  The two groups meet and mingle. Handshakes and pats on the back. A hug and a light kiss on a cheek, postponed for sixty years. A black Labrador runs through legs and is greeted by a bulky man who kneels to embrace him. As they tussle, some drift over to the aircraft whose manifolds steam in the drizzle. These are mostly men, the fitters, riggers and armourers. They stroke the wings, run fingers over the blown-away fragments of cloth that once covered the gun ports, curse quietly.

  Others look around in the rain at the rutted grass, the cracked concrete where the youth of the town race motorbikes and go-karts at weekends, the husks of Nissen huts. The control tower still stands though its windows are blank, the aerials bent and rusting. Some of the WAAFs move towards the concrete filter room, passing over the foundations of the communications hut. In the mud on the floor of the Anderson shelter one crouches and digs up the remains of an old Picture Post. She peels the pages apart and out falls a wizened French letter. She shrugs, others laugh. The youngest bites her lip.

  Nearly all smoke. They pass cigarettes between them like benedictions, like tokens of belonging. After all, they need take no heed of health warnings, even if there were any on the packets they slip from breast pockets, flip open, light up, then breathe into the warm, damp air.

  They talk in small groups. The pilots gesture with their hands, showing how it happened. They argue still over numbers and formations. One shows with the side of his hand dropping earthwards how he had peeled away, then steadied and came up behind his other hand, flying level. Then both start to shake. The others nod and laugh, quiet but persistent as memory.

  So they talk and drift till the drizzle slows then stops. Cigarettes are squashed under shoes and flying boots, ties are pushed up under collars, caps are straightened or set at precise, jaunty angles that pass just inside regulations. The couple who have been entwined since the beginning come back from the woods by the perimeter fence. The bells of the bicycles ring faintly as they fade up the lane. The propellers blur as the engines rev in whispers. Then one by one they take off and climb above the clouds where it is always blue, burning and burning at that summer’s end.

  There are some radio telephone signals from that summer – pilots taking directions from the women who controlled them from the ground, or screaming at each other to get in formation – that have become trapped between the ground and the Heaviside layer. They bounce back and forward like tennis balls in some endless rally, for they don’t decay. Once in a while a radio ham, idly skimming the airwaves late at night, will suddenly be listening to men and women controlling, flying, singing, cursing, dying. All present in the headphones though they are long gone.

  And among the few trees that are left beyond the rusting perimeter fence, there is a trunk with large distorted letters bearing a name and a date. It was carved by the other one, the lanky tired one who stands half in, half out the bedroom window of a house in the post-war estate, his tan boots sunk a foot below the floor. The one with his long back turned, whose right arm hangs slightly crooked, who is always starting to turn round, who never fully turns round, whose face would be so familiar. Who speaks in the dark:

  CHAPTER ONE

  Late June 1940

  First time I saw Tad he was standing in the Botanical Gardens near the station with a brown trilby shading his eyes and his foot on the stump of a 300-million-year-old fossilized tree. He was staring at it like a hunter gazing down at the lion he’d shot. The same look of awe and regret and … something.

  I lowered my heavy kitbag and stood near him, reading the plaque. Tried to imagine this part of England near the equator and covered in steamy swamps, the huge primitive trees tow-ering over our heads. Thought of the great changes that had taken place, and of the one that was happening right now, and then it didn’t seem quite so important and that was a relief.

  The figure beside me stirred then straightened up. I felt his eyes flick over me, my uniform still blue and stiff, my kitbag.

  ‘Yes, my friend,’ he said, as though continuing a conversation. His voice was throaty and quite strongly accented. ‘This is very old, you see.’ He tapped the stone tree with a spotless brogue shoe. ‘But we are alive and it is not. So we are one up.’

  I nodded. So that had been the other part in his expression: quiet triumph. I nodded as though addressing strangers was normal, put it down to his foreignness. And the War.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But what will be left of us?’

  He laughed then. An easy laugh that I hadn’t expected from his heavy, serious face.

  ‘Nothing, my friend!’ He held out his hand, it was surprisingly small. I automatically took it, as though this was quite normal. But then, very little was normal recently.

  ‘So you are the gloomy type,’ he said. ‘I am Tadeusz. I am from Poland but not gloomy, you know.’

  I didn’t know if Tadeusz was his first or second name. He said it as though it was a title.

  ‘Leonard Westbourne,’ I said, ‘though people call me Len.’

  ‘Ah yes, the English nickname of intimacy! In that case, you may call me Tad, I think it simpler for you.’

  His face suddenly lit up in a smile that brightened the grey day around us. But it wasn’t directed at me. With a gesture at once formal and natural he removed his hat and inclined his head as he clicked his heels together. I looked round. A tall and strikingly pretty woman was approaching us.

  ‘Good day, madam!’ he said. ‘I trust you are well?’

  She hesitated. I watched several impulses chase across her face. Who is this lunatic? Have we met before? Then something in the warmth of his smile, the deference of his gesture must have reassured her.

  ‘Very
well, thank you,’ she said. Then she walked on and past us but something about the set of her head suggested she was smiling.

  Tad looked after her as if it pleased him to see something so fine. Then he clapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘You see, Len,’ he said, ‘life is short but there are many possibilities. Was she not beautiful?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. I hefted my kitbag onto my shoulder. ‘But I’ve a train to catch.’

  Then without the trilby shading them, I saw his eyes. They were near-black, hot and restless and suddenly serious.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We do not forget the War. Never!’

  He said it with such conviction as if it were a curse, such passion that could never be English. Then he put his hand on my arm.

  ‘Come, my friend, let us go to the station and join our squadron and fight this war.’

  I stared at him, at his expensive suit. He was quite short and wide, big-boned. With his hunched shoulders and large mobile head and hot dark eyes he suddenly reminded me of a hawk. That same concentrated force. He looked back at me and chuckled at my astonishment.

  ‘You are Sergeant Westbourne, are you not? I am told you are joining with me and you will be catching this afternoon train. Why do you think I introduce myself? My luggage awaits at the station, you know.’

  He put his trilby on and adjusted the brim down over his eyes.

  ‘If we hurry, there may be time for a drink of your warm beer at the station bar. There were two women there, very pretty …’

  *

  I hesitated outside the pub. In front of me was the public bar, which looked seedy, especially for someone as immaculately overdressed as my new companion. I suggested we went in the lounge. More comfortable.

  He shook his head, sorrowfully it seemed.

  ‘Leonard, I am not bourgeois!’ he announced grandly. ‘Lounge bar is for the stuffy and the bourgeois. But Tadeusz Polarczyk is intelligentsia and you are a peasant, yes?’

  He pronounced my peasant status in such a matter-of-fact way it was impossible to be offended.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose I am a peasant.’

  ‘So we drink in the public bar among the people!’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘You’re buying and please don’t call anyone else in there a peasant. They mightn’t like it.’

  Inside we quickly drank to our good health, then caught the train at a run. So many possibilities, he’d said, and I felt them all around me that evening as the train ground south towards the coast, as solid yet ghostly as that once-living tree turned to stone.

  So I just caught the bus at a run as it left the end of Green Road. The conductress stood watching inside and she wasn’t smiling.

  ‘It’s forbidden to join a moving bus, Miss,’ she announced.

  I paused halfway up the stair to get my breath back.

  ‘You might have waited for me,’ I said.

  This time she positively scowled. She wore brown heavy-rimmed glasses and they were just made for scowling.

  ‘If we waited for everyone who’s late, we’d never leave the station. Then where would we be?’

  ‘In the station, stupid,’ I muttered as I turned and went on up the stair. I half expected her to add There’s a war on, you know, which seemed to have already become a catch phrase justifying any shortage or stupidity. People had said it as a joke during the phoney war, but now with the fall of France it wasn’t so funny.

  Upstairs was packed and smoky. There was one place left next to a woman with a pile of yellow hair.

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ I said.

  She picked her bag off the seat, put it on her knee then glanced at me. She was younger than I’d thought, my age. I felt her take in my uniform, the new duffel bag containing my papers from the training school.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and sat down.

  She took the cigarette from her full mouth, tapped the ash on the floor.

  ‘You’re welcome, love.’

  Then she buried her head in the magazine she was reading. One of the cheaper, gossipy sort. The conductress came up and I paid my fare. She didn’t go away but stared at the magazine my companion was half hidden behind.

  ‘Fare, please,’ she snapped. ‘I’m talking to you, Missie.’

  There was a long pause then the magazine came down. Big blue eyes set around with make-up.

  ‘I’ve forgotten my purse,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I’ll get off at the next stop.’

  ‘Sorry! There’s honest people on this bus pay their fare, but not you. Don’t you know there’s–?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘She’s with me. I’m paying.’

  *

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks so much. Did you see that old bat’s face?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That was well worth a few pennies.’

  ‘Like a smoke?’

  She held out the packet. Du Maurier. I’d tried as a child, then again at university, but never really got into the habit.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  We lit up together and I tried not to cough. I blew smoke out into the thick blue-grey fug. Hard to remember what it was like, upstairs in buses in those days.

  ‘I’ll pay you back,’ she said. ‘You’re on this bus regular. I seen you before.’

  ‘No need,’ I said. ‘Really.’

  ‘Thanks. I thought you were toffee-nosed but you’re a good sort. Still, doing the bus company is one thing, doing a pal is another.’

  I sat with the warm glow of that ‘pal’. Truth is, I was lonely in my billet in the town, getting my training through the week, going home at weekends. My university friends had gone their ways, and as for boyfriends, well, I didn’t want to think about that.

  I finished the cigarette and got up.

  ‘My stop,’ I said.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to that Lyons across the street and I’ll get you coffee and a cake.’

  ‘But I thought–’

  She smiled then, big and wide. Lots of white teeth. I’d see that smile, hear that laugh many times before we were through with that summer.

  ‘I was at school with a waitress there,’ she said. ‘We used to skip off lots together. If I ask, she might just lose our bill. So?’

  I contemplated this world in which people tried to avoid paying on buses, lost bills and didn’t go to school, and didn’t even feel guilty about it. My mother would be shocked. Alarmed that I would even associate with such a person, as though such a condition might be contagious. As though I might sink back into the class she’d striven to climb out of, the steamy swamp of the Unrespectable.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That sounds great.’

  And as we stepped down from the bus, she said, ‘I’m Maddy, by the way.’

  ‘Stella,’ I said. ‘Stella Gardam.’

  Then we went for coffee and cake in Lyons and the bill never appeared. I have to say the cake tasted all the sweeter for it, and the coffee had an edge I rather liked. And she told me she was a Naval VAD and how she had her hands full with an outbreak of mumps but the sailors were a load of laughs. I told her I was training in signals but it was hush-hush and I mustn’t say more about it. Work with Radio Direction Finding – what would become Radar – was still a big secret. We’d yet to find just how important it was, back at the end of June that summer, before the battle had really started.

  We stood outside on the pavement. I was about to say goodbye and walk back to my digs.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Fancy going to a RAF dance on Friday? I know the drummer in the band, we can get in free.’

  I thought about it. A weekend at home with my mother and respectability. Dad out with the ARP. And I had revision to do.

  ‘That sounds fun,’ I said. ‘I’d love to.’

  And so Maddy Phillips and I met, and so we went to the dance, and so … everything.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Early July

  Yet how light a girl is when you dance, how far removed from a
machine! She was pushed my way at the dance once Tad had bowed, clicked heels, seized her friend and whisked her off onto the dance floor. This one looked startled, then amused as we introduced ourselves. I missed the moment to shake hands and just nodded and grinned at her like an idiot, though an enthusiastic one.

  ‘I expect you want to dance,’ she said neutrally. Beyond her name, her first words to me.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

  She glanced across the dance floor where Tad and her pal were spinning through the crowd. Then she looked me carefully down and up. When she smiled, two faint vertical lines appeared between her eyebrows.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  We looked at each other a moment. I was sweating but wasn’t going to let her have it all her own way.

  ‘So,’ she said at last, ‘are you asking me?’

  ‘I expect so,’ I said, then she laughed and I took her right hand and for the first time placed my hand on her firm waist as we caught the beat and swung into a quickstep.

  Stella Gardam looked good to me – glowing, chin up, pretty and funny and clever, you could tell. And probably way out of my class. Finished university, no less, now training at something she couldn’t tell me about.

  ‘Hush-hush,’ she’d whispered in my ear as we turned a foxtrot at the corner of the crowded hall, Tad and her friend having disappeared.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ I said. ‘Do I look like a spy?’

  She leaned back in my arms and looked up at me.

  ‘You look like an honest man,’ she said eventually. ‘But it’s hard to tell these days.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  The clarinet squawked, the violin went Aaw and made it sound almost like harmony.

  ‘All right,’ she said, then stretched up to my ear.

  ‘Radio Direction Finding,’ she whispered. ‘I’m learning to see what’s coming our way.’

  For a moment I looked into her eyes – wide-set, grey, looking straight back at me, calm and measuring.