Permissible Limits (4 page)

There were more calls from the media during the afternoon, newspapers mainly, and by five o’clock, weary of explaining that Adam hadn’t gone down in the Mustang, I decided to flee for a couple of hours. One of the calls I had to make on my own account was to Adam’s parents. They’d emigrated to Vancouver only last year and I knew I had to break the news as soon as possible. If I was back in Mapledurcombe by eight, my call would probably find them preparing for lunch. In the meantime, I could gather what strength I had for what I knew would be a difficult conversation.

Ralph Pierson lived by himself on the island’s south coast. He had an immaculate chalet-bungalow on a wooded lane that wound down to the lighthouse at St Catherine’s Point. His garden unrolled from the back of the house and from the patio he’d built he could look out across the broad expanse of lawn to the undercliff and the sea.

Adam and I had known Ralph for nearly three years. He was in his mid-seventies, still fit, still alert, a fund of wonderful stories. As a young pilot, he’d flown Spitfires and Typhoons during the war and had contacted us after news of the Mustang rebuild had made a paragraph or two in the local paper. We’d liked each other on sight and after the sudden death of his wife, he and I had become close friends. I’d lost my own father at about the same time and I can’t pretend that Ralph wasn’t something of a substitute.

He was waiting beside his open front door when I got out of the car. He was a tall man, nearly as tall as Adam, and he was wearing the blazer and slacks he favoured for semi-formal occasions. He put his arms round me, and kissed me on top of the head, and then led me inside. There was a tray of tea on the low table beside the sofa and he’d even found the time to rustle up some crumpets.

I stood beside the big picture window, staring out. The sea looked grey and forbidding and I couldn’t get rid of the memory of the voice in my dreams. All day I’d heard it. Calling and calling.

Ralph must have seen me shudder. He insisted I had the armchair that looked inwards, towards the fireplace. He stooped to the glowing logs and gave them a poke.

‘
Unfair,’ he said simply. ‘Damned unfair.’

I nodded in mute agreement, already glad I’d summoned the strength to phone and then drive over. Ralph had the rare gift of making me feel completely at home. No fuss. No drama. Just the readiest kind of intimacy, wholly natural, wholly sincere.

‘
I’m going to hang on to the Mustang,’ I said suddenly, ‘if it’s the last thing I do.’

‘
Because?’ Ralph was still on his knees by the fire, coaxing a
crumpet on to a toasting fork.

‘
Because it was Adam’s. Because it meant so much to him.’

‘
And you think that’s possible? Or even wise?’

‘
I’ve no idea. But that’s what I’m going to do, I promise you.’ I broke off, surprised at my own vehemence. Keeping the Mustang felt like a decision I’d been waiting to make all day, something positive, something to remember him by, something to preoccupy me and keep me busy, just the way my marriage had done. Adam and the Mustang were two of a kind. As Ralph knew only too well.

‘
It’s early days, Ellie,’ he said quietly. ‘Things may change. You should take a deep breath, give yourself a bit of time. Here -’

He juggled the crumpet from hand to hand while I found a plate. I watched the butter melting on top, remembering the day he’d phoned to tell me about his wife, Sally. She’d died of a heart attack in her sleep. He’d awoken to find her lying dead beside him.

‘
It’s horrible,’ I said slowly. ‘Really horrible. I’d no idea.’

‘
Death?’

‘
Losing someone.’

Ralph nodded, sombre.

‘
You’re right,’ he said. ‘But you have to go on’.

I looked round the room, desperate for something else to talk about, only too aware how every conversation returned again and again to Adam. Alive, I hadn’t minded at all. He was that kind of man, vital, ebullient, turning heads, compelling attention. Dead, though, I couldn’t bear it.

Ralph kept his desk in the corner of the long lounge, tucked in beside one of the smaller windows. Amongst the pile of books, I spotted
The War Diary
of
the Mighty Eighth.
The Mighty Eighth was airman’s slang for the US Eighth Air Force. Since last year, Ralph had been helping us by putting together a detailed history of our Mustang.

‘
How’s it going?’ I enquired lightly. ‘The research?’

Ralph was spreading jam on another crumpet. He looked, if anything, relieved at the sudden change of subject.

‘
Is that a serious question?’

‘
Of course.’

‘
Then it’s going well. In fact it’s going beautifully. I meant to phone you yesterday. One or two developments, I’m happy to say.’

I smiled, glad of the warmth this lovely man spread so effortlessly around him. It was something to do with a largeness of spirit, a whole-heartedness that I’d never quite met in such measure before. Adam had always seized life by the throat but Ralph - older - had a softer, subtler grip. He was never downcast, never cynical, never pessimistic. He had immense dignity and a kind of quiet strength. The way he’d managed to cope with the loss of his wife had always, to me, been remarkable.

I licked the butter from my fingers and retrieved the
War Diary
from the desk. It weighed a ton and when I got back to the chair and opened it, half a dozen photos fell out. I picked them up and went through them one by one. They showed a Mustang. By the shape of the cockpit and the bulge of the big underbelly radiator, it looked like aP-5iD.

‘
Is this ours?’

‘
Yes.’

I returned to the photos, fascinated. They were in grainy black and white, the corners curling where they’d been stored in direct sunlight. In the first couple of shots, our fighter

They were air-to-air shots, but the aircraft was up-sun and the pilot was visible only as a silhouette in the bubble cockpit. In the third photo, the aircraft was back on the ground, parked in front of a big pair of hangar doors. A gaggle of pilots stood beside the cockpit, laughing. The stocky one in the middle was explaining some combat manoeuvre, his gloved hands out in front of him, the left hand closing on the right. He was still wearing a leather helmet and a parachute harness. His flying jacket was half-unzipped and I wondered just how much time he’d had to knot the scarf around his neck.

Ralph was watching me.

‘
His name’s Karel Brokenka.’ He pointed to the pilot in the middle of the group. ‘

‘
He flew the plane?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Our plane?’

‘
Yes. And he scored in it, too.’ Ralph joined me, perching himself on the arm of the chair. ‘According to Brokenka, it was ‘45, New Year’s Day. Fourth Fighter Group were flying daylight escort with the B
-
17S.
They came across some Me 109s on the way out and bounced them. There was a helluva dogfight and 336 accounted for at least four.’ Three-three-six was the USAAF squadron to which our Mustang was attached. I was still looking at the pilot in the photograph. He had a chubby face and a slightly lop-sided grin.

‘
And you’re sure he was flying the Mustang?’

‘
So he says.’

‘
And these came from him?’

‘
Yes. Along with some other bits and pieces.’

It was Ralph’s turn to go to the desk. While he rummaged in one of
the drawers he
told
me how his letters to the air force
archive in Washington had finally produced a list of names and addresses. Karel Brokenka was living in a nursing home in a suburb of Chicago. On the phone, he’d confirmed that P-Popsie had indeed been his aircraft. WD-P was the squadron designation of our Mustang. He’d called it
Little Ceska
or ‘Little Czech’.

Ralph returned with a file. Inside was a collection of photocopied A4 sheets, neatly stapled together. On the front sheet was one of those stick-on address tags. The nursing home was called Shoreview.

‘
I explained to him that the log book was incomplete. I told him about the missing page. He thought that was very funny.’

‘
Why?’

‘
He said he’d torn it out. Thought they’d never catch up with him.’ ‘And did they?’

‘
No, but I did.’

Ralph was smiling now. Brokenka had evidently kept the missing page as a souvenir of his one and only kill. I began to go through the photocopied sheets. Each one carried a big blue stamp. ‘USAF Archive’, the stamp read, ‘Certified for Release’. Ralph’s hand hovered over mine. I was looking at a grid of dates, aircrew names and aircraft types.

‘
These are extracts from the squadron’s Operations Record Book. Look -’ Ralph’s finger moved down the column of dates until we got to 1 January 1945. Beneath the details of sortie or flight, neatly typed, was the entry:
Penetration Target Withdrawal Support, Derben-Stendal-Genthin. 4 Mei09s destroyed.
I looked back along the line. On 1 January, P-Popsie had indeed been flown by zLt. Karel Brokenka. I mouthed the name to myself. It had a nice feel.

‘
What’s he like?’

‘
Pleasant enough chap. My sort of age, seventy-six, seventy-seven.’ ‘Married?’

‘
Divorced, but I gather his ex-wife still pops in to see him at the home. He had some kind of stroke. Nothing too serious but he says he’s pretty much confined to a wheelchair these days.’

I turned the photograph over. Someone had scribbled the pilots’ names. There were five in all. Left to right, Brokenka was the third. I looked at the photo again, checking the sequence. Karel Brokenka was very definitely the chubby one in the middle, the pilot who’d drawn blood in our Mustang, and I stared at him for a moment or two, trying to imagine him at the controls, the same seat, the same stick, the finger on that gloved hand closing on the firing trigger as the Me 109 fattened in the gun sight. We’d been hoping against hope that Ralph might unearth something like this. It would give the Mustang so much character, so much extra pedigree. Not simply an aeroplane. But an aeroplane with a history. I must tell Adam, I thought at once, picturing his face when I gave him the news.

Seconds later, I felt Ralph’s hand on mine. From somewhere or other he’d produced a handkerchief. I took it, shameless, grateful, blowing my nose.

‘
Crying helps,’ Ralph said quietly. ‘I’ll pour you some more tea.’

Later, after I’d pulled myself together, we talked again about the stuff that Karel Brokenka had sent over. Adam had planned for a full-scale book on the Mustang, listing every flight, every pilot, every unit with which the aeroplane had ever had contact. Lavishly illustrated, handsomely bound, we’d offer the book as a souvenir for visiting guests, and if it was any good, there might even be sales on the open market. Either way, Adam visualised the history as yet another brick in the wall we were building around Old Glory, and Ralph - with time on his hands - had been only too pleased to volunteer his services.

I was on my third cup of tea. Karel Brokenka’s family had evidently fled their native Czechoslovakia after the Germans moved in. They’d rented a single room in a Chicago tenement and as soon as he could, young Karel had volunteered for the air force. By Christmas 1943 he was back in Europe, flying with 336 Squadron from Debden, an airfield in Essex.

Ralph was showing me the combat report Brokenka had filed after his outing on New Year’s Day. The squadron had made its rendezvous with the bombers at 11.25. An hour later, a flight of Mustangs had peeled off, bouncing the Meio9s in the Ulzen area. Brokenka, in
Little Ceska,
had singled out a target, and chased it in a near-vertical dive. He’d closed to less than two hundred metres, loosing off three-second bursts of fire. At 3,000 feet, bits of the Mei09 began to disintegrate. Seconds later, it was ablaze. Brokenka had seen the pilot bale out but was too busy pulling out of the dive to register a parachute.

I looked up.

‘
What about the German?’ I queried. ‘Does Brokenka have a name?’

‘
No. But we’ve got the date now, and the mission details, so the rest shouldn’t be too difficult.’