The Flyer (25 page)

It was still dark. She could smell the pungent aroma of the injured, of wounds that needed draining and an underlying chemical taint of ether. In the darkness she heard men breathing, muttering, scratching in their sleep. She sat up in her chair beside the pilot’s bed. His stillness seemed unnatural. She looked at his chest, but couldn’t see any movement, and her breath caught in her throat. She thought that this is what had woken her. While she slept he had died. His body had given up, and whatever spirit lived in that prison of flesh and bone had gone.

But then he stirred, and she realised he was not dead after all. Only sleeping. His bandaged limbs twitched convulsively. She wondered what he dreamt of. Was it the summer they spent together? Could they have dreamt of the same time and place, and did that mean they’d been together in some otherworldly landscape where time stood still? And if so, could she change what had happened?

Or did he dream of the rush of cold air, the sound of guns and the flames that wrapped around his head and body like the greedy, devouring jaws of some bright, fierce animal?

His twitching became more agitated. She began to speak in a low, soothing voice. She spoke his name and told him she was there. Gradually he became calmer and the convulsive movements ceased, and he breathed more easily again.

When she got up, stretching her stiffened limbs, Elizabeth realised that she wasn’t alone. A figure stood watching her from the door. It was Doctor Ramsay. Together they went outside where he offered her a cigarette.

‘Do you sit with him every night?’ he asked.

‘If I can, yes.’

When he drew on his cigarette his features were thrown into sharp relief. ‘Sometimes I envy him.’

She wasn’t sure that she heard him correctly. How could anybody envy a man so terribly injured? But then he looked at her frankly, and she understood what he meant. He was married with three young children. She didn’t condemn what she saw in his face though, because it was yearning rather than lust. A yearning for love. They all felt it, surrounded as they were by misery and death.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘It’s alright.’

They smoked in silence.

‘It’s been decided he should be moved back to England,’ he said.

She was alarmed. ‘Surely he won’t survive the journey.’

‘The truth is, he’s already lived longer than anyone thought possible. If he has a long term chance, it isn’t here.’

‘When?’

‘A week perhaps.’ He paused. ‘You were dreaming earlier. I was watching you.’

‘Yes.’

‘What was your dream about?’

She understood that he wanted to know about the pilot. ‘I was remembering when I met William.’

‘Elizabeth… You are aware that it might not be him, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you ever been to Exmouth?’ he asked, unexpectedly changing the subject.

‘No.’

The beach is quite long and there are one or two small hotels along the front. Whenever I think of it I can smell the air. It’s the sharpness of the salt I suppose, and the grittiness of sand on the breeze. We used to go for holidays there.’

‘I stayed in a place called Shoreham on Sea once,’ she said. ‘Just for a few days.’

‘Were you on holiday?’

‘No. It was in October, after the war began. The army teach people to fly there. I went there to find William.’

She began telling him about how they met and about Sophie and Christopher, and how, after the fire, William had vanished and she had thought she would never see him again. ‘Then a friend of my mother’s discovered he was at Shoreham.’

The morning after she had sent a letter to the camp, Elizabeth sat nervously through breakfast, half expecting William to appear, or at least send a message. When he didn’t, she went for a walk, resisting the urge to return to the hotel until she had completed an entire length of the seafront in both directions. She stopped to watch the waves boiling where they broke on the shelf of the beach, and attempted to find a metaphor in the repetition, some lesson that was both simple and profound that would give her a sudden insight into life. But her thoughts were only a way of distracting herself.

When she returned, the hotel lounge was empty. Casually she enquired whether any message had been delivered for her.

‘I’m afraid not,’ the woman said.

Elizabeth hid her disappointment. There was no message that afternoon either, and nothing that evening. On the second day she walked up the hill and along the cliffs towards the camp. She wasn’t sure what she intended. At a distance she could see the hangers, and on the grass outside were several aeroplanes. A group of men were clustered around one of the machines. It seemed that one of them held their attention, an instructor she assumed. He climbed into the pilot’s seat.

She remembered the day William took her up in his plane. She’d been nervous. She’d never liked heights. She didn’t want him to think she was afraid, though wherever she looked she saw taut wires and flimsy wooden struts and thought a sudden gust of wind from the wrong direction would cause the machine to fold in on itself. When the engine had started she jumped a little. The plane bounced across the grass and then lifted into the air. The wind rushed past and she held tightly to the edges of her seat. She closed her eyes tightly and wished they would land again. When she opened them, the fields below were a patchwork of burnt yellow and russet brown, and gradually her fear gave way to fascination with this new world.

On the aerodrome, the instructor climbed down from the machine he had been demonstrating. One by one the men took their turn climbing into his place. She supposed they were being taught how to operate the controls. She wondered if the instructor could be William. She had been studying him, trying to discern if there was anything familiar about his movements, but she was too far away to tell. Eventually the instructor climbed back into the machine with one other man. The wind was coming from the sea so she didn’t hear the engine start, but she saw a puff of blue smoke that was swept away on the breeze in an instant. The other men moved out of the way and then the plane began to race across the grass. It lifted into the air, the wings wobbling slightly, gaining height as it came toward her. The engine sounded like the angry buzz of a bee, but it grew rapidly louder. As the plane passed overhead, Elizabeth tried to see if the instructor was looking down, and imagined herself from his point of view: A woman in a hat and long skirt in a sea of emerald green, her face upturned.

That night Elizabeth ate alone again in the dining room. She looked up every time the door opened, but she’d begun to lose hope that William would come. An elderly couple arrived and sat by the window several tables away. They said good evening to her politely. The man ordered wine, and when it came he tasted it fussily. Throughout their meal the couple barely spoke to one another. In the end the atmosphere became too stifling and Elizabeth went outside.

As she walked along the seafront a piece of driftwood bobbed in the waves. If the tide was going out it would be carried away, and in the morning she would leave. If it was washed ashore she would go to the camp and ask to see him. She watched as it seemed first to come in a little way, and then go out again. In the end though, the tide carried it further and further from the beach until it was lost against the dark green slabs of the waves. The following morning Elizabeth paid her bill and went to the station to catch a train back to London. As a final gesture of hope she left Catherine Beauchamp’s address in London with the woman who ran the hotel, and asked her to forward any message that might come for her.

Even at the last moment, as she stood on the platform beside the train, she hoped he would come. Not until the guard blew his whistle did she finally, reluctantly climb aboard. She sat alone in a carriage and looked out of the window as the sea receded into the distance.

When she had finished telling Doctor Ramsay her story, Elizabeth said, ‘I decided then that I would try to forget about William.’

Ramsay lit another cigarette. ‘And how did you come to be here?’

‘I wanted to be useful.’ She told him that Catherine Beauchamp had persuaded her to train to become a nurse. ‘Several months after I left Shoreham on Sea, I received a letter forwarded by the woman at the hotel where I had stayed. Inside the envelope was my own letter to William, and a short note from somebody at the camp called Captain Davies. He was an instructor. Perhaps the one I’d watched the day I sat on the cliff near the camp. He told me that my letter arrived a few days after William had been sent to a camp at Farnborough as an instructor. He’d meant to forward my letter straight away, but somehow he forgot. He discovered it by chance almost two months later, and though he sent it on to Farnborough it came back again, because by then William had left for France.’

‘That’s why you wanted to come over here?’

‘Yes. At least partly. I hoped I would be able to find him. But as you know, the army didn’t want women here to begin with and I had to complete my training. It was another year before I left England.’

Elizabeth felt tired suddenly. The sky had altered subtly from the blackness of night. Towards the east a faint greyness was leaching into its edge. A bitterly cold breeze had come up. Elizabeth hugged herself.

‘You’re shivering.’ Ramsay took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.

‘Thank you.’ He was a good man. Quietly intelligent. Stoic. A rock in a sea of mud. But he was married, and anyway she could never love anyone, however fleetingly, while there was hope for William.

Ramsay put out his cigarette. He smokes too many of them, Elizabeth thought. He told her she should get some sleep. ‘When he’s sent back I’d like to go with him,’ she said.

He nodded, though she could see he was sorry she would be leaving. ‘I’ll see if I can arrange it.’

‘Thank you.’

CHAPTER 23

After the battle at Arras began, the hospital was swamped with injured men. Some of them were pilots. Everybody knew that the Flying Corps was suffering awful losses at the hands of the German jastas. Only the lucky ones ended up at the hospital, however. Most of those shot down were killed.

The wounded were brought by motor ambulances from the dressing stations at the front. Many had lost limbs that had been severed by shrapnel from exploding shells. Others were gassed or blinded, or burned or shot. Elizabeth was no longer shocked by their injuries. If she was shocked by anything it was by how quickly the terrible became commonplace.

When she found time to visit the pilot he was conscious, but delirious from the morphine, and as usual was not aware of her. Without the morphine, the pain of his injuries would drive him mad. She sat beside the bed with her hands on her lap. She wanted to hold his hands, but the pressure of her touch would cause him pain. She had brought a book of poetry with her and she read to him from it. Sometimes she thought the sound of her voice penetrated his mind, and for a little while he was still. It was almost as if he was listening. He seemed to turn towards her and her heart beat faster.

She had come to believe that he was William. She said to him the things she had wanted to tell him when she went to Shoreham. She hoped that on some level he understood. She prayed that he forgave her.

Later, his body began to twitch convulsively as if he was dreaming. Some mumbled sound came from his ruined mouth. She leaned forward to try and catch his words, but she could make no sense of them. She spoke to him again until he became quiet, her eyes blurred with tears.

When she left, the man in the next bed was awake. She went to his side. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked quietly.

‘My legs hurt.’

She felt his brow. He was hot with fever. He had been burned in an attack with flame throwers during an attack that had been repelled, but initially his injuries had not seemed too serious, and he had lingered for three days in a hospital near the front, where his wounds became infected. Since then, both of his legs had been amputated. It was unlikely that he would survive. He had an all too familiar look about him. Elizabeth sat with him until he fell asleep, and by then she was too tired to move and she fell asleep herself, with her head resting beside his shoulder. In the morning he was dead.

Later that day, Elizabeth volunteered to drive an ambulance to the front to collect wounded men from the dressing stations. When they arrived at the field hospital she discovered that one of the wounded men was a pilot who’d been shot in his right shoulder. It was a nasty wound, but he was better off than the other men they were collecting, and on the way back he sat in the cab with Elizabeth, while Margaret, the Canadian nurse who went with her, rode in the back. The pilot’s name was Stringer.

‘Which squadron are you from?’ Elizabeth asked him.

‘Number twenty eight.’

She recognised the number with a jolt. ‘There’s another pilot from your squadron at the hospital.’

‘You mean the chap who was burned?’

‘Yes.’

‘How is he?’

‘He’s very ill. I expect you know that nobody’s quite certain who he is?’

‘Yes, so I believe… Hasn’t he said anything yet then?’

‘No.’

‘Poor devil.’ Stringer lit a cigarette. ‘It’s the worst thing that can happen, you know. Getting burned I mean. We all think about it. Of course none of us ever talks about it.’ He lapsed into brooding silence and avoided looking at her, as if he was ashamed of his admission. His eyes were dull, almost sunken.

‘I think everyone has their particular fear,’ Elizabeth said. ‘A lot of the men in the trenches are afraid of being gassed.’

He threw her a quick, grateful look. ‘It isn’t so much the thought of being killed. We all know it could happen, of course, but it’s just something that has to be accepted. One simply hopes to be able to do one’s bit first, I suppose. But burning…’ He shuddered. ‘How bad is he? The chap in the hospital, I mean?’

‘He doesn’t feel any pain,’ Elizabeth said, thinking that was what Stringer meant.

‘When we heard about the crash, we were all so relieved to hear one of them had survived,’ Stringer told her. ‘But then we heard nobody could tell which of them it was. It makes you think.’

‘Did you know either of them?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘You mean Wright and Reynolds? Yes, both of them, actually. Actually I was supposed to be on the patrol that day, but I wasn’t well. Good thing too as it turned out. The others were all shot down.’ He frowned and his foot tapped a rapid tattoo on the floor of the cab. He muttered something under his breath

‘What did you say?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘What? Oh, it’s just something Reynolds said in the mess. There was a bit of a scene at dinner one evening. Reynolds told the CO to his face that the brass were all fools.’

There was an undercurrent in Stringer’s tone that Elizabeth couldn’t quite put her finger on. A sort of resentment coupled with grudging respect. He wouldn’t look at her, his eyes darted this way and that, as restless as his foot. ‘Why did he think that?’ she asked.

Stringer looked at her and laughed unnaturally. ‘Oh, Reynolds was like that. Odd fellow you know. Difficult.’

‘Really?’ She kept her tone neutral. ‘In what way?’

Stringer shrugged and winced, then put his hand to his shoulder. ‘He was a bit of a loner, I suppose. Didn’t mix well. And he was pretty quick to voice his opinions. Most of the chaps thought it was a bit off. Bad for morale and all that.’

‘I see.’

Stringer fell silent and then suddenly said, ‘Anyway, he was right about the brass. We all knew it I suppose. We lose men everyday. They keep sending us up in those bloody two-seaters and we haven’t a chance.’ He was shaking, his tone vehement. And then he looked at her guiltily. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Do you know what happened when Lieutenant Reynolds and the other pilot were shot down?’

‘I heard all about it. Plenty of the men in the trenches saw the entire thing. Reynolds and Captain Wright were flying Nieuport scouts. They were meant to be escorting the patrol, but they were attacked by an entire squadron of Albatrosses. The two-seaters were shot up pretty quickly. I’m sure Reynolds and Wright did their best, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. They were both shot down near the lines. I suppose you know that one came down on our side. Some artillery chaps managed to get the pilot out, but the plane was hit by a shell so nobody could tell afterwards which one it was.’

‘I heard the other one crashed on the German side,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Is that right, do you think?’

‘Oh, yes. They saw it go down from the lines.’

‘You don’t think there’s a chance the pilot might’ve survived?’

Stringer shook his head. ‘If the Huns had caught him we would have heard about it by now.’

‘He might have escaped.’

‘Anything’s possible, I suppose,’ he said, though she knew as well as he did that it was unlikely.

After they arrived at the hospital, Elizabeth was kept busy with the wounded. Towards evening she asked which ward Lieutenant Stringer had been sent to. He was sitting in a chair by the window when she found him.

‘Hello again,’ he said, pleased to see her.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Oh, alright, you know. I’m having an operation in the morning. Apparently I’ll make a full recovery. Two months at the outside, I’m told.’

He sounded cheerful, but the haunted look in his eyes remained. ‘I’m glad for you,’ Elizabeth said.

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘I expect you’ll get some home leave, won’t you?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. It’ll be good to see everyone again.’ He looked in his pocket for a cigarette and offered one to Elizabeth.

‘We’re not allowed to smoke on duty.’

‘Of course. Sorry.’ He seemed troubled, distant.

‘Where do you live?’ Elizabeth asked, thinking he’d like to talk about his home.

‘Worcester,’ he said. ‘It’ll feel strange to go back there. I suppose life goes on much as it always did. My father’s with one of the banks. He’s on the board. My mother’s always busy with her committees and so on.’

‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

‘Two sisters. I’m the youngest. They’re both married now, but they live in the town.’

‘You must be looking forward to seeing them.’

‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘I can’t imagine it somehow, you know. After all this.’ He laughed self-consciously. ‘I expect it’ll be the other way around when I’m there, and I won’t be able to imagine coming back here again.’

He put his hand to his shoulder and Elizabeth wondered if he wished his wound would not heal so readily. He looked at her and seemed to guess what she was thinking. He looked away.

Later, she went to see the pilot, and found Stringer there. He was looking intently at the bandaged figure lying in the bed.

‘Do you know who he is?’ she asked him

He looked at her and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. I thought I might, but it could be either of them. Will he live?’

‘Nobody thought he would survive this long, but he has. He must have a very strong will.’

‘Reynolds was like that. You could sense it about him.’

‘Yes.’ She realised Stringer was watching her.

He was embarrassed to be caught. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just I’ve heard people say you knew Reynolds. Before the war.’

‘Yes I did.’

‘Do you think it’s him?’

She nodded, and he looked again at the figure in the bed. ‘I think you might be right, you know. I don’t know why exactly. I’m very sorry.’

‘Thank you.’

After Stringer went back to his ward Elizabeth stayed for a little while. For once the pilot was peaceful. She was glad for him, and yet she knew that it might be a sign that he was giving up.

She went outside for a cigarette. There was a small garden in the middle of the buildings where patients could sit outside. Somebody was smoking a cigarette. He wore a long coat. One of his legs was in plaster and a pair of crutches leaned against the seat. He seemed lost in his own thoughts and she didn’t disturb him, but after a little while she felt him watching her. She finished her cigarette, and would have gone inside again, except the man was still staring at her.

‘Are you alright?’ she asked him.

‘Liz?’

He struggled to his feet, using his crutches for support. Her heart was pounding. As he came closer she could see his face beneath the peak of his cap. He was thinner and his eyes had the same glassy, hollowed look as Stringer’s.

‘I thought I must be imagining things when I saw you,’ he said. ‘You look different. But it is you though, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

They looked at one another, neither of them quite able to believe in the other. And then Christopher smiled.

‘I’m so glad to see you, Liz.’