Winter of the World (78 page)

However, the engine died.

The boat slowed and was becalmed. It wallowed in the choppy waves while Japanese planes rained hell fire on the lagoon.

Gus said tightly: ‘Chuck, we have to get out of here right now.’

‘I know.’ Chuck and Eddie examined the damage. They grabbed the metal scrap and tried to wrestle it out of the teak deck, but it was firmly stuck.

‘We don’t have time for this!’ Gus said.

Woody said: ‘The engine is blitzed anyway, Chuck.’

They were still a quarter of a mile from shore. However, the launch was equipped for an emergency such as this. Chuck unshipped a pair of oars. He took one and Eddie took the other. The boat was
large, for rowing, and their progress was slow.

Luckily for them there was a lull in the attack. The sky was no longer swarming with planes. Vast billows of smoke rose from the damaged ships, including a column a thousand feet high from the
fatally wounded
Arizona
, but there were no new explosions. The amazingly plucky
Nevada
was now heading for the mouth of the harbour.

The water around the ships was crowded with life rafts, motor launches, and seamen swimming or clinging to floating wreckage. Drowning was not their only fear: oil from the holed ships had
spread across the surface and caught fire. The cries for help of those who could not swim mingled horrifyingly with the screams of the burned.

Chuck stole a glance at his watch. He thought the attack had been going on for hours but, amazingly, it was only thirty minutes.

Just as he was thinking that, the second wave began.

This time the planes came from the east. Some of them chased the escaping
Nevada
; others targeted the Navy Yard where the Dewars had boarded the launch. Almost immediately the destroyer
Shaw
in a floating dock exploded with great gouts of flame and billows of smoke. Oil spread across the water and caught fire. Then in the largest dry dock the battleship
Pennsylvania
was hit. Two destroyers in the same dry dock blew up as their ammunition stores were ignited.

Chuck and Eddie strained at the oars, sweating like racehorses.

At the Navy Yard, Marines appeared – presumably from the nearby barracks – and broke out firefighting gear.

At last the launch reached the Officers’ Landing. Chuck leaped out and swiftly tied up while Eddie helped the passengers out. They all ran to the car.

Chuck jumped into the driving seat and started the engine. The car radio came on automatically, and he heard the KGMB announcer say: ‘All Army, Navy and Marine personnel report for duty
immediately.’ Chuck had not had a chance to report to anyone, but he felt sure that his orders would be first to ensure the safety of the four civilians in his care, especially as two were
women and one was a senator.

As soon as everyone was in the car he pulled away.

The second wave of the attack seemed to be ending. Most of the Japanese planes were heading away from the harbour. All the same, Chuck drove fast: there might be a third wave.

The main gate was open. If it had been shut he would have been tempted to crash it.

There was no other traffic.

He raced away from the harbour along Kamehameha Highway. The farther he got from Pearl Harbor, the safer his family would be, he figured.

Then he saw a lone Zero coming towards him.

It was flying low and following the highway, and after a moment he realized it was targeting the car.

The cannon were in the wings, and there was a good chance they would miss the narrow target of the car; but the machine guns were set close together, either side of the engine cowling. That was
what the pilot would use if he was smart.

Chuck looked frantically at both sides of the road. There was no hiding place, nothing but cane fields.

He began to zigzag. The approaching pilot sensibly did not attempt to track him. The road was not wide, and if Chuck drove into the cane field the car would be slowed to a walking pace. He
stepped on the gas, realizing that the faster he was going the better his chances of not being hit.

Then it was too late for forethought. The plane was so close Chuck could see the round black holes in the wings through which the cannon fired. But, as he had guessed, the pilot opened up with
machine guns, and bullets spat dust from the road ahead.

Chuck moved left, to the crown of the road, then instead of continuing left he swerved right. The pilot corrected. Bullets hit the hood. The windscreen smashed. Eddie roared with pain, and in
the back one of the women screamed.

Then the Zero was gone.

The car began to zigzag of its own accord. A forward wheel must have been damaged. Chuck fought with the steering wheel, trying to stay on the road. The car slewed sideways, skidded across the
tarmac, crashed into the field at the side of the road, and bumped to a stop.

Flames rose from the engine, and Chuck smelled gasoline.

‘Everybody out!’ Chuck yelled. ‘Before the fuel tank blows!’ He opened his door and leaped out. He yanked open the rear door and his father jumped out, pulling his mother
along. Chuck could see the others getting out on the far side. ‘Run!’ he shouted, but it was superfluous. Eddie was already heading into the cane field, limping as though wounded. Woody
was half pulling, half carrying Joanne, who also seemed to have been hit. His parents charged into the field, apparently unhurt. He joined them. They all ran a hundred yards then threw themselves
flat.

There was a moment of stillness. The sounds of planes had become a distant buzz. Glancing up, Chuck saw oily smoke from the harbour rising thousands of feet into the air. Above that, the last
few high-level bombers were heading away to the north.

Then there was a bang that stunned his eardrums. Even with closed eyes he saw the bright flash of exploding gasoline. A wave of heat passed over him.

He lifted his head and looked back. The car was ablaze.

He jumped to his feet. ‘Mama! Are you okay?’

‘Miraculously unhurt,’ she said coolly as his father helped her up.

He scanned the field and spotted the others. He ran to Eddie, who was sitting upright, clutching his thigh. ‘Are you hit?’

‘Hurts like fuck,’ Eddie said. ‘But there’s not much blood.’ He managed a grin. ‘Top of my thigh, I think, but no vital organs damaged.’

‘We’ll get you to hospital.’

At that moment Chuck heard a terrible noise.

His brother was crying.

Woody was weeping not like a baby but like a lost child: a loud, sobbing noise of utter wretchedness.

Chuck knew immediately that it was the sound of a broken heart.

He ran to his brother. Woody was on his knees, his chest shaking, his mouth open, his eyes running with tears. There was blood all over his white linen suit, but he was not wounded. Between sobs
he moaned: ‘No, no.’

Joanne lay on the ground in front of him, face up.

Chuck could see right away that she was dead. Her body was still and her eyes were open, staring at nothing. The front of her gaily striped cotton dress was soaked with bright red arterial
blood, already darkening in patches. Chuck could not see the wound but he guessed she had taken a bullet to the shoulder that had opened her axillary artery. She would have bled to death in
minutes.

He did not know what to say.

The others came and stood by him: Mama, Papa, and Eddie. Mama knelt on the ground beside Woody and put her arms around him. ‘My poor boy,’ she said, as if he was a child.

Eddie put his arm around Chuck’s shoulders and gave him a discreet hug.

Papa knelt by the body. He reached out and took Woody’s hand.

Woody’s sobs quieted a little.

Papa said: ‘Close her eyes, Woody.’

Woody’s hand was shaking. With an effort, he steadied it.

He stretched out his fingertips to her eyelids.

Then, with infinite gentleness, he closed her eyes.

1942 (I)

On the first day of 1942 Daisy got a letter from her former fiancé, Charlie Farquharson.

When she opened it she was at the breakfast table in the Mayfair house, alone except for the aged butler who poured her coffee and the fifteen-year-old maid who brought her hot toast from the
kitchen.

Charlie wrote not from Buffalo but from RAF Duxford, an air base in the east of England. Daisy had heard of the place: it was near Cambridge, where she had met both her husband, Boy Fitzherbert,
and the man she loved, Lloyd Williams.

She was pleased to hear from Charlie. He had jilted her, of course, and she had hated him then; but it was a long time ago. She felt like a different person now. In 1935 she had been an American
heiress called Miss Peshkov; today she was Viscountess Aberowen, an English aristocrat. All the same, she was pleased she was still in Charlie’s mind. A woman would always prefer to be
remembered than forgotten.

Charlie wrote with a heavy black pen. His handwriting was untidy, the letters large and jagged. Daisy read:

Good Lord, thought Daisy, he seems to have grown up.

Ah, she thought, his
late
mother. So the old bitch is dead. That might explain the change.

There were three Eagle squadrons, Royal Air Force units manned by American volunteers. Daisy was surprised: she would not have expected Charlie to go to war voluntarily. When she knew him he had
been interested in nothing but dogs and horses. He really had grown up.

The mention of a husband was a tactful way of saying he had no romantic intentions, Daisy guessed.

Boy was not at home that weekend, but Daisy accepted for herself. She was starved of male companionship, like many women in wartime London. Lloyd had gone to Spain and disappeared. He said he
was going to be a military attaché at the British embassy in Madrid. Daisy wished it might be true that he had such a safe job, but she did not believe it. When she asked why the government
would send an able-bodied young officer to do a desk job in a neutral country, he had explained how important it was to discourage Spain from joining in the war on the Fascist side. But he said it
with a rueful smile that told her plainly she was not to be fooled. She feared that in reality he was slipping across the border to work with the French Resistance, and she had nightmares about him
being captured and tortured.

She had not seen him for more than a year. His absence was like an amputation: she felt it every hour of the day. But she was glad of the chance to spend an evening out with a man, even if it
was the awkward, unglamorous, overweight Charlie Farquharson.

Charlie booked a table in the Grill Room of the Savoy Hotel.

In the lobby of the hotel, as a waiter was helping her take off her mink coat, she was approached by a tall man in a well-cut dinner jacket who looked vaguely familiar. He stuck out his hand and
said shyly: ‘Hello, Daisy. What a pleasure to see you after all these years.’

When she heard his voice she realized it was Charlie. ‘Good Lord!’ she said. ‘You’ve changed!’

‘I lost a little weight,’ he admitted.

‘You sure did.’ Forty or fifty pounds, she guessed. It made him better-looking. His features now seemed craggy rather than ugly.

‘But you haven’t changed at all,’ he said, looking her up and down.

She had made an effort with her clothes. She had bought nothing new for years, because of wartime austerity, but for tonight she had exhumed an off-the-shoulder sapphire-blue silk evening gown
by Lanvin that she had acquired on her last pre-war trip to Paris. ‘In a couple of months I’ll be twenty-six,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I look the same as I did when
I was eighteen.’

He glanced down at her décolletage, blushed, and said: ‘Believe me, you do.’

They went into the restaurant and sat down. ‘I was afraid you weren’t coming,’ he said.

‘My watch stopped. I’m sorry I’m late.’

‘Only by twenty minutes. I would have waited an hour.’

A waiter asked if they would like a drink. Daisy said: ‘This is one of the few places in England where you can get a decent martini.’

‘Two of those, please,’ Charlie said.

‘I like mine straight up with an olive.’

‘So do I.’

She studied him, intrigued by the way he had altered. His old awkwardness had softened to a charming shyness. It was still hard to imagine him as a fighter pilot, shooting down German planes.
Anyway, the Blitz on London had come to an end half a year ago, and there were no longer air battles in the skies over southern England. ‘What kind of flying do you do?’ she said.

‘Mainly daytime circus operations over northern France.’

‘What’s a circus operation?’

‘A bomber attack with a heavy escort of fighters, the main object being to lure enemy planes into an air battle in which they’re outnumbered.’

‘I hate bombers,’ she said. ‘I lived through the Blitz.’

He was surprised. ‘I would have thought you’d want to give the Germans a taste of their own medicine.’

‘Not at all.’ Daisy had thought about this a lot. ‘I could weep for all the innocent women and children who were burned and maimed in London – and it doesn’t help
at all to know that German women and children are suffering the same.’