Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton

       Chapter Seventeen

      The NAAFI closed at ten o’clock but the Salvation Army canteen was open until ten-thirty. By leaving the Station cinema early and sprinting across the parade ground it was possible to get a cup of tea before bedtime. Mrs Andrews who served in the Sally-Ann judged the films by the number of hot drinks she sold last thing at night. ‘It’s not a very good film; fourteen teas Monday and I had to make a second pot on Tuesday night.’

      The previous week there had been a flying film. The hero made love with a sober intensity and flew with drunken abandon (the complete reversal of the activities of the RAF boys). A cowardly pilot ran amok, was ostracized and finally flew sobbing into an enemy plane. The CO ruled with his fists and cried glycerine tears each time one of his boys failed to return. The RAF greeted this film with jeers and catcalls. The projectionist had phoned the Orderly Officer about it.

      ‘Shouting at the film, are they? And you want me to come over there so they can shout at me? Not Pygmalion likely. I saw it last night. It’s about time you got some good films.’

      They had no contact with this film or its makers. RAF selection boards had ensured that none of them ever experienced such extreme emotions. No one at Warley had ever publicly sworn vengeance upon the Germans (unless you counted the CO). No one here endured a crash so light-heartedly, took off into thick fog or swigged whisky round the Mess table, toasted absent friends with song and threw their glasses into the fireplace. Here grief was measured by what was paid for the auctioned, worthless personal effects of the casualties. Tears were for actors. Here cowardice was their common conceit and all had their own favourite acts of cowardice of which to boast. The flyers of Warley were men of even temperament who, for better or worse, did not react profoundly to the work they did.

      Tonight there were no crews in the crowded cinema. No one left early nor did they make a noise. It was an old Charles Laughton film – Rembrandt – and so many turned up that they had been forced to get folding seats from the Operations Block and sit latecomers along the aisles.

      The Music Circle meeting in the Education Hut had assembled nineteen assorted ranks to listen to Georg Kulenkampff and the Berlin Philharmonic play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The performance was virtually faultless and their pleasure was marred only slightly by having to turn the records every few minutes. The Education Officer had the irritating habit of conducting, but when the music had finished and he produced a few bottles of beer all was forgiven. They were there until almost midnight talking about music. There were very few places on the aerodrome where all ranks could meet on a completely equal footing, let alone drink and smoke together.

      The Station dance band had been in existence for six weeks but there had been only two rehearsals with every member present. Two of the band were working tonight. Sergeant Tommy Carter, a keen amateur saxophone player, was flying Joe for King, and a corporal who could play the piano relatively well was on duty in Flying Control. This night the fellow on the piano could only play from the singer’s line and the trumpet player was all over the place. It wasn’t his fault, for although he had studied music for two years, his instrument was the violin. The seven musicians practised together at the far end of the NAAFI, but when the canteen began to fill up they stopped playing and sat around drinking tea. The leader, an LAC clerk from Southampton, said that if they couldn’t do better than this they should tell the dance committee to bring in a civilian band for the Sergeants’ Mess dance next month. By the time the NAAFI closed they were all a little depressed.

      Musically, however, Warley Fen was dominated that summer by a simple but subtle melody. Erks whistled it as they bicycled to dispersals. Fitters hummed it as they replaced the sparking plugs on the Merlins and a big-breasted blonde NAAFI girl named Veronica played it on the piano with lots of improvised vamping. A slim-hipped MT corporal with a thin moustache impersonated Al Bowlly and sang it wordperfect with every inflection of that singer’s voice. In the Officers’ Mess there was a gramophone record of it that someone had brought back from London.

      Every lunchtime of that hot summer the cadences floated across the even, bright green lawns of Warley Manor and made the tea-roses tremble. The Sergeants’ Mess had the same record and it had become the custom for returning aircrew NCOs to call into the Mess for one last nightcap after leaving the tension and excitement of the debriefing. That record was always near the gramophone and usually the first arrivals would put it on. Sometimes after a grim night when there were a few missing faces they would play it repeatedly until dawn shone.

      Easy come, easy go. That’s the way, if love must have its day, then as it came let it go.

      No remorse, no regrets. We should part, exactly as we met; just easy come, easy go.

      We never dreamt of romantic dangers

      But now as it ends, let’s be friends and not two strangers.

      Easy come, easy go, here we are, so darling au revoir, easy come, easy go.

      A quarter of a century later, men who knew Warley Fen that summer when the bombers went out night after night remembered nothing more clearly than that little melody. It needed only the opening trumpet notes, the wire brushes and guitar to transport them back there again.

      Not all spare-time occupations were musical. Flight Sergeant Bishop, the Station blacksmith, was Sergeant of the guard. He was sitting in the guardroom assembling a large picture of a galleon in full sail from sweet-wrappers and coloured paper. It was a painstaking hobby and the portrait of Joe Louis on the wall in his quarters represented nearly three hundred manhours of tearing, cutting and pasting. People who saw the pictures wondered that the clumsy muscular hands of the blacksmith could work in such meticulous detail.

      Aircraftman First Class Albert Singleton, an Officers’ Mess waiter, did that evening, with the help of Aircraftwoman Janet Marsden, motor-transport driver, steal from the aforesaid Mess one seven-pound tin of butter, three seven-pound tins of marmalade, eighteen pounds of bacon and twenty-eight eggs. These stores, the property of His Majesty King George the Sixth, were taken to Peterborough in an RAF Hillman van, also the property of His Majesty. The foodstuffs were delivered to a restaurant owner against payment of seven pounds ten shillings. By ten-thirty Singleton and Marsden had visited several public-houses and consumed a considerable amount of alcohol.

      It was nearly eleven o’clock when they came down the blacked-out country lane from Ramsey and parked near the perimeter fence. It was warm in the front seat of the RAF van and the windows grew misty with their breath as they kissed and cuddled in the dark. After a few minutes one of the lorries carrying aircrew came past them along the peri track. They paused to watch it.

      ‘It’s a new driver we’ve got,’ said ACW Marsden, nodding towards the crew bus. ‘She’s straight from the training school, talk about keen.’

      ‘Not like you,’ said Bert Singleton.

      ‘I’m keen sometimes,’ said the girl, and they kissed again. As the crew lorry got to the far corner they heard the crews shouting remarks about blackout to some house in the village but they didn’t stop kissing.

      Binty Jones folded