you’re on tour you have officer status and are entitled to use the mess.’
On their way down the clattery stairs he told them they would start rehearsing the next day and do a couple of concerts before the end of the week. ‘We’re hoping Max Bagley will get here tonight,’ he said. ‘He’s your tour director.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘As long as you do what he says, I don’t think you’ll have any problems with him. He’s certainly experienced. That’s all for now. Dismissed.’ Their brief conversation had ended.
Chapter 7
Dear Saba , he’d written to her,
I am so sorry about the other night. It must have looked very strange to you, but that girl was not a girlfriend, but someone who has recently lost a chap I flew with, a friend. When you are cleared for security, let me know where you are .
He couldn’t bring himself to go into more detail about Jacko; it felt cheap to use him as an excuse.
Jilly had kept her hand on his arm while they were talking. Saba had seen it all. When that other chap had left the table to claim her, Jilly had given Dom a guilty smile and he’d probably returned it. How strange that grief might look so like lust.
Dear Pilot Officer Benson , her mother had replied,
I wonder if you can help me? I happened to open, in error, the letter you sent to my daughter. She’s gone away to . . . the censor had cut a large hole here, and we’ve not heard a word since. Have you? I wonder if, being in the services, you might find out more information for us. My husband and I are very worried about her .
Yours sincerely ,
Joyce Tarcan
He was stationed at Brize Norton when he got the letter, training young pilots, champing at the bit because it was so much quieter now than the Battle of Britain days, and when they weren’t flying, the air in the mess was stale with boredom, endless games of cribbage, cigarette smoke. He’d gone as soon as he could get a day’s leave, grateful for a semi-legitimate reason for doing so.
As the train entered the Severn Tunnel, Dom felt a denser darkness outside him. He heard the hissing of steam as the brakes went on, and then the vague announcement from a sleepy guard that they might be here for quite a long time.
This was greeted by jeering and good-natured laughter from the other passengers in the stuffy carriage – delays were an inevitable part of life now. But Dom, sweating in his greatcoat, felt both feverish and furious with himself. Since the crash, he’d suffered from a form of claustrophobia, which he knew he had to fight if he was to fly in combat again. These attacks leapt at him with no warning, the first sign a crushing in the throat, a sense that his whole body had been transformed into a violently overworking pump that would explode if he didn’t breathe properly, or run somewhere. He was dismayed that even a train stuck in a tunnel could affect him this way.
He sat breathing heavily with his head down, sweating, terrified, and when the feeling passed, as it usually did, he asked himself what he was doing on this wild goose chase anyhow. The girl had gone to North Africa, or so the doorman had hinted, she’d have no use for the blue overcoat which he’d placed in the luggage rack above his head. In the right-hand pocket of the coat, he’d found a delicate filigree gold charm shaped like the palm of a hand. He’d put it in the pocket of his greatcoat. It was new.
He touched the charm now. As a boy, he’d been obsessed by magic amulets, and he recognised this one as a Hamsa hand, which was supposed to ward off the evil eye, the envy of others, the kind of envy that could kill a person’s dreams and wishes stone dead. The reason why peasant Egyptian mothers dirtied up the faces of their children, why English children were taught not to boast.
Cambridge and the RAF had trained him out of magic-thinking guff, but nevertheless his fingers had clutched the gold charm during his fear attack as if the tiny hand would help him. And
On their way down the clattery stairs he told them they would start rehearsing the next day and do a couple of concerts before the end of the week. ‘We’re hoping Max Bagley will get here tonight,’ he said. ‘He’s your tour director.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘As long as you do what he says, I don’t think you’ll have any problems with him. He’s certainly experienced. That’s all for now. Dismissed.’ Their brief conversation had ended.
Chapter 7
Dear Saba , he’d written to her,
I am so sorry about the other night. It must have looked very strange to you, but that girl was not a girlfriend, but someone who has recently lost a chap I flew with, a friend. When you are cleared for security, let me know where you are .
He couldn’t bring himself to go into more detail about Jacko; it felt cheap to use him as an excuse.
Jilly had kept her hand on his arm while they were talking. Saba had seen it all. When that other chap had left the table to claim her, Jilly had given Dom a guilty smile and he’d probably returned it. How strange that grief might look so like lust.
Dear Pilot Officer Benson , her mother had replied,
I wonder if you can help me? I happened to open, in error, the letter you sent to my daughter. She’s gone away to . . . the censor had cut a large hole here, and we’ve not heard a word since. Have you? I wonder if, being in the services, you might find out more information for us. My husband and I are very worried about her .
Yours sincerely ,
Joyce Tarcan
He was stationed at Brize Norton when he got the letter, training young pilots, champing at the bit because it was so much quieter now than the Battle of Britain days, and when they weren’t flying, the air in the mess was stale with boredom, endless games of cribbage, cigarette smoke. He’d gone as soon as he could get a day’s leave, grateful for a semi-legitimate reason for doing so.
As the train entered the Severn Tunnel, Dom felt a denser darkness outside him. He heard the hissing of steam as the brakes went on, and then the vague announcement from a sleepy guard that they might be here for quite a long time.
This was greeted by jeering and good-natured laughter from the other passengers in the stuffy carriage – delays were an inevitable part of life now. But Dom, sweating in his greatcoat, felt both feverish and furious with himself. Since the crash, he’d suffered from a form of claustrophobia, which he knew he had to fight if he was to fly in combat again. These attacks leapt at him with no warning, the first sign a crushing in the throat, a sense that his whole body had been transformed into a violently overworking pump that would explode if he didn’t breathe properly, or run somewhere. He was dismayed that even a train stuck in a tunnel could affect him this way.
He sat breathing heavily with his head down, sweating, terrified, and when the feeling passed, as it usually did, he asked himself what he was doing on this wild goose chase anyhow. The girl had gone to North Africa, or so the doorman had hinted, she’d have no use for the blue overcoat which he’d placed in the luggage rack above his head. In the right-hand pocket of the coat, he’d found a delicate filigree gold charm shaped like the palm of a hand. He’d put it in the pocket of his greatcoat. It was new.
He touched the charm now. As a boy, he’d been obsessed by magic amulets, and he recognised this one as a Hamsa hand, which was supposed to ward off the evil eye, the envy of others, the kind of envy that could kill a person’s dreams and wishes stone dead. The reason why peasant Egyptian mothers dirtied up the faces of their children, why English children were taught not to boast.
Cambridge and the RAF had trained him out of magic-thinking guff, but nevertheless his fingers had clutched the gold charm during his fear attack as if the tiny hand would help him. And
Similar Books
