Some Day I'll Find You by Richard Madeley Page A

he?’
    Her mother emerged in her dressing-gown from the breakfast room, beaming. ‘He’s in the garden with your father, darling. He looks very tired but I think—’
    Diana careered through the French windows and was running across the dew-drenched lawn towards the two men, who were standing under the great sycamore that stood by the path leading to the
kitchen gardens.
    ‘John!
John!
’
    Her brother spun round and flapped both arms humorously in the air. ‘Hey, sis! It’s all right – we’re both fine. James is fine. I’m fine. We’re both
fine!’
    Diana leaped headlong into his embrace, as she used to when he came home from school for the holidays.
    ‘Here, you’ll have me over!’ he laughed, staggering backwards. ‘My my, the child grows strong. Morning, young miss. I trust you’ve been behaving
yourself?’
    ‘We’ve been so horribly frightened! It’s all been awful
.
Just
awful
.’ She burst into tears.
    John squeezed his sister tight. ‘Yeah,’ he said, his voice muffled against her cheek. ‘That pretty much sums up what it’s been like at our end too.’
    He partly pulled away, his hand trembling slightly, but perceptibly. His blond hair appeared darker than usual – he hadn’t washed it for a month – and his skin was sallow with
angry blotches of eczema around the mouth. His blue uniform was creased and stained, and there were suspicious rusty-coloured splodges on the sheepskin tops of his flying boots.
    That’s blood, or I’m a Dutchman, Mr Arnold thought to himself. My God, look at his face. He’s aged ten years in a month.
    His son looked at them all. Lucy hovered nearby, listening.
    ‘Well . . . ’ John began. His eyes closed for a moment. He suddenly looked overwhelmed by exhaustion.
    ‘If you’d prefer, you can just leave it for now,’ Gwen said. ‘Don’t feel you have to go into any of it, dear. You’ve only just got home. Perhaps you should go
upstairs and rest?’
    Her son smiled faintly and shook his head. ‘No, Mum, honestly, I’d like to tell you about it. I’m OK, just damn tired. Nothing a couple of nights’ uninterrupted sleep
won’t fix.’ He turned to Diana. ‘He really
is
OK, sis. I left him sound asleep on his cot. I imagine he’ll be down here tomorrow.’
    Diana blinked and gave a quick little nod. Her brother led her inside to the drawing room, their parents following.
    ‘It’s funny,’ he said, sinking into an armchair. The others followed suit. ‘It’s nothing like you think it’s going to be. I bet you discovered that in the
last lot, Dad.’
    Mr Arnold nodded. ‘Oh, yes. War is full of surprises, that’s for sure.’
    ‘Yes. Well . . . we didn’t go to France. Not as far as being based there, anyway. The government decided weeks ago that Spitfires should operate from here in England. So our lot have
been flying across the Channel from Upminster ever since the German Blitzkrieg started. I’m sorry I didn’t ring you, but we’ve been extraordinarily busy, every single day, and
anyway we were told in no uncertain terms not to talk about operational stuff to anyone. I don’t suppose that matters now, not now that we’ve been kicked off the Continent.’
    The phone in the hall began to ring. John didn’t appear to notice.
    ‘We’ve been on the back foot since the tenth of May, to be truthful. Fingers in the dyke, and all that. It’s all been about covering a fighting retreat. The Army say we
abandoned them at Dunkirk but that’s completely untrue, Mum and Dad. Some of our boys have been beaten up in pubs by soldiers shouting, “Where was the RAF?” but we were there. We
just weren’t directly over the beaches.’
    John began to speak more rapidly. ‘I flew three missions a day over Dunkirk for five straight days. Fifteen sorties, back-to-back. We took off at dawn, patrolled above the Pas de Calais
and got stuck into the bastards – sorry, Mum, the enemy – whenever they came in to attack. Christ, there were