Bucks Boys.
She pictured Lewis’s smile, his floppy hair, and felt a pain in her chest so sharp, she couldn’t breathe.
Where are they?Clare had said.
They weren’t anywhere, any more.
They were gone.
‘We heard them,’ said Tim, waiting for Iris outside the control tower when she finally left it.
She was by herself. Browning had already returned to his billet, and Clare had volunteered to be the one to tidy up from the long night: cleaning the mugs, filing the logs. Wiping the chalkboard. ‘Go on,’ she’d urged Iris, ‘Robbie will be looking for you.’
All Iris wanted was to find him, but she stopped short when she saw Tim, the pain inside her growing as she took in the state of him. His eyes were wild in his haunted face. His skin, pallid. And the sweet, which he pressed absently into her hand, was hot, damp with his horror.
‘Lewis left the transmitter on,’ he said. ‘We heard them. All the way down.’
‘Oh, Tim.’ She choked, pulling him to her, too desperate to comfort him, attempt to comfort herself, to give a damn about whether it was or was not appropriate. She heard them too, Lewis and his crew, as clearly as if she’d been inMabel’s Furyherself, their terror shattering the still summer’s morning, filling her ears.
‘They didn’t bale,’ Tim said, into her neck. ‘They couldn’t get to their chutes. They were burning. Everything was burning. They were all so scared.’ His body shuddered. ‘They were so bloody scared.’
‘Shh,’ she said. ‘Shh.’
‘I feel something coming, every time we go up. I know it’s coming. I just don’t know when it’s going to come for us … ’
‘Shh,’ she repeated, automatically, trying not to let his words in. They were panic, she told herself.
Simple terror.
Not truth.
Yet, as Tim clung to her, she replayed her own sudden foreboding, only a few hours before,time is running out, and held him tighter, clinging to him too.
Then, at the sound of an approaching truck’s horn – more bombs, on their way – he pulled back, jerkily wiping his eyes.
Gently, she reached up, doing it for him, and he caught her hand, squeezing it with a tremoring smile.
‘Rob’s at the house,’ he said. ‘He had to telephone HQ, give them a full report. He wanted me to tell you he’d meet you in the woods after.’
‘And you?’ said Iris, as desperate as ever to run to Robbie, but equally reluctant to leave him alone. ‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll try and sleep.’
‘Do that,’ she said. ‘Please, Tim.’ She was still holding his hand. ‘You must try.’
Every airbase had a team responsible for packaging up the belongings of those who didn’t come back: emptying their lockers, changing their sheets, preparing their billets for the next intake. They were called the Committee for Adjustment, andeveryone did their best to avoid them, hating to be reminded of what they stood for. But there was no escaping them that morning. They were already everywhere when, leaving Tim at his billet, Iris set off for the woods. She saw them, sombrely carrying crates full of blankets, books, forgotten lucky mascots – a pair of tartan slippers – and became so overcome by the waste of it, the never-ending waste, that she had to stop, bending over in the long grass, clutching her stomach, fighting to get her gulping, raging grief under control.
It was Prim, of all people, who came upon her.
‘Here,’ she said, laying her hand on Iris’s shoulder, proffering her a kerchief. Her own eyes, reflecting the bright morning light, were red. Calm now, she’d obviously wept too. ‘Go and find Robbie,’ she counselled Iris, just as Clare had. ‘Neither of you will feel better until you do.’
He was already at the cottage when Iris reached it, standing outside in the leafy, dappled sunshine. His face was as pale as Tim’s had been; his blue eyes shadowed by the night.
He didn’t smile, when he saw her.
Just moved, as she moved to him.
‘How have you kept coming back?’ she asked him, her cheek to his beating heart. ‘How?’
