‘Gosh, I hope not, sir. Although I’m so tired after that walk, I hardly know.’
‘And what about you?’ he’d snapped at Iris.
‘What about me, sir?’
‘Is your watch functional?’
‘I haven’t checked either, sir.’
‘Because of the rain?’
‘Yes, sir. Plus, it’s really quite dark.’
It had been. Not a seam of light had escaped Doverley’s blacked-out windows, or penetrated the thick, scudding clouds above.
Still, not so dark that Iris had missed the adjutant’s narrow-eyed stare.
‘Now, I know you’re being smart,’ he’d said.
‘I’ll try not to be in future, sir,’ she’d replied.
At which his eyes had become slits.
He’d kept her and Clare out in the rain whilst he’d run through Doverley’s rules (no mischief between the sexes; no leaving the base without a pass; no bath to be run deeper than four inches; no alcohol for WAAFs, anywhere … ); then, to make matters more uncomfortable, when he’d finally led them up to Doverley’s front door, Iris had tripped on an uneven step, falling painfully to her knees.
‘Careful,’ the adjutant had remarked, ‘you’ll want to watch yourself there.’
Her kneecaps were still smarting now, and she’d ruined her stockings, which she held little hope of being able to replace. She’d have been fine at the base she and Clare had just left in Norfolk. Before Christmas, it had been taken over by the USAAF, who were always handing out packs of impossible-to-get nylons. Their airmen had them issued as part of their kit: a tool for making themselves welcome so far from home. Butit was all RAF personnel at Doverley, so there’d be no more stockings, or gum; just plenty of long nights, waiting for these boys now flying thunderously overhead, to come home.
For the past minute, Iris had been watching them all take off, the attic window giving her a direct view to the base’s burning flare path. She hadn’t seen one like it before. All the runways at her previous postings had been electric. Those static lights hadn’t crackled, or made the air around them dance with heat. These torches were hypnotic, she thought; ethereal and other-worldly.
Menacing too, though.
More than anything, menacing.
Because what was their purpose, if not to facilitate death? That’s what the crews above were flying towards, after all: either their own, or those of the strangers they’d shortly find. And how many, now breathing, would be gone before the night’s end? Iris couldn’t bring herself to guess. She felt no pleasure, thinking of the assault these throbbing planes were about to unleash; no satisfaction that, after the relentless pounding the Luftwaffe had given Britain, Britain was now very much giving one back. She was just weary, deeply weary, that, more than three years into this hideous war, it was still all going on.
And afraid, sickeningly afraid, for Robbie.
Tim too, of course.
Stepping away from the window, she moved her gaze to the attic’s sloping roof. The dark ceiling lamp swayed with the force of the planes’ cacophony. And Robbie and Tim were inside one of them. Robbie wasflyingone of them. Unbelievably, after all these years that Iris had spent wondering about him, he was now just a few hundred feet from where she stood, with Tim as his navigator, piloting a Lancaster calledMabel’s Fury, probably without a clue that she too had been stationed back here.
She hadn’t asked to be. Although she and Clare had realised a transfer was on the cards when the USAAF had arrived in Norfolk, and had hoped to stay together, they’d also known they’d be given no say in whatever happened to them next. Happy as Iris had been when their matching move orders had arrived, her elation had given way to shock the instant she’d learnt that RAF Doverley was where they were headed.
She hadn’t imagined that she’d find anything but sadness waiting for her when she arrived. But just this morning, she and Clare had been issued with the particulars of 96 Squadron’s active crews to memorise on their journey up, and there Robbie and Tim’s names had been, at the very top of the list, in typeset black and white.
‘Someone you know?’ Clare had asked Iris, noticing her sudden stillness.
‘Yes,’ Iris had said. ‘Or knew, anyway.’
‘It’s not … ’ Clare had begun, looking over Iris’s shoulder. Then, ‘Oh.Oh.’
And now, the sound of the planes was growing quieter. Already, Iris was having to strain to hear them.
How long would it take them to reach the continent from here?
Not that long, surely, over the North Sea.
