‘No.’ His brow had creased in a frown. ‘Say it, please. I need to hear you say it.’
So, she’d said it.
‘I believe it,’ she’d forced out, knowing only that she’d wanted to. So very, very much.
He’d smiled again, reassured.
It was something, at least, that she’d been able to give him.
And now, before her brimming stare,Mabel’s Furyjerked back into motion. Iris’s colleague inside had clearly issued the command.That’s a green for go. Proceed to angels ten and vector ninety to Idaho.Gripping the stair rail tighter, Iris followed the plane’s thundering silhouette as it gathered speed on the flaming runway. She pictured Robbie again, his body taut with effort as he pulled back on his throttle, wrenching the laden craft upwards.
She still hadn’t told him her secret.
She’d been keeping it from him for weeks now.
At the thought, her eyes fell shut.
And, when she opened them again,Mabel’s Furywas airborne, rising slowly, then disappearing, fast, into the black sky.
Her tears, contained for too long, broke free, snaking down her frozen face. Hastily, before anyone could see, she wiped them away.
Then, dragging her gaze from the voidMabel’s Furyhad left, she turned, heading up the rest of the control tower stairs.
You’ll guide us in, Robbie had said.
Get us home.
She pulled the tower door open, not ready, by no stretch ready, but resolved at last on facing all that this night was about to ask of her.
1 November 2018
LIGHTS, CAMERA, AND ACTION FORTHE BOMBER BOYS
It’s happening. After months of speculation, in which the production of this hotly anticipated adaptation of Imogen Hale’s word-of-mouth sensation,The Bomber Boys, has been rumoured off more times than the relationship of its leading stars, Claudia Baxter and Nick Turner, they, and the rest of the cast, have landed in England ahead of an intense month-long shoot on the Yorkshire estate of Doverley House – the same spot where Hale’s protagonists were based during the Second World War.
For anyone who hasn’t read Hale’s novel yet – and who are you? Where have you been? – you need to get your hands on a copy, stat, then have some tissues ready, block your diary, too, because you won’t be able to tear yourself away from this epic imagining of what really befell the vanished pathfinder crew of the now infamous ghost plane,Mabel’s Fury.
Before you turn to Google, no one does know what happened to the six young men who vanished into the war-torn darkness back in 1943. They, tantalisingly close to the end of their tour of duty, took off as normal that fateful night. But when their battered plane returned to England, crash-landing on the coast, it did so empty, save for seven damaged parachute packs and the crew’s badly injured navigator, Tim Hobbs (played by Felix Jade.SWOON). Tim, alive to this day, lost consciousness whilst the plane was still full of his crew mates, and has never been able to explain what befell them, or indeed how he got home withthe plane’s cockpit empty. His last recollection is of turbulence, dense fog, and his pilot – Squadron Leader Robbie Grayson (Nick Turner) – radioing their base’s control tower, speaking to the woman with whom he was in love, Section Officer Iris Winterton (Claudia Baxter). Hobbs doesn’t recall what was said between the pair, and Iris Winterton was never questioned, because she herself disappeared, that very same night.
It was her timing, and the mystery of her final radio exchange with Squadron Leader Grayson, that prompted Hale to writeThe Bomber Boys, which she tells through Iris’s voice, as a devastating confession: one which was rejected by scores of publishers before it crossed the desk of an editor at Acorn Press, who fell under its spell and, with a miniscule budget, set it on its way to print, so breaking my unsuspecting heart, and millions of others around the globe.
Hale – who had her pick of studios vying for film rights – was, unusually, granted final approval on the script. The question that we atThe Screenare now all desperate for an answer to, is: will the movie stay true to Hale’s shattering ending? The word is, that’s still a matter of heated discussion, and a different, much happier ever after, remains on the cards.
‘We feel we have some licence,’ says our inside source. ‘Given the mystery that still shrouds the fate of Iris Winterton and the crew, why not use this movie to explore something different?’
Because it’s not the way Hale wrote it, say we.
And what do the stars themselves think?
Claudia Baxter was giving nothing away when we caught up with her at Heathrow last week. Pictured here, fresh off the LA red eye – understated as ever in a baseball cap, puffer, and jeans – she stopped for a chat before ducking into her waiting Land Rover. Relaxed enough when we asked her to scale her happiness at being back on home soil (an eleven, obviously; she was on her way to see her mum), and how she felt aboutportraying the enigmatic Iris (delirious), she clammed up the moment we raised the matter of her character’s final, devastating reveal.
‘No,’ she said, with that smile of hers, ‘you’re not getting me on that.’
Her smile vanished at our next enquiry, into the lay of the land between her and Nick Turner, which we can only take to mean: not great.
And what will that mean for the atmosphere on set over the coming weeks?
Oh, to be a fly on Doverley’s walls…
