And, as she did, more wing lights appeared, and Fred raised his binoculars again, and another voice that wasn’t Henry’s sounded in Iris’s ears.
‘Hello, Tower. Queen here.’
‘Bucks Boys,’ said Clare to Sergeant Browning.
He marked them home, too, and Iris, relieved at least for Lewis and his slippers, gave them the instruction to circle at thirteen hundred feet to await landing. ‘Aerodrome thirteen. Over.’
‘Hello, Lima,’ Clare was already saying to the next arrival,Night’s Knights. ‘Aerodrome fourteen. Over.’
With a roar,Young Gunslanded, bouncing along the tarmac, so Iris called back to Queen, instructing them to pancake, over, then switched to Lima, telling them to take Queen’s place in holding at thirteen hundred feet, whilst Clare asked the next incoming plane to circle at fourteen hundred feet.
And so they went on.
For half an hour, they continued bringing the returning planes safely back down to the ground, whilst Fred kept his vigil at the window, and Browning ticked the names off, one by painstaking one, on his board.
Several of the squadron returned with flak damage. Three radio operatives called in with emergency transmissions that they had wounded men on board, so Browning scrambled the ambulances, who sped those men off to hospital. Fred ran downto see them before they went, and returned with the news that the Luftwaffe, making the most of the full moon, had sent up night fighters to intercept the stream on their way home over France.
‘A couple of planes from another squadron bought it,’ he said, not without feeling, but also not without that disconcerting pragmatism with which every airman seemed to speak about death. ‘I don’t know about our blokes.’ He returned to the window, raising his binoculars back to his eyes. ‘They all got split up.’
By five that morning, they were still missing two planes.
Mabel’s Furywas one of them.
Hamps Heroes– V for Verity – was the other.
Don’t worry, Robbie had told Iris, back in the woods.
But she was worried.
Her stomach was by now liquid with terror; her ears felt ready to burn with the strain of listening to her silent headphones.
Hamps Heroeswere newcomers, like herself and Clare. They’d arrived just that morning, sent to replace the only crew that hadn’t come back from Cologne the night before. According to Browning, that crew had flown under V for Verity too.
Iris had never used to be superstitious, but this war had changed that for her. Back in Norwich, P for Peter had been the code letter everyone had feared. Any plane given it had lasted one, at the most two, operations. Eventually, the station commander had struck it from use. It had been the same with one of the billets. For a spell, no one had slept in it for longer than a week before disappearing.
Was V for Verity to be the same?
Please not, she silently entreated the empty search beams roving the sky.Please let them come back.
Please let him.
And, as though in answer, the static in her ears fractured, sending her heart into her throat.
Clenching her shaking hands into fists, she waited for a voice.
From beside her, Clare reached out, touching her wrist in a gesture of solidarity. Iris knew how hard she must be thinking about Hans – whether he’d been piloting one of the fighters that had sent those two planes down – but didn’t for a moment doubt that she was rooting for Robbie and the rest of them, too.
The static cleared, and the radio operator spoke.
‘Hello, Tower, Verity here.’ He sounded ecstatic. Jubilant.
And why shouldn’t he be?
Iris didn’t begrudge him it.
But nor could she bring herself to answer him.
‘Hello, Verity,’ said Clare, doing it for her. ‘Pancake, over.’
