‘Such things are not for women’s eyes. Nor for men’s either, but war makes these things necessary.’
‘It wasn’t that. I just… I suppose I hadn’t realised what war looked like. My father fought in the trenches and he often has nightmares about what he saw out there. When I go to him after another nightmare and I hear him rambling about what he sees in his head… I thought I knew about the horrors of war. But it wasn’t until I saw those men that Ireallyknew.’
‘And now you see it all the time in your mind,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes.’ She cast her eyes down. ‘There was a man in my life. A… a sweetheart. He isn’t my sweetheart now, but I still care deeply for him. I can’t help but imagine…’
‘That one day it may be this man you love on fire in the plane,’ Piotr finished for her. ‘It haunts my dreams also. My older brother is with a Polish fighter squadron, repelling the German planes in the skies over the Channel.’
Bobby wondered why she had told him all that about Charlie; this stranger. Somehow he didn’t feel like a stranger, after what had happened on the mountain. He felt like someone she’d known for years and years, almost like Don or one of her brothers. More than that, she could tell he would understand.
‘Yet you seem so cheerful,’ she said. ‘You saw those men in the plane, and all these dreadful things have happened to your country and your people. How do you do it?’
‘I am not always happy, but I am always able to keep from being sad for too long. I suppose it is through knowing I have a home to go to, even though I had to leave my country – always while Jolka and Tommy are safe somewhere, there is a place for me. The world cannot feel dark or empty long while my soul is with them.’ He smiled at her. ‘You must come to us, when I am well enough to join them in Topsy’s little lodge. You must come and meet my wife and boy, Bobby.’
‘I’d be honoured.’
‘Ah, you will be impressed. You will say what a fine boy my boy is and what a clever, talented woman I have married, and the two of you will be excellent friends. And you will wonder how I tricked such a woman into marrying this clumsy fool Piotr. Unfortunately, I have no answer.’ He looked at her. ‘When your men from the village believed me to be the enemy and wished to leave me to die…’
‘You remember that?’
‘I remember, although the world span and I hardly knew where I was.’
‘You mustn’t be too hard on them, Piotr. They fought in the last war, and lost people in it too. They wouldn’t really have left you. We wouldn’t have let them anyhow, Charlie and Gil and I, but I like to think their better natures would have overruled their anger in the end.’
‘You knew though. That I was not the enemy.’
‘Yes, you told me. You managed to tell me you were Polish – in English so I could understand.’
‘You knew already, however. Before I told you, you knew.’
Bobby hesitated, thinking back to that night on the mountain. She hadn’t understood what Piotr had been saying to her as he’d rambled in what she’d then believed to be German, but his eyes had spoken to her, pleading with her to end the nightmare he was trapped in. They hadn’t looked like the eyes of an enemy.
‘Yes, I… I suppose I did,’ she said. ‘Something in your expression, I think. The way you looked at me. It reminded me of my father.’
‘And you knew, when you came up the mountain, that men were alive up there. Am I not right?’
She frowned. ‘I did have a sort of gut feeling as we went up that there had been survivors. How did you know?’
‘I had a feeling as if someone was coming for us. It is peculiar, is it not? I suppose this is what they mean when they say that God moves in mysterious ways.’
‘I wish we could have saved you all.’ Bobby glanced at the curtains around Teddy’s cubicle. She could hear his deep, rhythmic snoring, indicating he was now asleep. ‘Your friend thinks the crash was his fault.’
‘He does, but he is wrong. He could hardly see in the fog. None of us could.’ Piotr scowled. ‘It was that fool of a squadron leader who insisted we fly when we knew the fog was forecast. The Luftwaffe do not stop for fog, he said, so we do not stop for fog. And because we are Polish, he chooses us to fly this training mission. Pah! I wonder how he sleeps now, this Englishman.’
‘You ought to report him, Piotr. To someone more senior who can investigate.’
‘Huh. Probably I would be punished for insubordination for being so presumptuous. Bomber Command do not take the word of a Pole and a Jew over what I have learned the English call their “Old School Tie”.’
‘But you must, if he’s giving orders that are costing men their lives! Who knows but that this might not happen again? This isn’t the first time I’ve seen planes from your base flying when they ought to have been grounded. The others were lucky, but your crew wasn’t. The next one might not be either.’
‘It is of no use, Bobby. It has been tried before, by others.’ He looked at her and his scowl lifted. ‘But it is good of you to be concerned.’
‘What did happen up there, Piotr?’
He lifted his hand to wipe his brow. ‘I have very little to tell for your magazine, I am afraid, Madam Journalist. We were flying, and the wind howled and the radio scratched so you could not hear your prayers in your own head, but the wind did not blow away the fog and the rain that blinded us. Tadeusz took us lower, trying to drop below the cloud so we could get a fix on our position, but still the fog held us. To fly so low over high ground was dangerous, against regulations, but we had no choice. Everything around us was thick and grey like a blanket, and Jan, the radio operator, he shouted to the base that we were lost and we could not see, but only noise came back. A shape loomed in the fog suddenly and Tadeusz turned the nose up, trying to gain enough height to clear it, but it was too late. Too late for us to bail out and too late to change our course. I do not know what happened next, except that when I awoke, I was not in my gun turret but on the ground. I had hit my head when I was thrown and been unconscious a little time, I think. My strength was very small, but I crawled to the fuselage. I do not know if all the men were dead, then, but Tadeusz I could see was alive – if only barely. He had slumped against the fuselage and his face was burned on that side where it rested on the scalding metal, and shards of the wing where it had shattered were embedded in his stomach. I had just strength to drag him away from the plane before the flames spread and consumed him, then I lost consciousness again until you and the men arrived.’ He pressed his fingers to his temples. ‘If I had only been conscious a little longer, perhaps I could have saved them all.’
Bobby reached out to take his hand. ‘I doubt that. Your friends most likely died on impact. The plane hit at some speed. It would have been quick, at least.’
