Permissible Limits Read online

  Ralph must have seen me shudder. He insisted I had the armchair that looked inwards, towards the fireplace. He stooped to the glowing logs and gave them a poke.

  ‘Unfair,’ he said simply. ‘Damned unfair.’

  I nodded in mute agreement, already glad I’d summoned the strength to phone and then drive over. Ralph had the rare gift of making me feel completely at home. No fuss. No drama. Just the readiest kind of intimacy, wholly natural, wholly sincere.

  ‘I’m going to hang on to the Mustang,’ I said suddenly, ‘if it’s the last thing I do.’

  ‘Because?’ Ralph was still on his knees by the fire, coaxing a crumpet on to a toasting fork.

  ‘Because it was Adam’s. Because it meant so much to him.’

  ‘And you think that’s possible? Or even wise?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But that’s what I’m going to do, I promise you.’ I broke off, surprised at my own vehemence. Keeping the Mustang felt like a decision I’d been waiting to make all day, something positive, something to remember him by, something to preoccupy me and keep me busy, just the way my marriage had done. Adam and the Mustang were two of a kind. As Ralph knew only too well.

  ‘It’s early days, Ellie,’ he said quietly. ‘Things may change. You should take a deep breath, give yourself a bit of time. Here -’

  He juggled the crumpet from hand to hand while I found a plate. I watched the butter melting on top, remembering the day he’d phoned to tell me about his wife, Sally. She’d died of a heart attack in her sleep. He’d awoken to find her lying dead beside him.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ I said slowly. ‘Really horrible. I’d no idea.’

  ‘Death?’

  ‘Losing someone.’

  Ralph nodded, sombre.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But you have to go on’.

  I looked round the room, desperate for something else to talk about, only too aware how every conversation returned again and again to Adam. Alive, I hadn’t minded at all. He was that kind of man, vital, ebullient, turning heads, compelling attention. Dead, though, I couldn’t bear it.

  Ralph kept his desk in the corner of the long lounge, tucked in beside one of the smaller windows. Amongst the pile of books, I spotted The War Diary of the Mighty Eighth. The Mighty Eighth was airman’s slang for the US Eighth Air Force. Since last year, Ralph had been helping us by putting together a detailed history of our Mustang.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I enquired lightly. ‘The research?’

  Ralph was spreading jam on another crumpet. He looked, if anything, relieved at the sudden change of subject.

  ‘Is that a serious question?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then it’s going well. In fact it’s going beautifully. I meant to phone you yesterday. One or two developments, I’m happy to say.’

  I smiled, glad of the warmth this lovely man spread so effortlessly around him. It was something to do with a largeness of spirit, a whole-heartedness that I’d never quite met in such measure before. Adam had always seized life by the throat but Ralph - older - had a softer, subtler grip. He was never downcast, never cynical, never pessimistic. He had immense dignity and a kind of quiet strength. The way he’d managed to cope with the loss of his wife had always, to me, been remarkable.

  I licked the butter from my fingers and retrieved the War Diary from the desk. It weighed a ton and when I got back to the chair and opened it, half a dozen photos fell out. I picked them up and went through them one by one. They showed a Mustang. By the shape of the cockpit and the bulge of the big underbelly radiator, it looked like aP-5iD.

  ‘Is this ours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I returned to the photos, fascinated. They were in grainy black and white, the corners curling where they’d been stored in direct sunlight. In the first couple of shots, our fighter

  They were air-to-air shots, but the aircraft was up-sun and the pilot was visible only as a silhouette in the bubble cockpit. In the third photo, the aircraft was back on the ground, parked in front of a big pair of hangar doors. A gaggle of pilots stood beside the cockpit, laughing. The stocky one in the middle was explaining some combat manoeuvre, his gloved hands out in front of him, the left hand closing on the right. He was still wearing a leather helmet and a parachute harness. His flying jacket was half-unzipped and I wondered just how much time he’d had to knot the scarf around his neck.

  Ralph was watching me.

  ‘His name’s Karel Brokenka.’ He pointed to the pilot in the middle of the group. ‘

  ‘He flew the plane?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Our plane?’

  ‘Yes. And he scored in it, too.’ Ralph joined me, perching himself on the arm of the chair. ‘According to Brokenka, it was ‘45, New Year’s Day. Fourth Fighter Group were flying daylight escort with the B-17S. They came across some Me 109s on the way out and bounced them. There was a helluva dogfight and 336 accounted for at least four.’ Three-three-six was the USAAF squadron to which our Mustang was attached. I was still looking at the pilot in the photograph. He had a chubby face and a slightly lop-sided grin.

  ‘And you’re sure he was flying the Mustang?’

  ‘So he says.’

  ‘And these came from him?’

  ‘Yes. Along with some other bits and pieces.’

  It was Ralph’s turn to go to the desk. While he rummaged in one of the drawers he told me how his letters to the air force archive in Washington had finally produced a list of names and addresses. Karel Brokenka was living in a nursing home in a suburb of Chicago. On the phone, he’d confirmed that P-Popsie had indeed been his aircraft. WD-P was the squadron designation of our Mustang. He’d called it Little Ceska or ‘Little Czech’.

  Ralph returned with a file. Inside was a collection of photocopied A4 sheets, neatly stapled together. On the front sheet was one of those stick-on address tags. The nursing home was called Shoreview.

  ‘I explained to him that the log book was incomplete. I told him about the missing page. He thought that was very funny.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He said he’d torn it out. Thought they’d never catch up with him.’ ‘And did they?’

  ‘No, but I did.’

  Ralph was smiling now. Brokenka had evidently kept the missing page as a souvenir of his one and only kill. I began to go through the photocopied sheets. Each one carried a big blue stamp. ‘USAF Archive’, the stamp read, ‘Certified for Release’. Ralph’s hand hovered over mine. I was looking at a grid of dates, aircrew names and aircraft types.

  ‘These are extracts from the squadron’s Operations Record Book. Look -’ Ralph’s finger moved down the column of dates until we got to 1 January 1945. Beneath the details of sortie or flight, neatly typed, was the entry: Penetration Target Withdrawal Support, Derben-Stendal-Genthin. 4 Mei09s destroyed. I looked back along the line. On 1 January, P-Popsie had indeed been flown by zLt. Karel Brokenka. I mouthed the name to myself. It had a nice feel.

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Pleasant enough chap. My sort of age, seventy-six, seventy-seven.’ ‘Married?’

  ‘Divorced, but I gather his ex-wife still pops in to see him at the home. He had some kind of stroke. Nothing too serious but he says he’s pretty much confined to a wheelchair these days.’

  I turned the photograph over. Someone had scribbled the pilots’ names. There were five in all. Left to right, Brokenka was the third. I looked at the photo again, checking the sequence. Karel Brokenka was very definitely the chubby one in the middle, the pilot who’d drawn blood in our Mustang, and I stared at him for a moment or two, trying to imagine him at the controls, the same seat, the same stick, the finger on that gloved hand closing on the firing trigger as the Me 109 fattened in the gun sight. We’d been hoping against hope that Ralph might unearth something like this. It would give the Mustang so much character, so much extra pedigree. Not simply an aeroplane. But an aeroplane with a history. I must tell Adam, I thought at once, picturin
g his face when I gave him the news.

  Seconds later, I felt Ralph’s hand on mine. From somewhere or other he’d produced a handkerchief. I took it, shameless, grateful, blowing my nose.

  ‘Crying helps,’ Ralph said quietly. ‘I’ll pour you some more tea.’

  Later, after I’d pulled myself together, we talked again about the stuff that Karel Brokenka had sent over. Adam had planned for a full-scale book on the Mustang, listing every flight, every pilot, every unit with which the aeroplane had ever had contact. Lavishly illustrated, handsomely bound, we’d offer the book as a souvenir for visiting guests, and if it was any good, there might even be sales on the open market. Either way, Adam visualised the history as yet another brick in the wall we were building around Old Glory, and Ralph - with time on his hands - had been only too pleased to volunteer his services.

  I was on my third cup of tea. Karel Brokenka’s family had evidently fled their native Czechoslovakia after the Germans moved in. They’d rented a single room in a Chicago tenement and as soon as he could, young Karel had volunteered for the air force. By Christmas 1943 he was back in Europe, flying with 336 Squadron from Debden, an airfield in Essex.

  Ralph was showing me the combat report Brokenka had filed after his outing on New Year’s Day. The squadron had made its rendezvous with the bombers at 11.25. An hour later, a flight of Mustangs had peeled off, bouncing the Meio9s in the Ulzen area. Brokenka, in Little Ceska, had singled out a target, and chased it in a near-vertical dive. He’d closed to less than two hundred metres, loosing off three-second bursts of fire. At 3,000 feet, bits of the Mei09 began to disintegrate. Seconds later, it was ablaze. Brokenka had seen the pilot bale out but was too busy pulling out of the dive to register a parachute.

  I looked up.

  ‘What about the German?’ I queried. ‘Does Brokenka have a name?’

  ‘No. But we’ve got the date now, and the mission details, so the rest shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Write to the Bundesarchiv. That’s the German lot. Their records are over in Berlin. I gather they’re pretty helpful and I promised Karel I’d get back to him the moment they come up with something solid.’ He tapped the file containing the squadron records. ‘It’s all elimination, of course. Their pilots filed reports, just like ours. I imagine the chap we’re after’s probably dead, but if he survived…’ He frowned. ‘Are you sure you want to keep the Mustang?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Only now’s the time…’ Ralph’s eyes were back on the mountain of books on the desk.

  I shook my head and told him again that the aircraft was staying in the family. The phrase made him smile and he patted my arm before returning to his chair by the fire. The archival detective work, he said, had been a real pleasure, but a revelation, too. So many letters. So much cross-checking. So much light to be shed on those faraway days he remembered so well. For an hour or so, happily, I listened to him musing about his own little corner of the war, the aircraft he’d flown, the friendships he’d made, the moments when he’d battled for a kill, the conclusions he’d come to about exactly what it was that put the best fighter pilots way out ahead of the rest.

  ‘And what was it?’

  ‘Ruthlessness. Single-mindedness. Tunnel vision, if you like. The chaps who made it, really made it, were mostly bastards. They didn’t care about anyone else, just themselves. Funny that. They’d do well whatever line of country they went into. Peace or war, it wouldn’t matter.’ He nodded. ‘You had to get in close, as close as you could, and you had to have a certain kind of courage. Not normal courage, not what you or I would call courage, but something else.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ellie. It’s something I’ve thought about and thought about. A lot of these people were almost psychopathic. They had a sort of immunity.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Fear. They were pitiless, cold. You could feel the chill in them. It was as if something inside didn’t work properly. They had a kind of madness. Do you know what I mean?’

  I told him I didn’t. He looked thoughtful, gazing at the glowing coals, and I was suddenly struck by a very different Ralph, altogether less sure of himself than perhaps I’d imagined.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked gently. ‘Were you up there with them? These aces you talk about?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, regretful.

  ‘Did you try?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it didn’t work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He thought about the question, still looking at the fire, then he sighed, favouring me with a rueful smile.

  ‘I never got close enough,’ he said, ‘if you want the truth.’

  I told him it didn’t matter. Not to me. Then I was struck by something else.

  ‘What about Adam?’ I asked him. ‘Would he have made it?’

  He gave the question some thought. Then he shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Because he was too human, too eager, too much in a hurry. And because he let his attention wander. You couldn’t afford to do that. Not if you wanted serious kills.’

  I nodded, thinking of Adam, my puppy, my playmate, the glorious man who’d filled my heart, and shared my bed, and turned my life upside down.

  ‘You’re right,’ I conceded. ‘But that’s why I loved him.’

  Ralph smiled.

  ‘And needed him,’ he said quietly.

  Adam had been away in Africa a month before I realised what it was that I hated about Britain. We were still living in a draughty terraced house in Aberdeen, our first proper home after we’d married and Adam had got a job flying supply helicopters out to the North Sea oil rigs. The job only lasted nine months or so - Adam got bored - but it was through American contacts he met on the rigs that he landed the contract with the South African people. This new assignment took him out of the country for spells of three months or longer, and while he was away I did my best to make friends locally. We’d been out with several couples when Adam was still at home but I quickly discovered that operating as a single woman does absolutely nothing for your social life. The result, predictably, was loneliness.

  This, to be honest, came as a surprise. At home, in the Falklands, I’d never given the need for company a thought. By choice, I was often out with Smoko on my own, but I’d never once felt lonely. Back at the settlement, I had two sisters, a mum, a dad, and good buddies amongst the young shepherds and roustabouts who lived in the cookhouse. A day’s ride away, there were more settlements, more friends, more conversation. But in Britain, where you couldn’t move for people, there didn’t seem to be the same sense of kinship. People were cautious, wary, suspicious even. The way you dressed, which supermarket you went to, how much your husband earned, all these things appeared to matter. Packed into a big city, each of us seemed infinitely more isolated and cut off than I’d ever noticed in the emptiness of the Falklands.

  With loneliness came a longing to be home again, and on the gloomier days I began to drive out into the mountains, desperate for an hour or so when I could tramp around, and feel the wind on my face, and kid myself that I was back at Gander Creek. It never worked, of course, because there was always the drive back to Aberdeen, and the traffic jams on the ring road, and news of yet another stabbing on the TV once I’d got myself locked and bolted behind my nice big front door. As the weeks went by, I began to hate this half-life, and in my letters to Adam I must have said so because the moment he came home on leave he came up with the answer.

  ‘I’ll teach you to fly,’ he said. ‘We’ll start next week.’

  And we did. He’d made friends with one of the managers out at Dyce airport. The guy was also ex-navy and he had shares in an old Tiger Moth. A Moth is a biplane, one big wing o
n top of the other, and it’s got a little metal skid at the back which makes it, in Adam’s phrase, a tail-dragger. There are simpler ways of learning to fly than starting in a biplane but Adam, who was seldom less than sure of himself, wouldn’t entertain the thought of anything modern. An open cockpit, he assured me, was the very best introduction to what he promised would be a life-changing experience.

  It was early April when we started, a raw, bright day with a chilly wind blowing in off the sea. We were flying from a private farm strip up the coast, about a forty-minute drive from Aberdeen, and when we got there I was delighted to find how rudimentary the set-up was. A scruffy old Portakabin. Fuel hand-pumped from forty-gallon drums. And a youth on a tractor to clear the cattle from the strip whenever someone wanted to take off or land. This was a world to which I needed no introduction. Gander Creek. Definitely.

  I got changed in the Portakabin. It smelled of the fertiliser the farmer had stacked in bags at one end. Adam had found me a flying suit from somewhere or other but it was at least a size too big. Wearing an extra pullover filled up most of the space inside, and after I’d rolled up the trouser bottoms and the sleeves I felt like a badly wrapped parcel. Adam had produced a leather helmet, too, and a pair of goggles, but it wasn’t until we were walking out across the grass that I realised he was serious about me wearing them. Like the plane itself, with its struts and its wires, and the worn leather trim around the cockpit, the helmet and the goggles seemed like props from some period movie.

  Adam helped me put them on, tightening the helmet strap beneath my chin and then adjusting the goggles so they sat snugly on my face. For this first flight, he’d let me sit in the front cockpit. Later, once the real training started, we’d swap seats. When I asked why, he said something complicated about the aircraft’s centre of gravity. In a month or so, fingers crossed, I’d be going solo. Flying solo, you always sat in the rear cockpit.

  ‘So why don’t I sit in the rear cockpit now?’