USAF Major Rick Novak is a fearless Tornado B-45 jet pilot posted to a new British A-bomber base at Narford, close to the North Sea in Norfolk, England.
It is 1952 and the Cold War is warming up after the Chinese invasion of Korea.
He meets and falls in love with Anna Seymour, a British war correspondent back in Norfolk on compassionate leave.
He and many of his colleagues are housed off-base in holiday chalets by the sea at Hunningham. As well as flying spy missions into Russia they are all about to face a much more immediate threat: the Great Storm of 1953. It will wreck their homes and destroy their lives.
This novel is built around the real events that occurred during 1952-53 although these characters are completely fictitious.
When the sea eventually subsided 31 local people had died - including 16 US men, women and children - and 65 have perished in the 5-mile coastal strip. The disaster killed 300 in England and 4,000 in Holland.
Two US servicemen from the local airbase were the first-ever foreign recipients of the George Medal for their courage "not in the face of the enemy".
USAF Major Rick Novak is a fearless Tornado B-45 jet pilot posted to a new British A-bomber base at Narford, close to the North Sea in Norfolk, England.
It is 1952 and the Cold War is warming up after the Chinese invasion of Korea.
He meets and falls in love with Anna Seymour, a British war correspondent back in Norfolk on compassionate leave.
He and many of his colleagues are housed off-base in holiday chalets by the sea at Hunningham. As well as flying spy missions into Russia they are all about to face a much more immediate threat: the Great Storm of 1953. It will wreck their homes and destroy their lives.
This novel is built around the real events that occurred during 1952-53 although these characters are completely fictitious.
When the sea eventually subsided 31 local people had died - including 16 US men, women and children - and 65 have perished in the 5-mile coastal strip. The disaster killed 300 in England and 4,000 in Holland.
Two US servicemen from the local airbase were the first-ever foreign recipients of the George Medal for their courage "not in the face of the enemy".
North Norfolk, England
It was a clear winter morning. The face-numbing north wind from the previous day, a continuous blast that had scythed direct and unabated from the Arctic Circle, had backed north-easterly overnight and dropped to almost nothing.
Flights of resident and migrant birds jostled and swooped over and around the coastal marshland near the town of Hunningham. Through the middle of the salt marshes a deep, muddy creek ran out to the sea. Rising, curling wisps of mist still covered many of the pools of standing water honeycombing the land to either side of this. The water was particularly still in a large pool which reflected a nearby ancient, wooded copse and an open iron sluice gate.
A raised earth bank followed the line of the creek to the sand dunes and dark pines nearly half a mile away. Beyond lay the North Sea, sparkling deep blue in the strong winter morning sunshine, contrasting with the shallow golden sands of the beach. Three figures ran along the crest of the earth bank, towards the sea. The front two were twelve-year-old boys, Harry and Peter. Trying to catch up with them was Harry’s eleven-year-old sister, Bunty.
In the distance, their shouts mixed with the cries of sea birds. Bunty, increasingly distracted by what she could see around her, soon gave up the chase to concentrate on the wildlife. Two Marsh Harriers were up, hovering off to her left, scouting for the slightest movement of prey in the undergrowth. Part of a large flock of Pink Footed Geese noisily browsed the marshland ahead of her. A pair of Whooper Swans moved across the water in the dyke beside her without creating the slightest ripple. She was hunting for her favourite, the Snow Buntings, but there was no sign of them. Anna Seymour, her grown-up friend, had given her a special Christmas present: an “I-Spy Coastal Birds” book. In the two weeks since unwrapping it Bunty had already spotted over half the birds listed. She knew Anna would want to know when she had ticked them all. She walked slowly back towards the sluice gate and gazed down at the motionless water.
The unmistakable sound of jet aircraft heading out over the coast began and gradually increased in volume. Her gaze remained transfixed by the water. She saw the reflections of two B-45 Tornado bombers glide slowly over the surface.
She was surprised. She knew they must have taken off from the nearby American air base at Narford. Since the events of New Year’s Eve, over four weeks ago, the whole squadron had been grounded. She wondered whether one of the pilots was her friend, Rick Novak, who was now in charge as squadron commander. As the sound faded, the tide turned, and the water began to flow rapidly in through the sluice gate. The noise of the aircraft was replaced by the increasingly intrusive rush of incoming water, disturbing the stillness of the sluice pool and creek.
Bunty looked up to see whether she could see the boys but they were out of sight.
She shivered slightly as she remembered hearing the shipping forecast on the BBC Home Service as they had left the house that morning.
Her father had been listening intently at the brown Bakelite radio on its special shelf in the kitchen.
“A deep depression centred off The Faeroes is moving slowly northeast towards the Low Countries through sea areas Fair Isle, Cromarty and Forties. Pressure is currently 942 millibars and falling. This depression is expected over sea areas Fisher and German Bight at 0600 hours tomorrow. To repeat, this is a severe storm warning. Attention all shipping in sea areas…,” the announcer’s sombre and modulated voice continued to repeat the warning.
“That’ll be one to watch for then,” Charlie Bryant muttered as the children left.
Bunty caught the interest in his reaction. The family was used to her father conducting regular and animated conversations with the BBC Home Service. The Shipping Forecast was a favourite as well as other announcements like the reviews from the coastal weather stations. Sometimes he would argue, sometimes he would sniff contemptuously. This time he had nodded his head and begun to pack his pipe, thoughtfully.
Bunty knew that the lowest calibration of the left-hand side of the clock barometer in their hallway - beyond the legend in Old English script that warned of severe storms - read 930 millibars. It seemed that Hunningham might have to face some seriously bad weather. Storms meant excitement and adventure. She liked storms. She was not scared of the sea or bad weather as long as her parents were close to her.
She remembered that, almost exactly a year before, she and her family – together with the rest of the world – had listened to the minute-by-minute radio news broadcasts as the valiant Danish Captain Henrik Carlsen had struggled against hurricane force storms. He had fought to bring to the safety of the port of Falmouth the Flying Enterprise, a C1-type cargo Liberty ship that had been sailing from Hamburg to the USA.
Bunty had listened to almost every single broadcast. She knew all the details by heart because she – and other children throughout the country - had been encouraged by the radio, newspapers and their teachers to keep special journals as the saga developed.
Early in the New Year of 1952, battered by three days some of the worst weather ever known in the North Atlantic, a crack developed across the Flying Enterprise’s main deck amidships and down some12 feet on each side.
The ship had been carrying 1,300 of pig iron and 900 tons of coffee[i] together with 10 passengers. When the cargo shifted in the continuous storm, she took on a 30 degree list. Distress signals went out but all the European rescue tugs that might have reached her were helping other ships in trouble in the same storm.
Captain Carlsen’s SOS, however, was picked up by a US destroyer. It raced to the scene and all passengers and crew were taken off…. except the Captain. Intent on saving his ship from the sea he kept it afloat for 12 days and – under tow – got the ship to within 45 miles of Falmouth before he had to abandon her. As she slipped below the waves on 10 January he jumped to safety from her funnel.
Bunty’s shiver of anticipation now was similar to the one she felt during that time, a sense of wrapping round herself the solid strength and comfort of her parents but still reaching out to feel what it must have been like for Captain Carlson through his epic, stubborn battle against the storms and the sea.
She wondered how things were faring now for her friend Rick Novak.
WINTER 1952: TRANS-ATLANTIC ORDEAL
Shortly after the Flying Enterprise saga during the previous year Rick Novak had been in torment as an unwilling passenger on different Liberty ship. It was also making a rough passage across the Atlantic. His hands were gripping the bleached and weathered wood of the ship’s rail with a savage force.
His fear of being at sea was profound and implacable. The faded orange of the Mae West from his flying kit was stained with the evidence of this, thrown back at him from many earlier visits to the side of the ship. He was beyond worrying about how he looked or how pleasant he was to be near. The Mae West, in any event, looked incongruously small and useless against his huge frame. Rick was six feet and six inches tall
The blue in his eyes was washed out and faded with fatigue. The pain of retching – and the anger at the situation which had him enduring this journey at all – had leeched away the tan he had recently built up in the Nevada desert. His sandy hair was matted and sticky from the pervasive mist of sea spray and his clothes clung to him. They were wet and rancid as much because of his cold sweat as the dirty Atlantic weather against which the old Liberty ship was butting her bow.
The fear came from his inability to swim. He knew that, when people found out about this, they had difficulty in understanding how a towering former athlete could possibly be scared of anything. They presumed that such height gave mystical powers to blank out emotions and fears which ordinary mortals were permitted to suffer.
The anger, however, was inescapable. The sea had taken the life of his wife on the third day of their honeymoon just after VJ Day in 1945. His wartime flying years had been hazardous. He had not wanted to risk leaving Marjie, his teenage sweetheart, a widow. They had agreed to hold off on the marriage until the end of the conflict.
“When peace comes, I want us to enjoy it together so that we’re not looking over our shoulder at the time left before your furlough ends. I don’t want to be always flinching when I see the Western Union telegraph boy,” Marjie had reminded him whenever his resolve about this weakened.
It seemed to him as if Fate had noted their consideration and then deliberately and callously arranged the eventual peacetime bereavement.
He let the anger have its head. It seemed to push aside some of the nausea and clear the deadness in his body a little. He marvelled at the insensitivity and idiocy of the bureaucracy of the United States Air Force. It was no secret that he had rejoined as a pilot because of the death of the wife he had waited for the entire war to marry. He tried for eighteen months to fill the void, working first on his mother’s ranch in Montana, and then as a Ranger in the natural solitude of Glacier National Park close to the Canadian border.
Neither job eased any of his grief or pain. When the USAF was created in the fall of 1947, he adjusted from his wartime US Army Air Force rank of Lieutenant Colonel to join the new service as a Lieutenant. In the five years that followed he had worked his way up to Major.
Together with two senior RAF pilots he had recently trained, the trio were travelling by sea because it had been decided they were too valuable to be allowed to fly until the completion of a special mission. Perverse service logic decreed that the risk of harm to them from a ten-hour trans-Atlantic flight via Halifax in Nova Scotia and Reykjavik in Iceland was greater than being swept overboard or the ship succumbing to heavy seas.
Their ship, USNS James McKim Symington, had been built nearly ten years before as one of thousands banged and welded together in record time in shipyards all over the US seaboard. They were meant to be expendable. She hailed from Norfolk, Virginia, and she had seen off German U-boats and months of treacherous Atlantic weather during the hostilities. Now she was an old lady and was making heavy weather of the deep swell. Foam-flecked flinty green sea sluiced from stem to stern as her plates and rivets creaked and groaned.
Wing Commander Orlando Bunberry and Squadron Leader Eric Henley, like Rick, were close to their thirtieth birthdays. They, too, were experienced Second World War veterans.
Orlando sported a full handlebar moustache. He knew this made him something of a caricature “Wingco” and enjoyed acting up to the part. He had grown the moustache – and chosen its type - before he had joined the RAF. He knew no one would believe him if he tried to explain that, so he kept silent about its genuine origins.
Orlando and Eric had been part of the RAF’s Special Photographic Unit. Both had flown Seafires - specially lightened and adapted Spitfires with cameras instead of cannon – and Mosquitoes.
Their wartime role had been to slide into enemy territory to get reconnaissance pictures ahead of raids and attacks. Then they would sneak back and do the same after major operations. Unescorted and often either flying high above 30,000 feet or skimming just above ground level, theirs was a single-minded, fast and risky kind of specialist flying.
“I wish the bastards had let us fly the planes over to Narford. I can take special missions, but I can’t handle this,” Orlando shouted over the wind and spray. He was voicing the view of the three of them. Nodding towards Rick’s Mae West he muttered: “Are you living in that?”
“Yeah. It’s only coming off when we reach Southampton and I’m walking on dry land,” Rick grunted, hoping that neither of the others had seen him flinch as he was asked the question.
“Sounds like someone can’t swim,” ventured Eric.
Rick replied, almost to himself: “That’s only the half of it.”
He remained at the rail while the other two moved towards the comparative shelter of a battered wooden cabin door. When he had just about regained control of himself, and towering above them, he moved to join them.
None of them dared move back inside. They rocked unsteadily together. Fear and seasickness hit Rick again. He tried to get to the rail but was interrupted by a USNS deckhand.
“Capt’n saved some juice, coffee, ham and eggs for you guys, Major, sir. In the Officers’ Mess...if you would like to join him?” crowed the swabbie.
The three officers looked at him with loathing.
“A kind thought,” muttered Eric. He tried hard to sound polite. “However, I think I’ll join Major Novak looking at the sea again.”
In fact, Orlando had beaten everyone back to the side. All three airmen hung wretchedly over the rail again. The deckhand shook his head unsympathetically.
When he could manage it, Rick caught his breath and looked at the other two. “We’ve had four days of this already. We haven’t held down a meal yet, have we?”
“Or had one worth holding down,” said Orlando.
“You guys had it too easy with us at our training base at Muroc. We’re all the prisoners of the Navy, now. They like to humiliate what they don’t understand. In a Liberty bucket like this there is no escape,” said Rick.
He looked down and towards the bow and shivered with fear. Men on the lower decks crowded at the rails, most of them – too - were leaning unhappily over the side. On the deck directly below Rick, however, one group was thriving. Back in a sheltered corner by the deck housing Master Sergeant Jake Mardin was playing poker. He, and the other players, puffed at cigars and cheroots. They were concentrating so hard they were oblivious to the atrocious conditions.
A deep trough in the swell caught the JMS – as she was known to her crew - rolling the wrong way. She shipped a wall of water over the side. Men scattered and were washed randomly across the deck more in confusion rather than in any danger. Jake and the other players flicked their cards dry and continued to play as if nothing had happened.
The water drained off around their feet. Their smoking was undiminished.
Above them, Rick and the two RAF officers retired exhausted to the bunks in their tiny cabin. It was lit by over-bright bulkhead fixtures, which highlighted the condensation of the metal walls and the chipped off-white paint. With the lights on they got headaches. With the lights off they could see nothing and, if they tried to move, simply bruised and injured themselves. For a while they did nothing but reflect on how they had arrived at this state.
Rick’s squadron had taken delivery of forty B-45 Tornados three years before at its base in Barksdale in Louisiana. The original idea had been to transfer this squadron to Yokota in Japan. The problem was that these planes could not even fly as far as Hawaii to get them started on this trip.
There was a further snag. They were too large to be loaded on Liberty or Victory ships without chopping ten feet from each of the wings. Air refuelling techniques then were still in their infancy. At the time Rick remembered the feeling of misguided relief that he would not be at risk of having to get on a ship to follow the planes off to the Far East. Now he was ship-bound and heading for East Anglia in England.
Their B – 45 Tornado bombers were fulfilling a novel role. Just as they had begun to be built by North American Aviation, Congress had approved plans to halt manufacturing them as part of the post war peace dividend. Before the Congressional axe completely severed production – such decisions always took time to work their way through the system – the Korean War started in 1950.
Then, soon after, NATO’s need for a tactical nuclear bomber to act as a deterrent against a Russian attack against Western Europe became embarrassingly evident.
The United States was caught flat-footed. There was nothing except the B-45 to fill the gap. The Tornado had never been designed to drop atomic bombs. In fact, there was a large metal spar across the width of its bomb bay that had to be removed so that it could do this new job.
Massive Boeing B-47 Stratojets, with six engines, were lined up replace it. While two thousand of these giants were being built, the one hundred and fifty B-45 Tornados which had been produced were required to hold the line. The Tornados were midgets in comparison to the replacements that were already on the production lines.
Rick had been sent first to Wright Air Force Base in Ohio and then to a secret training and testing site at Muroc in Nevada to give Orlando and Eric, and other RAF colleagues who were still enjoying the desert sunshine, a top-of-the-range induction for the reconnaissance version of the Tornado, the RB–45.
This reconnaissance version of the Tornado had twelve cameras and a duckbill nose in place of a bombardier’s glass canopy that was fitted to the standard bomber.
Orlando and Eric had heard the alarming stories about early versions of the Tornado.
The list of problems was daunting. High speeds affected the accuracy of the gyrocompass. As if that was not enough, the automatic pilot frequently failed when the bomb doors were open. Given that the Tornado was – fundamentally – a bomber this was quite a major snag. The bomb doors also needed to be opened for full scale reconnaissance photography and that made the problem even more critical for their operations with the RB-45.
Then there was Orlando’s “B” list of flaws. “B” represented his understated “bloody inconvenient”. The emergency brake was unreliable. Bomb shackles unhooked themselves during certain manoeuvres, making the bomb load unstable. Engines had an unpredictable trick of catching fire when first started because of a faulty aspirator system. Fuel pressure gauges were erratic, and the airspeed indicator often functioned more like a roulette wheel.
By the time they got to fly the RB-45 with Rick some of these potentially lethal snags had been corrected. But they still occurred; gremlins in the system that had seen two of their training crews disappear without trace.
Orlando and Eric just hoped they were not going to discover further flaws that would make their job just as hazardous.
Orlando broke the silence in the cabin. “Let’s see that picture of your car again, Yank. It’s prettier than a woman and it’ll be much less trouble.”
Eric joined in from his bunk. “You’re a lucky bastard to have something like that waiting for you when we dock. If we survive, that is. How much do you say it cost?”
“I didn’t. I got a good deal; let’s leave it at that. One of the guys on the base is shipping home when we get there. He got word to me that I could take it off his hands if I wanted it. He didn’t want to bring it back because he’s due for a posting up to Alaska…. where it won’t be much use. That’s how I got this picture. I figured if he was that keen to sell then I could afford to say “no” at least once. After my second “no”, the price was so good I’d have been crazy to string him out any further.”
He passed across a picture of a Bugatti 35 two-seater racing car.
“My grandfather used to race one of them at the Brooklands racetrack in the twenties. You’ll turn a few heads driving that,” said Orlando, impressed. He examined the back of the picture closely. “It says here that it was laid up on blocks in a barn in 1939 until the end of the war.”
“That’ll have been because of petrol rationing. Gas rationing to you, Rick. It’s still going on. Same with food, clothes…. you name it. The only good news is that we’ve just got rid of those bloody ID cards that came in during the war. Apparently, the police were getting fed up with taking flak from people who couldn’t understand why they had to carry them seven years after the war had ended. You’d better get ready for a lot less plenty.” Eric could not keep the note of bitterness out of his voice. “It’s the price Britain paid for….”
“...being first in again to fight the Hun. Come on, guys, 1939 was over thirteen years ago. Knock it off, won’t you?” Rick finished the sentence, wearily in a mock-British accent. He retrieved the picture and waved it to try to break the atmosphere, which had suddenly cooled the camaraderie of the cabin. “You’re just jealous I’ve got one of these Bugattis! “
Orlando and Eric remained silent. The ship was heaving particularly badly at that moment.
*
Meanwhile, on the mess deck deep in the bowels of the ship, Master Sergeant Jake Mardin finished off some calculations on a pad. He took the notes and, amid the hubbub and groans of USAF ground staff being rattled uncomfortably around in the cramped and increasingly smelly and dirty conditions, he walked down two decks. He hummed tunelessly and tapped the half-smoked cigar in the top pocket of his work shirt. He moved easily between the decks despite the motion of the ship.
Most of those he passed on the way were Navy personnel. He reached a point outside a heavy iron door. Through a thick glass panel in the door there was the phantom flaring of coloured lights. Jake opened the door and a welder turned down the flame of an oxy-acetylene burner and tipped up his faceguard. The mechanic had been working to weld a steel fixture on the bottom of something quite small and delicate.
“Sonofabitch to fix…. but it’s done now. Got what I asked for?” grunted the welder.
He took the pad handed over by Jake and confirmed the calculations. Jake reached into a hip pocket and pulled out half a pint of whiskey and some dollar bills. He passed them over to the welder who was jiggling the work he had been doing out of a vice. He grabbed a rag to wipe it and test that it is safe to handle.
He passed back to Jake a shining steel model of a plane. He had added on a mounting to allow it to be placed on the front of a car. Only the outline and the tips of the wings were visible because rags covered the mascot. Jake hugged it to himself, clapped the welder on the shoulder and raced back up through the decks. As he moved higher, he slowed down and smartened himself before entering the area of the Officers’ Quarters. He reached Rick’s cabin door and knocked crisply. He noticed that there was some kind of atmosphere as he entered but decided to ignore it.
Still hugging the mascot for the Bugatti radiator beneath the rags almost as if it is a newborn child Jake blurted out: “Major, this is one beautiful baby. You’ll be so proud of her.”
Orlando and Eric found reasons to look elsewhere. Jake looked at them sideways, trying to figure out what was happening and just what it was that he had said that had caused the chilly change in their attitude. As the ship lurched again against the swell, he convinced himself that they were just feeling unwell.
HUNNINGHAM
Charlie Bryan was cycling slowly and methodically up one of the few hills in the area.
The spring morning sun added to the healthy glow on his weather-beaten face and arms and made his clear, hazel-coloured eyes sparkle. He had been out fishing since before dawn. His long dark hair, prematurely flecked with grey, was ruffled by the landward breeze that was heading out towards the sea. The wind direction was one of the reasons he was on his bicycle. With the wind against him - if he had wanted to berth as normal - he saved his fuel ration for the boat by using the bicycle to get home.
There was another, rather more North Norfolk reason.
Because his mackerel catch had been so plentiful he had put into Thorby harbour to offload it there rather than bringing his boat round another five miles west to its normal berth in the harbour on the edge of the salt marshes at Hunningham. The local fishmonger, Maurice Gildthorpe, had taken to parking his ancient van on the quay at Thorby on days when it looked as if the local boats could return with heavy catches.
Fishermen knew they could get a better price from him there, in the more discrete atmosphere, than the rationing regulations permitted at Hunningham harbour. Charlie always stowed his bike by the wheelhouse when he went out so that he had the option of cycling home from wherever he happened to land his catch. He could hitch a lift from someone with a tractor or from one of the local delivery vans to get himself and his bike back to Thorby to take the boat out the following morning.
He was humming the hymn tune "Abide with Me" as he pedalled. His version of it was enthusiastic but even he could hear that it was not completely in tune.
He had churchwarden's duties that afternoon at Saint Mary's Church. Those responsibilities weighed on his mind, but his conscience was untroubled by his business with the local fishmonger.
Pragmatism had operated on this stretch of the coast through the generations.
The churchyard at Saint Mary's had several gravestones commemorating the violent deaths of Customs officers, Revenue collectors and Excise men through the centuries.
As far as Charlie and other locals were concerned, when your living came from the sea you looked after your family first, then your friends and then you considered what might be needed to help locally. Only after all of that did the horizon of duty begin to extend towards London.
This area of North Norfolk had always been a law unto itself.
Romans and Vikings came and left with little of value. When faced with invaders from the sea or the land the population had melted away, out of sight, happy to return from inland woods and copses to rebuild any damage that had been inflicted when the time was right. They buried their gold and valuables.
In modern times, as ploughs on the back of tractors dug deeper, fabulous hordes of gold and silver antique torcs and jewellery had been uncovered.
King John was reputed to have lost part of his baggage train in 1216 on the edge of The Wash. Rumoured to have contained several of his Crowns of State, tales about this treasure had multiplied through the centuries.
The prospect of its recovery – with the dreams of vast wealth after a Coroner’s Inquest into the Treasure Trove - remained the secret desire of many local farm workers. King John had been unable to mount a recovery expedition because he died almost immediately, poisoned – it was said - by the monks of an abbey he had been visiting.
Nestling on this corner of The Wash, Hunningham had the North Sea on three sides of it. Little had changed in this area through those centuries until Victorian entrepreneurs and the railway system discovered the town.
Then, with the brisk pace of the new age, it was developed as a model seaside resort for healthy summer holidays. The winter population was little more than a thousand people. During the summer, however, hundreds of families flocked to it by train from the Midlands and the north.
Bands of white chalk were layered between the deep red local Carrstone giving the cliffs at the edge of Hunningham the distinctive appearance of a multi-layered slice of cake. Sited on top of the cliffs towards which Charlie was cycling was a lighthouse, a coastguard station and a collection of radio masts. The beaches below were wide and sandy, stretching out of nearly half a mile at low tide.
It was generally accepted that, with so much sea around Hunningham, those who lived there had little option but to be healthy. The extremes of this weather made it kill or cure. It seemed to Charlie that residents either lived to be a hundred or took a quick headstone in the churchyard. Way off in the distance he could see the town’s Victorian pier, its dark cast-iron legs striding out over the beach at low tide into the sea. Beyond it was the seaside funfair and honeycomb of amusement arcades and fish and chip shops that ran in a ribbon behind the south beach.
He followed the curve of the coast road round through the edge of the town and on up along the cliff top. Behind him the road ran back east to where the sand and dunes - sprouting coarse marram grass - gave way to salt marshes, creeks and the harbour from where he normally sailed.
A long raised concrete promenade ran the length of the south beach. It came into his view as he followed the cliff road. It had been built to provide rudimentary protection from the sea and high tides. In one place, recent storm damage had washed away some of the walkway. Already the arc of a new path had been trampled in by those who had to skirt round the breech to get to the other side. The promenade was barely high enough to provide any protection to the holiday homes and chalets behind it.
Sir Michael Seymour, whose family had lived at Hunningham Hall since it was built in 1563 and whose estate’s boundaries ran around the edge of the churchyard, had dragooned Charlie into volunteering to become a Churchwarden. That was just after the war ended when Charlie returned home from service with the Royal Navy.
The other churchwarden - the local doctor – was the Vicar’s nominee.
It was the kind of suggestion that Charlie, in the circumstances, would have found very difficult to refuse outright. The Seymour family also had the traditional right – personally - to approve the individual appointed as the Vicar at Saint Mary’s, so dissent was never likely.
Charlie understood that Sir Michael was making a point in urging him to put himself forward as the “congregation’s” appointment. No Hunningham fisherman had played that kind of part in the life of the church, not at least within living memory.
But times had changed. The war years had knocked down many of the class barriers although Sir Michael and his wife, Lady Elena, had never been ones for any of that kind of nonsense. They had run the estate and its businesses, since it became their responsibility in the early nineteen twenties, along the lines of a large local co-operative.
Charlie took his church duties seriously and solemnly. His colleague churchwarden was Doctor Lewis Kett. Between them they were responsible for checking and maintaining the fabric of the church, keeping the church records and inventories and attending the Bishop of Norwich whenever he visited the parish as well as playing an active part in the Parochial Church Council.
In an emergency – and Charlie was thankful that one had not arisen during his time in office – Churchwardens had to be capable of taking church services and dealing with everything except administering Holy Communion. Charlie’s wife, Rose, supported him with quiet pride.
Rose knew that he had spent sleepless nights wrestling with his conscience because much of what he had seen during the war had made him doubt the existence of God. She knew her husband was no hypocrite. Watching him tested – yet again, after everything he had endured during the war – had been an agony for both of them.
In the end Charlie decided that this was one of God’s personal tests for him and his doubts began to subside.
Events like the funeral, which would be part of his responsibilities that afternoon, however, always threw up questions. They were even harder to answer when he thought back to the news which had been brought the previous evening to the cottage he and Rose shared with their two children, Harry and Bunty.
He could see the smoke from the cottage chimney as he let the pedals of the fixed-wheel bicycle spin on their own, lifting his feet towards the crossbar, and coasted down the lane towards his garden gate.
Then he saw the whitewash and black-stained timbering of the front with its leaded windows with Rose’s carefully kept front garden showing a riot of spring colours.
“It was a rum life”, he thought. “Here I am, in credit for a good catch and a good morning’s work behind me, looking at something I never believed would be mine. And God still feels very far away.”
*
Around dawn the same morning, about the time Charlie had been out in his boat in the North Sea, the USNS James McKim Symington had turned her back on the Atlantic and finally docked at Southampton. The ship's crew scurried purposefully to the business of making her fast and then unloading her cargo.
Rick, Orlando and Eric were the only pilots on the ship but there was an advance guard of maintenance crews, crew chiefs and logistics officers who would form the heart of squadron when it arrived from the US. They had their crates of parts and ordinance. For the USAF personnel, leaving their creaking iron prison could not happen quickly enough.
Rick staggered down the gangplank, jostled by a herd of others eager to get on to dry land. Halfway down, he saw the gleaming blue bodywork of his 1926 Bugatti 35. Waving languidly to him, from the car, was his mission co-pilot, Lieutenant Gene Chang.
Although not as tall as Rick, Gene Chang was a large, raw-boned man with an untamed mop of jet-black hair and a mischievous grin. He was someone who appeared to take life as it came and then not too seriously.
Gene had experienced the great joy of driving the Bugatti down from Norfolk that morning having arrived at their base some days earlier. He had been rostered to fly Rick's B-45 over from the US on the basis, the two of them presumed, because Gene had not been involved in training Orlando and Eric. That made him somehow less vital and more expendable. Whatever the reason, Rick bore him no grudge for escaping the sea crossing and getting to the car first.
Owning a car like this had been a teenage dream of Rick’s. He never thought he might have a chance to realise it. He had collected a set of cards with pictures of the great pre-war racing cars at his prep school and the Bugatti had pride of place.
This model had a water-cooled, supercharged eight-cylinder, single overhead cam engine which produced 130 horsepower.
He still remembered some of the history, printed on the back of the cards. Ettore Bugatti, from Milan, had been the son of an artist and designer. It was his flair for inspired but practical design and his precise, conservative engineering, which made the car so different from all others of the time. Between 1924 and 1927, Bugattis driven by a variety of different nationals clocked up nearly 2,000 victories in various races and rallies.
Actually reaching the car, however, suddenly became more difficult that Rick had foreseen.
Gene was patiently sitting waiting for him in the passenger seat, waving an old-style leather flying helmet, goggles and gauntlet gloves at him. Rick checked that Orlando and Eric were loading themselves and their baggage into a USAF jeep and waved to them. Then he tried to run to the Bugatti. He had to slow down. He was weaving like a drunk and his legs acted as if they were still at sea. He paused to collect himself and almost fell over, nearly dropping Jake’s handcrafted B-45 mascot for the car.
His head began to swim. For a few seconds he felt weak and nauseous. He paused and collected himself, then made it to the car walking more slowly and carefully. Climbing gingerly over the side and into the driving seat, he passed the mascot to Gene and found himself staring helplessly at the controls. The steering wheel was on the right-hand side and the gearshift and hand brake was beyond it, outside the driving compartment.
Gene clapped him on the shoulder. “You look a bit green, buddy. Are you sure you’re up to this test drive? I can pilot her all the way back up to Norfolk…. if you give me half the chance.”
“Shit. I don’t want to sit on the dockside like a patsy. I just want to get the hell away from that ship and the last few days. Now what the heck do I do...?”
“It takes about five minutes to figure out the layout and then...you’ll see for yourself. After you clear this place, you’ll be able to open her out. The roads are quiet once you get past London. Gas is on ration for the Limeys. It cuts down the traffic. I guess that sea crossing must have been the journey from hell for you?”
Rick nodded grimly. He started the engine and gunned the car forward towards the dock exit. Gene hung on, trying not to look scared, as they cleared the gates with inches to spare.
Behind them Orlando and Eric looked on disapprovingly from their sedate USAF transport.
“Pity such a good pilot is such a damn awful driver,” remarked Eric. The men enjoyed mixing caricature RAF mess slang through their conversation. This was partly a tribute to Orlando’s eccentric handlebar moustache and partly to prevent themselves being swamped by the infectious openness of the American culture in which they had become so deeply immersed. “I hope he doesn’t prang that. We still need him. We should have made him travel up to the airbase at Narford with us.”
“He’ll be okay. Nothing was going to keep him away from that new toy,” said Orlando. “He’s not such a bad cove, all things considered. I pity his co-pilot for the journey, though. Did you get a look at him? Looked Chinese to me.”
“He is. Lieutenant Gene Chang. First generation American Chinese, I gather. They’re a strange mixture, these Yanks. Rick’s father and mother are from somewhere in Eastern Europe. I gather the station commander at Narford, Colonel Edward Behr, was born in Leipzig before his parents moved to the States. Wouldn’t surprise me if our damned ground crew are not all from what is now behind the Iron Curtain, what?! Either that or they will be from families that we made slaves years ago and who have every right to be fighting us for all of that idiocy. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Who really is fighting who and where do we come from, way back?”
“I suppose what you’re really saying – in these modern times - is ‘who is the enemy’?” said Eric.
*
Rick had always learned quickly. He mastered the elements of the controls of the Bugatti within a few minutes of his drive out of Southampton. Gene stopped gripping the side of his seat soon after that and began to relax.
Having cleared London, they sped along narrow country roads with high green hedges. These hid the occasional oncoming car or lorry but by now Gene trusted Rick’s reflexes.
Close to Narford they passed a sign to Hunningham. Gene pointed at it and shouted, above the noise of the engine: “That’s where we’re heading. It’s the nearest town to the base. Folks around here call it something weird like “Hunnam”. They get real hurt if you call it anything else.”
“No sweat, buddy - I’ll make sure to get it right. No point in upsetting the people we’re supposed to be protecting here.”
Soon the car was speeding around the perimeter road at the edge of RAF Narford. Rick could see various USAF planes parked in dispersal bays. The base was clearly still under construction with more building work in progress than completed. An aircraft was making its final approach. Both men looked at it with professional interest. It was a twin-engine Fairchild C-119C transport with distinctive dual tail planes on the end of long, thin fuselage pods that ran to the rear of the aircraft. Rick put his foot down and raced it, moving ahead of the plane as it touched down.
“How far is Hunning-ham from here?” Rick shouted. His voice had to battle with the combined noise of the aircraft landing and the engine noise of the car.
“Hey, pal, what’d I just tell you? It’s Hunnam, not Hunning-ham. At this speed, it’s only a few minutes ride – around nine miles from the base.”
“You’ve found us a good place?”
“You’d better believe it. The guy who sold you this baby, Major Hilsum, knew his cars. But he wasn’t the tidiest guy in the world. The house he rented that we’re taking over needs a bit of work to clean it up. It is by the sea but it is not too close to it….if you get what I mean. I hope that’s going to be okay?”
“It’s being on the sea, not by it, that I can’t take. We’ll try to find some local help, then, for the house. We should start making ourselves part of this community now. I’ve had it with being on the outside, looking in….” . Rick had a faraway look as his sentence tailed away to silence.
He had a distinct feeling that some forces, which he could not fully explain, were operating around him. He was neither scared nor disconcerted. In fact he felt quite peaceful and confident. He did not want to sound too visionary. He wondered whether it was a delayed effect that arose as a consequence of the journey across the Atlantic on the Liberty ship.
“It’s got beautiful views. There’s a wooden deck running outside each of the rooms on the first floor. On some days you can see forever. On others, the wind comes straight down from Russia with nothing protect you from it.”
“Yeah. Our Master Sergeant’s been briefing me on that. Jake describes that wind as ‘being flushed straight down from the Urinals’. I think we know what he means. You’d better watch out, though. You’re sounding like a real estate agent, Gene. This country’s got to you pretty damn quickly.”
“Well, there are fewer hills than in my San Francisco, that’s for sure. Or your corner of Montana, I guess.”
*
In Rose and Charlie Bryan’s cottage they were clearing away the teacups. Charlie had explained about his morning’s catch and why the boat was at Thorby. Their son, Harry, was sitting at the large kitchen table cutting an incongruous figure. He had a papier-mâché donkey’s head stuck over his own head. Their daughter, Bunty, had her sleeves rolled up at the kitchen sink and was fixing a dripping tap. All were wearing their Sunday best clothes.
“Mum, how long will Anna stay?” asked Bunty.
“You’ll need to ask her yourself, dear. And just be careful with what you’re doing. I know you’ll fix that tap but I don’t want you making a mess of yourself,” chided her mother.
“She’s all right, Rose – Bunty’s a very tidy worker. I can’t see Anna flying straight back to cover that war in Korea. Her dad’s going to need her to help him through.” Charlie had pulled out his pipe and was puffing on it, thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t have thought a Russki could become so much part of life here. We won’t see the like of Lady Elena again.”
“Do you want to tell the children about what she’s done for us all, Charlie?
It’s as good a time as any. Harry, take that thing – that papier-mâché monstrosity - off this minute and listen. William Shakespeare’s just going to have to wait a bit longer.” Rose often had trouble getting her son’s attention if there was any opportunity for him to play the fool. The part of Bottom in the forthcoming school play had given him the perfect role.
“Well now…. Anna came round last night to see your mum and me. Lady Elena remembered this family in her will. They’ve been good to us with work. Both with your mum and with me….when the fishing has been hard. Well....this is our cottage now. No more rent. This is all ours, thanks to her.” Charlie’s voice betrayed emotions he was trying to choke back. He was still absorbing this news and found it difficult to believe it was real. Neither he nor Rose had expected anything like this.
The children looked at him, wide-eyed. He had their absolute attention. After a moment the ever-practical Bunty broke the silence.
“I think we should remember her in our prayers, then. For a long time, too, not just tonight,” she said earnestly.
“Yes, dear. And Lady Elena thought of you, too. There was something she knew you might like to remember her by. It’s in this box. And you, Harry, there’s this envelope,” said Rose.
“Can I open it now, Mum?”
Rose looked at both children, having got their full attention now. “Yes. Of course you can.” She turned to Charlie. “Not having to pay rent means there’ll be more for the housekeeping each week. That’s such a Godsend. I’m going to keep looking, though. We still need a bit more coming in. For the little extras.”
“You want me to try for some of the construction work out at that Yank airbase? You know I’ll sell the boat and do that if that’s what you want.”
Charlie meant what he said. He hoped his wife’s regular response would not have changed but he never took it for granted. He was not disappointed.
“No, dear. The sea’s your life. I married you as a fisherman and I’m not about to try to change that. You didn’t fight your way through the war at sea just to mix cement when it was all over. None of us thought the peace was going to be this hard. But we’ll never starve while we’ve got your boat. And now we’ve really got our own roof over our heads. It’s for the extras I need to find something.”
Bunty had opened her package and was waving it around. “Mum. Look....it’s her opera glasses from that Bolshy Ballet in Moscow.”
“And she given me all that Russian money she used to count through and two five pound notes! I can become a real collector, now,” chimed Harry.
“Those two five pound notes can go straight into your savings bank, my boy! Hand them over now. And Bunty, it’s Bolshoi, not Bolshy. You must never say Bolshy….”
“Oh Mum! Bunty’s got two as well. Make her hand them over too.”
“Come on, then, both of you. That’s a fortune for the future that can start growing right now. Get yourselves ready for church, now. Just remember, Harry, this is a funeral, not Midsummer Night’s Dream and you are not Bottom. It’s a very sad and solemn occasion. You are both to be on your best behavior.”
The children nodded dutifully. With their father as a churchwarden, they knew that neither of their parents would stand for neither nonsense nor disrespect at church generally or at this funeral in particular.
*
The Bugatti passed the Hunningham town sign. Ahead of it was a Norman church, a green and there was a duck pond close by. People were crowded around the church entrance. The Bugatti moved slowly and quietly as Rick soaked in the atmosphere. He let the car coast to a halt short of the church and killed the engine. This was picture postcard England.
Almost immediately a black hearse appeared from the other direction and parked by the church. Pallbearers, who had been standing out of sight in the thatched porch of the lych gate, stepped forward and drew a coffin from the hearse. Another car pulled up behind. Anna Seymour got out and held out a hand to help her father, Sir Michael. Anna, nearly as tall as her father, had her straight fair hair drawn back with black ribbon. Her father, slightly stooped and with the help of a stick in one hand, steadied himself on his daughter’s arm and then straightened up. Both had decided to wear lighter colours than the traditional mourning black. Anna was wearing a dark grey suit and white blouse with her mother’s favourite set of pearls around her long neck. Her father’s suit was a slightly lighter grey and, in the top pocket, he was sporting one of Elena’s lace handkerchiefs. He had agreed, reluctantly, to wear a black tie and both were wearing black armbands. Anna looked up as she turned into the lych gate on seeing the Bugatti and the men in it. She turned quickly back to her father as if she had seen nothing.
Rick concentrated so hard he was involuntarily holding his breath. Only when Anna, Sir Michael and others by the church entrance were inside with the coffin did he dare breathe out. He eased himself out of the car.
“Do you figure they’d mind if we pay our respects too?” he muttered quietly.
“Wait up, pal. You sure you want to do this?” Gene looked carefully and saw a purposeful gleam in his friend’s eye that was not going to be reasoned away.
“There can’t be any harm. We’ll stay right down low at the back.”
Rick was already striding toward the church porch. So intent were the two of them on getting into the church without drawing attention to themselves that they failed to notice someone who was observing them in a disinterested fashion.
In a sheltered corner of the church porch, in a comfortable basket, sat a large Persian Blue cat called Horatio wearing a collar and lead. He was washing himself meticulously. He belonged to Hettie, one of the members of the congregation inside the church. Horatio continued his personal grooming routine and general observation undisturbed.
Inside, the congregation in the church had just finishing the first hymn. The Vicar, Robert Howlett, scanned his congregation. The church was completely full. At the front were Sir Michael and Anna. The coffin had a family wreath on it with two cards.
In the pew behind were the Bryan family. The Vicar looked to the back of the church, registering briefly his surprise as the two American airmen in uniform entered and bowed their heads.
From a pew close to the back Iris Walsingham, turned to see who has just entered. She caught Gene’s eye and then took her time turning back to the service, rolling her eyes to the ceiling in resigned irritation. Gene felt a deep flush of embarrassment and confusion cross his face. He was glad when Rick signalled to him that they should quietly make their way back out to the car.
Horatio watched in the porch, unnoticed, as Gene stepped clear of the church before he turned to Rick. “Well, that’s one way of introducing ourselves to the locals. D’you see that blonde?”
“That must have been someone quite special.” Rick was miles away.
“She was.”
“Not the blonde. The person who just died.”
“I guess we’ll soon find out. We’re living here now. Our house is only a
few minutes on. Let’s go.”
“You drive, Gene. I just want to soak all of this in. Take your time. We’re in no hurry.”
Rick lounged back in the passenger seat with his left arm trailing out of the cockpit of the car. Suddenly he felt very tired. Gene started the car and drove at a sedate pace up the hill from the church into the town and then down towards the south beach.
The house they were heading for was, like many on that road, a wooden summer holiday chalet. It had two floors with a sun deck, and protective wooden railings, running all the way round the outside of the first floor. Gene heaved Rick’s bags from the car and the two of them carried them inside the house. While Rick prowled around, Gene went out on to the sun deck at the front of the house.
“Did Major Hilsum allow you to have a look inside this place?” Rick shouted from the bathroom. “Or did he greet you at the door with a cold beer, waltz you round the outside and then get you to park your dumb ass on a chair out on the front deck to gaze at the sea view with him? I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve never been inside this hellhole that he’s created. As sure as hell he didn’t use the bathroom for taking a bath.”
Gene poked his head through an open window holding a cold beer. “He said the place was a mess because he was packing all his gear,” he shouted back.
“Well, I guess he’s gone and most of it is still here. And there’s crud he’s generated during his stay, which is seriously dangerous. This place is a health hazard, a fire hazard and God knows what else. It’s a miracle that he didn’t treat the Bugatti like this place.” Rick could hear Gene’s voice inside the house but could not to locate him.
“No. He was kinda particular about that car. Treated it like a baby.”
“But left all the dirty diapers here. Gene, come in from wherever the hell you are and look at this. He’s used one of these rooms as a workshop and dumped all the dirty rags in the corner.”
Gene climbed in through a window frame. He looked back out.
“When you get out on the sun deck, Rick, look to the left about half of a mile along the line of the sea wall. It’s not too close to us but I figure it’s been breached. Looks like old storm damage.” Then he looked at what Rick was pointing towards inside the room itself.
“Holy shit. Now this is seriously bad!”
*
That evening, at Seymour Hall, Sir Michael had asked his close friends to a dinner following his wife’s funeral. Anna was the hostess and organizer. The guests were the vicar, Robert Howlett, and his wife Lily; Hunningham’s mayor, Walter Chard, with his wife Olive; the County’s Police Chief Constable Martin Green with his wife Flora, and the Seymour family’s close confidant Colonel Donald “Bob” McRobert.
The Hall had been built in the middle of the Sixteenth Century but had gone through a number of changes, revisions and additions during the succeeding years. The main building, where they were having dinner, looked out over sweeping lawns, which ran down to an ornamental lake.
Half of the original Hall had been destroyed and rebuilt after a fire during the Eighteenth Century and Sir Michael’s grandfather – with Victorian zeal – had tried to enlarge and rationalise other portions of it.
The result was a handsome but rather rambling structure with no specific architectural style but a very individual appearance. The windows on the front of the house were huge and most of those on the ground floor opened out to various portions of the gardens. The stone was predominantly the local red carrstone which gave the building a warm if rather dark appearance.
Because the evening was still the Hall was reflected perfectly in the unruffled lake. Beyond the lake was a Gatehouse in the same carrstone with mock Tudor turrets and accommodation which Anna had used since she was a young girl. On her sixteenth birthday she been allowed to take it over as her own. She had her own bedroom in the Hall but many of her possessions were in her own world in the Gatehouse. From the Gatehouse, an oak-lined drive led up past the lake to the Hall itself.
In the long dining room of the Hall the meal was coming to a close. It was still almost light outside and there was a soft glow to the room which was lit by candles on the table. Sir Michael was feeling the effects of several glasses of claret but he was determined he was not going to disgrace Elena’s memory. With the help of others, he had nursed his wife carefully through the final months of her cancer. It hurt him to think of her still body, out of pain but so alone without him. At least she was at peace. With a stab of realisation, he understood that he was really the one on his own, without her.
They had made an odd couple. If he now had a slight stoop it was probably because there had been a significant difference in their height. Even when wearing high heels Elena had hardly cleared five foot. He topped six foot.
He was a Cambridge graduate, his English studies completed just as the First World War began. Before that he had been a pupil at Kelling College. This 400-year-old public school, some twenty miles from Hunningham, had a solid – rather than an inspiring - reputation both for its academic results and its team sports. His friend, Colonel Bob, had also attended Kelling College although the Colonel was ten years younger than his host.
Michael Seymour had served as an infantry officer in the trenches before volunteering to join to the Royal Flying Corps. His application to transfer met no resistance. This was because of his outspoken views on conditions generally and - in particular - the idiocy those in command above him. Those who organised the transfer hoped they might hear no more of him. The Royal Flying Corps had a high mortality rate. When the conflict finished in 1918 he was a Major, a highly decorated fighter ace and had a love of flying matched only in intensity by his hatred of fighting.
In 1921 his parents had encouraged him to go to Paris for further studies at the Sorbonne. It was clear to them that their son’s wartime experiences had forged him into a committed socialist despite his privileged and comfortable upper-middle class upbringing. They were not unduly perturbed by this.
In Paris Michael met, was captivated by and married the tiny, dark-hair and vivacious Elena. Her Communist Jewish parents had fled to France as émigrés just after the Russian Revolution fearing for their lives in some of the factional in-fighting around Lenin’s rise to power. Michael and Elena returned to Hunningham and Seymour Hall.
Then, shortly after this, came two deaths. First Michael’s mother and then his father. With little time to prepare, Michael found the inheritance of his father’s title daunting. He and Elena threw themselves into the complexities of the 800-acre estate and the responsibilities of being the major local landowner and employer.
What an eye-opener that had been, he thought. That really tested their socialist principles but it was Elena’s boundless energy and invention, which put a form and purpose to their lives from that point on.
He looked around the table and carefully acknowledged each guest in turn. Then he stood up, glass in hand, to propose a toast.
“Robert, Lily, Mayor, Olive, Chief Constable, Flora and Bob....there is no need for anyone to respond to this. When I asked you here this evening it was not to look back. I just wanted to thank you all for your help and support during Elena’s illness. Anna and I both appreciate it so very much. With your help, we’ll make certain that all the things that mattered to her most are not forgotten and that her memory lives on in the causes she supported so passionately. Anna, my dear...?”
Anna stood and they both toasted their guests. They sat down and Martin began to stand to respond. Flora touched him gently to remind him to stay seated.
“What would you say was top of her list, Anna?”
“Oh - that’s such a difficult question, Martin. You know how long the list was! I suppose top of it was the appalling state of the coastal defences, closely followed by DPs’ rights, community farming and fair pay for German and Italian POWs who have stayed on to help work the land.”
“Those Displaced Persons - the DPs – they’re one of the intractable problems.” Colonel Bob felt he could not let this opportunity pass. It was a subject he and Elena had often discussed. “Of course, they deserve a fair wage and a new life. Most of them had to wait five years in old concentration camps or former SS barracks before they were allowed to come here. Think about that. What a way to have to live after what they had already been through. They had to avoid being shipped back behind the Iron Curtain. The POWs are a very different case. They come from the countries and armies whose policies actually created the DPs in the first place. It is a difficult circle to square.” This observation was backed with the authority of experience. All present that evening knew he had worked in some of the DP camps at the end of the war, searching for former SS staff.
“And then, as well, Elena had so many church-based causes. She’s been so very generous to those in her will,” added Robert, the Vicar of St. Mary’s.
Michael had been thinking carefully. He was not sure he trusted himself to talk too much but he did not want to let down the side by saying nothing. Elena would not have approved of silence or too many heavy thoughts.
“To my mind, it was the coastal defences. The fear of flooding and losing everything is pernicious. We saw absolutely eye to eye on that,” he ventured.
“Oh Daddy, don’t be like that. It is natural that you found some of her other things a bit strange.”
“It is rather difficult to pay the Huns and the Eyeties - who, don’t forget, were trying to kill us all in our beds a few years ago - to stay here and work the land for a full wage. That’s money which should be going to the families of the lads who are no longer with us to do the work.” Having got started, Michael’s eyes were sparkling, as if Elena was in the room with them.
“Daddy!” Anna warned him and then turned to the Mayor. “Is there any news, Walter?”
“It’s not good. We keep pressing the County Council and the Ministry. You only need to look at what happened two years ago down on the South Beach sea wall. The tidal surge nearly topped it and the sea smashed up a lot of it. But the powers-that-be just aren’t interested.”
“You mean we can’t even get the money to repair the damage?” said Lily.
“Walter’s tried so hard but no one higher up seems to want to listen. It all “make do” and no “mend”, if you know what I mean,” said Olive. She was not going to have his effort questioned, not even in this friendly gathering.
“What’s worrying me is the number of properties on that stretch of the coast which are being let out to the Americans and their families,” said Martin.
“Trouble is that none of the owners live around here. They’re mostly families from the Midlands and the North who built their holiday chalets in the Thirties, didn’t get to use them in the Forties because of the war and whose children want an income from renting them out now that times are so hard,” reminded Michael.
Flora had been waiting for her moment. She took it at a rush. “The real trouble is that these American types just don’t realize they’re not welcome here.”
Anna looked around the table. The turn the conversation had taken did not surprise her. “Oh come, come - they can be rather insensitive sometimes...but that’s no reason to steal their money and make them out to be devils incarnate.”
Martin was having none of this. “No. This is serious. I hear it over and over again from my chaps on the beat, especially in this part of the county. John Bull, doing his National Service, gets paid twelve shillings a week while Yankee Doodle Dandy – the average American airman - gets over ninety pounds a month.”
“Yes, but Martin, we must remember that the Americans are serving in what is to them, a foreign country.” Anna had heard this wage comparison too many times before. It was normally expressed as a ratio of two pounds a month for the lads doing National Service against a hundred pounds a month for their American counterparts. It was hard to see any equity in that ninety eight per cent differential.
“Well...they certainly feel like an occupying force, according to most of my local Bobbies. Too much money and no damn sense.” Martin refused to come off his hobbyhorse.
Then the Vicar decided to join in. “I have to say, I don’t understand why they need to be here at all. The reality is that Korea is on the other side of the world. If the Yanks are so wedded to the idea of Fortress Europe, then what are they doing here. We’re not Europe, we’re Great Britain, for heaven’s sake. It’s Europe that keeps causing the wars that we have to sort out. And another thing. The Yanks didn’t exactly jump in at the beginning of the Great War or this last one. What they are good at is sitting on their hands, making a profit out of us and watching us bankrupt ourselves before they’ll even make a move. And – insult to injury - having bankrupted us, that KGB agent Harry Dexter White[ii] was all the time selling us out to Stalin at Bretton Woods.”
The Colonel looked as if he was about to join in the fray, stung by something the Vicar had said, but he bit his lip and lowered his head.
Anna, however, was affronted and was not prepared to contain her annoyance despite the fact that she was the hostess. “Robert! I just don’t believe you can be so isolated from what’s really going on in the world. I’m afraid I’m beginning to see why you went into the church. I’ve seen for myself what’s going on in Korea. Russia’s is as keen to….”
“Anna! No lectures...please. And remember, these are guests and old friends.”
Anna raised her eyebrows at her father’s rebuke but remained silent.
Having started that particular hare running, Martin realised he needed to clear the atmosphere. He raised his glass to smother further debate.
“Let’s just drink one more time to Elena. I do think her spirit is very definitely here! She must be enjoying this....but it really is about time we were making our way home.”
It worked. The guests raised their glasses, drank and then began to prepare to leave.
When they had gone Michael and Anna sat on their own at the table. Michael poured them each a large brandy.
“She was so proud of you, Anna. It meant a lot to her that you came back for her last days. She said that if she’d been in your position she’d have found it very hard to ask someone a favour and to come away from the front line fighting you had had to work so hard to get to cover.”
“That wasn’t difficult, Daddy. It’s the next bit – the two of us without her – that’s the real challenge. I’ll get back there when I’m ready. But we need to get things sorted out here.”
This book was a difficult read for me. On the one hand, I found there was too much information at the beginning. On the other hand, the real story, for me, didn't start until I was almost one-third into it..
The amount of details about airplanes and military action at the beginning is way too thick, in my opinion, and should be edited so that "regular" readers could be drawn in better. While it's nice to know about all the different airplanes that Major Rick Novak and his comrades know how to fly, it seems to me that regular readers are not as enamored of this knowledge as are real airplane fans (I happen to be married to someone who's obsessed with airplanes and was able to get some clarification about the role each airplane played in the story).
Once the interaction between the English people and the Americans began, I found this novel to be much more interesting. The roles of various people living in the village and their opinions of the "Yanks" who were on the base, working with the Royal Air Force, were quite interesting. The addition of a man who disguised himself as a bird fancier/painter but who was, in reality, a Russian spy, was a nice touch.
The inevitable romances between a couple of the Yanks and the locals are handled well, and the descriptions of the horrible tragedies created by the storm are very real. My favorite character was Bunty. She was not only brave during the storm--she was also her own person throughout the entire book.
I found quite a few typographical errors in this book, the most egregious of which was a different spelling of Rick's first wife. In the first part of the book, her name was spelled Marjie; later in the book, she was referred to as Margie. I was surprised that a former journalist would have tolerated such mistakes.
The story is interesting and deserves to be told. I would like to see this novel tightened up and focused to improve the flow.