The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [200]
‘Port engine gave up the ghost, damaged in the skirmish with the German fighters. Colerne says they managed to radio in before the radio packed up too. They were going to try to bring her in at either Alton Barnes or Yatesbury.’ Mr Keiller’s eyes fixed on the corner of the room, like he can’t bear to look at any of us. ‘Donald would have favoured Yatesbury, of course, knew it like the back of his hand.’
Thought he did, anyway, cocky bastard. But this is a day like no day he’s ever flown before, a day that’s not so much like flying through a night as like flying under water. Does that matter? Of course not. Behind him he’s got Davey, good old Davey; Davey’s an ace navigator, knows his way around Wiltshire, from the air and on the ground. Knows all the roads, all the airfields, knows every fold and wrinkle of the hills. Give us a fix, Davey. Really? Well, you’re the numbers wizard. Donald, too tired to argue, believes him.
On the ground it’s pitchy black too. The airfields will have to turn on their lights for the boys coming home. Alton Barnes is dark: it’s a training base, no novices out flying today. Davey and Cromley are past and gone before the message reaches Alton Barnes to light up the runway.
‘Not more than a couple of miles short of Yatesbury field. Simple mistake. Poor bastards weary unto death, flying practically blind, radio not responding, catch a glimpse of what they assume are runway lights.’
Easton Down. Not so fancy as the Starfish at Barbury, but one of the Q-sites Davey’s chum helped to build. A fake airfield. Don’t tell me Davey forgot it was there. He knew where it was all right.
Easton Down wasn’t one of the sophisticated Q-sites. Weren’t no Hares and Rabbits, the lighting rigs that made it look like planes were taking off or landing, running across the empty farmland. For Donald Cromley, that was the pity of it, because if he’d seen what looked like a plane taking off he’d have known at once it couldn’t have been Yatesbury, like Alton Barnes a training airfield, so nobody except him and Davey likely to be flying in or out of it that terrible afternoon. Instead Easton Down had gooseneck flares, laid out like runway lights across the bumpy ground. They’d been lit most of the afternoon, since the crew in the pillbox had been alerted there were German bombers in the air, and nobody’d given them the stand-down yet.
There she is, says Davey.
You sure? says Donald, bit of doubt in his voice. Wasn’t expecting to be at Yatesbury yet, hasn’t seen any of the familiar markers he used flying in and out when he was piloting those trainee wireless operators round the field. But it’s a bugger of a day, Satan’s own picnic out there; maybe, thinks Donald, he’s missed the landmarks in the rain and the gloom.
That’s her, for definite. Davey knows exactly where he is, doesn’t he? Best sense of direction in the squadron, which is why Donald was so glad to have him volunteer as his navigator when George broke his leg.
And Davey does know exactly where he is.
‘Meant to be a fail-safe system,’ says Mr Keiller. His eyes are wet, I’d swear, in the lamplight. ‘Coded signals, so RAF crews don’t mistake them for the real thing. Red light on a pole, flashing the letter K in Morse, supposed to indicate they should back off, it’s a dummy field. Poor devils. Such a stupid bloody mistake, but they were tired. I assume Davey must have interpreted it as “carry on”. It’s happened before.’
No, Davey knows exactly where he is. He’s been planning this for weeks, waiting for the right opportunity. What you will shall be.
Wish I could’ve killed him, I said to Davey, the day of the picnic on Windmill Hill, when I told him what Mr Cromley had done. Shook Davey’s world. Can’t think about what you did, Fran, without getting angry.
Get angry with him, I said. When it came down to it, Davey would do anything for me. Would’ve married me, if he’d known I was going to have a baby, even though it was Donald Cromley’s bastard. But he didn’t know. Should’ve told him.
Donald fingers the old bronze dagger he