To Die but Once (Maisie Dobbs #14)(92)
“Tom! Tom! I am so relieved to hear your voice. Your mother and father have been worried sick about you—we’ve had news reports of RAF fighting over the Channel, and there was no word from you.”
“Sorry about that—we weren’t allowed to use the telephone during the evacuation—and it’s all right, I wasn’t flying. Well, I was, but not on ops. Where is everyone?”
Maisie realized it would fall to her to break the news to Tom about his brother—his bravery, and how he now carried the wounds of war. She told Tom the story from beginning to end, and then answered his questions, one after the other in quick succession revealing his fear and concern.
“I’ll put in for compassionate leave. I can’t stay here, flying all over the place like some gnat without a purpose—I’m coming home.”
“Wait until you’ve spoken to your parents,” said Maisie. “Tim will be at the hospital in Hastings for a few weeks, I’m sure—they have to wait to see if any infection emerges. Everyone’s at Chelstone, staying with me—it’s not too far a drive to Hastings from there, and there’s the train too.”
“Can you fit in another, if I can get away?”
“Of course I can, Tom—you’ll have to bunk in with Tarquin though.”
“For once I won’t mind his snoring. I’ll let you know when I’m coming, Tante Maisie. But I’ll try for Friday.”
“I hope to see you then, Tom—and do take care.”
“I’m up in Northumberland—shouldn’t really tell you that, should I? They put us pilots into three big groups, and we’re all over the place—there’s us newish boys, who have to get our practice in, and then there’s the next group, which is a mix, so everyone gets experience flying with more seasoned chaps, and then there are the pilots with the hours on them—they’re a year or so older than me, the old salts! I started flying an old Tiger Moth—doing the sort of aerobatics that Uncle James would have done in the last war. I kept thinking of him, actually.” He paused for breath, and to put more coins in the slot. “Then they put me on this American aeroplane, called a Harvard. I thought it was a lovely kite—even had automatic wheels up. But now I’m really excited, because the very good news is that I’m transferring to RAF Hawkinge next month—they’re moving me into Hurricanes. I’ll have had about ten or twelve hours flying by the time I’m on ops over to France, which isn’t bad as I think some of the men coming up after me will have less, what with one thing and another. And Hawkinge is in Kent, so you’ll see something of me when I’ve a day or two off.”
Maisie nodded, as if Priscilla’s eldest son were in the room. “Telephone your parents at the Dower House this evening—they should be there in an hour or so. Let them know you’re doing well—they will be so relieved.”
“Will do, Tante Maisie. I want to know how my brother is—he’ll get better when he knows I’m coming. The way this family is going, we’ll make a good team of one-armed bandits—I’d better be careful!”
“Yes, you had. Now then, call your parents and I’ll see you at the week’s end. You can tell me then what a one-armed bandit is!”
Maisie replaced the receiver, knowing that Tom’s nonstop light banter at the end of the call was his way of assimilating his brother’s plight, of trying to appear as if everything was normal. All the emotions that Priscilla and Douglas had experienced since they learned that Tim was missing would have hit Tom at once, with relief coming on top of fear, and—she thought—some anger toward his sibling under the surface, in the place where deep brotherly love resided. Every member of the family was affected—that was how it was. And now Tom was being posted to RAF Hawkinge. Northumberland seemed a lot safer. They’re moving me into Hurricanes. Maisie shook her head. It felt as if they had all been moved into a hurricane, right into the eye of the storm.
She went into the kitchen, took a bottle of white wine from her new refrigerator—she still had not become used to the intermittent running noise—and poured herself a glass. She stood for a moment, looking out of the kitchen window across the garden, to her clematis still in bud, and then to the barrage balloons in the sky. Soon she would have to think about closing the doors and drawing the blackout curtains. She thought of Tim, looking back at his homecoming, the image of him being taken from the boat on a stretcher, and the terrible wounds to his arm. And she remembered the description Sylvia Preston, the WAAF, had given her—of driving her ambulance onto Salisbury Plain and picking up the bodies of young men who had failed their first parachute jump. She pictured Tom stationed at an aerodrome in Kent, which—it now seemed—would be on the front line of the invasion, if it came. And then Anna. Anna. How could she ever keep her safe? She sighed. Her heart was heavy. It was time for the next call.
She had no need to look up the number before dialing.
“MacFarlane!” The greeting was as brusque as ever.
“Robbie, when will you answer the telephone as if there’s a human being on the other end of the line, and not a charging bull elephant,” said Maisie.
Robert MacFarlane, formerly a senior officer with Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and now working with the Secret Service as a linchpin between the two, laughed when he heard Maisie’s voice.