Staring at the Sun Read online

  And then the war brought Tommy Prosser. That was definitely an Incident. The billeting papers arrived on a Tuesday, the Wednesday was spent complaining that there wasn’t enough room for the three of them, let alone four, and on the Thursday Tommy Prosser arrived. He was a short, slim man in RAF uniform with black hair brilliantined down and a little black moustache. The case under his arm was circled by a leather strap. He looked sideways at Jean as she opened the door, then glanced away, smiled at the wall, and announced, as if to a superior officer, “Sergeant-Pilot Prosser.”

  “Oh. Yes. They said.”

  “Very good of you and all that.”

  His tone was expressionless, but his unfamiliar northern accent sounded scratchy to Jean, like a rough shirt.

  “Oh. Yes. Mother will be home at five.”

  “Would you like me to come back then?”

  “I don’t know.” Why didn’t she know anything? He was going to live with them, so presumably it made sense to ask him in. But then what happened? Would he expect tea or something?

  “It’s all right. I’ll come back at five.” He looked at her, glanced away, smiled at the wall and walked off down the path. From the kitchen window Jean saw him sitting on the verge across the road, staring at his case. At four o’clock it began to rain, and she asked him in.

  He’d been posted up from West Malling. No, he didn’t know how long for. No, he couldn’t tell her why. No, not Spitfires, Hurricanes. Oh dear, already she was asking the wrong questions. She pointed up the stairs to where his room was, uncertain whether it was rude not to accompany him or forward to do so. Prosser didn’t seem to mind. Apart from his name, he had volunteered no information, asked no questions, commented on nothing, not even the way everything was freshly polished and smelt nice. They had given him the box room. There hadn’t been time to decorate it, of course, but they had hung Aunt Evelyn’s pictures on the wall for him.

  He kept to his room most of the time, appearing punctually for meals and answering Father’s questions. It was odd to have two men in the house. At first Father deferred to Sergeant-Pilot Prosser; he enquired with tactful admiration about the life of an airman, spoke with comradely contempt of “Jerry,” and would jokingly instruct Mother to “give another helping to our hero of the stratosphere.” But Prosser didn’t seem to answer Father’s questions in the right spirit; he accepted extra helpings without the extravagant thanks Mother clearly expected; and though he willingly helped with the blackout curtains, he appeared slothful in discussions about North African strategy. It became clear to Jean that Prosser was a disappointment to Father; equally clear that he knew it, and didn’t mind. Perhaps they just weren’t asking him the right questions yet. Perhaps heroes who flew Hurricanes required special questions. Or maybe it was that he came from another part of the country: somewhere in Lancashire, near Blackburn, he said. Perhaps they had different ways of behaving up there.

  Occasionally, when they were alone in the house, Prosser would come down, lean against the kitchen door and watch her ironing, or making bread, or polishing the knives. At first she felt embarrassed, but then less so; having a witness to her tasks made her feel more useful. Talking to him wasn’t any easier when her parents were out, though. He didn’t always answer questions; he could get prickly; sometimes he would simply look away and smile, as if remembering some aerial manoeuvre she couldn’t possibly understand.

  One day, as she was cleaning the stove, he announced crossly, “I’m grounded, you see.”

  She looked up, but before she could reply, he went on, “I used to be called Sun-Up, Sun-Up Prosser.”

  “I see.” This seemed a safe answer. She went back to smearing brown oven paste on the inside of the stove. Prosser stamped off to his room.

  For several weeks, the atmosphere in the house was uneasy. This is just like the Phoney War, Jean thought; except that there probably wouldn’t be any fighting at the end of it. There wasn’t. Father increasingly confided his views on military affairs only to Mother, while he would occasionally hint to Jean that just because someone was living under your roof it didn’t mean you had to be friendly. Civil was all that was required.

  Tommy Prosser came downstairs one afternoon at four. Jean was making a pot of tea.

  “Something to eat?” she said, still uncertain about the billeting regulations.

  “How about an All Clear sandwich?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Never heard of an All Clear sandwich? And you surrounded by all the necessaries?” She shook her head. “You stir the pot and I’ll rustle one up.”

  After a little banging of doors and some whistling with his back turned to her, Prosser produced two sandwiches on a plate. The bread did not look as if it had been cut with an entirely steady hand. Jean had tasted many better sandwiches, she had to admit; she tried to sound fair but encouraging.

  “Why’s mine got dandelion leaves in?”

  “Because it’s an All Clear sandwich.” Prosser grinned at her and looked sharply away. “Fish paste, marge and dandelion leaves. Of course, the quality of the local dandelions may not be up to scratch. You can send it back to the kitchen if you don’t like it.”

  “It’s … lovely. I’m sure it’ll grow on me.”

  “I’m sure I’ll fly again,” he replied, as if giving the second half of a joke.

  “Oh, I’m sure you will.”

  “I’m sure I will,” he repeated with sudden sarcasm, as if what he really wanted to do was slap her. Oh dear. Jean felt stupid and ashamed. She looked down at her plate. There was a silence.

  “Did you know,” she said, “that when Lindbergh flew the Atlantic he took five sandwiches with him?”

  Prosser grunted.

  “And that he only ate one and a half?”

  Prosser grunted again. With no obvious interest in his voice, he asked, “What happened to the rest?”

  “That’s what I always wanted to know. Perhaps they’re in a sandwich museum somewhere.”

  There was a silence. Jean felt she had wasted the story. It was one of her best, and she had wasted it. She wouldn’t ever be able to tell him that story again. She should have kept it for when he was in a better mood. It was all her fault. The silence continued.

  “I suppose you know where Lindbergh’s plane is,” she finally said in the bright tone of one who has taken conversation lessons. “I mean, that must be in a museum.”

  “It’s not a plane,” said Prosser. “It’s never a plane. It’s an aero-plane. Aeroplane. All right?”

  “Yes,” she replied. He might as well have slapped her. Aeroplane, aeroplane, aeroplane.

  Eventually, Prosser gave a short cough, the noise of one moving from anger or embarrassment to some other focus of emotion.

  “I’ll tell you the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said in a tense, almost grumpy voice. Jean, half expecting some arch compliment, kept her head ducked down. She still hadn’t eaten her other piece of sandwich.

  “I was on night ops. In the summer—June. Flying with the hood back, everything black and quiet. Well, quiet as you get.” Jean lifted her head. “It’s …” He stopped. “You wouldn’t know about night vision, would you?” This time, his tone was kindly. It was all right if she didn’t know; it wasn’t like calling an aeroplane a plane.

  “You eat all those carrots,” she said, and heard him chuckle.

  “Yes, we do. That’s what we get called sometimes, the carrot eaters. But it’s not to do with that really. It’s technical. It’s the colour of your instrument lights. They have to be red, you see. Normally they’re green and white, but green and white kills your night vision. Can’t see a thing. They have to be red—red’s the only colour that works.

  “So you see, it’s all black and red up there. The night’s black, the aeroplane’s black, it’s all red in the cockpit—it even turns your hands and face red—and you’re looking out for red exhausts. You’re alone as well. That was a good part. Off by yourself, solo, over to France.
Just when their bombers were getting back from their missions, from bombing us. You’d hang around one of their dromes, or you might shuttle between a pair of them if they were close enough. You’d be waiting for the landing lights to come on—or maybe you’d pick up something from its navigation lights. A Heinkel or a Dornier, that was the usual. You might get the odd Focke-Wulf.

  “What you could do was this.” Prosser chuckled briefly. “When they came in they’d always do a circuit first. Like this: descent, approach, fly down the runway, do a left-hand circuit, always a left-hand, come in again and land.” With his right arm Prosser sketched the German bomber’s flight path. “What you could do, if you were feeling a bit cheeky, was come in at about the same time, and when he flew his left-hand circuit, you’d fly a right-hand one.” With his other arm Prosser traced the Hurricane’s path. “Then, smack as he came out of his circuit, flaps down, just above stalling speed, and he was thinking about that last bit of turn and then getting the crate safely down, you’d be coming out of your circuit.” Prosser’s curving hands stopped opposite one another, the fingertips gunning from close range. “Bam. Sitting duck. Barn door. And the buggers thought they were safely home. Poaching, that’s what we called it. Poaching.”

  Jean felt distantly flattered that he was telling her about his flying days, but kept it to herself. She did the same with her feelings about the unfairness of poaching. Even if the Heinkel was full of black marketeers back from bombing London or Coventry or wherever. She hadn’t approved of poaching since she’d first lived with Aunt Evelyn’s print of the mink trappers. It had been right to put it in Prosser’s room. And was the Heinkel tenacious of life?

  “If you downed one, you beat it. There’d be quite a bit of dirt if you hung around. You only had about twenty minutes over there, in any case.” Prosser’s story seemed to be ending; then he suddenly remembered what it was he’d meant to say. “Anyway. One night, I hadn’t had a sniff of anything. Drawn a blank. Nothing doing. Crossed the Channel higher than usual, about eighteen thousand. I must have left it later than I should because it was starting to get light. Maybe the nights were still getting shorter.

  “Anyway. There I was, looking up the Channel, and the sun was just starting to come up. It was one of those mornings … well, it’s hard to describe unless you’ve been up there yourself.”

  “I went up in a De Havilland for the whooping cough,” said Jean, rather proudly. “But it was a long time ago. When I was eight or nine.”

  Prosser took the interruption without offence. “It’s so clear, it’s clearer than words can say. No clouds, the sniff of morning air, and this huge orange sun coming. I just watched it, and then, after a couple of minutes, it was all there—this bloody big orange sitting on top of the drink looking all pleased with itself.

  “I was so happy I could have had a 109 up my tail and I wouldn’t have noticed. I’d just been tooling along, staring at the sun. So I had a good squint round. Nothing there, just me and the sun. Not a whiff of cloud, and you could see straight down to the Channel. There was a ship there, tiny speck, lots of black smoke coming out of it; so I checked the fuel and went down to take a squint. It was a merchantman.” Prosser narrowed his eyes in memory. “About a ten-thousand-tonner, I’d guess. Anyway, there was nothing wrong. She was probably just stoking up. So I headed back to base. I must have lost half my height, down to eight or nine. And then, guess what? I’d descended so quickly, you see, that it all happened all over again: this bloody great orange sun started popping up from under the horizon. Couldn’t believe my eyes. All over again. Like running a film back and having another look at it. I’d have done it a third time and come home at nought feet except I’d have ended up in the drink. Didn’t want to join the submarine boys that fast.”

  “It sounds wonderful.” Jean wasn’t sure if she was allowed to ask questions. It was a bit like being down at the Old Green Heaven with Uncle Leslie. “What … what else do you miss?”

  “Oh, I don’t miss that,” he replied, quite rudely. “I don’t miss that. There’s no future in seeing that again. It’s a miracle, isn’t it? You don’t want to go back and see miracles again, do you. I’m just glad I saw it when I did. ‘I’ve seen the sun rise twice,’ I’d say to them. ‘Oh, yes, have the other half.’ They used to call me Sun-Up Prosser. Some of them did. Until we got posted.”

  He stood up and wolfed the piece of sandwich on her plate without asking. “What I miss,” he said emphatically, “since you want to know, is killing Germans. I used to enjoy that. Chasing them down until they were too low to bail out and then letting them have it. That gave me a lot of satisfaction.” Prosser seemed determined to sound brutal. “I got in an argument once with a 109 over the Channel. He could turn a bit tighter, but we were pretty well matched. We scrapped around but neither of us could really get in close enough to press the tit. So after a while he broke off, waggled his wings and headed back to base. If he hadn’t waggled his wings I wouldn’t have minded so much. Who d’you think you are? Bloody knight in armour? All good friends and jolly good company?

  “I grabbed a bit of height. There wasn’t any sun I could use, but I think he didn’t expect me to be chasing him. Expected me to go home like a good chap, have a slap-up meal and play a round of golf, I expect. I gradually began to gain on him—maybe he was nursing his fuel or something. Mind you, I was bumping along like a goods train by the time I lined him up. Gave him about eight seconds, I should think. Saw bits fly off his wing. Didn’t knock him down, more’s the pity, but I think he knew what I thought of him.”

  Sun-Up Prosser turned and stomped out of the room. Jean fished a piece of dandelion from between her teeth and chewed it. She had been right. It did taste sour.

  After this, Prosser took to coming down and talking to her. Usually, she carried on with her tasks while he stood propped against the door. This seemed to make it easier for both of them.

  “I was at Eastleigh,” he began once, as she crouched by the grate rolling the Express into firelighters, “watching this little Skua take off. Bit gusty, not enough to stop flying or anything. The Skua, as I shouldn’t think you’re aware, takes off with a funny sort of tail-down technique, and I thought I’d watch it go, cheer myself up or something. Well, it scuttled along the runway, and was getting up to flying speed, when it hopped into the air, suddenly, then flipped over on its back. It didn’t look too bad—just upside down. A few of us ran across the tarmac thinking we might be able to pull the chaps out. When we got halfway there we saw something on the runway. It was the pilot’s head.” Prosser looked across at Jean but she kept her back to him and went on folding newspaper. “Then we got a bit nearer and there was another. It must have happened as the Skua flipped over. You wouldn’t believe how neat it was. One of the chaps I was with couldn’t get over it. Welsh fellow, always going on about it. ‘Just like dandelions, Sun-Up, wasn’t it?’ he said to me. ‘Walking along, and you take a swing at a line of dandelion clocks with a stick or something, and you think, if I’m really clever I can knock them off and have them float down without disturbing the feathers.’ That’s what he thought.

  “The ones that haunt you … they aren’t really the ones you expect. I’ve had mates shot down only a few yards away. I’ve seen them get into a spin, I’ve shouted at them over the R/T, I’ve known they couldn’t bail out and followed them down and seen them go, and thought, I hope someone sees me off like this when it’s my turn. It shakes you at the time, and for a bit afterwards, but it doesn’t haunt you. The ones that haunt you are where there’s no fucking dignity. Sorry. I’m going to get it, you think, and sometimes you almost get used to the idea; but you still want it on your own terms. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. It really does.

  “I heard about some poor blighter at Castle Bromwich. He was testing a Spitfire. Took off, pointed the nose up, and started climbing as hard as he could. Got up to about fifteen thou, something went wrong. Came right back down again: from fifteen thou straight into the tarmac he
’d taken off from. They had to dig down quite a way. Then they had to have what was left of him looked at in case it was carbon monoxide in the oxygen supply or something, so they collected what they could find and sent it off for analysis. They sent it off in a sweet jar.” He paused. “That’s what matters.”

  Jean couldn’t really follow his horror. Dandelion clocks, sweet jars—of course it sounded undignified. Perhaps because it sounded homely, not grand enough. But there wasn’t anything very pretty or dignified about getting shot down or diving into a hillside or being burnt alive in your cockpit. Perhaps she was too young to understand about death and its superstitions.

  “So what’s the best way to … get it?”

  “I used to think about that all the time. All the time. When the whole thing started I used to see myself somewhere near Dover. Sunshine, sea gulls, the old white cliffs gleaming away—real Vera Lynn stuff. Anyway, there I’d be, no ammo, not much juice left, and suddenly a whole squadron of Heinkels comes along. Like a great swarm of flies. I’d intercept, get right in among them, fuselage like a colander, then I’d pick out the leader of the battle group, fly straight at him and smash into his tail. We’d both go down together. Very romantic.”

  “It sounds very brave.”

  “No, it’s not brave. It’s pretty stupid, and anyway it’s wasteful. One of theirs for one of ours isn’t a good enough ratio.”

  “So what about now?” Jean half surprised herself with her question.

  “Oh, now. It’s a bit more realistic. And a bit more wasteful. Now I’d like to get it the way quite a few pilots—the young ones, especially—used to get it back in ’39, ’40.

  “That’s one of the funny things you notice. You can’t get better without experience, but it’s while you’re getting the experience that you’re most likely to get knocked down. It’s always the youngest chaps that you might not see again at the end of an op. So as the war goes on, what happens in a squadron is that the old get older and the young get younger. Then some of the old ones get pulled out because they’re too valuable to lose, and you end up less experienced than you started off.