The Complete Flying Officer X Stories Read Free Page A

much of it before, the awful significance of it was not lessened. He told her about the weather; ten tenths, a bad storm soon after they turned for home, a spot of ice. “They put up a hell’s own flak at us. Just routine stuff, only a bloody sight worse. And they hit my hand. Took the skin off, that’s all.” He kept it in his pocket.
    She knew that he was not telling everything, that he never did, perhaps never would. Routine stuff, hellish flak, a spot of ice; the same words, the same repeated demand on courage, on fear if you like, the same holding back. She thought once more of her father: the world of the newspaper, the protest, the old indignations. To contrast it with the world of flak and ice, the long darkness of endurance, the spell of cold and strain thirty-one times repeated, was so difficult and angrily confusing that she said only: “Does your hand hurt? Can I do anything for you?”
    â€œThanks, darling, I’m O.K.”
    She remembered something.
    â€œWhat time did interrogation finish? Why were you so late?”
    â€œIt wasn’t so late. Not so very late.”
    â€œIf it wasn’t so late, why didn’t you ring me?”
    â€œI didn’t want to wake you.”
    â€œTell me what happened,” she said.
    He looked beyond the car window and said: “We got a bit shot up. Just one of those things.”
    â€œBad?”
    â€œBad enough. A lump of flak blew a hole as big as a cartwheel in the starboard wing and the transmitter was u.s. Shaky landing. But why pick on me? It happens every day.”
    â€œNot to you.”
    â€œIt happens,” he said.
    â€œYou hate it, don’t you?” she said.
    â€œHate what?” he said.
    â€œYou hate going, don’t you, time after time? The same place. The same job. The same everything. I know you hate it.”
    â€œI hate it like hell,” he said. He looked beyond the car window again. The diffused lighting of the searchlights and the cloudy moon shone on the misted windscreen. The trees were black against it. “But I hate what they’re doing even more. That’s what I really hate. What they do to me isn’t half of what I mean doing to them. Not half. Not a quarter. Not a hundredth part. Is there anything wrong about hatred?”
    She was thinking of her father, fussy with indignation, and she did not answer.
    â€œIt’s good honest downright emotion, isn’t it?” he said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSometimes I think we want more of it,” he said. “God, sometimes I think we do.”
    When at last she drove back from the station it was later than she thought. But at the house, to her surprise, her father and mother were still up. Her mother looked up from her knitting and her father looked at his watch.
    â€œEither my watch is fast or it’s ten past twelve.”
    She did not speak.
    â€œEven the Red Lion closes at ten.”
    â€œIt so happens I haven’t been there.”
    Her father coughed heavily. “Does your pilot friend realise that we sit here waiting?”
    She did not answer.
    â€œWe have a right to be considered.”
    She stood slowly taking off her gloves.
    â€œYou’ll agree that he owes us something, won’t you?”
    She stood thinking of the long flight in the darkness, the hellish flak, the hole in the wing, the shell through the fuselage, the shaky landing; routine stuff; easy, nothing to tell, something done again and again. Her mind became unsteady with hatred. She looked at her mother. The clean prejudiced hands were motionless on the knitting. Her father with the evening newspaper folded between his fingers stood with his back to the dying fire.
    â€œIs he married?” her mother asked.
    â€œDoes it matter?” she said.
    Her father crackled the newspaper.
    â€œMy dear child, my dear child! Does it matter? I ask you. What about the future? Is there any future in that?”
    â€œNo,” she