If he went on a sortie he flew in F-Fox. She was a good sound aircraft that had already beaten the odds by carrying one crew safely through their tour, but really he just liked the name and its associations with home. Ursula reported that Sylvie, who once upon a time loved the foxes at Fox Corner, had been laying poison down for them after they had committed a particularly successful raid on the henhouse. “She might come back as a fox in the next life,” Ursula wrote, “and then she’ll be very sorry.” She “liked the idea” of reincarnation, his sister said, but of course she couldn’t actually believe in it. That was the trouble with faith, Teddy thought, by its very nature it was impossible. He didn’t believe in anything any more. Trees, perhaps. Trees and rocks and water. The rising of the sun and the running of the deer.
He mourned for the foxes, he would have placed them above a coop of chickens in the order of things. Above many people, too.
He had sidestepped Christmas at Fox Corner, saying that he had to remain on the station, which was only half a lie, and he had not seen their potentially vulpine mother for many months—not, in fact, since the irritating lunch at Fox Corner after Hamburg. He realized that he had ceased to have any affection for Sylvie. “One does,” Ursula said.
F-Fox’s ground crew always issued dire warnings to anyone who had been allowed to borrow her—“bring the Wing Co’s kite back safely or else”—although really as far as the ground crew were concerned the aircraft belonged to them and they admonished Teddy himself in much the same terms.
Sometimes Teddy went up in one of the ropier old kites to test further his theory of immortality. His regular ground crew were unhappy if he flew with the new, the untested and the shaky. He occasionally piloted a sprog crew but usually he took the dickey seat and flew as a reassuring second pilot with them. It wasn’t unlucky if he was in it—quite the opposite. “We’ll be safe now the Wing Co’s with us,” he heard them say. He remembered Keith and his widdershins luck that had let him down in the end.
He made his way out to the dispersal pan to visit F-Fox and her ground crew.
It was the first flight for the crew Teddy was going up with. They had been delivered fresh out of the box from the OTU at Rufforth that morning. They had been assigned their own aircraft, but the ground crew had declared her unserviceable after her air test and Teddy had offered F-Fox to them, along with himself. They were as cheerful and excited as puppies at the prospect.
A bowser was already feeding fuel into F-Fox’s wing tanks. The ground crew knew roughly where they would be going by the amount being taken on board, but never talked about the target to the aircrew. They kept everything close to themselves. Perhaps they thought it was bad luck. Some of them would be keeping a long vigil through the night, usually huddled around an inadequate stove in their bleak little hut at dispersal, snoozing fitfully on a camp bed or even sitting on an upturned toolbox, waiting anxiously for F-Fox’s return. Waiting for Teddy.
A trolley of bombs trundled towards the aircraft, a miniature train, and the armourers started winching the bombs into the bomb-bay. Someone had chalked on one of the bombs, “This is for Ernie, Adolf,” and Teddy wondered who Ernie was but didn’t ask and no one said. One of the erks, a cheerful Liverpudlian, was at the top of a ladder, preoccupied with polishing the Perspex on the rear-turret with a pair of “blackouts”—the large serviceable knickers that the WAAFs wore. He had discovered—perhaps it was best not to imagine how—that they were the best material for this vital job. A little speck of dirt on the Perspex could be mistaken by the gunner for a German fighter and before you knew it he’d be shooting his guns off all over the sky, betraying their position to the enemy. The erk caught sight of Teddy and said, “Everything OK, skip?”
Teddy answered with a breezy affirmative. Calm confidence, that was the best demeanour for a captain, pull everyone along behind you in your optimistic wake. And try and learn everyone’s names. And be kind. Because why not?