“Don’t they have, like, a map?”
“Probably,” Teddy said. “But look, I’ve found him.”
He stopped in front of a headstone that read Flight Sergeant Keith Marshall RAAF. Bomb-Aimer and said, “Hello, Keith.”
“He’s not buried with his crew,” Sunny said, embarrassed to be with a man talking to the dead, even though they were the only people in the cemetery.
“No. The rest of us were OK. He was killed when we were attacked on our way back to the airfield from the Big City—that’s what we used to call Berlin. Sometimes intruders—Germans—hid in the bomber stream on the way home. That was a mean trick. He was my friend, one of the best I ever had.”
“Any others you want to look for?” Sunny asked after a few minutes of heroically repressed impatience.
“No, not really,” Teddy said. “I just wanted to let Keith know that someone’s thinking about him.” He smiled at his grandson and said, “Home, James. And don’t spare the horses.”
“Eh?”
It was growing winter-dark by now and Sunny said, “I’ve never driven at night.”
“Always a first time for everything,” Teddy said. Of course, sometimes the first time was the last time too. The journey back was a bit hairy but Teddy was determined to remain calm to bolster Sunny’s confidence. To Teddy’s surprise, Sunny asked, “So what was it you did? You flew a bomber? You were the pilot?”
“Yes,” Teddy said. “I was the pilot of a Halifax bomber. The bombers were named after British towns—Manchester, Stirling, Wellington, Lancaster. Halifax. Of course, it was the Lancasters who got all the glory. They could fly higher and carry heavier bomb loads, but actually by the end of the war when the Halifaxes had their Bristol engines fitted they could match the Lancasters. We loved the old ‘Halibag.’ The Lancasters were the celebrities after the war and we turned out to be the bridesmaids. And you were more likely to survive in a Halifax if you had to get out in a hurry. The Lancasters had this ruddy big spar in the middle and—” Sunny suddenly swerved across two lanes of traffic. Luckily the road was almost empty. (“Oops.”) Teddy didn’t know whether he was trying to avoid something or whether he had nodded off to sleep. Teddy supposed he’d better shut up. Nancy’s voice came back to him from long ago. Let’s talk about something more interesting than the mechanics of bombing. He sighed and murmured, “Thermopylae,” to himself.
“Eh?”
When they finally got home Teddy said, “You did very well, Sunny. You’re going to make a very good driver.” Best always to praise rather than criticize. And he had done well, after all. Sunny made bacon sandwiches (he was showing definite signs of improvement on the kitchen front) and they ate them in front of the television, with a glass of beer each to celebrate their safe return. For the first time in decades Teddy thought that he needed a cigarette. He resisted the temptation. He was exhausted and fell asleep on the sofa before either the beer or Noel’s House Party had finished.
Perhaps he should have moved back to the countryside when Viola fledged and left for university. Not far, the Hambledon Hills maybe. A little cottage. (He thought fondly of Mouse Cottage.) But instead he had stayed and plodded on, because something told him that this was the life that had to be lived out. And he liked York, liked his garden. He had friends, he belonged to a few clubs. He was a member of an archaeological society and went on digs with them. A ramblers’ club, an ornithological group. He preferred solitary pursuits, and being a member of a group seemed rather dutiful, but he could do dutiful and somebody had to or the world would fall apart. He hadn’t considered that working on a provincial newspaper was the most taxing job in the world, but nonetheless was surprised by how much time he suddenly had free when he retired. Perhaps too much.
What about these?” Viola asked, indicating the bookcase that held The Adventures of Augustus. “Do you think there’s some second-hand value in them? I mean they went out of fashion years ago. They’re all dedicated to you—I suppose that detracts from their value. There’s a full set though, so someone might be interested in them.”
“I’m interested in them,” Teddy said.
“But you’ve never liked them,” Viola said. “You haven’t even read them.”
“Yes, I have.”