Sentimental Journey Read online

  “She’s unconscious. I have a duplicate set of lists over at the nurses’ desk. Come. We’ll find your wife.”

  He followed her blindly. He was numb all over.

  “Mrs. Inskip? Is that correct?”

  He nodded. “Yes, Inskip.”

  She looked down the list.

  Greer. Greer. . . . He reached out to the nurse and touched her arm. “Mrs. George A. Inskip. Of Berkeley Court.”

  She nodded and went back to the list.

  It felt as if a month had passed by as she turned the last page. Then she picked up another clipboard and flipped through it. She stopped reading. “Her name is here.”

  “Where? Which ward?”

  She held out the clipboard.

  The heading at the top of the page read: “Morgue.” He vaguely heard the nurse say, “I’m sorry.” All the names blurred into a jumble of letters. All the names but one:

  “Mrs. G.A. Inskip. Berkeley Ct. Time of death—3:50 P.M.”

  “I’LL NEVER SMILE AGAIN”

  It’s been said that the essence of real human love is the one shared between mother and child, where a mother feels the presence of her child even inside the grown man. A basic human instinct? All she knew was that her son was in the hospital room.

  “George?” Odd that her voice sounded like someone else’s. They had taken the breathing tube from her mouth that very morning. Deep inside her throat it burned when she tried to make a sound; her words came out charred around the edges.

  “I’m here, Mother.”

  A metal chair scraped across the floor; then she felt the touch of his hand on her arm, the one with the tube stuck into her vein. In her mind’s eye she could see her son’s hands: the flat nails, the tanned skin, the strength in them.

  Almost a quarter of a century ago in the bedroom at Keighley, after hours and hours of labor during which she thought she was going to die, she looked down at her newborn son for the very first time, counted his fingers and toes, and saw a small version of his father.

  “I knew it was you. You were in the doorway only a few moments ago. It wasn’t the first time. Weren’t you here before? Yesterday? Last night?”

  He said nothing.

  “Am I wrong? Perhaps it was the medication and I dreamed it.”

  “Are you in much pain?” He grasped her hand.

  “Sometimes it feels tight. My arm hurts.” She searched for the words and thoughts to describe what she was feeling and came up empty-handed. “I must look a fright.”

  He did not reply.

  “I don’t suppose it matters, since I cannot see.”

  “Mother . . . ”

  “I always did so despise all those huge bloody mirrors at Keighley. Every room you walked into. I used to tell your father that he must have been descended from Narcissus. There are even mirrors hung about the library, for God’s sake, as if someone would want to look at themselves as they were reading. Now I shan’t be bothered by them any longer.”

  “You don’t have to do this for me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Pretend.”

  “Don’t.” She held up the hand with the tube taped to it and winced. “If you love me at all, don’t say anything. I want to revel in my pity for a few days.” She tried to sound flip, but failed even to her own ears.

  There was nothing from him, no words for the longest time. “She’s dead,” he said quietly. “The baby’s dead.”

  “George . . . ” she whispered his name. His hand was clammy and felt cold. Oh, he’s so young for this.

  “Why?”

  “I tried to keep her from going back upstairs.”

  “She went upstairs?” The chair creaked as he stiffened in it.

  “She said something; then she stood up and ran from the cellar room.”

  “In the name of God, what could have possibly been that important?” His tone was icy hard, his voice was hoarse, as if he had been screaming at God and Heaven and the world.

  “The bombs were so loud this time. They were closer than ever before. Then it was the oddest thing. The bombing had stopped with an eerie kind of suddenness. We were sitting there in the silence. I believe she thought she was safe. The candles were burning. She was talking about you and a promise she’d made you. She had been reading one of your letters aloud; then she stood and bolted for the stairs. I followed her, calling out for her to wait for the all-clear siren. But by the time I was up into foyer she was already up the staircase to the second floor. I followed her. I tried to stop her.” What was left of her voice disappeared momentarily, as if she had swallowed it along with the bitter pill of war and reality. She saw the image of her son’s lovely, animated wife rushing into the kitchen just before everything suddenly disappeared in a ball of hot light.

  Now she began to cry. It went on for a long time, and the worst of it was crying didn’t make her feel one whit better. It made her feel weak and out of control. And it hurt her face.

  “I know, Mother. I know,” was all he said. His grip on her hand did not change. He was sitting so still.

  She wanted to see his face, but the doctor had told her that very morning that her eyes were burned, along with half of her face. They could not guarantee she would ever see again. She laughed without any humor. “My eyes can still cry these foolish tears, but they cannot see a thing. I cannot even open them.”

  “You will, Mother. The doctor said they have to heal before you can open them again.”

  “What good will that do me?” She did not want to cry. She was not a weak woman.

  She turned towards the sound of his breathing. “I’m sorry.” For just a moment she asked herself if she truly did want to see again, to see what losing Greer and their unborn child had done to her son.

  “I stayed in the house last night.” His tone sounded distracted, surreal, as if he had left his soul somewhere far, far away.

  Sometimes there were grand loves in the world, the kind that were apparent to anyone who had even half a heart and half a brain. She knew this because her marriage had not been a great love affair. It had been comfortable, tender, secure, like two parallel lines moving side by side.

  But it had not been profound and unassailable, not the kind of love that George and Greer had, one that was a complete circle rolling through life in one single continuous perfectly formed shape—a shape that protected what was within that circle: George and Greer, Greer and George, two hearts, two souls, one love.

  On a summer day almost fifteen years ago, a ten-year-old boy with a quiet intelligence and a gentle heart met a golden-haired girl who had wit and charm and was his other, more spirited half. And that was it.

  “I slept in the front bedroom.” The sound of his voice came from above her. He was standing by the bed. “It looked unchanged, not a window broken, not a sign that anything had happened at all. Nothing even out of place. How could that be when the third floor and the entire back of the house is gone, Mother? How could that be?”

  “I don’t know. I ran after her,” she whispered. George was speaking, but she didn’t really hear him. She was reliving the scene in her memory. Running up the staircase. The sound of her feet on the carpet. Down the hallway.

  Greer! Greer! A slip of a floral dress disappearing around the edge of the kitchen doorway.

  Then came that terrifying whistling from overhead, that ominous shriek of a noise that made her stop and listen, made breathing and thinking impossible; it kept her frozen to the sound when she knew she should run away.

  So many times they had heard the whistle, then breathed a relieved sigh when the blast that followed was not near them.

  Odd, wasn’t it, how you never heard the blast when you were the target.

  Her son was talking. “ . . . when I walked inside, the foyer was intact, everything perfect, except for the sparrows that had flown in from the open roof above. They were sitting on the coat rack, and a lark was perched on that dragon table, singing when there was nothing to sing about.”


  She could hear him breathing, hear his breath catch a bit.

  He sat down hard in the chair. “God . . . but she loved that table.”

  What can I say to him? I can’t make it go away. This isn’t like some scraped knee or a lost ball. All I can do is tell him what happened.

  “What was it? What was worth her life and our child’s?”

  “I don’t know. She ran in the kitchen. When I came around the corner, she was standing in front of the open icebox.”

  “The icebox? The icebox? Oh, God . . . ” He lay his head on the bed next to her. A second later he was sobbing. It was an awful sound—the kind of crying that came from the deepest, darkest part of you, the kind of crying you heard with your heart, the kind of crying that broke it.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry.” She stroked his hair. The bed was shaking with his sobs, and he was saying something, but she couldn’t understand him because his head was buried in his arms.

  “Let it all go, my son. Let it go. I know it’s such a waste.” “A waste?” he said bitterly, raising his head. Then he gave a hopeless laugh that sounded like glass breaking. “A waste? She died for the bloody fucking eggs.”

  “ITS A BLUE WORLD”

  It was little more than a week later that Skip was on the train back to Wellingham. He looked out the open window, above the dark blue blackout paint at a few inches of flashing colors: overcast sky, the dark green treetops and pitched roofs that melted together—the world flying past him in a blur. It was an odd thing how in a time of war, life itself, the hours and minutes and days, all of it seemed to move at odd speeds, as if the world were in a nosedive spinning out of control.

  It had been a mere eight days since he had buried his wife and unborn child in a quiet ceremony at Keighley. Eight nights that seemed like eight decades and eight days that seemed like eight seconds.

  He’d brought back an aunt to stay with his mother until she could be released from the hospital, then spent two days and nights in a pub near Piccadilly. For hours he sat in a dark corner and stared at a red, black, and white “My Good, My Guinness” poster with a fat seal balancing a beer bottle on its nose while it served a foaming stout to a thirsty soldier. Empty bottles of single-malt scotch lined up on the table like enlisted men while Skip knocked back glass after glass. He tried and failed to forget his vacuous existence, tried and failed to forget the obsequious platitudes people said to him, well-meant though they were.

  Buck up, old chap. It will get better with time.

  It’s God’s will, you know.

  She’s in a much better place.

  You’ll marry again.

  That one was his favorite. It implied nothing except that people were like replacement parts on a motor. No problem, old chap, you go out and get another.

  The brakes of the train squealed as they scraped metal, and the rail carriage came slowly to a stop. The engine spit a burst of steam, and it floated into his open window, condensed, and dripped down the glass of a small framed tobacco ad by Churchman’s No. 1 with a pilot smoking and reminding you to recycle cardboard cigarette packets.

  A female ticket collector in a grey woolen uniform with a slim skirt and fitted jacket—new styles that used less fabric—moved through the narrow aisle on low-heeled, sensible shoes created to conserve wood for the war effort.

  She rang a small bell and called out, “Wellingham!”

  The next moment he was stepping down from the train onto a wooden platform that was less than three miles from the airbase. The hard soles of his shoes made a hollow, empty sound as he walked with his musette bag slung over a shoulder, heading toward a base vehicle— an American-made Dodge WC12 half-ton that had been part of the Lend-Lease agreement from the Yanks. It was parked under an iron streetlamp seldom used anymore with the blackouts and bombing raids.

  He tossed his bag in the back of the lorry and started to crawl inside, but froze when he looked up.

  The men inside were all staring at him.

  He hated that look on their faces, the one that said they didn’t know what to say to him, looks that were awkward and pitying, but also tinged with a small edge of relief that it hadn’t happened to them.

  It was a long three miles back to base. A few of them tried to make inane conversation, then gave up and talked amongst themselves. Pilot Officer Mallory had the most kills. Eleven. He was now the squadron top ace.

  The lorry drove through the gates and pulled to a stop in front of the pilots’ quarters. No sooner was he out than the siren wailed and someone shouted, “Scramble! Scramble!”

  Skip stiff-armed the barracks door; it slammed against the wooden wall. He ran toward his cot and tossed his bag on it, then jerked open his footlocker.

  Within minutes he was zipped in a jumpsuit and leather jacket, strapped in flight gear, and pulling on his gloves as he ran across the grass for his Spit. Over half the squadron was already in the air, which smelled of high-octane plane fuel and an even higher level of anticipation. A tin-hatted ground crewman handed him a chute, while another checked the ammo supply. From the corner of his eye he saw that seven swastikas had been painted on the fuselage of his plane.

  He tossed the chute in the cockpit as they shoved him onto the wing. He hopped inside and slid the canopy closed with one hand. The crew scattered like grouse while he strapped in and flicked a look at his gauges.

  A second later he hit the switches. The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine rang up in vibrations through the control stick and into his palm, where it purred pure power. Boots on the rudder pedals, the sky overhead, and he was off down the field, bouncing over the jagged, wheel-churned ground of the grass airfield, the engine roaring toward takeoff speed, that sweet moment when he pulled back and left his stomach, his body weight, and the ground behind him.

  And he was flying.

  “ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL”

  He broke the old squadron record of four kills in a day. He was rather surprised when he reflected on it as he flew back to base. It was quite easily done. Almost as if the enemy were flying into his sight. He’d pressed the button, tracers shot out, and he watched the planes spiral down in flames until they hit the Channel, disappearing and leaving no sign they had ever existed apart from a pale green patch in the water.

  There were no chutes today. A Nazi bomb had ended his world. He would do what he had to, to keep Nazi bombs from ending anyone else’s. He merely kept firing until the planes exploded or fell apart.

  The wheels of his Spit touched the field with a bounce, and he rolled over toward the maintenance hangars, then stopped. He shoved back the canopy and climbed out. The ground crew had made it a habit of waiting a few minutes after he landed before they came to work on the plane. The sergeant of the ground crew was a brittle old mechanic from Dorchester, a man with an understanding of pride, who gave him time to vomit.

  Skip jumped down from the wing. He shoved an anchor brick against a front wheel, then slowly walked around the plane. He’d taken some hits in the wing from the dorsal gunner on a Heinkel. It wasn’t too bad. Some holes in the starboard wing skin and a few chewed-up places on the tail.

  Corporal Andrews came up to him. “Sorry, sir. No hits today.”

  “Five.”

  “What?” The kid turned and looked at him. “But, sir . . . ”

  “I didn’t up jack my insides?” His laugh was biting. “I don’t think I’ll be having that problem any longer. I say, come here. Looks like one of them got the rear navigation light.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The rest of the crew joined Andrews and began going over the plane. As Skip turned away, he saw the corporal lean over and whisper to another crewman. He didn’t care what they were saying. He removed his fleece-lined gloves and strode towards the dispersal hut. He wanted some coffee.

  Inside, he grabbed a sandwich from a plate and took a few bites as he poured himself a cup of strong black coffee. He leaned against the wall and crossed his boots at the ankle as he finished off the farmer’s s
andwich of cheddar and tomato, then ate another one that tasted like chicken salad. He wasn’t certain what it was; he ate the whole thing in four bites. He was still chewing when his flight commander came in a few moments later.

  “Good job, Inskip.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mallory came inside grousing about his sight being off. He hadn’t a single kill. Skip sipped his coffee.

  Soon the hut was filled with flyers all talking at once about the mission, the near hits and the damage, the one that got away. They hadn’t lost a man that day. Eight sorties and no one pranged.

  The CO tallied up the day’s score. As he chalked up the squadron’s kills, the talking in the room tapered off to almost nothing. Soon it was so quiet that all you could hear was the scratching of chalk on the blackboard.

  After a moment the scratching stopped and the CO looked up.

  There was no sound left in the room.

  “We have a new squadron top ace.” He turned and looked at Skip. “Flying Officer Inskip has twelve kills.”

  The room erupted in cheers, and he found himself smiling as they pounded him on the back and toasted his success with coffee and teacups and a few good bawdy jests.

  He was top ace. The goal of every flyer.

  The men all shook his hand, including Mallory, who swore he’d catch up with him the next day.

  After Skip promised to meet a few of them in an hour for a celebratory beer, he left the hut and headed for the barracks. He walked into his quarters and began to remove his gear. He set his air jacket on the bunk, unbuckled his chute and let it fall. He took off his helmet and goggles, unstrapped his flight belt, and dumped his survival kit along with everything else into his footlocker, then kicked the lid closed. He was still in his flight suit, his gloves stuffed inside and hanging out of a pocket as he went into the WC and washed up. He bent over the basin and scrubbed the rubber smell of his oxygen mask off his cheeks and mouth, then straightened and rubbed a towel vigorously over his damp face.

  He looked in the small round mirror above the basin.