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Heaven. I’m in heaven. Dancing cheek to cheek. A hot night in late July 1943. A little dance hall in a small town near the base, maybe used to be the church hall or the Women’s Institute. A few rickety tables, a makeshift bar selling warm beer and weak scotch, weak beer and warm scotch, whatever. Dim air thick with smoke hanging in the lights: blue straight from the cigarette, grey when it comes out of the lungs. Everyone smoked then. All of us. It was the least of our worries. ‘Cheek to Cheek’ was the first song we danced to, the first time the magic hit.
But why does my memory smell of burning rubber and leather instead of her perfume? Why do flames and smoke blossom when I close my eyes and lean into her? I’m holding her close enough that she could almost be a part of me and I’m smelling hot metal and engine oil.
Bombenbrandschrumpfleichen.
My God, Carl, where did that come from? Not now. Not yet. That was later. Back to the dance. Holding her. Some of her face powder rubbed off when my lips brushed her cheek. It tasted like chalk. Carl was pissed, I could tell, but I was flying that night (fu
Christ, just look at them, will you? Half of them are asleep, about a third are deaf and three-quarters have no faculties left at all. What does that make? Is anyone out there listening at all? And that hunchbacked bastard Geoff gives me the evil eye for wandering too far on the ‘Stardust’ solo. As if anyone notices. Poor bastard’s piano is so out of tune it sounds like a warped LP. Fu
Carl wouldn’t talk to me. All the next day. And the next. He’d really wanted Mary the way a boy wants candy and he was jealous as hell. I didn’t tell him anything. Didn’t tell him about the softness of her body as we made love in the warm field that July night, the taste of the beet juice on her lips, the smooth warm skin, nipples hard as berries on my tongue, between her legs like warm, wet silk and how she cried out my name when she came. Not his. Mine. And clung to me afterwards for dear life as we lay against the drystone wall and watched squadron after squadron of Lancasters pass over the half-moon, blotting out its light like the plague of locusts, armadas from hell. Held me tighter as the roar of the bombers filled the sky.
Bombenbrandschrumpfleichen.
No. That wasn’t till later. We didn’t know then, the same way we didn’t know smoking was killing us. We didn’t know. But does that really make it any different in the end?
Another evil look from Geoff. Well, to hell with him. Let the miserable bastard fire me. I’ve had it with this, anyway. ‘In the Middle of a Kiss.’ Taffy always does a good job on this one. You just don’t expect that alto voice to come out of someone so fat. Look at that guy, the way his head’s swaying. If it’s the shakes, at least he’s in time with the music. Maybe some of them are capable of getting a little simple pleasure out of us, after all. Christ, if Andrea could see me now. She’d laugh until she pissed herself and tell me I’d found my true destiny. Here we go, man, ‘Blowing Up a Storm’.
Firestorm. They had to invent new names for the way people died.
Bombenbrandschrumpfleichen.
Incendiary-bomb-shrunken bodies. Then there were the ones who melted, asphyxiated, baked or just plain roasted. And the human torches ru
These were the important factories and docks we were told we destroyed. The firestorm sucked in all the surrounding air, made winds rage fast as cyclones, suffocated all the people hiding in shelters, cellars and bunkers. Fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit at the core. Spontaneous combustion.
Bombenbrandschrumpfleichen.
And the night after that I stole my best friend’s girl because I was the best dancer. That was the night we clung to one another watching the bombers set out again. Six raids. Day and night. Night and day. 41,800 killed. 37,439 injured, burned, maimed. Her skin warm and smooth, wet silk between her thighs, bombers blanking out the stars and the moon. Making Bombenbrandschrumpfleichen. And the night after that, Carl bought it…
‘Blue Flame.’ That should slow them down a bit before our fiery finale, and a nice searing blues solo for me. Most of them are asleep now anyway. There’s even one old dear snoring in the far corner by the vase of flowers. And there’s Emily, hands clasped on her lap, thin smile on her face. Is she enjoying us? As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind fucking Emily, stick it to her hard, right up that tight Morningside arse of hers and take that smile off her face. Bet she’s a screamer. That old guy’s having a real struggle with himself now. Ought to be in a fucking nuthouse not a rest home. Drooling and muttering, arguing with himself…
It wasn’t fair, we’d finished, we were heading home successful, looking forward to a hot cup of tea and a long sleep, no fighters in sight. But then it never is fair, is it? We’d dropped our load, made more Bombenbrand-schrumpfleichen, got out of the flack unscathed, and all of a sudden there it was, a lone Messerschmitt. Whether he was lost or just scavenging, looking for stragglers, I don’t know, but he buzzed at us like an angry wasp and let rip. He could outmanoeuvre us easily and his machine-gun fire ripped through the plane as if our fuselage were made of paper. I could smell the fires breaking out behind us. Me and Clarky, my co-pilot. We started spewing smoke and losing altitude. One of our gu