This Tumult by Caroline Preston

Author:Caroline Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: This Tumult;Preston;Second World War;Austrailia;Tottenham family
Publisher: The Lilliput Press
Published: 2017-06-30T13:36:05+00:00

Fourteen

LINCOLNSHIRE

Tony rolled over in the narrow bed and looked up at the ridges of the tin roof above him. The coke-burning stove was cold and the hut was freezing. He pulled the rough grey blanket under his chin and adjusted his greatcoat on top of it. His dreams had been full of flying, twisting his aircraft away from German night fighters, banking the Lancaster steeply and falling away to starboard to evade the enemy. But he had no actual experience of this because they had not yet been on an operational flight. Since returning from Winnipeg in September, it had been endless exercises back and forth over the Lincolnshire Wolds and he was sick of the sight of the cratered fields around Wainfleet. They had consistent bull’s-eye hits in target practice now and other crews who didn’t have their strike record had been sent out over Germany already. Tony and his boys were getting tetchy and wanted their first blooding. It was March and the weather was finally beginning to pick up so there had to be more operations shortly and then they would get their chance to drop a few real bombs. The waiting was excruciating and Tony knew that he and the crew needed to get into the thick of it to settle them down.

He looked down the line of beds at the sleeping mounds of his crew. Beside him Jimmy Bradley was on his back, his long thin body rigid but his jaw slack. He looked even more like a bird in his sleep, his skin taut over the hook of his bony nose. The crew had nicknamed him Toucan on their first day together, which had become Touc for short. Touc was the navigator. Everyone on the crew knew that this disappointed him, as he had wanted to be a pilot. He was older than Tony, a taciturn man who was a lab technician back in Melbourne with a good degree, whereas Tony was acutely aware that he had left school at fifteen. But Touc showed no hint of begrudgery towards Tony as his skipper and it never occurred to Tony that he might lose face if he turned to the older man for support, and so he frequently did. Perhaps Tony had been lucky to get his wings. Everyone at home had always said that he was steeped in it but he suspected that Aunt Virginia’s tuition in old-school manners had helped. It seemed that these things still mattered.

Tony got up and went over to the chipped enamel bowl in the corner and stabbed his toothbrush through the thin layer of ice that had formed across the top of the water. In the bed beside the basin, Jan Wikovski – Wiki, a wiry Pole from Krakow – lay, in contrast to Touc, in a tight ball. He was so accustomed to being wedged in his cold garret at the tail of the aircraft that he stayed in that position in his sleep. He was muttering to himself.

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