Читать книгу This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You - Jon McGregor - Страница 13

Airshow

Scampton

On the long drive back from the funeral, they took the grandfather to see the airfield where he’d been stationed during the war. They thought this was something he might like to do. They parked on a grass verge beside one of the exit gates in the perimeter fence, and helped the grandfather from the car. The ground was so flat it was difficult to see anything at all. It seemed to curve away from them. They looked at him looking through the fence. The wind was blowing in from the east, and the long grass near the fence dipped and swayed with a sound like a low shush. They looked at him looking at the runway and the hangars and the other low buildings in the distance. They couldn’t really see much from where they were. They waited for him to tell them something, but he seemed at a loss. He lifted a finger, as though to point something out, and withdrew it. They walked along the verge for a short distance. The grandfather wasn’t much inclined to talk about the place, it seemed. Instead, he talked about living in digs in the next village along, with his new wife and their baby, and about how his wife had only ever been able to walk along the road and back because the fields and woods were too muddy for a pram. The wind picked up. It got colder. They climbed back into the car and drove south.

Later, they learned that the grandfather had worked as an armourer, loading munitions into the heavy bomber aircraft and cleaning out the gun-turrets and bomb-bays when the aircraft returned. The task would at times have involved the removal of bodies and body-parts, but that was never discussed. From this airfield, squadrons had flown out to destroy whole towns; burying households beneath rubble, igniting crematorial fires, busting dams and drowning entire valleys. Some civilians were killed. The war was won.

On their way home, they passed the modern RAF base at Coningsby, driving alongside the perimeter fence for a mile or two before entering the town itself. As they passed the end of the main runway, they saw a small gravelled car-park on the other side of the road, sheltered from the wind on three sides by a thick line of gorse bushes. The car-park was full. People were sitting beside their cars in ones and twos, on folding chairs, with blankets across their knees and thermos flasks cradled in their laps. They had binoculars and long-lensed cameras and notebooks. They were waiting for the modern fighter aircraft stationed at the base to take off and land, so that they could take pictures and make notes and gaze in awe. They were also waiting for something called ‘The Memorial Flight’: a regular display by vintage bomber aircraft. As though vintage was a word which could be used about a bomber plane in the same way it could be used about a car, or a suit, or a set of buttons.

As they drove past, the grandfather turned to look at the people in the car-park. He didn’t say anything. He watched them through the back window. He didn’t say anything as they drove through Coningsby, past the church and over the river and out along the main road to the motorway. He waited until they got back to the house, and as they helped him out of the car he asked just what it was those people with the binoculars had thought they might be waiting to see.