No Chance to Meet Again: Chapter 3: A Brief Swing

“Listen, listen, now if you just shut up, Kwame, I can make my point.”

“No, I won’t, because you’re wrong!”

“I am not wrong!”

“Oh yes you are, Johnny, my dear girl, yes you are.”

“But you’re not even from the West Indies! How would you know whether Marcus Garvey is right or not?”

“I don’t need to be from there to know he’s a self-important lard arse with delusions of grandeur.”

Smythe sighed. “I get the feeling we’re going to have this argument a lot,” she muttered.

I didn’t have much choice to agree, but it was faintly amusing watching, even if it attracted a few stares from around the bar. Said bar — if a converted basement storeroom could be called a bar — was filled to the brim right now, the near-constant threat of bombing having no effect on the patrons. Most of them were pilots — both from Luqa and from the rest of my old Squadron at Takali, who had been bussed in together to see what our new Commander had to say. It was pretty stern stuff — gruff, and to the point. Hugh-Pugh Lloyd reminded me of my father, at least from photos and what people said about him. I didn’t remember much these days — I was far too young when he passed to remember a lot. But he inspired a certain form of confidence — frank and honest about our chances, but also about how important it was that we hold the line here.

It was odd, going from a front where we could hold the Luftwaffe at arm’s length to somewhere where they could put three or four times as many planes in the air as us. It was a little foreboding. I wondered then, looking around at the sea of faces around me, all smiling and happy, how many of these pilots would still be around in a month. That wasn’t to be dwelled on, though. Not now.

I tuned back into the argument at a completely different place, but I was still as lost as when I had tuned out. “It’s about bringing us all together, isn’t it?”

“That’s what the Empire’s for, isn’t it? Bringing us all together.” Butler’s tone was deadpan and dry in his cool, sarcastic way, and I chuckled, but from the mildly acidic look on Stringer’s face, it hadn’t quite landed with the Ghanaian.

“Oh please. You really think the Empire cares about us? That the British care about us?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I get to fly and kill stupid, fascist fuckers while I do.” Butler snorted. “Why are you here then, Bingo? If you despise his majesty’s government so much, why die for the man?”

“To prove I’m better than them.” Bagbin gave him a look. “I get to fly, and get called sir, and boss white men who would never give me the time of day in any other place around. They have to respect this uniform, even if they don’t respect me as an individual. And they’ll learn.”

“You really think they will? They didn’t in the last war, they won’t learn now.” Bagbin was pushing back now, and I could see the irritation twitch across Butler’s face.

“They will. They have to. This war will cost them this Empire even if they win, so they better get used to treating us like people. And what better way to remind them of that than by winning their war for them.”

“You really think they’ll care? Do you really think that the white men in Accra or Kingston or wherever will treat you better because you fought for King and Country? That the ones in London will?” Bagbin snorted. “I don’t care what they think. I didn’t when I was a kid back in the Gold Coast and I don’t now. They’ll sell us down the river when the war’s over but until then? I’m okay to do their dirty work.”

“Is it really dirty work?” I asked, feeling somewhat naïve.

“Oh? Are you saying that you want to do this?”

I pouted, then sat up, ready to defend myself. “Like you said, Stringer. Fighting fascists is what they want us to do, and I’ll do that. Hitlers got to be stopped, and I’ll do that. That’s hardly controversial stuff, is it?”

“Even if that means working for the evil Imperialists,” Bagbin crooned.

“Same boss as you have, Kwame,” Smythe quipped.

“True.” Bagbin took a long swig from his drink as Butler, and I waited to see how he ended this conversation. “Fact is, you’re both right, even if I don’t want to admit it. I hate the English, and I hate the Empire, and I don’t understand why I should even pretend to like them.”

“But,” Bingo pushed.

“But, they will pay me to kill fascists, and to fly planes, and to get the hell out of Accra, so who’s the fool now? Me? The one who gets paid by his majesty King George the Sixth, God bless him, to get drunk every night and then piss about in a plane at his expense? I think not.”

“Hear hear,” I said heartily.

“They’re still going to kick us out the door when the show’s over,” he added, with a dry growl. “Like they did last time.”

“This time will be different,” Butler murmured.

“Really?” Bagbin snorted. “They said it’d be different in 1919, you know. ‘Come fight for the mother country,’ they said. My dad was in the trenches in the Rhine with the rest of them, then when he was de-mobbed he was in England building all those ‘homes fit for heroes’. Did he get home from it? For all his fighting and back-breaking work?”

Bagbin paused for an answer, knowing he wouldn’t get one. “Like hell he did. A broken arm in the Cardiff race riots and deportation notice back to Accra, that’s what he got. It’s what they all got.” The dark look that clouded his face loitered for a second but dissipated just as quickly.

“That’s it,” Smythe interjected. “We’re changing the subject.”

“Oh! In that case-“

“We’re not talking about Churchill, Stringer.” Bagbin’s energy sapped slightly, but he shrugged affably, swigging his drink as he did.

Butler, however, still grimaced, until I put a calming hand on his shoulder. “You’d rather we were talking shop wouldn’t you.”

“Maybe,” he muttered, taking another swig from his drink.

“What do you think of Pughie?”

“Hugh Pughe Lloyd?” Butler shrugged. “Knows his stuff. Says it like it is. What you want, really. Knows how to beat Jerry on his own terms here.”

“They’re mean bastards here, mind you,” Smythe noted. “They’ve got the numbers as well — 10–20 of them against two, three, four of us at a time, and that’s on a good day.”

“That’s worse than the fighter sweeps,” I murmured under my breath, remembering the misery of the sweeps over northern France in 1941, where we’d go and buzz an airfield or escort a bombing raid on a factory to try and get the Luftwaffe to come out and fight us. They were terrible missions: tight formations and poor visibility while you sat in your cockpit and waited for an ME109 to come roaring out of the sun.

“I don’t think so,” Smythe countered. “See, with the sweeps — at least when I was doing them — you had to hold the form, stick with the whole squadron. Here, it’s just us, your wingman and maybe another pair. You’re free to fight ’em how you please and lord,” she chuckled, “do they go down like nine-pins sometimes.

Butler seemed unimpressed. “I can’t be that easy. They’ve got some of their best pilots down here, matching us.”

“Tell you what, though,” Bagbin drawled, having liberated another bottle of whisky from god-knows-where, “it ain’t too bad messing it with the good Jerries. Sure, he’s vicious, but he’s a vicious gentleman.”

“Luftwaffe pilots machine-gunned civilian houses in summer 1940, Bagbin,” Bingo growled.

“Oh, sure, year, there are bad sorts- the proper Nazi types, the like, but the ones here? Proper gentlemen if I say so myself.” He leaned in a little conspiratorially. “Last summer, right, when I still flying bombers, me and another feller — Congreve, I think it was — were ordered to go to Gibraltar to pick up some Marylands. So we hoof it over to Gib, get the new ships and take ’em over to Algeria. Hop across the neutral ports, save on fuel, have a bit of a nosy around and r & r, see? Anyways, we’re in a bar in some part of Algiers, have a shufti in some civvie clothes when this frog waiter comes up with two drinks. We hadn’t ordered another round yet, but then this man tells us that they’re from the table in the corner. So, we have a look and guess who’s sitting there, grinning at us?

“Hallie Selassie?” Butler muttered.

“Two Jerry Pilots!”

“You’re kidding!” I said, aghast.

“I bloody well am not,” Bagbin grinned back. “Sitting there in their own civvies, but with an iron cross around their necks like the bloody Kaiser!”

“What did you do?”

“Bought them a drink of course! Good fellows, they were as well. Very civil.”

“You-you spoke to them?” I barely believed it. The closest I’d been to a German pilot had been when one had come down near my airfield last February. He’d been a miserable sod. Sullen, but he still looked down his nose at as the Home Guard marched him away to the train station, his flying gloves and jet-black leather jacket stained with oil and grease. I couldn’t imagine him buying me a drink — I could barely imagine him thinking I was a person. “What were they like?”

“Just like us, really. Young lads who love flying. A good sort, really.”

“They want to use our hearts to line the soles of their shoes, Stringer,” Butler growled. “You don’t get to be chums with people who want to kill us and enslave our families.”

“Hans and Peter? I doubt it. Hell, Hans said he’d worked in Africa before the war. I doubt he’s a proper Nazi.”

“Hitler does, and they fly for Hitler.”

“And I fly for Winnie, who would be very shocked to find out that I can speak the King’s English better than he can.”

“That’s — that’s not the same, is it?”

“Listen, Bingo,” Babgin half-growled, “all I’m saying is that they were nice chaps. Germans, maybe, but they were just fellers doing their bit.”

“Nice fascists, huh? What happened to just wanting to kill the fascists?”

“That’s in the air, Bingo. On the ground? They’re just pilots — comrades in arms!”

“These guys dive bomb refugee columns and shoot up parachuting pilots. You don’t get to have a drink with them and pretend your chums with the enemy.”

“It was one time, Butler,” Bagbin shot back. “You really think I’d make a habit of partying with them?”

“I don’t know Bagbin, but if I’d been there, I wouldn’t have taken the drinks.”

Smythe groaned. “What happened to not talking about politics, Butler?”

***

“In the Land of San Domingo,

Lived a Girl Call Oh By Jingo,

From the Fields and Marshes

Came the young and Oh By Goshes

Oh they all spoke a different lingo

But they’d all heard of Oh By Jingo,

And out there every night,

They would dance by the pale moonlight!”

Bagbin had grabbed me now and we were swinging in the crowd to the frenetic pace of the music. His mood seemed better, and I felt a little more relaxed as we sang along to the chorus.

“Oh! by Gee, by Golly, by Gosh, By Jove!

Won’t listen to my tale of love..”

“Keep moving Froggy!” Bagbin yelled as the pace jumped up and he swung me with ease.

“I will build for you a hut,

You will be my favourite!

We’ll have a lot of little oh boy Gollies

And we’ll put them all the follies!”

It was nice to forget about politics and enjoy myself for a bit, even if Bagbin’s energy was a little too frenetic for my tastes. Still, though, he had the grace to drag me out of the crowd after the song finished, clapping a hand on my back as we pushed through the crowd back to our seats. Bagbin was trying to tell me a story — god knows what it was about — when he bumped into another pilot at full speed. “Sorry, old boy,” he said jovially.

“Watch it,” A voice grumbled, the irritation at odds with Bagbin’s jovial tone.

“Sorry, Grassley,” Bagbin murmured back, noticeably subdued.

“You better be, Bagbin.” I turned to see a ginger-haired fellow slide away into the crowd as we made our way back to our seats.

“Who was that?” I asked once we had re-perched ourselves on the stools.

“That was Michael Grassley,” Smythe replied, her tone leaning towards curious, for some reason. “He’s one of the old hats.”

“The Irish Question,” Bagbin added.

“Why do you call him that?”

“Cos we haven’t got a fucking clue what his deal is.” Bagbin took a swig from his drink, then turned back to glare at the shock of lonesome ginger hair in the far corner. “He’s been out here longer than most of us — first with the lot who went to Greece, then the Desert Air Force down in Libya, then out here.”

“A survivor, then,” Butler noted.

“Is that a polite word for a miserable bastard?” Bagbin chuckled at his own joke. “Either way, Ginger over there is about as fun as dinner with Adolf himself. Barely drinks, doesn’t party, doesn’t play cards, nothing exciting about him at all.” He paused, thinking. “He’s got a nice tail on him but that’s about it.”

“Stringer.” Smythe admonished.

“I’m not wrong. Maybe a good fuck would sort him out.”

“I think he’d be happier if the war was over,” Smythe shot back, and I could sense the deeper meaning there, and wondered how much of Grassley’s solitude was because those who should be sitting next to him were no longer there.

“Yeah, maybe. Either way, I still think it’s better to give him a wide berth,” Bagbin muttered, “At least, if I’m not allowed to fuck him.”

“Which you’re not allowed to,” Smythe added, much to Stringer’s chagrin. “You promised!”

“I did no such thing,” he shot back. “Okay, maybe I did, but- “he wilted under Smythe’s glare. “Alright, fine.” He reached back for a bottle, frowning when there was none. “Where’s the whisky?”

I spotted the bottle a few seats down. “I’ll grab it,” I muttered.

“Good man, good man,” he crooned as I waded through the crowd, reaching the bottle at the same time as a sunburnt, crusty sailor. I snatched it quickly, wincing at the outraged look on his face.

“Pass that bottle,” he yelled, the stench of alcohol thicker on his breath than it was on Stringers.

“It’s not mine,” I said, after a second.

“I know,” he growled, “It’s mine.”

“I didn’t say that,” I countered, the belching breath of the sailor irritating me. “It’s not mine and it’s not yours either.”

“Fuck off, flyboy.” He lurched across the bar for it and I jumped back. Off-balance, he tripped up and planted his face into the bartop with a loud clunk, earning a loud guffaw from Bagbin and a few others.

I couldn’t help but chuckle too, which was presumably why, when he recovered himself, red-faced and furious, the sailor in question launched himself at me, grabbing my shirt collars with two calloused fists. “Listen here you jumped-up n-“ His words were cut off by his own pig-like squeal as my fist impacted with his genitals almost instinctively.

He rolled over onto the floor and I looked up to see his shipmates jumping to their feet, sleeves rolled up. “Oh, well done Peter,” Butler grumbled, but he was on his feet too now along with the rest of the squadron — as well as all the other sailors in the bar. I heard someone mumbling about calling the military police as I slowly came around the bar, my hand's palm out in as non-threatening a way as possible.

“Now, listen,” Bagbin said, slurring slightly. “Why don’t we just…calm down. We’re all on the same side, aren’t we?” He grinned at the red-faced, still wincing man on the ground and offered him a hand. “No hard feelings?”

Too be fair to Bagbin, he should have expected the punch in the guts then, much as the sailor who delivered it should have expected the glass in Smythe’s hand to come crashing over his head afterwards.

The room more or less exploded after that, which was to be expected of a small bar filled with pilots and sailors. Pandemonium was instantaneous. Bottles and tables and chairs went flying through the air, an ashtray full of smouldered cigarette butts shooting past my head leaving contrails like tracer shells. I was barely aware of how I moved, ducking and weaving between punches and kicks. Someone swung at me with their whole body and I jumped out the way, sending them sliding across the floor into someone else’s legs. Another sailor slammed a chair leg into my side, but I grabbed his arm and held him steady as I planted a punch or three into his stomach.

“Good show, Froggy!” Bagbin was perched on a table now, kicking at his assailants with his feet while still swigging his whisky. “Give him another walloping!” he yelled before someone grabbed his ankle and pulled sharply. He went flying onto his backside with a crash, the shattering of glass marking the end of the whisky bottle that had started this mess, yelling expletives as he pummelled his attacker relentlessly.

I was trying to get to him when a firm hand gripped my shoulder and pulled me back. Instinctively I grabbed a bottle and turned, my weapon raised to come over my attacker’s hand. I yelled as I turned, locked eyes with my new foe and-

At this point in my life, there had been two occasions when time had slowed to almost a halt around me. The first was when I was 12. I was walking home from school with my friends, fighting and joking as you do when you’re that age. One of my friends pushed me as a joke, and I tripped and went over the curb of the pavement and turned to see a bus coming straight at me. For a moment then, as it hurtled towards me, I thought that was it, and all of time seemed to come to a halt. Then, I was pulled out harm’s way and the bus sped past, crushing my school cap underneath its wheels. It was over as soon as it had begun.

The second time was about a year before this, in early spring 41. I was coming back from a sweep over the channel when we got jumped by some Jerry fighters. I ended up with two Messerschmitt’s on my tail, edging closer and closer to me as I weaved and dived over the water, willing my plane to give me an ounce, any ounce of speed to get those the two yellow-nose bastards off my tail. About two miles off of Felixstowe they caught me, and as I saw the flashes of white in my rearview mirror and heard the thunk thunk of cannon shells passing over my head, I felt the passage of time slow to a halt. There were a few moments — perhaps a second — there when I thought that my number had come up and that one of those shells would crash into my cockpit, the world would go a horrid shade of red and black, and that would be it. Was I ready for that? I’m not really sure, and I never found out, for the moment I squeezed my eyes shut and prepared for the end Grayson came flying out of nowhere to down both fighters on my tail in one go.

For obvious reasons, therefore, that strange feeling of time slowing meant death and fear and imminent doom to me. So to feel it when I was confronted with something so utterly the opposite of death — something so full of life — well, it was very strange. So, very strange, but exhilarating at the same time.

Where do I start? The eyes. I should obviously start with the eyes. Well, maybe not with the eyes. The face. Yes, that’s a good place to start. My attacker’s face was that strange, tanned pale of all light-skinned people who spent any time in the sun, both reddened slightly and still white in places. His darkened skin still seemed light in the dim glow of the bar, as did his head of bright, flashing fiery ginger hair. Bursts of freckles exploded across his cheeks in dark swirls, while a well-kept moustache framed a mouth that, while currently curled into a snarl, seemed capable of a dazzling smile if provided with a reason. And the eyes — yes, at the end of the day, despite that chiselled, sharp face and fierce hair, it was those deep blue eyes that really brought time to a halt for me.

I still think about how I just turned and fell into their grasp completely, my gaze falling into his immediately before I had any chance to change course. There was something awe-inspiring and different about them — nothing like any eyes I’ve seen before. They were blue — bright, flashing blue — but those words don’t really describe the colour properly. Colour? I mean colours. It was beyond one shade in blue, it was like staring across the sea on a bright, clear day from the cockpit of an aircraft, and thousand different shades of azure, indigo, sapphire and aquamarine pooling and waltzing and rising and falling in his irises. Even with the raised tempers and adrenaline-fuelled wrath of a barfight, there was something almost tranquil about them, a twinkle of intrigue and melancholy underneath a flash of fury. They were the most beautiful eyes on the most handsome face I had ever seen, and I was about half a second away from smashing a bottle of Jameson’s into it.

Blue eyes — for right now there was nothing else to him but those wonderful blue eyes — seemed to have lost himself in time as well, an odd look of introspection, and perhaps interest, his expression fading from anger to apprehensive curiosity as we both looked each other down, realising we were both wearing RAF uniforms. The grip of his hand on my shoulder softened to a strange, tender touch as if he wasn’t even entirely certain that I was even real. His fingers ran lightly down my shoulder and along my arm for a second as I slowly lowered the bottle in my arm, my eyes still locked with his.

“I-“ he blinked suddenly and my focus went. Michael Grassley was standing in front of me, his hand running along my arm. His once fierce expression looked almost bashful. “Get out of the way!” he bellowed in a thick Irish accent, and I ducked as his fist flew past my head to collide with a sailor who had come up behind me. I spun around and smashed the bottle into the sailor’s body, sending them staggering back into the crowd.

I turned and Grassley was turned away from me, shoving his way through the crowd towards a door. “Wait!” I yelled but he was lost in the crowd of flying fists and struggling bodies. I strained to look for him but then suddenly Smythe and Bagbin were grabbing me and pulling me towards an exit.

“Come on, Froggy!” Stringer yelled. “We’ve got to get out before the Red-Caps grab us!”

“Redcaps?” I asked as the shrill cry of Military Policemen’s whistles cut through the bar. The crowd began to break apart with loud shouts and warning cries as the MP’s began dragging people out bodily. Suddenly I was out of the loud, simmering room and into the cool dark night as Smythe and Bagbin pulled me, running and laughing down an alley and away from the bar. The mood was jovial and exuberant — even Butler was laughing a, chuckling under his breath as we staggered down the alleyway. I couldn’t help but laugh a little myself as we passed through the streets away from the commotion. I could still see those strange, wonderful blue eyes in the corner of my mind, burning into my memory.

“What were you doing with Grassley?” Smythe asked when we eventually stopped for a breather. “Beating him up?”

“I…don’t think so,” I panted, thinking about the freckles on his cheek and the crinkle of his small smile. “I don’t really know what I was doing.” The cool, azure blue of eyes still bounced around in my mind, refusing to dissipate and be forgotten.

“Ah, well,” she shrugged. “You won’t have to deal with him again.” Honestly, I rather hoped I did.