"Did you not?" said the youth, then, in a voice not his, " 'Almighty Father, anything but this. I cannot bear it. Let this cup pass away from me. Did you not? As the bombs fell and we flew to our deaths, with only you piloting this ship through the worst storm of its existence. Did you not let go the tiller, leave your heavy burden to someone else, and go merrily to attend your pretty daughter's wedding and sleep in your warm wife's bed?"
"How dare-" Stopped himself. This boy had died for England. And he, he was preparing his pretty daughter's wedding.
"Are you sure you did not ask to get out of what needed to be done? Did not say 'It is too much for me? »
A searching moment. A croaking groan, "No. I didn't. I wouldn't. I would give anything for my country. Anything."
"Would you, Abraham?"
"My name is not-oh. Oh my." Gave him pause. Felt the quiver in his chin. The sacrifice of Abraham. "My family are dearer to me than life."
"Your life is not what hung in the balance."
"But… my son!"
"Your son. Your wife. Your daughter. Your happiness. Your sanity."
"Why them? Why my wife? Why my-" Could not talk. Was dangerously near to weeping again.
The Pilot Officer produced a sheaf of papers from his boot. Dowding recognized his manuscript. Part of it. "You say you should have devoted more effort to organizing communications and to developing the capabilities of the RDF. You should have. But it was not the task for a happy man to be wholly focused on the RDF, the links between the spotter corps and Ops and dispersal and the pilots in the air." He bounced the pages. "This calls for a strict taskmaster. Detailed. Blunt. Undistracted."
A man with a loving family was not so disagreeable and difficult as the time demanded.
"You weren't there, Hugh Dowding. And you were needed. And now youdare say you could have made a difference." He presentedTwelve Legions of Angels.
"I never had the chance! I feel there is no one else who could fight as I do!"
"To make the hardest decisions ever demanded of a man, when God Himself is silent? To stay the course without knowing for sure that all would be well in the end? With only the conviction of your own rightness and trust in what you cannot see?"
"I would have. By God, I would have. Inever asked to be relieved! I neverwould ask, had I the chance."
"Your children will never have been born."
Too many thoughts ramming together. Dizzy between hope and crashing despair. Drew breath with difficulty. "You're saying it can be done again!"
"It can be done the way you decided. Whatdid you decide?"
Would have jumped at the answer, but for the cost. "What of the souls of my children? If they are never born, do I condemn them to the outer darkness?"
"None of us has the power to damn any soul but our own."
Sat silent, gazing at the stained glass windows.
The Pilot Officer stood up. "Be here Saturday at eleven o'clock if you did not ask to be spared."
"Then what will happen?"
"Then you did not ask to be spared."
"My daughter's wedding is at eleven o'clock."
Met the Pilot Officer's silent stare. Not a surprised stare. Rather disparaging.
"I can't!" Dowding blurted.
"Then don't." The Pilot Officer stalked out of the church.
Dowding ran out to the street after him, but of course he was not there.
When Dick Trafford had his report ready for delivery, the Reichsmarschall was to be found at a hunt club.
The German airman who admitted the British air attache to the hall found his name amusing-Dick.Dick was German forfat. Dick Trafford, a slight man, was notdick.
"Our Hermann isdick!" The German laughed, ushered Dick to the Presence.
The girth and breadth of Hermann Goering were encased in a foxhunter's bright red habit, complete with black helmet and riding crop. A pack of cheerfully subservient English foxhounds fawned about his black boots.
Surely he did not mean to inflict that bulk upon some unhappy steed!
But no. The Reichsmarschall stood regally still, posing for an artist with two full tubes of red oils in his arsenal. In the adjoining chamber, exuberant young Luftwaffe pilots drank liberated brandy and talked with their hands under a cloud of aromatic cigar smoke.
Without breaking pose, Hermann's little eyes slid Dick's way. "So, Fat Trafford. Tell me about Herr Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding. Would anyone take his stupid book seriously? You are hesitating. That means yes."
"Not precisely," Trafford found his tongue. "No one with any knowledge of the facts would. But to a layman- Who knows? He bandies about technical terms and numbers with such authority, someone might take him at his word. What with his rank."
"He does not admit that you lost to German superiority?"
"No one ever questioned the superiority of German strength and numbers."
"So his plot to defeat my Luftwaffe was to… do what?"
"Rather a lot of nothing, from what I gather. He would avoid fighting. Reserves everything he can."
"Andthat was going to stop the Stukas!"
"The Spitfires and Hurricanes he reserved could have neutralized the Stukas. He says. Truthfully, Mr. Goering, Stukasare slow."
"Not in a dive." Goering's wide chest expanded in pride.
"Mr. Goering,you would be quick in a dive."
Silence gripped the club. The pilots' boasting from the next room, the clinking of glasses, even breathing stopped.
The thump of tails wagging became very loud.
Until Goering's lusty laughter sounded the all clear, scattered the dogs, and upset the painter.
Goering dropped his pose, shooed the painter away, and called for a drink.
Told Dick Trafford that the RAF must silence Hugh Dowding. "He is yours. You take care of him."
And he was off to join his lads with a snap of his riding crop. "Tally ho!"
Clarice turned over in the bed, shook her husband's shoulder. "Mister Dowding! You are thrashing and you've got all the covers!"
To his mumbled apologies she offered to heat some milk. He told her that would be very nice, and the two shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen.
In the mundanity of this place-of the motions of this beloved woman, no longer young, heating milk, of his own slippers on his blue-veined feet-the demons with which he wrestled lost their reality.
He had been agonizing: Did I do this? Did I sell England for my happiness?
And if I sell my happiness back for England, what of my Clarice? My Sarah? My John? Their children?
Did I really ask for the burden of command during England's darkest hour to lift from my shoulders? And itdid?
Here, now, the idea that he should yet hold the balance upon which the fate of the world hung seemed weird, impossible.
Well, there it is. I have gone completely starkers.
Caught between hideous alternatives, to live in guilt or to live in sorrow, he had discovered the obvious third-that there was no choice. He was a deluded old man who could only embarrass his daughter on her wedding day by chasing angels.
He was free to let it all go as God's will. He could live with his loving wife and dote on his coming grandchildren with a clear conscience.
There was nothing he could do.
A package arrived from Germany for the bride. The father of the bride saw fit to take a look before passing it on to his daughter.
A framed portrait of Adolph Hitler.
"It's odious!" Clarice cried. "Who could have done this!"
"The German Air Ministry." Dowding read the card congratulating Sarah on her wedding and wishing her many healthy Aryan children.