Bullshit, O’Farrell. You stole your best friend’s sweetheart, pure and simple. And all the rest, all this about profundity and meaning, is bullshit. Lust, that’s all it was. Lust. And revenge for all those times when Carl got the girl. And look what happened. A two-week honeymoon, then you took her thousands of miles away from her family and friends, spent the next fifty years in and out of the bottle and drove the poor bitch to an early grave.
No… no… it wasn’t like that. I’m tired, so tired of arguing with myself…
On the nod, just as we’re going into ‘Cheek to Cheek’. Christ, how stimulating we must be, what fucking exciting memories we must invoke. Still, he’s twitching a bit in his wheelchair, so I suppose he must still be alive. His mouth seems to be moving. Maybe he’s trying to sing along. Sometimes they do. But no, this one looks more as if he’s having a conversation with himself, only half-mouthing the words, hardly daring to give them full breath. A little string of drool hangs from his chin. Shit, I hate this job. Solo time, man. Remember what Geoff told you, ‘Stick real close to the melody line, Dex. You’re not Coltrane playing “My Favourite Things”, you know.’ Thanks a lot, Geoff. And fuck you…
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 (funny, I was flying the night before, too) and it was my turn for once. They’d only been out together a couple of times. It wasn’t serious. Besides, how was I to know that Mary and I would fall in love? It was just another dance, for crying out loud. We’d been to hundreds of them and Carl always got the best-looking women. But I was the best dancer and Carl had no chance this time when she and I were dancing cheek to cheek, me tasting chalk (or was it stardust?), smelling rubber burn and hearing those crackling noises arcing in my brain from ear to ear.
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. Funny, all of a sudden I’m thinking of that bitch Andrea. Was ‘Stardust’ playing when we met, on our first date? I’m damned if I remember. ‘Stairway to Heaven’, more likely, or maybe ‘Bitches Brew’. All I remember is ripping her panties off and fucking her hard up against the apartment door the minute we got back from the gig. Play it, Dex. ‘All the Things You Are.’ Bird, Trane, lead the way. And to hell with Geoff’s evil eye…
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 running down streets on fire, arms flailing.
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 gunners hit the ’Schmitt and it exploded at ten o’clock. We were bucking and swinging to starboard like an old Short Stirling. God knows how we made it, but we did, Clarky and me, we came limping in the minute we got beyond the old white cliffs and crash-landed in a field. The tail section broke off and flames leapt up all around us. Within minutes we were surrounded by a crowd of gaping yokels right out of a Thomas Hardy novel. Whether they wore smocks and carried pitchforks I can’t be certain, but that’s how I see them when I look now. And when I went back to see how Carl was doing, that’s when I found him. He was dead. Along with the others in back. All black and burned up, uniform and skin fused, welded into one, his knees crooked and his arms tightened up and fists clenched like a boxer, aimed at me. For one of those stupid moments, before reality’s cold blade pierced the back of my brain, I thought he was getting ready to fight me. We hadn’t spoken for three days because of Mary and I knew he was still pissed. But he was dead. Burned and shrivelled.