“How many injured?” Ralph called after him, but the man was already fixing his mask into place and appeared not to hear him. A seagull flew overhead and seemed to laugh at us.
“He’s having an off day,” I said, as we walked over to the hut.
“Your nerves wouldn’t be in fine fettle after spending long out here. The Huns have been bombing these listening stations to smithereens for years. Of course, we build ’em up again as soon as they’re done—the thing about concrete is it’s cheap and quick—but for some odd reason that only encourages them to keep coming back.”
“Pardon my asking, but how do you know all about this stuff, sir? Isn’t it top secret?”
“It was, although it won’t be for much longer. I don’t doubt you’ve noticed those wireless towers that are springing up everywhere?”
“Yes?” I answered cautiously, for I had seen the spindly constructions with my own eyes.
“Rumor mill says they’re something that’ll put these listening posts out of business in pretty sharp fashion. Pick up planes from hundreds of miles away, not tens. But until they’ve got ’em strung across the south coast and wired together properly, these acoustic locators are all we’ve got.” Ralph put his hand on the door to the hut. “To answer your first question …well, let’s attend to the chaps in here first, shall we?”
The door to the hut was stiff with rubberized gas seals, but after a good tug it swung open easily enough. I followed him inside, not quite sure what to expect. Despite the seals, the hut was damp and cold, like a slimy old cave by the sea. Although there were no windows, there was an electric light in the ceiling, a bulb trapped behind a black metal cage, with a red one next to it that wasn’t on. The lit bulb gave off a squalid brown glow that it was going to take my good eye a few moments to adjust to. There was some furniture inside: a gray metal desk with a black bakelite telephone, some chairs, some shelves with boxes and technical books, and a lot of secret-looking radio equipment, most of which was also black and bakelite. And a man sitting in one of the chairs at an angle to the desk, with a bandage around his head and another around his forearm, his shirt sleeve rolled up. As we came in, he tugged headphones from his head and put them down on the desk. He also closed a big green log book he had open on the desk, sliding it to the back. I’d only had a glimpse, but I’d seen loose papers stuffed into the log book, with lots of scratchy lines and blotches on them. I noticed there was a fountain pen on the desk next to an inkstand.
The man was a good bit older than me, although I’d still have said he was ten years younger than Ralph—fiftyish, give or take. He still had a moustache even though they weren’t in fashion nowadays. He looked at us groggily, as though he’d been half asleep until that moment, and waved us away in a good-natured kind of way. “I’m all right, lads—just a few scratches, that’s all. I told ’em it wasn’t worth sending out for an ambulance.”
“We’ll be the judges of that, won’t we, Wally?” Ralph said to me, as if we’d been working together for years.
I closed the door behind us.
The man stiffened in his chair and peered at the door with squinty eyes. “Ralph? Good lord, it can’t be, can it?”
“George?”
“One and the same, old boy!”
Ralph shook his head in delighted astonishment. “Of all the places!”
A smile spread across the other man’s face. “I presume you found out I was working here?”
“Not at all!”
The man laughed. “But it was you that put the word in for me!”
He had quite a posh way of speaking, like Ralph, but there was a bit of Yorkshire in there as well.
I placed my stretcher against the wall, coming to the conclusion I wouldn’t be needing it, even though the man would still need to come back to Cranbrook.
“Well, yes,” Ralph said. “But that was a while ago, wasn’t it? You’ll have to make allowances for me, I’m afraid—getting a bit doddery in my old age.” He put down his own stretcher and shook his head again, as if he still couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Slowly he moved to examine the seated man. “Well, what happened? Did you get knocked down in here?”
“No,” our patient said. “I was outside, coming down the ladder from the pickup tube, when some shells hit the dish. Got knocked off the ladder by a couple of splinters. Dashed my head on the side of the hut and grazed my arm.”
Ralph gave him a severe look. “You were outside during a shelling? You silly old fool, Butterworth.”
“The pickup tube needed adjustment. You know how it is—someone had to do it.”
“But not you, George—not you of all people. Well, better get you back to Cranbrook, I suppose. The fellow outside said we can expect flying wings. Don’t expect you’ll be too sorry to miss them, will you?”
“That’s always how it happens,” George said. “Berthas take out our listening posts, then the planes can come in and pick their targets at leisure. You’re right, Ralph, you chaps had best be moving. But you can leave me here—I’ll mend.”
“Not a chance, old man. Can you stand up?”
“Honestly, I’m fine.”
“And we have a duty to look after you, so there’s no point in arguing—right, Wally?”
“Right, sir,” I said.
Ralph offered him a hand, and the seated man moved to stand up. Seeing that he didn’t like having to put weight on his forearm, I wondered if his injury was a bit more serious than just a graze.
Just at that moment there was a distant whump that made itself felt more through the ground than the air. It was followed in quick succession by another, a little closer and sharper sounding. Accompanying the sound of the bombs was a mournful droning sound.
“That’s your flying wings,” George said, standing on his own two feet. “They were quick about it this time—give ’em credit. Probably got U-boats watching the station from the sea.”
I heard the boom of our own antiaircraft guns—you can’t mistake a seventy-five millimeter cannon for anything else, once you’ve worked on them. But something told me they were just taking potshots, lobbing shells into the sky in the vain hope of hitting one of those droning, batlike horrors.
“Righty-ho,” said Ralph. “Let’s get you to the ambulance, shall we?”
I moved to the door and opened it again, just enough to admit a sliver of overcast daylight. At that moment another bomb fell, much closer this time. It was only twenty or thirty yards from the barbed wire on the other side of the road, and the blast launched a fan of sand and soil and rubble into the air. I felt as if someone had whacked a cricket bat against the side of my head—for a moment my good ear went pop, and I couldn’t hear anything at all. Suddenly the distance to the ambulance looked immense. My hearing came back in a muffled way, but even so the siren managed to sound more insistent than before, as if it were telling us: Now you’ll believe me, won’t you?
I closed the door hard and looked back at the other two. “I think it’s a bit risky, sir. They seem to be concentrating the attack around here.”
“We’d best sit tight and hope it passes,” George said. “We’ll be safe enough in here—the hut’s a lot sturdier than it looks.”
“I hope you’re right about that,” Ralph said, sitting down in the other chair. Then he looked at me. “I don’t suppose you have the faintest idea what’s going on, Wally?”
“Not really, sir. I mean, I gather you two know each other, but beyond that …”
Ralph said, “George and I go back a long way, although we haven’t clapped eyes on each other in—what? Ten years, easily.”
“I should say,” George said.
“This is Wally Jenkins, by the way. He’s a good sort, although I don’t think he much cares for my driving.” Ralph leaned toward me with a knowing look in his eye, as if he were about to offer me a sweet. “George and I were both interested in music before the war. Very interested, I suppose you might say.”