Gratton regarded the damp padded envelope lying on the tabletop.
‘These are the originals?’ he said.
‘No, the originals are a couple of dozen ordinary exercise books. They’re lying around in his old bedroom, gathering dust. I can let you have the originals if you need them, but what I’m giving you are photocopies. I thought if the material turned out to be no use you could have the pages recycled.’
‘Well, thank you . . . er . . . ?’
‘Angela Chipperton, Mrs Angela Chipperton. Do you suppose Dad is the man you’re interested in?’
‘It’s impossible to say until I’ve read what he wrote. I’m curious about something I came across. Sawyer’s not an unusual name, as you no doubt realize. I’ve already received ten or twelve responses to the advertisement, but I’ve been away and I haven’t been able to get around to any of them yet. I’ll read your father’s memoir as soon as I can. Have you left an address where I can contact you?’
‘There’s a covering letter with my address.’
‘I’m really grateful to you, Mrs Chipperton,’ Gratton said. He stood up.
‘I hate to ask you,’ she said, while they were still shaking hands. ‘But is there likely to be ... I mean, if the material turns out to be suitable for publication and there was the possibility of payment, would I - ?’
‘I’ll do what I can and let you know what I think. But in practice, war memoirs don’t have a general market these days, unless they’re by someone famous.’
‘You see, when I saw your ad I wondered if that might be it. To me he was just Dad, but I thought perhaps he’d been involved in something important during the war.’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve never seen references to anyone called Sawyer in the standard works on the war. I think he must have been just an ordinary airman. That’s why I’ve been advertising for information, to see what I can turn up. There might be nothing in it. And of course, your father might not be the man I’m looking for. But if anything comes along I’ll certainly let you know.’
She left soon after that and Gratton resumed his vigil in the bookshop window.
2
The next day Gratton found that Mrs Chipperton’s padded envelope contained more than three hundred unnumbered pages, photocopied, as she said, from ruled exercise books. The ruled lines of the pages had come out of the copier with almost equal density to the words themselves, promising hours of eye-strain ahead, the occupational hazard of researchers of popular histories. The handwriting was small and some of it at least was regular and clear, but there were several long passages where the writing became wilder and less legible. Other parts of it appeared to have been drafted in pencil, because they had photo-copied badly. Gratton glanced through a few of the pages, then placed them back inside their padded envelope. He took out the covering letter and put it in his correspondence file. She lived in Bakewell, a small Derbyshire town on the other side of Buxton, on the road to Chesterfield.
So far he had learned of the existence of about a dozen officers and men called Sawyer who flew operationally against German targets in RAF Bomber Command during the 1940s. Nearly all of them were dead now, and few of them had left little more than letters or photographs as records of their experiences. Gratton had already been able to eliminate most of them. The rest would need more detailed investigation. Mrs Chipperton’s late father looked promising, but the sheer size of his text was daunting.
Gratton put the padded envelope on top of the pile next to his desk. He would have to get around to reading everything later. Much of the material sent in response to the Sawyer enquiry was waiting for him on his return from abroad, an additional workload he should have anticipated. His trip this time had been a long and circular one, taking in several interviews and a great deal of archival research. Much travelling had been necessary: first to Cologne, Frankfurt and Leipzig, then from Germany across to Belarus and Ukraine - Brest, Kiev and Odessa - then north to Sweden; finally ten edgy days in the USA, visiting Washington DC, Chicago, St Louis, beset by suspicious officials every time he boarded one of the great transcontinental trains or, the one time he took a short internal flight, when he passed through an airport. It was increasingly difficult for foreign visitors to travel about in the USA, partly because of the currency restrictions but mainly because of a general distrust of anyone from Europe. Another occupational hazard was what Gratton considered this to be, but the long delays created by US Customs and Immigration when entering or leaving the US were becoming a substantial nuisance. Beyond the aggravations of travel his researches involved the usual itinerary of old men and, increasingly often these days, of their widows or grown-up children.
It was gratifying, though, to keep being reminded how much in demand his work still was. In addition to the mountain of letters and packages lying in the hallway for him on his return, there were several hundred e-mails stored on his server in-box, and a score or more messages were waiting on the answering machine. Most of the recorded messages sounded vexed because they hadn’t been able to get through to him on his mobile number: it was a plus or a minus, depending on your point of view; that European cellphones were still unusable in the US while deregulation was being fought over.
Gratton worked for two days on his backlog, glad to be home and free to work once more. He labelled and indexed his most recent tapes, then parcelled them up to be sent to the transcription agency. While he was doing so, he again noticed the huge Sawyer manuscript. He was tempted by the detail he glimpsed in certain passages. It would save time in the long run if he had it transcribed professionally - the agency he used had someone there who specialized in deciphering holograph manuscripts. Once he had thought of doing it there was no going back. He wrote to Mrs Chipperton and asked her to send him the originals of the notebooks. He enclosed a formal copyright release note that would allow him to have the transcription made and later let him quote from the manuscript if he needed to.
All this made him think again about the Sawyer problem. On his fourth morning at home he sat down at his computer and carefully composed a letter to one of his earlier interview subjects.
3
Captain Samuel D. Levy Ret’d
P.O. Box 273
Antananarivo
Republic of Masada
Dear Captain Levy,
I hope you will remember me: I came to interview you in Antananarivo some eight years ago, about your experiences flying with the USAAF in the Chinese and Manchurian campaigns in 1942-3. You were kind enough to give me several hours of your time. From these conversations I extracted some excellent material about the fire-bomb missions in which you took part: the raids on the Japanese strongholds at Nanking and Ichang. I used most of that in my history of the campaign called The Silver Dragons: the 9th US Army Air Force in China. I recall that at the time I asked my publishers to send you a complimentary copy of the book. I realize that I never heard from you afterwards, so in case you did not receive the earlier copy I am enclosing one from the recently reissued paperback edition. As in the earlier editions, your interview features prominently in the first few chapters.
Let me get to the point of this letter.
I have recently become interested in the life and career of a man who was involved in the war, whose name was Flight Lieutenant Sawyer. (I don’t know his first name, or even his initials.) A certain mystery attends Mr Sawyer. I found out about it through Winston Churchill. I came across a brief description of the puzzle in the second volume of Churchill’s wartime memoirs, The German War: Volume II, Their Finest Hour. I am enclosing a photocopy of the relevant extract. It is from Appendix B of that volume, which consists of Churchill’s prime ministerial minutes and memoranda from the period. This minute, sent to various members of his war cabinet, is dated April 30, 1941. Churchill describes Sawyer as a conscientious objector who was also an operational RAF bomber pilot. He found it intriguing and so did I. What also interested me about the passage was that I had never come across any mention of Mr Sawyer in my other researches. Churchill himself never refers to the mystery anywhere else.