It was when we came down from Hall into the moonlit Tom Quad that we started to hear the noise. We were pulled up short as the crowd of undergraduates pressed behind us and around us. The sound was of a weight and penetration and strange gusted density we hadn’t heard before, outside London: the sickening irregular drone of the Heinkel 111. In a quick flick of the flashlight I saw Evert and his father, side by side, stock-still and staring up at the nearly invisible spectacle. Victor’s head was back, his mouth open, so that even he, with his famous indifference to the Blitz, appeared for a second like a figure witless with fear. On and on it went – no one could count, but there might have been fifty, a hundred, two hundred enemy aircraft, Heinkels and Dorniers, passing high overhead towards the north. I felt a hand grip my elbow and sensed more than saw that it was David. I did my best to stand steady, a little anchor for him, as he swung round on the flood of the crowd, and with his other hand seized on Evert. I had the impression we both held him up, as he stood gaping at the thing he had dreaded above all.
Sparsholt’s home was destroyed that night, though it was two days before he knew for sure what had happened. Hearing the siren, his parents had gone out as always to the air-raid shelter at the bottom of the garden; the noise of explosions was already loud when they found that the cat wasn’t with them. Frank Sparsholt ran back to the house for it, and died there together with the cat while his wife sat trembling underground thirty yards away, terrified by the noise and by what she had allowed to happen.
My affairs at Woodstock took more and more of my time in what was left of that Michaelmas term. I saw Connie Forshaw now and then on our special bus, but surrounded by a group of other girls – I raised my hat to her and smiled, and once only she gave me a nod. Had she somehow found out what had happened while she was away? If so, was her coolness towards me a sign that she thought me to blame? At the Palace she worked among the labyrinth of filing cabinets in Vanbrugh’s library, while I had my desk in a Nissen hut out on the freezing forecourt; so we were kept apart. But two small incidents connected with her fiancé remain.
I gave Peter’s drawing of Sparsholt’s torso to Evert. He was the person likely to value it most, and I felt uneasy keeping it in my bedroom closet. It wasn’t beyond that old investigator Phil to find it, and fiddle it out of its tube, and leapfrog his way to all kinds of conclusions – I imagined already the strained courtesy of our subsequent dealings. It was a relief to pass it to Evert one evening, and a teasing, curious pleasure to see how he took it. As he unrolled it in my room and turned it to catch the light from the fire, I edged my question into his distracted attention. The red chalks and the fire-glow made the drawn image lively and a little satanic. ‘I suppose it was omega?’ I said. He didn’t answer at first. ‘Well, I had to see him to give him the cheque.’ ‘Oh, yes, of course you did.’ ‘Thanks for the drawing, though.’ ‘No – I’m glad you’ve got it’ – we both considered it for a minute. ‘And have you, you know,’ I said, ‘seen him since . . . ?’ ‘Mm, what’s that . . . ?’ Evert murmured – red-faced himself as he hung over the drawing. I found that I couldn’t repeat the question; and saw that he knew I couldn’t.
Then in eighth week, with its more than usual flurry of packing and departure, I saw David Sparsholt in person for what proved to be the last time. I had been down to Magdalen to visit a friend who himself was leaving prematurely for the Army, and I went on from there, in a melancholy mood, to the Bodleian Library. I was on the first broad stretch of the High Street, with the glowing windows of Schools across the way looking almost friendly in the bitter December morning. An enormous convoy was approaching from behind, over Magdalen Bridge, and as the first lorry drew level with me I became aware of a figure running in the opposite direction on the far side of the street. He was in white shorts and a singlet, as if about to leap into a boat, and his breath made vanishing white plumes round his head. His powerful thighs were pink from the cold, but he seemed almost madly unaware of the weather, and loped forward with who knew what mixture of pride and indifference. A figure so unstoppable was alarming as well as splendid. I slowed as I walked but didn’t wave to him – he was in his own world, and besides it was too late. It was in two successive gaps that I saw him, as the convoy passed, like a man in a Muybridge photo, in exemplary motion: first here, then there, then no longer there, as if swallowed up by his own momentum.
*
This narrative, written for, but never read to, the Cranley Gardens Memoir Club, was found among Freddie Green’s papers after his death.
TWO
The Lookout
1
‘You like drawing,’ said Norma Haxby.
Johnny was sorry to be caught out. ‘I like drawing people.’
Norma took her cigarette case from her handbag. ‘Aren’t people rather hard?’ She treated him like a child, but as she flicked the lighter and raised her head she seemed to assume a pose.
‘That’s why they’re interesting,’ Johnny said, beginning to shade in the background, then coming back slyly to her nose.
‘I could never draw at all,’ she said. ‘Do you get your artistic side from your mother, I suppose?’
‘He doesn’t get it from me,’ said his father, quite sharply. He was just outside the French windows with the rolled oilcloth of his toolkit spread out; he was fixing the patio light.
‘Well, you’re more practical, aren’t you, David,’ said Norma, and Johnny could see from the way she lifted her head and blew smoke towards him how much she preferred this; there was something provocative in her voice.
‘Connie’s the arty one,’ his father said; ‘always has been.’
‘Well, I know Connie’s a great reader, isn’t she,’ said Norma, stretching her neck with a kind of idle satisfaction. ‘I can’t think when I last read a book.’
‘Oh, well, Jonathan doesn’t read,’ said his father. ‘Never quite got the knack, have you, old lad.’
‘Ah . . .’ She looked at them both uncertainly.
‘Of course he’s only fourteen.’
‘You don’t read much yourself, Dad,’ said Johnny, holding out for justice.
‘I don’t have the time,’ said his father, ‘do I?’ – passing back through the lounge into the kitchen. ‘Is your pal about? We leave in ten minutes.’
Norma smiled after him, then, left alone with Johnny, blinked, stubbed and squashed her cigarette, and stood up. ‘I hope it’ll stay fine for you,’ she said. She stared out at the gusted palm tree, the Falmouth ferry coming in, the cloud that dragged and blurred above the headland beyond. ‘I don’t know what your mother and I will do if it rains.’ She perhaps hoped to see his drawing but wasn’t going to ask to do so; Johnny closed his sketchbook anyway.
‘I’d better find out what Bastien’s up to,’ he said.