Coventry Carol - Torchwood, Children of Earth
Coventry Carol by A.J. Hall - Torchwood fic
Torchwood, Children of Earth. Gen.
Warnings: No spoilers. Content echoes canon and attempts to keep faith with its spirit.
Summary: Frobisher was a good man.
Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Herod, the king, in his raging,
Chargéd he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young to slay.
Then woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and pray,
For thy parting nor say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Trad. 16 Cent.
14 November 1940
Frobisher reached for the packet of Players. Part of his mind prided him on the visible steadiness of his hand as he did so, noted the flex of muscle and tendon, appreciated how his veins showed as blue ridges overlying the slender bones beneath his spare flesh, the winter pallor of his desk-bound skin.
He lit up. The warm bite of smoke in his nostrils and lungs cosseted him, blunted the impact of the words staring up at him from the decrypt on the desk. “Punitive raid” “Korn” “Target 53” and - his almost automatic, pencil-scribbled inspiration of a moment ago - “Coventry?”
It is not so nor was it so and God forbid it should be so.
Nanny’s voice, reading aloud to him from a book of fairy tales under the shadow of the walnut tree in the garden of his father’s house, with the chimes from St Michael’s Cathedral punctuating her voice, like grace-notes, every quarter of an hour.
His father’s house. At least until the day the telegram came, just at the start of his second year at prep school, and they told him his parents had succumbed to the Spanish ‘flu, so that, bewilderingly, it was his house now.
“The worst day of my life. I don’t talk about it,” he had snapped at Jen once, and she, bless her, had never mentioned it since. Odd he should be deliberately calling it to mind now. Odd, too, how clear his recollection was. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as the new bug tapped at the Form Room door, gained entrance, stuttered, “Headmaster’s compliments and Frobisher Major to see him in his study now, sir,” and fled without waiting for an answer. His mind churning, frantic to recall all possible sins which might have merited such a summons. Hewitson, his particular friend that year, grimacing sympathetically at him as he rose from his desk. That great school personage Lethbridge-Stewart (in his penultimate term and captain of the XV) passing down the corridor just as Frobisher paused before the headmaster’s door. Lethbridge-Stewart recognising his trembling pallor and hissing, password-style, ”Forsan et haec meminisse iuvabit” and then, realising that even the most basic Latin had forsaken Frobisher, adding, “Cheer up, old chap. The cane’s only on your backside for a moment: it can’t hurt you that much. Though next time - take a tip from me. Put a good thick grammar book inside your pants, first.”
But the worst had been the Head, that hitherto unapproachable figurehead, epitome of bluff manliness and muscular Christianity. As the mists of memory swirled back, Frobisher knew he had known what was coming from the moment the study door swung open to reveal the Head looking - smaller. Grey. Uncertain. In that endless instant Frobisher understood everything, so that the Head’s so-obviously rehearsed words: “Frobisher, this is one of the most painful duties which can fall upon a man in my position. I am so sorry - so very sorry - that I have to inform you -“ fell upon his ears with the hollow banality of phrases long known by heart.
They had deputed the junior mathematics master to see him home; a strained man with bad skin who had been badly gassed in the trenches and who seemed to have a blessed gift for silence, as well as a name and features which were almost completely forgettable and so had been duly forgotten.
Thoughts of that train journey conjured up a blurred intensity of misery, the only constant a shaming, unmanly longing for Nanny’s arms; her warm, starched, formidable presence standing as unbreachable defence between him and all the ills the world could deliver, as she had always done before he had grown to be a big boy, and gone away to school.
She should have been in the car awaiting him in the forecourt of Coventry station; his need of her was so fierce that in defiance of all etiquette he blurted out to Jones, the chauffeur, before even the clutch had engaged, “Where’s Nanny?”
He could hear the man’s soft, lilting Welsh voice now. ”But didn’t they tell you, sir? Terrible thing, this influenza. Buried her on Wednesday, we did. Co-operative Funeral Service, and a ham tea afterwards, and everything proper.“
They said a man recalled his entire past life when drowning. People made films about it. Funny how life imitated bad art. Or, perhaps, it was the other way round. It made more sense if there were patterns one had to follow, and art reflected those patterns. He’d never been much of a man for art. Mathematics always seemed so much more precise. Mathematics, and a good detective story - he liked Thorndike and Poirot and these puzzle people, though he didn’t care for all this psychological stuff they were bringing in these days.
Frobisher took another deep drag on the cigarette. One of the girls would be along soon to collect results into her wire basket. The decrypt would be passed Upstairs and then -
Then nothing. He knew that with a certainty as heavy and implacable as if it were molten lead flowing down channels in which it solidified as it went.
Nothing whatsoever must imperil Ultra. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. If the Germans ever suspect we have cracked their Enigma code -
So - a bombing raid upon a particular English city must be allowed to proceed as planned. Even - if predicted in advance. One had, after all, to remember the broader picture.
He looked up at the big clock on the hut wall. Ten minutes to four. At five minutes to four the door of the hut swung open and one of the girls strode in, holding out her wire basket for the products of their desperation, triumph and ingenuity.
Frobisher suppressed a gulp. As she passed through Hut 17 he muttered, ”Make sure that one gets escalated. Priority. I’m going off duty now; I’ll be back on at ten.”
He felt her assessing, soulless smile as he dropped the decrypt into her wire basket and she passed onwards.
At 4.08 pm, pedalling hard, he passed through the gates of Bletchley Park.
By 4.20pm he was on the steps of the Post Office, a pre-written telegraph form in his hand.
As the church clock struck half-past the hour he was still standing there, trapped on the threshold as though an barrier of invisible steel stood between him and the telegraph window inside.
At 4.50, stiff and stumbling, he found his way into St Mary’s Church, and sank down into one of the pews. Unlike many chaps at school and Oxford, Frobisher had never been a scoffer, but somehow the only words he could find were, “Oh Lord, let this cup pass from me.” He prayed them over and over.
The moon rose at approximately 6.35pm. The skies over Britain were clear, Munich still smouldered, and the Luftwaffe ground crew were running through final checks.
At 9.58pm Frobisher was back at his desk in Hut 17, staring down at his box of decrypts, trying to make sense out of chaos.
Sometime in the small hours - his eyes stung with the familiar sandpapered itch of another stretched late shift, and the ashtray on the desk overflowed - someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up, vaguely recognising the girl to whom he had given his decrypt ten hours ago.
“The Old Man needs to see you, sir. In his office. He said it wouldn’t wait.”
Donaldson, the Section head, did not look up as Frobisher entered. He twirled a paper-knife round on its point, round and round.
“You were right with your construe,” he said without preamble. “Coventry was the third target. We’re just getting the reports in now. Sounds like a pretty big one.”
Frobisher’s mouth was dry; he struggled to get the words out. “And the RAF, sir?”
“No.” Impossible to tell if there was any regret in Donaldson’s voice. “The PM - vetoed it. Conventional intell suggests they think we think it’s London. Can’t afford to let them know we know different.”
“I - see. Sir.”
The paper-knife continued to twirl, the point driving into the blotting paper, the pin-hole becoming a torn gash in the ink-stained sea of pink. “Coventry. You’ve got family there, haven’t you, Frobisher?”
“Ye - yes, sir. My wife and son.” And that fragile hope Jen raised in her last letter, almost too precious to think of, in case the bloom rubbed off. Not something to mention here.
For the first time Donaldson looked up. “Frobisher - in the circumstances, and given you were off-site for nearly six hours - after you delivered the construe - I - it was necessary to send someone round to check your digs.” He wrestled with the top drawer of the desk. The prevailing dampness of the great house must have swollen the wood and made it stick. He yanked it free with a protesting screech and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it out on the blotter. “They found this in the w.p.b. in your room. Anything to say?”
Frobisher gulped. “I - didn’t send it, sir. In the end.”
“I know. They checked the GPO logs.” Donaldson exhaled. “You bloody young fool. Get back to your desk, and try to justify your miserable existence for the rest of the shift. And thank your stars for whatever residual sense of duty made you change your mind at the last minute. I’ve got enough on my plate without treason breaking out in the huts.”
Frobisher’s hand was on the door-knob before the Section chief’s patented dry cough made him turn.
“Frobisher - James - “
“Well?”
“I just wanted you to know - my thoughts are with you. All three of you.”
In contrast to God’s, Frobisher discovered later that day. Divine attention, like the RAF, seemed to have been conspicuously absent from Coventry on the night of 14 November 1940.
_______________
23 March 1956
“I say, are you all right?”
A long-fingered hand encased in a navy blue glove, the thumb of which had been painstakingly darned, held out a glass of water. Mechanically, Frobisher took it and drank. He looked up from his perch on a flat-topped tomb in the shade of the ruins and saw a tall girl outlined against the light. Her navy straw hat swung by its elastic from her other wrist and the low spring sun turned her blonde hair into a blazing aureole about her head.
“I’m sorry, but who are you?”
“Meredith Gentle.” Her upper body moved in a gesture of artless grace, somewhere between a nod and a bow. “I’m here by royal command, you know.”
“Ah, what?”
She turned her head and he could see her face properly. Large, generous mouth, wide-set grey eyes beneath high-arched, eloquent brows. A bonny face for a spring morning Nanny used to say; he could hear the warm, familiar Warwickshire burr now. Something cracked inside his chest; a high, piercing, tingling sound filled his ears, as if icicles dropped from the boughs of a winter woodland in a sudden, unlooked-for thaw.
He felt his tense features ease, saw it reflected in her sudden smile, which betrayed a gap between her two front teeth you could slide a half-crown into (another Nanny phrase, come to think of it). He found it curiously endearing.
“Well, royal command in a manner of speaking. Her Majesty mentioned to her equerry that perhaps someone should see if the poor gentleman who felt faint while the foundation stone was being laid needed anything. And the equerry enquired of the Lord Lieutenant and the Lord Lieutenant suggested to his aide-de-camp that he might drop a hint to the Mayor and the Mayor indicated to the Mayoress that something needed to be done and she ordered me to do it. I’m her secretary, you see. Can I get you an aspirin?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. It was just when the singing began - the soloist -“
Frobisher felt his voice begin to falter. He clamped his jaws tight shut.
“Oh, yes. “ No hint of contempt for his weakness sounded in her voice; a deep, warm, purring voice, comforting as cocoa after a long walk through driving rain. “Me too. Why must boy sopranos always sound so - so other-worldly? As if they were so much in tune with the music of the spheres they wouldn’t bat an eyelid if the spheres sang back. Yet they’re such mucky little devils all the rest of the time, when they aren’t singing. My nephew’s a chorister, so I see both sides.”
“I met my wife in the Cathedral.” The words came out abruptly, all in a rush. He hadn’t intended to go to church at all that day, just been taking a short cut through the Close on his way back from the bookshop when a pelting downpour began. Thinking only of the precious, expensive text-books in his arms he’d bolted for the nearest refuge, which turned out to be the Cathedral front door, arriving just at the same moment as a bright-eyed, curly-haired girl also carrying an armload of shopping. Both sets of parcels had gone everywhere when they collided. And by the time they’d picked everything up under the clicking, fussy scrutiny of the churchwarden, Evensong was beginning, and it seemed inevitable that Jen and he would find themselves inside, in a side pew on the Decani side and sharing a prayer-book.
Meredith tipped her head on one side; he could see her assessing him, trying to think of a tactful way to make the delicate, probing enquiry that had to be coming.
“She died in the raid,” he said abruptly, to cut the whole business short. He had expected the usual awkward reaction to confession - God, why were people so bad about bereavement, as if everyone over the age of twenty hadn’t had more than enough practice at it - but she nodded, gravely, and waited for him to go on in profound, blessed, accepting silence.
He looked up, round at the ruins, the spring sunlight of the present overlaid with a vision of fire and darkness and endless, endless screaming.
“Such an awful night,” Meredith said, echoing his thoughts. “I’d been out that evening - dress rehearsal for the school play. Coming back, I lost my way in the blackout. When the sirens went I had not a clue where the nearest shelter might be. Running, always running, with everything shaking around me - and every time somewhere took a hit the air would go solid for a moment with the shock, and then the sound would rush back. Horrible.”
Her voice shook. Timidly, Frobisher stretched out his hand and laid it across her blue-gloved one. She nodded gratitude; her other hand waved in the air, tracing a pattern impossible for him to decode.
“Eventually I came round a corner into the Close. The Cathedral was alight, but the only bit I can remember properly is a man leaping up and down in front of that roaring blaze, yelling that the RAF had let us down and the Government only cared about defending London.” Meredith shook her head. “People can be idiotic when they’re upset, can’t they? Of course Churchill would have done something if he’d been able to. But who could have predicted that Coventry would be the target?”
Nothing could be said to that. The only option was to change the subject.
“What - er - did you have any plans for after the ceremony?” Frobisher enquired.
He had not, actually, intended it as a chat up line, but there never seemed a proper time to explain that. And, by the time he and Meredith were married six month later, explanations seemed contra-indicated, anyway. He tucked it away with all the other secrets.
___________________
1965
“Acka-acka-acka! Acka-acka-acka!” The Me210 swooped, and the Hurricane spiralled up to meet it. With the hand not holding the Airfix model, John Frobisher caught Philip Jenkinson by the wrist, at the same time hooking his ankle with a sneak move he’d just thought of. As the two boys dropped to the ground with common, unspoken purpose they tossed the fragile models clear of the scrimmage, into the beds of mint and flowering lavender which lined the lawn, lest they be damaged as the boys rolled over and over as they pummelled each other.
John wriggled, knocked Philip breathless with one strategically placed blow of his scabbed elbow, scrambled triumphantly atop his chest, pinned down his arms and reached for the pistol in his belt.
“Gotcha!” he said, holding the muzzle to his friend’s temple. “No surrender. Die like the Nazi scum you are, you stinking German pig!”
“John! Come indoors and see me at once!” His father; stern and commanding like the voice of God. Neither boy had realised how close the mock battle had brought them to the windows of his study, wide open on this sunny morning, second day of the long summer holidays.
Dead silence fell on the garden. Both boys wriggled awkwardly to their feet. Philip poised irresolutely, as if half wanting to flee whatever share of adult wrath might be coming his way, half-ashamed of the impulse. John made a quick, dismissive wriggle of one hand. It’s my row. I’ll deal with it. Get out while you can. His friend, pausing only to rescue the ‘planes, faded away towards the bottom of the garden and the strategically loose plank in the fence.
The study door was a little ajar; John appreciated this tiny mercy. Over the course of his short life he had already come to appreciate that the anticipation of pain almost always exceeds the misery of its infliction. A prolonged wait to learn your fate - whether outside the headmaster’s office or in the ante-room to the dentist’s surgery - seemed to him a profoundly exquisite torment that even the master torturers of the Gestapo could hardly hope to better.
His father did not look up as he entered. Strewn across the desk in front of him were half-a-dozen brightly-coloured booklets. John recognised them instantly. His father stabbed down a forefinger at them.
“Do you really have nothing better to spend your pocket money on than this American rubbish?”
He opened his mouth; then closed it again. However often he tried to impress on his father of the information that Commando magazine was a wholly British product, his father still assumed the very idea of telling stories in pictures was an American one and hence symptomatic of Everything That Is Wrong With This Country Today. Frankly, John could hardly see what was wrong with wanting to be more like a country which was, by all accounts, bigger, shinier and had lots more different kinds of ice-cream than this one.
His father made a little, angry, hrrumphing sound. The vein in his temple throbbed. He combed back his thinning grey hair with his fingers,
“And that, I suppose, is where you get these idiotic notions about the War. Sit down, John and listen.”
Mulishly, John sat. His father eyed him and began.
“Look -
John closed the study door behind him. Blank misery rose in his gullet, almost choking him. Why did Daddy always have to be so unfair? And make it sound as if he was being sensible and reasonable all the times when he was being anything but - fancy talking about the Nazi pilots as if they were ordinary human beings, f’rinstance. Everyone knew that was rubbish - practically - practically treason, some people would say. Suppose he said that sort of thing in front of Phil’s father, who’d been at D-Day, or Julian’s, who’d missed the War proper by a fraction, but had been in Palestine fighting off the Stern Gang which, according to Commando was pretty nearly as good. If only Daddy had done something proper like that to win the War, maybe he wouldn’t have his weird, embarrassing ideas about Duty.
A warm smell of currants and cinnamon breathed out of the kitchen. As he entered, his mother pulled a tray of plump tea-cakes from the oven, brushed them over with some glossy clear liquid from a mug, tipped them onto a wire rack and said, “So, Pilot-Officer Frobisher. Confined to barracks until further orders, are we?”
Despite every heroic intention, his eyes started to prick behind their lids. He turned aside, staring out into the garden so that she couldn’t see his expression. “It just isn’t fair.”
“Don’t be so hard on your father.” Against all the rules - which, among other things, decreed that to eat new-baked bread fresh from the oven was to court death by indigestion, he found a warm, aromatic fragment of tea-cake, dripping with butter, held up to his lips. “Eat that. Look here - your Uncle’s death took your father very hard. Even if he doesn’t let it show. Last of the family, and all that. His little brother, too.”
“Uncle Gerald? His little But he - but he was old -“
“Ssh! Far from it. He looked old because he’d been ill for so long. So be kind to your father, O.K.? Scout’s honour?”
He nodded, reluctantly. His mother smiled. “Well then. As I understand you are currently unable to join the rest of your unit, Pilot-Officer Frobisher, then I proposed to commandeer your services as an escort. We’re required to carry out a targeted sortie over the Covered Market at precisely 2.45 pip emma. After which - all units rendezvous at the Odeon Cinema at 4.10 pip emma. Intelligence reports that they are showing The Dambusters and we are ordered to observe and report back. Mission plan agreed, Pilot-Officer Frobisher?”
He hurled himself ecstatically into her arms. Far along the passage he thought he heard a door scrape shut, but it seemed of no importance and he duly forgot it.
End.
Historical note: the Coventry Blitz of 14 November 1940 killed at least 554 men, women and children. It has been controversially claimed that the Allies were aware of the size and destination of the impeding raid, but decided not to take counter-measures for fear of revealing the top secret German Enigma code had been cracked, thus prejudicing the rest of the Allied war effort.
“Forsan et haec meminisse iuvabit”: Aeneid, Book I: “Perhaps one day we will even enjoy remembering this lot”.
Torchwood, Children of Earth. Gen.
Warnings: No spoilers. Content echoes canon and attempts to keep faith with its spirit.
Summary: Frobisher was a good man.
Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Herod, the king, in his raging,
Chargéd he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young to slay.
Then woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and pray,
For thy parting nor say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Trad. 16 Cent.
14 November 1940
Frobisher reached for the packet of Players. Part of his mind prided him on the visible steadiness of his hand as he did so, noted the flex of muscle and tendon, appreciated how his veins showed as blue ridges overlying the slender bones beneath his spare flesh, the winter pallor of his desk-bound skin.
He lit up. The warm bite of smoke in his nostrils and lungs cosseted him, blunted the impact of the words staring up at him from the decrypt on the desk. “Punitive raid” “Korn” “Target 53” and - his almost automatic, pencil-scribbled inspiration of a moment ago - “Coventry?”
It is not so nor was it so and God forbid it should be so.
Nanny’s voice, reading aloud to him from a book of fairy tales under the shadow of the walnut tree in the garden of his father’s house, with the chimes from St Michael’s Cathedral punctuating her voice, like grace-notes, every quarter of an hour.
His father’s house. At least until the day the telegram came, just at the start of his second year at prep school, and they told him his parents had succumbed to the Spanish ‘flu, so that, bewilderingly, it was his house now.
“The worst day of my life. I don’t talk about it,” he had snapped at Jen once, and she, bless her, had never mentioned it since. Odd he should be deliberately calling it to mind now. Odd, too, how clear his recollection was. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as the new bug tapped at the Form Room door, gained entrance, stuttered, “Headmaster’s compliments and Frobisher Major to see him in his study now, sir,” and fled without waiting for an answer. His mind churning, frantic to recall all possible sins which might have merited such a summons. Hewitson, his particular friend that year, grimacing sympathetically at him as he rose from his desk. That great school personage Lethbridge-Stewart (in his penultimate term and captain of the XV) passing down the corridor just as Frobisher paused before the headmaster’s door. Lethbridge-Stewart recognising his trembling pallor and hissing, password-style, ”Forsan et haec meminisse iuvabit” and then, realising that even the most basic Latin had forsaken Frobisher, adding, “Cheer up, old chap. The cane’s only on your backside for a moment: it can’t hurt you that much. Though next time - take a tip from me. Put a good thick grammar book inside your pants, first.”
But the worst had been the Head, that hitherto unapproachable figurehead, epitome of bluff manliness and muscular Christianity. As the mists of memory swirled back, Frobisher knew he had known what was coming from the moment the study door swung open to reveal the Head looking - smaller. Grey. Uncertain. In that endless instant Frobisher understood everything, so that the Head’s so-obviously rehearsed words: “Frobisher, this is one of the most painful duties which can fall upon a man in my position. I am so sorry - so very sorry - that I have to inform you -“ fell upon his ears with the hollow banality of phrases long known by heart.
They had deputed the junior mathematics master to see him home; a strained man with bad skin who had been badly gassed in the trenches and who seemed to have a blessed gift for silence, as well as a name and features which were almost completely forgettable and so had been duly forgotten.
Thoughts of that train journey conjured up a blurred intensity of misery, the only constant a shaming, unmanly longing for Nanny’s arms; her warm, starched, formidable presence standing as unbreachable defence between him and all the ills the world could deliver, as she had always done before he had grown to be a big boy, and gone away to school.
She should have been in the car awaiting him in the forecourt of Coventry station; his need of her was so fierce that in defiance of all etiquette he blurted out to Jones, the chauffeur, before even the clutch had engaged, “Where’s Nanny?”
He could hear the man’s soft, lilting Welsh voice now. ”But didn’t they tell you, sir? Terrible thing, this influenza. Buried her on Wednesday, we did. Co-operative Funeral Service, and a ham tea afterwards, and everything proper.“
They said a man recalled his entire past life when drowning. People made films about it. Funny how life imitated bad art. Or, perhaps, it was the other way round. It made more sense if there were patterns one had to follow, and art reflected those patterns. He’d never been much of a man for art. Mathematics always seemed so much more precise. Mathematics, and a good detective story - he liked Thorndike and Poirot and these puzzle people, though he didn’t care for all this psychological stuff they were bringing in these days.
Frobisher took another deep drag on the cigarette. One of the girls would be along soon to collect results into her wire basket. The decrypt would be passed Upstairs and then -
Then nothing. He knew that with a certainty as heavy and implacable as if it were molten lead flowing down channels in which it solidified as it went.
Nothing whatsoever must imperil Ultra. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. If the Germans ever suspect we have cracked their Enigma code -
So - a bombing raid upon a particular English city must be allowed to proceed as planned. Even - if predicted in advance. One had, after all, to remember the broader picture.
He looked up at the big clock on the hut wall. Ten minutes to four. At five minutes to four the door of the hut swung open and one of the girls strode in, holding out her wire basket for the products of their desperation, triumph and ingenuity.
Frobisher suppressed a gulp. As she passed through Hut 17 he muttered, ”Make sure that one gets escalated. Priority. I’m going off duty now; I’ll be back on at ten.”
He felt her assessing, soulless smile as he dropped the decrypt into her wire basket and she passed onwards.
At 4.08 pm, pedalling hard, he passed through the gates of Bletchley Park.
By 4.20pm he was on the steps of the Post Office, a pre-written telegraph form in his hand.
As the church clock struck half-past the hour he was still standing there, trapped on the threshold as though an barrier of invisible steel stood between him and the telegraph window inside.
At 4.50, stiff and stumbling, he found his way into St Mary’s Church, and sank down into one of the pews. Unlike many chaps at school and Oxford, Frobisher had never been a scoffer, but somehow the only words he could find were, “Oh Lord, let this cup pass from me.” He prayed them over and over.
The moon rose at approximately 6.35pm. The skies over Britain were clear, Munich still smouldered, and the Luftwaffe ground crew were running through final checks.
At 9.58pm Frobisher was back at his desk in Hut 17, staring down at his box of decrypts, trying to make sense out of chaos.
Sometime in the small hours - his eyes stung with the familiar sandpapered itch of another stretched late shift, and the ashtray on the desk overflowed - someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up, vaguely recognising the girl to whom he had given his decrypt ten hours ago.
“The Old Man needs to see you, sir. In his office. He said it wouldn’t wait.”
Donaldson, the Section head, did not look up as Frobisher entered. He twirled a paper-knife round on its point, round and round.
“You were right with your construe,” he said without preamble. “Coventry was the third target. We’re just getting the reports in now. Sounds like a pretty big one.”
Frobisher’s mouth was dry; he struggled to get the words out. “And the RAF, sir?”
“No.” Impossible to tell if there was any regret in Donaldson’s voice. “The PM - vetoed it. Conventional intell suggests they think we think it’s London. Can’t afford to let them know we know different.”
“I - see. Sir.”
The paper-knife continued to twirl, the point driving into the blotting paper, the pin-hole becoming a torn gash in the ink-stained sea of pink. “Coventry. You’ve got family there, haven’t you, Frobisher?”
“Ye - yes, sir. My wife and son.” And that fragile hope Jen raised in her last letter, almost too precious to think of, in case the bloom rubbed off. Not something to mention here.
For the first time Donaldson looked up. “Frobisher - in the circumstances, and given you were off-site for nearly six hours - after you delivered the construe - I - it was necessary to send someone round to check your digs.” He wrestled with the top drawer of the desk. The prevailing dampness of the great house must have swollen the wood and made it stick. He yanked it free with a protesting screech and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it out on the blotter. “They found this in the w.p.b. in your room. Anything to say?”
Frobisher gulped. “I - didn’t send it, sir. In the end.”
“I know. They checked the GPO logs.” Donaldson exhaled. “You bloody young fool. Get back to your desk, and try to justify your miserable existence for the rest of the shift. And thank your stars for whatever residual sense of duty made you change your mind at the last minute. I’ve got enough on my plate without treason breaking out in the huts.”
Frobisher’s hand was on the door-knob before the Section chief’s patented dry cough made him turn.
“Frobisher - James - “
“Well?”
“I just wanted you to know - my thoughts are with you. All three of you.”
In contrast to God’s, Frobisher discovered later that day. Divine attention, like the RAF, seemed to have been conspicuously absent from Coventry on the night of 14 November 1940.
_______________
23 March 1956
“I say, are you all right?”
A long-fingered hand encased in a navy blue glove, the thumb of which had been painstakingly darned, held out a glass of water. Mechanically, Frobisher took it and drank. He looked up from his perch on a flat-topped tomb in the shade of the ruins and saw a tall girl outlined against the light. Her navy straw hat swung by its elastic from her other wrist and the low spring sun turned her blonde hair into a blazing aureole about her head.
“I’m sorry, but who are you?”
“Meredith Gentle.” Her upper body moved in a gesture of artless grace, somewhere between a nod and a bow. “I’m here by royal command, you know.”
“Ah, what?”
She turned her head and he could see her face properly. Large, generous mouth, wide-set grey eyes beneath high-arched, eloquent brows. A bonny face for a spring morning Nanny used to say; he could hear the warm, familiar Warwickshire burr now. Something cracked inside his chest; a high, piercing, tingling sound filled his ears, as if icicles dropped from the boughs of a winter woodland in a sudden, unlooked-for thaw.
He felt his tense features ease, saw it reflected in her sudden smile, which betrayed a gap between her two front teeth you could slide a half-crown into (another Nanny phrase, come to think of it). He found it curiously endearing.
“Well, royal command in a manner of speaking. Her Majesty mentioned to her equerry that perhaps someone should see if the poor gentleman who felt faint while the foundation stone was being laid needed anything. And the equerry enquired of the Lord Lieutenant and the Lord Lieutenant suggested to his aide-de-camp that he might drop a hint to the Mayor and the Mayor indicated to the Mayoress that something needed to be done and she ordered me to do it. I’m her secretary, you see. Can I get you an aspirin?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. It was just when the singing began - the soloist -“
Frobisher felt his voice begin to falter. He clamped his jaws tight shut.
“Oh, yes. “ No hint of contempt for his weakness sounded in her voice; a deep, warm, purring voice, comforting as cocoa after a long walk through driving rain. “Me too. Why must boy sopranos always sound so - so other-worldly? As if they were so much in tune with the music of the spheres they wouldn’t bat an eyelid if the spheres sang back. Yet they’re such mucky little devils all the rest of the time, when they aren’t singing. My nephew’s a chorister, so I see both sides.”
“I met my wife in the Cathedral.” The words came out abruptly, all in a rush. He hadn’t intended to go to church at all that day, just been taking a short cut through the Close on his way back from the bookshop when a pelting downpour began. Thinking only of the precious, expensive text-books in his arms he’d bolted for the nearest refuge, which turned out to be the Cathedral front door, arriving just at the same moment as a bright-eyed, curly-haired girl also carrying an armload of shopping. Both sets of parcels had gone everywhere when they collided. And by the time they’d picked everything up under the clicking, fussy scrutiny of the churchwarden, Evensong was beginning, and it seemed inevitable that Jen and he would find themselves inside, in a side pew on the Decani side and sharing a prayer-book.
Meredith tipped her head on one side; he could see her assessing him, trying to think of a tactful way to make the delicate, probing enquiry that had to be coming.
“She died in the raid,” he said abruptly, to cut the whole business short. He had expected the usual awkward reaction to confession - God, why were people so bad about bereavement, as if everyone over the age of twenty hadn’t had more than enough practice at it - but she nodded, gravely, and waited for him to go on in profound, blessed, accepting silence.
He looked up, round at the ruins, the spring sunlight of the present overlaid with a vision of fire and darkness and endless, endless screaming.
“Such an awful night,” Meredith said, echoing his thoughts. “I’d been out that evening - dress rehearsal for the school play. Coming back, I lost my way in the blackout. When the sirens went I had not a clue where the nearest shelter might be. Running, always running, with everything shaking around me - and every time somewhere took a hit the air would go solid for a moment with the shock, and then the sound would rush back. Horrible.”
Her voice shook. Timidly, Frobisher stretched out his hand and laid it across her blue-gloved one. She nodded gratitude; her other hand waved in the air, tracing a pattern impossible for him to decode.
“Eventually I came round a corner into the Close. The Cathedral was alight, but the only bit I can remember properly is a man leaping up and down in front of that roaring blaze, yelling that the RAF had let us down and the Government only cared about defending London.” Meredith shook her head. “People can be idiotic when they’re upset, can’t they? Of course Churchill would have done something if he’d been able to. But who could have predicted that Coventry would be the target?”
Nothing could be said to that. The only option was to change the subject.
“What - er - did you have any plans for after the ceremony?” Frobisher enquired.
He had not, actually, intended it as a chat up line, but there never seemed a proper time to explain that. And, by the time he and Meredith were married six month later, explanations seemed contra-indicated, anyway. He tucked it away with all the other secrets.
___________________
1965
“Acka-acka-acka! Acka-acka-acka!” The Me210 swooped, and the Hurricane spiralled up to meet it. With the hand not holding the Airfix model, John Frobisher caught Philip Jenkinson by the wrist, at the same time hooking his ankle with a sneak move he’d just thought of. As the two boys dropped to the ground with common, unspoken purpose they tossed the fragile models clear of the scrimmage, into the beds of mint and flowering lavender which lined the lawn, lest they be damaged as the boys rolled over and over as they pummelled each other.
John wriggled, knocked Philip breathless with one strategically placed blow of his scabbed elbow, scrambled triumphantly atop his chest, pinned down his arms and reached for the pistol in his belt.
“Gotcha!” he said, holding the muzzle to his friend’s temple. “No surrender. Die like the Nazi scum you are, you stinking German pig!”
“John! Come indoors and see me at once!” His father; stern and commanding like the voice of God. Neither boy had realised how close the mock battle had brought them to the windows of his study, wide open on this sunny morning, second day of the long summer holidays.
Dead silence fell on the garden. Both boys wriggled awkwardly to their feet. Philip poised irresolutely, as if half wanting to flee whatever share of adult wrath might be coming his way, half-ashamed of the impulse. John made a quick, dismissive wriggle of one hand. It’s my row. I’ll deal with it. Get out while you can. His friend, pausing only to rescue the ‘planes, faded away towards the bottom of the garden and the strategically loose plank in the fence.
The study door was a little ajar; John appreciated this tiny mercy. Over the course of his short life he had already come to appreciate that the anticipation of pain almost always exceeds the misery of its infliction. A prolonged wait to learn your fate - whether outside the headmaster’s office or in the ante-room to the dentist’s surgery - seemed to him a profoundly exquisite torment that even the master torturers of the Gestapo could hardly hope to better.
His father did not look up as he entered. Strewn across the desk in front of him were half-a-dozen brightly-coloured booklets. John recognised them instantly. His father stabbed down a forefinger at them.
“Do you really have nothing better to spend your pocket money on than this American rubbish?”
He opened his mouth; then closed it again. However often he tried to impress on his father of the information that Commando magazine was a wholly British product, his father still assumed the very idea of telling stories in pictures was an American one and hence symptomatic of Everything That Is Wrong With This Country Today. Frankly, John could hardly see what was wrong with wanting to be more like a country which was, by all accounts, bigger, shinier and had lots more different kinds of ice-cream than this one.
His father made a little, angry, hrrumphing sound. The vein in his temple throbbed. He combed back his thinning grey hair with his fingers,
“And that, I suppose, is where you get these idiotic notions about the War. Sit down, John and listen.”
Mulishly, John sat. His father eyed him and began.
“Look -
John closed the study door behind him. Blank misery rose in his gullet, almost choking him. Why did Daddy always have to be so unfair? And make it sound as if he was being sensible and reasonable all the times when he was being anything but - fancy talking about the Nazi pilots as if they were ordinary human beings, f’rinstance. Everyone knew that was rubbish - practically - practically treason, some people would say. Suppose he said that sort of thing in front of Phil’s father, who’d been at D-Day, or Julian’s, who’d missed the War proper by a fraction, but had been in Palestine fighting off the Stern Gang which, according to Commando was pretty nearly as good. If only Daddy had done something proper like that to win the War, maybe he wouldn’t have his weird, embarrassing ideas about Duty.
A warm smell of currants and cinnamon breathed out of the kitchen. As he entered, his mother pulled a tray of plump tea-cakes from the oven, brushed them over with some glossy clear liquid from a mug, tipped them onto a wire rack and said, “So, Pilot-Officer Frobisher. Confined to barracks until further orders, are we?”
Despite every heroic intention, his eyes started to prick behind their lids. He turned aside, staring out into the garden so that she couldn’t see his expression. “It just isn’t fair.”
“Don’t be so hard on your father.” Against all the rules - which, among other things, decreed that to eat new-baked bread fresh from the oven was to court death by indigestion, he found a warm, aromatic fragment of tea-cake, dripping with butter, held up to his lips. “Eat that. Look here - your Uncle’s death took your father very hard. Even if he doesn’t let it show. Last of the family, and all that. His little brother, too.”
“Uncle Gerald? His little But he - but he was old -“
“Ssh! Far from it. He looked old because he’d been ill for so long. So be kind to your father, O.K.? Scout’s honour?”
He nodded, reluctantly. His mother smiled. “Well then. As I understand you are currently unable to join the rest of your unit, Pilot-Officer Frobisher, then I proposed to commandeer your services as an escort. We’re required to carry out a targeted sortie over the Covered Market at precisely 2.45 pip emma. After which - all units rendezvous at the Odeon Cinema at 4.10 pip emma. Intelligence reports that they are showing The Dambusters and we are ordered to observe and report back. Mission plan agreed, Pilot-Officer Frobisher?”
He hurled himself ecstatically into her arms. Far along the passage he thought he heard a door scrape shut, but it seemed of no importance and he duly forgot it.
End.
Historical note: the Coventry Blitz of 14 November 1940 killed at least 554 men, women and children. It has been controversially claimed that the Allies were aware of the size and destination of the impeding raid, but decided not to take counter-measures for fear of revealing the top secret German Enigma code had been cracked, thus prejudicing the rest of the Allied war effort.
“Forsan et haec meminisse iuvabit”: Aeneid, Book I: “Perhaps one day we will even enjoy remembering this lot”.