A Pair of Silver Wings Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by James Holland

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part I: England

  Somerset – May, 1995

  London – May, 1995

  Surrey – May, 1995

  Cambridge – September, 1940

  Somerset – May, 1995

  Cornwall – August, 1941

  Cornwall – May, 1995

  Cornwall – December, 1941

  Part II: Malta

  Somerset – June, 1995

  Malta – February, 1942

  Malta – February, 1942

  Malta – March, 1942

  Malta – June, 1995

  Malta – March, 1942

  Malta – June, 1995

  Malta – April, 1942

  Malta – May, 1942

  Malta – June, 1942

  Malta – June, 1995

  Somerset – June, 1995

  Part III: Italy

  Italy – April, 1944

  Italy – April, 1944

  Italy – April, 1944

  Italy – May, 1944

  Italy – May, 1944

  Italy – May, 1944

  Italy – August, 1995

  Italy – August, 1995

  Italy – August, 1944

  Italy – September, 1944

  Italy – September, 1944

  Italy – August, 1995

  Italy – August, 1995

  England – August, 1995

  Historical Note and Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  At the school where Edward Enderby taught for over forty years, there were few who knew he'd once been a successful fighter pilot during the war. For over half a century he has, for the most part, put the memories of those years out of his mind. But fifty years on, he is alone, with a strained relationship with his only son, and a career behind him that has brought him respect but little affection.

  In 1995, Britain is celebrating the anniversary of the end of the war, and Edward finds himself forced to confront the tragedy he suffered during those years. Embarking on a journey of self-discovery and personal redemption, Edward travels from England to Malta and then to Italy, and in doing so comes face-to-face with the idealistic young man he once was, and the devastated and traumatised 23-year-old he was to become. . .

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James Holland was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and studied history at Durham University. He has worked for several London publishing houses and has written for a number of national newspapers and magazines. He is also the author of three works of history and three previous novels, including The Burning Blue. Married with a son, he lives near Salisbury.

  Also by James Holland

  FICTION

  The Burning Blue

  NON-FICTION

  Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege 1940–1943

  Together We Stand: North Africa 1942–1943:

  Turning The Tide In The West

  Twenty-One: Coming of age in World War II

  A Pair of

  Silver Wings

  JAMES HOLLAND

  For my Parents

  PART I

  England

  Somerset – May, 1995

  The sun burned down on his face. Although his eyes were closed, the world was not dark; rather, it seemed to be diffused by a gentle orange glow. A soothing, warm, orange glow. He was lying down, stretched out and almost hidden by the long grass that surrounded him. A shadow passed across his face and he opened his eyes: she was looking at him, just inches away, the sun lighting the back of her head and giving her flaxen hair an unreal glow, like a halo. She was something good, angelic even; something unsullied, incorruptible. Her mouth was moving, the lips moist, and her eyes smiling, but the words were invisible and unheard. Every feature of her face was so clear: the small nick in her eyebrow where the dark hairs refused to grow; the small mole on the end of her left earlobe; the deep-brown eyes that searched his own face. So clear, as though he were staring at her through a magnifying glass. As though her face filling his view was somehow protecting him.

  The sun vanished and in its stead came rain, and he was no longer lying down gazing at her, but rather, crouching, in a corner of a dark building. She had gone. There was straw at his feet and other people nearby. Men, crouching with rifles. He was looking through some kind of opening and watching soldiers walking steadily up the hill towards him. They looked inhuman, more like machines, because they were indistinct, faceless. He was turning towards someone near him, someone yelling at him, his mouth screaming, the veins on his neck pulsing with panic and terror. He still couldn’t hear the words but now he was running, his heart beating loudly and increasingly fast. A muddy track, a wall and thick undergrowth, scratching, tearing his skin, and a voice that was telling him that no matter how much pain he felt, or how much his face and hands were running with blood, he must not stop until he reached the summit. And then he was there, on the bald patch of ground, looking down, his world beneath him. He could see all around him but his eyes were fixed on a line of people standing against the wall and the soldiers opposite. He had to do something. Panic welled within him – panic born from helplessness. ‘No!’ he was screaming, ‘Don’t do this!’ But no matter how hard he shouted, no noise came from his straining mouth, his pleading lost to anyone but him.

  *

  Edward Enderby woke with a start, and for a moment felt quite disorientated and short of breath. It was a dark night, but even in a small town like Brampton Cary the streetlights ensured there was a faint filter of neon, and soon the features of the familiar room began to focus. Edward turned, still half expecting to find the door side of the bed filled with the warm and gently breathing figure of his wife, and was dismayed to see that the sheets and blankets had been wrenched from the sides and into a state of disorder. His pyjamas were clammy, too, and when he put his fingers to his brow, he touched beads of sweat.

  His alarm clock had long since lost its luminosity, so he reached over and turned on the side light, his eyes smarting with the sudden brightness. Squinting, he cursed – only half-past four – then got up, took off his pyjama top, straightened the sheets and tucked in the sides, and eased himself back into the window side of his bed.

  Having turned off the light again, Edward lay back, staring up at the ceiling. It was the second time in a week he’d had the same dream, and the third time in ten days. Three times too many. He’d thought such dreams had gone away a long time ago, but suddenly the past was rushing back again, refusing to let him alone. Refusing him the peace he desired. Cynthia used to make allowances; invariably, after a particularly disturbed night he’d be irascible and short-tempered the following day. ‘It’s all right, I understand,’ she’d tell him, discreetly keeping out of his way, and protecting Simon from his father’s bark. One time, soon after they had been married, he’d even hit her. He hadn’t meant to, but he had been crying in his sleep – a little upset, Cynthia had said – and so she had woken him. For a moment he’d not seen his wife, but someone quite different, and so had angrily struck out, shouting ‘Don’t touch them!’ He’d hit her quite hard too – the bruise on her cheek had kept her indoors for the best part of a week. He’d been horrified by what he had done – it had upset him more than he’d been able to express. Of course, he had apologised profusely, assured her it was just his dream and that he had been confused – he’d even offered to sleep in a separate bed. But as always, she had been understanding, even suggesting it had been her fault for having roused him. He had not moved into a different bed, and neither of them had ever spoken of it again.

  Edwa
rd sighed. Why now? he wondered. He’d spent the past fifty years trying to forget, but it seemed old ghosts were not going to let him go yet. He continued staring at the ceiling for some time, the ticking clock the only sound. He tried to think about other things: about the cricket later that day – the first match of the term. But his mind would not let him. No matter how hard he tried, those ghosts wanted to haunt him and there was nothing he could do about it.

  He leaned over and turned on the light once more. Then he picked up his book, put on his glasses, and began to read.

  When Edward Enderby had first come to Myddleton College as a twenty-seven-year-old history teacher in the autumn of 1949, there were only a couple of other masters who had been in the war – the younger ones like himself – but rather more who’d served in the Great War thirty years before. Both conflicts were rarely mentioned, and then usually in the form of an admonishment to one or other of the boys – ‘To think I fought the war for you lot!’ or, ‘If you think that’s hard, Baker,’ (or whoever), ‘then try spending three years in the trenches!’ Even at Edward’s interview, the headmaster had not mentioned his war record, except to mutter, ‘So, could put you down to help with the Corps?’ In the staff room, both the First and the Second World Wars were understood to be as out-of-bounds as the pubs in Brampton Cary were to the boys. It was simply not the form. To brag about one’s exploits would be to ‘shoot a line’ (in old RAF parlance), while to dwell on the hardships was considered whingeing. Besides, it was the next generation they needed to worry about – the boys now at the school.

  For Edward, who wished to put the matter out of mind as far as possible, this unwritten rule was most welcome. As far as he was concerned – and he felt sure the other new masters felt the same – it was a relief to be able to channel his attention towards teaching and to whether the first eleven were going to beat King’s Taunton for the first time in a quarter of a century.

  Thirty-eight years later, when Edward finally retired, he was one of only four members of staff old enough to know what war was like. Mr Cowley, the art master, had been in a tank regiment in Germany when the war had ended; the chaplain, Reverend Troughton, had spent two years in the Royal Navy and had served under Mountbatten. Neither advertised the fact, but it was known amongst the boys. Sometimes their achievements were underplayed; sometimes they were exaggerated. The school rumour mill rarely got it right. Mr Wilkinson, on the other hand, the head of classics, made no secret at all about his time in Burma. Mr Wilkinson positively loved talking about it, and would regale the boys with tales of jungle warfare and his time as a Chindit, sneaking up behind Japanese strongholds and blasting them to smithereens. He’d always been popular, Mr Wilkinson, with both the boys and the rest of the staff. He was an enthusiast, passionate about his subject, passionate about everything, it seemed. Passionate even about the war.

  By contrast, Edward had never spoken a word about his war years. If Cynthia knew little about it, then he was certainly not going to go blabbering to his colleagues and to the boys. There had been times when one or other of the boys, and even the masters, had directly asked him, but he’d either brushed it aside with an ‘Oh, nothing very exciting,’ or told them not to be impertinent and to mind their own business, depending on his mood and who had asked the question. On Remembrance Sunday, he’d never worn any medals, nor had he ever had either photographs or pictures from his war years in any part of his house. Whenever it became known that he’d once been a Spitfire pilot – and somehow, some way, these rumours did evolve periodically – such talk soon evaporated. Mr Enderby? Surely not! Fighter pilots were supposed to be flamboyant, romantic figures; larger than life. That wasn’t Mr Enderby at all.

  The school had saved him, as he’d known it would. A cocooned environment, where, in those grim post-war years, the depressing effects of rationing, war damage and economic hardship were felt less keenly. A place where he could attempt to forget the past. He’d felt that the moment he’d arrived for his interview in the summer of 1949. Even its situation, nestling in a hollow, surrounded by rolling Somerset hills, had given the impression that both the school and the town were somehow sealed off from the rest of the world. It was why he’d never left. At Myddleton he’d always felt secure, settled. And it was why he was still there, even though his teaching days were over. ‘Don’t you want to do something with your retirement?’ Simon had asked him. I am, Edward had thought: he still ran the history society for the sixth-formers, still watched most of the home games. And he read, and continued to build his train set in the attic. He had no desire to ‘travel the world’ as Simon had suggested he might when Cynthia died, as though constant global travel was a Utopian existence to which all men should aspire. Occasional forays to Spain and France or a week’s fishing in Scotland were quite enough.

  More than enough, really. He couldn’t see himself even making it that far afield too often again in the future. The small town house he and Cynthia had bought on his retirement was the ideal place to see out his days. One of a number of new properties built around a redeveloped mill house, they’d been lucky to get it. Neither too large, nor too small, it had decent and cost-effective central heating, a garage and small garden, and all the fittings worked beautifully. He supposed the stairs might get a bit much later, but now, when he was thankfully free of arthritis and other signs of advancing old age, he felt unconcerned by the potential hazards of the future.

  And until a few weeks before, he’d been comparatively content, if content was the right word. His existence was, he knew, fairly banal, and had become more so since his retirement, revolving as it did around daily and weekly routines that altered slightly with the changing seasons. For most of his adult life, habit and routine had proved a great defence against unnecessary brooding; a certain amount of readjusting had been required when he had retired, and again when Cynthia had passed away, but for the last six months a sense of calm had returned. Anyway, he always tended to feel brighter at the beginning of April, when once again the cricket season began, and there was the prospect of summer and long days of light stretching before him.

  But then the dreams had started again, unsettling him and shattering his peace of mind. They’d never gone entirely, but he’d not had as many so close together for some time. It had left him not only short of sleep, but irritable. Throughout the day, he’d suddenly find himself thinking about it, the images of his dreams re-entering his mind, but now only clearer. It was like having a bad shadow following him around, prodding him in the ribs the moment he settled down to do something.

  *

  This latest dream had shaken him further, and although reading for a while usually helped him back to sleep, he was still wide awake at 7.30 a.m. when his alarm clock began ringing furiously. For much of his life, the shrill sound of the hammer pounding against the bells had been his signal to get up and start his day. When he had been teaching, he had always, without fail, risen at 6.30 a.m., then during the holidays had allowed himself a lie-in and moved it forward an hour. Since his retirement, it was set at 7.30 a.m. permanently. For some reason that he had never articulated in his mind, he felt unable to rise until the alarm rang, no matter how awake he might be before that time, and so it was not until then that he pulled back the sheets, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and got up.

  In the bathroom, Edward looked at himself in the mirror. Tired, he thought, and with his fingers pulled at the skin beneath his eyes, before running a basin of hot water in which to wash and shave. The steaming water refreshed him. Didn’t have much of that then, he thought to himself, then cursed silently. Think of something else, damn you. His face had aged well. It was lean, without much loose skin, and despite the dark smudges at his eyes, they were still as clear as they had been all his life; he looked good for seventy-two. His hair was thinner than once it had been, but he was not really balding – just receding a little, perhaps. And although it was mostly white, there were still streaks of dark. This made him appear younger than he
really was.

  Having completed his ablutions by trimming his moustache, Edward went downstairs, still in his pyjamas, to make tea. This was another old habit. When Cynthia had been alive, he’d always brought it back upstairs on a tray, so that his wife could have a cup in bed before starting the day. Now, he simply boiled the kettle, poured out a pot, and then went back upstairs to dress while the tea brewed. ‘Four-and-a-half minutes is the perfect length to brew a decent pot of tea,’ his father had been fond of saying – and he should have known, having spent many years in the tea business before the war. Edward followed his father’s rule almost to the second. It took him almost precisely that time to dress: plain drill trousers, fresh socks, check shirt and tie. Lambswool pullover. Brogues, polished before bed the night before.

  Sitting at the pine kitchen table, eating a breakfast of toast and cereal, Edward read the newspaper, the radio burbling softly in the background. The daily copy of the The Times had been a retirement luxury he had awarded himself. When he had still been teaching, he had always read the copies delivered to the staff room; he liked to keep up with the latest news and political wranglings, and to read the sports reports. Although it was expensive to have the paper delivered to his door, Edward felt it was something he could afford. He scanned over the front page, then flicked through until he saw, on page thirteen, a large feature about the plans around the country for the forthcoming VE Day fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Edward sighed again, hurriedly turning the page, but then suddenly the radio distracted him. The reporter was at Hyde Park in London, describing the preparations for the coming weekend’s events. With him was a former paratrooper who had been dropped over Arnhem, and who had been freed just a couple of days before the end of the war. ‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it enormously,’ said the man. ‘It should be quite an occasion.’ He was, he told the reporter, hoping to catch up with some of his former comrades in arms through the Veterans’ Link that had been established. He’d already spoken to a few. ‘One of my old mates, he lives in Spain now,’ he continued, ‘but he’s coming over this weekend and we’ve planned to meet in the tent on Saturday afternoon.’ Another reporter then came on air from a village in Suffolk. The village was expecting a number of Americans who had been based on a nearby airfield during the war. A street party was being prepared in their honour. ‘We’ve always had a soft spot for the Yanks,’ said one villager. ‘It’s going to be a wonderful reunion this weekend.’