Darkness Falls from the Air

by Nigel Balchin

Genres: General Fiction; War & Military

Synopsis

The classic novel of the London Blitz, DARKNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR captures the chaos, absurdity and ultimately the tragedy of life during the bombardment. Bill Sarratt is a civil servant working on the war effort. Thwarted at every turn by bureaucracy and the vested interests of big business, the seemingly unflappable Bill is also on the verge of losing his wife Marcia to a literary poseur named Stephen. As the bombs continue to fall, Bill must decide whether he his willing to compromise his principles and prevent his life from crumbling before his very eyes.

Release date: September 10, 2015

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Print pages: 212

Sample

 

 

 

ONE

I STOPPED at about seven. There was too much stuff on my desk to have a chance of getting clear that night, and I was tired of it. I felt pretty guilty coming downstairs, and had to tell myself that this was the first time that week that I had stopped before eight.

Two French officers were just coming in the front door as I went out, and I did the bowing and waving act that I always do with them. It struck me as odd that they should still be around – unless they had decided to stay on in England and fight with us.

Going up the street I looked at the balloons and still thought they looked like a shoal of silver fish, and that when the war was over it would be worth while to keep them as decoration. But I’d thought those two things so often that they were getting a bit second-hand as thoughts, and it began to feel as though I’d better find something new to think about barrage balloons. But not tonight because I was damned tired.

I thought about the two French officers and remembered that before the French crack-up I used to think of the French Army and find it comforting. Every morning when I went into the lavatory at the office I used to think of the French Army and tell myself that it was something expert and professional which knew its job, rather like the Navy. It wasn’t so much Gamelin or la ligne Maginot. They were just catchwords. But I believed in the French Army. Hadn’t France seen this war coming for ten years? Well – there we were. The two I had seen coming in looked as expert and professional as hell, but that hadn’t stopped the Panzer Divisions.

I was damned tired and I suddenly didn’t want to go home. I turned into a telephone box and rang up Ted Ransome and asked him to come and have a drink. He hummed and hawed and said he hadn’t got any money. I said I’d pay and he hummed and hawed some more and then said he’d come, in an unwilling sort of way. I felt more tired than ever and nearly told him to go to hell. I got a bus and went up to the Royal.

It was pretty full. There were the usual tarts and the usual collection of one-pips and airmen and a naval bloke in a beard who looked like George V, and the usual young wide boys and me. I had a drink while I waited for Ted and it went down very well and I had another, and that went down very well too. I told myself that I was beginning to drink too much and ordered another and shut my eyes. The one-pips were all very cheerful about something. I wondered whether they had one joke between them or one each. Anyhow, I wished I thought it was funny. Sometimes when they glanced at me I thought I caught that look again, and wondered how long it would be before we got to the stage of handing round white feathers and throwing stones at dachshunds. Anyhow, it would be all right to be in the Army or the Navy or something. If you got killed – well, that was all right, and if you didn’t you sat round with tarts and laughed your head off. Better than working your guts out trying to get Lennox to do his job.

Ted turned up just as my third drink arrived. He was tired and looked fed to the teeth. I asked him how his outfit was getting on and he told me. It might have been a description of our joint – or any other Ministry, I dare say.

I asked Ted to have another and he said No and looked all grim.

I couldn’t do with it any more and I said, ‘For Christ’s sake don’t sit there, looking so damned disapproving. You give me a pain.’

Ted looked even grimmer and said, ‘Well, Bill, we’ve got to face up to it, and if people like you and me don’t, who’s going to? This war’s costing God knows how much and . . .’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘If we have another drink there’ll be a gap between the country’s expenditure and revenue which can only be filled by inflationary borrowing. Then we shall get the Vicious Spiral in wages and prices and lose the war or the peace or something. Hell, d’you think I don’t read the papers? Have another.’

He shut his mouth up like a trap and said, ‘No, thank you.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Then I will. The trouble with you is that you’re a prig and an economist. Either’s bad enough but both’s just terrible.’ I called a waiter and ordered two more drinks. Ted grinned rather painfully but he didn’t say anything.

I was beginning to feel a lot better, so I told him about Lennox. He wasn’t very helpful. He’d got too many people just like Lennox around in his own Ministry. And anyhow you should never tell your troubles to Ted. He’s too good at being reasonable about them when you want somebody who’ll stop being reasonable and help you curse.

He said, ‘How’s Marcia?’

I knew what he meant, but I just said, ‘Oh, flourishing,’ and that ended that.

He told me he was damned hard up. I couldn’t see why he should be. His Ministry salary was nearly as much as he got at Parks’, and he’d only got himself to keep. But he said he’d told Parks he didn’t want a retainer. Heaven knows why, but it was very characteristic.

Ted wasn’t happy, and when he said he thought he’d go I didn’t stop him. He can be the devil in that mood. He asked me if I was coming and I said No, though I hadn’t an idea what to do.

The one-pips were getting on nicely. One set of four had only one girl between them and she was having a wonderful time. I thought of the story about the St Cyr cadets, and that brought me back to the French Army again.

I still didn’t want to go home, but it was past eight and I was getting hungry. I went upstairs and rang up the flat. Marcia answered, and I asked her to come up West and meet me at De Vrie’s for dinner. She hesitated and I knew why.

I said, ‘If Stephen’s anywhere about, bring him along.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact he’s here,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Well, put him in a suitcase and bring him along. Tell him it’s all right. I’ll pay.’

‘If I tell him that in that voice, he certainly won’t come,’ said Marcia, going a bit stiff.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then don’t tell him. Just imply it. And don’t worry about me, honey. I’m a trifle tight.’

Marcia giggled. ‘I thought so. Darling, you mustn’t take to solitary drinking.’

‘It wasn’t solitary. I’ve been with Ted. Anyhow, buck up, because I want my dinner. Take a cab.’

Marcia said all right and we rang off.

There weren’t many people in De Vrie’s, but Tony seemed quite cheerful and said business was fair. I looked at the menu and it looked pretty good – except the prices. But I was tired of that stuff about the inflationary gap and I didn’t care. I’d averaged seventy hours a week for the last month and I wanted some dinner. Marcia and Stephen turned up about five minutes after I got there. I thought they made a pretty pair, and didn’t much like it. Marcia was all smoothed out and sparkling like women are after that sort of thing, and Stephen was looking big and handsome and haunted and so like a creative artist that you wouldn’t have thought he’d have the nerve to go around looking like that. They were very much together, and I felt like a stockbroker uncle taking the engaged couple out.

I said, ‘I’ve ordered you some smoked salmon, honey. Right?’

‘Lovely,’ said Marcia. ‘Bloody day?’

‘Average,’ I said. ‘I think I shall commit suicide soon.’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Stephen. ‘I thought of it first. Besides, why worry? If you wait a week or two you’ll probably be killed anyhow.’ He drank some sherry and looked haunted.

‘I’m tired of waiting for Adolf,’ I said.

‘You certainly look darned tired of something,’ said Marcia. She was looking at me with her anxious expression. What with looking at me anxiously and looking at Stephen anxiously, Marcia’s anxious expression was doing heavy overtime.

‘I am,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of using all I’ve got to overcome a lot of bloody incompetence and gutlessness. By the time you’ve fought your way over the dead bodies of the Civil Service, you haven’t got time or energy to do anything useful.’

‘Lennox being difficult?’ asked Marcia.

‘It isn’t only Lennox. It’s the man higher up every time. Lennox is an incompetent but he knows the Ministry. He knows all the reasons why you can’t do things. If you get a thing past him against his better judgement it simply sticks higher up.’

‘Look, darling,’ said Marcia. ‘Why do you stand it? It isn’t as though they’re paying you or as though your career depends on it. There must be thousands of other things you could do in a war.’

‘It’s the same everywhere,’ said Stephen. ‘Did I tell you what happened to me?’

‘No,’ I said. I didn’t want to hear what happened to him.

‘I wrote to the Censorship people and told them I had French, German, Italian, Spanish and a bit of Russian, and was I any good? Unpaid, of course. They waited six weeks and then sent back a printed slip telling me that there were no vacancies. So now I suppose the only thing for me is to go and carry a rifle.’

He drank the rest of his sherry and looked haunted some more.

‘Oh bunk!’ said Marcia, coming in pat on her cue. ‘There must be something more useful than that.’

‘They don’t seem to think so,’ said Stephen gloomily. ‘Not that I shall be much good to them anyway, with my knee.’

I didn’t say anything, but this made me a bit cross. It was exactly like Stephen to have a ready-made dud knee. The wine waiter came up and I chose a Chateau Yquem. I was still savage about Ted and the inflationary gap.

The waiter said, ‘The sirens have just gone.’

‘Another caterpillar in the machinery,’ I said.

‘No. There is guns firing, sir. But a long way away.’

He went away. Marcia said, ‘I hope something is happening. I’m sick of waiting.’

We listened but we couldn’t hear anything. You’re about thirty feet underground in De Vrie’s so we hardly should.

I said to Stephen. ‘How’s work?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It isn’t. You can’t write in the middle of this.’

‘Oh come,’ I said. ‘The spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling and so on. Why, for the last ten years all you boys have been saying you couldn’t write good verse on the brink of a war because it didn’t mean anything. Hasn’t the start of the thing made it easier for you?’

‘No,’ said Stephen curtly. ‘I’m not Kipling or Leconte de l’Isle.’

‘You might try being Siegfried Sassoon,’ said Marcia. ‘But I don’t see why you should.’

I looked at Stephen and he was looking pretty done. I suddenly felt sorry for him in the contemptuous way I always did.

‘Why on earth didn’t you clear out before the war started?’ I said bluntly. ‘This isn’t your show. You’d got the money. Why didn’t you clear off to America or something?’

‘And leave the war to you practical people?’ said Stephen bitterly.

‘Well, Christ, why not? I don’t seem to be getting a lot done about it myself.’

‘You’ve never known what it is to be useless,’ said Stephen, using his profile and looking more haunted than ever. ‘With your brilliant practical ability, you can’t understand what it feels like.’

I glanced at Marcia. She was looking at him with large worried blue eyes. I decided that she must be a long way gone if he could get away with that stuff. Stephen’s eyes were full of tears and that always embarrassed me, so I said, ‘All right. Have it your own way. I don’t understand how it feels,’ and filled my glass up.

‘What country’s that?’ asked Marcia in a low voice, looking towards a chap in uniform who was just being served with an escalope.

‘Polish, I should think,’ I said.

‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Stephen, pulling himself together with a click which could be heard all over the room, ‘the way these odd people come over here and want to go on fighting.’

‘No odder than the International Brigade in Spain,’ said Marcia, starting a conversation.

‘Very noisy up above,’ said the wine waiter, passing. ‘Nice and safe here. Deep down.’

‘Look here, if there’s really anything happening let’s go up and have a look at it,’ said Marcia, quite excited.

‘Not till I’ve had coffee,’ I said firmly. ‘This may be the last dinner like this you’ll have, my girl, if the thing’s really starting. It certainly won’t be the last air-raid.’

‘I keep having the last dinner I’m going to have,’ said Marcia. ‘Do you remember the first one? The night after the war started? You ate a whole lobster.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I suddenly felt pretty fed-up with sitting drinking Chateau Yquem and eating that sort of food in De Vrie’s.

‘How was Ted?’ said Marcia, coming down, as usual, slap on what was on my mind.

‘Very grim,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t approve of me. You can’t wonder. I don’t approve of myself much.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this sort of thing is pretty disgraceful in wartime.’

‘You mean we can’t afford it?’ said Marcia.

‘God knows. I’ve given up reckoning whether I could afford things. But even if I can afford it the country can’t.’

‘I think that’s bunk,’ said Marcia.

‘You would, darling.’

‘No, but seriously, Bill. You can’t work as you’re working now without doing this sort of thing occasionally.’

‘You mean I don’t want to.’

‘No. I mean you can’t. It’s like the Lancashire man and the kid – You can’t do that sort of thing on bread and jam.’

‘Ted manages to.’

‘Rot. Ted doesn’t do the same sort of thing as you. He’s the sort of person who sees that we don’t lose the war. You’re the sort of person who wins it.’

Stephen was getting a bit restive over Marcia doing this stuff with me. ‘There’s one war job,’ he said bitterly, ‘that rather appeals to me. Rear gunner in a bomber. I believe it’s as near suicide as no matter.’

‘It doesn’t appeal to me,’ I said firmly. ‘If I’m going to be killed I’d rather do it without being sick first.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Marcia. ‘If you felt sick enough you probably wouldn’t mind being killed so much.’

I grinned because I knew that would rattle Stephen.

‘I believe they’re finding it so difficult to get people that they’re taking volunteers up to any age,’ he said, ‘and I don’t suppose you have to use your knees on that job.’

He went into profile again and looked very haunted indeed.

I looked at Marcia to see how that one had gone across. It had been quite a fair success and she was registering anxiety again. Then it struck me that Stephen was the sort of bloke who might go and do just that and leave you feeling rather a fool.

I gave up and called for the bill. It hadn’t helped the inflationary gap a bit.

There was no commissionaire outside and no cabs on the rank. We were quite bitter about it until suddenly Marcia said, ‘My God, look!’

We looked. The whole sky over East London was bright copper colour.

I said, ‘It wasn’t a caterpillar in the works that did that. I thought there didn’t seem to be many people about.’

‘Where is it?’ said Marcia.

‘Docks, from the look of it.’

A bobby in a tin hat came by. Stephen said, ‘Is the raid still on?’

‘It’s been quiet for the last half-hour,’ the bobby said. ‘But the All Clear hasn’t gone. I’d get home as fast as you can.’

‘Any excitement up here?’ I asked.

‘Not very near. All down east. Plenty of noise though.’

He went on.

‘And there we’ve been sitting eating and not heard a thing,’ said Marcia disgustedly. ‘D’you think we might get down there somehow? We might be able to do something, and it looks pretty bad.’

‘Probably be more nuisance than we were worth,’ I said. ‘There’ll be far too many people there with no equipment but good intentions already. Come on. We’re going to have to walk home.’

‘I shall leave you now,’ said Stephen abruptly.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight. Goodnight, Marcia.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘I may ring tomorrow,’ as though he might and might not.

‘All right. Goodnight, Stephen.’ Marcia patted his arm and he went off. Suddenly he turned round and came back past us. He didn’t look at us as he went by.

We walked up Regent Street. There wasn’t a soul in it.

‘That’s a ghastly colour,’ said Marcia, jerking her head back towards the glow.

‘The colour’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s what it’s the colour of.’

There was a faint bump down East.

‘Bomb or gun?’ said Marcia.

‘Gun, I should think. D’you mind walking about in air-raids?’

‘No. Do you?’

‘No. But then nothing’s happening. Otherwise I should run like a rabbit, I expect.’

A cab came along. I hailed it and it stopped.

‘Just not taking any notice?’ I said as we got in.

‘Naow,’ said the driver. ‘Goin’ to get you it will. Business as usual. Where d’you want?’

When we were in the cab Marcia hooked her arm inside mine. I let her, but I didn’t do anything else. ‘Angry with me?’ she said.

‘About what?’

‘This evening?’

‘No. Why should I be?’

‘I don’t suppose you wanted Stephen,’ she said rather wretchedly.

‘Not particularly,’ I said. ‘But I thought you’d like to have him so I ordered him for you. Like the smoked salmon.’ I looked back through the window. The glow seemed brighter than ever.

Marcia said, ‘Poor Stephen.’

‘That’s the bit I can’t understand,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘The poor part of it. I should have thought that was the last thing he was.’

‘I suppose so. He has a pretty bloody time though, Bill. Honestly.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘He sees to that. But so what?’

Marcia didn’t say anything.

I said, ‘My main grouse about the whole thing is that it’s made Stephen do tense close-ups all the time. Before he knew you he used to stop sometimes and be rather good company. He never is now.’

‘Not when you’re there,’ Marcia said. ‘But he still is with me.’

The cabby was driving as if he wanted to get home soon, and we went over in the corner in a heap as he went round Marble Arch.

‘I’m a bitch,’ said Marcia.

I said, ‘Well, bitches are warm-hearted anyhow.’

‘You’re quite right about Stephen. Of course he loves being miserable. But somehow I can’t help—’

‘Somehow you can’t help helping him?’

‘Bill?’ said Marcia, squeezing my arm and going intense.

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Can I – can I really have this and get away with it? Because if so, I’ll make it up to you. I will really.’

‘There’s no charge,’ I said. ‘You can have anything you can get.’

‘But how much do you mind?’

‘When I mind enough to matter I’ll tell you,’ I said.

‘But you do mind, all the same.’

‘Just enough to preserve your self-respect,’ I said.

‘Not more than that – honestly?’

I said, ‘I told you long enough ago about that. I love you and I think you love me. If so, we don’t have to take people like Stephen seriously. If it meant anything to you, I assume that you’d stop, and stop quick.’

‘Of course,’ said Marcia. ‘But not many people would see that.’

‘Pure conceit,’ I said. ‘If I were five feet two and spotty, or if I thought you were doing me a favour by being married to me, I should probably mind a lot. As it is, I’m just amused.’

‘By me?’

‘Yes. You’re rather sweet being all bad and sinful. But I think it’s rather bitchy of you to let Stephen think you take him seriously.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Marcia. ‘But he likes it like that.’

The All Clear went just as we got to the flat.

‘Like some tea?’ asked Marcia.

‘Yes. It’s only about eleven.’

I lit the gas fire and sat down while she went and got the tea. There were seventeen cigarette stubs in the ashtray. Two had lipstick on and the other fifteen hadn’t. Stephen must have been there quite a time. Marcia came back with the tea. She had put on a dressing gown. I could see Stephen’s point of view. But then I always could. The sirens went again.

‘I wish they’d make up their minds,’ said Marcia. ‘Anyhow I vote we just stay here, don’t you?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘If a bomb lands within a hundred yards of this place it’ll fall down anyhow, and if it’s going to fall down I’d rather be on top of it than underneath.’

There were a few bangs and bumps, but still a long way away.

‘I suppose when the local batteries start we shall be deafened,’ said Marcia.

She sat down on the floor and leant her head against me. I stroked her hair. It was queer, thick, smooth stuff and nice to stroke.

‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I wish I knew about us. And more particularly about you.’

I lit a cigarette.

‘Steph. . .