Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

by Derek Robinson

Genres: War & Military

Synopsis

Having survived a double tour on Lancasters in WW2 (and won two DFCs), Flight Lieutenant Silk rejoins Bomber Command much later and qualifies to fly the Vulcan bomber. Welcoming him, the airbase commander says: “You have the best, and the worst, job in the world. You have the Vulcan, incomparably the finest bomber. That's the best bit. Your job is to fly to the Soviet Union and destroy cities. That's the worst bit. If Moscow decides to go berserk, Soviet bombers can attack us with nuclear weapons - enough to turn these islands into a smoking wasteland.” Trouble ahead. And when the lovely Zoe brings politics to the party, the mixture is explosive.

Release date: October 6, 2011

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 236

Sample

HULLO RUSSIA, GOODBYE ENGLAND

Derek Robinson read history at Cambridge before working in advertising in London and New York. He has also worked as a broadcaster for radio and television, and was a grassroots rugby referee for thirty years. His novel Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1973.

PRAISE FOR DEREK ROBINSON

“Robinson should be mentioned in the same breath as Mailer, Ballard or Heller. A masterpiece” express

“Tough, taut prose that pulls you through the book like a steel cable... great” Guardian

“Robinson writes with tireless enthusiasm which never sacrifices detail to pace, or vice versa... terrific”  Jennifer Selway, Observer

“Derek Robinson has developed a brand of ‹ripping-yarn› all his own...hard-bitten stuff, anti-Newbolt and anti-Biggles”  Times Literary Supplement

“Robinson is a better storyteller than Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett or Wilbur Smith... His is a rare achievement, difficult to attain and one not much striven for in the current literary output, the creation of poetry in fiction”  Tibor Fischer, The Times

“Robinson has a narrative gift that sets up the hackles of involvement. A rare quality” Paul Scott

“Nobody writes about war quite like Derek Robinson. He has a way of carrying you along with the excitement of it all before suddenly disposing of a character with a casual, laconic ruthlessness that is shockingly realistic... As a bonus, he writes of the random, chaotic comedy of war better than anyone since Evelyn Waugh”  Mike Petty, The Independent

“If the argument that book reviews sell more books is ever proven, then reviews of Robinson’s books should be posted on every wall, hydrant and lease-expired storefront. They should be free with your breakfast cereal. They should be dropped from planes – for the only purpose of reviewing Robinson’s case is to persuade readers who have yet to pick up a Robinson novel to do so in their millions”  Julian Evans, Weekend Post

“Robinson mixes the action with cynicism and hard-bitten humour that has you halfway between tears and laughter. Biggles was never like this”  Daily Express

“The descriptions of patrolling and aerial combat are superlatively well done . . . Stronger tastes will relish the whiff of battiness and brimstone”  Times Literary Supplement

CORKSCREW

1

“I am the Lord thy God,” said Air Commodore Bletchley. “I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh... Do sit down. Cup of tea?”

“No thank you, sir.”

“Good decision, it’s pure poison. How d’you fancy a posting to Greenland?”

Bletchley had an office in the Air Ministry. If he lost any more weight he would be too thin. His hair was grey and years of brushing had beaten any insolence out of it. His hands rested on his desk, one of top of the other; his body didn’t move. His eyes were as bright as his buttons and his voice was crisp and brisk. He made Silk nervous.

“I don’t know much about Greenland, sir.”

“It’s towards the north. Somewhat icy. Sunstroke is not a problem. You’d be an airfield controller. Last chap got killed by a polar bear. They stand nine feet tall and run like the wind.”

“Good God.”

“The chap before him went insane. He kept seeing animals at the foot of his bed. Guess what they were.”

“Um... pink elephants?”

“Polar bears. With green spots. Imagine that.” Still Bletchley was motionless. “Or I could post you to Bombay, India. Our psychiatrist there needs help in assessing the dementia of aircrew. Does that interest you?

“All pilots are a bit demented.” Silk was beginning to get the measure of Bletchley. “You’ve got to be a bit demented to want to fly.”

“Bombay is unlike Greenland. The Indians have twenty-nine words for typhoid fever and seventeen for malaria. The flies breed by the billion.”

“If they like it so much,” Silk said, “they can have it, sir.”

“That leaves the Aden posting. Crash investigation officer. Right up your street, Silk. Lots of action, thrills, drama.”

“Action, sir? At a crash site?”

“From the Arabs. They regard the wreckage as their property. You have to fight them for it.”

At last Bletchley moved. He cocked his head an inch to the left.

“So either way, it’s death,” Silk said. “Just a matter of deciding whether to be frozen, baked, or shot into little pieces by ten thousand fanatical fuzzy-wuzzies. Sir.”

“Or I could post you to Washington, DC, and you could make a morale-boosting tour of American war industries.”

Silk had had enough. He didn’t care what the air commodore said or thought or did. He relaxed, and looked away, and spun his hat on his forefinger. “You’re pulling my pisser, aren’t you, sir?”

“I am the Lord thy God, Silk, and when I say to thee, Go to Washington, thou goeth. Starting now.” He clapped his hands, once.

Silk stood up. “Washington. Bloody hell. Why me?”

Bletchley left the desk and took him by the elbow. “One: you’re a double-tour-expired decorated hero, so we’re not going to let you kill yourself. Bad publicity. Two: the US Air Force sent James Stewart over here, in uniform, flying bombers. We need a counterweight over there. You’re not James Stewart but in a bad light you might be David Niven’s younger brother. And three: if you stay here you’ll only make a thundering nuisance of yourself. Off you go.”

Silk went into the outer office. An elderly flying officer saw the look on his face. “Polar bears?” he said. “Everyone gets polar bears.”

“Is there a reason?”

“He spent too long with the Desert Air Force. Too many good types bought it in order to help win a bit of desert that looks like any other bit of desert, and in the end he went sand-happy. Wore a loin cloth, told everyone he was Florence of Arabia. Desert Air Force sent him home to be cured, Air Ministry gave him a desk which he hates. And now he plays his little games.”

“So... am I going to America, or not?”

The flying officer gave him a large envelope, heavy with documents. “Sailing from Liverpool, the day after tomorrow.”

“He knew that, all along.”

“Look, Bletchley’s no fool,” the flying officer said. “He gets the postings right. He does it in his own way, that’s all.” He glanced at the purple-and-white ribbon on Silk’s tunic. “Nobody gets a medal for cracking up, do they? Give your life for your country, and you might get a gong. Give your sanity, you get damn-all.”

On the train back to Lincoln, Silk thought about that. He wondered if Bletchley had known what was happening to his mind as he became sand-happy in the desert. Or was madness like malaria, a thing that took charge silently and secretly? Crept into your mind like an earwig crawling into your ear? Nothing lasts forever. Keep stretching an elastic band, and it snaps. Maybe Bletchley’s sanity simply wore itself out. Could a weakness like that be inherited? There was great-aunt Phoebe on his mother’s side, rumoured to be only tenpence in the shilling.

Silk was glad when he reached Lincoln, drove to the cottage and told Zoë he was posted to Washington. She wept.

It startled him. Women were so damned unpredictable. But after two minutes her tears suddenly stopped, and she was back to normal. Proved nothing, of course. Great-aunt Phoebe looked perfectly normal when she wasn’t hiding the spoons up the chimney. What a day.

2

That was in 1943. A bleak year everywhere. The U-boat war in the Atlantic was a brutal business. In Russia, both sides counted their losses in whole armies. Fighting in the Pacific had developed into a bloody slog. In Britain, US bombers were attacking Germany by day and paying a heavy butcher’s bill for it. RAF bombers raided by night. They’d been in action for more than three years, so the job prospects were well known, although not advertised.

There was a large element of luck. Bomb Berlin or the Ruhr and you might suffer ten per cent losses; keep that up and ten raids would wipe out the whole unit. On the other hand, leaflet raids over France were easy meat: you might lose only one per cent, perhaps none. But an operational tour in Bomber Command meant thirty missions, mostly over Germany. The grim arithmetic of war meant that only a minority of crews survived a full tour. A second tour was twenty missions, and the odds against surviving both tours were not worth thinking about. Silk never thought about them. Waste of time. From the start, he let life and death happen all around him, and that included Tony Langham marrying Zoë. The wedding was in Lincoln cathedral. Silk was his best man. Obviously.

Silk and Langham were a double-act. Joined the RAF together, trained together, got their wings on the same day, joined 409 Squadron in nice time to fight World War Two. Silk thought Tony was very lucky to get Zoë, she being intelligent and young and rich, with a figure that made grown men on the other side of the street walk into lampposts.

Their happiness was a poke in the ribs for Silk. Life was for living, not flushing down the toilet. 409 was based at RAF Kindrick in Lincolnshire; Langham and Zoë rented a nearby cottage and kept open house. Silk dropped in whenever ops allowed, took his meals there, played cards, had a bath, slept on the couch, left some clothes. “It’s fun,” Zoë told him. “Find yourself a popsy, Silko. Get married, be happy.”

“Someone like you?”

“Someone you like. And don’t frown. It gives you wrinkles.”

“Signs of maturity and wisdom, darling. Don’t worry, Tony will never get them.”

He was right about that. A month later, Langham went down over Osnabrück. No parachutes were seen.

Silk drove to the cottage. Empty. People told him she’d gone to London. 409 was glad of that: nobody wanted a black widow hanging about the airfield: it was bad luck. He tried to write a letter, couldn’t find the words. A terrible shock? Not true: crews got the chop every night. Awfully sorry? That wouldn’t make her feel any better. He gave up. Best to forget them both.

Then, almost a year later, Zoë turned up at Kindrick. She never explained why, and Silk didn’t ask. Meeting her was a pleasant surprise and falling into bed seemed very natural. Those were two small and happy facts. Against them stood the large fact of the war. Silk knew that his future was never a problem, because he had no future. When Zoë went back to London he could kiss her goodbye and forget her. Ops were his life, not women. It didn’t work.

They met again. She told him that, when Langham died, she had been pregnant. They had told nobody, and without Langham she had no reason to stay in Lincolnshire. Now she had a baby, a girl called Laura. Silk didn’t know what to make of that discovery. He wondered if he had a moral duty to Zoë, as Langham’s best friend, and immediately knew that was bullshit. Maybe he was in love. Would that explain why she refused to get out of his mind? It annoyed him, her persistent presence. He hadn’t planned to fall in love. It was a damn nuisance. This was a ridiculous state of affairs in the middle of a war. He got forty-eight hours leave and went to London to straighten things out.

They were in her Albany apartment, drinking gin. Little Laura was far from the dangers of London, being cared for by her grandmother at her house in the Cotswolds. Langham had wanted a daughter, and Zoë was quite proud of the baby, but motherhood did not dominate her life.

For Silk, it had been a slow and tedious rail trip, and now that he’d arrived he wasn’t at all sure what he wanted to say.

Zoë was bored with the war. “Have you seen the underwear the shops are selling?” she asked Silk. “No, I suppose you haven’t. Quite brutal. Totalitarian. Suitable for Jugoslav lady partisans, I suppose, but personally I’d sooner go naked.”

“It’s the price of victory,” Silk said.

“Too high.”

“What a damned shame. We’d better have a ceasefire, while I ask Air Ministry if they can spare a parachute or two. How many square yards of silk d’you need to gird up your delicate loins?”

She stared, not quite smiling. “Why are you so angry?”

“I’m not angry.” He tried staring back, and couldn’t do it, and drank gin instead. “You’re the one who’s fed-up.”

Zoë went to close the curtains. As she passed behind him, she tickled his neck and saw his shoulders stiffen. “There you go again,” she said. “Always looking for a fight.”

“I don’t like being touched.”

“Yes you do. You’re absolutely itching to be touched.” She sat down and crossed her legs. Since he couldn’t look at her face he looked at her legs. Stupendous was the word that came to mind. They wouldn’t last, of course. Nothing lasted. By the time she was ninety ... He couldn’t complete that thought. Zoë was talking.

“I told my gynaecologist about you yesterday. He’s not surprised you’re permanently angry. He says that subconsciously you believe I killed Tony.”

“Bollocks.”

“Yes, he said you’d probably say that. But Tony was your pal, and then I came along, and who else can you blame?”

“For a gynaecologist, he’s a bloody awful trick cyclist.”

“Now you’re angry with him.”

“I don’t give a toss about him. Or Langham. Or you.”

They sat in silence. The only light came from the gas fire. Silk was sprawled on the couch. Well, that’s well and truly buggered everything, he thought.

“He’s really an awfully good gynaecologist,” Zoë said. “What you call my delicate loins are in perfect working condition.”

“Oh, Christ Almighty,” Silk said weakly. He had run out of rage. “Romance. Bloody romance. That’s not fair.”

“Come on, Silko.” She helped him up. “The bed is in the bedroom. Convenient, isn’t it?”

3

Silk vetoed Lincoln Cathedral and they got married at Marylebone Road Register Office. Freddy the navigator was one witness. Zoë’s gynaecologist was the other. Silk had not liked that choice. “He’ll be there as a friend,” Zoë said. “And if you had any idea how much he charges by the hour, you’d feel flattered.”

“If he so much as smirks at me, I’ll thump him.”

“Goodness, you are touchy. I’ll tell him to look grim and dyspeptic. Will that suit you?”

The ceremony went off smoothly. They left the office and stood in the street, congratulating each other. “Well done, Freddy,” Silk said.

“All I did was bring the ring, old boy.”

“But you did it with such panache,” Zoë said.

The gynaecologist had brought champagne and glasses. “Now,” he said. “Before the gloss goes off the union.” He thumbed the cork off a bottle and it hit a passing major in the Polish army on the left ear. The major got the first glass. He kissed Zoë, and then kissed Silk. He proposed a long Polish toast, and stayed to the last of the champagne. “We could do with you in the rear turret,” Freddy told the gynaecologist.

* * *

No honeymoon. Wartime Britain was not the place for that. All the hideaway hotels had been requisitioned by the War Office as headquarters for infantry training exercises. Silk and Zoë went to the same cottage, midway between RAF Kindrick and Lincoln, where she had lived with Langham. It smelt of mould.

“You’d think the landlord would have lit a fire, or something,” Silk said.

“I’m the landlord,” Zoë said. “Didn’t I tell you? After I lost Tony, I didn’t want any squalid strangers living here, so I bought it.”

Silk stared. “Tony bought it. And then you bought it.”

She breathed on a mirror and wiped it with her sleeve. “I hope that was a joke.”

“Sorry. It just slipped out.”

He took their bags upstairs. In the bedroom, on a windowsill, lay the dried remains of a pigeon. Got in somehow, down the chimney perhaps, couldn’t get out. He picked it up by a tiny claw and carried it downstairs. “Dead bird,” he said. “Sort of symbolic, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He went out and tossed the pigeon into some nettles and came back. She was reading a newspaper that was brown with age. “He’s dead, you know,” Silk said. “They don’t come any deader than old Tony. I hope you’re not turning this place into a shrine. I can’t live in a shrine.”

“We must have a party. Tomorrow. A sodding great pisser of a party. Open house for a week.”

“I can’t live in a pub, either.”

“I can. An alcoholic shrine. Like Lourdes, only with gin galore. You’ll love it, darling. Which reminds me: it’s nine hours since we made whoopee.”

“Scandalous. Just when the government keeps nagging us not to waste anything.”

He followed her upstairs, taking off his tie, undoing his collar stud, his shirt buttons, his cuffs. Already his pulse was beginning to race. “You think sex solves everything, don’t you?” he said. He tugged at his laces. One got knotted. He used both hands and dragged the shoe off and threw it into a corner. “Sex doesn’t make the world go round,” he said. “It makes it go slightly elliptical.” She laughed. That was reward enough. And there was so much more to come.

* * *

Marriage was a new and delightful experience. Ops were not. Ops continued to be the hard labour of dumping loads of high explosive on German cities, night after night, while flak and nightfighters tried to blow the bombers to bits, preferably before they dropped their loads. Sometimes a nightfighter went down in flames, hit by an air gunner or occasionally by friendly flak. Sometimes a crippled bomber exploded and took another bomber with it. Highflying German aircraft dropped pyrotechnic displays called ‘Scarecrows’ that resembled burning bombers, or so it was said. Other pilots rejected the idea: the night sky over Germany had victims enough without playing the fool with stupid bloody fireworks. That was true. Ops hurt Germany, but the pain had to be paid for.

In 1943, when he was well into his second tour, Silk knew that a few of the men on their first tour had mixed feelings about him. They were amazed that he and his crew had survived so long, but they suspected that this might be at the cost of crews who had failed to return. There was only so much good luck to go around. Silk was getting an unfair share. What was his trick?

He had no trick. He was a good pilot and he kept learning from experience. This was something you couldn’t teach the newcomers. After an op, if there was an empty table in the mess, chances were the missing crew was inexperienced. Silk didn’t let it worry him. Nobody said the chop was fair. Equally, nobody said dodging the chop was fair. You made the most of life while it lasted. Silk’s new life was flying.

He liked the Lancaster. It was his workplace, his office. Every time he opened all four throttles and turned the Merlins’ roar into a thundering bellow and felt the controls become alive and the undercarriage hammer the tarmac until finally the bomber came unstuck and the engines stopped shouting and began singing: every time that happened, he felt privileged.

He knew the price of that privilege. From the outside the Lancaster looked formidable. From the inside it was a long alloy tube stuffed with explosives and aviation fuel. Silk had seen too many Lancasters falling out of the night sky over Germany, burning like beacons. All aircrew believed that some other poor bastard would get the chop, not them. All aircrew except Silk; until one night they flew to Stuttgart, and even Silk began to wonder.

4

He’d been there before. About five hundred miles from base to target. The flight plan would include plenty of twists and turns, all with the aim of keeping the German fighter controllers off-balance, hoping to con them into scrambling their night fighters over the wrong city. These detours would add a hundred miles to the op. A fully loaded Lancaster could cruise at 180 or 190 miles an hour, depending on wind strength and direction. So Silk’s crew expected to spend four hours or so over Europe, mostly over Germany.

It was a biggish raid: 343 Lancasters. The bomber stream began to cross the North Sea at 10 p.m. Silk was at fifteen thousand feet, still climbing, eating a corned-beef sandwich. Things began to go wrong. The port outer engine was losing revs. With unequal power, the Lanc was edging to the left.

Silk dropped his sandwich and applied a little rudder to straighten the bomber. He throttled back the starboard outer to equalise the action, and he looked at Cooper, the flight engineer. “Your rotten engine is mucking me about, Coop,” he said.

“Temperature’s okay, oil pressure’s normal. Electrics are working. Could be we lost a cylinder but I don’t think so.”

The port outer got no worse but five minutes later the starboard outer lost some power and from then on, at one time or another, each of the four engines gave trouble, and the Lancaster couldn’t keep its place in the stream.

Silk concentrated on flying the aeroplane. He trusted Cooper to nurse the Merlins and keep the airscrews churning. The Lanc was a frighteningly complex machine. Sometimes – not often – Silk had watched his ground crew at work, exposing the criss-cross networks of tubes and cables and rods: hydraulic, pneumatic, electric, oxygen supply, flying controls, fuel system, ammunition ducts, de-icing system, fire extinguisher system, intercom, engine controls, bomb fusing system, cockpit heating, and a whole lot more. It didn’t pay to think of the things that might go wrong. He left the ground crew to it.

The Lanc was over Holland when Cooper said: “Dirty fu. . .