Some Day I'll Find You Read Online Free PDF Page B

it was usually best to let others fight their own battles, but even so, he looked
for a way to offer quiet support.
    The chance came after an afternoon’s navigation instruction. James went straight to the room he shared with three others and sat alone, surrounded by textbooks on navigation theory. John
passed the open door in time to hear a deep sigh coming from within.
    He hesitated, then rapped on the doorframe. ‘Everything all right in there? Not too much doom and gloom?
Nil desperandum
and all that?’
    James looked up from the page. ‘Fuck off, mate. Don’t give me all that cheery balls. It’ll take more than a Latin tag to get me through this lot.’ He gestured at the
books. ‘Trigonometry I can just about cope with. It’s these bloody equations that have me floored.’
    He rose and moved to the doorway, hand outstretched, to introduce himself. ‘James. James Blackwell.’
    ‘John Arnold.’ They shook hands. ‘Actually, I’m not really John at all – I’m Robert. Don’t ask. It’s a sort of family tradition. We all change our
names. I have no idea why.’
    James laughed. ‘Well, I’ve always been James, though right now I wish I were someone else altogether. Someone who could understand this stuff.’ He gestured towards the books.
‘If I don’t crack it soon, I’ll be out on my arse like those other poor sods.’
    John sat down in a battered leather armchair and swung one knee over the side. ‘I could help, if you liked,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ve got the best of
navigation instructors, as it happens. He rattles too quickly through everything. But I’m lucky – it mostly comes pretty naturally to me. I could go over things with you more slowly
until it sticks. You’ll get it eventually.’
    The other man stared at him. ‘Why would you do that? We hardly know each other.’
    John stood up and stretched. ‘It’d be one in the eye for those braying idiots who think being born into high society makes them better than chaps like you. Or me, come to that.
They’d love to see you booted out of Cranwell; it would confirm all their ghastly prejudices. Let’s give them a kick in the pants, shall we?’
    Diana drew thoughtfully on her cigarette in the darkness. ‘You must be a bloody effective teacher, brother,’ she said. ‘Too effective for your own good,
perhaps. He’s ended up a flight commander and you’re a humble pilot officer.’ She giggled and poked John in the ribs. ‘You should show him some respect. Why haven’t I
seen you salute him or call him “sir”?’
    Her brother’s glowing cigarette end arced over the ha-ha as he flicked it into the little stream beyond. ‘Oh, James isn’t interested in any of that nonsense,’ he said.
‘Obviously on base we observe the proprieties, but not here. We’re friends. It was a real stroke of luck that our first posting after Cranwell was to the same squadron. Anyway, I
haven’t finished telling you about him.’

11
    James Blackwell, thanks to long hours of private tuition from his new friend, scraped through his navigation exams. The frightful condescension directed at him by
Cranwell’s self-styled social elite eased somewhat, but that had nothing to do with the exams. John was popular among the other trainee pilots and his friendship with James conferred a degree
of social acceptance on the other man – enough, at least, to mute the more contemptuous comments about him behind his back.
    ‘But here’s the thing, sis,’ John continued. ‘He’s actually got more blue blood in him than the lot of them. His mother used to be in service. James won’t
tell me the name of the family, but I get the impression they’re not just well-connected – they’re the kind of people half those chinless wonders at Cranwell would give the family
silver to be connected to.
    ‘Apparently, the young Miss Blackwell got herself into a compromising position with Lord Whoever-it-was and the upshot was James. She was