Staring at the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

for red exhausts. You’re alone as well. That was a good part. Off by yourself, solo, over to France. Just when their bombers were getting back from their missions, from bombing us. You’d hang around one of their dromes, or you might shuttle between a pair of them if they were close enough. You’d be waiting for the landing lights to come on—or maybe you’d pick up something from its navigation lights. A Heinkel or a Dornier, that was the usual. You might get the odd Focke-Wulf.
    “What you could do was this.” Prosser chuckled briefly. “When they came in they’d always do a circuit first. Like this: descent, approach, fly down the runway, do a left-hand circuit, always a left-hand, come in again and land.” With his right arm Prosser sketched the German bomber’s flight path. “What you could do, if you were feeling a bit cheeky, was come in at about the same time, and when he flew his left-hand circuit, you’d fly a right-hand one.” With his other arm Prosser traced the Hurricane’s path. “Then, smack as he came out of his circuit, flaps down, just above stalling speed, and he was thinking about that last bit of turn and then getting the crate safely down, you’d be coming out of yourcircuit.” Prosser’s curving hands stopped opposite one another, the fingertips gunning from close range. “Bam. Sitting duck. Barn door. And the buggers thought they were safely home. Poaching, that’s what we called it. Poaching.”
    Jean felt distantly flattered that he was telling her about his flying days, but kept it to herself. She did the same with her feelings about the unfairness of poaching. Even if the Heinkel was full of black marketeers back from bombing London or Coventry or wherever. She hadn’t approved of poaching since she’d first lived with Aunt Evelyn’s print of the mink trappers. It had been right to put it in Prosser’s room. And was the Heinkel tenacious of life?
    “If you downed one, you beat it. There’d be quite a bit of dirt if you hung around. You only had about twenty minutes over there, in any case.” Prosser’s story seemed to be ending; then he suddenly remembered what it was he’d meant to say. “Anyway. One night, I hadn’t had a sniff of anything. Drawn a blank. Nothing doing. Crossed the Channel higher than usual, about eighteen thousand. I must have left it later than I should because it was starting to get light. Maybe the nights were still getting shorter.
    “Anyway. There I was, looking up the Channel, and the sun was just starting to come up. It was one of those mornings … well, it’s hard to describe unless you’ve been up there yourself.”
    “I went up in a De Havilland for the whooping cough,” said Jean, rather proudly. “But it was a long time ago. When I was eight or nine.”
    Prosser took the interruption without offence. “It’s so clear, it’s clearer than words can say. No clouds, the sniff of morning air, and this huge orange sun coming. I just watched it, and then, after a couple of minutes, it was all there—this bloody big orange sitting on top of the drink looking all pleased with itself.
    “I was so happy I could have had a 109 up my tail and I wouldn’t have noticed. I’d just been tooling along, staring at the sun. So I had a good squint round. Nothing there, just me and the sun. Not a whiff of cloud, and you could see straight down to the Channel. There was a ship there, tiny speck, lots of black smokecoming out of it; so I checked the fuel and went down to take a squint. It was a merchantman.” Prosser narrowed his eyes in memory. “About a ten-thousand-tonner, I’d guess. Anyway, there was nothing wrong. She was probably just stoking up. So I headed back to base. I must have lost half my height, down to eight or nine. And then, guess what? I’d descended so quickly, you see, that it all happened all over again: this bloody great orange sun started popping up from under the horizon. Couldn’t believe my eyes. All over