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blighted, so that they looked as if spattered by drops of coffee on the dark rainy autumn days, and for long periods low clouds kept the aircraft down. Gradually the harvest fields were cleaned and the potatoes sacked and carted away, and in place of them you could see pale goldencones of sugar-beet piled in the fields and by the roadsides. I mention the weather because it was almost the only thing about England that troubled him. He longed for the hot dry air of the Australian summer and he used to tell me, as we gazed over the wet flat country, of the days when he had flown over Victoria in a Moth in his shirt sleeves and had looked down on the white beaches shining all along the coast in the sun.
    The weather troubled him because his anger was still there. He felt that it frustrated him. He could never forget the day in Kalgoorlie when he had first read of the bombing and the mass murder in England and the very headlines of the paper had seemed like an awful dream. He felt that so much of his life had still to be brought up to date. Something had to be vindicated. Yet you could never tell that he was angry. It was easier to tell that he was sometimes afraid; not that he was afraid of dying or being hurt, but of some material thing like mishandling a kite. As he graduated from Moths to Ansons, to Blenheims and Wellingtons, and finally to Stirlings, he felt each time that he would never be big enough for the change to the bigger aircraft, yet it was always because of that fear that he was big enough.
    Late that autumn he became captain of a Stirling and about the same time he got to know a girl. Two or three evenings a week, if there were no operations, we used to go down into the town and drink a few glasses of beer at a pub called the Grenadier, and one evening this girl came in. She was very dark and rather sophisticated, with veryred lips, and she never wore her coat in the ordinary way but simply had it slung on her shoulders, with the sleeves empty and dangling. “This is Olivia,” he said. For some reason I never knew her other name; we most often called her Albert’s popsy, but after that, every night we were in the Grenadier, she would come in, and soon, after talking for a time, they would go off somewhere alone together. The weather was very bad at that time and and he saw her quite often. And then for a few nights it cleared, and one night, before going over to Bremen, he asked if I would keep his date with her and make his apologies and explain.
    He had arranged to see her at seven o’clock and I made a bad impression by being late. She was irritable because I was late and because, above all, I was the wrong person.
    â€œDon’t be angry,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”
    â€œI’m not angry,” she said. “Don’t think it. I’m just worried.”
    â€œYou needn’t be worried,” I said.
    â€œWhy not? Aren’t you worried? You’re his friend.”
    â€œNo, I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m not worried because I know what sort of pilot he is.”
    â€œOh, you do, do you? Well, what sort of pilot is he?” she said. “He never tells me. He never talks about it at all.”
    â€œThey never do,” I said.
    â€œSometimes I think I’ll never know what sort of person he is at all. Never!”
    I felt there was little I could say to her. She was angrybecause I was the wrong person and because she was frustrated. I bought her several drinks. For a time she was quieter and then once more she got excited.
    â€œOne night he’ll get shot down and about all I’ll know of him is that his name was Albert!”
    â€œTake it easy,” I said. “In the first place he won’t get shot down.”
    â€œNo? How are you so sure?”
    â€œBecause he’s the sort that shoots other people down first.”
    â€œAre you trying to be funny?” she said.
    â€œNo,” I said; and for a