The Complete Flying Officer X Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

he came back from briefing with a very satisfied look on his face. “A little visit to Mr. Salmon and Mr. Gluckstein at Brest,” he said. He had been flyingjust a year. He had done twenty trips, all of them with the same meaning. It was a bright calm day, without cloud, quite warm in the winter sun. There were pools of water here and there on the runways, and looking through the glasses I could see little brushy silver tails spurting up from the wheels of the aircraft as they taxied away.
    When I looked into the air, again through the glasses, I saw two aircraft circling round, waiting to formate before setting course. One of them was smoking a little from the outer port engine. The smoking seemed to increase a little and then became black. Suddenly it seemed as if the whole engine burst silently and softly into crimson flower. I kept looking through the glasses, transfixed, but suddenly the aircraft went away behind the hangars as it came down.
    That evening I waited until it was quite dark before going into the town. I went into the bar of the Grenadier and the girl was standing by the bar talking to the barmaid. She was drinking a port while waiting for him to come.
    â€œHello,” she said. Her voice was cold and I knew that she was disappointed.
    â€œHello. Could you come outside a moment?” I said.
    She finished her port and came outside and we stood in the street, in the darkness. Some people went by, shining a torch on the dirty road, and in the light I could see the sleeves of her coat hanging loose, as if she had no arms. I waited until the people had gone by, and then, notknowing how to say it, I told her what had happened. “It wasn’t very heroic,” I said. “It was damnable luck. Just damnable luck, that’s all.”
    I was afraid she would cry.
    She stood still and quite silent. I felt that I had to do something to comfort her and I made as if to take hold of her arm, but I only caught the sleeve, which was dead and empty. I felt suddenly far away from her and as if we had known two different people — almost as if she had not known him at all.
    â€œI’ll take you to have a drink,” I said.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou’ll feel better.”
    â€œWhy did it have to happen?” she said suddenly, raising her voice. “Why did it have to happen?”
    â€œIt’s the way it often does happen,” I answered.
    â€œYes, it’s the way it often does happen!” she said. “Is that all you care? Is that all anyone cares? It’s the way it happens!”
    I did not speak. For a moment I was not thinking of her. I was thinking of a young man in a barber’s saloon in Kalgoorlie, about to make the shocking discovery that the world was at war and that he did not know it.
    â€œYes, it’s the way it happens!” she said. I could not see her face in the darkness, but her voice was very bitter now. “In a week nobody will ever know he flew. He’s just one of thousands who go up and never come back. I never knew him. Nobody ever knew him. In a week nobodywill know him from anyone else. Nobody will even remember him.”
    For a moment I did not answer. Now I was not thinking of him. I was thinking of the two people who had so bravely and stupidly kept the war from him and then had so bravely and proudly let him go. I was thinking of the farm with the sheep and the eucalyptus trees, the pink and mauve asters and the yellow spring wattle flaming in the sun. I was thinking of the thousands of farms like it, peopled by thousands of people like them: the simple, decent, kindly, immemorial people all over the earth.
    â€œNo,” I said to her. “There will be many who will remember him.”

It’s Just the Way It Is
    November rain falls harshly on the clean tarmac, and the wind, turning suddenly, lifts sprays of yellow elm leaves over the black hangars.
    The man and the woman, escorted by a sergeant, look very small