THE RETURN.
Tibor Tarent waited until the Mebsher was not only out of sight, but also until he could no longer hear the distinctive high whining of its turbines. The personnel carrier had been driven away towards the east, which was the direction for the time being from which the wind was coming. For several minutes the sound of the Mebsher"s engine came intermittently to him, as the cold wind bore it across the high Lincolnshire Wolds. The further it travelled the more distorted by the wind, and to Tarent the increasing distance lent the sound an eerie, other-worldly quality. It was close to midday in full daylight, and the sun was breaking fitfully through the racing clouds, but that far off wailing made him think of night. In particular, of those nights in Turkey when people had come to the field hospital too late to be treated, had been forced to wait outside the locked compound overnight, who howled in pain as they died in the dusty, enervating heat of the Anatolian night. It was a regular task in the morning for the orderlies to retrieve the bodies of those who had not survived the hours of darkness.
The Mebsher, its turbines howling into the distance, had become a carrier of human remains, of people whose image had been doubled by death. He thought of Lou Paladin trapped inside the grey steel compartment, accompanied by people he knew were dead. Who was that she was sitting next to? That man who had the same cameras, the same face and no doubt the same name? How could he ever explain to her what had occurred?
Tarent could not think of it, or try to imagine it, because there was no verbal or visual vocabulary to describe it.
The Mebsher finally moved out of earshot. Silence followed, the partial silence of the outdoors: wind, movement, foliage and branches. There was no birdsong in this place. The wind was edged with a deep chill, a harbinger of the early winter that threatened. Tarent felt the cold, not only from the wind.
He was alone in the quadrangle of Warne"s Farm even the men who had been guarding the closed building were gone. With no one now to stop him, Tarent took several photographs of the concrete building where he had identified the bodies. He switched cameras, putting aside the Canon he was most attached to and taking out the Nikon. He immediately took a series of shots of the dark tower by the main gate, checked online that they were in memory at the lab, then went towards to the building and took a few pictures closer up. Pigeons had invaded the building and were squatting on the sills. Moss grew in the many crevices in the brickwork and render. For the first time, Tarent noticed that a placard had been placed on a door at the base of the building, warning that the structure was unstable and that no one should try to enter it. The area immediately around it had been designated as a hard-hat zone.
Again he checked online for the confirmation that the Nikon"s images had been received and were archived.
He walked across the quad to where he had left his bag, then moved it to a less exposed position inside a doorway. His name was shown prominently on the label, following OOR regulations.
He decided he should not attempt to leave Warne"s Farm until he had finished what he planned to do before the Mebsher arrived. Taking all three of his cameras he walked back through the lower corridor of the residential building, then followed the gravelled walkway that led to the fence. At every door or barrier he pa.s.sed he made sure that his ID card was still functioning the cavalier way in which Flo Mallinan had suddenly invalidated his pa.s.sport made him wary of being locked out, but his card still worked.
Tarent pa.s.sed through the main gate, checking and double-checking that his pa.s.s still functioned, then went through to the outside. He turned back, took some shots of the gate, the fencing, the notices and warnings attached. He also photographed the general view of the Warne"s Farm compound, seen from this slight rise of ground, visible through the trees.
As he climbed up the slope towards the ridge he thought at first that someone must have been out with tractors or heavy earth-moving equipment, because the fallen trees he remembered from before, up-ended by the storm, were not there. There had been one particular root-ball which hung over the pathway. That tree alone, a huge beech, would have taken a team of men several hours to chainsaw up and clear away.
Tarent tried to remember how long it was since he had been up here. It was before the Mebsher arrived, while he and Lou were waiting. An hour or so? How could all those felled trees have been removed in that time?
As he approached the top of the ridge he had to leave the pathway, because it curved down and away, so he scrambled up the slope through the undergrowth. There were many clumps of brambles and rhododendrons, and towards the top a tangle of gorse. He pushed through the branches and p.r.i.c.kly bushes. Maybe he had climbed a different part of the ridge, because he did not remember so much dense undergrowth up here.
However, when he finally forced his way out he realized he was in much the same place as before, and for the same reason he had clambered up to the ridge from the highest part of the path.
He looked down at the wide field where he had witnessed the adjacency attack on the Mebsher, where the triangle of annihilated earth had been scorched into the surface of the ground. Two days ago, before the storm? Three or four? He had lost count of those days. But however long it was, there was no longer any sign of it. He clearly remembered the place where the attack had occurred it was more or less in the centre of the field, and the black triangular mark left on the ground could not be missed. But the crops were growing uninterrupted.
Baffled again, Tarent stared for a long time, wondering what he had seen, or even if his memory had failed him. There were so many contradictions he had to absorb, so much to try and make sense of.
An idea came to him. He switched on the Nikon and selected the infra-red view, an option he rarely used because it caned the battery. With the quantum lens set to telephoto he slowly scanned through the viewfinder the part of the field where he felt certain the Mebsher had been just before the adjacency attack. Most of the image came through neutrally, but there was one spot, slightly to the side of where he expected the adjacency mark to be, that gave a positive register.
It was an area of the ground beneath the growing wheat and it was roughly triangular in shape, perhaps ten or twenty metres across at most. He turned up the gain the image became clearer. There was something there, even if it was not what he was seeking. He had seen similar traces before, usually when images were taken from above by aircraft or reconnaissance drones they often revealed historical workings, or the foundations of ancient roadways or buildings, or most commonly areas of violent impact, such as traces of explosions or the sites of crashed aircraft.
The Nikon"s battery failed after that so he took out the Olympus Stealth, keeping the Canon in reserve. He took several photographs of the field, including a few telephoto shots of the area of the old trace, but the central mystery of the adjacency scar remained.
He turned to walk back to Warne"s Farm. He was feeling warm in his jacket, which he had put on when he went out to find the Mebsher. In the erratic current climate sudden temperature shifts were not unusual, but normally they involved unexpected cold snaps. The air was much warmer about him, the sort of feeling he remembered from childhood, the calm evening after a sweltering day, when the air stayed warm long after the sun had set.
The light too had changed. It was around midday when the Mebsher had been at the Farm, a cool but bright day, with broken clouds, a stiff wind. He had walked up through the trees, in their shade. The air was now still, and it was evening. There was a glow in the sky towards the west: high cirrus clouds lit by a setting sun.
How much time had pa.s.sed? And in what manner had it pa.s.sed?
Tarent removed his jacket, pulled his camera holdall on over his shirt and pushed his way back through the gorse and rhododendrons to find the path below. Once under the trees, where swarms of midges hovered beneath the branches, he wondered if somehow he had blundered into another place entirely. The shallow hillside was thickly wooded, with trees of all ages and sizes, and a thick, loamy soil below, rich with leaves and twigs and other pieces of vegetation. He vividly recalled the wretched damage caused by the storm, so many fallen trees and broken branches, so much chalky soil and clods of earth bared to the elements.
He continued down the slope through the gathering twilight until he found the path, which at least looked familiar and as he expected it to be. He walked back towards the Warne"s Farm complex, looking for the gate and the fence. A heady smell, sweet and almost intoxicating, drifted up towards him through the trees: gasoline.
2.
In the half-light of the evening he pa.s.sed the place where the gate had been before he realized he had done so. He was walking down through the trees, looking ahead to see the Warne"s Farm buildings, thinking in a confused way about the trees where had they come from, hadn"t they all been blown down? He realized he had reached the lowest point of the path, where he would cross the compound to go through the corridor of the residential block, but none of that was there any more.
When he looked back he could see no sign of the fence, nothing at all of the gate. The light was failing rapidly, but there was enough for him to see that all traces were gone.
He walked out of the trees none of the now-familiar buildings were there. The Warne"s Farm compound had disappeared. Tarent, already in a state of mental disequilibrium, did not panic, did not try to find an explanation, did not try to understand. He was still perspiring after his climb up to the ridge, and confused by the changes he was experiencing, but for years he had trained himself to limit his activities to seeing and observing. Photography was only incidentally to do with the camera real photography began with the eye of the photographer.
It was as Melanie had said. Photography was a pa.s.sive art not an art of creative intervention or making, but of creative receptivity. Tarent had learned as a photojournalist not to become involved: he had been present at street riots, fights outside nightclubs and bars, he had been surrounded by surging crowds at political rallies, he had run alongside desperate people in times of war or natural disaster. A photographer"s work was never about what he did, it was about what he saw.
The world he was moving through now was one that had changed in ways he did not understand, but even in spite of the fading daylight it was one he knew he had to see, and to keep seeing. Nothing else made sense his cameras were his only hold on reality, or at least they represented a reality he felt he could comprehend.
He clicked the Olympus light receptor to night sensitivity. While he looked around at what was before him, he reached down to the Canon inside its case, and by familiar touch alone switched that also to night use.
Ahead of him there was a small piece of lawn, enclosed by white-painted cobblestones. Beyond that a tarmac path, an expanse of concrete, some young trees recently planted, and two or three nondescript two-storey office buildings with flat roofs. There was another similar building to his left. They all reminded him of the elderly MoD buildings he had seen during his overnight stay at Long Sutton. He took several shots of them, digitally enhanced by the camera. There was a road running down between the two buildings, with a view of another road crossing that one further along, and more buildings in the same functional architecture. Three cars were parked along the road, but without exception they were models he did not recognize. They were cars of a boxy, outdated design, probably from around the middle of the previous century. They were all the same colour: unpolished black paint, or possibly, because it was none too clear in the twilight, dark blue. They were unoccupied, except for the one closest to him in this a young woman in a military cap was sitting behind the steering wheel, staring ahead. He took more night pictures, using a long focal length the woman in the car did not react to being photographed, or she chose not to, or she had not noticed him.
Two young men in work clothes came out of the building beside him, carrying mugs of what looked like hot drinks in both hands. They pa.s.sed close to him Tarent took several more shots. He smelled tea made with milk, which he found unexpectedly appetizing. They walked on, went into the next building. As the door opened, Tarent heard loud voices inside, someone hammering, something else being drilled. Once the door had closed he photographed the building itself.
He looked to his right. There stood the only familiar remnant from Warne"s Farm the tall dark tower, vaguely similar to a church tower. It was silhouetted against the evening sky, making it appear darker, but Tarent could see that whereas before it had been in a bad state of repair, in danger of imminent collapse, now it looked solidly built, four-square on the ground, a recent construction. The tall window frames, three on each of the two sides he could see from this angle, contained gla.s.s.
He walked towards the tower, intending to take more photos, but suddenly he became aware of a deep-throated roaring noise, getting louder or coming closer, and in the next moment an aircraft swept low overhead, black against the sky. It was a four-engined propeller aircraft, heavily built with a deep fuselage and st.u.r.dy wings. Gun turrets were mounted fore and aft. Its wheels were down. The engines made a concussive roar that Tarent could feel throbbing against his face and chest. Then the plane was gone, sliding down towards the ground, too low to be seen, beyond the buildings and trees.
Tarent recognized the aircraft it was a bomber from the period of the Second World War, a Halifax, perhaps, or a Lancaster. It pa.s.sed overhead too quickly and unexpectedly for him to be sure which, but when he was a boy he had gone through a period of obsessively learning to identify all the British warplanes of that period.
Using the LED screen on the back of the Olympus, Tarent quickly looked at the shots he had just taken, then pressed the upload key. Almost at once the camera showed a red warning light. Familiar words, always unwelcome, appeared on the display: Network unavailable or offline. He never felt his pictures were secure until they had been uploaded to the lab"s archive so he tried again immediately, with the same result. It reminded him of the worst days in the field hospital in Anatolia: being isolated from everything, including his archive.
He made a third unsuccessful attempt to upload, then decided to change cameras. All three of the cameras used the same archive, but sometimes one of them accessed the lab more reliably than the other two. Or it seemed that way it varied, so there was probably nothing in it. He tested the Canon and quickly received its own version of the error message.
The sunset was over and the darkness was now almost complete. Although the buildings and paths and roadways were unlit, there was still some light in the sky, presumably from the moon, at present too low to be seen or perhaps because for the moment it was covered by cloud.
Tarent walked towards the building where he had seen the men entering. He paused on the way, regarded it through the night-sight of his camera, which was able to display its enhanced image in colour. From this, Tarent discovered the building was an aircraft hangar. It had been camouflaged in a way that he found familiar from films and TV shows set in the Second World War: great rounded waves of dark green and brown were painted across its walls, and the huge steel doors at the front.
He cautiously pushed open the access door he had seen the men using, and walked inside. Bright lights were glowing down from above, illuminating a great deal of purposeful activity. At least twenty airmen were at work. Notably, the main floor of the building was taken up with two of the four-engined aircraft, which Tarent was this time able to recognize as Lancaster bombers. These were both partly dismantled and the focus of much work. One of the aircraft had all four of its engine nacelles open, while some kind of testing or parts-replacement was going on. The other aircraft had obviously been damaged by gunfire, or by a near-miss from an anti-aircraft sh.e.l.l the covering of its wings, tailplane and part of the fuselage were in tatters. The rear turret had also been removed and a new one was on the floor of the hangar, presumably soon to be mounted as a replacement.
He was standing there, staring, trying to understand, trying to continue to act as an observer rather than a partic.i.p.ant, when one of the men turned sharply towards him, then strode angrily towards the door.
"Who left the bleeding door open?" he shouted, and slammed it closed. "Was that you, Loftus?"
"Don"t think so, Sarge," one of the airman replied, in a deep Birmingham accent. "I thought I"d shut it behind us."
"Mind the blackout."
A mumbled chorus from two of the men: "Sorry, Sarge."
Work resumed.
Using the ambient light in the hangar, Tarent took a series of rapid shots of the two Lancasters, expecting at any moment that he would be shouted at, or manhandled, or threatened with some breach of the regulations covering this place. But it was as if he was not there. Everyone ignored him. He moved towards some of the men as they worked, took close shots of what they were doing. They continued to ignore him. The plane, standing high on its main undercarriage and tailwheel, was at an angle to the ground. Most of it was painted matt black, but the narrow strip at the top of the fuselage visible from below was painted in dark-green camouflage. The tall letters P D and S were painted on the side of the fuselage, aft of the wing, with the RAF roundel between them. Below the c.o.c.kpit canopy drawings of bombs were stencilled on the black paint, indicating the number of sorties it had so far completed.
Tarent took detailed close-up photographs of everything he saw.
Finally, he retreated and went to stand by the door again. The network was still down, so he switched off the Canon and slid it into its protective pouch.
It was against all reason, against all logic, against everything rational, but Tarent knew that in some fashion he had wandered on to an operational RAF base, in wartime, an old and mostly forgotten war of a hundred years before. How was that possible?
It was beyond his ability to comprehend. All he could do as a reaction to what had happened was to look, to see, to watch, to take pictures. That d.a.m.ned pa.s.sive att.i.tude that Melanie had criticized him for, unfairly but accurately, had become his only resort in this time of unreason. To try to think or do anything different was a risk that for the moment he did not know how to take.
He expected it to end suddenly, this vision, this experience, this glimpse of a distant past, this dream, this hallucination he still could not describe it, even to himself. Until it came to an end, until the unreason was reversed, he had to hold on to what he knew.
He again took out the Canon, his talisman of known reality, switched it on, routinely glanced at the battery level to be sure there was still enough charge, checked the default settings for taking pictures in extremely low light, watched as the automatic dust-cleansing of the processor chip was swiftly carried out. The whole procedure took less than two seconds, and was completed by the familiar electronic beep, confirming the boot-up was correct.
He played back the photographs he had taken since he arrived in this place. They were all there in camera memory. The network and therefore the archive lab continued to be inaccessible. He tried again, twice.
It was hot inside the hangar so Tarent returned outside, this time being certain to secure the door behind him. The mild evening air, with its taints of gasoline and rubber and paint, but also of recently cut gra.s.s, was still warm after the day. Thinking that being in the open air and away from the immense metal doors of the hangar the network signal might have been restored, he tried once more to access the lab, but without success.
He waited for a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness after the lights inside the hangar, then set off towards some of the other buildings he had noticed earlier. Although they were obviously blacked out so that no bright lights showed, there were in fact many doors, windows and other apertures where glints of light shone through.
After a short walk he came to one of the two-storey brick buildings he had noticed when he first arrived. He could hear the sound of many voices. Inside, there was a short corridor, which then turned to right and left. Before that he saw a double door, with a sign attached to it: Crewroom. He went through, closing it quietly behind him.
It was a long room, packed with airmen, the air thick with cigarette smoke. Tarent"s first breath made him reel back, gasping. He turned away and re-opened the door, seized by a bout of helpless coughing. Never before in his life had he been in a place so full of smokers. His eyes were watering. He returned outside, breathed the evening air until he felt better. Then, more cautiously, he returned to the room.
The airmen were all wearing flying suits, lounging around in dozens of armchairs or standing in small groups. Cups and saucers, and large ashtrays filled with cigarette ends, littered every tabletop. A radio was playing dance music, but no one appeared to be listening. The mood in the room was not jovial, but noisy and friendly, most of the hubbub coming from conversation rather than anything else. Many of the men were standing, carrying extra items: flying helmets, maps, life jackets, Thermos flasks, pairs of leather gloves. At the far end of the room was a huge map of northern Europe: part of Great Britain was visible at top left, but most of the map showed mainland Europe, from France in the west as far as Czechoslovakia in the east, and Italy in the south. Two long ribbons, one red and the other blue, had been thumb-tacked over the map, showing two routes from Lincolnshire across the North Sea into Germany. The red route ran a track slightly to the south of the other, but they ended in the same place: a town in the north-west of Germany.
Tarent began taking photographs and once again no one took any notice of him at all. He was becoming bolder, so he took several close-ups of the men"s faces. He was shocked to realize how young they were most of them were barely out of their teens. He worked quickly, catching the men"s expressions, the way they used their hands when speaking, their bulky uniforms, the mannerisms with cigarettes and angles of caps which looked as if they had been copied from movies.
He was moving towards the end of the room where the map hung against the wall, when two officers walked out of a side door and took up a position on a low platform in front of the map. Silence fell, and all the airmen stood up. Someone switched off the radio. At a signal from one of the officers, they resumed their seats.
The leading officer spoke, addressing the room.
"You"ve been fully briefed," he began, "so I won"t repeat what you already know. Your navigators have the route in detail and tonight"s recognition codes are inside the aircraft. The target for tonight is a tactical one, a plant that manufactures synthetic oils, which the Luftwaffe and the German Army are increasingly dependent upon. Any questions?" No response. Tarent walked forward, went up to the officer, began to take photographs of him and the other man. They both wore medal ribbons on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "All right. You know what"s expected of you. We need precision bombing tonight, so the Pathfinders will be there a few minutes before you. Weather conditions over the target are expected to be cloudy, but not so much that you won"t be able to bomb accurately. You don"t need me to tell you what to do when you get there, but let me wish you all the luck you deserve, and a safe return."
He saluted, then turned away quickly. He left the room and the airmen all stood up again. The other officer indicated the clock, and told the airmen to synchronize their watches with it. When this was done he too then walked briskly away. The airmen began to shuffle around, picking up their equipment and heading for the door.
Tarent looked closely at the map. The indicated target was the town of Sterkrade, in the northern part of the Ruhr. He had never heard of the place before. Since no one seemed aware he was there, Tarent took several photographs of the map, and the view of the room from the platform.
There were many newspapers left lying around on the chairs, on the tables, so Tarent walked over and picked one of them up. It was a copy of the Daily Express. The date on it was Friday, 16 June 1944. He took photographs of the front and rear pages. He did not stop to read the pages then, but he noticed that the main headline concerned a new kind of weapon the Germans were launching against London: unmanned aircraft filled with high explosives, designed to crash randomly on the city with devastating effect.
As the last of the men left the room Tarent followed them outside. A number of trucks were waiting to transport the men away. One by one these drove out across the airfield, with the men standing or squatting in the back. Some of them sat by the tailgate, their legs dangling.
The moon had appeared while Tarent was inside the building, and it was easier to make out the shape of the buildings and the extent of the airfield. The trucks carrying the airmen were speeding away in several directions, and in the moonlight he could just make out the distant shapes of one or two of the Lancasters, parked close to the perimeter of the field.
Unexpectedly, there was a loud bang fairly close at hand. Tarent snapped around to see what it was. He saw what appeared to be a fiery rocket shooting up into the sky. At the peak of its flight a bright red flare of light appeared, throwing a distinct reddish glow on the ground.
It was directly above his head, a coincidence that immediately triggered a feeling of alarm. Flo had said that adjacency attacks invariably involved a bright overhead light.
But this one, fizzing and spluttering, continued on, moving down and away from him on the wind, probably destined to burn out before hitting the ground somewhere in the middle of the airfield.
Two airmen had emerged from another building, and were walking close to Tarent. He heard one of them say, "What was that Very for?"
"Not sure. But someone came on the phone from Scampton just now. The radar there picked up a couple of what they thought might be intruders."
They walked directly past Tarent, so close to him that he could see the features of their faces in the dimming red glow from the Very light. They were both young men, as youthful-looking as the aircrew he had seen. Once again they revealed no awareness that he was there. He decided to walk along with them and listen in to what they were saying.
"They don"t usually fire a flare just because Scampton sees something."
"Maybe one of the intruders is headed this way?"
"A Junkers came in one night before you were posted here. He got one of our Lancs."
"Did you see it?"
"No, but I had to help clear up the mess the next day."
"I heard a single-engined plane come in about an hour ago."
"That was a Spit. I heard it too, and went out to watch it land. Whoever it was must be lost, coming in here."
"So it wasn"t a German?"
"Not that one."
In the distance, at the various extremities of the airfield, the Lancasters" engines were starting up. The two young airmen paused. Tarent stood beside them in the dark.
"I"m going down to the NAAFI for some grub. You coming too?"
"I thought I"d walk out to the end of the runway and watch the lads take off again."
"OK. See you in the morning, then."
"Probably not," said the other. "I"m leaving first thing in the morning. The posting came through a couple of days ago."
"I"m sorry to hear that, Floody. You going to another squadron?"
"I"m being retrained, then I"ll be sent to Italy. Yank planes, apparently."
"I bet they"re c.r.a.ppily built."
"Just because they"re American?"
"Of course. Not half as good as ours."
"OK, see you after the war, then!"
"Yeah, OK. Good luck, Floody."
"You too, Bill."