Assurances Read online

  And once it’s done it’s done. If the call goes out it can’t be re-called. That’s one of the basic rules. Can’t have the bombers yo-yoing. Can’t be forever crying wolf. It’d make a mockery of the whole operation. So, if they go: they go.

  (And if that’s what the intelligence shows.

  If it shows categorically. Indisputably.

  Then we must trust to our intelligence.)

  And if the order proves to be a mistake (because mistakes can, will, and do happen), if the enemy changes its mind (because even the enemy is capable of recognising its own foolhardiness), the decent thing might be to let them know what’s heading their way. Or else perhaps to hold our tongue. They’ll find out soon enough. Or not at all. No need to fuel more nonessential angst.

  (The threat, as such, will have been eliminated.

  Because the threat, if anything, was always real.

  And threats, in all seriousness, can’t go ignored.)

  The question of blame in such matters has several strands. Who shoved whom the hardest? Whose strategy was bound up with pretence? Who thought it sensible to have such weapons openly in stock? Who loved their country the most? Who loved life more? It makes no difference how it’s asked, the answers get us nowhere in the end.

  His watch as near to true as he can set it

  by which he gets a fix upon the stars,

  ensuring they are where they ought to be.

  Keeping the lamplight dim so his eyes stay bright.

  Enough to read the pad upon his knee,

  his pencilled sums, his pre-drawn charts.

  The pattern of glowed green dots on the watchface,

  the narrow field of stars seen in

  the six-inch circle of the periscope.

  Each star in a ceaseless self-contained explosion,

  a reliable spot in the universal spin,

  as pin-heads hammered flush into the black.

  Each an anchor point, a hole

  through which light bleeds

  and escapes.

  Holes into which may be hooked

  fine threads of quintessence,

  the intricate lines overlapping to form

  an ever-divergent mesh.

  A spacious weave on which to sail.

  Easy to break. Easy to sew back up.

  Caught deep within a corner of this net:

  a routine night-flight, idling,

  tracing its roundabout course.

  His angular reading of the stars

  matched to the mechanics of his watch.

  Their subtle movement worn upon his wrist.

  And all this just to find out where they are

  and where they’re going to

  and how long it will take.

  When things start getting thick on the phones then all the bombers in each squadron take off together. At once. En masse. Seven hulking Vulcans. All sitting in a line. Like a curiously-sectioned caterpillar. Each free-floating segment hoping the next one along won’t suddenly falter.

  (a weak-limbed crumple

  a seizure a stubborn resolve

  and they shunt they buckle

  they nestle together

  stacking like paper cups)

  Because they all have to start moving simultaneously. One body. One long slick machine. Every well-tended engine at maximum thrust. A line of fat white triangles stencilled neatly onto the runway. First sliding, then lifting, then peeling away from the world.

  (and their sensitive cargoes

  picked free from the wreckage

  are hug-hurried over the grass

  to be stashed out of sight

  squirrelled off for safe keeping)

  Because it’s hard to steer a Vulcan when it’s hurtling down the concrete. It needs to be up. So, before they’ve tucked a good bit of air beneath their wings, while they’re still earthbound and heavy, if the one at the head of the queue promptly splutters and fails, with all the others coming up fast behind it: then that’s the game finished. A foot-fault embarrassment. All points passed on to the opposing side.

  Some folk only join up for the flying.

  The basic training, the officer classes, the trials, the tests:

  it’s endured, it’s enjoyed.

  In the knowledge of where it will lead.

  As a means to an end.

  Really, for them, it’s only the flying that matters,

  they’re not so keen when it comes to the sharp-end stuff.

  Not quite non-combatants. Not even objectors.

  They accept the principle of their role

  despite a deep-seated discomfort.

  But when a code comes chattering through,

  its fine grey type imprinted

  onto a thin white papery strip;

  and when this time it’s the right code, the go-code,

  no war-game scenario, no mere exercise:

  there should be no hesitation,

  no alternative to consider;

  the reaction needs to be immediate,

  the destruction: absolute.

  Still, the pilot does consider, because

  to be a pilot is to make many quick considerations

  from moment to moment, and no less for this.

  So as swiftly as the order tickers through

  the pilot chooses to ignore it.

  But there are measures set in place for this sort of thing.

  One never acts alone: command

  may shift, or else coercion

  may be employed by dint

  of a warm pistol muzzle

  pressed to the back of the head, except

  who’d really concede to do that?

  And if, by chance, in that instant, the co-pilot

  arrives at the same no-go decision;

  and if then the wiresman, the aimer, the plotter,

  if each is found to be, individually,

  in perfect agreement:

  then very soon the interstice of action will have passed.

  Five singular minds coinciding. A natural accord.

  Not a matter of bare disobedience, one clear choice:

  not to do what they’ve been tasked to do.

  Perhaps they could argue the code itself

  never came through.

  Perhaps they might somehow produce

  an alternative slip of ticker-tape

  to prove they thought the order had been false.

  A predilection for returning to face

  due discipline, rather than playing their part;

  or for whatever else may remain

  when at length they do get back.

  The worst sort of weather is that which can’t be predicted. Can’t be seen. Doesn’t really exist. Till you’re already right in amongst it. Example: icing-up at altitude. Above the high cloud line. A column of sky at saturation point might stay that way if not for the cool-skinned Argosy blundering into an otherwise empty blueness.

  (there are sundogs on the horizon

  our star split into three and each one

  standing guard beyond the atmosphere)

  Like a furred-up freezer chest, only inside out. The wet air finds its surface: sticking itself to the sub-zero metal. Adhering in plaques, in crystal laminates. Slicks of ice, new-forming, over ice. So the finer joints start to seize: ailerons, elevators, trim-tabs, etc. All of them soon rendered useless.

  (a rainbow having broken its moorings

  to pull away clear from the earth now floats free

  and full as the ring it always strained to be)

  Not that the loss of roll-capability matters quite so much. The main problem is the sheer weight of it. That and the altered aerodynamics. The bulked-up leading edges of wings and propellers. The four dart engines struggling to shake this new coverall from their calibrated blades.

  (the full moon has a misty corona

  soft concentric circles blueing outward

  from a faultless bright white core)

  So, like the lumpwork of m
etal it basically is, the aircraft starts to fall again, back down to earth. As though it had only just realised its own airborne impossibility. A slow three-mile drop. Except on plunging through the warmer airs the ice begins creaking and snapping and slipping away.

  (a few more degrees and the sundogs flare and vanish

  the rainbow inverts to spill its inner colours into space

  the moon is blotted out by thick black cloud)

  A brittle skin being shed in huge white slabs. And when the ice spins off the propellers it splinters and smacks right into the fuselage. Like a heavy rain of machine-gun fire. The racket inside so fierce you’d think the war had already begun.

  An air-show, sunkissed and sticky, its hot concrete

  bordered with gaudy spectators.

  The family-man with a girl on his shoulders.

  The obsessive with tripod and super-8 camera.

  Businessfolk on complimentary tickets, who sip

  in the parasolled shade of picketed enclosures.

  A woman half-in/half-out of her grass-parked car,

  iced bun in one hand, field-glasses firm in the other.

  And the team of red gnats have shown off their tight

  and all-too-familiar formations.

  And there have been daredevils, and deafenings,

  and blubbing children placated with ice-cream.

  And somewhere about sits a long white prototype,

  although it isn’t scheduled to go up.

  Then comes the one they’re all really here for.

  Even for those who know nothing about it:

  they soon have that sense of uncanny importance

  if not from the crowding and craning then from

  its overbearing presence

  and the whisper of its name.

  A curious giant that looks like a fighter

  and flies like a fighter: all single-stick stuff,

  all muscle and self-centred poise; the way

  it strokes the sky with dreamy composure;

  the way its crew-bubble, squashed up into its snout,

  seems more like an offhand inclusion, an afterthought.

  And yet for all these endowments

  not a fighter. Far too big for a start.

  The audience willing it into performance,

  wanting to hear it, to feel it, the roaring, the howl

  that sounds more like a moan. A mournful cry

  from the stresses of its envelope-pushing display.

  Like a pony made to turn tight circles

  not by gentle persuasion but by

  the sharpness of the bit that tugs

  and cuts into the corners of its mouth.

  A tired old beast forced into the tricks of its youth.

  The tricks it was never designed for

  but still it could do them, does do them.

  Spectacular even in semi-retirement.

  The visible weight of it. A ponderous slowness

  that somehow looks graceful, that looks

  like it hangs in the air, when really

  it’s straining through every moment to stay up.

  A pure excess of power that pressures it

  into its final stunt, a near-vertical climb, and how

  at the cloud-nudging apex it seems to lose power:

  a swoon, a dead faint, slipping back

  and then rolling off sharply, its nose pointed earthwards

  at full thrust, to pull itself

  heavily into the clear,

  to the unheard applause of the crowd, very small

  far below, who seek only now to acknowledge

  the peril that has been averted.

  When it comes down to it so many things can go wrong. Chaotic it may be, but preferable to automation, to the effortless flick of a switch. Much better to rely on the inborn reluctance of each and every man. And there aren’t any orders as such, not for how one behaves. Somewhere, by that point, it’s already over. A country gone quiet. A dimple. A smouldering plain.

  (an island picked out

  small and mountainous

  near enough to nowhere

  ignorable forgettable

  a hesitant descent

  through high valley mists

  and onto a short black runway

  no guide-lines no lamps

  no sign of anyone)

  There’s not really any survival gear to speak of, not on board. No flimsy A-frame tent. No cooking pots. Not even basic rations. Little point in loading up supplies when a full-blown attack won’t leave much to live for. If you’re lucky you may find a few bars of chocolate, hidden away in a tin. But that’s been there for a good few years. By now it likely tastes of kerosene. Everything seems to get tainted after a while.

  (women in national dress

  green-eyed freckled pig-tailed

  presenting local wares

  to the stiff-limbed crew

  a fish-supper shared

  down by the harbour wall

  as they gaze out over

  the black lapping waves

  towards phosphorescent horizons)

  You’ll hear it in those last communications. Not the wording itself but the tone that tells you it’s true. A forced rigidity applied to over-rehearsed commands. Fully aware that they’ll be a primary target. Their location well known to the enemy, who’ll still hope to limit the extent of retaliation, even though they know what’s coming next.

  Yet here, for her, it is a night

  on which there is no warning given,

  and the silence is no different

  from all other nightly silences.

  The routine of her day completed

  as it thickens round her into routine loneliness.

  Except, on this one night, she’s not alone.

  (All effort is of little worth

  if only meant to satisfy the self.

  My own internalised contentment

  only comes from how the outside

  may impress upon it.)

  And now it’s she who switches out the light

  and locks the door and draws the heavy curtains

  very nearly closed.

  Each action ordered to her deft creation

  of a space in which

  no one exists but them.

  Their nearness necessary

  in the dimming of a world new-made,

  each wondering what it is the other sees,

  each breathing in the air the other breathes.

  (And could the sudden stealing of a kiss

  be meant as nothing more

  than one’s desire for drawing breath

  directly from the source?)

  To ask to hold in hope to touch

  a heartbeat other than one’s own.

  When breathing inward presses out

  it’s only fair to wish

  once started

  such proximity might never end.

  (And if it fell to nothing, if the air

  turned stale, the grasses then

  so many miles of dust, and if I walked

  would there be hope in finding anyone at all?

  would it be foolish just to try?)

  How still they stand,

  one’s fingers pushing backward

  slowly through the other’s hair.

  And of such stillness, of such touch,

  it’s here they find

  there is no need, no want,

  for any more than this.

  (Even in a wilderness I’d feel that spark

  that sense of someone else still being there.

  With all that’s bound between us

  would it be so strange to wonder if

  we’d speak or see each other once again?)

  A face dipped forward to a face reclined.

  Her lifted eyes, both cool and wide

  to counteract the dark.

  And if no words

  are in and of that closeness spoken

  then there’s no way to b
e certain

  that their thoughts are likewise matched.

  (How close things draw together just to split.

  How full an understanding of the ways in which

  our worlds may pull apart.

  If everything we strove for led to this

  how could it be undone with one embrace?)

  The curtains yield a narrow gap

  through which the thin white street-lamp light

  illuminates the pair, enough

  to know each other there —

  what then is lost by letting all that light flood in.

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  Copyright © J. O. Morgan 2018

  J. O. Morgan has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Jonathan Cape in 2018

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library