Free A Song At Twilight by Lilian Harry Page B

we have here in the mess.’
    Ben grinned. He’d been startled at his first encounter with a mess ‘brawl’, with the airmen hurling themselves at each other rather as they hurled their planes about in the sky, somersaulting over rows of chairs and tables and ending in a struggling heap on the floor. It had all seemed rather juvenile to the eighteen-year-old not long out of school, who had expected a little more gravitas from senior officers. But he’d soon come to recognise that this was a vital way of letting off steam, recovering from the strains and tensions of risking your life in the air, watching a plane you had destroyed explode beneath you, and coming back to find that yet another of your friends had lived his last day.
    ‘Will your wife mind having a lot of idiots invading her house?’ Robin enquired seriously. ‘Does she realise what she’s letting herself in for?’
    ‘Oh yes, she’s got plenty of experience. We’ve been married four years now, you know – been at Manston and Tangmere and one or two other stations. She’s well used to RAF types.’
    ‘And she’s still prepared to let us into her home?’ Robin said, shaking his head in mock wonder. ‘Well, so be it. I’ll do my best to keep order.’
    Andrew grinned. ‘You won’t have to. Alison can keep order. In fact, she’d make a very good Group Commander. Now look, I’ll leave Stefan here in your capable hands. Treat him gently, mind – they’re damned good flyers, the Polish.’ He went off, leaving the small group to settle themselves in armchairs and look at each other.
    ‘So how long have you been flying?’ the Pole asked Ben and Tony. ‘You look very young.’
    ‘I’m twenty,’ Ben said with dignity. ‘And Tony here’s an old man of twenty-one – had his birthday on our last station. Got the key of the door and everything. We’ve been flying two years.’
    ‘Only just joined here, though,’ Tony added. ‘Haven’t started ops flying yet. Hoping to do so next week.’
    ‘I don’t think there’s any question about that,’ Robin observed, filling his pipe with tobacco. ‘All three of you will be up.’ He glanced at Stefan. ‘It’s unusual to have one of you chaps in with us, though. You usually stick with your own squadrons.’
    Stefan looked across at the far corner of the mess, where some others wearing the same uniform were drinking steadily, as though competing for some prize. ‘Andrew asked if he could borrow one of us. I volunteered.’
    ‘Volunteered!’ Robin exclaimed. ‘It’s easy to tell you’re not English. That’s the first thing we learn when we join up – never volunteer for anything.’
    The Pole gave him an unsmiling glance. ‘I volunteered because your squadron is the best on Harrowbeer and I want to fly with the best. There is then much more chance of killing Germans.’
    ‘Well, yes, of course there is,’ Robin said, slightly taken aback by the pilot’s intensity. ‘That’s what we all want to do.’ He glanced at the other two and then said, ‘I’d better be off too. Things to do, you know. Find a clean shirt for Saturday night, that sort of thing.’ He stuck his pipe into his mouth and sauntered off, leaving the three newest members of the squadron together.
    Stefan watched him. ‘I’m afraid your friend doesn’t like me. I take it all too seriously – I let my feelings show too much. I don’t have the British stiff upper lip.’ He drank from his glass and then set it down with a small thump. His voice shook a little. ‘But if he had seen what I have seen – people forced to wear yellow stars on their sleeves and live behind brick walls, people shot down in the streets, just for daring to walk along them – then perhaps he would take the same attitude. You don’t really know what war is in this country. You have no idea at all.’
    ‘Hold on,’ Ben protested. ‘We might not have been invaded, but we’ve been through some pretty foul times. Our cities blitzed