Cliff May Creative Writing ? HimIndoors - My Telegraph

Cliff
Monsieur! Monsieur! Cliff! Clifford ! Sergeant! Oi you! Mr Young. So many names, so many people calling him, confusing him, the pain in his chest still there, grumbling, aching, worrying him, why wouldn?t it just go? How many times was this now? Three, four, five?
He felt the warmth from the sun catching his face as it shone through the dirty blast proofed, taped windows. ?Well, they can take that off now can?t they,? he thought to himself, ?Not needed anymore, surplus to requirements, just like me.? The bell rang to let the visitors in, ?Oh Christ, the wife, don?t need that, I?ll pretend to be asleep, keep quiet, keep very still, I?ve gotten good at that over the last few months.?
He closed his eyes, the sun still shining on him, the flags and bunting blowing gently in the breeze, just visible from his bed. There had been so many people, happy people and all he had wanted, could think about, was a pie. A Wigan ?special?, with gravy. A long, cramped overcrowded train journey up from the south coast, hot sweaty demobbed troops. Some quiet, pleased to have survived, some noisy, sheer bravado he thought, covering up their relief. Finally, the platform at Wigan and then the damned pain, darkness.
?Oi you, clear off, can?t you read the sign? ?Private? it says, ?Private!? Now bugger off and don?t come back or I?ll kick your backside till it?s black and blue.?
?I?ll show, you one day, I?ll show you, I?ll fly one of those planes, then you won?t tell me to bugger off,? he shouted back, with all the confidence of a youth able to run faster than the older bloke.
His fingers weren?t really meant to build these fiddly little model planes. Too much bacon and eggs had loaded on the weight over the years and grandson wasn?t much better at it either. No patience, glue everywhere and its smell reminded him of the kerosene pumped into the Bombers, then the bombs, messages, never polite, chalked on them for Hitler and Jerry, their load for tonight.
Twenty eight years old, his Skipper two years younger and how they trusted him. Thirty one times they had lumbered off the airfield heading off over northern France. Still the same crew, the youngest, nineteen. Last night had been the most frightening, the night fighters now skilled at their work hunting them, radar controlled and invisible against the blue-black sky. Bullets unseen until they came without warning, snapping and smashing inboard, maiming, killing and for those trapped in the burning aircraft, worse, much worse, hurtling downwards, knowing their barely begun young lives were about to be ended.
?Cliff, Clifford! Come back will you, stop day dreaming, the dog wants to go out.?
The wife was ironing and as usual it put her into a bad temper. Most of the time he just ignored her and today was no different. She flicked a pillow case to straighten it and as she did so a single solitary white feather flew from its inside and drifted slowly to the floor. Cliff watched it, down, down, down, landing silently on the rug.
Ten thousand feet, moonless, they hadn?t seen the bastard. The bullets cutting into the fuselage and Cliff in the bomb aimers turret had heard his Skipper, ?Get out all of you, get out.?
Cliff sensed rather than saw the fire, a rising panic but concern also for his Skipper and the others. He scrambled to the escape hatch and dropped out of the Bomber. He felt the wind rushing past him, he counted to twenty just to be sure he was well away from the plane, he mind clear that he didn?t want to become tangled up with it when his parachute opened. He found the ring, pulled hard, and felt the bump as the chute opened, slowing him as he went down, down, down, gently, safe, alive. It was raining.
?Just one more sheet to do then a glass of wine, do you want a tin??
?Er, no thanks, got a bit of a tummy ache, those pills you know, still upset me sometimes.?
His wife did know. She had never been a tolerant women about other people?s ills. Although she could and did spend hours talking to the few friends she had about her latest trip to the doctors.
He watched as she smoothed the creases out of the sheet, the iron running quietly over the white cotton.
He was lucky, he had landed in a small pond, no broken ankles from hitting the hard earth. The parachute drifted over him, its silk cool and crisp, cocooning him just for a moment from the reality of his position. Certainly behind German lines, somewhere around Beauvais he thought.
It was all very well the instructors in England telling them to hide the parachute, bury it, but it was quite another thing to do it. Anger came over him, he was alone, frightened and sick with worry for the rest of the crew. The ground was rock hard and the Germans knew there was at least one bomber down and they would be looking for its crew just in case any had survived.
?You ok with sausage and mash? What about you, Robert?? this to their grandson.
?With gravy, grandma and then ice cream yes??
?No ice cream but I got some nice red cherries, you can have those.?
Cliff liked sausage and mash and ice cream, a good tea. But, after spending, how many days had it been three, four, five? in a cherry tree, uncomfortable, frightened, Germans passing close by, cherries didn?t figure as one of his favourites.
?Cliff! Sergeant, wake up, your wife?s here.? It was no good he would have to speak to her. But she would go on and on and on. How brave he?d been, how lucky. He knew she was boasting about her brave husband, coming back after all those months in France. She paid no heed to the five who had gone down in the burning bomber. The sixth, Reggie they were still looking for. Had the Germans found him? If so what had they done to him, he wouldn?t have been the first allied airman to have been shot whilst ?escaping.?
?I?ve bought you this orange, took me ages to find one, home grown it?s supposed to be. In the glass house up at the big house?
?You mean black market.?
?Well, you?re a hero and the Yanks like a hero.? So that was where she was spending her time, up at the local camp. He took the orange and put it on the bedside cabinet. He?d give it to the nurse later, the one that gave him the saucy bed baths.
Finally, it was over, she was gone, smart, how did she afford it? But that was a question he chose not to even think about the possible answers. The bunting outside flapped in the rising breeze, red, white and blue.
Damn, how was he supposed to bury a white silk parachute in rock hard ground? He?d tried to bury it in the mud around the pond but after scrapping away a couple of inches he had hit solid hard soil.
Thank god it was a moonless night or the white would have stood out like a beacon, guiding the searching troops towards him and then what?
?Monsieur! Monsieur! Venez,? and in broken English, ?Quick, quick!? A young girl stood over him, dirty knees just above his eye level. She held out her hand, beckoning, hopping from foot to foot with impatience. Well, after three days hiding in that ditch, slyly smoking his last few woodbines and eating his escape rations, Cliff knew he had to take a chance.
The farm house was about half a mile away, he had been watching it from his hiding place, trying to pluck up the courage to ask for help. The girl guided him over the fields, signing him to duck down and run. An older women ? her mother as he found out in the weeks to come ? took him by the arm, shoed him upstairs and indicated him to strip off.
?Clifford, wake up. It?s time for your bath. Are you feeling any better? Here take your pills before we start.?
Madame, sensing his shyness, turned her back on him. Cliff stripped off to his underwear. Madame turned and indicated that he must take everything off. She threw a towel at him and pointed to a pile of clothes on the bed. Then he understood. French clothes, country clothes. French underwear. She took his dog tags and now he felt truly naked, they were his last link to England, his mates, everything he knew, safety.
?????
He never wore his medals. The only thing that adorned his jacket lapel was a small Caterpillar Badge, his ?Grub.? He wore the insignia of aircrew who had baled out of aircraft under combat conditions. It was not to boast, but to remember those who had been unable to get out, his mates, finally crashing onto a village road, dying, all so young.
They were gathered in the main lounge of the sheltered accommodation, settling down to watch the Silver Jubilee. The wives had all gone off somewhere, he hadn?t been listening where, and the husbands now gathered for a natter, a grand reminisce, as, without exception they were all ex servicemen. They believed in Queen and Country, were proud to have served and unashamed, as age took hold, to shed a tear for those not so lucky to have survived. And later, a party, family, friends from the oldest to the youngest.
The young girl ? she was what seven, eight? ? sat everyday on the gate post chatting to the German soldiers in broken German. She was the lookout, his sentry. She would laugh aloud and giggle as the Germans yet again searched the farm just in case the allied airman was around. Cliff, sensitive to her change of tone, would hide beneath the pig sty, a place built for just this job. And above him the pigs pee?d volumes which dripped slowly over him. He never knew the farmer and his family?s names, they were always careful not to use them. If he didn?t know them he couldn?t tell the Germans anything, if caught, could he?
?Cliff! Cliff! come back, do you want a sherry or a tin of that strong lager you like??
?Oh, a lager please, just the one though, you know what two does to me.? He sat contented, warm, surrounded by his friends, comrades, as the TV broadcast the celebrations. Twenty five years already, it seemed like yesterday to Cliff, the young princess, her father gone, the figure head they had fought for. He was waiting for the fly past. A single Spitfire, a Hurricane followed by a Lancaster Bomber, pristine, elegant, unarmed, no bombs to carry to drop to smash the V1 rocket sites as V for Victor had done on that fateful night of July 7th 1944.
?Get out, get out,? the rain, the receding glow as V for Victor fell from the skies down, down, down, into the French countryside.
Three days in the ditch, watching that farm, then Madame, stripping him off, the little girl, those pigs, Germans. A tatty rusty old bike, himself smelling of pig pee. German sentries waving him through the checkpoint with his guide, an equally dirty farm labourer. They wanted nothing to do with these smelly Frenchmen.
Dry bread, hard cheese, water drunk from the ditches as he was guided towards safety, gunfire approaching. German troops travelling in the opposite direction, dirty, dishevelled, some blood stained, none happy or smiling now.
Lager finished, the room a little hazy, half watching the Queen and Phillip, the other half in France. Dog tags, he had no dog-tags, he could cope with the stink of himself, the pain in his chest getting worse, throbbing, aching. He hadn?t seen any Germans in number, for a couple of days and Cliff was sure that soon he would come across allied troops. That Cherry tree just off the roadway. He sat in it, waiting, too frightened to move now, his nerve gone, until desperation forced him down to peddle towards the coast.
?Mr Young, Mr Young, come on, wake up!? So many names, so many people calling him, confusing him, the pain in his chest still there, grumbling, aching, worrying him, why wouldn?t it just go?
It was all hazy, too much lager again, but this wasn?t his own bed. Fuzzy eyesight, in hospital again, but which one, when?
British troops picked him just outside a small village. They were rough with him, didn?t believe him, no dog-tags, nothing to prove he wasn?t a German saboteur. They could spare a bullet for him couldn?t they, who?d know in all the bedlam? Cliff protested, he was English, gave his name, rank, number. His squadron, his plane?s call sign. ?Check please check, I was shot down on July 7th. Please! I haven?t survived all this time just to be shot by my own side as a spy.?
?Come on, Mr Young, take this medicine, it?ll help your pleurisy, it?s the second time this year it?s laid you low.?
?Do I get a sweet then??
?No, just better.?
The drugs made him dozy, a soft gentle, curing doziness. The bunting was inside the ward this time, last time it had been outside just visible through those dirty taped windows, but the same colours, red, white and blue.
More drugs, a haziness. Guns pointing at him. Rain clouds, low scudding rainclouds, not bombing weather, were they really going to shoot him? His own side?
?Oi you, Charlie, come here! Got a geezer here claims he?s English, some place up north called Hindley, sounds like your neck of the woods. See if he?s telling the truth, ?cos he?s got no papers nothing. Might just as well shoot the bugger, smells bloody awful as well.?

Charlie was a short skinny man ,ill fitting khaki uniform, the runt of the litter. A cigarette dangling out of his mouth and now all that stood, or rather slouched, between Cliff and a bullet.
?So, Hindley, then mate, what?s the name of that street that runs between the station and the park then??
?Clough Lane.?
?What?s the pub called on the Lane, the one that sells special home made brew??
?The Swinging Gate.?
?What?s it served from??
?One of those big white enamel jugs, pint glasses only, no handles.?
?Landlord or Landlady??
?Land lady, big tits on her, known as Doris 1 and Doris 2.?
?Reckon he?s kosher, Sergeant.?
End

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