“For showing me that the journalist I used to be ain’t dead… that he still exists somewhere in this killer’s body.” She began to protest his self-criticism but he pushed on, cutting her off. “What I do, I do well, Eileen…” The way he made that statement, while devoid of pride, nevertheless left no doubt as to exactly how very well he did his work. “For a long time now, it’s felt like what I do is all I am… but you showed me that wasn’t true… that there is some of the man I was left. Things haven’t worked out the way I’d have liked,” he shrugged, “but they can’t work out that way… it’s just not possible. What you said about it never getting easier was right… it never does… but at least you’ve given me hope that maybe — just maybe — there’ll be a time somewhere in the future when I can stop being the person I am now… now I know I can still be something else.”
Eileen embraced him then and they hugged tightly for a few moments, enjoying the sensation of proximity before separating once more. She lifted her head and kissed him once on the lips as they parted, running a hand along his shoulder.
“You stay lucky, ‘Jimmy’… you hear…!” She breathed softly, the hint of tears at the corners of her eyes. “There’s always a tomorrow…!”
He grinned faintly. “Like that Miss Scarlett says: ‘Tomorrow is another day!’”
“Would it be inappropriate at this moment,” Thorne interrupted from a metre or two away, standing expectantly beside the biplane with hands on hips, “to say ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!’?” He gave a broader grin. “We do need to get a wriggle on!”
“You’ve no sentimentality, Maxwell Peter Thorne!” Eileen snapped back, but there’d been no real offence. Kransky, snapping automatically back into ‘business mode’, simply nodded as he grabbed the gear and weapons at his feet and walked across to load them into the rear cockpit of the Swordfish.
“Sorry… I was almost expecting Bogie to come waltzing out of the fog with Ingrid Bergmann on his arm.” Thorne didn’t care that he was mixing up his movies in going for the right imagery.
“Well you just make sure you get yourself back here before dawn tomorrow, mister!” She countered as she moved to his side, trying to keep a light mood but not quite managing.
“I will,” he nodded, a little more solemn at the thought. “You just make sure you take off at the scheduled time regardless… got it?”
“I’ve got it,” she reassured, but there was clearly more she wanted to say and he quickly interrupted her.
“And if you tell me to ‘be careful’, I’ll kick your pert little ‘thirty-something’ ass up to the top of Ward Hill and back… this is all starting to sound like a bad bloody movie as it is!”
“Don’t worry,” she reassured, chuckling a little despite her fears. “I wouldn’t dare!”
“Two golden rules of the movies,” he continued in the same, mock-lecturing tone. “The guy that talks about what he wants to do after the war is over, or shows someone a picture of his girl always gets killed… and the girl who tells ‘The Hero’ she loves him always gets killed! That’s why Dina Meyer’s character bought it in Starship Troopers! If she’d just shagged Casper Van Dien, like Denise Richards’ character did, that bloody alien wouldn’t have done her in…!”
“Max,” she whispered softly with a kind smile, leaning in close. “You’re rambling.”
“I’m just trying making a point is all,” he said lamely, and the frayed nerves behind his bravado suddenly became very obvious. He was heading into a real war, and was quite reasonably scared witless by the thought.
“Well, mister, you’re safe with me then… you know I only want you for your body! Purely physical… love’s got nought to do wi’ it!” She managed to get another grin out of him with that remark even if it was at least partly a lie.
“Well, good… just so long as we’re clear on that point!” She’d given him an ‘out’, and he took it gladly, immediately hiding his sensitive side once more behind the usual bravado and humour.
“Get yourself into that plane and get the hell out of here, Max… time’s a wastin’!” He nodded and turned toward the aircraft into which Ritter and Kransky were already climbing. “Hey…” Eileen called, catching his arm with one hand and turning him back momentarily. “…Be careful!” She added with a faint smile. The look that passed between them at that moment said a lot more than words could have, and he simply grinned as she added: “Now you’ll just have to make sure you come back and give my arse that kicking!”
“When I come back, I will…” he replied, his voice low enough to keep it between them, but the tone in his voice was honest and caring — he had no stomach for either mock anger or mock lasciviousness.
“‘Pert’…?” She suddenly added with a disconcerted frown, that particular piece of what Thorne had just said about her behind finally registering.
“If the arse fits…” he grinned, shrugging almost apologetically as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. Turning back to the aircraft, he quickly clambered into the forward cockpit and dragged the flying helmet and goggles he found there over his head. The Bristol Pegasus radial engine began to turn over, and he gave a wry smile as it caught and spluttered loudly and unevenly into life in clouds of smoky exhaust.
“Don’t be concerned, Commander,” Ritter called loudly as Thorne gave the engine a few tentative revs. “Assuming that Max can actually fly this thing, we’ll take care of him!”
“Just what I bloody need… a ‘rear cockpit’ driver…!” Thorne growled loudly enough for everyone to hear, drawing smiles from all of them. “I think I liked him better when he was on the other bloody side!”
Thorne was glad of the lightness of his headgear compared to the flight helmet of the Lightning, even if it couldn’t give him a helmet-mounted sight and deadly-accurate weapons to go with it. The buffeting of the three-bladed propeller’s backwash whipped past them, adding to a wind-chill that was already making them terribly cold… what the conditions were likely to be like flying at speed in the icy morning air didn’t bear thinking about. With a final wave to Eileen that Kransky duplicated from the rearmost cockpit, he gunned the engine and signalled the ground crew to remove the chocks beneath the Swordfish’s main wheels.
The airstrip was sparsely lit, and there was barely enough illumination for a take off in that fine rain, but the biplane surged forward all the same as Eileen and Trumbull moved away, their clothing and hair buffeted heavily in the increased backwash. The take off run was relatively short without the added weight of a torpedo slung beneath its belly, and in a few moments the ‘Stringbag’ had lurched into the dark sky, navigation lights winking as it turned slowly south and continued to climb beyond fifteen hundred metres. The flight would be a long and arduous one without automatic pilot, but the first part over the northern wilds of Scotland would a least be free of threat from enemy fighters, and he could therefore stay at a higher altitude. The real dangers would come as they flew further south in daylight hours, through skies ruled completely by the Luftwaffe.