By Robin Reinders
The morning has not yet decided to be morning –
A pale seam of light lying low along the hedgerow
Beyond the hangars –
Everything else ready-room charcoal and damp tin.
The trainers crouch along the tarmac, wings folded
Like birds waiting out a storm.
We sit on the narrow step of one of them –
Shoulder to shoulder because there is no other way to sit –
Soles knocking the aluminium skin.
The metal is cold enough
To steal heat through wool.
You swear softly from behind your teeth –
Shove your hands beneath your thighs.
‘Christ–
Colder than the Channel.’
Your breath ghosts between us,
Seeps into the nothing void of the sunless dark.
I strike a match.
The flare of it briefly paints your face gilt-gold –
Young still, soft along the jaw,
Eyes gentle
And half-lidded with sleep.
The cigarette takes to the flame –
Tobacco curls wonderfully into the air, bitter and sweet the way sweat is.
You pitch gracelessly forward to steal the first draw
Before I can lift it to my mouth,
Shoulder bumps mine –
‘Greedy bastard’, I mutter.
‘Pilot’s privilege’, you answer.
Cocksure. Irritating.
Your grin flickers quick and mean like the spark of the match –
Bright and licking up cruel and then gone.
Smoke leaks skywards from your mouth.
For a moment it hangs between us
Like breath on cold glass.
…
Inside the cockpit the instruments sit dark and patient,
Anticipating handling.
The seats absurdly close together –
A joke among all us flyboys –
Knees almost touching
Even before the parachutes and the harness
And everything else we carry into the kite with us.
You climb in first –
I tell you to –
The leather of your jacket creaks
Like saddle tack.
When I follow
There is the usual awkward instance –
Boots tangling with pedals,
Shoulders negotiating space
That will never be won between two grown boys
And their clumsy limbs.
We afford one another the same dignity
As bedfellows.
‘Give us the cigarette.’
You hold out your hand behind you
Without turning to face me.
I place it gingerly between your fingers.
Your glove brushes my wrist in hasty hungry hunt for the filter –
I feel as if some surface part of me has been permanently smeared by it.
The cockpit smells thickly of oil
And stale canvas.
Smoke threads through the cramped air
In thin blue ribbons.
You lean back in your seat impish and lazy,
So the cigarette hangs near my mouth.
I bend forward to take it –
A cat lapping milk from the dish and
Our helmets knock.
You laugh like you’re out of breath.
‘Careful –
We ain’t even wheels up yet.’
The ember pulses blood orange when I draw.
For a second the light of it
Paints the underside of your jaw all ruddy and raw.
Pink-skinned.
Your throat moves when you swallow.
Clicks.
(‘Why do all-a men got a Adam’s apple? Hell they do wi’ mine?’)
You notice I notice and know this is tolerable.
Outside, ground crew voices drift through the dark.
Boots clink-clanking on metal ladder-rungs.
Someone slams a hangar door with
The same rough-handed tenderness you’d handle a horse.
A lark begins somewhere beyond the field –
Thin, tinny, delirious music climbing the sky
Like a dizzy soprano.
You reach forward to fiddle with the compass housing.
Your sleeve drags across my forearm.
Friction of wool
And leather.
It is ridiculous.
It all is.
‘–?’ you ask.
Your voice is easy –
And careless –
Like how you fly and handle girls.
I shake my head though I never register what it is that you said.
You hand the cigarette back –
The flighty little pulse beneath your skin
Jumping through the opening in the glove seam –
The ghost of it stays in my palm.
The last of the ash lengthens, trembles.
You reach to tap it out the window
And your bony elbow nudges my ribs.
‘Sorry.’
‘Sure?’
You grin like you’re going to survive this one too –
Allow me to get you back for it.
…
The eastern sky lightens
From jet-black to Bobby’s blue velvet.
The trainers along the runway begin
To show their shapes –
Long wings, blunt noses,
Frost dulling the metal.
You stretch one leg forward,
Moony and slow,
Your ankle
Bullying my shin out the way.
I go without much fight.
‘We’ll be home for breakfast’, you speak
Through the palm
Dragging down your weary face.
‘Powdered eggs and cold coffee’, my lippy retort.
You draw once more on the dying smoke-butt –
Deep enough to burn it to the stub –
Then hold your leftovers out to me –
As if there’s anything left.
As if I should thank you kindly.
The heat from your last drag warms the thin paper.
I feel as though a detonator is beneath my thumb.
Outside, someone laughs, sharp and awake –
You snatch the butt back,
Flick it out into the wet grass,
Dewy from the damp English dawn.
It lands –
And dies with a small hiss.
Featured Image: Australian War Memorial, William Dargie, 1945
