Only This

That night the frost was very heavy. It covered the hedges and whitened the grass
in the fields so that it seemed almost as though it had been snowing. But the night was
clear and beautiful and bright with stars, and the moon was nearly full.

The cottage stood alone in a corner of the big field. There was a path from the front
door which led across the field to a stile and on over the next field to a gate which
opened on to the lane about three miles from the village. There were no other houses in
sight and the country around was open and flat and many of the fields were under the
plough because of the war.

The light of the moon shone upon the cottage. It shone through the open window
into the bedroom where the woman was asleep. She slept lying on her back, with her
face upturned to the ceiling, with her long hair spread out around her on the pillow, and
although she was asleep, her face was not the face of someone who is resting. Once she
had been beautiful, but now there were thin furrows running across her forehead and
there was a tightness about the way in which her skin was stretched over the
cheekbones. But her mouth was still gentle, and as she slept, she did not close her lips.

The bedroom was small, with a low ceiling, and for furniture there was a dressing-
table and an armchair. The clothes of the woman lay over the back of the armchair
where she had put them when she undressed. Her black shoes were on the floor beside
the chair. On the dressing-table there was a hairbrush, a letter and a large photograph of
a young boy in uniform who wore a pair of wings on the left side of his tunic. It was a
smiling photograph, the kind that one likes to send to one's mother and it had a thin,
black frame made of wood. The moon shone through the open window and the woman
slept her restless sleep. There was no noise anywhere save for the soft, regular noise of
her breathing and the rustle of the bedclothes as she stirred in her sleep.

Then, from far away, there came a deep, gentle rumble which grew and grew and
became louder and louder until soon the whole sky seemed to be filled with a great
noise which throbbed and throbbed and kept on throbbing and did not stop.

Right at the beginning, even before it came close, the woman had heard the noise.
In her sleep she had been waiting for it, listening for the noise and dreading the moment
when it would come. When she heard it, she opened her eyes and for a while she lay
quite still, listening. Then she sat up, pushed the bedclothes aside and got out of bed.
She went over to the window and placing her hands on the window sill, she leaned out,
looking up into the sky; and her long hair fell down over her shoulders, over the thin
cotton nightdress which she wore.

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 For many minutes she stood there in the cold, leaning out of the window, hearing
the noise, looking up and searching the sky; but she saw only the bright moon and the
stars.

"God keep you," she said aloud. "Oh dear God keep you safe."

Then she turned and went quickly over to the bed, pulled the blankets away and
wrapped them round her shoulders like a shawl. She slipped her bare feet into the black
shoes and walked over to the armchair and pushed it forward so that it was right up in
front of the window. Then she sat down. The noise and the throbbing overhead was very
great. For a long time it continued as the huge procession of bombers moved towards
the south. All the while the woman sat huddled in her blankets, looking out of the
window into the sky.

Then it was over. Once more the night became silent. The frost lay heavy on the
field and on the hedges and it seemed as though the whole countryside was holding its
breath. An army was marching in the sky. All along the route people had heard the
noise and knew what it was; they knew that soon, even before they had gone to sleep,
there would be a battle. Men drinking beer in the pubs had stopped their talking in order
to listen. Families in their houses had turned off the radio and gone out into their
gardens, where they stood looking up into the sky. Soldiers arguing in their tents had
stopped their shouting, and men and women walking home at night from the factories
had stood still on the road, listening to the noise.

It is always the same. As the bombers move south across the country at night, the
people who hear them become strangely silent. For those women whose men are with
the planes, the moment is not an easy one to bear.

Now they had gone, and the woman lay back in the armchair and closed her eyes,
but she did not sleep. Her face was white and the skin seemed to have been drawn
tightly over her cheeks and gathered up in wrinkles around her eyes. Her lips were
parted and it was as though she were listening to someone talking. Almost she could
hear the sound of his voice as he used to call to her from outside the window when he
came back from working in the fields. She could hear him saying he was hungry and
asking what there was for supper, and then when he came in he would put his arm
around her shoulder and talk to her about what he had been doing all day. She would
bring in the supper and he would sit down and start to eat and always he would say, why
don't you have some and she never knew what to answer except that she wasn't hungry.
She would sit and watch him and pour out his tea, and after a while she would take his
plate and go out into the kitchen to get him some more.

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 It was not easy having only one child. The emptiness when he was not there and
the knowing all the time that something might happen; the deep conscious knowing that
there was nothing else to live for except this; that if something did happen, then you too
would be dead. There would be no use in sweeping the floor or washing the dishes or
cleaning the house; there would be no use in gathering wood for the fire or in feeding
the hens; there would be no use in living.

Now, as she sat there by the open window she did not feel the cold; she felt only a
great loneliness and a great fear. The fear took hold of her and grew upon her so that she
could not bear it, and she got up from the chair and leaned out of the window again,
looking up into the sky. And as she looked the night was no longer beautiful; it was cold
and clear and immensely dangerous. She did not see the fields or the hedges or the
carpet of frost upon the countryside; she saw only the depths of the sky and the danger
that was there.

Slowly she turned and sank down again into her chair. Now the fear was great.
She could think of nothing at all except that she must see him and be with him, that she
must see him now because tomorrow would be too late. She let her head rest against the
back of the chair and when she closed her eyes she saw the aircraft; she saw it clearly in
the moonlight, moving forward through the night like a great, black bird. She was so
close to it and she could see the way in which the nose of the machine reached out far
ahead of everything, as though the bird was craning its neck in the eagerness of its
passage. She could see the markings on the wings and on the body and she knew that he
was inside. Twice she called to him, but there was no answer; then the fear and the
longing welled up within her so that she could stand it no longer and it carried her
forward through the night and on and on until she was with him, beside him, so close
that she could have touched him had she put out her hand.

He was sitting at the controls with gloves on his hands, dressed in a great bulky
flying-suit which made his body look huge and shapeless and twice its normal size. He
was looking straight ahead at the instruments on the panel, concentrating upon what he
was doing and thinking of nothing except flying the machine.

Now she called to him again and he heard her. He looked around and when he saw
her, he smiled and stretched out a hand and touched her shoulder, and then all the fear
and the loneliness and the longing went out of her and she was happy.

For a long time she stood beside him watching him as he flew the machine. Every
now and then he would look around and smile at her, and once he said something, but
she could not hear what it was because of the noise of the engines. Suddenly he pointed
ahead through the glass windshield of the aeroplane and she saw that the sky was full of
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searchlights. There were many hundreds of them; long white fingers of light travelling
lazily across the sky, swaying this way and that, working in unison so that sometimes
several of them would come together and meet in the same spot and after a while they
would separate and meet again somewhere else, all the time searching the night for the
bombers which were moving in on the target.

Behind the searchlights she saw the flak. It was coming up from the town in a thick
manycoloured curtain, and the flash of the shells as they burst in the sky lit up the inside
of the bomber. He was looking straight ahead now, concentrating upon the flying,
weaving through the searchlights and going directly into this curtain of flak, and she
watched and waited and did not dare to move or to speak lest she distract him from his
task.

She knew that they had been hit when she saw the flames from the nearest engine
on the left side. She watched them through the glass of the side panel, licking against
the surface of the wing as the wind blew them backwards, and she watched them take
hold of the wing and come dancing over the black surface until they were right up under
the cockpit itself. At first she was not frightened. She could see him sitting there, very
cool, glancing continually to one side, watching the flames and flying the machine, and
once he looked quickly around and smiled at her and she knew then that there was no
danger. All around she saw the searchlights and the flak and the explosions of the flak
and the colours of the tracer, and the sky was not a sky but just a small confined space
which was so full of lights and explosions that it did not seem possible that one could
fly through it.

But the flames were brighter now on the left wing. They had spread over the whole
surface. They were alive and active, feeding on the fabric, leaning backwards in the
wind which fanned them and encouraged them and gave them no chance of going out.

Then came the explosion. There was a blinding white flash and a hollow crumph
as though someone had burst a blown-up paper bag; then there was nothing but flames
and thick whitishgrey smoke. The flames were coming up through the floor and through
the sides of the cockpit; the smoke was so thick that it was difficult to see and almost
impossible to breathe. She became terrified and panicky because he was still sitting
there at the controls, flying the machine, fighting to keep it on an even keel, turning the
wheel first to one side, then to the other, and suddenly there was a blast of cold air and
she had a vague impression of urgent crouching figures scrambling past her and
throwing themselves away from the burning aircraft.

Now the whole thing was a mass of flames and through the smoke she could see
him still sitting there, fighting with the wheel while the crew got out, and as he did so he
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held one arm up over his face because the heat was so great. She rushed forward and
took him by the shoulders and shook him and shouted, "Come on, quickly, you must get
out, quickly, quickly."

Then she saw that his head had fallen forward upon his chest and that he was limp
and unconscious. Frantically she tried to pull him out of the seat and towards the door,
but he was too limp and heavy. The smoke was filling her lungs and her throat so that
she began to retch and gasp for breath. She was hysterical now, fighting against death
and against everything and she managed to get her hands under his arms and drag him a
little way towards the door. But it was impossible to get him farther. His legs were
tangled around the wheel and there was a buckle somewhere which she could not undo.
She knew then that it was impossible, that there was no hope because of the smoke and
the fire and because there was no time; and suddenly all the strength drained out of her
body. She fell down on top of him and began to cry as she had never cried before.

Then came the spin and the fierce rushing drive downwards and she was thrown
forward into the fire so that the last she knew was the bright yellow of the flames and
the smell of the burning.

Her eyes were closed and her head was resting against the back of the chair. Her
hands were clutching the edges of the blankets as though she were trying to pull them
tighter around her body and her long hair fell down over her shoulders.

Outside the moon was low in the sky. The frost lay heavier than ever on the fields
and on the hedges and there was no noise anywhere. Then from far away in the south
came a deep gentle rumble which grew and grew and became louder and louder until
soon the whole sky was filled with the noise and the singing of those who were coming
back.

But the woman who sat by the window never moved. She had been dead for some
time.