There was an old Aga in the kitchen that pumped out heat. She thought of it as akin to a big friendly animal. Next to the Aga was a small armchair covered in a crocheted blanket and on the blanket a large tabby cat was sound asleep. The stone-flagged floor was warmed by hand-hooked rugs. A Welsh dresser held blue-and-white crockery and on the large scrubbed deal table was a little china jug of sweet peas and marigolds from the garden. Bertie was standing at the ancient Belfast sink patiently drying pots and laying them on the wooden draining-board.
She could see the garden from the kitchen window. The garden was a little corner of Eden, the scarlet flowers of runner beans, the neat mounds of strawberry plants and tangled rows of peas. An apple tree next to the—
A siren interrupted this delightful reverie. Bertie was on her way back from lunch at the Wolseley with a production company. On Piccadilly, she discovered, there was a sense of occasion in the air. Or threat, it was hard to tell the difference. Police and military everywhere and crowds corralled on the pavement. A motorcycle escort signalled importance. A huge car containing royalty swept past. “The Bomber Memorial,” someone explained when she asked. Of course, the Queen was dedicating the new Bomber Memorial today, midway between the Jubilee and the start of the Olympics, a patriotic summer of red, white and blue for London.
Later, on television (because this was another second-hand spectacle) she watched the ceremony on the news, saw all the fragile old men struggling to hold back tears and couldn’t hold back her own as each one reminded her of her grandfather and the mysterious past.
Bertie waited patiently with the crowds on the pavement. Bomber Command had waited seventy years, she supposed she could wait a few minutes. A formation of Tornado fighter jets roared overhead, thrillingly noisy, and were followed by a lone Lancaster that dropped the contents of its bomb-bay over London. Poppies bloomed in a stain of red on the blue-and-white summer sky.
Bertie was on her way home from work when Viola phoned. “We’ve been summoned,” she said portentously.
“Summoned?”
“Asked to come. By the nursing home,” Viola said. She sounded excited. She loved drama as long as it didn’t threaten her.
“Grandpa Ted?” Bertie said, suddenly alert. “What’s happened?”
“Well…” Viola said, as if about to embark on a thrilling narrative when in fact all that had happened was that Teddy had fallen asleep yesterday evening and couldn’t be woken this morning. “They said to get there as soon as possible but I won’t be able to get a flight until the morning. It’ll be late tomorrow night before I can get to York.”
“I’ll set off and drive there now,” Bertie said.
It wasn’t them who had been summoned, Bertie thought, it was her grandfather. The angels had finally called him in.
“They took their time about it,” Viola said.
2012
The Last Flight
Dharma
“There is a Hindu legend that tells us that there was once a time when all men were gods, but they abused their divinity. Brahma, the god of creation, concluded that people had lost the right to their divinity and decided to take it away from them. Wanting to hide it somewhere where they wouldn’t be able to find it, he called a council of all the gods to advise him. Some suggested that they bury it deep in the earth, others that they sink it in the ocean, others still suggested it be placed on top of the highest mountain, but Brahma said that mankind was ingenious and would dig down far into the earth, trawl the deepest oceans and climb every mountain in an effort to find it again.
“The gods were on the point of giving up when Brahma said, ‘I know where we will hide man’s divinity, we will hide it inside him. He will search the whole world but never look inside and find what is already within.’ ”