Wings Over Malta

Not exactly a ghost story, but hopefully it will amuse.

Prologue

Summer, 1940

The sky was a clear cloudless blue. On the far horizon, the curvature of the Earth’s circumference could be seen as a hazy line of darker blue where the Mediterranean met the azure of the heavens. Vincent Childs turned his Sea Gladiator to port peering to both port and starboard for any Regia Aeronautica Fiats. To either side, were the other Gladiators in the squadron. The Sea Gladiator was slow – indeed, the last of the RAF’s bi-plane fighters, the Gloster Gladiator was obsolete by the time it entered service in 1939, but for Childs, it had become a part of him. When the squadron finally got its spitfires, he would be sad to see the old bus going. There was something graceful about these relics from a past era. An era when he had learned to fly – when he flew anything with wings and learned through trial and error, just what a plane could do.

When war broke out, like many pilots of his generation, he volunteered for the RAF. The Malta posting seemed, at first, a backwater, but with Italy entering the war and Malta being a strategic position for the war in north Africa, regular sorties and bombing raids by both the Regia Aeronautica and the Luftwaffe changed that. The Gladiator was outdated and outpaced, yet, and yet, the Axis failed to make a breakthrough. Those old string kites held their own.

Such was his musing; he almost missed the crackling of the radio in his ears. “Blue two, blue two, six o’clock, over.”

Vincent checked his mirror and saw the Fiat bi-plane. “I see him,” he responded. Twisting hard to port and then to starboard, he dived, setting the Gladiator into a spin before pulling hard on the joystick, climbing steeply. “Vincent, you’ll stall…”

“That,” he muttered, “is the idea.”

Just as the aircraft hit the stalling point he again tipped the nose into a dive, the engine clattered and coughed but another sound caught his ear, the staccato rattle of machine gun fire. Shells ripped through the craft and the rigging broke with a twang resembling a bowstring. He swore as the engine coughed. There was a thud in the seat panel behind him and smoke started to stream from the engine cowling. That and the oil pouring from the dying engine splattered across his windscreen, making all vision ahead impossible. Bailing out was now his only option. As the aircraft dived, twisting in her final death throws, Vincent tried to push the canopy back. “Bugger, bugger, bugger!” he swore. The sea met the nose of the stricken aircraft with a sickening thud, and then there was silence as the cold sea swallowed up the machine and its occupant. Eventually Vincent managed to pull back the canopy, but the plane was sinking faster and faster. Breathing in, his lungs filled with salty water and he lost consciousness.

***

Present Day. St Paul’s Bay

Christopher Marchant stepped off the shuttle bus into the searing heat of the Maltese sun. Mid June was the height of summer and the temperature was climbing close to the forties. Still, the few days stop over before resuming his flying duties would be spent diving. The sea looked cool and inviting. According to Clive there was still some war wreckage to be found. It was at Clive Marchant’s insistence that Chris decided to take a break in Malta. Besides, Chris’ father had come from Malta, and he had always wanted to visit.

“I’m pretty sure we’ve found a Sea Gladiator,” Clive had said excitedly over the phone. “All I need is a second diver to do some exploration.” That was in January. There followed the rigmarole of getting the relevant permits to dive and now, in June, they were ready.

“Apparently,” Clive said, barely able to conceal his excitement, “This bird is one flown by Flight Sergeant Vincent Childs in the summer of 1940. We know he was shot down over St Paul’s Bay.”

“How do we know that?”

“Because, he was rescued from there, so we can pinpoint almost exactly where he went down.”

Chris shrugged. Clive’s exuberance had been a hallmark of his personality since their childhood. Entirely unlike Chris, Clive was a small, excitable man with thinning sandy hair and bright grey eyes who burned off his energy with his schemes and plans. Chris was nothing like his cousin. This was, perhaps, because Chris’ father, Francis, was the adopted child of the Marchants. Believing themselves unable to have children of their own, they adopted a boy – Francis – and within the year, Mrs Marchant was pregnant with Clive’s father, John. The two cousins were both physically and emotionally different. Clive; exuberant, extrovert and sunny, contrasted with the saturnine, introverted and thoughtful Chris. It was Chris who invariably put the brakes on some of Clive’s more extravagant plans. But this one, he went along with. Perhaps, being a pilot, he was curious about his forebears. Flying commercial airliners for a living did tend to distance him from the seat of the pants flying that the interwar period flyers engaged in and he was a little envious to have missed out on that. So, perhaps, Clive’s enthusiasm for this project rubbed off on him. And if Clive was right, the Gladiator in the museum in Valetta would have a stable mate of sorts.

Clive came out of the hotel lobby to greet him. “Chris,” he said. “Good flight?”

“Not as good as my flying, but it will do,” he replied easily. There was a half smile on his face as he embraced his cousin. “So, how are plans for this exploration going?”

“Great, great. We’ve got the boat all set and the weather is on our side for the next week, so I’m planning to start diving tomorrow. I want to go over the charts with you this evening. There’s a bar just down the road, we can get some drinks there and conflab.”

***

Chris became slowly aware that the old woman at the bar was staring at him. At first, he concentrated on the chart that Clive had laid out on the table. Yet there she was in the corner of his eye, watching him with a strange stare. Eventually she walked over. “Vincent,” she said, “it’s me, Grace”. Chris frowned and looked back at the woman. She must have been all of ninety, he thought; silver hair tied back from an olive face with dark eyes and a gap-toothed smile. “No”, he said, “You must be mistaking me for someone else.”

“You don’t remember me,” she said. There was something wistful about her. Alzheimer’s he figured. I must look like someone she knew. “No,” he said. “I’ve never been here before. We’ve not met previously.”

She shook her head. Then she reached out a hand, dry and mottled with age. She touched his cheek lightly. “Of course.”

“Of course?”

“It hasn’t happened yet.”

“What hasn’t happened yet?”

“You will know when it does,” she said enigmatically. Then she turned and went back to the bar.

“What was that all about?” Clive asked.

“Beats me,” Chris replied. “Age, I guess. She’s going batty.”

“Mm, anyway…”

They returned their attention to the chart and the morrow’s dive.

***

The conditions were ideal. As dawn broke, Chris dropped over the side and into the cool embrace of the waters of St Paul’s Bay. As he swam deeper, the light from the surface became more dull – dark blue green. Following Clive’s directions he worked his way along the sea bed. For a while all he did was disturb the sea creatures who probably felt that he was better off above the surface and not disturbing them. As they swam and twisted across his path they kicked up clouds of sand.

Then he saw it. The unmistakable rounded shape of an engine cowling and the blade of a Hamilton variable propeller. So, it was a mark 2 – and that was what they were looking for. Swimming in more closely, he brushed away the mud and worked his way along the wreckage. Not much was left of the fuselage, just some skeletal struts and bars. The engine lump seemed intact and the prop had two of its three blades in place.

So absorbed did he become, that he didn’t realise that his air tube was snagged against one of the body struts. Turning around, to work his way around the far side of the wreckage, the strut trapped the air pipe and severed it. Cold water poured into his lungs. Gasping and choking, his vision went dim and he passed out.

***

“Vincent, Old chap, thought you were a gonner there.”

Flight Lieutenant Gerry Fanshaw grinned at Chris as he lay heaving in the dinghy.

“What?” He choked.

“Stay still, old bean, there’s a good chap. We’ll get you fixed up in no time and you’ll be back in the air seeing to old Eyetie before you know it.”

“What?”

“What do you mean what?”

“I mean what… where…”

“Must be that bump on the head when the kite hit the water, old thing,” Gerry cheerfully went on. “Like I said…”

“You thought I was a gonner,” Chris finished.

“Yes, that’s right. Still, you should have seen that Fiat coming. Bit out of character for you, that was.”

“Fiat?”

“Yes, the one that got you. Peppered the kite good and proper.”

“Got me?”

“Have I developed an echo?” Gerry asked.

Chris sat up in the dinghy and promptly wished that he hadn’t. His head hurt. Something was different. His wetsuit was gone. Instead, he was wearing flying overalls. He frowned. Antique flying overalls. “Where am I?”

“St Paul’s Bay, that’s where you ditched your crate.”

Chris looked about him. The bay seemed familiar yet different. As they drew to the shore, the traffic was missing, the road signs strangely different. And Fanshaw, clearly a pilot, but his dress, idioms and mannerisms were from another time.

“What’s the date?” Chris asked.

“June twentieth,”

“Okaaaaay. June twentieth, when?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what year is this?”

Gerry stared at him with genuine puzzlement. “Really, that bang on the bonce needs looking at by Bones, I reckon.”

“Just answer the question.”

“Nineteen forty, but you knew that.”

Chris lay back in the boat and sighed. “This isn’t happening to me,” he thought. “Oxygen starvation, that’s what it is.” Still, let’s probe this character a little more. “What is my name?”

“Oh, Vince, now you really are playing the fool.”

“Vince. Vince what?”

Gerry frowned. Vince Childs. Flight Sergeant, DSO. Yes? Remember now?”

Chris nodded. It seemed the best thing to do while he thought about his predicament. Either Clive would get him to the surface and oxygen to his brain – or he would drown. Either way, this little nightmare would come to an end. In the meantime, his head was throbbing and the flight lieutenant cheerfully chattering away about the morning’s exploits was probably best humoured for the moment.

A field ambulance took him to the hospital and following a brief examination he was declared fit for duty. He peered into a mirror and his own face stared back. There was a nasty cut above his right eye, but apart from the shorter hair and the RAF moustache, it was his own face looking back at him.

Gerry walked out into the sunshine with him. “I’ll give you a lift back to base,” he said, hopping into a two-seater MG. “Come on.”

Chris clambered into the vehicle and still somewhat bewildered sat silently through the short drive out to Ta’Qali. As they drove into the base, Chris looked across at the row of Gloster Sea Gladiators. “This isn’t real,” he told himself. “It isn’t real, I’m imagining it, and I’m drowning off St Paul’s Bay.”

The squadron greeted him boisterously, with jovial comments about ditching his kite, none of which he could recall, but he played along. Equally, he muddled through working out each of them without too much embarrassment. The faded sepia photographs with scribbled names in Clive’s collection that they had pored over the previous evening all took flesh and he recognised them all. When he had to ask a name he shielded his discomfort behind concussion and they took it in good part.

Gerry led him out onto the aerodrome. “We’ve got a replacement bird for you,” he said. He stood beside a new Sea Gladiator, resplendent in her dark sea grey paint – the manufacturer’s markings still on the wings and wheels. “Brand new, straight out of the crate,” Gerry beamed. “Try not to bend it.”

“Er, thanks, sir,” Chris replied.

“Enough of the sir,” Gerry said. Anyway, the NAAFI is the place to be…

And it was. And there she was.

Grace.

“Grace,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Grace, it’s me.”

She frowned. “I’m new here. This is my first day. Have we met?”

He stared at her. The same eyes stared back at him, yet the face was smooth and unlined, the wavy dark hair swept around her oval face before cascading about her shoulders. When she smiled, the gaps in her teeth gave her a quirky, lop-sided attractiveness that made his heart skip. Oh, yes, it was the same person. She would be around twenty now, he thought.

He sighed and echoed her words. “Well, yes, in a way. I have, you haven’t but you will.”

She frowned again.

“Concussion,” Gerry explained gesturing with his finger to his forehead and she smiled broadly.

“It’s happened to me, but not to you. Yet,” Chris stumbled on, wishing the ground would swallow him up. “My past, your future.” He was making as much sense to her as she had to him yesterday or was that – when was that? It hasn’t happened yet. No, no, no, I’m drowning, he told himself, and this is all my dying brain playing tricks. Or was that will have? Oh, God, he groaned inwardly. None of this makes any sense and I’m becoming ever more confused.

“Look,” he said, “never mind, I’m not feeling myself.”

And they left it at that. The following morning they had a sortie and he had to fly his Gladiator. Used to flying twin engine jets – modern jets, the Gladiator was a string and canvas contraption with crude controls. Autopilot wasn’t an option. How, he wondered would he fly this crate and stay alive in a dogfight?

Clambering into the cockpit he clanked around at the controls. All pretty straightforward and logically laid out. No surprises, then. The gun controls fell easily to hand and the sights directly in front of the cockpit. At least this bi-plane had a full cover canopy.

The rotary engine fired up with a loud crackle and he gently eased the controls taxiing out onto the runway. Opening the throttle the light plane swept along the runway and lifted easily into the air. He never got over that sinking feeling in the stomach as the craft left the ground and this was no different – a more raw experience if anything. Pulling back the stick, he climbed sharply staying with the rest of the squadron.

The flight swept out over Valetta harbour and in the distance small dots grew larger. A Luftwaffe bombing raid. The cumbersome Heinkels were accompanied by ME109s and they peeled off to face the lumbering Glads. Before he knew it, they were twisting and turning in the clear blue sky. Diving between the nimble escorts, the Gladiators strafed the bombers. Chris lined one of them in his sights before firing his guns. The rattle of the machine guns as they spat death across the sky both thrilled and horrified him. Smoke drifted lazily from the big bomber’s port engine and it slowly drifted sideways falling from the sky. Chris watched willing the crew to bail. One by one, parachutes drifted down to the water below. Turning his craft he turned to the sun and came in behind one of the fighters, again spitting machine gun shells into its body. Once more the aircraft spiraled in a plume of smoke.

“Two confirmed kills, Vince,” Gerry confirmed back at the mess. Not bad for a day’s work.

***

Grace was in the NAAFI. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” Chris started. She shrugged and smiled. “You have been concussed,” she said.

“Yes, that’s it,” he replied. She was easy on the eye and her laugh sparkled, lighting up his heart and he knew he would see more of her, he couldn’t not, for she captivated him almost immediately.

As the summer passed, they spent as much time together as they could. In the midst of the whirlwind of death above, they took solace in life below. Snatched times in each other’s arms were heaven on earth for him. He soaked up every stolen moment with her and longed for it to continue, but in his heart he knew it wasn’t to be. She was his Euphrosyne, his grace of mirth, for she had an irrepressible humour that lit up his heart.

She worried each time he took to the skies to defend the island from the Axis air raids and breathed a sigh of relief when he walked through the door of the NAAFI. But he knew that one day – indeed, he knew the very day; September 15^th – he would not walk back through the door and her heart would break.

Clive had done his homework during his search for the wreckage and Vincent Childs was shot down a second time over the bay on September 15^th 1940 and this time, he did not survive. So, he had these few months with his grace of merriment and their fleeting affair. Then he would be gone and she would wait for sixty years to see his face again.

War took its toll as his comrades fell one by one and new flyers joined the squadron. And Vincent – Chris – became one of the old hands.

“I’m expecting a child,” she said.

He held her close. “We’ll marry, I’ll make an honest woman of you,” he lied. When he walked away from her he knew he would not be returning this time. For today was September 14^th. Tomorrow morning would be his last sortie. But he couldn’t tell her that her child would never see its father. The courage to face death in the skies was one thing, the courage to face the woman he loved and tell her the truth was another.

War took the toll it always takes.

Flying out to meet the Fiats of the Regia Aeronautica the Gladiator took fatal damage. Spinning earthwards, the aircraft started to break up as gravity took the machine faster and faster to the waters of the Mediterranean.

***

He was drowning, gasping for breath that would not come. Then hands pulled him from the sea’s deathly grasp.

“Chris,” Clive said. “Thought we’d lost you there.”

“I’m here…?”

“Yes, you’re fine, just swallowed some seawater. You caught your airline on the wreckage. Need to be more careful.”

“Yes…”

He lay back in the boat as they motored back into shore. She was waiting as they clambered onto the harbour. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Chris said to Clive. “Something I need to say to Grace.”

Puzzled, Clive shrugged and let him walk over to her.

“Vincent,” she said. “It’s happened, hasn’t it?”

He nodded.

“I have been waiting for you to come back. You said we would meet again.”

“I did?”

“The first time we met. You said that we had met before, but not for me yet. So I waited. Sixty years for this moment to see you again.”

“The baby?” He asked. “You were expecting a baby. Our baby.”

“A boy. Francis.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was adopted. I had to give him up. An English couple took him.”

“The Marchants?” He asked, knowing the answer before it came.

“How? Yes… What happened to him, you know?”

He sighed. “Francis died last year. Cancer. He told me his mother was called Grace. He spoke of you sometimes and always said that he would like to find you. Time passed him by.”

“You knew him?

“Yes,” he said. “He was my father.”

***