and maybe a bottle of Scotch.’
Sitting on the chimney parapet that night in 1916, with his son beside him and a bottle of whiskey to hand, was something Cyrus Rensselaer remembered vividly for the rest of his days. The strange life the old man had led, the travelling and the hard work, had prevented him from seeing his son grow up in the way that other, luckier men did, watching their sons and helping them as they faltered into adulthood. But to some extent this night compensated for that lost relationship. Tonight the two men drew together, not as proud father and dutiful son, but as two friends with common interests and values who enjoyed each other’s company.
Glenn, too, remembered this night for as long as he lived not just for the events they witnessed but because it was the high point of his relationship with his father.
‘My boys will be excited,’ said Glenn.
‘Will they be in the air?’
‘Not yet. They’ll probably be sitting on their butts waiting for a sighting.’
‘Then?’
‘Then they have to take off in the dark and climb like hell. The zeps can get damned high nowadays. An aeroplane pilot has to be darned nifty to get in among them before they bomb and climb away. But they’ll try. They’ll chase after those zeps until their gas tanks run dry. Then comes the bit they all dread, landing in the dark – it’s a bitch. We’ve lost too many good boys in accidents; sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said the elder man, although he could not repress a shudder. If landing in the dark was the most dangerous part of the mission, what were the chances that Glenn would survive the job of teaching these boys how to do it?
‘Maybe we should let them come in and bomb. Now that Londoners have learned how to darken the town, central London has become more difficult to find on a dark night, and that’s the only kind of night the zeps come. And even when they bomb, they seldom hit anything of military value or kill more than half a dozen people.’
‘Sounds mighty callous, Glenn.’
‘The British lost fifty thousand infantry before lunch on the Somme a few weeks back.’
The old man sighed. ‘Well, maybe you are right. But it would rile me to think of those Germans cruising overhead unchallenged.’
‘It’s politics, Dad. The politicians wouldn’t dare leave London undefended, even if it was the right thing to do. The voters would never stand for it. My boys wouldn’t stand for it, either….’ He drank. ‘Especially now that we have rich civilians offering rewards for anyone who downs a zep.’
‘I was reading about that.’
‘Three thousand five hundred pounds sterling for any pilot who gets himself an airship, and any time at all someone is likely to chip in another bagful of gold. That’s enough to set one of my boys up for life.’
‘Are you still flying with your buddy Piper, the Englishman you met on the boat?’
‘The one that went for Veronica.’
‘Veronica?’
It was the whiskey of course. Glenn could have bitten his tongue off. ‘It’s a long time ago.’
‘Veronica. My Veronica?’
‘You remember how I went to stay at old Frau Winter’s house that summer when they were all on vacation there. It was long before the war … 1910, I think. I was starting that tour around Germany that I did with “Boy” Piper. I’d just met him, and we spent a week with the Winters.’
‘Never mind the goddamned filibuster,’ said his father. ‘What happened?’
‘Hell, nothing happened, Dad. But Boy wanted Veronica to marry him. He was crazy about her. He still is. He never got married, and once, when he left his wallet and stuff in my locker – Royal Flying Corps pilots are not allowed to carry personal effects when they’re in the air – a photo of Veronica fell out. He made some silly joke about it being a photo of his sister, but I recognized Veronica all right. Then, after that, he always carried it with him, like a lucky piece.’
‘Jesus! How did Harry react to all this?’
‘I told you, Dad, there was nothing to react to. Boy just fell head over heels in love with Veronica. I think she went for him too, but she figured she had to stay with Harald because of the boys.’
‘You mean you even discussed this with Veronica?’ His father was incredulous. ‘She knew Piper was in love with her? It sounds like a damned funny business.’
‘We were in a hotel in Kiel. Veronica told me that Boy had asked her to go away with him. She had to tell someone, and she couldn’t tell Harald. She was in love with Boy, there was no doubt about that. I could see it in her face.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I wish I’d told her to go with Boy. He’s a great guy; she would have been happy with him. And Harald is a louse.’
‘Well, I’m glad you told me about this,’ said Cyrus bitterly. ‘I’m relieved that your mother never found out.’
‘No one will find out. I never even discussed it with Boy.’
‘And is your friend Piper still working with you?’
‘The lucky dog got command of a squadron on the Western Front. Can you imagine that? He’s over forty years old. And he didn’t even learn to fly until the war began. How the devil he fixed it I’ll never know. Not fighters of course, but even so…’
‘What’s that across there?’
‘Searchlights. That will be a zeppelin; they always come in that way from the northeast. Some of them mistake the river Lea for the Thames and drop their bombs there, which can be bad luck if you live out that way.’
‘More searchlights.’
‘I think they’ve got him. See the little sparks – bluish-white flickers. That’s the anti-aircraft shells exploding. Maybe you can hear them.’
‘Well below him.’
‘We haven’t got enough long-range high-velocity guns.’
Glenn’s father noticed that ‘we’ hadn’t got the guns. Although Rensselaer senior was an unreserved Anglophile, he was, above all, an American, and determined to stay out of this European quarrel. He was tempted to lecture his son on the subject, but he wisely decided that this was not the time or place. ‘There must be a dozen searchlights there.’
‘The defences concentrate there because that’s the way the Germans come.’
‘What kind of dopes are they to keep coming that way?’
‘No, they are smart to come that way. The Thames estuary is wide. The zeps come over the water and they can get very close to London before making a landfall.’
‘More searchlights.’
