Plague Church

Sol said he wanted to show his wife where he flew Liberators from during the war.

The air base had been called Wendling, after the nearby village, and Honeypot Lane stuck in his memory. He was sure this was the place, but everything had changed, the airfield was farmland now and there was nothing to see.

Esther gave him a long look. "Grandma always said you should let the past be."

So she went shopping for antiques, while Sol took himself off with a packed lunch and a huge map of East Anglia that unfolded like a sail in the wind.

The church of St Botolph was isolated amongst some elms in a remote corner of a field, the village it once served abandoned after the Black Death. It was where he and Jen first met in the summer of 1943.

Jen would go for a walk most evenings, to escape her mother-in-law, who thought she wasn't good enough for her son. Sol had surprised Jen by stepping out from under the trees, golden in the light of the setting sun, handsome as an actor from the films, with his leather flying jacket and easy smile.

They call them plague churches, Jen said. That was the kind of thing they talked about, instead of what they were both thinking.

"Can't uproot a church," she explained."So it got left behind when the survivors moved on."

There had been a spark between them, Sol was certain, and he'd loitered in the churchyard each evening afterwards, hoping she’d come back. Which she did a few days later, so as not to look too eager.

Sol remembered the church, which didn’t seem to have changed. He found it unlocked and inside was dim and musty, like entering another world. He picked up a guidebook from a table at the back, and not sure how much sixpence was, put a one of the odd seven-sided fifty pence coins in the collection box.

They’d peeked inside the church that first time, though never afterwards, Sol uncomfortable for reasons of religion, Jen because of the guilt she felt. All that summer they met whenever they could. It had been a secret and wondrous time, far away from the war.

There were a pair of carvings facing each other over the porch, knights clad in chain mail perhaps, the stone eaten by time. Jen shrugged and said a lot of local churches had them. Sol had been disappointed by her indifference to her own history.

Emerging into the sunlight again was like surfacing from water, and for a moment Sol was halted by the sudden brilliance. There was an old fellow cycling down the lane, his venerable machine creaking at each turn of the pedals.

Sol was about to call out hello when three B-24 Liberators roared low over the church tower.

He ducked and stared after them, open-mouthed in wonderment.

"I used to fly those!" he cried. "In the war."

The fellow leaned his bicycle against the wall. "What war was that then?"

Sol smiled. Brit sense of humour. "Is there an air show on? I hear they keep Spitfires and such flying."

"Them's landing at Wendling. Back from a raid I suppose."

Sol's grin faded. Dementia, he supposed.

"You and us is too old," the man added, without regret. "Wouldn't believe how young your Yank fliers are. You thinking of the Great War per'aps. Though it were all canvas and wires back then."

"No, I mean I flew them in World War Two."

The man fished out a pipe and filled it with tobacco from a leather pouch.

"One of us is mistook, Yank."

Sol sat on a bench in the churchyard. It was impossible, but the old guy had produced a newspaper from his coat pocket. Italy Invaded, said the headline, 4 ^th September, 1943.

His young self was on the air base, just half a mile from here, or perhaps that was him, bringing home Lucky Ladywithout a mark on her again. Or it was a dream.

He didn't believe any of that. Jen lived ten minutes away across the fields, the end cottage in a row of six, but when he knocked, the door was opened by the mother-in-law he'd avoided.

She was already framing sharp questions, suspicious of this grey-haired Yank wearing strange clothes and asking after her daughter-in-law, when Jen appeared, wiping her hands on her apron and shepherded him out into the lane.

Her hair style made her look like Greer Garson. So old-fashioned. How could he have forgotten that?

"Is Sol safe?" she whispered, her eyes wide.

It never occurred to him that she'd think his plane had gone down.

"You needn't worry. Never a scratch. I think his mother was running the war."

"You shouldn't have come then."

He was unsure how to start. He wanted to explain why he'd not sent for her after the war like he'd promised. Guilt had brought him here, but guilt didn't make it any easier.

She glanced at the cottage. "What shall I tell her? She's already suspicious."

"See here," he began. "It's just that when, ah, Sol finishes his tour and goes back to the States, there's his family you see." They were Reform, but even so. "And you being married..."

She was so young, so careworn. He didn't remember the shadows under her eyes. His heart went out to her all over again.

Her husband had been captured when Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. A clod of a man it seemed, from things she'd said about their life before the war.

"Sol doesn't know you're here, does he?" Her gaze narrowed with suspicion. "What are you? A chaplain or something? Do I know you?"

"Look, things will be kind of difficult after the war. Maybe it would be for the best if—"

"I don't know who you are," she interrupted. "But don't ever come here again."

Once before he'd left without being honest and now he would do it again.

"Confused me with somebody else," he heard her tell her mother-in-law as the door shut.

Not knowing what to do, Sol sat on a bench in the churchyard. He didn't recall Jen mentioning a visit from an elderly Yank. But then, perhaps she wouldn’t if she thought he'd let their affair become known on the base, and this was his friends or superiors interfering.

There were no more Liberators, and as darkness fell, a gleaming SUV sped down the road by the church, headlights painting the trees. When he found the pub in Wendling, Esther was already there.

"How was memory lane?" she asked, but he didn’t seem inclined to talk, so she told him about the bargains she’d found.

There'd been a letter from England after the war, forwarded by the Air Force. Jen had written to say her husband had died in a Japanese POW camp. The question of sending for her was left unasked. He was already engaged to Esther by then.

Esther didn't ask about the letter, and he never could find the words to write back.

His mother had been curious, and he made up a story about some locals he'd got to know, their son a POW, the letter saying he'd died. His mother had nodded. He was a good boy, and a comfort to a family like that. Too many sons had not come home.

Much later, Sol read the guide-book and discovered he’d been mistaken. They weren't knights, but angels guarding the doors with mundane piety, and not wearing chain mail, but feathers that ended at neck, wrist and ankle like the costumed actors in miracle plays, the closest those rustic masons ever came to mystery.

Then the church was abandoned and the survivors moved on. Guilty like all survivors.

THE END

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E-mail: David Barber

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