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  The thought of an overnight delay made the trainees miserable and there was a round of applause when the senior instructors gave the go-ahead. The five Norwegian women – or the Birds, as the instructors had nicknamed them – were invited into the metal cage.

  The cage’s gate was bolted from the inside by Sergeant Parris and a ground-based officer holding a megaphone gave the order for the winch operator to release the cables. There was a clang as the rising balloon picked the cage off the ground and then nothing but the sound of pelting rain as the huge balloon rose into the air.

  At two hundred metres, the balloon still cast a huge shadow as the winch operator clamped on the brakes. The six guide ropes holding the balloon looked perilously fragile and the wind made the metal cage swing from side to side.

  All non-essential personnel had cleared the drop zone and the officer gave the all-clear signal through his megaphone. Takada and the kids in Group A looked to the sky as the first of the Norwegian women plunged out of the cage.

  Her parachute was attached to a static line and there was more applause as her chute opened. The wind knocked the chute forwards at a surprisingly sharp angle, but gravity did its bit and from the ground the descent looked serene.

  As the first woman landed and gathered her chute to clear the drop zone, the second made her jump. Corporal Tweed stood alongside Takada and the kids, giving advice on dealing with the strong wind and commenting on each drop. The last landing went badly when a strong gust caught the parachute an instant before touchdown and sent the Norwegian crashing hard on to her back.

  ‘Next up the Poles,’ an officer shouted, as the winch pulled the balloon back down to earth. ‘Well, the Pole anyway.’

  There was some tense laughter. The trainees had been given a short written test covering everything they’d learned so far. The Norwegians and the kids had passed, but three of the four Poles and three of the seven French soldiers had failed. They’d been backtracked, which meant they had to do more ground training, resit the exam and would jump in darkness that evening if they passed. If they failed a second time, they were off the course.

  ‘Let’s have four of the kids as well,’ the officer continued.

  Corporal Tweed tapped Paul, Marc, Rosie and Luc on the back. With the weather looking suspect, the five trainees jumped into the cage as soon as the gate opened and they were on their way up before Sergeant Parris had even secured the bolt.

  It was a bumpy ride and it felt more precarious than the previous day’s trip in the Wellington. The wind howled through the wire cage around them. The deck was made from wooden planks, with gaps between them big enough to see the ground. Paul leaned over the side as a blast of thunder lit up the sky in the distance.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said quietly, as he turned to Rosie. They were tense, but they both smiled.

  The cage shuddered as the ascent stopped and there was quiet and a sudden realisation for all the trainees that this was for real. Two hundred metres up, with a strong wind and no safety wire.

  ‘Remember your training and you’ll have nothing to worry about,’ Sergeant Parris said, as he opened the door of the cage. ‘Lieutenant Tomaszewski, you’re number one. Hook up. Then I want Rosie, Luc, Marc and Paul lined up behind.’

  In parachute drops you line up the best jumpers first. That way if something goes wrong with one of the least confident trainees it doesn’t affect everyone else. Paul was offended because he’d done as well as anyone in the ground training and Luc had only passed the exam by one mark. He reckoned he was only at the back because he was small and skinny.

  The lanky Polish officer hooked his parachute to a rail above his head. When he jumped, the cord would snag and release the parachute. A shout of all-clear came from the ground.

  ‘Good luck, Lieutenant,’ Parris said. ‘On my mark … and mark.’

  Tomaszewski threw himself forwards off the platform. Four seconds later the cage rocked as the rope snagged and the chute opened.

  ‘Rosie, hook up,’ Parris ordered.

  At the same moment an alarmed shout came up from the megaphone-wielding officer on the ground. ‘Take it right, take it right! Use lift webs now.’

  Rosie was hooked up and trapped behind Parris, but Paul, Marc and Luc looked over the side and saw the Polish officer drifting towards the edge of the airfield.

  The higher you are, the greater the effect a gust of wind can have on your final landing position and it seemed that Tomaszewski had been hit by a blast of wind as soon as his chute opened. To make matters worse, instead of correcting by opening both lift webs to steepen the angle of descent, he’d pulled on just one cord. This meant he was heading away from the trimmed grass and concrete of the airfield and into the rocky scrubland beyond the perimeter fence.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Rosie asked anxiously, as the boys watched three of the training instructors racing towards the fence and yelling instructions that couldn’t be heard over the rain and wind.

  Less than fifty metres from the ground, the Pole realised he was in trouble and opened the flaps on his chute. This steepened his descent, but also increased its speed. He hit the ground hard, but at least he was on the shaggy grass a few metres inside the perimeter fence.

  ‘Shit!’ Sergeant Parris shouted.

  Rosie was in agony as she waited on the edge of the platform. Two minutes passed before Tomaszewski hobbled away with his arms around an instructor and the all-clear signal came from the ground.

  ‘Rosie, are you good to go?’ Parris asked.

  ‘As I’ll ever be sir,’ she said, sounding more confident than she felt.

  ‘Remember, if that wind hits hard like it did with Tomaszewski, correct straight away. He’s lucky he didn’t break his legs correcting that close to the ground. Now, jump on my mark … mark.’

  Paul clutched his chest as his sister flung herself off the platform, then inhaled with relief as the cage juddered and Rosie’s chute opened.

  ‘Luc, hook up.’

  The wind was benign and Rosie made a perfect landing.

  ‘Excellent, excellent, excellent!’ came through the megaphone, followed by the all-clear.

  Luc had a more difficult time with the wind, but made it down, albeit with an uncomfortable landing on a concrete taxiway rather than soft grass. The only damage was a shredded glove and a painful bump on the arm he’d injured the night before.

  Marc was next. As he saw the top of Luc’s parachute his mind flashed back to the previous September and the sight of a decapitated parachutist hanging in a tree. He felt like he was going to vomit and shit at the same time as he clutched his arms to his chest.

  Keep your nerve and think about your training, he told himself.

  ‘All clear,’ Parris said. ‘Trainee, jump on my mark … mark.’

  But Marc froze. The ground swayed beneath the cage as he tried telling his body to make the leap.

  Parris had seen nerves before and spoke with uncharacteristic warmth. ‘Calm down, son. Just follow your training. As this is your first drop, I’m going to count to three and give you an extra chance, OK?’

  Marc turned around and nodded anxiously.

  ‘You can do this in your sleep, mate,’ Paul said encouragingly.

  ‘On my mark,’ Sergeant Parris said. ‘Keep calm, one, two, three, mark.’

  Paul grimaced as Marc grabbed the side of the cage and doubled over. ‘I just can’t,’ he said, gasping desperately. ‘I don’t understand … I just froze.’

  ‘You’ll have to stand aside,’ Parris said, as he disconnected Marc’s static line from the railing over their heads. ‘Paul, hook up.’

  ‘Can’t he have one more go?’ Paul begged. ‘He can do it, for sure.’

  ‘Hook up,’ Parris said firmly. ‘Marc, sit down at the back of the cage and try to compose yourself. Paul, ready on my mark … mark.’

  Paul hesitated: after the drama with Marc his mind was blank. He almost didn’t want to jump because it would make Marc feel even worse, but he
had to for his own sake, and before Paul knew it the wind was blasting his face. His body jerked as the static line caught and the chute began slowing him down.

  Terrified and thrilled at the same time, it was the biggest rush of his life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Joan Henderson stood by the front door, screaming in her husband’s face. ‘I know why you want me out of here, you dirty pig. I know what you’re like!’

  ‘Darling, I just made a suggestion because you complained to McAfferty about the noise from the artillery range. In your condition you need rest and Bushy Brooke will give you that. You can swim in the river, it has beautiful gardens.’

  ‘I can’t leave the spiders,’ Joan shouted.

  As Joan said this, Troy peeked around the kitchen door. His path to the conservatory was clear and he dashed down the hallway without the Hendersons seeing him.

  ‘Perhaps you should put the well-being of our unborn child before a bunch of hairy bugs,’ Henderson suggested.

  ‘Ignorant pig!’ Joan screamed.

  Troy glanced backwards as Joan lunged at Henderson and began clawing his face. ‘They’re not bugs. They’re rare and beautiful. They have their own personalities. They have souls.’

  ‘Paul looks after them well enough,’ Henderson said. ‘I’m sure he’d cope if you went away for a few weeks.’

  ‘Paul feeds them,’ Joan screamed. ‘But he doesn’t know what to do when they’re sick. He can’t adjust their conditions and he doesn’t have time to collect fresh insects for them.’

  Henderson sighed. ‘Then perhaps we can rent a cottage a few miles from here. Or even buy a place. Your inheritance is sitting in the Westminster bank. You could afford a full-time servant to look after your blasted spiders if needs be.’

  In the conservatory Troy grabbed the feeding diary and unscrewed the lid on a jar of beetles that Joan had collected from the surrounding fields. They’d been in the jar for a day or so and most were either dead or close to it.

  ‘You just want me out of here,’ Joan yelled from the hallway. ‘I know you. You want to carry on with other women and you can’t do that while I’m stuck in your teeth.’

  ‘Darling, you’re being preposterous. I’m too busy working to have an affair. I can’t even get ten minutes to put my feet up and do the crossword.’

  ‘I know you’ve slept with half the women in France.’

  Troy felt awkward as he overheard this. Marc had told him that Henderson had an affair with a glamorous woman named Maxine in France the previous year, and it was common knowledge that Henderson was a womaniser.

  ‘Don’t start on that,’ Henderson said. ‘I’m prepared to swear on a stack of Bibles that I’ve never cheated on you, Joan. These fantasies about other women are just in your head.’

  ‘Pull the other one,’ Joan screamed. ‘It’s got bells on.’

  ‘And what are we going to do when the baby starts walking?’ Henderson asked. ‘I don’t want my child living in a house filled with dangerous spiders.’

  ‘You’re just looking for an excuse to get rid of them,’ Joan yelled. ‘If you so much as touch them I’ll wait till you fall asleep and cut your throat.’

  Troy sprinkled a handful of beetles into a cage filled with coin-sized spiders with ladybird-like domed bodies and custard-yellow legs. As they scurried about collecting the fresh bugs and dragging them back towards their hiding places, Troy turned his attention to the next cage.

  Mavis the cobalt blue had a reputation for aggression. Like most large spiders, she only ate live prey and, rather than hunting in the fields, Joan now bred worms, dormice, grubs and crickets in a small shed at the end of the garden.

  Troy smiled as he raised the hinged lid of a wooden cigar box and picked out a tiny black dormouse. It sat in his palm with its tail curled up and its black eyes shining. It seemed a shame that this cute fur ball’s fate was to be injected with paralysing venom and eaten while it was still conscious.

  But Troy’s stomach was grumbling for his own lunch, so he flung the mouse unceremoniously into Mavis’ enclosure and closed the lid.

  The Hendersons’ row had progressed to the kitchen as Troy moved on to the largest cage, which contained a pair of giant bird-eating spiders.

  ‘I’m going back to work,’ Henderson was shouting. ‘Stay here if you want to, but don’t waste McAfferty’s time complaining about artillery noise. There’s nothing she or I can do about it.’

  ‘My nerves are in shreds,’ Joan sobbed. ‘I shudder every time I hear a bang.’

  ‘Then bloody well move,’ Henderson shouted. ‘There’s a bloody war on. The army has to practise and everyone else seems to cope well enough.’

  Troy saw the partially eaten remains of a mouse in the bird-eaters’ cage. In the wild this would have been picked up and eaten by a scavenger, but in the cage it would go rotten so Troy had to fish it out with a pair of tongs.

  As he searched for the tongs, the kitchen door slammed.

  ‘Joan, let me through. I have to get back to work.’

  ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard!’ Joan screamed. ‘I hate you.’

  A body slammed against the wall in the hallway, and then there was a groan. Troy thought Henderson had slapped his wife, but instead Henderson burst into the conservatory clutching bloody hands to his stomach.

  ‘Bitch stabbed me!’ Henderson groaned, as he staggered slowly towards the back door.

  Joan thundered in and lunged at her husband’s back with a huge carving knife. Troy was horrified by the giant patch of blood soaking through Henderson’s shirt. Fortunately, Joan had no idea that Troy was in the room and before she found out he’d grabbed her wrist.

  Takada would have been proud as Troy executed a textbook move, twisting Joan’s arm up behind her back and forcing her to release the knife. She swung a wild punch but Troy kept hold and used all his strength to shove her against the spider cages on the far wall.

  ‘Calm down,’ Troy begged, as Henderson staggered out into the back garden. His scream for help was heard by Mason and another boy who were kicking a football around in the school courtyard.

  An artillery shell blasted in the background as Mason ran screaming into the school building to get help. Joan collapsed on to the conservatory’s stone floor. Troy was scared that she’d attack him and scanned the floor looking for the bloody knife, but she just sat still.

  ‘I only want Charles to love me,’ she sobbed desperately.

  As Troy looked up, he saw Mavis’ blue legs clattering quickly through the shattered glass front of her cage.

  *

  Marc lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He was the only trainee who’d chickened out and he felt like his whole world had collapsed. Parachutes were the only realistic way to infiltrate occupied Europe and if he couldn’t jump all the rest of his training had been a waste of time.

  It was four in the afternoon. Takada was having a discussion with Sergeant Parris in another hut. Joel had picked up a rope burn when his chute caught a gust of wind upon landing and was in the medical tent getting it cleaned up. Rosie and PT had supposedly disappeared to the toilet, but judging by the amount of time they’d been gone they’d found a spot where they could get some privacy.

  This left Luc and Paul in the hut with Marc.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ Paul asked quietly, as he stood by Marc’s bed.

  Paul was a good friend, but all Marc saw was someone who’d been able to jump when he hadn’t. He felt wildly jealous.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ he tutted.

  ‘It’s probably not that serious,’ Paul said. ‘Takada’s over with Parris now. I’m sure they’ll let you make another attempt with the guys who got backtracked.’

  Marc sat up quickly and scowled at Paul. ‘What part of leave me alone don’t you understand? And what’s to say exactly the same thing won’t happen if I do get up there again?’

  Luc put down his cowboy novel and smiled. ‘Leave the little baby alone, Paul, you’ll make him cry.’r />
  Paul shook his head with contempt. ‘Luc, who asked for your opinion?’

  ‘I’ll give you credit where it’s due, Paul,’ Luc said. ‘You might be a scrawny little streak of piss, but I’ve never seen you give up. The way Marc stood on that platform quaking in his pants was an embarrassment to our whole unit.’

  ‘Luc, shut up,’ Paul said. ‘You’re lucky you even got to jump. You passed the exam by one mark and it wasn’t even hard.’

  Marc wouldn’t usually have let Luc have a go at Paul without defending him, but he felt so depressed that he didn’t care about anything.

  Luc adopted a high-pitched, mocking voice. ‘Ooooooh I’m little Marc,’ he squeaked. ‘It’s a long way down. I can’t jump. I’m pissing my panties.’

  ‘You’re such an arsehole,’ Paul said, as Luc crashed on the end of his bed and buried his head in his hands.

  Marc wasn’t rising to the bait, so Luc decided to tease Paul instead. ‘What you gonna do to stop me, Paul?’ he grinned. ‘I seem to remember you were kneeling down ready to kiss my feet rather than face me like a man.’

  ‘You’re two years older than me,’ Paul said. ‘And I remember you tied up with towels and tears streaking down your face.’

  Luc smiled. ‘Do you think your friends are always gonna be around to protect your skinny butthole?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Marc roared, as he grabbed the empty metal chamberpot from under his bed and charged towards Luc.

  The pot clanged as Marc whacked it around the back of Luc’s head. ‘You think you’re hard!’ Marc said as he jumped on Luc. ‘You’re nothing but a thick bully.’

  Unfortunately for Marc, Luc really was hard. Marc managed a couple of good punches before Luc flung him off the bed and jumped on top, with his kneecap pressing down on Marc’s belly.

  ‘Prepare for some pain!’ Luc said, as he raised his fist and punched Marc brutally in the face.

  Paul looked around desperately. He wasn’t strong enough to pull Luc off Marc. He thought about running off and fetching Takada, but even if that only took half a minute Marc would be beaten to a pulp. Instead, Paul rushed to the dining table and grabbed one of the three-legged stools.