V2, Page 2

  At roughly the same moment, a twenty-four-year-old woman named Kay Caton-Walsh – her first name was Angelica, but everyone called her Kay, after Caton – emerged from the bathroom of a flat in Warwick Court, a quiet narrow street just off Chancery Lane in Holborn, about a mile from Charing Cross. She was wrapped in the short pink towel she had brought with her from the country and was carrying a sponge bag containing soap, toothbrush, toothpaste and her favourite perfume, Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue, which she had dabbed generously just beneath her ears and on the insides of her wrists.

  She savoured the feel of the carpet beneath her bare feet – she couldn’t remember the last time she had known that small luxury – and walked down the passage into the bedroom. A moustachioed man smoking a cigarette watched her from the bed through half-closed eyes. She put the sponge bag in her valise and let the towel drop.

  ‘My God, what a vision!’ The man smiled, eased himself further up on his pillow and threw back the eiderdown and blankets beside him. ‘Come over here.’

  For a moment she was tempted, until she remembered how rough his black stubble was before he shaved, and how he always tasted of tobacco and stale alcohol first thing in the morning. Besides, she preferred to anticipate her pleasure – sex, in her experience, being at least as much a matter of the mind as the body. They still had the afternoon to look forward to, and the evening, and the night, and perhaps – as it might be the last time for a while – the following morning. She returned his smile and shook her head – ‘I need to find us some milk’ – and as he flopped backwards in frustration, she retrieved her underwear from the carpet: peach-coloured, brand new, bought specially in anticipation of what the English, in their peculiar way, called ‘a dirty weekend’. Why do we use that phrase? she wondered. What an odd lot we are. She glanced out of the window. Warwick Court, midway between Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn, was mostly full of lawyers’ chambers – an odd place to live, it seemed to her. It was quiet on a Saturday morning. The rain had stopped. A weak winter sun was shining. She could hear the traffic in Chancery Lane. She remembered a grocery shop on the corner opposite. She would go there. She started to dress.

  A hundred miles to the east, the V2 had reached its maximum altitude of fifty-eight miles – the edge of the earth’s atmosphere – and was hurtling at a velocity of 3,500 miles per hour beneath a hemisphere of stars when gravity at last began to reclaim it. Its nose slowly tilted and it started to fall towards the North Sea. Despite the buffeting of cross-winds and air turbulence during re-entry, a pair of gyroscopes mounted on a platform immediately below the warhead detected any deviations in its course or trajectory and corrected them by sending electrical messages to the four rudders in its tail fins. Just as Kay was fastening the second of her stockings, it crossed the English coast three miles north of Southend-on-Sea, and as she pulled her dress over her head, it flashed above Basildon and Dagenham. At 11.12 a.m., four minutes and fifty-one seconds after launching, travelling at nearly three times the speed of sound, too fast to be seen by anyone on the ground, the rocket plunged onto Warwick Court.

  An object moving at supersonic speed compresses the atmosphere. In the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the tip of the nose cone touched the roof of the Victorian mansion block, and before the four-ton projectile crashed through all five floors, Kay registered – beyond thought, and far beyond any capacity to articulate it – some change in the air pressure, some presentiment of threat. Then the two metal contacts of the missile’s fuse, protected by a silica cap, were smashed together by the force of the impact, completing an electrical circuit that detonated a ton of amatol high explosive. The bedroom seemed to evaporate into darkness. She heard the noise of the explosion and the rending of steel and masonry as the fuselage and fragments of the nose cone descended floor by floor, a crash as parts of the plaster ceiling landed around her, and then an instant later the sonic boom of the sound barrier being broken followed by the rushing noise of the incoming rocket.

  The shock wave lifted her off her feet and flung her against the bedroom wall. She lay on her side, more or less conscious, winded, but weirdly calm. She understood exactly what had hit them. So this is what it’s like, she thought. The blast wave underground would be the problem now, if it had shaken the foundations sufficiently to bring the building down. The room was dark with dust. After a while, she became aware of a breeze and something flapping in the gloom beside her. She put out her hand and touched the carpet. She felt glass beneath her fingers and quickly withdrew them. The window had been blown in. The curtains were stirring. Somewhere outside, a woman was screaming. Every few seconds came the crash of falling masonry. She could smell the deadly sweet odour of gas.

  ‘Mike?’ There was no response. She tried again, louder. ‘Mike?’

  She struggled to sit up. The room was in a kind of twilight. Particles of pulverised brick and plaster swirled in the pale grey shaft of light from the gaping window. Unfamiliar shapes – dressing table, chairs, pictures – were shadowed and askew. A jagged crack ran from floor to ceiling above the wooden bedhead. She took a deep breath to gather her strength, and sucked in dust. Coughing, she grabbed one of the curtains, hauled herself to her feet and stumbled through the debris towards the bed. A steel beam had come down and lay over the bottom part of the mattress. Large chunks of plaster, lath and horsehair were scattered across the eiderdown. She had to use both hands to throw them aside to uncover the shape of his upper body. His head was turned away from her. The eiderdown was drenched in something bright red that she thought at first was blood but when she touched it turned out to be brick dust.

  ‘Mike?’ She felt his neck for a pulse, and at once, as if he had been playing dumb, he turned to look at her, his face unnaturally white, his dark eyes wide. She kissed him, stroked his cheek. ‘Are you hurt? Can you move?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Can you try, darling? There’s a gas leak. We ought to get out.’

  She put her hands under his arm, gripped his hard muscled flesh and pulled. He twisted his shoulders back and forth in an effort to escape. His face contorted in pain. ‘There’s something on my legs.’

  She went to the beam at the end of the bed and wrapped her arms around it. Each time she shifted it slightly, he groaned through clenched teeth. ‘Leave it, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Sorry.’ She felt helpless.

  ‘Get out, Kay. Please. Just tell them there’s gas.’

  She could hear the edge of panic in his voice. He had told her once that his worst moment as a pilot wasn’t combat; it was seeing a man burned alive in a plane crash after a botched landing – his legs had been trapped and they couldn’t get close enough to pull him out: ‘I wish to God I could have shot him.’

  The clanging bell of a fire engine sounded nearby.

  ‘I’ll fetch help. But I’m not leaving, I promise.’

  She pulled on her shoes and picked her way out of the bedroom and into the passage. The thick carpet was buried under plaster. The gas smell was worse here – the leak must be in the kitchen – and the floor seemed to be tilting. Daylight filtered through a crack that was as wide as her hand and ran all the way up to the ceiling. She unlocked the front door, turned the handle, pulled. At first it wouldn’t open. She had to drag it free from its twisted frame, and then let out a cry as she found herself swaying on the edge of a twenty-foot drop. The second-floor landing and the exterior wall of the mansion block had gone. There was nothing between her and the shell of the tall building across the street, its windows gaping, its roof collapsed. In the road immediately beneath her feet, a landslide of rubble tumbled into the road – bricks, pipes, fragments of furniture, a child’s doll. Smoke was rising from a dozen small fires.

  A fire tender had pulled up, the crew unloading its ladders, unrolling hoses in the middle of what looked like the aftermath of a battle – bloodied, d
ust-covered victims lying full-length; others sitting dazed, heads bowed; civil defence workers in helmets moving among them; two bodies already set apart and shrouded; spectators gawping. Kay gripped the door frame, leaned out as far as she dared and shouted for help.

  * * *

  —

  According to the records of the London County Council, six people were killed by what became known as ‘the Warwick Court rocket’ and another 292 were injured, most of them caught in Chancery Lane by flying debris. The dead included Vicki Fraser, a nurse aged thirty; Irene Berti, a nineteen-year-old secretary in a barrister’s office; and Frank Burroughs, sixty-five, a heating engineer. The few photographs passed for publication by the censors show firemen’s ladders stretching up into a wrecked building, the top floors of which have entirely collapsed, and a strange, short, gaunt man in his fifties, wearing a black overcoat and homburg, squeezing between the heaps of wreckage. He was a doctor who had happened to be passing and who volunteered to climb up into the unstable ruin, and he was the man who, after five minutes of her frantic appeals, came up the ladder and followed Kay and the rescue workers into the flat.

  As they entered the bedroom, the doctor politely removed his hat as if he were making a routine house call, and asked quietly, in a Scottish accent, ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Mike,’ she said. ‘Mike Templeton.’ And then she added, because she wanted them to treat him with respect, ‘Air Commodore Templeton.’

  The doctor went over to the bed. ‘Right, sir, can you feel your legs?’

  One of the firemen said, ‘You should get out now, missus. We’ll take it from here.’

  ‘What about the gas?’

  ‘We’ve shut off the main.’

  ‘I’d rather stay.’

  ‘No chance, sorry. You’ve done your bit.’

  Another fireman took her by the arm. ‘Come on, love. Don’t argue. This place could collapse.’

  Mike called out, ‘It’s fine, Kay. Do as they say.’

  The doctor turned round. ‘I’ll see he’s all right, Mrs Templeton.’

  Mrs Templeton! She had forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to be here.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I understand.’

  She was halfway to the door when Mike called to her again. ‘You’d better take your case.’

  She had forgotten all about it. It was still on the ottoman at the foot of the bed, covered in dust and plaster, mute evidence of their infidelity. He must have been lying there worrying about it. She brushed off the debris, fastened the catches and followed the fireman out to the front door. He stepped onto the first rung of the ladder, took the valise and threw it down to someone below; then he descended another couple of rungs, held out his hands and beckoned her to follow. She had to shut her eyes as the ladder bent and swayed beneath their combined weight. His hands were hard around her waist. ‘Come on, love, you can do it.’ Slowly, pausing on each step, they descended. Just as they reached the bottom rung, she fainted.

  She came round to find a nurse kneeling in front of her, holding her chin and dabbing iodine on her temple. She moaned and tried to pull away. The grip tightened slightly. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart. Keep still. Nearly done.’ Something sharp was digging into her back, and when the nurse was finished and she was able to turn her head, she found she was propped up against the rear wheel of the fire engine. Two more ladders had been run up against the bombed-out building, and three men in steel helmets were standing in a row at the top, steadying a stretcher that was being lowered down to them by half a dozen firemen. The nurse followed her gaze. ‘Is that one yours?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  She held out her hand and pulled Kay to her feet. She put her arm round her shoulder as they stood at the foot of the ladder.

  The stretcher came down slowly, the men shouting to one another to keep it steady. She recognised him by the curliness of his black hair. They had wrapped him in a blanket. As he reached the ground, he turned and saw her. His face was drawn with pain, but somehow he managed to pull his hand out from under the blanket and give her a weak thumbs-up. She took his hand in both of hers.

  He said, ‘Was it a V2?’

  She nodded.

  He smiled faintly. ‘That’s bloody funny.’

  Kay turned to the nurse. ‘Where are they taking him?’

  ‘Barts. You can go with him if you want.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  He pulled his hand away. His expression was suddenly remote, as if she were a stranger. He stared up at the sky. ‘Better not,’ he said.

  3

  THEY STOOD UNDER A DRIPPING fir tree, Graf smoking a cigarette, Biwack with his notebook open. Graf had wanted to return to Scheveningen straight after the launch, but Biwack had insisted on seeing how the regiment worked. They watched as half a dozen members of the firing crew cleared the launch site, rolling up the electrical cables and collapsing the mast. The firing platform itself was a round, squat, stout metal frame not much bigger than a coffee table, the same circumference as the V2, mounted on hydraulic legs, with a pyramid-shaped blast deflector in the centre.

  ‘How heavy is that?’

  ‘About a ton and a half.’

  The crew dragged over a two-wheel trailer and manoeuvred it underneath the platform. They worked quickly, without talking much, to minimise the time they risked being exposed to enemy aircraft. Somewhere in the wood a tank engine cracked into life, coughing up pulses of dirty brown exhaust smoke, and slowly a half-track armoured car struggled up out of the ground.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The firing control vehicle. It’s dug in during the launch.’

  The half-track lumbered through the undergrowth towards them, and stopped with its engine idling while the firing platform was hitched to its tow plate. Then the men climbed up onto the mudguards and clung to the armoured shell. The engine revved and they moved off. Within a minute they had gone. Apart from the faint lingering smell of burned fuel and the odd scorch mark on the surrounding trees, there was nothing to show that a missile had ever been launched.

  Biwack seemed as impressed by this as he had been by the rocket itself. ‘That’s all there is to it? My God, you really can fire this thing from anywhere!’

  ‘Yes, as long as the ground is flat and firm enough. The corner of a parking lot or a school playground would do.’ A year ago, Graf had never imagined they might be able to fire the rocket so easily. But then he hadn’t thought they might be able to mass-manufacture the V2s in their thousands either. The appalling ingenuity of it all was a constant surprise.

  ‘It must be wonderful for you,’ said Biwack, ‘to see something you have worked on since you were sixteen finally turned into a weapon to protect the Fatherland.’

  It seemed such an oddly loaded remark that Graf darted a look at him, but Biwack’s face was expressionless. ‘Naturally.’ He finished his cigarette, dropped it onto the forest floor and crushed it out with his shoe. ‘Now we should get back.’

  They had barely gone fifty metres along the road when they heard the rumble of the half-track returning, its engine whining as if in panic. It reversed around the curve at speed, without its clinging passengers, and braked hard. The side door was flung open and the sergeant in charge of the firing platoon – Schenk, a veteran from the Eastern Front, who had lost both ears to frostbite – stuck his head out. ‘Dr Graf, there’s an emergency at site seventy-three. Lieutenant Seidel wants you right away.’

  He extended his hand to help Graf clamber aboard, but hesitated when he saw Biwack. Graf said, ‘It’s fine, he’s with me.’ Schenk hauled the SS man up and slammed the door after them.

  Biwack said, ‘Aren’t you forgetting something, Sergeant?’

  Schenk looked him up and down, puzzled and then amused. He slowly raised his arm. ‘Heil Hitler.�
��

  The half-track suddenly reversed off the road, then lurched forwards, knocking them off balance. Graf grabbed one of the two fixed swivel seats. Schenk caught the other. With a mocking display of courtesy, like a maître d’ in a smart restaurant, he offered it to Biwack. They bounced over the undergrowth and rejoined the road.

  The seats were arranged for the firing control officer and his second in command to observe the launch. Above the panel of instruments, through the narrow slits at the back of the half-track, the road receded behind them. Biwack was examining the dials and switches. He seemed to want another tutorial, but Graf’s mind was too full of misgivings to answer any more questions. There’s an emergency. How many times in the last month had he heard those words?

  Jolting around in the stuffy compartment, he started to feel sick. He clung to the sides of the seat. After a couple of minutes, they slowed to pass a column of tankers parked at the side of the road. The soldiers stood sheltering under the trees with their hands in their pockets, forbidden to smoke so close to the fuel. The armoured car stopped and the sergeant opened the door. With relief, Graf jumped out into the cool wet air.

  Lieutenant Seidel was waiting for him. There were three batteries in the regiment, each with three launching platoons of thirty-two men. Seidel commanded the second battery. He was about Graf’s age, a fellow Berliner. Sometimes in the evenings, in the mess, if they weren’t too exhausted, they played chess. They never talked politics. Seidel looked grim. ‘We’ve got a fire in the control compartment.’