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  I was feeling my face with my fingers but I couldn’t feel it; I could only feel something else.

  ‘What’s wrong with my face?’

  I heard her coming up to the side of my bed and I felt her hand touching my shoulder.

  ‘You mustn’t talk any more. You’re not allowed to talk. It’s bad for you. Just lie still and don’t worry. You’re fine.’

  I heard the sound of her footsteps as she walked across the floor and I heard her open the door and shut it again.

  ‘Nurse,’ I said. ‘Nurse.’

  But she was gone.

  THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD

  * * *

  First published in Ladies’ Home Journal (March 1945)

  The two of us sat outside the hangar on wooden boxes.

  It was noon. The sun was high and the heat of the sun was like a close fire. It was hotter than hell out there by the hangar. We could feel the hot air touching the inside of our lungs when we breathed and we found it better if we almost closed our lips and breathed in quickly; it was cooler that way. The sun was upon our shoulders and upon our backs, and all the time the sweat seeped out from our skin, trickled down our necks, over our chests and down our stomachs. It collected just where our belts were tight around the tops of our trousers and it filtered under the tightness of our belts where the wet was very uncomfortable and made prickly heat on the skin.

  Our two Hurricanes were standing a few yards away, each with that patient, smug look which fighter planes have when the engine is not turning, and beyond them the thin black strip of the runway sloped down towards the beaches and towards the sea. The black surface of the runway and the white grassy sand on the sides of the runway shimmered and shimmered in the sun. The heat-haze hung like a vapour over the aerodrome.

  The Stag looked at his watch.

  ‘He ought to be back,’ he said.

  The two of us were on readiness, sitting there for orders to take off. The Stag moved his feet on the hot ground.

  ‘He ought to be back,’ he said.

  It was two and a half hours since Fin had gone and he certainly should have come back by now. I looked up into the sky and listened. There was the noise of airmen talking beside the petrol wagon and there was the faint pounding of the sea upon the beaches; but there was no sign of an aeroplane. We sat a little while longer without speaking.

  ‘It looks as though he’s had it,’ I said.

  ‘Yep,’ said the Stag. ‘It looks like it.’

  The Stag got up and put his hands into the pockets of his khaki shorts. I got up too. We stood looking northwards into the clear sky, and we shifted our feet on the ground because of the softness of the tar and because of the heat.

  ‘What was the name of that girl?’ said the Stag, without turning his head.

  ‘Nikki,’ I answered.

  The Stag sat down again on his wooden box, still with his hands in his pockets, and he looked down at the ground between his feet. The Stag was the oldest pilot in the squadron; he was twenty-seven. He had a mass of coarse ginger hair which he never brushed. His face was pale, even after all this time in the sun, and covered with freckles. His mouth was wide and tight closed. He was not tall but his shoulders under his khaki shirt were broad and thick like those of a wrestler. He was a quiet person.

  ‘He’ll probably be all right,’ he said, looking up. ‘And anyway, I’d like to meet the Vichy Frenchman who can get Fin.’

  We were in Palestine fighting the Vichy French in Syria. We were at Haifa, and three hours before the Stag, Fin and I had gone on readiness. Fin had flown off in response to an urgent call from the Navy, who had phoned up and said that there were two French destroyers moving out of Beyrouth harbour. Please go at once and see where they are going, said the Navy. Just fly up the coast and have a look and come back quickly and tell us where they are going.

  So Fin had flown off in his Hurricane. The time had gone by and he had not returned. We knew that there was no longer much hope. If he hadn’t been shot down, he would have run out of petrol some time ago.

  I looked down and I saw his blue RAF cap, which was lying on the ground where he had thrown it as he ran to his aircraft, and I saw the oil stains on top of the cap and the shabby bent peak. It was difficult now to believe that he had gone. He had been in Egypt, in Libya and in Greece. On the aerodrome and in the mess we had had him with us all of the time. He was gay and tall and full of laughter, this Fin, with black hair and a long straight nose which he used to stroke up and down with the tip of his finger. He had a way of listening to you while you were telling a story, leaning back in his chair with his face to the ceiling but with his eyes looking down on the ground, and it was only last night at supper that he had suddenly said, ‘You know, I wouldn’t mind marrying Nikki. I think she’s a good girl.’

  The Stag was sitting opposite him at the time, eating baked beans.

  ‘You mean just occasionally,’ he said.

  Nikki was in a cabaret in Haifa.

  ‘No,’ said Fin. ‘Cabaret girls make fine wives. They are never unfaithful. There is no novelty for them in being unfaithful; that would be like going back to the old job.’

  The Stag had looked up from his beans. ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t really marry Nikki.’

  ‘Nikki,’ said Fin with great seriousness, ‘comes of a fine family. She is a good girl. She never uses a pillow when she sleeps. Do you know why she never uses a pillow when she sleeps?’

  ‘No.’

  The others at the table were listening now. Everyone was listening to Fin talking about Nikki.

  ‘Well, when she was very young she was engaged to be married to an officer in the French Navy. She loved him greatly. Then one day when they were sunbathing together on the beach he happened to mention to her that he never used a pillow when he slept. It was just one of those little things which people say to each other for the sake of conversation. But Nikki never forgot it. From that time onwards she began to practise sleeping without a pillow. One day the French officer was run over by a truck and killed; but although to her it was very uncomfortable, she still went on sleeping without a pillow to preserve the memory of her lover.’

  Fin took a mouthful of beans and chewed them slowly. ‘It is a sad story,’ he said. ‘It shows that she is a good girl. I think I would like to marry her.’

  That was what Fin had said last night at supper. Now he was gone and I wondered what little thing Nikki would do in his memory.

  The sun was hot on my back and I turned instinctively in order to take the heat upon the other side of my body. As I turned, I saw Carmel and the town of Haifa. I saw the steep pale-green slope of the mountain as it dropped down towards the sea, and below it I saw the town and the bright colours of the houses shining in the sun. The houses with their whitewashed walls covered the sides of Carmel and the red roofs of the houses were like a rash on the face of the mountain.

  Walking slowly towards us from the grey corrugated-iron hangar came the three men who were the next crew on readiness. They had their yellow Mae Wests slung over their shoulders and they came walking slowly towards us, holding their helmets in their hands as they came.

  When they were close, the Stag said, ‘Fin’s had it,’ and they said, ‘Yes, we know.’ They sat down on the wooden boxes which we had been using, and immediately the sun was upon their shoulders and upon their backs and they began to sweat. The Stag and I walked away.

  The next day was a Sunday and in the morning we flew up the Lebanon valley to ground-strafe an aerodrome called Rayak. We flew past Hermon, who had a hat of snow upon his head, and we came down out of the sun on to Rayak and on to the French bombers on the aerodrome and began our strafing. I remember that as we flew past, skimming low over the ground, the doors of the French bombers opened. I remember seeing a whole lot of women in white dresses running out across the aerodrome; I remember particularly their white dresses.

  You see, it was a Sunday and the French pilots had asked