Read Staring at the Sun for Free Online

again. Like running a film back and having another look at it. I’d have done it a third time and come home at nought feet except I’d have ended up in the drink. Didn’t want to join the submarine boys that fast.”
    “It sounds wonderful.” Jean wasn’t sure if she was allowed to ask questions. It was a bit like being down at the Old Green Heaven with Uncle Leslie. “What … what else do you miss?”
    “Oh, I don’t miss that ,” he replied, quite rudely. “I don’t miss that. There’s no future in seeing that again. It’s a miracle, isn’t it? You don’t want to go back and see miracles again, do you. I’m just glad I saw it when I did. ‘I’ve seen the sun rise twice,’ I’d say to them. ‘Oh, yes, have the other half.’ They used to call me Sun-Up Prosser. Some of them did. Until we got posted.”
    He stood up and wolfed the piece of sandwich on her plate without asking. “What I miss,” he said emphatically, “since you want to know, is killing Germans. I used to enjoy that. Chasing them down until they were too low to bail out and then letting them have it. That gave me a lot of satisfaction.” Prosser seemed determined to sound brutal. “I got in an argument once with a 109 over the Channel. He could turn a bit tighter, but we were pretty well matched. We scrapped around but neither of us could really get in close enough to press the tit. So after a while he broke off, waggled his wings and headed back to base. If he hadn’t waggled his wings I wouldn’t have minded so much. Who d’you think you are? Bloody knight in armour? All good friends and jolly good company?
    “I grabbed a bit of height. There wasn’t any sun I could use,but I think he didn’t expect me to be chasing him. Expected me to go home like a good chap, have a slap-up meal and play a round of golf, I expect. I gradually began to gain on him—maybe he was nursing his fuel or something. Mind you, I was bumping along like a goods train by the time I lined him up. Gave him about eight seconds, I should think. Saw bits fly off his wing. Didn’t knock him down, more’s the pity, but I think he knew what I thought of him.”
    Sun-Up Prosser turned and stomped out of the room. Jean fished a piece of dandelion from between her teeth and chewed it. She had been right. It did taste sour.
    After this, Prosser took to coming down and talking to her. Usually, she carried on with her tasks while he stood propped against the door. This seemed to make it easier for both of them.
    “I was at Eastleigh,” he began once, as she crouched by the grate rolling the Express into firelighters, “watching this little Skua take off. Bit gusty, not enough to stop flying or anything. The Skua, as I shouldn’t think you’re aware, takes off with a funny sort of tail-down technique, and I thought I’d watch it go, cheer myself up or something. Well, it scuttled along the runway, and was getting up to flying speed, when it hopped into the air, suddenly, then flipped over on its back. It didn’t look too bad—just upside down. A few of us ran across the tarmac thinking we might be able to pull the chaps out. When we got halfway there we saw something on the runway. It was the pilot’s head.” Prosser looked across at Jean but she kept her back to him and went on folding newspaper. “Then we got a bit nearer and there was another. It must have happened as the Skua flipped over. You wouldn’t believe how neat it was. One of the chaps I was with couldn’t get over it. Welsh fellow, always going on about it. ‘Just like dandelions, Sun-Up, wasn’t it?’ he said to me. ‘Walking along, and you take a swing at a line of dandelion clocks with a stick or something, and you think, if I’m really clever I can knock them off and have them float down without disturbing the feathers.’ That’s what he thought.
    “The ones that haunt you … they aren’t really the ones youexpect. I’ve had mates shot down only a few yards away. I’ve