by Peter Rimmer
“Can I buy you a drink, Mervyn?” asked Harry, now they were hatless in the sanctuary of the bar.
“I told you outside it’s Sir or Major Braithwaite, Brigandshaw… My usual, Corporal. Give me Lieutenant Brigandshaw’s mess card… That is not possible! No man can drink this amount in a day. Has the officer been buying my pilots drinks, Corporal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you know it’s against my rules?”
“Yes, sir, but…”
“There are no buts. Cut those stripes from your uniform and give them to me.”
“But, sir,” began Harry.
“You did not know the rule, Brigandshaw, now you do. The corporal knew, so he will give me his stripes, and from tomorrow receive the pay of a private. Now, is that clear to everyone?”
“Yes, sir,” called the pilots together.
Harry had kept his mouth shut.
“Is it clear, Brigandshaw?”
“Yes, Major Braithwaite.” Harry looked him straight in the eye. He had thought the Germans would be the ones to hate him in France. And then he understood. Sara Wentworth. The posting had not been a fluke after all. The man hated him.
“Oh, my God,” he said barely aloud. “Better give me a drink, Corporal,” he said louder. “A large one.”
“He’s not a corporal,” snapped Fishy Braithwaite.
“He is until tomorrow if I heard you rightly… Sir.”
It felt like being alone in the Zambezi Valley without a gun. He would have to watch his back.
He was woken the next morning by his newly appointed batman, just before dawn. The nine aircraft took off for the dawn patrol over the Somme, led by Major Braithwaite. Harry had felt safer with his foot halfway down onto a puff adder. He had never had a real enemy before. But like everything else in life, he told himself, there was a first for everything.
Their job was to stop the Germans shooting down the observation balloons that were spotting for the British artillery. There was a minor British hate on one section of the front, a probe, Harry thought, to take prisoners in a night attack to find out the German intentions.
Soon after take-off, they had split into three patrols. Harry was flying to the back and left of Fishy Braithwaite, maintaining the leader’s altitude as they climbed above the Western Front. By the time they reached a position above the reserve trench, the false dawn had given way to broad sunlight at ten thousand feet. Below, everything was dark. All the time Harry, in the cockpit of his de Havilland biplane, moved his head around. He was as comfortable as riding his horse on Elephant Walk, the Vickers machine gun on its swivel no different to his Purdey. For the first time in many years, he was hunting. And being hunted.
Harry said a short prayer for his brother George, who had died down below, and left his flesh and bones rotting in the mud far from home. When he said his prayer he could make out the Somme River, then the Allied and German trenches.
“In the bush, Harry, always trust your senses. The buffalo, the lion, they are animals. So are you. We sense each other when in tune with nature.”
Harry smiled at the voice of his dead father in his head. Even now he was giving him guidance.
“A good hunter has good senses. He knows when he’s being watched. He knows by instinct he is being stalked. Get into tune with nature. Survival. That’s all we are about. Survival of us. Survival of our family. Survival of our species. It’s your job to make sure we survive, Harry.”
Some had said before that Harry’s peripheral vision was so good he had eyes in the back of his head. From years of watching his back in the bush, he had trained his eyes to pick up movement directly behind, even when he was looking forward.
“Never drop your guard, Harry. Never let your mind go to sleep when you are hunting. A leopard can drop on you from a tree quicker than you can bring up a rifle. Feel the cat tense before he drops and you will have time to gut-shoot him in the belly. No, don’t just take my word. Ask your Uncle Tinus. You only have to mess up once in the bush… And all animals are dangerous. A honey badger the size of a dog goes for the balls of a buffalo, the one vulnerable spot. A honey badger can kill a buffalo. It can kill you. Have a look at his teeth… In the bush, a man feels alive.”
They flew another hour up and down no man’s land, looking for German aircraft. Then they headed for their airfield and breakfast. His mind still crystal clear, Harry had never felt colder in his life. His three-point landing on the rough turf of the field was perfect. He noted Braithwaite kept his goggles on even when he climbed down from his aircraft. His mechanic had taken control of the machine, gunning the engine to taxi the biplane towards the camouflaged canvas hangar. Twice the field had been attacked by the Germans. Regularly the camouflaged hangars were moved on their wooden poles.
Harry was hungry. The grey sky was weeping a thin drizzle. The third pilot in their trio caught up with Harry and walked alongside. Both of them had taken off their helmets and goggles but not their flying gloves.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Harry.
“The major is quite mad.”
“You sure?”
“We all are. Too long in the air. Too many kills. Nerves snap. He’s been gone a long time. Not the only one. But he’s good. You wait and watch him fight… Thanks for the drinks last night. We should have told you. Most of us live off our pay… You have a farm in Africa… Sorry, sir. Money.”
“Don’t call me sir. We’re the same lowly rank.”
“It’s the age bit, sir. How long you been flying?”
“Less than four months.”
“Good God. Watching you up there and land, thought you’d been born in the cockpit.”
“In the saddle. To the son of a white hunter.”
When the third flight landed there were only two aircraft. Five minutes later the third one landed, pieces of cloth flapping under the right wing and from the fuselage behind the cockpit.
Major Braithwaite strode across to the aircraft.
“Poor old Bunty,” said someone looking up from his bacon and eggs. “Some say it’s better to let the Hun kill you than bring back a damaged plane… Can someone pass me the butter?”
Outside in the cold, the pilot of the damaged plane was receiving a roasting. Making the gestures and shouts of the small major more bizarre, was the fact he had not taken off his goggles. Harry watched the man through the window of what once had been the farmhouse dining room. The man was like a bantam cock in a blind rage.
The leaden sky settled down just above their heads for three days and rained on them. There was no more flying. The grass airfield was waterlogged and visibility down to one hundred yards. From the air, they would be able to spot nothing on the ground. If they flew into clouds, they could lose themselves and never find clear sky. They were grounded.
Harry learnt to avoid Fishy Braithwaite. Any conversation they had would be military. If the man wanted to behave like an idiot, that was his business. Because the other pilots were so much younger, he found himself mostly on his own. Which was how he liked it. Harry Brigandshaw had never been lonely in his life. The solitude of the bush was his joy. Like flying alone high in the sky. When the youngsters talked to him he joined the conversation, the kind of conversation he remembered from his days at boarding school in the Cape. At Bishops, life had been one long leg-pull. Even playing cricket. His fellow pilots were slightly overgrown schoolboys and he envied them their innocence. Getting killed was no different to getting a duck at cricket. Mostly, he left them to their small talk, their innocent practical jokes. Even the three captains in the squadron were in their teens. In a war with appalling casualties, any survivor rose quickly in rank. Harry, mostly, read a book or thought about home.
More than once the picture of Tina Pringle appeared in his thoughts. If George had not been killed and sent him running to Europe, he wondered what might have happened. He couldn’t remember meeting a sexier woman in his life. She was alive, dangerous, and knew what she wanted; and that wa
s never going back into the class system of England. He could still feel her eyes looking at him and sending a signal straight to his balls. Just the picture of her in his head had the same effect.
Even at the time, he had known that there could be no casual affair with Tina Pringle. Unlike the few girls he had known in Cape Town when he did not go back to Elephant Walk for the school holidays. When he stayed with schoolfriends. Or at Kleinfontein with Barend Oosthuizen.
The first had been a woman on the beach between the rocks, where a wet bed of sand had been washed in by the sea. She was the nurse for the younger siblings of his schoolfriend, the only reason he could still remember his friend, Francois Botha’s name. The woman, he thought subsequently, was in her twenties. Harry had just turned fifteen. Gently, she had made a man of him. He would always remember her but never knew her name.
“Always cradle a woman afterwards even if you don’t want to. She wants that. Even the most casual of sex has the meaning of life.”
“What’s your name?”
“No, Harry. Just remember me. You are going to become a wonderful man… Just remember me the same, so for you, I will never grow old. When I am old and grey, I will think of you thinking of me, young and beautiful. Then I will be young and beautiful again. Sun, beach and me. Enjoy the rest of your life, Harry. I wish us both to have a wonderful life. Just treasure my memory for me. It’s going to be precious to me.”
Harry had wanted many times over the years to find out her name from Francois Botha, but he had always kept the promise. And she was still as young to him as the day so long ago they had made love together on the wet sand of the beach, hidden from any other world than their own. Even now in France, wet and cold, fighting a war, he could see her smiling up at him. And she would never grow old as long as he lived. The beach was called Llandudno, that much he could remember. And it was in the Cape, not in Wales. And he had never been back to the place. And never would. The memory was too precious to break.
The third day was more leaden than the first, visibility down to fifty yards. Away from the other pilots by the window, Harry picked up the sound first. He had never heard the engine note before but he knew it was not coming from a de Havilland. The CO was not in the farmhouse they now called the officers’ mess. He had not been seen all day, not even at breakfast. One of the flight leaders had stopped talking. Then everyone listened.
“Shit,” cried one of the pilots. Ripping open the door, he raced over the field towards the hangar and his aircraft.
Harry could now hear the distinct chatter of machine gun fire. Then he saw them. Three enemy aircraft were flying down the grass runway six feet off the ground, having hopped over the hedge. The running pilot stumbled and fell thirty yards short of his aircraft still in the camouflaged hangar. He did not get up. An aircraft engine fired from the hangar, and the major’s aircraft came out, the engines running as he taxied the plane to face the Germans. Then, solid on the platform of his aircraft on the ground, he fired at the oncoming Germans who were shooting up his airfield, swinging his Vickers back and forth across their line of flight. The Germans were flying directly to the officers’ mess. They were after the pilots, planes being easier to replace than trained pilots. One moment the three German planes were steady on their approach and then they broke, two of them flying into the ground, the third pulling up over Fishy Braithwaite, the downdraught shaking the de Havilland biplane on the ground. It was over as quickly as it started.
The pilot who said the one word ‘shit’ was lying dead on the runway. It was the same boy who had thanked Harry for the drinks.
In the middle of the grass runway, well short of his aircraft, Harry felt the rain dripping down his face. They could all clearly hear their CO shouting now the noise of the engines had gone. The two German aircraft were burning on the ground. Ground crew were trying to pull out the pilots. One was still alive.
“I’m not a wet fish! And you’re dead!” shouted the CO over and over, gunning his engine. Then he got down from his aircraft, pistol in hand, and began to race across the soggy field towards the German pilot who was still alive.
“Oh, my God,” said Harry, and began to run. He was lightly clad from the time he was reading his book in the mess. Fishy Braithwaite was fully dressed for winter flying. Harry caught him short of the German, who was now kneeling on the ground. Harry tackled Fishy low, as he had been taught at school, pushing the major’s face down in the mud. The sergeant mechanic who had pulled the German pilot from the burning wreck was standing with his mouth open. The pistol flew from the CO’s right hand and Harry struggled up and trod it into the mud.
“Sorry, sir,” Harry said looking back. “Following you. Must have tripped. Jolly good show. Two of them. Very brave. The one chap’s still alive, you’ll be pleased to know. Won’t be flying in this war again. Can I give you a hand?”
“You did that on purpose, Brigandshaw.”
“Why on earth would I do it on purpose? You saved our lives. They were going for the officers’ mess… Sergeant! Bring the prisoner to the officers’ mess. Poor chap needs a drink… It is over, Fritz,” he said to the kneeling German.
“I speak English,” said the German. “He had a gun in his hand. He was going to shoot me.”
“Nonsense, old boy. Running to help. We both were… Are you wounded?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We’ll have the MO give you a once-over. The weather was clearing your side of the lines, I suppose. How you jumped us.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Almost caught us napping… You are now a prisoner of war. The other chap’s dead I’m afraid. So’s one of our chaps. Silly really, isn’t it?”
“Where are you from?” asked the German.
“My accent, I suppose… Africa. Rhodesia. You chaps killed my brother, or I’d still be over there.”
When Harry looked around, Fishy Braithwaite was walking away in the opposite direction still wearing his goggles. Harry waited for the sergeant to escort the German to the mess. Then he walked across and picked up the gun, slipping it into his pocket. He did not think anyone had seen him. Then he began to shiver from the cold. And fear. If there had been a senior officer anywhere he knew he would have handed in the gun. What Fishy Braithwaite was going to do was murder in Harry’s book. Even in a time of war. As he walked to his room behind the officers’ mess, the gun was heavy in his trouser pocket. Then he put on his army greatcoat and went for a walk in the rain. There was a pond half a mile away. Harry checked he was alone, took the pistol from his pocket and tossed it out into the water, where it sank out of sight. Fear, cold fear, had a firm grip on the inside of Harry’s stomach. He was no longer so sure he was coming out of this war alive.
The weather closed in again and it was unlikely they would fly the next day. The rain intensified. The airstrip was deeply waterlogged. Harry took himself off to the only bathroom in the old farmhouse and soaked in a hot bath. Fishy Braithwaite had gone off in his open sports car despite the rain. He was still wearing his flying goggles. The senior captain, still in his teens, a boy, gave the order to post machine gun crews at each end of the runway, the guns mounted on stands so the gunners could fire up into the air.
Harry thought it should have been done before, as today had been the third attack on the makeshift aerodrome. Good officers planned ahead. Good officers out-thought the enemy. Heroics were one thing. Prevention was another.
Letting his mind drift, he went back into the comfort of the bush. Everything was simple in the bush. Dangerous but more predictable. One lion behaved much like another. Animals had their habits and rarely strayed. They drank from the same waterhole. Mostly emptied out yesterday’s food at the same spot with the whole family. Birds nested every year at the same time. Trees flowered when they were meant to flower. The migration of birds happened every year. The bush was predictable. Nature was on time. Inside one lion’s head were the same thoughts and instincts of any other lion. Unless the lion was sick. Had
an abscess. Was in pain.
When it came to man, the worst thing to do was judge another person by what one would do oneself. Inside every man’s head was a different set of thoughts. No man was quite certain what was in another man’s head. To try to work out the next move of a rational man was hard enough and mostly a calculated guess. What was going on in the head of Fishy Braithwaite was beyond Harry’s comprehension. In normal times, his ranting at the crashed German aircraft, heard by nearly everyone on the station, would have had him carted off to an asylum.
The fire in the room with the bar, which had previously been the parlour of the French farmhouse and the most comfortable room in the house, was burning high, competing with the storm outside. The big guns were silent. The machine gun and rifle fire from twenty miles away were muffled by the distance and the storm. The corporal who was now a private was still behind the bar doing the same job for less pay. If he had complained he might have been sent into the trenches.
After his third drink sitting alone silently at the bar, the senior captain sat down next to him on a bar stool. The barman was at the end of the bar.
“Did you pick it up again?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have it?”
“No. Threw it in the pond…”
“Quite a tackle.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing… You knew him at Oxford. Did you ever call him ‘Fishy’ to his face?”
“All the time.”
“Oh, dear God. No wonder he looks at you that way.”
“It’s worse. There’s a woman. Once his fiancée. She thinks she’s in love with me. Braithwaite knows. I think he is going to let me get myself killed. Where is the prisoner?”
“We sent him back straight away.”
“Look out. Our CO has just walked into the room… Don’t worry about me. And no, I don’t love the woman in question. Fact is, she’s about as obsessed as Braithwaite.”