Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  There was the bend of the Scarrow by Cantley … about ten miles now to the Park. He passed over Felstead & Whitmore station at a thousand feet, and began to descend, throttling back the engine slightly. The stick was firm but sensitive in his hand … You had to pretend there was an egg between your hand and the control column, the joystick … gently firmly forward … gently firmly back … Yet in battle you obviously couldn’t afford to treat it like that; then you’d have to throw the machine about in the air, as the enemy dodged, and victory or death would depend as much on the machine’s strength of construction as on your skill … and your desire to kill, to matar … Was he a matador, or just a maker of patterns in the sky?

  There was the Big House … car lights moving up the drive – perfect timing. He was below all clouds, down to two hundred feet above the ground. In this light, it was not safe to go any lower, and he levelled off. The sweeping lights on the long drive had stopped in front of the main entrance to the house.

  He banked carefully on to a west heading, edging the Caudron round and watching the primitive prototype gyro direction indicator that he was testing – the raison d’être for this night flight. It was ill-lit by a single instrument light and he had to strain his eyes to read it, so … carefully … delicately he banked, keeping the altitude constant, turning by the new instrument. On course, he flew west for two minutes, banked, flew north for two minutes, east for two minutes … south … west … jerky at first, gradually steadying and stabilizing the aircraft as he learned the responses. Thank heaven it was a calm night.

  Gradually his grip on the controls relaxed, became gentle and confident. He had time to look at the Big House below.

  People had got out of the car, a charabanc in fact, and were standing in a half-circle, lit by headlights. Guy repeated his pattern, flying never more than two miles from the Big House. The charabanc and the people went away. After an hour he changed to figures of eight, sweeping in lazy curves all over the Park. His hands and feet were cold and his face frozen to an icy mask, but inside he was warmed by the glow of a fierce content: he was flying – in battle, his first. Perhaps he’d do a victory roll, to celebrate … He put the thought firmly from him: he’d never kill any Germans if he killed himself first by doing stunts, at night, in a Caudron.

  At nine o’clock precisely, the moon bursting out from the clouds, he headed back for the airfield on the downs east of Hedlington, where he had learned to fly, and where, after much soft soap, he had persuaded the chief instructor to let him try a night flight to test the new instrument. Guy was doing it for Probyn, but to him the tests were also real, for he was sure that the Royal Flying Corps would soon be flying by night as a matter of course, and that would include night raids and air fights.

  A few paraffin flares had been put out in a line along the airfield and at 9.23 p.m. Guy lined up with them, a mile downwind at 500 feet. He throttled back the engine, swallowed once, and forced himself into a relaxed calm. Slowly the line of lights swam towards him … seemed too foreshortened so that hastily – too hastily – he opened the throttle again … readjusted it … lazily the lights came nearer … suddenly the first of them was under his wing. He checked the glide, held the nose in the landing attitude … the aircraft hung in the darkness for a second or two that seemed like minutes … a jerk and a rumble, the bite of the tail-skid. He had a perfect three-point landing.

  The chief instructor was waiting for him when he taxied up to the hangars. ‘Looked good, Guy.’

  ‘I was a bit rough with the throttle when I lined up.’

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘The gyro’s fine, as far as it goes. Needs a stronger light … And we’re going to need some way of knowing where the horizon is, if we can’t see it, or the ground. I was in clouds for a bit, now and then, and I really didn’t know whether the nose was up, level, down, or tilted.’

  ‘We’ve talked about that before. Where did you go?’

  ‘Oh, round and about. I’ll be back Tuesday, same time. Good night.’

  Chapman came to the door of the drawing-room and said, ‘There’s a party of waits outside, m’lord. Furr let them in, in accordance with your standing instructions for the Christmas season. They came in a charabanc, m’lord.’

  ‘A charabanc?’ Lord Swanwick growled. ‘Where the hell from?’

  A droning sound filled the room and the earl said, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I have no idea, my lord.’

  ‘It sounds like an aeroplane,’ Lady Swanwick said. Lady Barbara, reading Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities the other side of the fireplace, said, ‘It is an aeroplane.’

  ‘Impossible!’ Lord Swanwick said. ‘It’s dark.’

  He got up, left the room and strode along the passage to the front door. The lights over the door were on and below he could see a charabanc, its headlights shining on a dozen men grouped in a semi-circle, their hands behind their backs. As soon as he appeared, they began to sing The First Nowell. He could barely hear them above the racket of the aeroplane, except when it flew further away. He shouted at the butler, ‘Who are they?’

  ‘A group collecting for the fund for Disabled Soldiers and Sailors, m’lord.’

  ‘They’re awful!’ Swanwick shouted.

  The name of a livery firm in Brighton was painted in an ornate scroll on the side of the charabanc. Brighton? These men had come nearly fifty miles! Impossible! He held up his hand and bellowed, ‘Stop!’

  Raggedly the singing ceased. ‘You’ve come here from Brighton?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Yes, sir … my lord,’ the leader said. He was a big man with a red nose and a woollen scarf wrapped round his neck.

  ‘Just to sing carols here?’

  ‘Oh no, my lord, we’ve sung in three places already.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t remember the names, my lord. Big houses, they was … and when we’re done here we’re going on to Hedlington … been asked to sing in High Street, outside the pubs … till midnight.’

  ‘Here,’ Swanwick said, finding a Treasury pound note in his pocket. ‘Take this, but don’t sing any more. Confound that aeroplane!’

  The aeroplane passed directly overhead, its sound very loud. The waits were saying thankee my lord, thankee, and climbing back into the charabanc. Skagg was there, coming up, a shotgun under his arm. Reaching Lord Swanwick’s side he muttered, ‘Don’t like the looks of these, m’lord. They’re just the sort to slip out of the charry and into the woods after a bird or even a deer. I’ll follow them till they’re out of the gate.’

  ‘All right. Put a blast over their heads if they try anything.’

  Skagg went off. The charabanc moved away. Watching from the steps, Swanwick thought that the moving lights slowed half-way to the gatehouse. Skagg had been right … but he could deal with the blighters. As he was turning into the house he thought he heard a gunshot … but the infernal aeroplane was still there, circling, roaring, the blue flame from its exhausts clearly visible and, against the moon, the silhouetted head of the pilot.

  Lady Barbara came out to stand beside him, ‘Do you think he’s in trouble, Father? Lost?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care. Blasted row … He can’t go on for ever.’

  ‘I wonder why he keeps circling,’ his daughter said. ‘You’d think he’d either try to land, or go somewhere else. There’s a new airfield on the Canterbury road, which he could almost see from up there.’

  ‘I’d ring up the RFC, but they’d only tell me there’s a war on.’

  He led back indoors and Chapman closed the door behind him. The inside of the big house reverberated to the aircraft’s engines, and Swanwick swore under his breath. Bloody stinking machines, turning gentlemen into mechanics …

  Dan hurried from Midland Road station through the darkened streets of Bedford towards his parents’ house. They lived about a mile from the station and he was perspiring even in the winter cool by the time he reached it. He ran up the steps and rai
sed his hand to bang the knocker energetically, but paused. She might be sleeping. He tried the door and it opened – they never did lock the door; no need to, except perhaps now with so many soldiers about … Some girl had given him a white feather in London, right outside St Pancras station. A bloody nerve, she had. How did she know he wasn’t in a vital industry? He’d thrown it in the gutter and run for his train. All the same, it made you think. Keeping Probyn Gorse away from His Lordship’s pheasants wasn’t exactly important to beating the Germans … but how could he think of leaving Ivy and baby George?

  He went into the house. In the passage he heard no sound, and there was no light. God, had they taken her to hospital? Or was she already …? It was near ten, and they usually went to bed at half-past nine. He crept up the stairs and to their bedroom door. Stooping down he put his ear to the keyhole and listened. He heard breathing … snoring. That was Dad. He couldn’t hear Mother. Ah, there, that was her, saying, ‘You’re snoring, Dad.’

  She sounded sleepy like, but otherwise the same as usual. He straightened and knocked gently on the door. ‘Mum, Dad. It’s me, Dan.’

  It took a moment or two to sink in, then his father called, ‘Dan? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, Dad. How’s Mum?’

  ‘How’s Mum? How are you, Mum?’

  ‘I’m fine … Come in, Dan. Dad, light the light.’

  Dan went in, and waited, holding his cap in his hands, while his father found the matches and lit the gas mantle. Brilliant white light shone out, blinding him, and he put his cap over his eyes. When he lowered it, his mother was sitting up in bed, a shawl thrown round her ample shoulders.

  He stared at her, ‘You really all right, Mum?’

  ‘Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You’re not serious ill?’

  ‘Do I look like it?’ she said.

  ‘Are you all right, Dan?’ his father said, getting out of bed, and taking Dan’s shoulder paternally. ‘You look funny.’

  ‘I feel funny.’

  ‘Sit down, there’s a good lad. Your Mum’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘I don’t want no tea.’

  ‘Have you been given the sack, Dan? Is that it? That Skagg never did like you, you said.’

  Dan sat down on the bed. ‘This afternoon … evening, about six … I got a telegram saying Mum was serious, come at once. Here …’ He pulled the crumpled slip from his pocket and handed it over. His father found his gold-rimmed spectacles on the chest of drawers, put them on, and read aloud: ‘ “MUM SERIOUS ILL COME AT ONCE DAD.” I never sent that, Dan. But it’s from Bedford. See?’

  Dan said, ‘I haven’t been sacked. This is a practical joke, like. I bet it’s one of those men I caught with His Lordship’s rabbits the other day. Making me spend a lot of money for nothing.’

  ‘Lucky it wasn’t a bang on the head some dark night, Dan,’ his father said. ‘Gamekeepers don’t get many love letters, you know. Come down, and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea.’

  They went down the stairs one after the other, Dan saying, ‘Might as well … and sleep in my old room. Can’t get back to Walstone tonight.’

  His mother said, ‘I’ll make up the bed, and you’ll have a good breakfast in the morning, just as good as Ivy can make for you in that nasty little lodge house you showed us. Surprised you don’t catch your death in that. His Lordship ought to be ashamed of himself, making an Englishman live in that place.’

  ‘The Big House isn’t in much better shape, I can tell you,’ Dan said, laughing at last. He felt better, and dismissed the hoax from his mind. It would be nice to chat with Mum and Dad and hear the latest news about Dick and Mary and Peter, who’d gone for a soldier, and Janice who’d got into trouble from a Canadian, and …

  Probyn Gorse reached the railway line at nine-thirty. The aeroplane had gone and the sky was quiet once more. He was nearly two miles from the Big House, and the .410 had been reburied in its oiled silk wrapping in the hole he’d dug outside the park wall three months ago. The two sacks, each containing six dead pheasants – four cocks and eight hens in all – were heavy on his back as he walked carefully by vagrant moonlight towards the railway embankment. He had met Fletcher at the corner of Ten Acre copse at the agreed time and they’d entered the wood immediately. Fletcher held the electric torch for him and found the roosting birds, and he had shot them down, killing each with a single No. 5 cartridge. As soon as the work was done, Fletcher had gone to join the men from the charabanc, who were roaming the Park the far side of the Big House, two miles from where he had been firing. Some of them might get caught, but they had no weapons on them, and would have no birds, and it was unlikely that Skagg would be able to hold more than one, with Dan away, and the extra keepers, to be brought in against Probyn’s promised raid, not to be hired until tomorrow. Meanwhile, here were the birds, and young Rowland had done his work so well that Probyn doubted whether anyone had heard the shots – certainly not Skagg, chasing the waits. But … safety first. He covered the two sacks with dead leaves, moved a hundred yards off, curled up against the foot of the embankment and went to sleep.

  He awoke at four and lay quiet, his hands behind his head. It had been a good night for weather … for everything else, too, as far as he knew. He’d spent many, many hours in much worse straits in His Lordship’s park, nights of sleet and bowling wind, soaked through, Skagg on watch somewhere close: nights of black frost, cold gnawing at his marrow; nights of snow, or fog, when he could not see a yard in front of his face: nights of summer, when every mosquito in Kent seemed to have decided to settle on him, and suck his blood … This had been easy, and good. He closed his eyes and waited till the moon sank.

  In the short dark between then and dawn, he got up, walked back along the fence and into the wood, and picked up the heavy sacks. The land rose gradually, climbing to the level of the rails, the line here being neither banked nor cut. In a few minutes he made out the white shape in the darkness ahead, and moved silently towards it.

  ‘All right, Granddad?’ Florinda asked.

  ‘All right,’ he answered. ‘Twelve. Good big birds, too.’

  The faint starlight showed that she was wearing a red blouse over a white skirt. ‘Don’t wait too long to get out of the way,’ he said. ‘Those little lamps don’t throw much light, and they won’t see you till they’re on top of you.’

  She said, ‘I have an electric torch.’ She clicked it on, and a circle of light illuminated Probyn’s feet.

  ‘All right, turn it off girl,’ he said. Then they parted, for both knew what to do.

  Probyn waited, lying down in the grass along the fence, twenty feet from the rails, and a little below the level of the ballast. Florinda had disappeared into the darkness, walking along the railway towards Walstone station. The early morning milk train from Hedlington to Ashford was due at Felstead & Whitmore station at 5.32 a.m.; Walstone at 5.43, Taversham at 5.49.

  The down distant signal for Walstone was almost over Probyn’s head and he started involuntarily as it suddenly clanged down, the light changing from yellow to green. Almost at once he heard the distant muffled long continued clangour of the engine and train passing over the Scarrow bridge. Then he saw the little white light in front of the chimney. The rails sang, and he waited. The engine passed, though he did not see it for he kept his head down, pressed into the earth and damp grass. As soon as it had gone by he jumped up and ran to the side of the passing wagons. Looking ahead he saw Florinda’s dim white and red shape by the rails, the waving beam of the torch. At once the brakes went on on the engine, so hard that he could hear the squeal from fifty yards back. The buffers of the wagons banged into each other all down the short train, bang bang bang bang bang. In half a minute the train had stopped. He stepped quickly between two wagons and, climbing up on the buffer beam, swung the sacks with a grunt, one after the other, into the shallow open wagon and, more carefully, followed them.

  He heard the guard pass, his boots crunching on t
he cinders, walking towards the engine to find out the cause of the stop. Five minutes later he walked back again. The train started.

  It stopped at Walstone ten minutes late, and at Taversham the same. A mile past Taversham, it being still dark, by a group of dense willows where the Scarrow curved away from the line for the last time, Probyn threw the two sacks off the train on the left side. Near six-twenty, still dark, as the train crawled through Ashford yards, he climbed down the outside steps, dropped to the cinders, and started a walk of twenty-one miles to Walstone, arriving in time for a late dinner to be shared with Florinda and Fletcher.

  ‘They’re hung safe,’ Fletcher said. ‘The Duke’s there, with plenty of food, to guard ’em. And Skagg never caught any of those Brighton men. He was near one when I come … but then I got him to chase me, not knowing who I was, of course. When I thought the others had got free, I dodged off.’

  Florinda said, ‘The engine driver didn’t believe me when I told him about the big rock I’d seen on the line, but the train was stopped by then, so I ran away. They didn’t chase me.’

  ‘You did well.’

  ‘Thanks, Grandpa … I feel sorry for Dan, though.’

  ‘Dan’s a gamekeeper.’

  ‘Guy Rowland was marvellous, wasn’t he? Just tophole.’

  ‘Don’t speak la-di-da, or I’ll give you a bash on the kisser … And we’re not done yet, are we?’

  By Givenchy, it was raining, a bitter slanting rain. The trench was crowded, most of the men now wearing the inverted steel bowl helmets, glistening in the rain. Fred Stratton leaned against the front wall, soaked through, as was everyone else, shivering in the cold, waiting. The stars were hidden behind the clouds, and the soldiers pressed together were a presence of breathing men, smells of damp wool, sweat, urine, fear. Colonel Rowland muttered, ‘Stratton?’