THE HENS WOULD LAY OMELETTES
1
He found Zoë on the terrace. She was wearing a white silk blouse and grey linen slacks with blood-red slippers and she was feeding the peacocks. The scene looked like a bad cover for Vogue. “Had a good week?” he asked.
“Perfectly frightful. Yours?”
“Frightfully perfect. Right now the Vulcan’s in the hangar with a sick whatsit and so the crew’s been stood down. I’m completely at your mercy for the next forty-eight hours. As the actress said to the bishop: ‘Scream your loudest, my pretty one, nobody can hear you here.’ Or I hope not.”
“Let’s go to Cambridge,” Zoë said. “I want to punt on the river.”
“Punt. Well, it’s not what I was thinking of. But if you really want to...”
“I’ve been dreaming of it all week. It’ll be heavenly.”
They stopped halfway for lunch and reached Cambridge early in the afternoon. Silk found the boatyard. There was a long queue of undergraduates. The sun was hot and the queue was not moving. “This won’t be heavenly,” he said. “This looks hellish. Bloody students. Why aren’t they at work?”
“I’ll go and investigate. You park the car, darling.”
When he came back, she was at the boathouse jetty, talking to a man whose foot was hooked over the side of a punt to stop it drifting away. “Such a pleasure,” she said, and flashed a smile as she tipped him. She stepped into the punt. The man handed Silk a pole, and glanced at the tip: a pound note: half a day’s pay. “Pleasure’s all mine, sir,” he said. “Remember, give it a twist so it don’t stick in the mud.”
As Silk poled away, there were angry mutterings from the queue, some whistling and stamping. He concentrated on his punting. It was not like flying a Vulcan. The boat yawed horribly until he learned to trail the pole and use it as a rudder. They reached King’s College backs before he felt confident enough to let the punt drift alongside the bank and come to rest. “You bribed them,” he said.
“Certainly not. I told them we’d driven all the way from Lincoln, and you were a double DFC, and they were awfully decent about it.”
“What bollocks. How much?”
“Twenty quid.”
“Bloody hell, Zoë. You could buy a punt for that.”
“Actually, I think I did.” The punt had plenty of cushions, and she was stretched out on them. Her straw hat was tilted forward to keep the sun out of her eyes. Her hands were linked behind her head, and this lifted her breasts in a way that made him breathe deeply and blink hard. “Hullo,” she said. “You want sex.”
“Christ... Am I so obvious?”
“Not your fault, Silko. I’m definitely not complaining. Come on, let’s do it. Here and now.”
Silk looked up and down the river. “I can count a dozen punts, and a hundred people walking by.”
“All of them English. They’ll be more embarrassed than we will. They’ll look the other way and talk loudly. Come and join me, Silko. Let’s make whoopee.”
The straw hat shadowed her eyes, but her mouth was smiling. “You’re serious,” he said.
“Well, sex is a serious business. The future of mankind depends on it. Not to mention the fate of nations.”
He sat down. “You’d risk your reputation for the sake of a quick shag in a punt.”
“It needn’t be quick. Take a chance, old sport. Live dangerously for once.”
He leaned back, resting on his arms. He looked at the sky and tried to picture the scene. Both stark naked? No. But their clothing would be dishevelled, at the very least. The punt would rock, perhaps rather a lot, and make waves. Passing students would applaud. Someone would have a camera... “I live dangerously seven days a week,” he said.
“No, you don’t. You’re up at sixty thousand feet, with your enormous bomb. We’re the ones living dangerously, down below.”
“That’s the fate of nations.” His words sounded cheap. “Anyway, outdoor intercourse would certainly get me kicked out of Bomber Command, and you wouldn’t like that. I’d end up lord of the manor, pissed as a fart by breakfast, rogering the chambermaids, shooting the poachers from the clock tower. Might upset your guests.”
“No poachers to shoot. Nothing on the estate to poach.”
“Then I’ll hire some bloody poachers.” Silk stood up and eased the punt away from the bank. “I’ll hire dozens of the buggers, all poaching like fury around the clock, and all paid top whack with a Christmas bonus to boot. We can afford it, can’t we?”
“Heavens, yes.” Zoë sounded sleepy. “I think I must have married you for your bum, Silko. When you bend your knees like that, and tense your buttocks, they’re so shapely...”
“Really? The group captain said exactly the same thing, just the other day. So it must be true.”
Briefly, he considered adding something nice about Zoë. Whatever he said, it might cause sex to raise its foolish head, again, in this punt. Zoë was thinking too: thinking of mentioning other reasons why she married him. They were complicated. In the end, they both said nothing. Eventually they saw an undergraduate fall off his punt, still grasping his pole, stuck firmly in the riverbed. He made a large splash. “Crashed in flames,” Zoë said. “Damned poor show.” That made Silk laugh. From then on, the afternoon went happily. When it finished, Zoë donated the punt to a young couple. “Gosh, thanks,” they said.
2
They drove home at no great speed. The evening sky put on a five-star performance. “Look,” Zoë said. “Old gold, baby blue and shocking pink. God must be holding a clearance sale. Turn left here, Silko.”
He slowed. “It’s just a lane.”
“It’ll take us to a nice old pub. You’ll like it.”
The lane was flanked by thick hedges; they made a green tunnel. The car hit a pothole. “What a shocker,” he said. “Take a letter to my MP, Miss Smith. No, hang on, you are my MP. Can’t you do something to –”
“No, I can’t. Look out: horses.”
He stopped to let the riders go by. A girl smiled down. “Good God,” he said. “She looks just like Laura.”
“Rubbish. Laura’s a brunette.”
“Really? I remember her as sort of blondeish.”
“You’re a man, Silko. You don’t know mauve from mashed potato.” He grunted a denial. “Okay: tell me what I’m wearing,” she said. “Don’t look. Speak up. What colours?”
The riders had passed. “You can’t expect me to drive and think,” he said. “Besides, I haven’t seen Laura for years. I bet she was blonde once.” They argued amiably for a while: familiar phrases, comfortable attitudes. “Why doesn’t she come over and see you?” Silk asked.
“If she wants to, she will.”
“I could see her. The squadron sends a Vulcan to the States now and then. I could easily pop over to Radcliffe.”
“No. Lousy idea.”
“Why? We could –”
“She’s in love, Silko. We talk on the phone, Laura and I. She’s thoroughly, happily, totally in love with some lucky fellah. Think back: when you were her age, would you sooner spend a day with someone young and wonderful, or with someone twice as old and half as funny?”
The sun was setting behind clouds and the lane became suddenly dark. Silk switched on his sidelights. “I can be funny,” he said. “I can –”
Zoë screamed. A man on a bicycle sailed across the lane and just missed the Citroën. Silk swore, stamped on the brake, wrenched the wheel. The Citroën clipped a tree, bounced back into the lane and skidded to a stop. He swore some more, and looked back. The bicycle had vanished. Zoë’s nose was bleeding. He gave her his handkerchief. “I hit the dash,” she said thickly. “Nothing broken.”
They got out and went back to where it had happened. Or, thank God, hadn’t happened. “Crossroads,” Silk said. He walked a few yards up a side-road. “He came down here. Look: there’s a halt sign. He didn’t halt. Never even saw us. Miles away by now.”
“One second earlier,” Zoë said.
She looked at the handkerchief. “Half a second. We’d have killed him.”
“Killed them. He had a little boy sitting on that thing behind his saddle. That seat-thing.”
“Little boy?” Zoë sniffed hard. “Didn’t see a...” Blood ran again. “Oh, sod it.”
“Very small boy.” The image was vivid in Silk’s mind: a tall man, in black clothes, sitting upright on a tall bicycle, looking dead ahead, going fast, with a small boy sitting behind him. Such speed! Crossed the lane in a flash. “I suppose the idiot took a chance.”
The Citroën had a bashed mudguard. Silk used the jack handle to lever it clear of the wheel. “Pillion,” he said. “That’s the word. Kid was on the pillion.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not in the slightest.”
They drove home, not talking. All the way, Silk kept thinking of cricket-bat oil, another name he hadn’t been able to remember, long ago. And that didn’t matter either, not in the slightest. So why think of it?
* * *
Hot bath. Food and drink. Bed.
“We get there half a second earlier, and he’s dead,” Silk said. “His problems are over, but we live with the consequences for ever and a day. His fault, and we pay.”
“I don’t care about him. Let him kill himself. But not the boy. He has no right to kill the boy, does he?”
“Of course not. Nobody does.”
“Except you,” Zoë said. “Tens of thousands of children. Cities full of children.” She wasn’t starting a fight; just making a point.
“I can’t think about that.” Silk turned a switch in his mind.
“I can,” she said.
No more talk. Silk lay in the dark and wondered if they could ever be permanently happy. She’d been hot in a punt, for Christ’s sake! And now, when you’d think the best answer to that suicidal maniac on a bike would be a long, strong roll in the hay, she was very, very un-hot. Marriage guidance books always said: Be sensitive to her needs. Silk was sensitive, damn sensitive. So what was going wrong? He drifted off to sleep and dreamt that he was a trapeze artist in a circus, swinging by his hands, letting go, reaching for another pair of hands that was never quite there. He woke up, heart pounding. Not very subtle, he told himself. You can do better than that, you fool.
3
Silk was alone in the crew room, studying a town plan of Leningrad, when Quinlan came in. He was very jovial. He looked over Silk’s shoulder and flicked a finger at the centre of the plan. “There,” he said. “That’s where our warhead will hit.”
“Railway station.”
“No. Too vague. Platform seven. Under the clock. Next to the girl selling coffee.”
Silk looked at the plan. He imagined rings of shock-waves speeding outwards from the station, as shown in the training films on nuclear attack. As shown in the wartime newsreels, too, when a blockbuster hit an ammunition dump. Which, of course, was a popped balloon compared with a nuclear explosion. “That’s how you see it?” he said. “Aim at the girl selling coffee?”
“World War Two was a slaphappy affair, Silko. We thought we were shit-hot, didn’t we? All we were doing was chucking out dozens of iron bombs in the hope that a lucky one might clip the target. Now we’ve got a true precision weapon. We use it precisely. If platform seven is our aiming point, I shall be highly displeased if we hit platform eight. But not today. Tell me, which bit of Britain is the most surplus to requirements?”
“Slough? Betjeman said –”
“Bugger Betjeman. The Isle of Lewis, top left-hand corner of Scotland, is totally superfluous, especially a spot called Benbecula, and that’s where we’re off to. Dando gets a chance to test his electronic countermeasures on the sheep, all stops pulled out and loud pedal down.”
“You’re very chipper today, Skip. Have I missed something?”
“The crew’s back in business. When my idiot second pilot got hurt we lost our Combat Status. Went down to Non-Operational. If all hell broke loose, we’d be spectators. Now we’re Combat again. Evidently the CO thinks you’re competent.”
“Well, we conned him there, didn’t we?” Silk said. Quinlan almost smiled.
The rest of the crew arrived. As they went out to the station wagon, Silk found himself next to Dando. “Benbecula,” he said. “Seems a long way to go just to play with your Pink Shrimps.”
“You don’t know the first thing about ECM, do you?” Dando said. “I’ve got toys in the back of the bomber as big as your mum’s dustbins. They draw down enough power to drive a destroyer. Only one way to supply that kind of juice: from the engines. Are you ready to sit on the deck, throttles wide open, for half an hour?”
“Not for half a minute.”
“So we’re flying. Stooge around here at six, seven thousand? While I test my jammers? Full blast? Okay by you?”
“Uh...”
“We’d fry every TV set in the county. The hens would lay omelettes and the clocks would run backwards and every mirror would split with a noise like the crack of doom.”
“I say. Extreme bad luck.”
“Which is why we go to Benbecula, where there’s nothing but No. 81 Signals Unit, and nobody cares a shit about them.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Silk said.
The car pulled up near the bomber and they got out. “Kick the tyres and light the fires!” Quinlan cried.
“He always says that,” Tom Tucker said bleakly.
4
The station commander had the best office on the base, high in the Ops Block with a fine view of the airfield. All the blinds were closed. This was because Pulvertaft knew that pilots couldn’t resist looking at aircraft taking off or landing, and he wanted the full attention of 409’s CO, Innes Allen, and his Operations Officer, Joe Renouf. Skull, the Chief Intelligence Officer, was there too. They settled into their seats.
“I’ve been handed a hot potato which could turn into a banana skin,” Pulvertaft said. They smiled. That was good. Stress levels in a Vulcan squadron climbed with rank. He liked to keep everyone de-stressed.
“So far, there’s nothing on paper,” he said. “All I’ve had is a very informal phone call from someone at Group HQ. He’d received a similar call from Command HQ. They’d like to know what we think about a pilot on 409 who has links at the highest level with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.”
“Kick him out,” Joe Renouf said. He had a face like a divorce lawyer: nothing surprised him. “Get rid of him, pronto.”
“I hope you don’t mean instant discharge from the Service,” Innes Allen said. He was a Scot from the Western Highlands: every word rang crisp and clear. “That’s both unwise and illegal.”
“There’s no precedent,” Pulvertaft said. “That’s the trouble.”
“We can’t have Ban-The-Bombers infiltrating 409,” Renouf said. “At the very least it’s corrosive of morale.”
“Have you seen any sign of corrosion?” Allen asked. “I certainly haven’t. Morale is superb.”
“Then why take a risk?” Renouf said. His tone suggested he’d played his ace.
“It’s Flight Lieutenant Silk, isn’t it?” Skull said.
Pulvertaft breathed deeply. “What on earth makes you say that?”
“My low threshold of boredom, sir. Also, I worked it out from what I read in The Guardian.” Skull turned to the others. “Intelligence starts at breakfast. You can pick up quite a lot in the political columns.”
“Silk’s wife’s an MP,” Pulvertaft said. “She supports CND, in fact she’s one of the brains behind it. She’s their liaison with similar bodies abroad, France, Germany, Italy, Greece. Organizes conferences and so on.”
“Organised subversion,” Renouf muttered.
“I haven’t got time for The Guardian,” Allen said. “It puts a slant on everything.”
“Not its racing tips,” Skull said sharply. “I’m a hundred pounds to the good this season already.”
“What does that prove?” Allen asked.
“Prove
s sometimes the papers get something right,” Skull said. “Roman Warrior romped home at Kempton Park yesterday. Six to one.”
“Enough.” Pulvertaft rapped his desk. “Silk. What’s to be done?”
Nobody spoke. Everyone was thinking the same thing. What if some grubby journalist stumbled on the truth? Irresistible story. V-bomber pilot shares a bed with top anti-nuke campaigner. The Press would milk it. She bans, he bombs.
“Blame MI5,” Renouf said. “It’s their job to check out Silk.”
“They did,” Pulvertaft said. “He was clean when he rejoined the Command. She wasn’t active in CND then.”
“Even if she had been, it’s not a criminal offence.” Skull linked his hands behind his head and stretched his legs. “If you get rid of Silk now, it amounts to accusing him of being a security risk. On what evidence?”
“This is absurd.” Renouf was too restless to stay in his chair. “Don’t tell me there’s no risk. What if the silly bugger talks in his sleep? He could recite the entire squadron targeting plan! And never know it!”
“I can’t see Zoë Silk making shorthand notes in bed at four in the morning,” Skull said. “Her mother was Lady Shapland. Very rich. The Tatler made Zoë deb of the year.”
“And dope of the century,” Renouf said. “If she had her way we’d be dropping CND leaflets on the Kremlin.” He saw a crease in the carpet and stamped on it.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Pulvertaft said. “Skull, you know him best. Suppose he got posted somewhere safe. Transport Command, say. In Singapore. Would he go quietly?”
“He’d raise merry hell,” Skull said. “He’d appeal to C-in-C Bomber Command and Zoë would ask questions in the House. They’d allege victimisation.”
“Which it is,” Allen said.
“It would look as if we’re sniping at CND,” Pulvertaft said. “Punishing the wife through the husband.”
“Which we are,” Allen said.
Hullo Russia, Goodbye England Page 11