The grass was longer here. A breeze chased through it, searching left and right, giving up, then trying again. “Never saw such greenery as you folks got,” Red remarked. They flushed a hare, and stood watching it bound away.
“Beautiful beast,” Silk said.
Red smiled his wide and wonderful smile. “Reckon that hare ate all your mushrooms.”
“Could be.” As Red turned away, Silk noticed how quickly his smile faded. It simply fell off his face. Now he looked, not sad, but stony, almost bleak. The contrast was startling. Yet the smile had been so true, so generous. How could it vanish so fast? After that, Silk watched for this change of face. It kept happening.
“The mushrooms are around here somewhere,” he said. “I remember a day in... must have been 1942. Pug Duff came by in his car and picked me up, just like you did, and we drove out here.”
It was a slim fragment of memory, quickly told. Pug Duff, short but tough, got his wings same time as Silk but went up the promotion ladder twice as fast, so by ’42 he commanded 409. That evening Pug had brought grub – bacon, sausages – and a Primus stove and frying pan. Add mushrooms and it made a decent meal, very decent. Silk searched his mind for more exciting detail and found none.
“You guys do a lot of that?” Red asked. “Hot sausages around the fire?”
“That was the only time. I think Pug needed a break. Had to get away from the war for an hour. We were losing too many aircraft. Good crews getting the chop. Bad for morale. Poor old Pug worried but of course he couldn’t do anything except press on.”
“Poor old Pug?” Red said. “Should I ask what happened to him?”
Silk thought about it. “Better not,” he said. Did Pug get the chop? Must have done. This was turning into a gloomy chat. “Where are you from?”
“Manhattan, Kansas. New York City gets our mail, we get theirs.” The smile was back. The American was pleased to find an Englishman who knew so much of his country, and for a while they talked easily. Red was getting nostalgic about the great taste of American ice cream when the first raindrops smacked them in the face. They ran.
It was a cloudburst. The wipers flung water left and right and still the windscreen was swamped. Red put his head outside the jeep, and the rain hammered at his eyes: the faster he drove, the less he saw. Then Silk shouted and pointed, grabbed the wheel. They turned onto the concrete hardstandings where the Vulcans stood, and drifted gratefully under the vast delta wings of the nearest bomber. Red dragged a handkerchief from his pants pocket and mopped water from his eyes and ears. Now he could hear the steady bass thunder of rain. “See England and drown,” he said. Big smile.
“It’s what makes our greenery so green,” Silk told him. A policeman arrived. “Hullo, corporal. We are orphans of the storm.” He checked their identity documents and went away. “Airfields are all alike,” Silk said. “Vast areas of nothing much. Not even mushrooms.” He sneezed. “Damn. I’ve been talking garbage. Wrong place. I wasn’t here with Pug Duff in ’42. We were based at Coney Garth, in Suffolk. Well, that explains everything.”
“You lost me there.”
“Bags of mushrooms at Coney Garth. Famous for it.”
Captain Black dried the wheel with his handkerchief. Now he had a dry wheel and a soggy handkerchief. He hung it on the gear lever. “I came out here to kill myself.” He took a small automatic from his tunic pocket. “You’d better have this. I don’t like guns.”
“Very un-American.” Silk examined it: compact, tidy, loaded. He removed the magazine. “Why carry it if you don’t like it?”
“Standard issue,” Red said wearily. “We all get one. Self-protection in case we get shot down.”
Silk thought about it as they sat watching the rain bounce knee-high off the taxiway. The banging of the little gun might amuse Russian infantry in the few seconds before they shot Red Black dead; but it would be unkind to say so now. “None of my business,” he said, “but going nowhere with a gun you dislike is an odd way to end your life.”
“Oh, hell.” He was thoroughly miserable. “It’s not easy. Nothing’s easy.”
“Take some leave. Go to Scotland. Jump off a mountain. Lots of mountains in Scotland, highly dangerous. People fall off them without even trying. And the scenery – ”
“You married?” Red asked. “You talk like a guy who’s married.”
“Many years. You, on the other hand...”
“She wanted to. I said, wait till I’m out the Service. She didn’t wait. Found some other guy.”
Silk exercised his arms. Wet clothes, gusting wind: cold was eating into him. “You volunteered for aircrew,” he said. “And you must be damn good to make pilot in an elite squadron. Why blow it all?”
“It’s a waste. Total waste.” Now his head was trembling, whether from cold or rage or fatigue, Silk couldn’t tell. “Look: everybody gets allocated a target, right? What’s yours?”
“Um... it varies. Here and there.” Dangerous question. Safe answer.
“Mine is East Berlin,”
“Ah. Not a friendly place.”
“We’re a tactical nuclear strike outfit. We take out the enemy air defence command centres. Clear the way so the big boys can go in and whack the Soviet cities.”
“Jolly sporting of you.” Silk wished he hadn’t said that. The American hadn’t heard. Apparently.
“The F-100 is a fighter-bomber. Carries a bomb big enough to leave East Berlin looking like Nagasaki times ten, maybe times twenty. Times fifty, who’s counting? Not me, because a couple minutes before I get there, one of your Thor missiles, also tactical nuclear, is scheduled to take out the same target also. And a couple minutes after I get there, another Thor is scheduled to do likewise. That means if I arrive early or late, I get fried. Or if one of those Thors is early or late, I get fried. Slice it where you like, I’m fried, just so East Berlin gets taken out three times over.”
“Dismal prospect, old chap. Still, buck up.” Christ Almighty, Silk thought, I sound like my father, and he’s dead. “Look on the bright side. East Berlin did its best to take me out, more than three times, so the wretched place deserves all it gets.”
A ghost of the smile returned. “I’ll try to remember that,” Black said.
“Forgive my curiosity....” Now I’m my grandfather, and he’s extremely dead. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
Got that wrong, then. Mind you, I only saw him through one eye. Only half-wrong. “You should meet my wife, Zoë,” Silk said. “She’s an MP. Lady Shapland.” He was in the grip of a paternal friendliness, searching for something to give a young American far from home. “I’m sure she’d love it. Does the notion appeal?”
“Sure. Is she here?”
“No, but we have a country house nearby. Not exactly a castle, although I think there’s an arrow-slit somewhere...” Stop! Silk told himself. Can the bullshit. “Why not spend a weekend?”
Captain Black said he’d like that very much. “We have a small ballroom,” Silk said. “You two could jitterbug. Or is that completely passé now?”
The storm blew over and they drove back to the base. Silk returned the automatic. “Keep it in your underwear drawer,” he said, and got another blinding smile. The man was wired for light.
5
Stevens, the under-butler, said that he believed her ladyship was walking in the estate.
“You know she never inherited that title,” Silk said. “She never uses it in her work.”
“Yes sir. But the staff like to think of her as Lady Shapland. Life is quiet here. We make our own entertainment.”
“I see.” Silk turned away, then stopped. “What do they call me? The Unknown Warrior?”
“Nothing so disrespectful, sir, I can assure you.”
“Pity. Ask them what they think of ‘Sir Jasper’. Tell them I’ll carry a horsewhip, if it helps.”
Silk went out into the sunshine. It was early afternoon, Friday; the crew had been stood down after a week of
hard training, in the simulators and in the air. He had a free weekend. The lawns had been mown in a precise diagonal stripe that flared and dipped where the ground ran into bumps and hollows. “Bloody clever,” he said aloud. “Like a flag in the breeze.” Fifty yards away a gardener stopped doing something to a rose bush and took his cap off. “Talking to myself,” Silk told him and walked in the other direction. The Grange was as bad as RAF Kindrick. You couldn’t pick your nose without hiding in the bog.
The lawns ended with a ha-ha. Beyond it sheep grazed, or stopped grazing as he walked near. “Relax,” he said. “I haven’t rogered a sheep since the day the old king died.” They bolted. “Lots of girls would jump at the chance,” he called. “Double DFC and all that.” He went through a plantation of tall conifers, cool as a church, and out into the heat again, and looked down at a lake. In the lake was a punt and in the punt was Zoë, wearing so little it seemed pointless to make the effort.
“My stars,” she said. “A handsome stranger. Have you come to give me the thrill of a lifetime?”
“I don’t know.” He sat on a log. “What if your husband turns up?”
“Oh... You needn’t worry about him. He’s at sixty thousand feet, obliterating Olenegorsk.”
Silk was startled and tried not to show it. Olenegorsk was a Soviet strategic bomber base, on the Kola peninsula, near Finland. How did she know? “Not even close,” he said, carelessly. “Olenegorsk got obliterated on Tuesday. I know it was Tuesday, because the Mess always serves spotted dick for lunch on Tuesdays. Wednesday we annihilated Murmansk Northeast. Thursday we took care of Lvov. But you know all that, don’t you?”
She turned onto her side and propped her head on her hand. She tipped her straw hat over her ear. She smiled sweetly.
“You’re shag-happy again, aren’t you?” he said. “I don’t understand it. Why punts?”
“It’s a mystery, Silko. Don’t just sit there. Use your initiative.”
“It won’t reach.” He stood up. “I’m hung like a horse, but look: it’s thirty feet at least.”
“We’re drifting apart.” It was true; a breeze had caught the punt. “Dive. Swim.”
He undressed, and waded into the lake. The cold made him gasp. “If I get castrated by a sodding great pike, you’ll be sorry,” he said. He swam, kicking up a lot of foam, and heaved himself over the end of the punt. “You’re a cold, cruel woman,” he said, “and when my balls come out of hiding I demand satisfaction. Where’s the towel?”
There was no towel. They lay together and she gave him the warmth of her body. She could feel the heavy thump of his heartbeat gradually slow to normal. “This is special,” she whispered. “This is our first time in a punt, on a Friday, near Lincoln, in July.”
“It’s June, Zoë. June thirtieth.”
“Well... restrain yourself, Silko. Take it very, very slowly. Try to last until midnight.”
“Send for beer and beef sandwiches, my sweet, and I can guarantee you a thrill a minute until three in the morning.”
She moved her head. “Would you like mustard on the beef?” she asked. “Because I think I see Stevens waving to us.”
Silk cursed and sat up. Stevens was waving a large handkerchief. “Telephone message, Mr Silk,” he shouted. “From your squadron. A Mr Renouf, he said it was extremely urgent. He said it’s a Micky Finn, sir.”
“Renouf’s the Ops Officer,” Silk told her. “Micky Finn means –”
“I know what it means,” Zoë said.
He stood, dived, swam. Stevens turned his back while Silk dressed. Underwear clung. Feet resisted socks. His hair dripped into his shirt. He looked towards Zoë and offered a shrug. She gave back the smallest wave.
“The Citroën is waiting in the drive, sir,” Stevens said.
Silk jogged to the car, which turned out to be two cars. A jeep was parked next to it. Captain Red Black was waiting. Damn damn damn, Silk said to himself. Nothing goes bloody right. Well, Stevens will have to sort it out.
“I haven’t come on the wrong day, have I?” Black asked.
“No, no. Glad to see you. Sheer bad luck, we’ve got a squadron panic, bloody nuisance but... Look, Stevens will take care of you, and Zoë’s here, so... I’ll be back soon as possible. Just...make yourself at home.”
Black smiled. What else would he do? The Citroën started at once. Exit Silk.
6
Twenty minutes after Silk left, the breeze blew the punt to the bank. Zoë climbed out, put on her jeans and sweater and deck shoes, and looked up to see a man. One look was enough. Lust turned a switch and seemed to release a magnetic impulse. Nothing mattered except skin on skin. Her mother’s dead voice warned: You’re acting like an animal. And lust replied: I bloody well hope so.
“You must be Lady Shapland,” Captain Black said.
“Must I? Yes, I suppose I must. Everyone says so, it must be true. And you are the promised kiss of springtime that makes the lonely winter seem long.”
He laughed, which was a good start. The bank was steep. He gave her his hand, and she scrambled up. “Silko told me to expect you,” she said. “And here you are. I suppose I ought to show you around the estate.”
“I’m at your service.”
“Yes? Well, that sounds like a very good arrangement.”
They strolled across a meadow that was thick with buttercups. Behind them, Stevens was invisible in the gloom of the plantation. He got his binoculars in focus. Zoë had taken Captain Black’s arm. Stevens made a note of that.
She said she hoped he could stay for dinner. He thanked her. He smiled, and the old earth took a couple of whirls. “Back home, people used to warn me. Said the English were, uh, reserved. But now look at us. And we just met.”
“Well, sometimes friendship doesn’t take a year. Sometimes it doesn’t take two minutes. You’re not married, are you?”
“Correct.”
“Strewth. That’s an aristocratic expression of surprise. Either the women of Kansas... I am right, Kansas?... are all dreadfully slow, or, well, to be frightfully crude, your wedding tackle is in less than full working order.”
“Wedding tackle...” He found that amusing. “I wouldn’t be an Air Force pilot if the medics had found any defects. And God knows they look hard.”
“Splendid,” Zoë said. “So reassuring. One doesn’t want any disconcerting revelations, does one?”
“One sure as hell doesn’t. And I guess two don’t want them twice as much.”
They reached a stile in a hedge. He went first, and then gave her his hand to help her over. They strolled on, fingers interlaced. Stevens put down his binoculars and made another note.
“That thing on a hillock, looking rather foolish, is our gazebo,” Zoë said. “Not very high, but then Lincolnshire is fairly flat, isn’t it? Let’s go up, shall we?”
The gazebo was a six-sided room with a pointed roof, raised on iron stilts. They climbed the stairs. The air inside smelt faintly of varnish and turpentine. “The previous owner wanted to be an artist,” Zoë said. “That divan was where his model posed.”
“Peaceful. Quiet.” He poked the divan. “Well sprung.”
She removed a cotton sheet from a stack of canvases. They were all nudes. “He knew what he liked,” she said.
“Yeah. I guess he did his best, but look: the bed is sexier than the girl. That’s not a criticism.”
“Certainly not.” She was unbuttoning his tunic. “Somebody once said that the secret of a woman’s success is to be born with a silver zipper in her hand.” She unzipped his fly. “Can that be true?” She opened his belt buckle.
“The great thing about a railroad is the trains run both ways,” he said, and unzipped her jeans. “And that’s enough fancy talk for now.”
Sitting comfortably in the branches of an oak tree, Stevens watched the movements inside the gazebo until the figures sank from view. He made a note. Twenty minutes passed. From his pocket he took two currant scones, wrapped in wax paper. Later he ate a slic
e of fruit cake and drank a small bottle of lemonade. There was nothing to record. He opened a paperback copy of British Trout Flies and was studying a colour plate of Greenwells Glory when the couple came out of the gazebo. They stood on the stairs, arm in arm. She spoke. He grinned. They went back inside. Stevens looked at his watch. An hour and seven minutes. Such stamina! He made a note.
ALL HOUSE-TRAINED MANIACS HERE
1
Some bloody fool had left a tractor parked beyond the end of the runway. It was the tractor that was used to mow the grass. Hooked up behind it was a triple gang-mower, capable of cutting a swathe twenty-five feet wide. Well, RAF Kindrick was a big airfield.
Four Vulcans stood on the Operational Readiness Platforms, short strips of concrete that angled into the runway. At 1637 hours, Bomber Command Ops Room ordered a scramble. The crews spilled out of the QRA caravan. An umbilical cord linked each Vulcan to a massive trolley-load of batteries. As each captain reached his seat, the crew chief pressed a button that released a flood of electricity which simultaneously fired all four closely-grouped jet turbines and thus released the makings of seventy tons of thrust. The cable fell away. Wheels rolled.
The first Vulcan to swing onto the runway, using far less than maximum effort, blasted the tractor and mowers off their wheels. The next Vulcan hurled them thirty yards back. Quinlan’s Vulcan came third. He opened his throttles, and the wreckage smashed through the perimeter fence and killed three rabbits in the next field.
Pity about the rabbits. They’d grown accustomed to Vulcan take-offs. The air thundered, the ground shook, the rabbits flattened themselves until all faded and they went back to their dandelions, lightly flavoured with sweet kerosene. But a savage attack by a mad tractor was different. That was a hazard they were not prepared for.
The last Vulcan was airborne one minute forty-seven seconds after the scramble order: satisfactory. Within half an hour they landed at their dispersal airfield, Yeovilton in Somerset; turned; taxied back up the runway; parked on the ORP. Nearby were operational caravans where the crews could rest, wash, get a hot meal. A supply of fresh underwear was available if needed. Nobody knew how long this exercise would last.
Hullo Russia, Goodbye England Page 14