Goshawk Squadron

by Derek Robinson

  Kimberley let fly at the dangling men from a hopeless range. He dueled briefly with the Triplane, lost it, and came round in a wide, searching turn. He flew into an anti-aircraft shell with the precise catastrophe of a drunken driver speeding into a wall. The gas tank exploded in a bloom of yellow and red, and then there was only a lot of smoke, with bits falling: bits of wing, bits of wheel, bits of pilot.

  Lambert held his dive. The Triplane came after him and made a long, angled pass, but he was unaware of it. He reached the parachutes and killed the observers in two attacks from close range. Then he dropped to rooftop height and fled for home through the deepening dusk. Killion landed right behind him.

  “I’d like to introduce myself,” said the replacement. “My name is Shufflebotham. I just came today.”

  “Oh.” Rogers looked at him. The man was neat and clean and nervously ingratiating. “I’m Rogers. Do you have somewhere to sleep?”

  “Oh, yes. The adjutant—”

  “That’s all right, then.” Rogers went back to oiling his cricket bat. He seemed anxious about its condition.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Got one.” Rogers indicated the half-full bottle of Scotch on the floor between his legs.

  Shufflebotham watched him work for a few moments. “Sorry about my name,” he said, unconvincingly. “Damn silly name, really. I ought to do something about it.”

  “Oh?” Rogers said. He waited. “Oh,” he said.

  Shufflebotham wandered away. Lambert was putting records on the gramophone. He was drunk, and he dropped one. Shufflebotham picked it up for him. Lambert played a record.

  “Jolly little tune,” Shufflebotham said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Shufflebotham. Awfully sorry …”

  “Nonsense.” Lambert blinked at the blur of the spinning label. “That’s a waltz. Know it anywhere.”

  “No, no. My name is Shufflebotham.”

  “Never heard of him. Not in this squadron.” He picked up his bottle and tramped away, treading on Dickinson’s feet.

  “Who’s that?” Dickinson said, waking up.

  “Shufflebotham,” Lambert said angrily. “Not in this squadron, never. Fellow has the wrong squadron. Never, never, never.” His narrow, bloodshot eyes glared at the replacement.

  “Wait a minute,” Finlayson said. “You’re a bloody liar, Lambert. Wait a minute. I know you’re a bloody liar.”

  “Where?” Lambert demanded. “What?”

  “There was a Shuttlecock in this squadron,” Finlayson said. “I’m almost bloody certain of it.” He sniffed morosely. “You always were a bloody liar, Lambert. Hey,” he turned on Dangerfield. “You remember the bastard, don’t you?”

  “Who’s that?”

  Finlayson looked back at Lambert. “Come on, then, who was it?”

  “Nobody,” said Lambert. “There never was one. Never.”

  “I’m afraid it’s all a bit of a misunderstanding,” Shufflebotham said with a light chuckle.

  “Who is this screaming hysteric?” Finlayson said.

  “You mean Shackleton,” Dangerfield announced. “You remember old Shack, Dudley? Came down in a tree and broke both his legs. You remember, he used to do those tricks with matches.”

  Rogers thought. “No,” he decided.

  “Oh, come on,” Dangerfield protested. “How can you forget old Shack?”

  “I never knew him,” Rogers said. “Before my time probably.”

  “I win, then,” Lambert said loudly. “You’re all bloody liars.”

  “Listen,” Finlayson said. He went up to Lambert and hiccupped rum fumes into his face. “Listen, I can remember this fellow whatshisname as clear as you.” He waved at Shufflebotham. “Clearer.”

  “All right, then,” Lambert challenged. “AH right, ask old Woody.”

  “You ask old Woody.” Finlayson closed his eyes to help him think. “The burden of the evidence rests on the other side to disprove whatever it is, and not on the other side to disprove the other side’s evidence. That’s English justice.”

  Lambert turned to Dickinson. “Is that right, Dicky?” he asked, confused.

  “Better ask old Woody,” Dickinson said.

  “That’s what I said,” Finlayson confirmed. “You ask old Woody.”

  The adjutant came in, followed by a one-armed major. “Aha!” said Dangerfield. “Now for a duel between giants. Lambert wants to ask you something, Woody.”

  “Fire ahead.”

  “I forget,” Lambert said. There was a chorus of booing and laughter. “There never was one, that’s why!” he shouted.

  “Are these the officers named in the arraignments?” the major asked Woodruffe.

  “Yes. Manslaughter and fraud all round, more or less, and rape, arson and assault sort of sprinkled through. This is Major Gibbs,” he told them

  “Have a drink,” Dangerfield offered.

  “It’s damn ticklish, really,” the major said. He accepted some whisky. “Thanks. I’ve been sent down to arrange your indictments before a French civil court on all these charges. Cheers.”

  “But it’s all bull,” Richards said, emerging from behind a newspaper. “Tell them to go to hell.”

  “It is their country,” Woodruffe pointed out.

  “They don’t deserve it. We’re fighting much harder than they are. Besides, look at the rations they sell us. Look at the eggs we get, they’re tiny. It’s scandalous.” Richards was trembling with indignation.

  “Well, never mind about that,” the major said. “We can’t get you before a French court anyway, as long as you’re all awaiting court-martial.”

  “I’m not awaiting court-martial,” Gabriel declared. He put down his pocket Bible and looked around with a certain grim satisfaction. “Nor am I charged with any crime under French civil law.”

  “Good,” said the major. “Then maybe you can give me a hand. We have to get one set of charges or the other in motion, and I’m your defense counsel.”

  “We plead guilty but insane,” Lambert said.

  “I shall have nothing to do with unrighteousness,” Gabriel stated firmly. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” He looked calmly from Gibbs to Lambert. “But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, saith the Lord God.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” said Gibbs. “I just need someone to help with the paperwork.”

  “Oh no. That’s quite impossible. If ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague. And I will break the pride of your power.” He tapped his Bible with his finger. “You see, it’s out of my hands.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Finlayson growled in disgust.

  “Who else?” asked Gabriel.

  “What about the other girl who lives here?” Killion asked.

  “She’s hiding behind the curtains,” Jane Ashton said. “Why are you shivering? Perhaps you’d better put some clothes back on.”

  “Who’s shivering?” He swished the wine around in his glass to disguise the tremble. “Anyway, I’ve had a hard day.”

  She stepped out of her skirt and undid her hair. Killion watched from the corners of his eyes. “Let’s bring the mattress through here, in front of the fire,” she suggested. She cocked her head. “If you can wait that long, that is.”

  Killion turned away, pretending to look for somewhere to put his glass. “All right,” he said. “Are you sure it will go through the door?” He picked a china ornament off the mantelpiece and looked at its base. “Neat, but not gaudy,” he said. “Is it yours?”

  She came up and put her arms around him. “Oh Jack,” she said. Killion felt the warm and cool curves and points pressing against him. He put the ornament down very carefully. It fell over. “It’s all very well for you,” he said meaninglessly. “You live here.”

  “Oh, come on. Stop muttering away to yourself.” She
reached down and began tickling toward his groin, and he broke away.

  “Where is it?” he demanded.

  They dragged the mattress through, and stood panting with exertion on either side of it. Killion said: “You really do look absolutely wonderful.” There were tears in his eyes, and he did not look away.

  “Thank you.”

  They lay down, and started to begin the endless discovery of the pleasure of each other, and the endless pleasure of each discovery; while outside there was a faint, remote rumble which could have been shell-fire, or heavy traffic, or even a loose window vibrating in the wind.

  “If we had a house,” Margery said, “what would we call it?” She was frying eggs and bacon and mushrooms on a camp stove in Woolley’s billet.

  “Cléry-le-Grand.” Woolley was looking at a large-scale map, and drinking Guinness.

  “What? Seriously.”

  “Seriously, I can’t think of anything more serious than Cléry-le-Grand. Right now it’s just about the most serious little piss-pot of a frog pox-factory in the whole world.”

  She glanced at the map, and went back to spooning hot fat over the eggs. “It depends what sort of house it is, I suppose, but what if it was a, you know, biggish place, in the country somewhere. Like Hampshire. What about that? What would we call it?”

  “Dunromin. Taj Mahal. Justanook.” He rubbed a grimy thumb in his palm, collecting dirt off both surfaces. “Bide-a-wee. Cosycot. Cedar Lodge. The Moated Grange. The Station Hotel. The Bottom of the Barrel. The End of the Road. The Skin of our Teeth. The Broken Reed. Bottomsup.” He went back to the map. “Cléry-le-Grand.”

  “We used to live in a house called The Nest.” She forked out the bacon, letting it drain before she arranged it around the plate. “We didn’t give it that name, but all the same it made a difference. I mean, it wouldn’t have been the same if it had been called something else.”

  “We lived in hundred and ten Canal Row,” he said. “If it had been called hundred and twelve we’d have had our own lavatory.”

  She slid the eggs, one by one, on to slices of toast in the middle of the plate. “It does matter,” she said. “You give names to the things that matter to you, and where you live matters.”

  “As long as the postman puts the begging letters through the right door,” he said. He felt a throbbing strain at the outer corners of his eyes, and pressed them with his fingertips. Margery’s face was hidden by her hair as she bent over the stove.

  “I’d like to live somewhere nice, that was called something nice,” she said. The mushrooms were being dotted around the eggs, bright and buttony. “What I want more than anything is to have somewhere I can look forward to.” She put the plate in front of him, and he began eating.

  “I once had a week in a boarding-house called St. Monica’s,” he said. “What I look forward to is never seeing it again.”

  “Why don’t you want to live somewhere nice, for God’s sake?” she asked. “Haven’t you ever wanted a home of your own?”

  Woolley grimaced. “This bacon,” he said. “Bloody salty.”

  She reached forward and overturned the plate so that it landed on his lap. Mushrooms bounced about the plank floor. He stared at her.

  “You’re an absolute bastard,” she said. The tears came, and rapidly dissolved her angry expression to one of utter despair. Woolley sat, knife and fork in hand, and tried to think what to do.

  “Why do you have two watches on?” Jane asked. She held his wrist and smoothed the soft hairs on his arm.

  “Extra precaution,” Killion said, “in case one goes wrong. Hey! That reminds me.” He jumped up and went to his tunic. “I brought something for you.”

  He handed her his green silk scarf. “How beautiful!” she said. “You are kind.” She kissed him.

  “Try it on,” he said. She put it around her neck and let the points fall between her breasts. “What a perfect day,” she whispered.

  Force 10: Whole Gale

  Trees uprooted; considerable structural damage

  The following night Killion was awakened by the drumming of a loose pane of glass. He found his watch: 5 AM. The window frame vibrated steadily, producing a buzz like a trapped fly. Killion got out of bed and went over and rested his brow on the cold glass. He heard a dull thunder that was not the blood in his ears. He opened the door and listened. From the east came the roar of ten thousand blast furnaces. Killion stood and let the cold air chill him, as a kind of left-handed penance for not being at the Front where all that pounding and pulverizing of flesh and bone and blood with steel and explosive was taking place.

  Somebody walked past, and said: “Damn noisy, isn’t it?” It was Dickinson.

  Killion asked: “Is this it, d’you think?”

  “No, no. They’re just loosening up. The real barrage comes later.”

  Killion got dressed and went to the mess. He saw some figures on the roof and climbed a ladder to them. “This is definitely worse than Passchendaele,” Rogers was saying. “I mean, just look at it.” The entire eastern horizon was red. “It’s like the Great Fire of London, 1666.”

  “I suppose it is the Hun, and not us,” said Finlayson gloomily.

  “We don't have the guns to do a quarter of that damage,” Dickinson said, “and in this weather it would take a week to bring them up. Good God Almighty!” A huge explosion bloomed and reverberated on the skyline. “Somebody holed out in an ammunition dump.”

  As if this were a signal, the entire barrage magnified and intensified itself. Now the horizon was brighter, with little curling lights flaring into the glow. The battering clamor seemed to shake the air. “It’s not possible,” Rogers muttered. “No one can live through that.”

  “We kept it up for ten days before Passchendaele,” Finlayson said. “I wonder how long they’ll do it for?”

  “They don't have ten days to waste,” Dickinson told him. “I’ll give you fifty to one the Jerry infantry is drinking its Schnapps in the front row of the stalls right now.”

  Rogers produced a flask that had belonged to Church, and they circulated this while the appalling display went on.

  “How far are we from there?” Killion asked.

  “About twenty miles. Far enough,” Dickinson said. “Nobody’s advanced twenty miles in this war since the soldiers settled down to do their gardening.”

  A figure climbed on to the roof and came toward them. It was Gabriel. “What d’you think of that for hellfire?” Finlayson asked him sourly.

  “The Lord shall smite thee with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish,” Gabriel said firmly. “Thy carcass shall be meat unto all the fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth.”

  “It beats me why you want to fly with us at all, Gabriel,” Rogers said. “If that’s the way you feel.”

  “To me belongeth vengeance and recompense,” Gabriel told him. “Their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”

  “Ah,” Rogers said. “Well, I suppose that’s different, then.”

  “The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.”

  “How disgusting,” Dickinson declared. “I shall go and make them cook me some breakfast.” He climbed down the ladder. “The botch of Egypt, indeed! And the emerods …” His words were lost in the violent pounding from the east.

  Rogers and Lambert took off at first light to see what was happening. More than three hours after it began, the German barrage was still going full blast. They heard it through the clatter of their engines, but they could not see its results. Dense fog covered the Line. Whatever war was being fought below them was taking place either at the long range of bombardment or the short range of a brawl. It was curious. Rogers had flown over the Front many times, and he thought of it as two huge armies entrenche
d against each other, launching and repelling attacks massively and obviously; but now, he supposed, the fog must have dissolved the armies into isolated soldiers, each fighting his own tiny battle, with no way of knowing whether his side was winning or losing.

  Well, Rogers thought, it’s the same for both sides. Our chaps can’t see their chaps, but their chaps can’t see ours. And our chaps will be ready for them.

  Lambert, nervously watching a couple of single-seaters at height, thought: please God get me home, I don’t want to land down there … His face was twitching; he tried to stop it, and failed; looked for Rogers and couldn’t see him; lost track of position and direction and why he was up there at all. His brain moved with a mocking ponderousness, deliberately not helping. He panicked because he wasn’t keeping a look-out. Found his flask, gulped from it. Nobody fired at him. Rogers was alongside. Slowly his panic faded.

  The fog was still thick when they crossed the German Line, but it thinned out on higher ground. Rogers took advantage of the absence of flak to fly low. Everywhere that he saw ground, he saw troops moving up. The gray lines patterned the green-brown earth like odd bits of carpet. He turned north and searched for more openings and found more troops. They hurried forward, ignoring the planes. Other patches revealed supply columns, horse-drawn wagons, ambulance units, strings of gun carriages. Then more troops, more troops. More. Hurrying forward with the absorbed attention of worker ants moving their colony. Hurrying toward the square miles of deafening battering that had been provided to smash open the British Line for their benefit.

  After a while Lambert stopped looking. He had seen too many troops already. There was no point in measuring how much was too much.

  The sun was shining at two thousand feet, but it did no more than lacquer the fog. Rogers gestured toward home. As they recrossed the submerged inferno, they saw other aircraft, Germans, further down the Line. Presumably the attack was not considered a secret anymore, for nobody made any move to intercept. In any case, there was nothing anyone could do about the men in the trenches until the fog lifted. And precious little after that.