Bletchley grunted.
“How’s your sole, sir?” Rex asked.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Bletchley said. “This is not a war about boundaries.”
“Good Lord, no,” Rex said.
“I mean it’s not completely about boundaries.”
“Far from it.”
“This is a war about decency, about … about …”
“Spot more wine, sir?”
“Yes. Thanks. Decency, that’s what we’re fighting for. Thanks. Just keep that idea clear in your mind,” Bletchley said to Skull.
“That’s what really matters. Nothing else matters.”
“Not Poland?”
“Yes, Poland, for heaven’s sake! The Poles are a very decent people. They don’t go around beating up Jews.”
“Oh yes they do,” Skull said firmly. “The Poles beat up Jews regularly, vigorously and with every sign of keen enjoyment.”
“Rubbish.”
The adjutant caught a warning flicker of the eyes from his CO. “Skull, old chap,” he said, “change the record, would you? It’s getting a bit worn.”
Bletchley drank some wine and forced himself to smile. “Let’s face it, talk never won a war,” he said. “What you chaps need is some decent action. Then you’ll really have something to talk about.”
“It’s like playing cricket, isn’t it?” Rex said. “Waiting to bat is always the hardest … Your boy’s a pretty fair cricketer, isn’t he, sir? D’you think he’ll get a Blue?”
Air Commodore Bletchley visited the hangars and walked past the Hurricanes, slapping them on the engine-cowling as if they were horses lined up in stables. “Jolly good,” he said. “Now remember, Rex: keep your squadron on its toes. And if you ever need anything, call me at Headquarters. Goodbye.” He got into his car.
Rex went back to the mess, found Kellaway and Skull, and took them into a quiet corner. “What d’you make of all that?” he asked.
“Poland’s had it,” Kellaway said. “As soon as I heard him use that word ‘gallant,’ I said to myself ‘Old boy, Poland’s been scratched.’ It’s all over for them.”
“Skull?”
“Poland has been carved up by its neighbors for centuries,” Skull said. “I see no reason why it should not be carved up once again.”
“Right, we’re agreed. Forget Poland. So now the question is: What the dickens are we doing sitting here?”
“We’re waiting for Jerry to invade France, aren’t we?” the adjutant said.
“Are we? I’m not so sure. If you look at the map, we’ve got Belgium next door.”
“That’s the way he came last time.”
“Yes. And he got thoroughly bogged down.” Rex nodded at the drenched, drowned view of the airport. “What price Flanders fields in this weather? Frightfully muddy. Besides, it’s getting late in the year. No, I think we’re in the wrong spot, gentlemen. Nothing’s going to happen here.”
“And the right spot is where?” Skull asked.
Reilly wandered over and licked Rex’s hand. After a while Rex lay back in his chair, one hand propping his head, his faithful hound at his feet, and allowed a smile to play over his face. “The right spot,” he said, “is where danger lurks and honor beckons.”
Kellaway sighed. “I say, Skull,” he said. “Was all that stuff true, about Poland?”
“Was it true?” Skull was quite offended. “My dear fellow …”
“Sorry, sorry.” Kellaway sighed again. “Oh, well. I’ll go and see about a spot of tea, I think.”
Three days later, Hornet squadron was airborne again, flying southeast.
Below them, saturated fields gleamed and glistened in pale sunlight. The sky had a cold, scrubbed look, with leftover scraps of cloud swept along by a gusting, thirty-mile-an-hour wind. The squadron flew in a very loose vic at only four thousand feet. This was because Rex had Reilly in his cockpit, curled between his legs, and he didn’t want to distress the dog with extreme altitude.
They landed at Rheims, refueled, lunched, and flew on, this time more east than south.
The sun gained a little strength and picked out more clearly the wandering scars of old warfare. The pilots looked down on the marks left by mile after mile of trench-system. It was as if an endless furrow had been plowed out by some dreamy giant who had turned this way and that as he walked, opening the earth as easily as a finger splits a rotten seam; and had then forgotten it, abandoned it, left it to mend itself or not. Alongside it ran the remains of a smaller ditch: half an inch away from the air, two hundred yards on the ground; and running parallel with that was an even softer marking. These were the second and third lines of trenches. On the German side the same pattern repeated itself, one-two-three, like breakers picking up strength as they advanced. And everywhere the scab and pox of shell-holes. They spattered no-man’s-land with the frozen impact of rain-drops hitting water. They left a million craters on either side, and the afternoon sun caught them and counted them all. Twenty years of grass and weeds had begun to coat the damage, but it was a feeble answer to four years of high explosive.
Châlons was left behind them; then Sainte-Menehould; Clermont; Verdun with its fortress, its huge cemeteries, its ugly memorial tower. After that the land fell sharply to a wide plain and they reached Metz. To the north lay neutral Luxembourg. Forty-odd miles to the east they could see the haze of factory smoke that must be Saarbrücken: Germany.
They flew halfway to Saarbrücken and then turned south. Ten minutes later they landed at a small, all-grass airfield on the edge of somewhere called Lunéville.
The pilots went for a walk through the town. It did not take long. “What a hole,” Dicky Starr said.
“Someone has blundered,” Rex said. He looked very grave. “This won’t possibly do.”
It had to do, at least for a while. The convoy of trucks bringing the groundcrews, cooks, batmen and administrative staff arrived late that night, led by Kellaway and Skull in Stickwell’s Buick convertible, which had been smuggled over (contrary to all regulations) by an army-officer friend returning from leave.
They were all billeted in a brand-new block of flats with no heating and erratic plumbing. For the next week, Flip Moran commanded the squadron while Rex drove around the countryside in Sticky’s Buick, with the adjutant to navigate. At length he found what he wanted: an adequate airfield within striking distance of Metz and Nancy, a requisitionable château less than a mile away, some shooting in the surrounding hills, and good riding in the grounds of the estate. It was called Château St. Pierre. “Given a decent winter,” he told Kellaway as they stood on the terrace, “we might even get a spot of skiing in the Vosges.”
“Where on earth are we going to get skis, sir?” the adjutant asked.
“Wake up, uncle,” Rex said patiently. “This is war, when all things are possible. Remember?”
OCTOBER
1939
Fanny Barton rejoined Hornet squadron and found it a happy unit.
“This is a smashing place,” Flash Gordon said as he showed Barton over the house. “Lovely big bedrooms, a socking great library where we play ping-pong, jolly nice anteroom with a log fire and a bar …” He opened a door. “Look, this is the billiard room.” Barton glanced inside: two full-size tables, with deep leather armchairs all around. “Colossal, isn’t it? And there’s a swimmingpool in the grounds, and a tennis-court, and a thing for clay-pigeon shooting. We’ve even got a squash court! Must be the only one for hundreds of miles. Soon as we get some rackets, Pip Patterson’s teaching me how to play.”
Barton had never heard him talk so much. Flash Gordon was the man who listened, who laughed at the joke (slightly later than everyone else), who was on the edge of the photograph, half-obscured by the man in front. He always looked neat and squared-off, his hair cleanly parted and his features regularly distributed, as if his face were ready for kit-inspection. When people thought of him (which was not often) they thought of a uniform rather than a personality.
“Who owns this place?” Barton asked.
“Some Paris banker, I think.”
They went onto a balcony. “Not bad countryside, is it? The aerodrome’s on the other side of those trees. It’s just an emergency field, really, but Lord Rex is having it extended.”
“Lord Rex?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know? That’s what we call him now. It suits him, don’t you think? Some head waiter in Metz kept sucking up to him and saying ‘Yes milord’ and ‘Tout de suite, milord,’ so we just kept it going. The CO doesn’t mind. In fact I think he rather likes it. He’s a marvelous chap.”
Barton looked down at the wide, flatstoned terrace from which a flight of shallow steps led to a domino pattern of lily ponds. “Done much flying?” he asked.
“Bags. We haven’t shot down any Jerries yet, but that’s their fault. We never see them. Well, the odd Dornier stooges over at twenty thou but he always beats it before we can get near. We’re not allowed to chase them into Germany, you see. D’you speak French?”
“Not much.”
“The frogs around here all gabble away like mad … Still, they seem to know what we want. And some of the French popsies are really smashing. Très formidable.”
Barton glanced at him. “Where are you from, Flash? I forget.”
“North London. Hendon.”
“Oh, yes.” London: biggest village in the world. Barton realized what had happened: Gordon had finally left home. All his RAF training and service had been spent no more than a train-ride away from his parents in Hendon; now he was released, liberated, let off the leash in this wonderfully foreign country where everyone drove on the wrong side and drank wine night and day, and where sex was more than a technical possibility, it was a definite probability because it was a well-known fact that the French had virtually invented passion and they had definitely invented the brassiere, which meant that they knew how to get the bloody thing off, a problem that was often discussed in the mess, some saying that you could do it one-handed after a bit of practice and others claiming that they had encountered a species of safety-catch which obstinately defied all efforts, even using both hands and a pair of pliers. Flash Gordon listened to these discussions very carefully.
“Well,” Barton said, “I suppose popsies are much the same wherever you go.”
“Not these,” Gordon insisted. “These popsies are hot stuff. Just you—”
“Hello, Fanny.” Flip Moran stepped onto the balcony. “Did you get your ears repaired, then?”
“Yes, thanks.” Barton had rather dreaded meeting Moran again. “The doctors gave me some stuff for them.”
“Very clever people, doctors.” Moran leaned on the balustrade. It was impossible to tell if he was being sardonic; his Northern Irish accent put a heavy slant on every word he spoke. “You were away such a terribly long time,” he said, “we thought for sure the Air Ministry had given you a squadron of Spitfires all to yourself.”
“What? That’ll be the day.” Barton was damned if he was going to apologize; on the other hand they all had to live together and he wasn’t proud of his performance as acting squadron commander. “I don’t think I’m cut out for that sort of job. No, they made me stick around over there for the inquiry.”
“What inquiry?” Gordon asked.
“Into the Battle of Southend Sands,” Moran said. “Isn’t that what they’re calling it?”
“Yes.” Barton didn’t want to talk about it but Gordon still looked puzzled. “Where the Blenheim went down,” he said.
“I understand the man’s name was MacArthur,” Moran said.
“MacArthy.” Barton turned and looked away. There was absolutely no need for Moran to go into this sort of detail.
“Is that right? MacArthy, was it? He might have been Irish, you see.”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Well, whatever he was, I’m sure they gave him a proper send-off, poor fellah.”
“He got a military funeral.”
“Of course he did. After all, he died on active service, defending his country.”
Barton clenched his teeth. He felt resentment boiling up inside him but he knew that he simply could not afford to have a row with Moran. It was going to be difficult enough to be accepted back into the squadron as things were. “The inquiry completely cleared everyone in this squadron,” he said. “It was not our fault.”
“Of course it did,” Moran said. “Of course it wasn’t. MacArthy, MacArthy … I used to know a MacArthy, we trained together, he had this flaming red hair, an awful funny fellow he was, kept us in fits of laughter all the time … David McArthy.”
Barton stared at him. Moran’s broad black mustache hid any expression but Barton was sure Moran was lying. “Was he a small chap with big feet?” he asked.
“That’s right. That’s him.” Moran nodded vigorously. Flash Gordon smiled, just to make it unanimous.
“Couldn’t have been the same man,” Barton said. “This MacArthy was a big chap with small feet.”
“Ah. Is that right? Well, now.”
“And his name wasn’t David,” Barton said. “It was Henry.”
“Fancy that,” Moran said. “Well, we all make mistakes, I suppose, even the best of us.”
Rex was only a squadron leader but he knew his way around the Royal Air Force. He was a product of the RAF College at Cranwell. During the peacetime years, as he served in different squadrons on various bases, and as he went about the country to attend courses here and there on this subject and that (eventually even giving an occasional lecture himself), and as he flew in Fighter Command’s annual exercise, and took part in war games and ceremonial fly-pasts and official visits to aircraft factories—as he did his job, Rex kept in touch with his Cranwell contemporaries and his old instructors. He knew who was on the way up, who was on the way out, and who was too clever for his own good. He knew who could be flattered, who could be ignored, and who could be baffled with bullshit. It did him no harm that his father had been a Conservative MP who had served for a spell as PPS to the Secretary of State for Air; the old man still had a lot of contacts at the Air Ministry. “Some people say, usually somewhat bitterly,” he told his son, “that it’s not what you know in this world, it’s who you know. They’re absolutely right, of course. Knowledge is useless without friends. It’s an arrangement that’s worked damn well for me. Apply yourself, and I see no earthly reason why it shouldn’t work for you too.” Young Rex applied himself. By the time he took Hornet squadron to France he could manipulate the system more successfully than any other man of his age and rank.
In one respect he was lucky. He looked right. He looked just like a man who ought to command a squadron of fighters: taller than average, alert-looking, well-built, with a natural curl to his chestnut hair and a questing gleam to his eye. His mouth was wide and strong and ready to smile; his jaw had a tiny cleft; his nose was straight; his eyes were gray, and they expressed an unblinking self-confidence. Rex had worked hard and mastered everything the RAF could teach him about being a fighter pilot. He had the self-assurance that comes when you know there is no question you cannot answer. Rex knew his strength. When he arrived at RAF Kingsmere and dumped all Fanny Barton’s paperwork in the waste bin—the farmers’ complaints, the accident inquiry’s questionnaire, and so on—he knew that he could get away with it. The raid on the spares depot was rather more of a calculated risk, but not much: in time of war a fighter leader was expected to show powers of initiative when carrying out orders. Rex had got his squadron airborne and over to France, as ordered. That was the only justification he needed.
And he was popular. “Everyone’s been very chipper since he took over,” the adjutant told Barton. “Even Mother Cox has stopped biting his nails. The thing is, he’s such a tremendous wangled He wangler! our transfer down here when Pas-de-Calais got boring, and then he wangled a move to this drome, and he wangled the requisition of this lovely great house. He’s even wangled us some decent cooks, would you
believe. All the old sweats are being posted back to Blighty and we’re getting some top-line civilian chefs instead, chaps who’ve just been called up. God knows how he wangled that, but he did.”
“That’s nice,” Barton said.
“Well, it makes a pleasant change after the Ram, you must agree.”
“And after me,” Barton said.
“Oh, don’t talk tosh, Fanny. I thought you coped magnificently under really very difficult circ—”
“Yes, yes, sure.” Barton, having picked at his scabs, regretted it already. He said: “The only thing the CO can’t wangle, it seems, is a scrap with the foe.”
“True. Just before we came here, there was a spot of action, I believe, and half-a-dozen French bombers went to pot. Then some of our Battles trundled over to drop a few bombs and bumped into some Jerry fighters and had rather an unpleasant time. But now that Poland’s down the drain, everyone’s put up the shutters. Jerry doesn’t bother us and we don’t bother him.”
“Not much of a war.”
Kellaway laughed. “Fanny, you remind me exactly of a young chap who joined our outfit in 1917, during a bit of a lull. ‘This is a feeble sort of fight,’ he used to say. ‘Call this a war? It’s a swindle. I want my money back.’ Then all of a sudden the balloon went up again and he had all the war he wanted, and a bit more besides. That changed his tune in a hurry.” Kellaway stooped and tugged a frayed thread from the cuff of his trousers. “He was so keen! Keen as mustard. Trouble was, he didn’t have the faintest idea what he was getting into, and by the time he found out, it was too late.”
“What happened to him?”
Kellaway spread his hands. “Who knows?”
Barton found Rex in the squash court, playing Cattermole. They were using tennis rackets and a red rubber ball as big as an apple. It was too bouncy: the rallies went on and on and on, until the players collided, or tripped and fell. Sprawled on his back, Rex saw Barton watching from the gallery. “Welcome back!” he called, panting. “You’ve got ‘A’ flight again, Fanny.”
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