Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  “I don’t play in your backyard,” CH3 said. “Why should you play in mine?”

  Skull said: “What exactly did you do? If it’s not an impertinent question, which I realize from what you say it must be, so I withdraw it.”

  “I made my garden grow.”

  Skull looked at Jacky Bellamy. “When I knew lie was going to be here I checked the record,” she said. “Youngest American male to win a gold in the Winter Olympics. Bobsled. Also climbed a couple of mountains that nobody had climbed before. Won a few ocean races. That sort of thing.”

  “Goodness,” Skull said to him. “You were busy.”

  “I was, and it was all my own business. Nothing I ever did made a damn bit of difference to anyone but me.”

  “Look, you really can’t be the judge of that,” she said.

  He ignored her. “Which is why I never talked to people from newspapers. They were going to get it all wrong anyway. They always do. They sell their papers by telling people what they want to hear, and believe me that’s a long way from the truth.”

  She sat up. Her voice was still calm but her eyes were wide. “You mean for example reports about this war? About cities getting bombed, civilians getting killed?”

  “I mean like the sort of junk you just wrote about us.”

  “How can it be junk? I wrote what I saw.”

  The game had stopped.

  “Sure,” he said. “You saw the Dornier get hit and crash and they’re all dead. That’s fact. What you wrote about the way it happened, that’s junk.”

  “The way it happened?” She was puzzled. “It was a perfect interception, that’s all there was to—”

  “Wrong. That Dornier should have got away. Our tactics were terrible. We took half a year to get into position—all that wheeling and shifting and re-arranging formation, it was like Aunt Phoebe’s dancing class.”

  “It worked.”

  “What did you call it? Aerial chess? Hooey. It wasn’t even aerial hopscotch. We didn’t stalk that thing. We clumped around the sky like a herd of cows. We didn’t use the sun, we didn’t use height, we came in dead astern one after another as if we were taking it in turns to go to the lavatory.”

  “But it worked”

  “They must have been asleep.” Skull was listening carefully. So were two or three nearby pilots. “Those black-and-white wings of ours make this squadron stand out like a checkerboard. Any normal bomber crew would have spotted us first time we banked and gone like hell for home, but they just chugged along. Something was wrong, mechanical failure, oxygen, food poisoning, I don’t know what, but that wasn’t a normal Dornier 17. It was half-dead when we hit it. An angry canary could have brought it down.”

  That was too much for the listening pilots, and there were muttered protests. Jacky Bellamy sat back in her chair and looked at him seriously. CH3 said: “Now aren’t you sorry you asked?”

  She shook her head. “Asking is what the job is all about.” She got up and walked away.

  “Whose throw is it?” CH3 asked. Skull looked at the dice and frowned. CH3 sighed and scraped the counters into a heap. “Bloody woman,” he said.

  Fifteen minutes later they had built another game to a beautifully balanced struggle when a mess servant told CH3 the CO would like to see him in his office.

  The adjutant and Jacky Bellamy were there too, comfortably seated. “… and that was the end of him!” Rex was saying as CH3 came in. They chuckled. “Well now, Mr. Hart.” Rex took a pipe from a little rack on his desk and squinted into the bowl as if something might be hiding there. “My spies tell me you have been spreading alarm and despondency, contrary to section tiddly-pom of the Defence of the Realm Act.”

  CH3 said nothing.

  Rex began shredding tobacco and filling his pipe. “You have been trying to persuade Miss Bellamy that our successful destruction of an enemy bomber, without loss to ourselves, was a piece of monumental incompetence and an act of folly without parallel in the annals of the Royal Air Force.” He stuck the pipe in his mouth.

  “No, sir.”

  “Ah. You mean there is a parallel? Tell me about it.”

  “No, sir, that’s not what I mean, and you know it’s not what I mean.”

  “Oh. Do I?” Rex switched the pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Well, since you seem to understand me better than I understand you, perhaps you’d care to explain yourself.”

  “All right. Her report made the interception look like a triumph of military aviation. She suggests we won because we outflew the enemy. I don’t agree. I think our tactics were lousy and we won because we were lucky.”

  Rex lit his pipe and studied the American through the smoke. “I see. Now tell me, Mr. Hart. Would you say that the Air Staff, who saw fit to commission you and equip you with a Hurricane, are experienced and intelligent men?”

  “I guess they do their best.”

  Kellaway uttered a little high-pitched snort: whether of surprise or amusement it was hard to say.

  “But their best is not good enough for you. The Air Staff created the system of Fighting Area Attacks to destroy enemy bombers. I used one such Attack. We destroyed one such bomber. You, however, feel that we should have acted otherwise.”

  “Yes.”

  “You think that the combined and unanimous opinion of the Air Fighting School, the Air Staff, and the Commander-in-Chief Fighter Command, Sir Hugh Dowding, is wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think that a pilot officer with less than a month’s experience in France is qualified to rewrite the Manual of Air Tactics?”

  CH3 breathed in deeply through his nose. “Yes” he said. He heard the ice-cubes tinkle in the adjutant’s glass.

  “Why?” Rex was getting impatient. He tossed his pipe into a huge glass ashtray. “What makes you so amazingly qualified?”

  “Spain.”

  “Not good enough. Spain was a scruffy little civil war. An insurrection. No proper front, and lots of garlicky peasants getting their heads blown off because the anarcho-syndicalists wouldn’t take orders from the Marxist-Trotskyites. Typical dago shambles, in fact.”

  “The Germans learned a lot from it.”

  “Your side lost, I believe.”

  “That’s not the point. We should take advantage of the German experience and—”

  “My dear Hart, I’m here to smash the Hun, not to imitate him. Now, if you have any specific tactical proposal to make, I’m prepared to listen.”

  CH3 thought for a moment, and shook his head. “Let’s not waste each other’s time, sir. If you’re convinced the official tactics are right, you won’t budge whatever I say.”

  Rex stared at him for several seconds. “A piece of advice, Hart,” he said. “While you are in my squadron, if you cannot speak courteously, then better to remain silent. That’s all.”

  Skull had gone to bed, but Fanny Barton, Flip Moran and Moke Miller were still at the bar. “I take it you have been suitably chastised, young man,” Moran said. “Have a drink.”

  “More than chastised,” CH3 said. “I have been converted. I’ll take a beer, thanks.”

  “Converted to what?” Barton asked.

  “The new air tactics. Haven’t you heard? From now on we’re to attack the enemy in alphabetical order. I tell you, it’s revolutionary.”

  “But we won’t know the Jerry pilots’ names,” Miller objected. “Or am I being dense?”

  “Don’t worry, that’s only on Tuesdays and Fridays. Mondays and Thursdays we take off in order of height, shortest first and tallest last, and we attack in order of age, starting with the youngest. Shouldn’t you be taking notes?”

  “The pencil’s broken,” Moran said.

  “Also there’s a relationship between altitude and inside-leg measurement, but I’ve forgotten what exactly. I’m afraid Rex became a little incoherent after he chewed my head off and swallowed it.”

  “Don’t expect any sympathy from me,” Barton said. “You asked for tro
uble and you got it.”

  CH3 sipped his beer.

  “Let’s face it, old boy, you were talking a lot of balls,” Miller said.

  CH3 grunted. “I suppose the whole thing is a grim warning never to speak to the press.”

  “You can’t blame Jacky,” Moran said quickly. “If you say her story’s all wrong, she’s got to do something. She has to go to the CO. You gave her no choice.”

  “You don’t particularly like newspaper people, do you?” Miller asked.

  “That’s got nothing to do—”

  “All right, let’s forget it,” Barton said. “You’ve just put up a small black, CH3, that’s all. It’s not wildly important. Let’s all forget it.”

  Moran nudged the American. “You know what they say in England,” he told him in his heavy Ulsterman’s voice. “If you can’t say anything nice, then for the love of Christ don’t say anything at all.” He nodded sternly. “Begorrah,” he added. “Whatever that means.”

  Next morning Area Operations sent the squadron to patrol a section of the Maginot Line south of Strasbourg. The weather was a strange mixture of gusty rainstorms and bright, warm sunshine. When they flew through rain the clouds towered and overhung them, leaking blackness as if soaked in ink. When they reached sunlight the clouds became sparkling white terraces, hugely spaced. They were only at five thousand feet but the air was sharply cold.

  Rex allowed the formation to loosen when they met turbulence but as soon as they entered smooth air he called them together again. Only one aircraft gave him trouble. Yellow Three was frequently out of position, sometimes by as much as a length. Each time he looked around, it seemed, the American’s Hurricane was drifting away like a feckless child. There were no enemy aircraft about, indeed no aircraft of any kind to be seen except for one very highflying machine that Rex spotted when it was too far inside Germany to be pursued; but there was always the possibility of flak, and there was navigation to be done, there were landmarks to be looked for, weather to be watched. “Close up, Yellow Three,” he said yet again.

  “Closing up, Leader.”

  They hit the fringe of a heavy shower. Rain-drops smeared the cockpit canopy, coated it, got blasted away by the rush of dry air. Rex glanced to left and right. “For God’s sake close up,” he said.

  Pause. “Closing up, Leader.”

  “Look: what’s the matter with you?”

  No answer.

  “Jester Leader to Yellow Three, is your aircraft faulty?”

  “Not faulty, Leader.”

  “Are you unwell?”

  “Not unwell, Leader.”

  “Then for God’s sake hold formation. I’ve got better things to do than watch you all the time.”

  Long pause. Then: “Yes.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Rex looked across at CH3. The man wasn’t even paying attention: he was gazing up at the clouds.

  “Message understood, Leader.” Already, Yellow Three was ten feet out of position. Far away on the other side of the squadron, a burst of French flak soiled the sky. Rex ignored it. “Hopeless,” he muttered.

  When the squadron landed, Rex strode across the turf toward Fanny Barton. Barton saw him coming and raised a hand to forestall him. “I know,” he said.

  “You’re his flight commander, Fanny. Sort him out. Right?”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Good.” Rex turned away. “Now, where’s the only intelligent member of this squadron?”

  Rex’s rigger slipped the leash, and Reilly came bounding across the airfield. Rex ran lumberingly toward him, arms spread in greeting.

  Fanny followed CH3 into the flight commander’s office and kicked a chair as an invitation to sit. “I’m supposed to give you a bollocking,” Fanny said. “Frankly, I think it’s too damn childish for that. You do realize you’re behaving very childishly? You can formate as well as any of us, when you want to. Last night the CO put you in your place, quite rightly in my opinion, and today you do all you can to ruin the formation. I call that childish.” Fanny stopped speaking. He realized that the other man wasn’t listening. CH3 had put his feet on the table. His head was tipped back and he was blowing steadily at the ceiling, where a balsa-wood model of an Me-109 hung from a thread. His breath made the fighter sway.

  “Lovely little plane,” he said, almost to himself. “You know, Fanny, this is my third war. I should have learned how to lose gracefully by now, shouldn’t I? I can’t seem to get the knack.”

  Fanny thought about that for a moment. The most he had accomplished so far was the confirmed destruction of one Blenheim. He abandoned the idea of a bollocking, and sat down. “Three wars?” he said.

  “Yes. When we didn’t win in Spain I went to China and you know what? We didn’t win there, either. So I came back and joined the RAF. Nobody seemed to mind my depressing record.”

  “You know what the British are like. They admire a good loser.”

  “Mmm. Trouble is, I’m a bad loser. I remember we had one outstandingly good loser in Spain. We called him Harry because he was a Pole and his real name sounded like broken bottles. Harry was a great believer in showing the enemy who was boss. No dodging about: that was sissy. Fly straight and low and treat them with the contempt they deserve. I’ll say this for Harry: he knew which side the angels were on.”

  Fanny waited. “What happened to him?”

  “Oh …” CH3 stretched, and laughed at the memory. “Well, one day Harry told three of us we were going to demoralize the daylights out of some enemy unit or other. So off we went. In Polikarpovs. Ever seen one? Tubby little Russian biplane, not bad for combat, no good if you plan to fly through a hail of death. Not that I’d ever actually been through a hail of death, but when we reached the target we discovered it had a great number of German flak batteries around it. Let me tell you, Fanny: German flak is very good. Harry didn’t give a damn. Harry led us in at two hundred feet, straight and level, spreading a thick layer of contempt as we went. Not me. I took one look at that flak and I turned and I beat it. Harry and the others lasted four, maybe five seconds. Then the flak blew them away. Simply blew all three of them away: poof-poof-poof, just like that. It was really very funny, the way it happened. Like a Disney cartoon. I know I laughed all the way home.”

  Fanny did not smile. “No joke for Harry and his wingmen, though.”

  “Harry was a joke to start with.”

  “A very expensive joke.” Fanny stood up; he did not approve of making fun of war. “Now then: what’s to be done?”

  “Nothing.” CH3 swung his feet to the floor. “I’m not going to keep tight formation when we’re on patrol. It’s stupid. Eleven men watching each others’ wingtips and tails, while the leader looks at the sky? No thanks. I’ll make myself some space so I can stop worrying about a collision and use my eyes to see Jerry before Jerry sees me.”

  “If we all behaved like that,” Fanny said stiffly, “the entire squadron would be scattered all over the sky.”

  “Sure. That’s how Jerry learned to fly in Spain. They call it the finger-four.” CH3 spread his fingers like a fan. “Two pairs, wide apart. No sweat, and very useful.”

  “But no damn good for Fighting Area Attacks. They depend on tight formation flying.”

  “Yes. Another reason to scrap them.”

  Fanny stared. He felt both angry and baffled. “You’re bloody determined to go your own sweet way, aren’t you? Squadron discipline and loyalty and … and …” He couldn’t think of another word. “They mean nothing to you?”

  “Not a damn thing. I told you: I’m a bad loser: There’s only one thing I care about, and that’s not getting jumped by a Messerschmitt.” CH3 was relaxed and smiling; the fingers of his left hand beat out a happy little rhythm on the edge of the desk. “There were Messerschmitts around this morning, I’m sure of it. All that sun and cloud? Right up their alley. I could smell ’em!”

  “Pity you couldn’t see them.”

  CH3 looked at his watch. �
�How about some lunch?”

  Fanny did not move. He made his voice as flat and empty as he could. “You’ll get kicked out if you go on like this.”

  “So what? I didn’t ask to be posted here. I was very happy flying Spits at Hornchurch, you know.”

  “You might get sacked from that, too.”

  “Come on, Fanny. I’m hungry.”

  “You won’t cooperate?”

  CH3 walked to the door. “I don’t mind dying for freedom or democracy or King George the Sixth or whatever the hell it is we’re fighting for,” he said, “but I’m damned if I’ll die to satisfy Rex’s neat and tidy mind.”

  They went to lunch.

  As Rex came bustling downstairs with Reilly, heading for a teatime walk, he heard someone hammering in the anteroom.

  It turned out to be Moggy Cattermole. He was standing on a chair by the wall opposite the bar. “Hello, hello,” Rex said. “What’s all this?”

  “Squadron trophies, sir.” Moggy climbed down to give him a clear view of three wooden plaques, which he had hung on the wall. Mounted on the left-hand plaque was a fox’s brush. “You remember what a battle we had with that brute, up in the mountains? Worth recording, I thought.”

  Rex pointed to the middle plaque, on which was mounted a much longer tail. “Where the devil did that come from?”

  “Blunt end of a horse, sir. The one I shot after it went mad and tried to eat me. Very savage beast.”

  “Oh.” Rex flicked the tail with his gldves. “Horse, eh?”

  “Well, we had to pay for it, so I thought—”

  “And what’s this?” Rex craned his neck. “Looks like a boot.”

  “It is a boot, sir. The remains of one, anyway.” The sole had sprung loose, the uppers were scarred and stained, and the top had been very roughly chopped off above the ankle. “It came out of the Dornier. This was about the only thing we could find that was big enough to have mounted.”

  Rex sniffed. “Is it … um … empty?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.” Cattermole spun the hammer in the air and snatched at it. “I gave it a jolly good shake,” he said as he stooped for the hammer.