Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  When he woke up he was in the back of a car, traveling fast along a smooth, straight road. His throat was sore and he was painfully thirsty. He moved and groaned. A French army officer in the front seat turned and smiled. “Ça va?” he said. Patterson tried to swallow but it hurt too much. The officer produced a vacuum flask and gave it to him. Milky coffee. Patterson drank it all. When he returned the flask he saw that the driver was an Arab soldier, and memory rushed back.

  “Heads,” he said. “Two heads.”

  “Ah, you saw them?” the officer said. “German airmen. Their machine crashed. My regiment does not concern itself with prisoners, you understand.”

  “They wanted mine. My head.”

  “You were un aviateur, they knew by your boots. Et probablement un boche, non? Cependant … you had luck. They found a map, a carte Michelin, here.” He touched Patterson’s right boot. “So they telephoned for me.”

  The sky was beginning to lighten. Patterson lay on the seat with his hands under his head and let the black blur of the countryside speed past his eyes. Everything was going on at once inside his head: dogfights with 109’s inside the Arab hut while he swung from his parachute and shotguns blazed like searchlights so he put up his hand to stop them chopping off his head, and the treetops jabbed at his face …

  “Those two heads,” said the officer. “I cannot be sure they were German. I myself have not seen the machine. Peut-être ils sont descendus par parachutes, n’est-ce-pas? But one was blond, I think.”

  “Some of my best friends are blond,” Patterson said. The officer chuckled.

  They took him to Mailly-le-Camp, declined his offer of breakfast, and drove away. That was when he saw the dog Reilly.

  One of the cooks found him sitting by the body, crying. He took him to the mess-tent and gave him coffee spiked with rum. Skull was the only other officer who was up. He came and talked and listened but Patterson didn’t make much sense because he never completed a sentence, he kept remembering something else and sometimes he couldn’t think of the right words and his head trembled with the awful effort of capturing them. He began telling Skull about the Arab soldier and his big knife. “It was …” Grimly he hunted down the word. “Sharp,” he said at last. “It was so bloody sharp”

  “What was, old chap?” Skull asked.

  Patterson gazed at him for a long time. “Can’t remember,” he said miserably.

  Skull gave him a shot of rum. He liked it, so Skull gave him another and put him to bed. He seemed to fall asleep at once, but he muttered a lot. Skull closed the tent-flaps and left him.

  Fanny Barton awoke at six and got up at once. He felt slightly brittle but not seriously hung-over. The day had begun and he was keen to start work: he was, he remembered with a surge of pride, the CO of this squadron.

  After that, everything conspired to give him encouragement. His batman brought him fresh coffee and hot shaving-water: the bust pipe had been mended. Skull strolled by and told him that Pip Patterson had turned up and that Flip Moran had been found: the land-line to Area HQ was working again. One by one, all of yesterday’s anxieties disappeared. Barton luxuriated in the delight of shaving off three days’ stubble and told himself that CH3 had been absolutely right. Worrying was a mug’s game.

  On his way to see Micky Marriott about the Hurricanes he noticed the body of the dog. It was attracting a lot of flies. He took it by the legs, dropped it into a slit-trench and kicked dirt over it, thinking: A week ago I couldn’t have done this, it would have been unthinkable. He strolled on, pleased at his progress.

  Most of the others were up when he got back. They were hanging about the mess-tent, waiting for breakfast. It was correct form to salute the CO and call him “sir” the first time you met him in the morning, and everyone did. He enjoyed that. “Morning, chaps!” he called. “Heard the news? Flip Moran’s alive and Pip’s back, so things could be a lot worse, right?”

  “Pip’s in here, sir,” Cox said. “He’s still a bit pissed.”

  Barton went into the tent. Patterson was slumped in a camp-chair, resting his head and arms on a trestle-table. His eyes were almost shut. Except where it was grimy and bloodstained his face was off-white, like newsprint. “Welcome home, Pip,” Barton said.

  No response.

  “He’s completely whacked, poor chap,” Skull said.

  “Landed in some frog officers’ mess, I expect,” Fitzgerald said. “Been soaking up the five-star brandy all night.” He funneled his hands and bawled into Patterson’s ear: “Is that right, Pip? On the razzle, were you?” Patterson’s eyes flickered once.

  CH3 squatted and studied him. He felt his pulse and touched his forehead. “He needs a doctor, Fanny,” he said.

  “He needs a bucket of Alka-Seltzer,” Cattermole said. “Followed by a nice battle-climb to twenty thou.”

  “Listen, Fanny,” CH3 began, but Fitzgerald interrupted with a great shout: “Zut alors! Mon Dieu, voici le général Delacroix! Bon jour, mon général!”

  It was the adjutant. He was looking for Barton, but Fitz and Cox and Cattermole made a loud and extravagant show of greeting him in bad French. Kellaway waved them aside with his clipboard. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “I’ve had another signal from Rheims. It seems that Flip took a bullet in the foot. He’s in a hospital at St. Quentin. No replacements available.”

  “Very good,” Barton said.

  “And the squadron’s to be ready to move north at short notice.”

  “I see. Is that all, adj?” The cooks were bringing in trays of eggs and bacon. A tea-urn got heaved onto the table, and Barton pointed at it. A cook drew off a steaming mugful and gave it to him. Rank has its privileges.

  “I don’t want to bother you with a lot of bumf, sir …” Barton waved the idea away. “It’s just that some letters ought to go off as soon as poss,” Kellaway said. “Next-of-kin stuff.” The adjutant was speaking quietly but the others heard him and fell silent. “Miller and Lloyd, and …” Kellaway adjusted the papers on his clipboard. “And Rex, of course.”

  The only sound was the soft sizzle of bacon and the slap of the cooks’ spatulas as they filled the plates. Barton was staring out of the tent, watching the clouds blow by. “Of course,” he said.

  “No problem about Lloyd and Miller,” Kellaway said briskly. “I can draft something for you to look at, perfectly straightforward and routine … No, not routine, far from it, but … Anyway, no problem. And I can put up a few suggestions for the other one, if you like.” Barton nodded. “Although it would help,” Kellaway said, “if I knew something about how it happened.”

  Patterson heaved himself up from the table and propped his face on his fists.

  “Yes, I see,” Barton said. “Mind you, it was all rather sudden. Rex was leading, of course.”

  “Rex leading …” Kellaway made a note, and added: Vanguard. (Spearhead?) Hot pursuit.

  “He ran into a couple of 109’s,” Barton said. “And that was that, really.”

  Kellaway wrote. “Outnumbered,” he murmured. “He set his personal safety at naught.”

  Barton grunted. “I suppose you could say the squadron won’t be the same without him.”

  “Sorely missed,” Kellaway remarked.

  “No,” Barton said. “Just put: the squadron won’t be the same without him.”

  The adjutant glanced inquiringly; but Barton had nothing to add. “Jolly good,” he said. “I’ll get cracking, then.” He went out.

  Everyone relaxed at once. Everyone moved, or scratched, or coughed, or swung his arms. There was an air of relief as keen as the smell of bacon. “Let’s eat!” Barton said. CH3 got a mug of tea and put it in front of Patterson. Steam rose and made him blink.

  They sat and ate. For a while the only sound was the scrape of knives and forks on metal plates. Patterson watched, his eyes half-open.

  “How’s the war getting on, Skull?” Fitzgerald asked. “Got any half-time scores?”

  “Sorry. Haven’t the vaguest idea.
”

  Cox said: “Fine intelligence officer you are. Can’t you even make up some rumors?”

  “The skies of Flanders,” said CH3, and paused to swallow, “are thick with German parachutists disguised as nuns. They machine-gun innocent children as they float down.”

  “Bloody good shots,” Barton said.

  Patterson tried to speak and could only croak. They waited, interested, while he took a sip of tea. It stung his lips. “Who shot the dog?” he asked huskily.

  Cattermole raised his fork. “I, said the Mog. I shot the dog, in mistake for a frog.”

  Fitzgerald groaned. Cox blew a raspberry. Patterson picked up his mug and flung the tea in Cattermole’s face. It was hot enough to hurt. CH3’s warning shout came too late for Cattermole to do more than throw up an arm. That couldn’t save his face. The shock and the pain knocked him off his chair. He rolled from side to side and moaned like someone winded and fighting for breath. “What happened?” Fitzgerald asked. He had been rubbing sleep from his eyes and he’d missed it all.

  One of the cooks got to Cattermole first. He ripped off his apron and wrapped it around Cattermole’s face so that it covered everything except his mouth. The others gathered around. CH3, however, went to Patterson and removed everything throwable from his reach. Patterson did not notice. He had got to his feet and was shouting, furiously but incoherently. Spittle ran down his chin, and a tremor shook his left arm.

  Quite soon, Cattermole got his breath and stopped moaning. He sat up, holding the apron to his face, and let it slip until his eyes were exposed. “You maniac,” he said.

  That silenced Patterson, but only for a couple of seconds. He cackled with laughter, and waved a derisive finger. “Can’t take it, can you?” he cried. “You can dish it out but you can’t bloody take it. Who killed Dicky Starr, eh? You did, you murdering bastard! Just like you nearly killed poor old Sticky! Couldn’t get him killed but you got him chopped!” Patterson was hoarse, and his voice kept cracking. A sneer of contempt hooked up a corner of his mouth and exposed his teeth. “You’re damn good at that, aren’t you, Moggy? You killed Rex, too! Cunning bugger! You got us silly sods to do it for you!” Patterson was beginning to cry. “Who’s going to be left at the end? Just you? Don’t bet on it, chum.” The tears were coming fast, now; his left arm was shaking so that his knuckles rattled on the table. “Don’t bet on it! You won’t kill me like you killed Dicky and … and …” Patterson broke down.

  CH3 took his arm and led him out.

  They helped Cattermole up and sat him on a chair. Cautiously, he removed the cloth. His face was lobster-red, as if he had fallen asleep in the sun. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m not so sure about him.”

  “He was in a bad way when he got here,” Skull said. “He kept jabbering about having his head cut off.”

  “Bloody good idea,” Cattermole said. “Anyone got a knife?”

  That broke the tension, and they laughed. A medical orderly hurried into the tent. While he treated Cattermole they got on with breakfast. Cox said, “D’you think Pip’s going to be fit to fly, sir?”

  “We’ll see.” Barton was getting the hang of command: just because you were asked a question, it didn’t mean you had to give an answer. “I don’t know what he does to the enemy, but by God he frightens me,” he said, and they laughed some more. When CH3 came back and said that he had put Patterson to bed and left his batman to watch him, Barton thanked him and forgot about Patterson. He didn’t actually need Patterson. The squadron was short of Hurricanes. What mattered was making the surviving machines airworthy and getting them back into action, damn fast. Patterson could wait.

  The adjutant looked up from his paperwork, saw one of the riggers cycling across the field, and suddenly remembered Flash Gordon.

  Flash was in his pajamas, sitting on his camp bed, rubbing the grime from between his toes. “Hello,” he said.

  “Sleep well?” Kellaway asked.

  “Dreams. Too many dreams.”

  “Ah, don’t we all?” He sat on the bed. Flash looked ten years older, he thought: pouchy eyes, grim mouth, none of the old fizz. “I’ve got some news for you,” Kellaway said.

  “Ever shot a little old lady, uncle? I must’ve got about forty of them yesterday. Bit of a walkover, really. They didn’t put up much of a fight.” He rubbed an ankle, and got more grime off that.

  “Tell me.”

  Flash put his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands. “I just did,” he said.

  Kellaway waited, but Flash had no more to say.

  “Well, I only came over to tell you that Micky told me he bumped into your charming wife as he was going out yesterday,” Kellaway said.

  “Nicole got here?”

  “On a bicycle, apparently. Micky told her you were in Belgium, returning God knows when, and from the way she was talking it seems quite likely that she decided to head in the same direction. Probably halfway there by now.”

  “Unless,” Flash began, and had to stop and swallow a couple of times. “Unless something happened to her.”

  “Well … I suppose some of the roads are a bit dangerous now. Still …”

  “Anything’s possible, uncle. Anything. Christ Almighty …” Flash stood up. “Christ Almighty. That really has put the tin hat on it, that has. Christ Almighty.” His voice had begun to shake.

  “I expect she’s perfectly safe, old chap.”

  “I could have shot her, uncle. Maybe I did. Maybe I did shoot Nicole. They were all just refugees. God knows where they were going.”

  “No, no. Chance in a million, old boy. Forget it.”

  “I could’ve shot her. How do you know I didn’t?” Flash gripped the tent-pole, squeezing hard. “I mean, Christ Almighty.”

  Kellaway tipped his cap back and scratched his head. “Look: Pip’s all right,” he said, “and Flip’s nearly all right, so I bet Nicole’s all right, too.” He knew it wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do.

  In fact at that moment Nicole was safe and well and in good spirits.

  She had walked five miles the previous evening and found a barn with fresh straw to sleep in. She was up at dawn, washed in a cattle trough, and walked another three miles to a village, where she got a breakfast of coffee and bread. She felt good. It was a clear, pleasant day and the walking had given her a sense of accomplishment. Belgium couldn’t be far. She was convinced she was doing the right thing. To sit in Mailly-le-Camp while Flash was in Belgium would have been stupid. Boring and pointless and intolerable. Too many people treated the war as an excuse to stop trying. Nicole was a doer. She didn’t believe in waiting for someone else to come along and solve your problem.

  Then someone came along and helped to solve hers. He was a man on a motorcycle, a medical student trying to get to his home in Valenciennes. He offered her a lift. Valenciennes was just where she wanted to go. They could be there by afternoon.

  It was a large machine and he liked to go fast, but the further north they went the worse the traffic became: a blaring confusion of military vehicles and plodding refugees. About midday the whole weary mess came to a halt. The student took to the grass verge and after a couple of miles they reached the blockage. It was a crossroads, thoroughly cratered and strewn with burning vehicles, dead horses, bits of people. The student stopped to see if he could help, and in the next five minutes the Stukas came back to bomb the crossroads again.

  He started his motorcycle and Nicole got on the pillion. They were well away from the crossroads when the first bombs fell, and the road was clear: everyone else had run into the fields. He got the machine into top gear and raced down the crown of the road. Nicole’s hair streamed in the wind. She linked her fingers, hugging his body, resting her chin on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed and she took pleasure in the speed and in their escape.

  An hour earlier, a couple of empty wine-bottles had rolled off a cart and broken in the road. Nicole never saw them, and the student saw them too late. His front tir
e was slashed open. The wheel skewed wildly to the left and the machine bucked, catapulting them both ahead. Nicole’s eyes opened to show her a bright blur of green and blue, and then the road rushed up and smashed her.

  Fanny Barton made CH3 an acting flight commander.

  “That’s in case I snuff it,” he said. “You haven’t got a flight to command right now. Micky Marriott says Fitz’s kite has had it. That leaves four: you, me, Moggy and Mother.”

  “Flash?” CH3 said.

  “Dead loss. Looks like a zombie with a flat battery. He and Pip make a fine pair. What did you make of Pip’s moment of madness, by the way?”

  “I reckon he’s near to cracking up. He needs care.”

  “Hmm. I still don’t see why he had to be so shitty to Moggy.”

  “Well, Moggy’s a shit, Fanny. Pip was right: Moggy does like killing people. He’s a very nasty piece of work, is Moggy. You don’t know how lucky you are to have him.”

  Barton looked hard at CH3 to be sure he wasn’t joking, and then shouted for Cox and Cattermole.

  “We’re getting out,” he told them all. “They want us at Berry-au-Bac, nearer where Jerry’s broken through the Ardennes. Berry’s only about eighty kilometers from here so while we’re up we’ll go and look for trouble. We’ve been given the patrol line Vouziers-Rethel. Tactics are simple. We fly loose and staggered, like yesterday. Keep your heads turning. If you see anything, shout. And if it comes to a scrap, get in close, hammer the buggers and get out fast. Okay? Any problems?”

  “I could do with some cash, Fanny,” Cox said. Cattermole sighed, and shook his head. “Well, I’m broke,” Cox protested. “I spent all my francs at that restaurant, and we haven’t been paid for a week, and I need toothpaste.”

  “Mercenary thug,” Cattermole said.

  “You can call me what you like,” Cox said, “just as long as it’s understood that I’m only in this for the money.”

  “Me too,” CH3 said. “Listen, Mother: I can lend you, say, fifty francs at seventeen and a half percent.”