Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  “Steele-Stebbing,” Cattermole said thoughtfully. They had been sitting below the control tower for over an hour. The overcast flattened the day and pressed the life out of it. Most of the pilots were dozing. The portable gramophone had run down and nobody felt energetic enough to rewind it. “I knew a Steele-Stebbing at school. Nice lad.”

  Steele-Stebbing put down his book. “Oh, yes,” he said brightly.

  “He wanted to join the Church, but … Oh, well. Awfully sad.”

  Cox half-opened his eyes. “What?” he mumbled.

  “Expelled, poor chap. Caught the pox, you see. Got it from matron, actually.”

  “That doesn’t sound very likely,” Steele-Stebbing said.

  “No? Well, you know the chap best. Who did he catch it from?” Cattermole stared until Steele-Stebbing, unable to think of an answer, looked down. “Come to think of it,” Cattermole went on, “I knew another Steele-Stebbing at Oxford. Used to wear ladies’ clothes.”

  This time Steele-Stebbing thought of an answer. “Perhaps that was my cousin. Amanda Steele-Stebbing.”

  “Amanda? Funny name for a boxing Blue. He certainly didn’t have the figure for summer frocks. But then, neither do you, do you?”

  Steele-Stebbing knew that any answer would be dangerous, so he merely shrugged.

  “Really?” Cattermole went over and examined him. “Yes, perhaps you’re right. You do have the figure for it.”

  “Shut up, Moggy,” Fitzgerald said.

  “No, no. Iron Filings is right.” Cattermole began poking and feeling him. “He’s a bit flat-chested but he has the most exciting hips.”

  “Excuse me.” Steele-Stebbing got up.

  “And rather a nice bottom, too,” Cattermole said, as Steele-Stebbing walked away. “See how it goes up and down?”

  “Leave the blighter alone,” Patterson said.

  “Ah. The tea-boy speaks. What is it, tea-boy?”

  “Next time I’ll make it battery acid,” Patterson muttered.

  “Promises, promises! A word of warning to all you young lads. When Pip says he loves you … pay no attention. Pip toys with our affections. He—”

  “Shut your dirty, filthy, stinking trap,” Patterson said harshly.

  “You see?” Cattermole said. “So fickle. Only yesterday, poor Pip was pleading with me to rub tomato ketchup in his hair, he finds that very exciting, almost as thrilling as Steele-Stebbing’s bottom—”

  “Pack it in, Moggy,” Moran ordered.

  “Hey!” Flash Gordon seemed to come awake, although he had been staring at the clouds for a long time. “How would you …” He swiveled in his chair, searching faces, and ended on Renouf. “How would you destroy an Me-110?”

  Renouf was startled by Gordon’s glittering stare. “Well … uh … I suppose the … the thing to do is to try to take it by surprise and … uh … I mean if—”

  Gordon was shaking his head. “Get up close,” he said. “Stick your guns right up the animal’s ass. Blow the bugger to bits.”

  “I see,” Renouf said. When Gordon continued to stare, he added, “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Hitler. Without Hitler there wouldn’t be any 110’s to blow to bits. Would there?”

  “No, I suppose not.” Renouf was getting used to this.

  “Well, then.” Unexpectedly, Gordon put on a friendly smile. “Remember one thing, MacArthy. Bullets don’t kill the enemy. Fancy flying doesn’t kill the enemy. Only one thing kills the enemy, and that’s clear, logical thinking.”

  “Beautiful,” Fitz said lazily, and Gordon turned the smile on him like a fading flashlight. “But it’s not MacArthy. It’s Renouf.”

  The smile died. “What happened to MacArthy?”

  “Fanny shot him,” Moran said, and yawned. “Battle of Southend Sands. Remember?”

  Gordon nodded several times, the nods getting deeper and deeper. “No,” he said.

  “South End?” Haducek said. “Where is this South End?”

  “London. Between the East End and the West End,” Renouf said. Fitzgerald blew a raspberry.

  Haducek and Zabarnowski exchanged a few words in one of their languages. Zabarnowski said: “Was battle in the South End?”

  “Was cock-up, Zab,” Moran said. “Always cock-up.”

  The adjutant’s car came in sight. As it bumped across the grass, Barton and CH3 came down the steps of the control tower. Kellaway got out and spoke to Barton, who smiled, and went over to the pilots.

  “With effect from today,” he announced, “Pilot Officers Cox, Cattermole, Gordon, Fitzgerald and Patterson are promoted to the rank of flying officer.”

  Some of them cheered with a deliberate feebleness, some languidly applauded. “This will go down,” Moran said, “as the biggest mass accident in the history of aviation.”

  “I thoroughly deserve it,” Cattermole said, “but I do think, Fanny, that you might have left a decent interval before you promoted Pip as well. Damn it all, what has Pip ever done?”

  “Fallen out of airplanes,” Patterson said.

  “Exactly,” Cattermole said. “I mean, if you’re going to promote people just for doing bloody silly things like that you might as well make Flash an air vice-marshal.”

  “Hey!” Macfarlane said. “We don’t have to salute these elderly gents now, do we?” He had become quite daring since he had discovered that you could write-off a brand new Hurricane and be given a new one without so much as a reprimand. It wasn’t like school, where you got a telling-off for breaking a window. Not a bit like school.

  “Okay, uncle, now give us the good news,” Cox said. “Tell us you’ve sorted out our back-pay.”

  “Still working on it, Mother. No luck yet.”

  “Bloody hell. When’s it going to come through? I’ve got an overdraft the size of Ben Hur.”

  “Explain, please,” Haducek said.

  “Ben Hur, mountain in Scotland,” Patterson told him. “Very big.”

  “Pip jolly nearly made a joke then,” Cattermole said. “Go and lie down, Pip. You’re covered in sweat.”

  “Think yourself lucky,” Fitzgerald said to Cox. “My bank manager won’t let me have an overdraft.”

  Steele-Stebbing had come back and was keeping his distance from Cattermole. Now he raised his hand. “Sir,” he said to Kellaway, “is there any activity at Sector?”

  “Adj, not sir,” Kellaway said easily, and Steele-Stebbing flinched. “No, nothing doing. Somebody caught a Heinkel up in Norfolk, so I heard. Getting bored, are you?”

  “Try and speed up the money, uncle,” Barton said. “Can’t Baggy Bletchley do anything?”

  A telephone rang in the tower. A corporal looked out. “Scramble one section, sir. Patrol Hastings, angels ten.”

  Barton glanced at his squadron. His command. Death or glory was waiting up there. Maybe. “Green Section,” he said. Patterson and Renouf jumped up, grabbed gloves and helmets, and ran. “You won’t find anything,” Macfarlane shouted. “It’s early closing in Germany today.”

  He was wrong, however. They found a runaway barrage balloon at twelve thousand feet and shot it down. Renouf chased the tumbling, blazing carcass and got some useful practice at deflection shooting.

  After a few days, Steele-Stebbing asked for a few words in private with CH3.

  “Cattermole seems to have elected me his private and personal butt,” he said. “I don’t think I need go into detail.”

  “No.”

  “I can put up with the insults, they’re all rather schoolboyish anyway. And the practical jokes don’t matter. I’m used to sitting on collapsing deckchairs by now. It’s a bit of a bore, that’s all.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it is.”

  CH3 waited, but Steele-Stebbing didn’t seem to know what to say next. He chewed his lip, and frowned. The silence became uncomfortable. Eventually he half-turned away. “Well,” he said, “I just thought you ought to know.”

  “No, you didn’t,” CH3 said. “I’ve known all alon
g. It’s no secret, is it? Now you want me to do something. Right?”

  “I simply don’t understand,” Steele-Stebbing said. “Why does he pick on me? If I’ve done something wrong, or if there’s something I ought to be doing that I’m not doing, I wish someone would tell me. Then I’ll try to put the matter right. As it is … Well, to be blunt, I feel I’m being victimized, and frankly it’s unfair.”

  “Of course it’s unfair, you fool. So what? Life is unfair. The question is, what’s to be done about it? And I’ll tell you here and now: I’m not going to do anything.”

  “Oh no, of course not.” Greatly daring, he risked a hint of sarcasm.

  “Unless and until Moggy’s nonsense affects your flying it’s none of my business. I could make it my business, I suppose. I could make Moggy behave himself. That would identify you as the sort of man who can’t stand on his own two feet, who has to be given special protection. Is that what you want?”

  “No.”

  “Glad to hear it. If nobody else is going to help you, it looks as if you’ll have to sort it out yourself, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s settled then.”

  Macfarlane and Renouf were quickly accepted into the squadron. They knew they were in when they were given nicknames. Macfarlane became Bing because he kept playing Crosby records. Renouf, whose initials were N.I.M., was called Nim.

  The foreigners’ names were shortened to Zab and Haddy, but only for convenience. They were not popular. They either brooded or they bitched. When they talked to each other it was in some Central European tongue that sounded like wet barbed wire. Perhaps they felt homesick and lonely; who could tell? The only thing anyone was sure of was their opinion of the Hurricane. After every patrol, at debriefing, they expressed their contempt.

  Fanny Barton called Skull, Kellaway and the flight commanders into his room to discuss the problem.

  “It’s the others I’m worried about,” he said. “I mean, a kite’s as good as the pilot thinks it is, right? Once he starts thinking he’s sitting in a load of duff machinery, bang goes his confidence.”

  “So chop the miserable buggers,” Moran said.

  Barton sniffed. “Doesn’t look good, Flip. New squadron, new CO. Looks as if I’m not bloody trying.”

  “Besides,” CH3 said, “they’re both very good pilots.”

  “D’you know what I think?” the adjutant said. “I think they’re not really interested in getting Spits at all. What they really desperately want to get is some Huns.”

  “Very angry men, Zab and Haddy,” Moran said.

  “You mean, because we’re not getting Huns, they’re bitching about the Hurricanes?” Barton said. “That’s a bit boss-eyed, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, no!” Skull exclaimed. “It’s a perfect example of transferred hostility. Quite beautiful, in its way.”

  “God stone the crows,” Kellaway grumbled. “This is a fighter squadron, not a looney-bin.”

  “Could’ve fooled me,” CH3 said.

  “Um,” Barton said. “Okay. I’ll think about it. Thanks.”

  As they went out, Kellaway poked Skull in the ribs with the stem of his pipe. “Transferred hostility!” he scoffed. “Utter guff.”

  “On the contrary, you’ve just demonstrated it …”

  The voices faded. Barton stared at the wall. If they had been English, or English-speaking, he could have torn them off a strip and told them to stop binding and start pulling together for the common cause. But the buggers weren’t English. They didn’t believe in Westminster Abbey and Windsor Castle and cricket and Wimbledon and London bobbies and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and thatched pubs and village flower shows and all the stuff that Fanny had first seen on calendars sent to New Zealand by English relatives. God knows what they did believe in. Apart from killing Germans. Not much love left in Zab and Haddy. Just plenty of hatred, which they couldn’t switch off.

  Tricky.

  Haducek was sitting on the lavatory when the scramble sounded, which was why Nim Renouf took off with Moggy Cattermole as Yellow Section.

  The controller had one bandit for them, reported fifteen, one-five, miles northwest of Dover, angels eight to ten. Apparently the little blighter had been wandering all over Kent but there was so much mist the Observer Corps kept losing him. Now they’d found him again, and he was heading east.

  Correction, west.

  Correction, south. “Sorry, Mango Yellow Leader,” Snowball said. “Bandit is definitely heading south. What are your angels?”

  “Angels five.”

  “Mango Yellow, make angels six. Your bandit seems to be losing height.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Snowball steered them back and forth and up and down. Canterbury Cathedral poked through the mist like a mooring mast. Renouf watched Cattermole’s tail and covered the sky behind and above. Cattermole hunted the bandit. Once, there was a burst of flak about a mile astern, looking as small and innocent as smoke-smuts.

  “Mango Yellow Leader to Snowball,” Cattermole said eventually. “Fritz doesn’t live here any more.”

  “Steer one-zero-zero, Mango Yellow.”

  “We’ve been down that street, Snowball, and it’s empty.”

  “Bandit is still on the table, Mango Yellow.”

  “That’s us you’re plotting, Snowball. He’s gone. Scarpered.”

  “Steer one-zero-zero, Mango Yellow.”

  One minute later it was zero-two-zero. That became three-one-zero. Which became three-four-zero. Snowball held them on that course until he abruptly announced a new bandit, five miles south of Dover. “Vector one-four-zero, angels one, Mango Yellow,” he said. “Buster, buster.” Buster was the code word for maximum speed, short of pulling the tit.

  They came screaming over Folkestone and began slicing down through the top of the Channel mist at a speed that made Renouf’s eyeballs dilate and his toes curl. Cattermole leveled out at five hundred feet. The mist was not thick: the sea was just visible, a flat oily black like spilled creosote. There seemed to be no ripple; just an occasional white smear where a swell had stretched too far and split itself open. Renouf stuck behind Cattermole and tried not to blink. He was scared and exhilarated. No horizon, no sun, just this shapeless gloom that gave the frightening illusion of not moving. Then a white smear flicked past the edge of his vision and he put all his trust in Moggy Cattermole, who shouted, “Got the bastards!”

  Renouf glimpsed the edge of something on the water. Then Cattermole was turning, circling, shedding speed as he called Snowball. “Bandit’s down in the drink. Looks like a Heinkel 59 next to him. Damn foggy. Hard to see. Lost them for a sec.”

  Renouf trailed him around and around, the circle getting steadily smaller.

  In theory they were bound to find their target again. In practice Renouf rapidly lost all sense of direction: he soon had no idea whether they were north or south of that first sighting. Gray mist and black sea blurred into each other, endless, changeless, featureless. Again, it was Cattermole who found the enemy and who told Renouf where to look, far to the right. The silhouettes on the water were as soft as moths at dusk.

  The next circuit carried them, low and slow, straight over the two planes. An Me-110 had ditched, expertly. Oil skims trailed behind the engines like dull silk. Fifty yards away sat a big white twin-engined float-plane with prominent red crosses. Between the two, a rubber dinghy was being paddled. There were also numbers of seagulls wandering about the scene and one flew slap into Cattermole’s airscrew.

  The blades minced it into an instant flurry of bloody feathers. Most sprayed wide, but enough splashed onto the windscreen to blind Cattermole’s view ahead. As he climbed, he told Renouf to make the attack.

  Renouf turned and came down and gave the 110 a quick squirt that boiled a bit of sea, and he went up again. “Hello, Leader,” he called. “I think I hit the 110 but it’s sinking anyway. Wings are under water.”

  “Yes.” Pause. “Get the Heinkel?”
>
  Joke, Renouf thought; but only for a second. Cattermole didn’t make that sort of joke. As he swung the Hurricane, careful to turn through an exact half-circle, his mind was briefly touched by revulsion. He did not allow this emotion to affect his efficiency. Indeed, when he saw that the seaplane was taxiing, trying to takeoff, he welcomed the added challenge of a moving target.

  It was a biggish machine, the He-59: a biplane nearly eighty feet across, nearly sixty feet long, riding on twin floats that were each longer than a Hurricane. Apart from a red tail-band with a black swastika, the whole machine was painted white, presumably to show off its red crosses. It had three open cockpits. Renouf could see the crew quite clearly. They looked too small for such a big aircraft. He had a silly impression of children, caught joyriding. A single machine-gun opened up wildly, shaken by jolting as the plane gained speed. Renouf fired.

  The results were strange and spectacular. It was as if the floats struck flame from the sea. The further and faster the plane traveled, the more flame it struck, until it was leaving a long double track flaring in the gloom. Renouf suddenly understood: the floats were also the petrol tanks. His incendiary bullets had pierced them.

  He banked to make a beam-attack and felt slightly sorry for the crew, having to lay a great blazing trail. They wouldn’t have escaped anyway, but this was rubbing it in.

  So much fuel had been lost that the seaplane almost got airborne. It was coming unstuck just as he fired again, allowing half a length for deflection. It shuddered, the nose dipped, the tips of the floats dug in, and the whole heavy, complicated airplane performed a slow somersault. Burning petrol sprayed and made a broken necklace of flame.

  When Renouf came back, all he could see was the underside of the floats, resting uppermost on the water. He called Cattermole, and was told to climb above the mist. They regrouped and got a bearing for home.