Damned Good Show

by Derek Robinson

  “Nothing. I haven’t asked her.”

  Now Silk was shocked and bewildered. “It’s all your idea?”

  “Look, you know the score. I can’t give her what she wants. You can. Then I’ll be off the hook, don’t you see?”

  “You make it sound so simple. Just one problem: you’re married and I’m not.”

  “Who cares? Once the lights are out, Zoë won’t know the difference. All cats are black in the dark.”

  “I can’t believe we’re discussing this. It’s absurd.”

  “Don’t say no, Silko. Think it over. Sex with Zoë is fun,” Langham said miserably. “It really is the most tremendous fun.”

  3

  The ceremony of donating, naming and blessing the bomber was a great success. The sun shone. The entire squadron paraded. The band of the RAF played. Lady Shapland wore a dress of sky-blue silk topped off with a clever hat modeled on an RAF forage cap. Zoë wore a short coat and skirt of white linen with a scarlet headscarf and knocked her mother dead.

  Various people made brief speeches: an air marshal, the Secretary of State for Air, Group Captain Rafferty. Lady Shapland named the Hampden after herself. The Bible is notoriously thin on aeronautical advice, so the bishop made the most of Isaiah, chapter forty, verse thirty-one: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” He blessed the Hampden, and prayed that those who flew in it would smite the ungodly. The Wingco led three cheers and everyone except the air marshal flung his cap in the air, a pre-arranged spectacle for the benefit of Press photographers. Finally the officers and guests went to tea in the Mess.

  An hour later, Langham’s smile ached. Philly took him by the arm and steered him outside. “The British wouldn’t know a real sandwich if it bit them in the ass,” she said. “Those little triangles are pathetic. How you guys ever won India beats me. We’ll take a walk.”

  They strolled over to her Hampden. “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “For fun. Why else? Speaking of which, Zoë tells me you two are having trouble in the sack.” He nodded. “You don’t play Hide The Salami any more. Did used to. Don’t now.”

  He walked away, kicked a tire, came back. “There are some things you can’t buy. Not even you.”

  Her eyes widened. “If you can’t cut the mustard, that’s cause for divorce and I can buy that in ten seconds, don’t kid yourself, sonny.” She snapped her fingers. He saw that her hand was trembling. A pulse in her throat was throbbing furiously. One thing he had learned to recognize was fear. This woman was afraid. What a surprise.

  “Why make such a fuss?” he asked. “You’ve got a son in Africa, haven’t you? Rhodesia? Tell him to do his ghastly family duty.”

  “He can’t. When he was eighteen he had cancer of the testicles. Lucky to live, but he’s not a man any more. Men are so damn weak.”

  They walked on. For the first time in a month, he felt calm. “You’re a selfish bitch, Lady Shapland,” he said. “You’ve always got what you want, and it’s never enough. You’ll never see fifty again, will you? And you’re desperate for Zoë and me to breed, so your whole rich stupid life won’t be a waste.”

  “Congratulations, kid. I just cut you out of my will.”

  “There you go again. We speak different languages. You’ve bought a Hampden. So what? We lose a couple of kites like this one every month. Go ahead, buy another kite, buy two, it won’t replace eight dead men.”

  “They’re young, they don’t know what they’re losing. It’s harder when you get older. You’ll see.”

  “Highly unlikely.” He spoke so crisply that she was silenced. They walked back to the Mess.

  4

  That night he was on ops. The target was Gelsenkirchen but industrial haze blotted out the Ruhr valley and Jonty got hopelessly lost. Langham prowled around at fifteen hundred feet, searching and failing, breathing the chemical stink of a thousand factories. Even the searchlights were baffled by the pollution. In the end he gave up and went home via Schiphol aerodrome, which he could see clearly, and he bombed it instead. Everyone bombed Schiphol. It was the dustbin for leftover bombs.

  Still, the crew had earned their bacon and eggs, which they never got. Fog was thick over East Anglia, Kindrick was closed, Langham got diverted to West Raynham, canceled, diverted to Feltwell, canceled, and ended up at Abingdon in Oxfordshire, a big Operational Training Unit. Bombers were packed all over the field. No breakfast. They slept on blankets in a hangar. It was midday before they landed back at Kindrick. There was a flap on, reports of a German battleship in the North Sea, all crews to briefing, all Hampdens bombed up. Soon that got changed to mines: Gardening at Rotterdam. Fresh briefing. Then the mines came off and the bombs went back on again. No briefing. Nobody cared any more. Too much climax and anticlimax. At nine p.m. the whole shambolic op was scrubbed. Everyone cheered and headed for alcohol except Langham, who drove home through the mild and scented evening air.

  He was met at the garden gate by a delirious boxer puppy. It barked endlessly, scattering spittle, and leaped at his legs. “Get off, you brute!” he shouted, waving his cap at it. The dog jumped, trying to bite the cap. This was fun.

  “Don’t do that, darling,” Zoë called. “He’s just being friendly.”

  “Make the bugger shut up, then. I’ve got dirt on my bags.”

  She hurried down the path and clipped a leash to the dog’s collar. It stopped barking and began chewing her shoes. “He’s pure boxer,” she said.

  “He’s pure menace. What’s he doing here? You’re not looking after him, I hope.”

  “No, he’s mine, I bought him.” As they walked to the cottage the dog lunged to left and right, desperate to eat a flower or catch a moth. “Heel, boy! Heel, I say!” Encouraged, the dog lunged more fiercely.

  “You bought him. Why?”

  “Oh, because. You take him, darling. My hand hurts.”

  They went in. He tied the leash to the leg of a sofa. The dog raced away and was stopped, choking. “It can’t stay here,” he said. “It’s completely batty.”

  “No, he’s not, he’s sweet! Don’t you remember, you gave me that little porcelain boxer?” It was on the mantelpiece. “I’m all alone here. I need a friend. What’s the matter?”

  Langham was sniffing, slowly turning, searching. “Something smells in here. A peculiar stink.”

  “It’s not his fault, my love. He’s just a little doggie, you mustn’t blame him if he …”

  Langham was scrutinizing several dark patches on the carpet. “The damn thing’s crapped everywhere,” he said. He saw more. “There isn’t anywhere it hasn’t crapped.”

  “It’s not his fault, and besides …” She took a small bottle from a shelf and quickly sprayed the darkest patch. “There. Now I’ve covered up the nasty smell, so everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

  His nose twitched. “What is that stuff?”

  “Chanel Number Three.”

  He laughed so much that he had to sit down. The dog stopped chewing the sofa leg and began chewing his shoe. “Has this hound got a name?” he said.

  “Of course he has. I call him Handyman, because he’s always doing little jobs about the house.” That was even funnier. She smiled. It was a long time since she had seen him so happy.

  “He seems to have a taste for feet,” Langham said. “What have you been feeding him on?”

  “Jam doughnuts, darling. And beer. I read somewhere that dogs like beer.”

  Now Langham was too exhausted to laugh. “Jam doughnuts,” he said. “Beer. My poor sweet angel. You don’t know anything, do you?”

  “Well, daddy would never let us have pets when we were children.” She sat on his lap and unbuttoned his tunic. The puppy fell asleep with his mouth full of shoelaces. After a certain amount of kissing, she said, “Handyman’s not the only stinker here.”

  “That’s honest sweat.”

 
; “I’ll run an honest bath for you. Stay there.”

  The bath smelt powerfully of exotic oils and essences. “This isn’t Chanel Number Three, is it?” he asked as he eased himself into surprisingly hot water. No answer. His skin tingled in a way that he hadn’t felt since winter afternoons at Clifton, rubbing pungent embrocation on his shoulders before rugger matches.

  After a couple of minutes he found himself looking at an erection. He splashed it, but it didn’t go away. After ten minutes it was taller than ever. He stood up and watched it. Fresh air made no difference. “Come and look at this,” he called.

  She came in. “Well,” she said. “There’s a thing.” She flicked it gently with a fingertip. It shivered like a flagpole in a wind.

  “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “Well … promise you won’t be angry, because … the fact is, Flemming gave me some special bath salts. He said a handful might help but I’m afraid my hand slipped and the whole boxful went in.”

  “Flemming.”

  “Yes. He told me he trained as a vet.”

  Langham looked again. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

  “Come with me.” She led him out of the bathroom. “I’ll see if I can find a good home for it.”

  5

  Next morning it poured with rain. Handyman liked that. He romped around the garden and came in, soaking wet and muddy. “Who cares?” Langham said. “Worse things happen upstairs. Tubby Heckter bought it, for instance.”

  “Yes, I know. Silko told me last night. I mean yesterday. Some time, anyway.”

  “Good type, Tubby.”

  He chopped up a tin of corned beef with a handful of broken biscuits. Handyman wolfed it down and fell asleep. Now there was no reason to stay, so reluctantly he drove back to camp. His front wheels carved up the puddles and flung them aside.

  Silk was, at first, astonished. “Three hours?” he said. Then he was skeptical. “I don’t see how that’s physically possible,” he said. Finally he offered his congratulations. “It makes a nice change to hear some good news,”

  “And she’s bought a puppy to play with when I’m not there. Bliss reigns.”

  “Damn good show.” Silk nodded and smiled, and kept nodding. “Yes. I suppose this means your … um … offer, proposition, solution, you know what I mean, is now …”

  “Stone dead.”

  “I would never have gone ahead with it, anyway.”

  “Yes, you would, you liar.”

  “Well, only for your sake.”

  “Have you no shame?”

  “Three hours,” Silk said. “It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  That afternoon the rain cleared and Silk went up for a night-flying test. His Hampden flew perfectly until he came to enter the landing circuit and the undercarriage refused to go down. The hydraulic system had a fault, obviously. The back-up system was a bottle of compressed air. It didn’t work either. The pilot could pump the undercarriage down, by hand. The pump handle was locked solid.

  Silk flew out to sea, burned up some fuel, came back and used up most of the rest. The control tower cleared the circuit. He got the crew into their crash positions. He made his final approach as slowly as possible. Everything felt normal; he found it hard to believe there were no wheels waiting to take the bomber’s weight. Then he was skimming the ground, and the belly plowed into the turf, he heard the scream of tearing metal, the propellers sent up a green blizzard that turned brown, and Silk’s head got flung violently, savagely, from side to side.

  Everybody escaped. The next thing Silk knew, he was in the MO’s office, talking to both of them. If he looked at only one MO, that man drifted away and there were two again. It went on for hours. The MO thought he might have concussion. Double vision could be a symptom. Silk got packed off to a hospital in Cambridge. They specialized in this stuff.

  His eyesight cleared up after two days but they kept him for a week. When he got back to Kindrick he reported to his Flight Commander, who was not Tom Stuart but a new squadron leader called Frank Fender. “I’ve just taken over,” he said. “Stuart caught a packet coming back from Hanover, night fighter probably, badly wounded. I believe he made a forced landing on a fighter field in Kent. We shan’t see him in a hurry.”

  “Good God,” Silk said. “Fancy old Tom … Anybody else?”

  Fender opened a file. “As I said, I’ve just arrived. Let’s see … Tony Langham bought it over Osnabruck. Flak. That’s all.”

  Silk went to the adjutant’s office. His legs felt like stilts. “Why didn’t anyone tell me, Uncle?” he said.

  “Don’t be bloody silly, Silko,” the adjutant said, gently. He reached for the whisky bottle he kept in a desk drawer for occasions like this. There was always one chap that you thought would never get the chop. It had been the same in the First War. One chap would always come back, and when he didn’t, it was worse than dying. Uncle had seen it a dozen times. Silk looked stunned, like a boy who had walked slap-bang into a telegraph pole.

  PART TWO

  Risk Creates Optimism

  BEWARE INTRUDERS

  1

  409 Squadron’s death toll was typical. During the summer and autumn of 1940, more aircrew were killed in Bomber Command than in Fighter Command. But it was Fighter Command that gripped the attention of the British people, because summer 1940 was the time of the Battle of Britain. When it came to newspaper space, Hampdens bombing Germany could not compete with Spitfires and Hurricanes clashing with the Luftwaffe over England.

  At the height of the Battle of Britain, a bus came down from London to RAF Bodkin Hazel, a fighter aerodrome in Kent.

  The bus brought Air Vice-Marshal Thurgood and an aide, Squadron Leader Perry, plus foreign correspondents from the United States, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Spain. They were there because, increasingly, foreign newspapers and magazines were skeptical of British claims that Fighter Command was defeating the Luftwaffe. Some said that Air Ministry press releases were pure propaganda, written to boost morale, not to be taken seriously, especially when it came to claims of enemy aircraft destroyed.

  Well, Bodkin Hazel was at the sharpest end of the fighting, and Thurgood introduced the journalists to squadron and flight commanders. Fortunately, there was a scramble to intercept raiders and the visitors saw a mass takeoff. Not all the fighters returned. “They probably landed elsewhere to refuel,” Thurgood said. “Happens all the time.”

  When he had debriefed the pilots, the Intelligence Officer joined the journalists. Flight Lieutenant Skelton was in his thirties, tall, with a beaky nose supporting horn-rim glasses. His forehead was domed, his cheekbones were wide, his jaws narrow. His nickname was Skull. “Any luck?” someone asked.

  “One Heinkel 111 definitely destroyed,” Skelton said. “One possible.”

  The journalists made notes, but they were disappointed. Twelve Hurricanes took off. All they got was one lousy Heinkel.

  “To reach the bombers, our chaps often have to smash through the German fighter screen,” Thurgood pointed out.

  “Any losses?” an American asked.

  “One Hurricane,” Skelton said. “The pilot baled out.”

  “Even Steven, then.”

  For a final question-and-answer session, the correspondents assembled in a lecture room. Thurgood brought Skelton along for good measure.

  Everyone had been impressed by what they saw; nevertheless, their questions were still very pointed. What Was the proof that the Air Ministry’s scores were right? If so many German planes had been shot down, where were all the wrecks? According to the RAF, most of the Luftwaffe had been destroyed, but the raids seemed to be getting bigger, didn’t they? Thurgood did his best but the longer it went on the more his answers sounded like excuses, which annoyed him. He resented having to deny allegations of false accounting at a time when the very survival of his country was under threat from a foreign dictator who had made a trade of dishonesty.

  The meeting dragged
to an end. He knew he had not convinced them. The room emptied until only a couple of the correspondents remained, asking the same old questions in different words. Thurgood forced a smile. “If you think so little of our claims,” he said, “why not go to Berlin and check theirs? The Lufwaffe’s scores are absolutely preposterous!”

  One of the journalists looked at Skelton. “D’you have an opinion?” he asked.

  “Undoubtedly the Luftwaffe’s claims are inflated,” Skelton said. “It’s a natural phenomenon. High-speed combat invariably has that effect. Airmen are not ideal witnesses. Risk creates optimism, and optimism creates—”

  “Wait outside, Skelton,” Thurgood said stonily. When the journalists had gone, he recalled Skelton and blasted him for his interfering stupidity. The Intelligence Officer was unmoved. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, sir,” he said. “But what the Luftwaffe claims is beside the point. Proving them wrong doesn’t prove us right. If we believe our own lies we merely deceive ourselves and, by so doing, we aid the enemy. Surely that’s self-evident.”

  “Don’t preach to me, flight lieutenant.”

  Skull twitched his nose and made his spectacles bounce. “Preaching assumes moral alternatives, sir. War allows us no such choice. We cannot award a fighter pilot his kill just because we feel he deserves it. The truth—”

  “Get out.” Thurgood sounded sick, and looked even sicker. Skelton hesitated. The air vice-marshal grabbed the nearest weapon and hurled it at Skelton’s head. It was a half-pint bottle of ink, government issue, short and chunky, and it should have cracked his skull. It missed by an inch and smashed a framed portrait of the King in RAF uniform. Ink drenched the wall. Squadron Leader Perry seized Skelton and hustled him out and kicked the door shut behind them. “You maniac,” he said. “Bugger off and hide! Understand? Hide.”