2
The obvious thing for Silk to do was get a haircut. His hair was so thick that it bulged out around the sides of his cap. Hazard kept telling him it needed cutting. But the barber on the base was a butcher, so that meant driving to Bury St. Edmunds, where there was a man who understood hair. Too bad he didn’t understand people. His hobby was collecting postage stamps. No: his real hobby was talking about them, endlessly, tediously. Silk forgot about a haircut.
He had a golf club, good condition, one previous owner, collided with a Hampden in eight-tenths cloud over Krefeld. If he could find a golf ball he could whack it around the aerodrome. He was scrabbling in the back of a drawer when he pulled out a photograph, several photographs, some taken outside a cathedral, others at a wedding reception, and one taken during a briefing by Pixie Hunt at RAF Kindrick. Pixie of the piercing eyes. Well, Pixie was gone. They were all gone. Silk burned the snaps in an ashtray. “I don’t wish to discuss it,” he said aloud, to nobody.
He drove out of camp in the Frazer-Nash. “Nobody left it to me,” he said. “I won it in a raffle. Kindly leave the room.”
He stopped at the first village he came to. It had a pub, the King William, and he wanted a pint of beer, but if he went inside they would all look at him, at his wings, at his face, and nobody would say anything until some stumpy-toothed, bald-headed farm laborer came up to the bar for a refill and said, “Day off today, then?” And Silk would agree, he wasn’t actually flying at that particular moment, and the man would say, “I was at the Somme, you know. Not like this, it wasn’t.” You couldn’t go into a pub without meeting a boring old fart who told you how lucky you were, not dying of trenchfoot at the Somme.
So Silk went to the village shop instead. Bought a small loaf, two apples and a bottle of milk. Sat on a bench at the edge of the village green. It was a big green, and some boys were playing cricket. How frightfully English, he thought. Pub, church, cricket, and here comes a haywain with a couple of immensely patriotic cart-horses. The batsman took an almighty swing and hit the ball higher than the elms. It fell about ten feet short of Silk and bounced over his head. A boy came running.
“This place is worse than Bremen,” Silk said.
The boy fetched the ball and trotted back. “What’s Bremen like?” he asked.
“Not cricket.”
The boy looked at him, decided not to risk another question, and returned to the game. The sun shone, the church clock sounded the hour, and another bloody haywain came around the corner. Silk felt totally out of place. He tossed the food into the car and drove away.
After a mile or so he reached a wood. Nothing majestic; just a tangled mass of silver birch, ash, sycamore, a few beech, the occasional oak. He liked trees. He enjoyed watching the top branches wave in the wind and hearing the whispered conversation of the leaves. That was a thoroughly sentimental idea and one which he would never have mentioned to his crew. They were in Newmarket, flashing their half-wings at floozies in pubs. He’d seen enough uniforms for a while. Enough floozies, too. A gap in the wood looked as if it might be a track, so he turned into it. The Frazer-Nash mowed down grass and thistles, and after fifty yards he stopped. This was as good a place as any to eat his lunch.
Food made him drowsy. He curled up in the back seat of the car with his hat over his eyes and fell asleep.
The usual dream came along. He half-rolled the Wimpy, a pointless maneuver and strictly forbidden by the manufacturers. Now the kite was upside-down and everything was falling off the instrument panel: first the boost gauges, then the flap control lever and the altimeter and the air speed indicator and more; they all dropped to the roof. Without them, he couldn’t land. But he didn’t care. He’d had this dream many times before, he knew that landing was impossible when inverted, so there was no point in worrying. One small problem. How to drop the bombs? Damn things were a nuisance, get rid of them. He pulled the jettison control lever and it came away in his hand. Fat lot of use that was. He dropped it and it fell past his face. Damn. They’d make him pay for it. He’d signed for this kite, and what you lost, you paid for. Sure enough, here was the Engineer Officer, poking him, what a mannerless bastard. Silk took a long time to wake up, and it wasn’t the Engineer Officer. It was Zoë. Well, that couldn’t be right. He let his eyelids close. Back to sleep. “Come on, Silko,” she said. “Hit the deck.”
Gradually he became completely awake. She was kneeling on the front seat, looking like an angel who had missed too many hair-dressing appointments. A rather weather-beaten angel. In a grubby green sweater with a hole in the elbow. “That’s the navy,” he said. “We never hit the deck. Our batman wakes us with a nice cup of tea.” He sat up and scratched his ribs. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“What an asinine question, even by your standards … Oh, look. Milk.” She drank from the bottle.
“You never used to touch the stuff.”
“Things have changed. You’ve changed. You’ve got more lines than Clapham Junction.” She traced the map of his face with her fingertip. His face enjoyed it.
“This is a thumping great coincidence, isn’t it?” he said.
“No. Quite the opposite. Let’s go for a walk.”
They took a path into the wood, and Zoë explained. She said that she had been looking for Silk. First she found out that 409 was at Coney Garth; then she hung about the area, hoping to catch sight of him. She had a push-bike, and today she’d seen the Frazer-Nash and hoped it was him driving.
“Of course it was me,” he said. “Nobody else drives it.”
“Somebody else might. Remember how you got it.”
“Goodness. You have changed.”
She had followed the car on her bike, lost it, seen it leaving the village, lost it again, and searched the lanes without much hope—he was probably miles and miles away—until she noticed the wheel marks in the grassy track.
“Bluebell, the Girl Detective,” he said.
“Don’t laugh. It’s taken me ten days.”
“Zoë, my sweet. What’s wrong with the telephone? Call the Officers’ Mess. Send me a postcard. Ask at the Main Gate, and I’ll come and meet you.”
“There’s something else. I’m on the run from the police.”
That had to be a joke. “Dear Zoë,” he said. “I’m finding it very difficult to concentrate right now because, in the words of the popular song, as time goes by, woman needs man and man must have his mate, that no-one can deny. Certainly not me. But it’s never as simple as that, is it, and in a nutshell, I haven’t got a French letter on me.”
“Poor Silko,” she said. “Why are men so slow? I was ready the minute I saw you in the car. And the only protection I need is your tunic to lie on. Forest floors can be dreadfully lumpy.”
Already they were undressing. “Later, you must tell me about the police,” he said. “Much later. Next month will do.”
Later, of course, was too soon; as it always is. The keener the desire, the quicker the anticlimax. One quick glimpse of paradise from the mountaintop, Silk thought as they walked back to the car, and then God tips you over the edge. Still, better than no glimpse at all.
He put her bike in the back of the car, reversed to the road, and drove until they saw a tea garden. A small girl brought a large teapot and a plate of scones with a jar of plum jam.
“It’s been nearly a year,” Zoë said. “Feels like ten.”
“He might be a prisoner-of-war. Cock-ups do occur. It’s not impossible.”
“He’s dead, Silko. I knew as soon as I opened the door and saw the adjutant. Stone dead.”
“Where did you go?”
“London. Albany. You didn’t write.”
“Couldn’t think what to say. You weren’t interested in the squadron, and anyway life was just ops, and more ops. You didn’t write, either.”
“I had too much to say. Life became very messy, Silko, and it was all my fault. First, I was pregnant. No surprise. God knows Tony tried hard enough.”
�
�I did my little best, too.”
“Forget that.”
“What! Never.”
“The baby was born in March. Anthony Charles Hubert. Greedy little savage. Chewed on my breasts until they were raw. I’d got engaged to Hubert at Christmas, he was a fighter pilot…”
“Big mistake. They’re cowboys.”
“Well, he’s a dead cowboy. Shot down over France. Then something strange happened to me, I began to hate the baby, so I gave it to Mummy.”
“Makes sense. She’s the one who wanted it.”
“And Mummy’s living in Dublin, so there aren’t any problems about food rationing. Or bombing.”
“No? Jerry bombed Ireland twice. By mistake, of course. I’m told it doesn’t hurt so much when you get accidentally killed.”
“Hey.” She rapped his knuckles with a knife-handle and he spilled his tea. “If you know my story so well, you tell it.”
“Zoë, you’ve ruined these trousers.”
“I’ve cleaned them. What a shambles you are, Silko … Anyway, after the baby went away I met a wonderful Norwegian pilot called Rolf and we both wanted to marry and a week later—gone. Failed to return, nobody knew what happened. That was when I decided I must be a jinx popsy, and I gave up men. Then I met someone at a party who asked me to work for a refugee charity, raising money. He was a Czech count and they had nice offices in Belgrave Square. The chairman was a Polish baron and I worked for the director. He was a Hungarian prince. They made me treasurer because I’m English and according to law … I can’t remember the details and it didn’t seem to matter because it was a charity and nobody was working for pay, we were raising lots of money for a really good cause, I just signed documents when I was asked to, a pure formality they said, and about a fortnight ago I turned up and the office was empty and all the money had gone. It seems that I’d authorized it. The police were banging on the front door, so I did a bunk through the back window. There’s a warrant for my arrest.”
Silk made a guess, and said, “How much is missing?”
“A quarter of a million pounds.”
He winced. His guess had been twenty thousand. “When you say you’re on the run…”
“I’ve got Rolf’s revolver. He was supposed to take it whenever he flew, but he gave it to me, in case I got attacked in the blackout. I drove to Suffolk and ran out of petrol and when a policeman asked to see my identity card I told him to stick ’em up.”
“You actually said, to a British bobby, ‘Stick ’em up.’”
“Yes.”
“Bizarre. Was it loaded?”
“Probably not. How does one find out?”
“I take it he stuck them up.”
“Yes. So I stole his bike. That’s it in your car. He wasn’t a real policeman, just a Special Constable. They don’t count, do they? He was quite small, too. I managed to lower the saddle. That was lucky, wasn’t it?”
“And where are you living?”
“I’ll show you.”
They drove back, past the aerodrome, up narrow lanes, into a dirt track that led eventually to a small, broken-down bungalow overlooking a lake. Marshy scrubland was all around. No house was in sight. “I think people used to come here to shoot duck,” Zoë said, “but the bombers scared the ducks away.”
They went inside. There was a hole in the roof and a strong smell of mildew. The only furniture was a sagging sofa, covered with blankets. He saw a revolver hanging from a nail, took it down, checked it. Empty. A cardboard box had some tins in it. “Pilchards,” Zoë said. “I’m getting rather sick of pilchards.”
“Can’t your mother do something? She’s got millions. Or that peculiar Dutchman, Flemming Thingummy.”
“Vansittart. I think he’s gone to Holland to be a spy.” She picked at what little was left of the wallpaper. “Anyway, what could he do? I transferred the money, I’m guilty in law, even if someone pays it all back. I’m bound to be arrested.” The last bit of wallpaper fell. “You’re awfully clever, Silko. Can’t you think of something?”
“I’ve got one idea. But we’ve already done that.”
“Ages ago.”
“True, true.”
“Let’s say it was an air-test. To make sure none of the screws were loose.”
“What a clever, beautiful girl you are.”
The sofa creaked, but none of its screws came loose. A Wimpy on its final approach made the windows vibrate. Silk and Zoë had heard it all before, and they concentrated on enjoying themselves, since the rest of the world wasn’t being much fun.
3
Rollo lay on a bed. The dentist sat on a tall stool, watching him. The male nurse stood alongside.
“The body is a wonderful machine,” the dentist said. “Take blood, for instance. First it cleanses the wound, then it coagulates and seals up the hole in the body, and all the while it keeps searching for hostile bacteria which may have taken the opportunity to sneak in, and if it finds any, it bumps them off. Meanwhile, of course, the blood is also engaged in its epic journey around the body which keeps us alive. Man has invented nothing so clever as blood.”
Rollo leaned sideways and spat a heavy gobbet of the stuff into a basin. The nurse came forward and wiped his mouth with a towel and went back to his place.
“I almost forgot to mention another quality of blood,” the dentist said “It’s non-toxic. You can swallow it quite safely”
Rollo was very tired. The anesthetic had almost worn off but he was dozy. There was a hole in his jaw the size of a bucket, and he kept having to empty it.
“And here’s another thing,” the dentist said. “Is it pure chance that blood is red? The perfect symbol for danger, isn’t it? The body has a good reason for everything, and that includes color. Imagine yellow blood. Or green! Well, duty calls. Give him another aspirin in thirty minutes,” he told the nurse, and left.
There was nothing to look at but the ceiling. Nothing to hear but the thud of his pulse. One side on his face felt as if it had been clubbed. Rollo grew accustomed to the pain. Without realizing it, he drifted into sleep, and woke up choking on blood. After that he knew there was no point in trying to stay awake. If his body disagreed, it would wake him up, choking and spitting. That was another thing blood was good for: waking you up. The dentist had missed that one. Rollo dozed off again.
The room was in dusk when he opened his eyes, not because he was choking, but because the nurse was lifting him by the shoulders, making him sit up. Automatically, Rollo spat into the basin.
“Jolly good,” the dentist said. “Look: we’re going to put a couple of stitches into that cavity. Knit the edges together. Try to stop the bleeding.”
Rollo got off the bed. He raised a finger. Big speech coming. “What’s the rush?” he said. “I’ve still got a pint left.” They were kind enough to smile, although they had heard it before. They had heard everything before.
4
The signal came from Command and said: Report King’s College Cambridge 1800 hours in civilian clothes. Authority: R.G.T. Champion, Group Captain.
Skull got the Lagonda filled up with RAF petrol and wore the only decent suit he had, an Irish thornproof tweed of such a dark green that it looked almost black. Two years in uniform made him feel naked without a hat, so he borrowed a bowler from the adjutant. His sudden release from Coney Garth turned the day into a holiday. He sped west and was in Cambridge by three o’clock. He strolled along the Backs and enjoyed the calm beauty of the university during the Long Vacation. Cambridge was at its best without undergraduates, Skull thought. A pity it couldn’t be a permanent arrangement.
At six he walked into King’s, and the Porter’s Lodge installed him in the room of an undergraduate called Cooksley, reading medicine. Skull had a bath and he was browsing through Cooksley’s books when Champion knocked and came in. “We’re dining at High Table,” he announced.
“I bet you didn’t know that bone marrow comes in two colors, red and yellow,” Skull said.
“H
ere’s a gown for you.”
“Not striped, you understand. Either red or yellow. The red marrow makes blood cells. That’s reassuring, isn’t it?”
“We’ll be late.”
Skull followed him. “How the blood cells escape from the marrow and enter the arteries was not revealed. Possibly in the next chapter.” He noticed that Champion’s suit, of charcoal-gray flannel, had been generously tailored to enhance the shoulders. “You look bigger,” he said. “But of course you’re a group captain now.”
Champion said, “We’re here to meet a chap called Butt. David Bensusan-Butt. You’ve never heard of him. He’s only twenty-seven but he’s private secretary to Professor Lindemann and Lindemann is Churchill’s personal adviser on weapons and science and the like. This means that Bensusan-Butt is in the Prime Minister’s office. He’s a civil servant but they’re not all stupid and Bensusan-Butt’s got a brain like Battersea Power Station. He’s a King’s man. That’s why I got you both here, away from London. He’ll be more relaxed here.”
“Relaxed about what?”
“Good question. Bomber Command has plans. It needs to be twice as big, maybe four times as big. However, we’ve got enemies in the War Cabinet. My spies tell me that Lindemann has ordered Bensusan-Butt to do a deep analysis of Bomber Command and award marks out of ten.”
Skull was introduced to the man and they talked briefly, not about the war. Skull got an impression of warmth and wit, of an intense energy, and of someone who knew exactly how each sentence would end before he began it. Then they went into Hall and were seated too far apart for conversation. Skull thought: Champion wants to run the show. This should be interesting.
When dinner ended, Champion did not linger. He led his guests to his rooms, which were much more spacious than Cooksley’s. Champion’s influence had evicted a professor of clinical biochemistry. Such raw power both impressed and depressed Skull.
“No piano, I’m afraid,” Champion said, and murmured to Skull, “Mr. Bensusan-Butt is an excellent pianist.”
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