Damned Good Show

by Derek Robinson

  “Purely for pleasure,” his guest said. “Some play squash, I play Haydn. Incidentally, can we drop the Bensusan? Butt is enough. David is even better.”

  “Splendid,” Champion said. “I’m Ralph, and Skelton is … well, Skelton is Skull. Very apt. He’s my tame brain in the field of battle.”

  Skull had been adjusting the blackout curtains. Now his head turned slowly. “What did you call me?” he said.

  Champion should have apologized, but he had only recently been made up to group captain and he could not apologize to a flight lieutenant. Instead, he bustled about, offering drinks: brandy, port, whisky, Madeira?

  “I wouldn’t mind some coffee,” Butt said.

  “Of course. Skull, be a good fellow and make some coffee.”

  “No.” It was said calmly but firmly.

  Champion frowned. “Are you allergic to coffee?”

  “No.”

  Champion looked at Butt with mock-despair. “Mutiny. Is it like this in Downing Street?”

  Butt smiled. “We are all mutineers in Downing Street. The Prime Minister gets restless when he is surrounded by harmony. War is not a harmonious business.”

  “Well, Bomber Command has never shirked a chance to stir up trouble.” Champion went into the kitchen and filled a kettle and put it on the stove and came back. “People forget that Bomber Command has been operating against the enemy since the very first day of the war. Whenever the weather allowed we’ve hammered him in his own backyard. No other Service can claim that.” He went out. Rattling and clinking were heard. He came back with a loaded tray. “No coffee. Is tea all right? As I was saying, the Command hasn’t had full credit for its efforts throughout almost two years. Shipping strikes, Nickels, Gardening, and then the Battle of Britain which was really two battles. The fighter boys did their stuff but who sank all those invasion barges? Every Channel port from Antwerp to Dieppe-Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne—all through last summer, night after night, walloped by Bomber Command! And when Hitler dropped the first bombs on London, it wasn’t Spitfires that flew to Berlin the next night and gave the Germans a fright. Which is what Bomber Command has been doing ever since. Night after night. Is there a Focke-Wulf aircraft factory in Bremen? Fine. We’ll send a hundred bombers and blast it. That’s just what we did last January. Target destroyed. What’s next? And so we’ve continued. We know Nazi Germany is suffering. You can’t drop a four-thousand-pound blockbuster on Bremen without giving Hitler a headache.”

  Butt poured the tea. “I have a feeling that was a preamble,” he said.

  “Throat-clearing,” Skull said. “Delete paragraph one.”

  “If you double the size of Bomber Command, you quadruple its destructive power,” Champion said, “How? By overwhelming the German defenses. Quadruple the size of Bomber Command and you can utterly devastate the German war machine …” He raised a hand to dramatize the point. “… without the need for a land invasion of Europe.”

  Butt sipped his tea.

  “That’s the view from the top,” Champion said. “But it’s the squadrons that do the real work, isn’t it? 409 Squadron at Coney Garth is one of the best. What is their formula for consistent success? Our eminent sleuth has the answer.”

  Champion meant to flatter. Skull felt he was being patronized. This made no difference to Skull’s answer but it sharpened his tone of voice. “There is no formula,” he said, “because there is no consistent success.”

  “That’s the trouble with academics,” Champion said. “They will quibble about words. If you don’t like ‘consistent,’ how about ‘conspicuous’?”

  “The term I most dislike is ‘interrogation,’” Skull said.

  “It’s what we do to pilots after an op,” Champion explained to Butt.

  “It’s what we don’t do to them,” Skull said. “Interrogation suggests a degree of mental toughness. A rigorous examination of performance. That’s not what happens. A crew’s report is accepted at face value, and rarely challenged. Interrogation is a poor method of measuring success.”

  Champion had an instant answer. “Then it’s just as well we don’t depend too heavily upon it. One infallible indicator of Bomber Command’s effectiveness is the enemy’s response, and I don’t think that even you, Skull, would dispute the evidence of flak damage which our bombers bring back.”

  “Yes, it’s evidence,” Skull said. “But of what?”

  “That the Hun has been stung! We’ve laid waste so many of his cities that flak, searchlights, night fighters are top priority over there!”

  “Oh, I doubt that. The Russian front is Hitler’s top priority.”

  “And Russia desperately wants us to keep bombing, to take the pressure off her. When the other man gets mad, you know your punches are hurting, and I’ve seen the German newspapers. They get very upset at Bomber Command.”

  “Proves nothing,” Skull said. “Our newspapers made gloomy reading during the Blitz, but they didn’t make the German bombers any more effective.”

  “Thank God for that!” Champion was brisk; he seemed to be enjoying the exchange. “You were in London in the Blitz?” he asked Butt, who nodded. “So was I. Skull was in Scotland … Ask any Londoner, Skull. He’ll tell you whether the Blitz was effective or not. Bombing hurts, old chap. It’s already hurt Berlin. Given time we’ll flatten it.”

  “Hitler didn’t flatten London.”

  “He made a mess of it.”

  “Of a small part of it. Measured on the map, only one yard in ten of Greater London is covered by a building. Inevitably, most bombs fell in the ninety percent that is open space.”

  “Such as railways? All the London termini got hit. Does your open space include churchyards? That would explain all the Wren churches that we lost. Did the Germans waste those bombs?”

  Skull took his glasses off and polished them with his tie. “It begs the question,” he said, and squinted hard at Butt, “that this war will be won by bombing churches.” He put his glasses on, and made a little act of locating Champion. “Ah. There you are.”

  “Well, it certainly won’t be won with debating tricks,” Champion said. “There’s nothing tricky about high explosive. If the Luftwaffe can destroy Coventry, we can destroy, say, Hamburg.”

  “Coventry wasn’t destroyed. Just because Goebbels says so, doesn’t make it true. I’ve heard too many of our pilots say they annihilated the target, and next week they got sent back to annihilate it again.”

  “Repairs,” Champion said. “Salvage work.”

  “You can’t repair annihilation. People are too casual with words. Coventry wasn’t destroyed. Its center was severely damaged. Its gas and electricity and water supplies were cut. Some factories were hit. But by far the greater part of Coventry was still standing next day, and all the factories were back in action within weeks, some within days.”

  “They were indeed,” Butt said. “However, we don’t want the Germans to know that. How did you find out?”

  “Intelligence. A Waaf in my section comes from Coventry.”

  “Ah. And what conclusion do you draw from all this?”

  Skull puffed out his cheeks. “Not a conclusion, but a suggestion. If the Luftwaffe couldn’t destroy Coventry, perhaps we shouldn’t be too cocksure about destroying Hamburg.”

  “Too late,” Champion said cheerfully. “We’ve already made a start. And we’ve also knocked down large chunks of Kiel, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven. How can I be so cocksure of this? Because neutral businessmen see it and tell us. Foreign journalists make reports. Travelers travel, Skull. In and out of Europe.”

  “Travelers. I see.” Skull felt that he had been sucked into playing verbal ping-pong for the amusement of an audience of one, and he was growing tired of it. “I trained to be a historian, and historians are suspicious of travelers’ tales. Men like to excite their listeners. The traveler visits, say, Dusseldorf and sees one bombed street. When he returns to Sweden he tells what he saw and soon there is a report headed ‘Devastation hi
ts Dusseldorf,’ from which it is but a short skip and a jump to believe that Dusseldorf is devastated.”

  “Jolly good!” Champion applauded, briefly. “The strategic bombing campaign as seen through the eyes of a Swedish news editor. That’s more than I had hoped for.” To Butt he said, “He really is awfully clever, isn’t he?” To Skull he said, “Thank you, flight lieutenant. Most enjoyable. I don’t think we need keep you up any longer.” Skull shook hands with Butt. At the door, Champion said, “You must lunch with me at my club, old chap.”

  “If I must,” Skull said.

  Champion came back and poured himself a whisky. “I like old Skull,” he said. “He’s got a mind like a rugger ball: you never know which way it will bounce. Of course, his weakness is he sees everything at squadron level. He can’t take the broad view. I brought him along to act as a sort of devil’s advocate. Not bad, was he?”

  “Not bad at all,” Butt said.

  “Now to serious business. Bomber Command’s the only weapon we have which can seriously damage Germany. That’s hard fact. And you don’t need the brains of an archbishop to see that the more bombers we build, the sooner we win. Or have I overlooked something?”

  “Tell me more,” Butt said.

  5

  Next morning, Silk bought some food at the village shop: bread, salad stuff, two Chelsea buns, four pears, lemonade. Everything else was on ration. He drove to the broken bungalow and Zoë wasn’t there. He sat by the edge of the lake and watched dragonflies perform maneuvers that were strictly banned by the manufacturers. After a while she appeared, very wet. “I found a bubbling brook,” she said. “Had an all-over wash. How the rabbits stared. Golly, such red tomatoes.” She ate one. She sat beside him.

  “What’s that funny smell?” he asked. “It smells like carbolic soap.”

  “That’s because it is. All the best outlaws use carbolic, darling.”

  “It smells awfully coarse. Us bomber pilots are terribly sensitive, you know. Pug Duff cries at dog shows.”

  “Don’t believe you.” She stretched out so that her head was resting on his lap. “Tony wasn’t sensitive. Tony was an animal. Sometimes I had to bite him on the neck to make him stop.”

  “Are we talking about the same chap?” No answer. Her eyes were closed. “How often did you bite his neck?”

  “Once.”

  “What a shocking liar you are. I was going to ask you to marry me but…”

  “Jinx popsy, remember?”

  “Balls. I’m on my second tour. I’m jinx-proof.”

  “I won’t marry you, Silko.”

  “Too late. I withdrew the offer ages ago.”

  “You don’t really love me. You just covet my body.”

  “You coveted mine first.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” She smiled at the memory. “Men are so slow.”

  Silk thought about that. Was he really slow? Often, during the past year, he had thought about Zoë, about finding her again. Why hadn’t he done anything? Because he was slow? Or because he hadn’t expected to survive his first tour? Thirty ops had been too many for most crews. After that, instructing ham-fisted student pilots in clapped-out Wimpys had been a chapter of accidents. He had no right to survive that, either. Nobody on the squadron had ever finished a second tour. It was one reason why he kept putting off having a haircut. Or getting a new uniform. Or buying a book. Fancy going to all that trouble and then getting the chop. Wasted effort. And now, as it turned out, Zoë had come looking for him, which probably proved something, but Silk didn’t care what it was. He preferred to sit and enjoy the feeling of her head in his lap while he watched the dragonflies do their stunts. How long was a dragonfly’s tour of ops? Bloody short, judging by their frantic antics. That was nice. “Frantic antics,” he murmured. She didn’t move. Sound asleep.

  Zoë wanted lunch: a real knife-and-fork lunch, not tomato sandwiches and lemonade. Silk told her she looked like a gypsy princess and no respectable hotel would serve her. “They’d better,” she said. But she brushed her hair.

  They drove across Suffolk. At every crossroads or junction, she pointed and that was where he went. He felt a sense of happy irresponsibility, but he also felt hungry. “Are we going somewhere special?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Zoë, you’re completely lost.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “And Tony said you were thick. You’re not at all thick, Silko.”

  After many more turnings, she suddenly pointed at a white-stucco hotel. “There,” she said. Silk parked, and they went in. A middle-aged woman sat at reception. She wore a straw hat with a rose tucked into the band and she was knitting a scarf, using the biggest needles Silk had ever seen. They were like chopsticks. “Hello,” Zoë said. “We’d like lunch, please.”

  “Can’t be done. We don’t do lunches, not since my chef got called up by the army.”

  “Oh.” Zoë fished a checkbook out of a skirt pocket. “In that case I’d like to cash a check for fifty pounds.”

  “So would I.” She hadn’t stopped knitting.

  Zoë took the revolver from her other skirt pocket. “If you don’t give me fifty pounds, I’ll shoot this man.”

  Silk put his hands up. “She’s quite mad,” he said. “I’d pay her, if I were you.”

  “If I had fifty pounds,” the woman said, “I’d be at the races.”

  “It’s a real gun,” Zoë said. “Look: give us the money and we’ll take you to the races.”

  She put down her knitting. “He’s a nice boy,” she said. “What good would it do to shoot him?”

  “Ten pounds.” Zoë opened the checkbook. “It won’t bounce, I promise.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you have a room and bath, and a plate of ham sandwiches, for the afternoon, for a pound.”

  “Done,” Silk said, and lowered his hands.

  “It’s not like this in the movies,” Zoë said.

  “I was your age once,” the woman said. “I know what it’s like to be young. I eloped with an Italian count when I was nineteen. We ran away to Gretna Green and the blacksmith married us, but it turned out he wasn’t an Italian count, he was a vacuum-cleaner salesman with a wife in Cardiff. Still, he was lovely in bed.”

  Silk gave her a pound.

  “Use any room,” she said. “A hotel with no meals doesn’t get many guests.”

  “I’m on the run from the police,” Zoë said. Silk groaned.

  “I get the occasional deserter staying here,” the woman said. “They’re no trouble. D’you like mustard?”

  Zoë picked the room. They lay on the bed, comfortably naked in the afternoon sunshine, and ate ham sandwiches. “She didn’t play the game,” Zoë said. “What if the gun had gone off accidentally?”

  “It’s empty, you juggins.”

  “She didn’t know that. She might have killed you.”

  “I think you confused her. Why did you say you would shoot me? We came in together, we were friends.”

  “Who else could I shoot? Not her. Women don’t shoot other women, do they? Anyway I bet if I’d been a man, James Cagney for instance, she’d have found fifty pounds. It’s not as if I’m robbing anyone. My check’s good. The money’s in the bank.”

  “Zoë, my sweet, if you want fifty quid, write me a check and I’ll cash it for you. You don’t need a gun.”

  “Perhaps. It’s all become a bit of a bore, hasn’t it?” She got mustard on her fingers, and wiped them on his thigh.

  “What a slut you are, Zoë.”

  “Yes. Go on. More like that.”

  “Slut. Floozy. Tramp, trollop, tart. Strumpet. Bitch. Double slut. Super bitch.” She was on top of him, laughing as she kissed him, smearing mustard from her lips to his. Without looking, he reached sideways and put the remaining sandwiches on a side-table. That was the hard work done. Now it was all uphill to the mountaintop.

  A DIFFERENT POINT

  OF VIEW

  Constance Babington Smith wa
s a beauty with brains. Her father, Sir Henry, had been private secretary to the Viceroy of India. Her mother was the daughter of the ninth Earl of Elgin. Her eldest brother was a director of the Bank of England. In the 1930s she became very interested in flying. Eventually she was such an expert on all aspects of aviation that she wrote a regular column for The Aeroplane magazine. When war broke out, she was commissioned in the Waaf and joined Coastal Command’s Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. It was based at Danesfield, a mansion in Buckinghamshire. That was where David Bensusan-Butt went.

  “I’m told you know more about interpreting air reconnaissance pictures than anyone else,” he said.

  “Actually, that’s quite likely,” she said, “because until recently I was the only one here who was doing it. But I’m sure the Germans must have something similar.”

  “It’s a subject I know absolutely nothing about.”

  “Good. That means you start with an uncluttered mind.”

  For the rest of the day she showed him what to look for, and how to find it, in photographs of Germany taken by high-flying aircraft. He learned much about camouflage, shadow, bomb damage, fire damage and smoke. He used magnifying glasses of various size and complexity. Next day he came back and practiced his skills.

  “It makes a change to meet someone like you,” she said. “I sometimes think the various Commands don’t have much faith in our Unit. Unless our interpretation confirms what they already think, they’re likely to ignore it.”

  “What about photographs of the target taken by our bombers at night? Can you help me with those? I imagine that flak and searchlights are a problem.”

  He came back again. By now they knew each other well enough for him to ask the name of the delicate perfume she always wore. “L’Heure Bleue,” she said. “By Guerlain. I slosh it on, in case an air vice-marshal looks in. This uniform is fearfully masculine, don’t you think?”

  “In your case, not for one instant,” he said. His utter honesty made it sound like a vote of thanks.