101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  ‘To be more concise, sir, you have only to say, ‘the port-outer seized’.’

  ‘Farlow! It so happens that I am conscious of whom I am writing to and how to put my report as best as they will understand it.’ Chiltern was so annoyed that he was losing control of himself.

  It was useless to try to correct or even assist Chiltern. He had them here, it seemed, to read them his story so that they would substantiate it. They had been hit without warning, they actually bombed an observed German concentration although the bomb aimer, abandoning his post in the face of the enemy, deserted the aircraft. They did not fly in circles above where they were hit, nor was there at any time a shred of doubt in the captain’s mind that N-Nuts was doomed; it could never have reached the Allied lines. Times were altered to fit his story (that was why they were fifteen, and not twenty-five miles from the target—to allow for the time spent circling) and at no point was Squadron Leader Chiltern made to appear less glorious or more fallible than in fact he had been. Indeed, Squadron Leader Chiltern emerged and unerring and heroic master of a terrible and, it seemed, almost single-handed ordeal.

  They were all surprised when Chiltern said; ‘Flying Officer Krynkiwski. As you were the senior officer in the area of the fire I am recommending you for the DFC.’

  ‘But, sir …’ stammered Krink, bewildered.

  ‘You must therefore have been in charge of what efforts were made there to save the stricken aircraft. I shall therefore suggest that you be decorated.’

  ‘You were the senior ranking officer up aft,’ said Chiltern. ‘You must therefore have been in charge of what efforts were made there to save the stricken aircraft. I shall therefore suggest you be decorated.’

  Chiltern took a letter from his ‘Out’ tray and said; ‘This has been dealt with but since it is addressed to you all I am going to read it to you. It is a maudlin letter addressed to ‘The Crewmates of Sgt Smith’, from his mother and sisters. ‘We heard as how some of you got back and we want to write to ask you to tell us just how our dear Jack got killed. He meant the world to us. Jack was our only man about the house. Please write and tell us the true story because we want to know.’ I’ve written and told them what happened.’

  ‘Is that kind, sir?’ said Krink. ‘A letter can be kept and cause sorrow for years. A personal visit and a soothing talk would be better. I’ll gladly go if you’re too busy, sir.’

  ‘A novel way to wangle a trip to Blackpool, Krynkiwski. But how can you deliver a soothing talk when you tell a mother that her son was burnt to death?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t tell her that, sir. Just say he died instantly; hero’s way out … all that guff. It would be terribly unkind to tell his family he died in agony; they have enough sorrow already.’

  ‘Do you never give any consideration to honesty and truth when you speak, Krynkiwski? The woman asked for the truth and you would fling her a pack of lies.’

  ‘Decency is often more important than truth, sir.’

  ‘Observing your company of late, Mr Krynkiwski, I am surprised to hear you speak of decency.’

  ‘I mean decency in the big things, sir.’

  ‘Surely morals are big things,’ sneered Chiltern. ‘These women have written a letter to this crew. As captain of this crew I have answered it. I told them the truth, as they requested; that Smiff was burnt to death having been badly wounded.’

  Vincent was suddenly more angry than he could ever remember having been before. The true story of Smiff’s death trembled on his lips, but instead, he said; ‘You cannot know how Smiff died, sir. Perhaps he died of shock the instant he was hit. It would be monstrous to send your letter.’

  ‘He did not die instantly, Farlow. You have told me yourselves that he was alive.’

  ‘Possibly muscular reaction, sir …’

  ‘You know and I know perfectly well that Smiff burnt to death, and that is what I have written.’

  Outside Chiltern’s office the four men exploded with protests to each other.

  ‘He’s deliberately altered the whole thing.’

  ‘But only, he insists, to keep the account concise and uncomplicated.’

  ‘I just can’t see why he’s put me up for a DFC,’ said Krink.

  ‘Can’t you? I thought it was obvious.’

  ‘I feel like starting a riot.’

  ‘I feel like a drink.’

  ‘I’ll settle for a drink of tea,’ said Vincent, and he strode off towards the met office.

  Vincent was still so annoyed that he forgot to feel sheepish as he entered the scene of his recent revels. He was already inside when he noticed that Squadron Leader Gaffer was there, having strayed down from flying control. Joe was there too, and Wendy. Paps was off duty.

  ‘Hello there,’ said Wendy. She spoke brightly enough but her glance was cool. ‘Enter the meteorological wizard!’

  ‘What do you mean?’, asked Vincent.

  ‘This,’ said Wendy, as she pointed to a map stuck on the wall. It was the map of a synoptic situation, and Vincent recognised it as the hurried work that he and Paps had done just a few hours before through the fug of romance and alcohol. Now Vincent blushed.

  ‘It is without doubt the most remarkable weather ever to have been recorded over the British Isles,’ said Wendy. She laughed and carried on; ‘I notice with amazement that Moreton-in-the-Marsh not only had gale-force winds but also fog, in addition they experienced snow out of ten-tenths of cirro-stratus, despite the fact that the temperature was well above dew point. One cold front runs, not only into, but right through a centre of low pressure, and there it proceeds to cross a warm front like a glacier through the Gulf Stream.’

  ‘How did you know it was my work?’, asked Vincent.

  ‘Because it not only shows your particular frontal technique, it also bears your signature. Like a true, proud artist you’ve signed it boldly.’

  Vincent laughed. Then he became more serious. ‘It won’t matter, will it? I mean, nobody will get into trouble?’

  ‘Luckily for you, and for Corporal Bartlet, no. There’ll be no flying while this weather keeps up. So your neck is saved. Though it could have been serious.’

  ‘That’s what just occurred to me,’ and Vincent’s furious frown returned. ‘Chiltern is just in the mood to court martial me on the slightest pretext.’

  ‘Really?’, said the Gaffer. ‘Why?’

  The whole tale came bubbling out; the bumptious report, the distortion of facts, the alteration of intent, the glorification of the writer.

  ‘And what annoys me the most,’ concluded Vincent, ‘is that he caused the whole damned thing.’

  ‘How do you mean, he caused it?’, asked Gaffer.

  ‘By being pig-headed about captain’s prerogative. Bill gave him evasive action which he ignored.’

  ‘Do you mean that Squadron Leader Chiltern’s stupidity caused you to be hit?’

  ‘Not quite. We’d have been hit anyway. But not badly enough to be shot down. And the stupid thing is that, apart from being slow off the mark, he did jolly well. He succeeded in flying the thing when I’m sure most pilots would have baled out, as Bill did. We’d all be prisoners now were it not for Chiltern. He could have told the real story and still come out well. But that’s not good enough for Chiltern; his report must be text-book to the last.’

  ‘In other words, his report is just a pack of lies?’

  ‘Well, hardly that bad. He did lie about ‘no warning’, but mostly it’s just avoiding relevant facts or using misleading words.’

  ‘He has always struck me as a particularly honest man.’

  ‘Oh, he gives that impression. And at times he is so damned honest it’s a crime …’

  Vincent told the story of Smiff and the letter from his unhappy family.

  ‘You mean he told them that Smiff burnt to death?’ Wendy asked incredulously. ‘Oh, the heartless beast! I feel I could …’

  She struggled for words that were polite and chose: ‘… could bang his head!’r />
  ‘From what he has told me,’ said Squadron Leader Gaffer, ‘I had gathered that those were not your feelings at all.’

  Wendy looked quickly at Gaffer and coloured to the roots of her hair. She dared not catch Vincent’s eye. Gaffer sensed that he had hit a touchy spot and changed the subject.

  ‘Anyway, Farlow, why aren’t you wearing your Flight Lieutenant rank?’

  ‘It isn’t through yet, sir.’

  ‘On the contrary, I know that it is. Something or somebody must be holding it up.’

  With that Gaffer turned to Wendy. ‘Well, if you’re quite sure there can’t be any operational flying, I’m off.’

  Squadron Leader Gaffer encountered one aspect of Chiltern that very afternoon which reminded him of what Vincent had said. Chiltern had borrowed the GC’s Oxford to fly down to RAF Hemswell1 to see some friends. Weather bad enough to ground Bomber Command did not awe Chiltern. Gaffer was not in flying control when Chiltern took off, so Gaffer did not recognize the Oxford when it returned.

  It so happened that at conference that very morning the squadron call-sign had been changed. Chiltern remembered, on returning to Ludford, that it had been changed but could not remember what the new code was. He decided to bluff his way out of it.

  ‘Oxford Fox to Ludford,’ he said on radio. ‘Request permission to land.’

  ‘Ludford to Oxford Fox,’ said Gaffer. ‘You can’t land here.’

  ‘I must land at Ludford. I must land at Ludford. Over.’

  ‘Ludford to Oxford Fox. Are you in trouble? Over.’

  ‘Not in trouble, Ludford. Not in trouble. Over.’

  ‘Then bugger off back to Training Command. You can’t land here; this is an operational squadron. Out!’ said Gaffer firmly, making it obvious that he would stand no nonsense.

  Squadron Leader Chiltern had to be careful what he said on radio in case the Germans picked up his message. He was also particularly eager not to mention his own name on radio in case somebody important heard it and realised that he had boobed. He decided on a very drastic course.

  ‘Oxford Fox to Ludford,’ he said. ‘I am coming in to land. I am coming in to land. Out.’

  Squadron Leader Gaffer could hardly believe his ears. He yelled and bellowed into the radio but the Oxford continued its approach. He fired red Very lights and flashed the red Aldis until flying control looked like pre-war Picadilly Circus.

  Still the Oxford droned down. Gaffer picked up the phone and called the guardroom. ‘Hello, sergeant? Arm yourself then hurry out to an Oxford that is just landing. Take the pilot into custody and bring him in, at pistol-point if necessary, to me, here, now.’

  The sergeant did not march Squadron Leader Chiltern in at pistol-point. When he saw who the pilot was the sergeant, with admirable quick-wittedness, said; ‘Er, I rather think flying control would like to see you, sir.’

  Without answering and white with rage at his own stupidity, Chiltern strode past him. What the Gaffer said to Chiltern the ear-straining erks could not overhear, but when they emerged again into control office the two senior officers seemed quite friendly.

  ‘Life,’ said Krink, ‘grows too complicated.’

  ‘Cheer up,’ said Jackal, ‘it’ll solve itself.’

  ‘Solve itself?’, moaned Krink. ‘I dare not leave this bar. I am doomed to stare into this flat, watery beer for ever. Outside in the lounge, two women are waiting for me. One of them believes that wounds received on the Groninberg trip have rendered me impotent. The other believes, or wants me to believe, that the child she finds she is going to have is mine. How can I walk out there and face them both together? What one thing can I say to make them both happy and leave me clear? Was there ever a situation less likely to solve itself?’

  ‘Oh, do introduce them! The dialogue between those two girls has such possibilities. But why are you worried about the girl who thinks you’ve been castrated?’

  ‘She wants to marry me.’

  ‘Despite your sad loss?’

  ‘Yeah! It’s incredible. She was playing hard to get and preaching marriage and things so I said, ‘Well, let’s get married some time’, and it worked like a charm. Then, when I wanted to back out, I told her about my distressing wounds and she said—you’d hardly believe this—that sex isn’t all that important and she’d marry me anyway.’

  Jackal laughed and burst out singing; ‘No balls at all, no balls at all. She married a man who had no balls at all.’

  Krink grinned unhappily and said, ‘Aw, hell, this ain’t funny.’

  Jackal stopped singing and spoke seriously. ‘You can get rid of the fiancee by playing it noble,’ he said. ‘Give her the routine about, ‘You would make this sacrifice for me? Oh, sweetest, how my selfish heart longs to accept. But I cannot let you do this thing. It is too much. The price is too high …’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ interrupted Krink. ‘I get the trend; ‘I cannot let you do this thing.’’

  ‘Well, yes. Reduced to essentials I suppose that’s it. But play it up a bit. Develop the theme.’

  ‘Look,’ said Krink. ‘Why don’t you tell her? Say I’m too upset.’

  ‘But I’ve never met the girl.’

  ‘Say I described her to you and you recognised her beauty the instant you walked in.’

  ‘You don’t get rid of a girl by telling her that! Hasn’t she got a wart on her nose I could recognise her by? That might do the trick without further effort.’

  They peeped through the door.

  ‘That’s the fiancee with the two-way-stretch nose. And that’s the little mother, sitting near Vincent and Paps, the one with the pink gin and the expectant expression.’

  Jackal was back in four minutes, during which time Krink had lit and thrown away three Lucky Strikes.

  ‘Has she gone?’, Krink asked nervously.

  ‘Straight to join a nunnery and weeping as she goes.’

  ‘She was cut up, huh?’

  ‘All joy is fled from her life.’

  ‘I feel a cad.’

  ‘You are a cad. Now, what about our little mother …’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I’ve got a theory …’

  Vincent was sitting in a corner looking ill-at-ease. He kept twisting his drink between his fingers nervously as he looked at Paps who, on the other hand, looked radiant and eager.

  She leaned close to Vincent as she spoke. ‘Honestly, darling,’ she was saying, ‘I feel alive for the first time in months. You’ve no idea how long and how much I’ve wanted you.’

  ‘Truly? I didn’t know girls felt that way.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it! There were times when I was with you and I didn’t know what you were saying. I only knew that you were close and my body ached for you. You must have felt like that, haven’t you?’

  ‘I—I don’t know. I don’t think I have; not without some expression of affection beforehand.’

  ‘Oh, you wonderful boy! You really are innocent, aren’t you? Don’t ever change. Keep that manner though you become a roué. It will win you mistresses galore.’

  ‘Would you approve if I became a roué?’

  ‘Approve? Why should I care? I probably won’t even know you then.’

  ‘Do you mean that now, even now, you assume that …’

  ‘That this affair won’t last? Oh, my sweetest Vincent, you really are a poppet! Never spoil good sex by wondering if it’s going to last.’ She closed her eyes an instant and then said quickly; ‘For God’s sake book a room in this frowzy bug-house and take me upstairs to bed before I tear you to pieces.’

  Vincent looked very steadily at his glass, but his voice was unsteady when he replied, ‘I don’t know that I want to.’

  Paps’ eyes, which he had seen so warm and tender, suddenly grew hard and cold and furious. ‘You’re a fool,’ she said. ‘There isn’t a man in this pub who wouldn’t envy you my company tonight. With my figure and my talents I’m the most bedogenic woman in this town.’

  He star
ted. ‘The most—what?’, he asked.

  ‘You heard!’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Vincent said, rising. ‘I have to see a man about a bitch.’

  He stormed from the lounge into the crowded bar and ordered a drink. Vincent had been shocked. He admitted to himself that he had been a prig when he was eighteen but he thought he had grown out of that in the last three years. Suddenly he wished that he had never changed; if that was where the trend from puritanism led then he would revert to puritan.

  ‘The celibate life,’ he reflected, ‘precluded these risks. Perhaps one sacrificed the greatest pleasures but one also avoided the greatest indignities, the greatest heartaches, the greatest shames. And,’ he concluded his particular train of thought, ‘the greatest mistakes.’

  Suddenly he realised what impulse, what powerful weakness, had made him victim to Paps’ lure. Reaction to fear; that’s all it was. He had experienced it before, he now remembered, but that experience had been rather beautiful, with a sweet girl he had loved and with whom, under different circumstances, he felt sure he could be happily married.

  The importance of the Paps mistake rushed upon his mind and swamped it. He had chosen her because he had wanted somebody and she had flung herself into his arms with such hot welcome, such ready response, that he had grasped the easy goal without considering whether or not it was the goal he wanted. The person he had wanted then and still wanted, wanted now more than ever, was Wendy. And now Wendy knew all about Paps; she had seen the swift affaire from the beginning and would now guess its ugly end …

  His introspection was cut short when he felt a heavy slap on the back.

  ‘Vincent! Don’t look so glum. Have a drink; help me celebrate.’

  It was Krink and, looking as pleased as a dog in a forest, the wide-smiling Jackal.

  ‘Celebrate?’

  ‘Sure! An hour ago I felt a doomed man. I had two women after me. Waiting for me, they were. Lurking like anything. Sinister. Inescapable. Now I am a free man. They are both gone—phoof!—forever. Thanks to Jackal.’