Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  “Something you’ll never die of, Woolley.”

  “You did lay it on a bit thick, Pax,” Slattery said.

  “Did I?” Paxton tipped his chair and balanced on its back legs. “Woolley takes the biscuit for talking tosh. That wasn’t a bomber we saw.”

  “What was it?” Woolley asked.

  “Don’t know, but —”

  “So it might have been.” They stared at each other.

  “Anyway,” Slattery said, “it got us out of that perfectly bloody dinner. More drink, landlord!” The man appeared. “Same again, if you will.”

  “I won’t. I called time five minutes ago.” He was not impressed by their uniforms. “Act of Parliament.”

  “I sometimes wonder what we’re fighting for,” Paxton said.

  “Free speech, isn’t it? So now you’re free to say goodnight.”

  In the car, Slattery said. “I suppose he had the law on his side.”

  “He’s a Hun,” Paxton said. “When we win the war I shall have him shot.”

  * * *

  Andrew Mackenzie’s mother dressed him in skirts and blouses until he was six, and let his fair and curly hair grow to his collar. That was not uncommon in the nineties, especially in well-to-do Kensington. Then her husband came back from South Africa.

  He had never been poor; now he was rich. He had made a small fortune in diamond mining, risked it all on gold mines and won hugely. He returned to his roots: the Scottish Highlands. Land was cheap. He bought a shooting lodge, bristling with turrets, which sat on a headland overlooking a loch. He bought the loch. Behind it reared a range of mountains. He bought the mountains too.

  He got Andrew out of a skirt and into a kilt. He scissored off the curls. While his wife sobbed, he put the boy on a pony and he climbed on a horse. Father and son began to explore the estate. After Kensington, this was a howling wilderness. The pony’s saddle bruised Andrew’s little backside. He didn’t understand a word the local people said. But excitement conquers all. The mountains held deer, eagles, sheep, buzzards, hare, wildcat. In the rivers were trout and salmon, otter and heron. There was sailing on the loch. London couldn’t compete with such adventure.

  By the time he was twelve, Andrew was strong enough and smart enough to do most jobs on the estate, from sheering sheep to felling timber. He was a better shot than his father: farmers down in the glens invited him to shoot the crows that threatened their lambs; he rarely wasted a cartridge. Sometimes, to make it more challenging, he shouted at the crows and sent them clattering and climbing away. Sometimes he chased them on horseback and shot them from the saddle.

  None of this could change his face. His eyes were large and strong, but that only confirmed how demure the rest of his face was; how charming. He went off to boarding school, and a procession of older boys became besotted with it. Nothing bothered Mackenzie. If anyone grew too affectionate he kicked him in the balls.

  Then something horrible happened. His father died. Andrew was fifteen. He grieved longer than his mother did; she had two small daughters to fuss over. When he left school he was nearly eighteen. He was a man, all set to take over the estate; and to his great surprise she began urging him to join the army. “Your father would have gone,” she said, grimly. “Gone like a flash.”

  “Nonsense. He would have been forty-eight by now.”

  “All your friends are in uniform.”

  “D’you want to get rid of me?”

  “I want you to do your duty.”

  “So that you can boast about me to your friends?”

  She turned away; he was too much like the man who had died. Also too little like him. Everything was unsatisfactory. “Surely you’re not afraid?” she said.

  “Mother, you are a brilliant blackmailer, but you don’t know when to stop. Of course I’m afraid. Having your head blown off is a frightening affair.” All the same, the following month he lied about his age and joined the Royal Flying Corps. She cried a little when he left.

  * * *

  Paxton had started with six pupil-pilots. One was dead, one was in hospital, one had been sacked. He met the remaining three after breakfast.

  The morning was bright. “Go up and try to kill each other,” he said. “One against two. The two can fly off somewhere, anywhere, I don’t care. The other chap climbs up and hides in the sun. Nasty Hun habit. You two come back, he falls on you like the wolf on the fold. Understood?” They nodded. “I may join in the fun. Who knows? Life is full of surprises. So is death. If I surprise any of you, please keep flying until you crash in the North Sea and drown yourself, because otherwise you will only become a burning wreck in France, which is unfair on the Poor Bloody Infantry who have enough scrap metal landing on their heads already. Be off with you.” He turned and saw Mackenzie, standing waiting. “I sacked you yesterday,” he said. “Get off the damned aerodrome.”

  “I couldn’t report to the C.O., sir. He’s gone to attend a crash inquiry. Tony Yabsley.”

  “Yabsley?” Paxton squinted at the sun until his eyes closed and all he could see was a pulsing yellow glow. “Yabsley.” Then he remembered. Yabsley had (presumably) got lost, tried to land at another airfield, made a nonsense of it and charged straight into a busy hangar. Killed three airmen. And himself. Destroyed two machines. And his own. Yes, young Yabsley deserved a Court of Inquiry. He opened his eyes. “I knew a chap,” he said, “flew into a hangar. German hangar. Flew straight through, came out the other side. There were witnesses,” he told Mackenzie, “so don’t stand there with that sceptical Scottish look on your face. Why are you carrying a flying helmet?”

  “You said I couldn’t shoot, sir.”

  “You couldn’t hit a hangar if we locked you inside it, chum.”

  “I can shoot grouse, sir. From a Pup, I mean. I can fly a Pup and shoot grouse with the Vickers.”

  Paxton took off his cap and read the name inside and put it back on. He looked at Mackenzie’s calm and delicate face. “Am I mad?” he said. “Or is this a training squadron without a grouse in the sky?”

  “I know a grouse moor about twenty miles away. It belongs to Lord Delancey. We could shoot there.”

  “We?”

  “You won’t believe me unless you see it done, sir.” Mackenzie kicked the head off a young thistle. “Bet you a fiver I get ten birds, sir.” A fiver was a week’s pay for Paxton.

  “If you lose and you can’t pay,” Paxton said, “I’ll have you cashiered for fraud.”

  “If I win?”

  “You’ll be flogged for insolence.”

  * * *

  From five hundred feet the moors looked like velvet, slightly ruckled in places, stretching on all sides to the distance. From a hundred feet the ruckled places turned out to be streambeds and outcrops of rock. From fifty feet the heather was pitted with pot-holes. Paxton, flying alongside Mackenzie, tried not to think what would happen if his engine failed. The stretcher-party would take half a day to find him. Mackenzie was not thinking of failure. His head was half out of the cockpit and he was searching the moor. He banked gently, straightened up, throttled back until the Pup was down to twenty feet and dawdling just above its stalling speed of fifty miles an hour.

  This was good grouse country, and yet no birds appeared. He glanced behind him: birds were rocketing up, scattering, raised by the racket of his engine. By the time he turned they would be gone. He needed a beater, ahead of him. For a second he despaired; then he touched his gun-button, just to see what happened. A dozen bullets lashed the heather, far ahead; and far ahead the grouse leapt into the air. Mackenzie nudged the rudder and his thumb released brief rattles of fire. He eased the stick back and chased the dark blurs. The Pup trembled as something hit the wires that braced the wings. Well, at least I got one, Mackenzie thought.

  * * *

  A rigger used a long-handled screwdriver to prise a bundle of black and red feathers from the wire, and let it drop to the hangar floor. “Three,” he said. “Plus some bloody guts on the right wheel,
sir.”

  “Plus seven I shot but didn’t catch,” Mackenzie said. “Ten.”

  “You hit four,” Paxton said. “I counted four.”

  “I was closer than you.” Mackenzie stooped and plucked a tail feather and tucked it behind his ear. “With respect. Sir.”

  “Send these over to the mess,” Paxton told the rigger. “If they find any bullets, I want them. Now ...” He removed the feather and tickled Mackenzie’s nose. “Let us get out of earshot of these skilled tradesmen before I tell you what a fucking maniac you are.”

  They walked across the field to the roller.

  “Bring it,” Paxton said and walked away.

  Mackenzie rocked the roller, gave it a heave, got it moving, and followed him.

  “Benefit of the doubt,” Paxton said. “Ten birds. You win.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Mackenzie was leaning hard.

  “Proves nothing, of course. Grouse can’t fire back. Toddle over the Lines as low and slow as you did and the Hun machine gunners will toss for the privilege of shooting you down and still have time for a plate of sauerkraut before you arrive. Is that device heavy?”

  “No, sir.” Mackenzie’s lungs were toiling.

  “Pity. I need some enormous weight to flatten the restless soul of a cove called Milner. Not a bad pilot, Milner – better than you, for instance – but not good enough, either. He was directly above us.” Paxton halted, so Mackenzie stopped too. Sweat trickled into his eyes. “A thousand feet?” Paxton suggested. “Quite high, anyway. Flew into a bird, smashed his prop, panicked, lost speed, panicked some more, tried to turn, spun like a top, and I expect he was still panicking like the devil when he met his Maker precisely here.” Paxton stuck the feather in the top of a mound of earth. “We keep flattening it but it keeps bulging up. A restless soul, Mr Milner. Squash him.”

  Mackenzie dragged the roller back and forth. Paxton sat on the grass and watched.

  “Squashed,” Mackenzie said.

  “Milner was unfortunate,” Paxton said. “You, on the other hand, went looking for bad luck. If one grouse had clipped your prop you would have crashed.”

  “Chaps forced-land all the time.”

  “Not on hillsides. Not on heather. Wheels can’t run on heather. You’d go arse-over-teakettle, sonnyboy.”

  Mackenzie looked at him. He thought of pointing out that Paxton had known he was going to shoot grouse, and he decided it would do no good. Instead he walked onto the flat circle of earth and jumped up and down. “I thought I saw it move,” he explained.

  Paxton helped him tow the roller back where it came from. “Now go and write Lord Delancey a note of thanks,” he said.

  “Why? He doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “You didn’t get his permission?”

  “No fear. He’d have had his keepers out shooting at us, if he’d known. It’s the close season for grouse.”

  “Sweet Jesus Christ.” Paxton had been in the R.F.C. for over a year; he was a veteran; he had learned how to survive. “We’ve been to the seaside,” he said. “Those were seagulls you shot.”

  “Of course, sir. What was my score?”

  “Go to hell,” Paxton said. “Go to blazes. Go to France. Go up and get yourself killed. Nobody stopped me. Why should I stop you?”

  * * *

  Thunderclouds blew in from the west. The wind gusted so hard that the aeroplanes had to be lashed down at wingtips and tail. The instructors retired to the anteroom – half of a long hut, the other half being the mess – and played poker. A tall Canadian called Quarry skinned them. By the time they went in to dinner, his cap was bulging with the weight of coins. “What’s your secret?” Slattery asked him.

  “Never draw to fill an inside straight,” Quarry said.

  “Oh. Thanks awfully.” Slattery turned to Paxton. “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t come blubbing to me. You should have done your prep, like everyone else.”

  “We didn’t have prep at Bog Street Elementary,” Woolley said. “We were lucky to have a lump of coal to suck on.”

  “Also it helps if you have endless funds,” Quarry said. “Which I now have.”

  “That’s how we’re going to win the war,” Slattery said. “We’ve got deeper pockets than the Germans. When they’ve all been killed, we shall still have chaps left over. You wait and see. I read it in the Daily Mail”

  “How long will all this take?” Paxton asked. “Only I’ve got a dental appointment in 1928.”

  It rained all night and all next morning. Players dropped into the game and dropped out again. Quarry kept winning; now he was taking IOUs.

  “At this rate, England’s going to be a colony of Canada, not vice versa,” Paxton said.

  “Canada is a dominion,” Quarry said.

  “Don’t upset him, for God’s sake,” Slattery said. “He’ll start charging interest.”

  “And we wouldn’t take England at any price.” Quarry dealt. “Too wet. Too small. Too old.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “Oh ... just saving your bacon. Cards?”

  “This isn’t a hand,” Woolley said. “This isn’t even a thumb.” He threw in four cards. The door opened, and the wind made the fire howl. Major Venables kicked the door shut. They all stood, out of respect for his temper. “Who’s been doing what to Lord Delancey?” Venables said. His voice had been overworked lately and now it cracked a little.

  The silence became uncomfortable. Paxton sniffed, hard, and Woolley glanced at him. Paxton’s face was pale and his neck was bright red. Someone asked: “Is he a pupil, sir?”

  “Is he a pupil?” Venables threw his hat at a mess servant. “No, he’s not a bloody pupil. He’s a peer of the realm and he lives in a damn great castle and he wants my head with an apple in the mouth. Now, why?”

  Paxton cleared his throat. “Did ... um ... did he give you any, you know, sort of indication, sir?”

  “Lord Delancey doesn’t speak to the likes of me, you idiot. His butler telephoned. A grave incident, he said. So who’s been playing silly buggers?”

  A gurgle from Slattery’s stomach broke the silence. Nothing else did. “Beg pardon, sir,” he murmured.

  “Senior instructor,” Venables said. Woolley raised a finger. “Get into your Number Ones lickety-split,” Venables said. “If I’m going over the top, you’re going too.” His head kept wobbling, as if loose on its bearings. “Where’s my bloody hat?”

  * * *

  They went in the C.O.’s car. The lanes were slick with mud and the driver kept his speed down; still, the wheels enjoyed an occasional skid. Every time the car wandered crabwise, Major Venables whispered the same fierce profanity. Woolley put up his collar. The car windows did not fit properly and rain kept spitting at him.

  There was no castle. Lord Delancey lived in a palace surrounded by a deer park. The driver had to stop to let a stag amble across the drive. Woolley wiped a window and they looked at the place, but saw only half. Woolley opened the window and they looked out and saw the other half. “God Almighty,” he said.

  “God couldn’t afford the rent,” Venables said. “Go to those pillars,” he told the driver. “That’s probably the front door.”

  The pillars turned out to be as tall as beech trees. Two servants were waiting with umbrellas. They escorted the officers up some steps and under a portico and through a huge doorway. A silver-haired man in a tailcoat met them and took their coats and hats. “Are you the butler?” Venables asked.

  “That is not my privilege, sir. If you will follow me?”

  Everything echoed. Rain pattered on a glass dome, fifty feet above. The corridor was wide enough to take a horse team with an eight-pounder gun at the gallop. The floor was marble and the tramp of leather-soled boots sounded like a parade. The butler met them in a room lined with oil paintings of large men in rich clothes who could see nothing to smile at. He apologised for not being present when they arrived. Circumstances had unavoidably detain
ed him elsewhere. His Lordship hoped to be able to receive them soon. He left.

  They sat on opposite sides of the room. “The old bugger’s polishing his ear-trumpet,” Venables said. “Cursing his gout.” Woolley nodded. He wondered if he had ever met a lord. There had been a baronet in his regiment when they were in the Lines in 1915, Captain Sir Gerald Somebody. Got mortared. Nothing left. It was unusual to vanish like that. Bits hanging on the wire, maybe, but nobody was going to go out and collect those. There had been a Polish count, too, thin chap with a bad cough. You never met a Pole who wasn’t a count, so forget him. But no lords in the Lines. Trench-fighting was a young man’s game. You got trench foot, and trench foot was bad for the gout. And all those loud bangs, too. Bad for the ear-trumpet.

  The butler returned. He was sleek as a cabinet minister.

  They marched down another corridor. Double doors were opened. “Major Venables and Captain Woolley, my lord,” the butler said.

  Plaster swans stretched their delicate necks as they flew across the high ceiling. Tall windows overlooked a paved courtyard where the rain was faithfully washing the stones until given orders otherwise. The room had a floor and walls of light oak: a very large tree had died for this room. Two men in dark suits stood at a desk, also of oak, about the shape and size of a family tomb. One man was old, one was not. They were looking at documents. After a while the older man murmured something and moved towards the officers. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “I am Sir Frederick Parfitt.”

  “That’s as may be,” Venables said. “My appointment is with Lord Delancey.” The cracks in his voice were wider.

  “Lord Delancey has urgent business to settle.” Parfitt made the smallest gesture towards the other man. “As his legal adviser, I can outline to you the salient features of the problem. In a nutshell, it concerns aerial poaching of grouse on the estate ...”

  Woolley was only half listening. He was watching Lord Delancey sign letters and documents. The man looked no more than twenty-five. His hair was straw-coloured; it had been barbered to perfection. He looked very alert. He sat upright and only his head and his hand moved: he scanned a page, signed it, turned it, scanned the next. Sometimes the tightening of the jaw muscles betrayed a little tension.