War Story

by Derek Robinson

  O’Neill, his face as stiff as a stone, gave that a lot of thought. “Well, it’s not a funny joke,” he said at last,”so you must have some other reason for inventing all that poison.”

  “Good!” Cleve-Cutler said. “Now understand this. It doesn’t matter a hoot whether T. Chivers was shit or sunshine. He’s dead. Agreed? But the entire squadron, including cooks and clerks, tell me that you refuse to accept that fact.” The stoniness of O’Neill’s face was becoming tinged with pink. “Every time you take off you’re looking for Chivers,” Cleve-Cutler said. “That’s bloody silly, and if you keep it up you’ll find him sooner than you think. When you do, remember to ask him what good it did either of you.” He slammed the file shut. “Next!”

  Paxton, being the most junior officer, was the last to be seen.

  “You’ve only been here four days,” Cleve-Cutler said, his expression as jaunty as ever,”and everyone hates you. Mmm?” He cocked the other eyebrow.

  That hurt. “I can’t understand it, sir,” Paxton said. Nobody had spoken to him all morning. “Whatever I do, nobody likes it, even when it’s right, even when …” That was a low blow, saying everyone hates you. “I don’t want to play cricket, I want to fight.” He could very easily have cried. Tears were ready, waiting to leak out. He placed his right heel on his left toes and made enough pain to defeat the tears. “Nothing’s gone right from the start, has it?” he said angrily. “I flew that blasted Quirk all the way from England, which was more than the others could do, and Major Milne burnt it. Deliberately! Set fire to it! Is that the way to win the war?”

  “Yes. Give me your hat.” Cleve-Cutler took it, and opened a penknife. He slit the fabric at the end of the peak. “What’s wrong with Quirks?”

  “Nothing. It’s a topping machine. It almost flies itself.”

  “Exactly. It’s not built to be dangerous, it’s built to be safe. The bloody silly thing’s so stable it stays straight and level when you want to chuck it all over the sky.” He was tugging the wire stiffener out of the peak. “The Quirk isn’t a fighting aeroplane, it’s a pussy cat. Major Milne was right to burn yours.” He squashed the peak with both his hands. “All the Quirks in France should be burned, then maybe we’d get sent something livelier.” He sat on the cap, bounced up and down, then tossed it to Paxton. “Now you’ll look more like a flier and less like a captain in the Church Lads’ Brigade.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Paxton mumbled. But he did care. He liked his cap now that it looked properly broken-in, more like the rest of the squadron. But he wasn’t going to say so. “I got an Albatros yesterday,” he said. “That was from a Quirk. There’s nothing wrong with Quirks.”

  Cleve-Cutler picked up a pen. “You’re grounded,” he said. “In fact you’re undergrounded. Your flight commander told me you were a turd, so I’m putting you in charge of the men’s latrines.” The half-grin had hardened into a glittering scowl. “Start now.” He pointed to the door.

  A few moments later, Corporal Lacey tapped on the door and came in, carrying a bundle of files and documents. “Good heavens, sir,” he said. “What did you say to Mr. Paxton? He looks quite deathly.”

  “Suicidal?”

  Lacey thought about it. “Murderous.”

  “That’s all right, then … Look here, I’m not going to read all that.”

  “Certainly not, sir. There’s a summary and conclusion on a single sheet.” He placed the bundle on the desk. “I’ve kept everything as simple as possible.”

  Cleve-Cutler rocked back on his chair and put his pen between his teeth like a cigar. “I did go to school, Lacey. Quite a good school, actually.”

  “Yes, sir. Marlborough. Not noted for mathematics, however.” The CO looked away. “Still less for fraudulent accountancy,” Lacey added softly.

  “Are you always as familiar as this with your Commanding Officer?”

  “That depends how much he wants to borrow my Elgar records.”

  “My God, you’re a spy. I should have you shot. Have you got the violin concerto?” Lacey nodded. Cleve-Cutler sighed. “Damn. I might compromise and have you lightly maimed instead. What the devil is that?” It was a distant popping, like the bursting of many balloons.

  “It’s the officers, shooting at empty bottles,” Lacey said. “If the Hun ever attacks with empty bottles, we shall be ready for him.”

  About half an hour later, Cleve-Cutler telephoned the adjutant and asked him if he could spare a few minutes.

  Appleyard splashed some eau-de-cologne on his cheeks and the back of his neck: it tightened up the skin and stopped him sweating for a while. He chewed a peppermint lozenge, sucked in his gut until he could tighten his belt, picked up his clipboard and set out. Tiny silver sparkles danced in front of his eyes, and his ears were singing. He thought of loosening his belt; instead, he went back and took a swig of medicine. He chewed another lozenge and set out again, eyesight and hearing clear. “Got a touch of the old Afghan Curse today,” he said. Corporal Lacey paused in his typing and smiled sympathetically.

  Cleve-Cutler gave the adjutant what seemed like a welcoming smile. “I make it just over a thousand pounds,” he said. “On a captain’s pay it’ll take you about three years to repay that. But you won’t be a captain, will you? You’ll be a nothing, once you’ve been court-martialled. Isn’t that right?”

  Appleyard turned away from that appallingly jaunty expression. He could feel his gut slipping until it was below his belt. He opened his mouth, and then closed it. The singing in his ears had started again.

  “It’s too late to ask me what on earth I mean,” Cleve-Cutler said. “That’s a card you play immediately or not at all. Anyway, you’re sacked.”

  “I can explain,” Appleyard said.

  “Start by telling me where it’s all gone. Not even you could spend a thousand pounds on booze and still be standing.”

  “It’s a damned lie.” The adjutant was on the edge of a stutter. “Who’s been feeding you these lies?”

  “All this stuff came out of your office.”

  “I see. I see. I see.” Appleyard took a quick trip up and down the room. “My office. My papers. This is what the British Army’s come to, is it? Well, I’ll fight it. I’ve fought for my country, I’ve fought the bloody Boers, the Afghans, the Zulus, black as your hat, bullets won’t stop ‘em—”

  “No, I don’t think you will,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  The adjutant shut his eyes and rubbed the lids with his fingertips, several times. When he looked again, the CO was still in the same place with the same expression. “All I can say is I’m glad you find it so bloody funny,” he said.

  Cleve-Cutler glanced through the papers again. For a long minute there was no sound but the soft rustle as he turned a page. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s forget all that’s been said, and start afresh. You’ve stolen just over a thousand pounds from this squadron. Now where on earth did it go?”

  “Horses,” Appleyard said. “It went on the horses. There’s still lots of racing in England. Chap in Amiens, used to be a bookie, now he’s a lieutenant in the Signals, he runs a book on the English races. I lost most of it through him.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Drank it.”

  “Now we know.” Cleve-Cutler stood up.

  “I don’t suppose …” Appleyard blew his nose. “I mean, you wouldn’t consider …”

  “You’re sacked, Uncle. Message ends.” He held the door open for him.

  Foster lay on the grass outside the mess, his head resting on a cushion, and studied the sky through binoculars. “Remarkable,” he said. “Amazing.”

  Some of the officers were resting in deckchairs. Most were half-asleep. “There’s damn-all up there,” Ogilvy said drowsily. “You’ve got a pigeon-dropping on the lens, Frank.”

  “No, no. I heard it, and now I can see it. Definitely a Hun.” That aroused them. Foster’s eyesight was phenomenal: on patrol he was invariably the first to see the speck that turned i
nto an aeroplane. An anti-aircraft battery stationed at Pepriac crossroads opened up and rapidly battered the afternoon quiet to bits. “Told you so,” Foster said. “Daddy’s always right, children.” Two miles high the shells burst against the blue like little splatters of spilt milk.

  “Any good?” Elliott asked.

  “Well, they nearly hit a cloud. Not the cloud our Hun has gone behind, however.”

  Charlie Essex settled back and closed his eyes again. “Bloody nerve,” he grumbled. “Probably a tradesman. Tell him to go around the back, Frank.”

  Dando said: “Can’t you do anything? Go up and shoo him off?” Nobody bothered to answer. “I thought that’s what you were here for,” Dando said. “My mistake.” He picked up his book.

  “Oh, he’s far too high for us,” Foster said, still using his binoculars. “If I told Spud and Gus to go and chase him, now, they’d take ten minutes to get dressed and thirty minutes to climb up there and frankly I don’t think he’s willing to wait that long.”

  “So he’s just going to get away.”

  “Don’t get shirty with us, old boy,” Mayo said. “It’s his fault for not making an appointment.”

  “Hullo, he’s dropped something,” Foster said. “Parachute, I think.”

  The parachute took fifteen minutes to fall. The pilot had judged well: it landed in the next field. Several of the squadron were there waiting for it.

  “Message-bag,” said Ogilvy. “I bet it’s booby-trapped. Where’s the squadron booby?”

  “Inspecting the latrines,” Jimmy Duncan said.

  Foster turned it over with his foot. “No, the German air force woulda’t be so crude,” he said. “I know what’s in here.” He undid the drawstring. The bag held the scorched fragment of a British officer’s tunic, two fire-blackened medal ribbons, a broken cockpit watch, half a shoe, and the remains of a cheque book. “That’s that, then,” he said.

  “There’s absolutely no doubt?” Dando asked.

  “None. They knew where to drop it, you see. Their intelligence is pretty good.”

  “In that case,” Dando said,”I’m free to tell you that he had cancer of the stomach. He probably suspected something for a month. It was pretty well confirmed a couple of days ago.”

  Foster shoved the bits back into the bag. “I wish I’d seen his last fight,” he said. “You’d better tell the new CO about the cancer.”

  “Don’t tell Dougie Goss,” said Essex. “He’ll think he’s got it too.” Nobody laughed. “Still, I suppose it’s not infectious or contagious or whatever,” he said. Dando didn’t answer. They began to walk back to camp.

  Later that afternoon, some of ‘B’ Flight returned from leave. The flight commander, Captain Gerrish, was tall and bony, with big hands and feet and a broken nose above a sprawling black moustache that did something, but not enough, to hide the absence of two front teeth, which had gone at the same time that he broke his nose in a small crash during training. His eyelids were heavy. He had been nicknamed ‘Plug’, short for ‘Plug-ugly’. It was dangerous to call Gerrish ugly. He was usually amiable, but sometimes he grew silent and gloomy and then he was liable to hit people who made jokes about him.

  He was cheerful enough when he came into the anteroom.

  “Have a good leave, Plug?” Goss said. “Ah, new records!” He took them from him. “This is Dando, by the way,” he said while he glanced at the labels. “That’s his surname, he hasn’t got a Christian name, I think it got amputated by mistake … I say: ragtime!”

  Gerrish shook hands with Dando, and called for tea. “Anything exciting happen while I was away?” he asked.

  “No, it’s been very dull.” Goss was winding the gramophone. “Fritz is being feeble. No fun at all.”

  Mayo put aside his newspaper. “Were you still here when Toby Chivers …”

  “Yes. That was the day before I left.”

  Mayo grunted and went back to the paper.

  Jimmy Duncan heaved himself out of an armchair, and stretched. “The old man went west last evening,” he said.

  “East, actually,” Goss said,”and then west. Collision.”

  “Bad luck,” Gerrish said.

  “He wasn’t very well,” Goss said. “Tummy trouble … Okay, everyone, stand by for Temptation Ragl” He lowered the needle. Dando watched Gerrish stir his tea and tap his foot, slightly missing the beat all the time, and he saw Goss click his fingers and strut around the gramophone, and he realised that nobody would mourn Rufus Milne. People came and went. While they were here they mattered, more or less; once they’d gone they mattered not at all, so it was bad form to make a fuss about them. Foster had got it right, when he’d put the bits back in the bag and said, “That’s that, then.” That was that. Now this is this. Very English. Very sensible.

  “I hear you’ve been sacked, Uncle,” Piggott said. “Is it true?”

  Appleyard nodded. He took down a framed photograph of a group of polo players and laid it carefully in a suitcase. “Surplus to requirements, old chap.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. The old man must have given you a reason, for God’s sake.”

  “Wheels within wheels.” Appleyard tapped the side of his nose. “Ours not to reason why.” He opened a drawer and searched it thoroughly. Piggott could see that it was empty. “My shoulders are broad, old boy,” Appleyard said. “I’ll carry the can, don’t worry.”

  “Well, if you’re definitely going, I thought I’d better collect that fiver you borrowed.”

  Appleyard closed the drawer and patted him on the arm. “I hope you profit from my example, old chap,” he said. “Never do anyone a favour unless you’ve got it in writing. And witnessed.” He took the photograph out of the suitcase and studied it, his head nodding. “This sort of thing wouldn’t have happened when Brendan Lucas had the regiment. That’s him in the middle.”

  “Yes … Can you let me have that fiver, Uncle?”

  “Yes, yes, of course, of course … You’ve no idea how awkward they’ve made it for me. It makes a chap wonder just what’s going on, it really does.” He took out his fountain pen and unscrewed the cap and looked at the nib.

  “What is going on, Uncle?”

  Appleyard put the pen away and sat on the bed. He sighed, and looked glumly at Piggott. “Politics, old chap,” he said. “Politics. Sometimes you have to run fast just to stay in the same place, as the White Rabbit said. I couldn’t run fast enough.”

  “I think it was the Red Queen said that.”

  Appleyard blew his nose.. “I didn’t have your educational advantages,” he said. “Just a simple soldier, me.”

  “I really could do with that fiver, Uncle.”

  “Nobody ever said I don’t honour my debts. It’s as good as paid.”

  “Yes, but… I meant now.”

  “Tell you what…” Appleyard took out his pen again. “I’ll send you a cheque, backdated to … to whatever today’s date is.” He put the pen away and stood up. He looked under the bed and pulled out a cardboard box. Bottles clinked. He shoved it back. “Politics,” he said. “I should have seen it coming. Too trusting by half, that’s my trouble.”

  Piggott felt defeated. “You’ll come and have a drink before you go, won’t you?”

  Appleyard shook his head. “Shakespeare understood,” he said. “To everything there is a season, and so on.”

  “Yes. Isn’t that the Bible?”

  “You know best. Simple soldier, me.”

  On his way back to the mess Piggott met Binns and Mayo, who had only just heard the news. Appleyard owed them money, too. While the three men were talking, Duncan appeared. “I thought I was the only one,” he said. “What on earth has he spent it on?”

  “Politics,” Piggott told him. “Maybe he’s bought a peerage.”

  Chapter 9

  Appleyard vanished. A month later there was a rumour that he had been reduced to the rank of second lieutenant and posted to a particularly tough Pioneer battalion, a dump for all the thu
gs and wreckers in the British Army; a month after that there was a rumour that his platoon had beaten his head in one night and left his body in No-Man’s-Land after an argument over the rum ration; but by then there was hardly anyone left in Hornet Squadron who remembered him.

  A new adjutant arrived. His name was Brazier and it was obvious that he too had recently been demoted: you could see the unfaded shape of a major’s crown on his epaulettes, which now carried a captain’s stars. He wore the ribbons of the DSO and MC, which were enough to silence the squadron for a start, plus various other ribbons that nobody could identify. He was six foot four and very broad-shouldered. Doorways were sometimes a problem, and he had developed a slight stoop to keep his head down to conversational level. He had the sort of face you see on a Roman coin, all chin and nose, but his eyes were bright blue, very disconcerting at first. According to Corporal Lacey, who looked him up in the Army List, Captain Brazier was forty-nine. At first he was rarely seen in the Mess. “He eats broken bottles for breakfast,” Mayo said. “I’ve seen the corks in his out-tray.” The truth was that he was busy trying to straighten out all the nonsense that Appleyard had left behind; but his absence made him seem even loftier. “Spud called him Uncle,” Mayo said,”and he tore Spud’s arm off, didn’t he, Spud? It’s in the goulash tonight.”

  “Anything’s better than mutton,” Foster said.

  “You can tell it’s Spud’s by the dirty fingernails,” Mayo said.

  “If you don’t like them,” Ogilvy told him,”leave them on the side of your plate.”

  “Is that what they taught you at Eton?”

  “Nobody gets taught at Eton,” Foster said. “A certain amount of assisted learning takes place, when games allow, but nothing as crass as teaching.”

  Binns overheard this. “What’s twelve times nine?” he asked him.

  “I don’t intend to go into trade, so it’s of no consequence,” Foster said.

  Binns found that amusing. “What do you intend to do when the war’s over?”

  “James and I will form some kind of partnership,” Foster said.