Yeo yawned and stretched. “No we shan’t,” he said.
“Partners in what?” Binns asked.
“Oh … lots of things. Motor-racing, perhaps. Or we might set up a film studio. Or maybe a jazz band. We haven’t decided yet.”
“I have,” Yeo said, opening a magazine. “I’m going to stay in the Army. I like the Army.”
“Nonsense. You’d be wasted in the Army.”
Yeo threw down the magazine. “I’ve told you before,” he said. “Don’t nag.”
That killed all conversation for a moment. Then Binns decided he had been patronised by Foster, and so he said: “The answer’s a hundred and eight. Just thought I’d tell you, now you haven’t got a partner to count on.”
“Remind me,” Foster said, peering at Binns as if through fog. “Which school did you go to?”
“Clifton College.”
“Clifton … In the West Country, isn’t it? Last stop on the GWR. No tradition but excellent plumbing.”
“Cor blimey,” Yeo said bleakly, staring at Foster,”you’re a right toff, you are, guvner, strike me pink if you ain’t.” Again, the conversation died. After a few seconds he left the room, leaving Foster looking far from happy.
At first, nobody knew quite what to make of Cleve-Cutler. Now that ‘B’ Flight was back, there was rarely an hour of daylight when somebody wasn’t flying, and the CO often led a patrol, even if it was only an escort for a bit of artillery observation. He knew his stuff, and anyone flying with him had to stay alert. Once, when O’Neill and Duncan were coming home with him at the end of a long patrol, Cleve-Cutler’s machine suddenly disappeared.
It was still early morning, and O’Neill had been thinking of the second breakfast soon to be eaten – thinking of it for perhaps ten seconds, or forty, or ninety, he couldn’t be sure, time played terrible tricks after a couple of hours in the air – when he glanced left at his leader and saw empty sky. Nothing to the right either. He flew a slow figure-of-eight, using his bank to search high and low. Duncan looked at him and gestured failure. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that a pair of aircraft had been cruising home when one blew its engine or bust a vital spar or snapped a control cable and went down so suddenly that its partner noticed nothing. O’Neill got back on course for Pepriac. He was beginning his final glide to the field when the sun was blotted out. It was Cleve-Cutler’s FE, half a length above and behind. The CO waved. His machine sank, and vanished again.
O’Neill worked it out as he made his landing. The FE had an enormous blind spot directly behind its tail. With a bulky engine roaring at his back the pilot could neither see nor hear anything that followed him closely. And Cleve-Cutler must have trailed him very closely indeed. He must have duplicated every move, quick as a shadow.
Quite a clever bit of flying. Filthy with risk, of course. Cleve-Cutler’s observer said afterwards that there were times when he could have reached out and grabbed O’Neill’s rudder, but nobody believed that. Nevertheless, his face and goggles were black with exhaust smuts from O’Neill’s engine. Cleve-Cutler said nothing about it.
He rarely talked shop. A couple of minutes’ comments after the next day’s Flying Orders had been read out, perhaps: an exchange of views on the probable weather, especially wind and cloud, or a change in the system of signals between aircraft, or reports of a new German machine. Then he would conspicuously change the subject, as if to say: Enough is enough, I leave the rest to you, let’s not allow the war to spoil the entire day. He was very good at conversation, or rather at getting others to talk while he listened. He seemed to find everyone entertaining; even Jimmy Duncan made him grin. (But then so did the squadron dog, a mongrel that had turned up in the ration wagon one day.) After a week, almost everyone in Hornet Squadron began to believe that the old man – the new old man – was his especial friend. The exception was Paxton.
Paxton had decided to lie low for a while. There seemed to be some sort of conspiracy to blame him for everything and thank him for nothing. Nobody had thanked him for getting that load of coal, for instance. And of course he got no credit for shooting down the Hun; on the contrary he’d been blamed for it, as if it was his fault that the Hun had attacked them. He wrote a letter to his parents: It is just my foul luck to have been sent to a squadron with so many wasters and drunks in it. On my first flight over the Lines we met a Hun and after a bit of a scrap I managed to shoot him down in flames. Just writing those words excited Paxton. He had to pause and do some deep breathing. But my flight commander, who is an absolute pig, refuses to approve my claim! What’s more he is very ill-mannered and beastly about it. It is all so unfair that I sometimes wonder who is the real enemy out here. The last line sounded a bit whining so he crossed it out. Next day he re-read the whole letter and tore it up. Everything he’d written was still true but he was eighteen; it was up to him to fight his own battles now.
He hadn’t mentioned O’Neill because he couldn’t put his hatred of the man into words.
The day after Cleve-Cutler and Brazier arrived, Paxton inspected the latrines (for the second time) and went back to his billet. He was braced for another fight with O’Neill. He had decided that the only way to cope with the Australian was to ignore him completely. Even so, his heart was kicking his ribs and his fingertips were prickling when he opened the door. The room was empty.
Ever since the business of the stolen book he had kept all his belongings padlocked in his trunk. He found the key but even as be began to insert it the padlock swung open. He stopped breathing; the sound of his own pulse was as loud in his ears as the pounding of surf. When his lungs complained, he sucked in a huge breath and looked around the room as if his enemy might be lurking somewhere.
O’Neill had picked the lock. Paxton clearly remembered testing it, after he had turned the key. “Swine,” he breathed. “Stinking, sneaking swine.” He didn’t really want to look inside the chest. His fingers were trembling when he opened the hasp and lifted the lid: God alone knew what that Australian pig might have done to his things. Lying on top was his book, The Riddle of the Sands, held together by a rubber band.
Paxton had given it up for lost since his first fight with O’Neill. Maybe there was a shred of decency in the fellow, after all. He took off the rubber band and thumbed the pages, but nothing gave way to his thumb. The book refused to open. All the pages were stuck together. It was as solid as a block of wood.
That chest had been Paxton’s last hope. It was the keep of the castle into which he had retreated. Let O’Neill do his worst outside, Paxton had thought; as long as I have that one place which is safe and private and secure, then I don’t care. Now he felt as if he had been raped. “Raped,” he whispered, and played angrily with the padlock, making the shackle go in and out as fast as he could, just to prove its filthy treachery.
“Having trouble with your equipment, sir?” Private Fidler asked. He was standing in the doorway, holding a broom,”I find a touch of Vaseline sometimes helps.”
“Oh, mind your own damn business.” Paxton tossed the lock onto his bed. “If you want something to do, you can clean my boots again, they’re filthy.” He kicked the lid of the chest shut.
“Bust, is it, sir?” Fidler picked up the lock. “Oh dear. Look at this. My old grannie could open this with one wave of her feather duster.”
“Thank you, I’m sure she could. I’m extremely grateful for your advice, Fidler. Most helpful. Perhaps I’ll go round to Harrods and get something better.”
“Well, I suppose you could do that, sir.” Fidler swept a patch of floor, carefully redistributing the dust, fairly and evenly. “But if it was me I’d go and see Corporal Lacey.”
Lacey had no padlocks but he knew where the best were stored and how to get one. “Good cigars are the most useful currency in the Corps,” he said,”and as it happens another box of cigars arrived for you today.”
“Good heavens,” Paxton said.
“Yes. When the first box proved so valuable I took the l
iberty of sending a telegram to your uncle, nominally from you, asking for more.”
“You did what? You’ve got a damn nerve, Lacey.”
“But you do want the cigars? Five will get you the strongest padlock in France.”
“Who from?”
“It’s best that you don’t know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my desk. Captain Brazier frets if I’m not at his beck and call.”
Later that day, Lacey delivered the padlock. It was the size of a small pineapple and two keys were needed to operate it. “Specially made to protect gold bullion deliveries up the Khyber Pass,” Lacey said. “Don’t lose the keys or you’ll have to dynamite your way in.”
Paxton dropped the hasp over the staple and fitted the shackle through the slot. The two keys turned slickly, moving heavy and complex mechanisms. “That’s one problem solved,” he said.
Cleve-Cutler kept his squadron busy. Whenever the weather allowed, Brigade HQ ordered them up for escort duties or reconnaissance patrols. Each of the three flights was in the air at some time of the day, and Cleve-Cutler encouraged the pilots to practise low-level flying in their spare time. He also liked the observers to practise gunnery in the butts. What he didn’t like was to see people standing around.
On his second day in command, ‘B’ Flight had been sent up to do the usual variety of jobs. Plug Gerrish, the flight commander, rendezvoused with a BE2c to give it protection while it directed an artillery shoot. Unusually, the plane quit and went home after half an hour, but by then Gerrish and his observer, a red-haired, sharp-faced, Scottish lieutenant called Ross, had seen and warned off a Fokker monoplane. It climbed and loitered. It seemed interested rather than aggressive.
Gerrish waited until the BE2c was safely out of sight before i.e went up and tried to catch the Fokker. No hope. It climbed as he climbed. At about eight thousand feet it levelled off. For some minutes they flew parallel, near enough to be able to see details: oil stains, patched canvas, the other man’s goggles, machine guns.
Ross took out his binoculars and had a good long look. Either this was a new type or the Fokker was even smaller than he remembered. Really, it looked old-fashioned: just a plain cross, with square wings stuck on a square fuselage, not much better than the thing Blériot flew across the Channel. Strange to think that Fokkers had frightened the life out of everyone only six months ago. This one had twin Spandau machine guns on top of the engine, very wicked-looking, perforated like cheese graters, but obviously the pilot wasn’t looking for a fight with anyone. Feeble, feeble. Gerrish banged his fist on the nacelle and Ross stuffed the binoculars away. Time to go.
Gerrish was bored. He put the tail up and the nose down and enjoyed plunging into nothingness. This was what he liked about flying: if you got tired of one place you could be somewhere else in no time at all. From the corner of his eye he saw the Fokker diving too. That was no good; he was fed up with this Hun. He steepened the dive, determined to out-race him; then changed his mind, opened the throttle until the vibrations made the instruments blur, and hauled the FE into a loop. The Fokker followed him. Gerrish looked out and saw the monoplane hanging upside-down just as he was hanging upside-down. They came out of the loop like brothers. It was a game now. Gerrish side-slipped left, then right, then developed a corkscrewing dive that widened into a lazy spiral. The German pilot copied everything, perfectly, instantly, levelled out as Gerrish levelled out, and waited to see what was next. Gerrish waggled his wings. He didn’t look for the reply; he knew it was there. He flew home, feeling amused but also annoyed. Fun and games were all very well, but when were they going to start killing each other again?
Foster and Yeo landed together. It had been another dud patrol. Their observers trudged away to get out of their flying kit but Yeo had things to discuss with his fitter and rigger. Foster leaned on the wing of his plane and watched. It was hot and he began to feel sleepy.
Yeo’s discussion ended. Foster heaved himself upright. They walked slowly and silently to the pilots’ hut, scuffing their boots, sweating.
Yeo peeled off his sheepskin coat and let it fall. He slumped into a chair and got rid of his scarf. He tried to prise off one boot with the toe of the other but it refused to loosen.
“Hang on,” Foster said. He took hold of the boot and dragged it off.
“Thanks awfully,” Yeo said. Apart from formalities, those were the first words they had exchanged since the business with Binns.
Foster pulled off the other boot. “Are we friends?” he asked.
“We always were,” Yeo said. “Sometimes good, sometimes bad. But always friends.”
Next morning was wet but not windy. A soft, fine rain drifted across the aerodrome like smoke. Condensation dribbled down the inside of windows and when Tim Piggott got dressed his clothes felt clammy. ‘A’ Flight was due to be on patrol at 9 a.m. and he was not looking forward to it. Flying an FE2b through rain was like sitting on the sharp end of a schooner in a gale. The cockpit was open, with only half a thumbnail of a windscreen, and when rain arrived at seventy or eighty miles an hour it stung.
Talk at breakfast was subdued.
“They ought to call the war off on days like this,” Charlie Essex said.
“You mean like Wimbledon?” O’Neill said.
“Exactly. The grass gets dreadfully cut-up if you fight when it’s wet.”
Goss got up and took his coffee to a window. At the far end of the field, the windsock almost came to life-and then lost interest again. The adjutant walked past, under a large and brightly striped golf umbrella. It made him look ten feet tall. “I don’t see how anyone at the Front can see anything through all this muck,” Goss said.
The adjutant came in and gave the umbrella to Collins. “Porridge with plenty of salt,” he said. The chair creaked as he sat down. “Reminds me of the day we counter-attacked at Mons,” he said. “Same sort of rain. Perfect cover. Master Fritz never saw us coming. Scarcely a shot fired. All bayonet work. I encouraged thrift, you see.”
“Nice to know we won something at Mons,” Piggott said.
“No, we lost. The Hun brought up his guns and blew us all to blazes.” His porridge arrived. “This is what the ground looked like after the barrage.” He stirred it with his spoon. “Exactly like this.”
“No good for mixed doubles, then,” Essex said. Brazier raised an eyebrow. “Sorry,” Essex said. “Family joke.”
“Come on, let’s go and do this bloody silly patrol,” Piggott growled. Men stood, chairs grated, boots scuffed.
“Don’t be late back,” Brazier said. “There’s to be a court of inquiry starting at eleven o’clock into the circumstances leading up to the death of a sergeant muleteer while driving a squadron tender when unauthorised so to do. You may be wanted to attend.”
“What good’s an inquiry?” Goss said. “He’s dead. They’re both dead.”
“But not authorised so to be.” Brazier looked for Collins. “More salt,” he said.
The first three FEs took off one after the other, their propellers blasting the drenched grass and leaving a wake of spray that ceased as each machine came unstuck and began to climb. Douglas Goss was in the fourth plane, with an observer called Henley. Towards the end of his take-off run, with the aeroplane feeling ready and willing to stop jolting and start flying, the engine quit. In the sudden silence, the wings lost their lift and the weight of the aeroplane – nearly a ton, fully loaded – settled on the tricycle undercarriage. The FE took a hundred yards to run to a halt, squeaking and groaning all the way.
“What’s wrong?” Henley asked.
“I think the wheels need oiling. Or maybe you weren’t praying hard enough.”
“I’m agnostic, you know that.”
“Well, so’s the engine. It certainly doesn’t want to go to heaven.”
“Suits me. We can play ping-pong instead.”
A lorryload of ground crew came out and pushed the FE back to its hangar. “Sorry about that, sir,” said Goss’s fitter
. Within two minutes he had found the fault. “Magneto’s gone dud, sir,” he said. “Can’t understand it, I tested it three times yesterday and—”
“Never mind.” Goss took the magneto and kicked it away, and hurt his foot. “Put another one in, and this time make sure it’s brand new.”
“The other one was brand new, sir.”
“Charming. Just what I wanted to hear.” Goss supported himself on Henley’s shoulders and limped off. “I’ve broken several toes,” he said.
“Frankly, Dougie, I think this war is going to be the death of you.”
It took twenty minutes to fit and test the new magneto. Cleve-Cutler came out to see what the trouble was. “We’ve missed the rendezvous by now, sir,” Goss said. “Anyway, I expect they cancelled the shoot and forgot to tell us.”
“Don’t hang about here. Get over the other side and make a nuisance of yourselves.”
The new magneto worked. The cloud ceiling turned out to be less than a thousand feet, which was far too low for Goss’s peace of mind. He kept climbing until they popped into sunshine. This was pleasant. Goss went up a few thousand feet, cruised idly from nowhere to nowhere and waited for business.
Nothing happened. Once or twice he thought he might have seen something but it was less than a dot, it was a pinprick and it vanished. After an hour he was getting sunburn and cramp and he wasn’t at all sure that he knew where he was. Henley seemed to have gone to sleep, and then maybe died peacefully in his sleep.
Goss cut back the engine until it was ticking over and let the weight of the machine carry it down in an easy dive. Slicing into the cloud looked like falling into a bed of melting snow. The first thing he realised when they dropped into dull daylight was that the cloud base had gone a long way up in the past hour. The second thing was they were five miles behind the German Lines. He knew this because he could see three German observation balloons flying in the north: podgy, sausage-shaped bags tugging amiably at their cables. Goss opened his throttle. He probably couldn’t get near enough to destroy any of them but he could make a bloody nuisance of himself. Henley was awake now, testing the Lewis gun with a brief burst.
War Story Page 16