by Wilbur Smith
He was coming towards her, out of the gloom of the barn. Tall and broad-shouldered, his pale face beautiful in the lantern light.
‘Oh, I thought you were not coming.’
He stopped in front of her. ‘Nothing,’ he said softly, ‘nothing in this world could have kept me away.’
They stood facing each other, Centaine with her chin lifted to look up at him, staring at each other hungrily and yet neither of them knowing what to do next, how to bridge those few inches between them that seemed like the void of all eternity.
‘Nobody saw you?’ he blurted.
‘No, no, I don’t think so.’
‘Good.’
‘Michel?’
‘Yes, Centaine.’
‘Perhaps I should not have come – perhaps I should go back?’
It was exactly the right thing to say, for the implied threat galvanized Michael and he reached out and seized her, almost roughly.
‘No, never – I don’t want you to go, ever.’
She laughed, a husky breathless sound, and he pulled her to him and tried to kiss her, but it was a clumsy attempt. They bumped noses and then their teeth clashed together in their haste, before they found each other’s lips. However, once he found them, Centaine’s lips were hot and soft, and the inside of her mouth was silky and tasted like ripe apples. Then her shawl slipped forward over her head, half smothering them both and they had to break apart, breathless and laughing with excitement.
‘Buttons,’ she whispered, ‘your buttons hurt, and I am cold.’ She shivered theatrically.
‘I’m sorry.’ He took the lantern from her and led her to the back of the barn. He handed her up over the bales of straw, and in the lamplight she saw that he had made a nest of soft straw between the bales and lined it with grey army blankets.
‘I went back to my tent to get them,’ he explained, as he set the lamp down carefully, and then turned to her again, eagerly.
‘Attends!’ She used the familiar form of address to restrain him, and then unbuckled his Sam Browne belt. ‘I will be covered in bruises.’
Michael tossed the belt aside and seized her again. This time they found each other’s mouths and clung together. Great waves of feeling washed over Centaine, so powerful that she felt giddy and weak. Her legs sagged but Michael held her up and she tried to match the flood of kisses that he rained on her mouth and her eyes and her throat – but she wanted him to go down on to the blankets with her. Deliberately she let her legs go and pulled him off balance, so that he fell on top of her as she tumbled into the blanket-lined nest in the straw.
‘I’m sorry.’ He tried to disentangle himself, but she locked one arm around his neck and held his face to hers. Over his shoulder she reached out and pulled the blankets to cover them both. She heard herself making little mewing sounds like a kitten denied the teat, and she ran her hands over his face and into his hair as she kissed him. His body weight on top of her felt so good that when he tried to roll off her, she hooked her ankle into the back of his knee to prevent him.
‘The light,’ he croaked, and groped for the lantern to close the shutter.
‘No. I want to see your face.’ She caught his wrist and pulled his hand back, holding it to her bosom as she looked up into his eyes. They were so beautiful in the lamplight that she thought that her heart might break – and then she felt his hand on one of her breasts, and she held it there while her nipples ached with the need for his touch.
It all became a delirium of delight and wanting, becoming more and more powerful until at last it was unbearable, something had to happen before she fainted away with the strength of it – but it did not happen, and she felt herself coming back off the heights and it made her impatient and almost angry with disappointment.
Her critical faculties that had been dulled by desire returned to her, and she sensed that Michael was floundering in indecision, and she became truly angry. He should have been masterful, taking her up there where she longed to go. She took his wrist again and she drew his hand downwards, at the same time she moved beneath him so that her thick woollen skirts rode up and bunched about her waist.
‘Centaine,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want to do anything that you don’t want.’
‘Tais-toi!’ she almost hissed at him. ‘Be quiet!’ – and she knew that she would have to lead him all the way, she would have to lead him always, for there was a difference in him that she had not been aware of before, but she did not resent it. Somehow it made her feel very strong and sure of herself.
They both gasped as he touched her. After a minute, she let go his wrist and searched for him and when she found him she cried out again, he was so big and hard that she felt daunted. For a moment, she wondered if she was capable of the task she had taken upon herself – then she rallied. He was awkward above her, and she had to wriggle a little and fumble. Then abruptly, when she was not expecting it, it happened – and she gasped with the shock.
But Anna had been wrong, there was no pain, there was only a breathtaking stretching and filling sensation and after the shock abated, a sense of great power over him.
‘Yes, Michel, yes, my darling.’ She encouraged him as he butted and moaned and thrashed in the enfolding crucifix of her limbs, and she rode his assault easily, knowing that in these moments he belonged to her completely, and revelling in that knowledge.
When the final convulsion gripped him, she watched his face, and saw how the colour of his eyes changed to indigo in the lamplight. Yet although she loved him then with a strength that was physically painful, still there was a tiny suspicion in the depths of her consciousness that she had missed something. She had not felt the need to scream as Elsa had screamed beneath Jacques in the straw, and immediately after that thought she was afraid.
‘Michel,’ she whispered urgently, ‘do you still love me? Tell me you love me.’
‘I love you more than my own life.’ His voice was broken and gusty, she could not for an instant doubt his sincerity.
She smiled in the darkness with relief and held him close, and when she felt him going small and soft within her, she was overcome with a wave of melting compassion.
‘My darling,’ she whispered, ‘there, my darling, there,’ and she stroked his thick springing curls at the back of his head.
It was a little time before her emotions had calmed enough for her to realize that something had changed irrevocably within her during the few brief minutes of that simple act they had performed together. The man in her arms was physically stronger than she was but he felt like a child, a sleepy child, as he cuddled against her. While she felt wiser and vital, as though her life up until that moment had been becalmed, drifting without direction, but now she had found her trade winds and like a tall ship she was at last bearing away purposefully before them.
‘Wake up, Michel.’ She shook him gently and he mumbled and stirred. ‘You cannot sleep now – talk to me.’
‘What about?’
‘Anything. Tell me about Africa. Tell me how we will go to Africa together.’
‘I’ve told you that already.’
‘Tell me again. I want to hear it all again.’
And she lay against him and listened avidly, asking questions whenever he faltered.
‘Tell me about your father. You haven’t told me what he looks like.’
So they talked the night away cuddled in their cocoon of grey blankets.
Then, too soon for both of them, the guns began their murderous chorus along the ridges, and Centaine held him to her with desperate longing. ‘Oh, Michel, I don’t want to go!’ then she drew away from him, sat up and began to pull on her clothes and refasten the buttons.
‘That was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me,’ Michael whispered as he watched her, and in the light of the lantern and the flickering glow of the guns, her eyes were huge and soft as she turned to him again.
‘We will go to Africa, won’t we, Michel?’
‘I promise you we wi
ll.’
‘And I will have your son in the sunshine, and we will live happily ever after just like in the fairy stories, won’t we, Michel?’
They went up the lane clinging together under Cen-taine’s shawl, and at the corner of the stables they kissed with quiet intensity until Centaine broke out of his grip and fled across the paved yard.
She did not look back when she reached the kitchen door, but disappeared into the huge dark house, leaving Michael alone and unaccountably sad when he should have been joyous.
Biggs stood over the cot and looked down fondly at Michael as he slept. Biggs’s eldest son, who had died in the trenches at Ypres a year ago, would have been the same age. Michael looked so worn and pale and exhausted that Biggs had to force himself to touch his shoulder and wake him.
‘What time is it, Biggs?’ Michael sat up groggily. ‘It’s late, sir, and the sun’s shining – but we aren’t flying, we are still grounded, sir.’
Then a strange thing happened. Michael grinned at him, a sort of inane idiotic grin that Biggs had never seen before. It alarmed him.
‘God, Biggs, I feel good.’
‘I’m glad, sir.’ Biggs wondered with a pang if it might be fever. ‘How’s our arm, sir?’
‘Our arm is marvellous, bloody marvellous, thank you, Biggs.’
‘I would have let you sleep, but the major is asking for you, sir. There is something important that he wants to show you.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m not allowed to say, Mr Michael, Lord Killigerran’s strict instructions.’
‘Good man, Biggs!’ Michael cried without apparent reason, and bounded from his cot. ‘Never do to keep Lord Killigerran waiting.’
Michael burst into the mess and was disappointed to find it empty. He wanted to share his good spirits with somebody. Andrew for preference, but even the mess corporal had deserted his post. The breakfast dishes still cluttered the dining-table, and magazines and newspapers lay on the floor where they had obviously been dropped in haste. The adjutant’s pipe, with malodorous wisps of smoke still rising from it, lay in one of the ashtrays, proof of how precipitously the mess had been abandoned.
Then Michael heard the sound of voices, distant but excited, coming through the open window that overlooked the orchard. He hurried out and into the trees.
Their full squadron strength was twenty-four pilots, but after the recent attrition they were down to sixteen, including Andrew and Michael. All of them were assembled at the edge of the orchard, and with them were the mechanics and ground staff, the crews from the anti-aircraft batteries that guarded the field, the mess servants and batmen – every living soul was on the field, and it seemed that all of them were talking at once.
They were gathered round an aircraft parked in the No. 1 position at the head of the orchard. Michael could see only the upper wings of the machine and the cowling of the motor over the heads of the crowd, but he felt a sudden thrill in his blood. He had never seen anything like it before.
The nose of the machine was long, giving the impression of great power, and the wings were beautifully raked yet with the deep dihedral which promised speed, and the control surfaces were full, which implied stability and easy handling.
Andrew pushed his way out of the excited throng around the aircraft and hurried to meet Michael with the amber cigarette-holder sticking out of the corner of his mouth at a jaunty angle.
‘Hail, the sleeping beauty arises like Venus from the waves.’
‘Andrew, it’s the SE5a at last, isn’t it?’ Michael shouted above the uproar, and Andrew seized his arm and dragged him towards it.
The crowd opened before them and Michael came up short and stared at it with awe. At a glance he could see it was heavier and more robust than even the German Albatros DIIIs – and that engine! It was enormous! Gargantuan!
‘Two hundred gee-gees!’ Andrew patted the engine cowling lovingly.
‘Two hundred horsepower,’ Michael repeated. ‘Bigger than the German Mercedes.’ He went forward and stroked the beautifully laminated wood of the propeller as he looked up over the nose at the guns.
There was a .303 Lewis gun on a Foster mount set on the top wing, a light, reliable and effective weapon firing over the arc of the propeller, and below it mounted on the fuselage ahead of the cockpit was the heavier Vickers with interrupter gear to fire through the propeller. Two guns, at last they had two guns and an engine powerful enough to carry them into battle.
Michael let out the highland yell that Andrew had taught him, and Andrew unscrewed the cairngorm and sprinkled a few drops of whisky on the engine housing.
‘Bless this kite and all who fly in her,’ he intoned, and then took a swig from the flask before handing it to Michael.
‘Have you flown her?’ Michael demanded, his voice hoarse from the burn of whisky, and he tossed the flask to the nearest of his brother officers.
‘Who the devil do you think brought her up from Arras?’ Andrew demanded.
‘How does she handle?’
‘Just like a young lady I know in Aberdeen – quick up, quick down and soft and loving in between.’
There was a chorus of cat-calls and whistles from the assembled pilots, and somebody yelled, ‘When do we get the chance to fly her, sir?’
‘Order of seniority,’ Andrew told them, and gave Michael a wicked grin. ‘If only Captain Courtney were fit to fly!’ He shook his head in mock sympathy.
‘Biggs!’ shouted Michael. ‘Where is my flying jacket, man?’
‘Thought you might want it, sir.’ Biggs stepped out of the crowd behind him and opened the jacket for Michael to slide his arms into the sleeves.
The mighty Wolseley Viper engine hurled the SE5a down the narrow muddy runway, and as the tail lifted Michael had a sweeping view forward over the engine cowling. It was like sitting in a grandstand.
‘I’ll get Mac to strip off this piddling little windshield,’ he decided, ‘and I’ll be able to spot any Hun within a hundred miles.’
He lifted the big machine into the air and grinned as he felt her begin to climb.
‘Quick up,’ Andrew had said, and he felt himself pressed down firmly into the seat, as he lifted the nose through the horizon and they went up like a vulture in a thermal.
‘There’s no Albatros been built that is going to climb away from us now,’ he exalted, and at five thousand feet he levelled out and swept her into a right-hand turn, pulling the turn tighter and tighter still, hauling back hard on the stick to keep the nose up, his starboard wing pointing vertically down at the earth and the blood draining from his brain by the centrifugal force so that his vision turned grey and colourless, then he whipped her hard over the opposite way and yelled with elation in the buffet of wind and the roar of the huge engine.
‘Come on, you bastards!’ He twisted to look back at the German lines. ‘Come and see what we have got for you now!’
When he landed, the other pilots surrounded the machine in a clamorous pack.
‘What’s she like, Mike?’
‘How does she climb?’
‘Can she turn?’
And standing on the lower wing above them, Michael bunched all his fingers together and then kissed them away towards the sky.
That afternoon Andrew led the squadron in tight formation, still in their shot-riddled, battered and patched old Sopwith Pups, down to the main airfield at Bertangles and they waited outside No. 3 hangar in an impatiently excited group as the big SE5a’s were trundled out by the ground crews and parked in a long line abreast on the apron.
Through his uncle at divisional headquarters, Andrew had arranged for a photographer to be in attendance. With the new fighters as a backdrop, the squadron pilots formed up around Andrew like a football team. Every one of them was differently dressed, not a single regulation RFC uniform amongst them. On their heads they wore forage caps and peaks and leather helmets, while as always Andrew sported his tam-o’-shanter. Their jackets were naval monkey jackets, or c
avalry tunics, or cross-over leather flying coats; but every one of them wore the embroidered RFC wings on his breast.
The photographer set up his heavy wooden tripod and disappeared under the black cloth while his assistant stood by with the plates. Only one of the pilots was not included in the group. Hank Johnson was a tough little Texan, not yet twenty years old, the only American on the squadron, who had been a horse tamer – or, as he put it, a bronco buster – before the war. He had paid his own passage over the Atlantic to join the Lafayette Squadron, and from there had found his way into Andrew’s mixed bunch of Scots and Irish and colonials and other strays that made up No. 21 Squadron RFC.
Hank stood behind the tripod with a thick black Dutch cigar in his mouth giving bad advice to the harassed photographer.
‘Come on, Hank,’ Michael called to him. ‘We need your lovely mug to give the picture some class.’
Hank rubbed his twisted nose, kicked into that shape by one of his broncos, and shook his head.
‘None of you old boys ever hear that it’s bad luck to have your picture took?’
They booed him, and he waved his cigar at them affably. ‘Go ahead,’ he invited, ‘but my daddy got himself bit by a rattle snake the same day he had his picture took for the first time.’
‘There aren’t any rattle snakes up there in the blue,’ one of them taunted.
‘No,’ Hank agreed. ‘But what there is, is a whole lot worse than a nest of rattle snakes.’ The derisive cries lost their force. They glanced at each other and one of them made as if to leave the group.
‘Smile, please, gentlemen.’ The photographer emerged from beneath his black cloth, freezing them, but their smiles were just a shade fixed and sickly as the shutter opened and their images were burned into silver nitrate for posterity.
Quickly Andrew acted to change the sombre mood that held them as they broke up. ‘Michael, pick five,’ he ordered. ‘The rest of us will give you ten minutes’ start, and you’re to try and head us off, and make a good interception before we reach Mort Homme.’
Michael led his formation of five into the classic ambush position, up sun and screened by wisps of cloud, blocking the return route to Mort Homme. Still, Andrew almost gave them the slip; he had taken his group well south and was sneaking in right down on the ground. It would have worked with duller eyes than Michael’s, but he picked up the flash of the low sun off the glass of a windshield from six miles and fired the red Very flare to signal ‘Enemy in Sight’ to his group. Andrew, realizing that they had been spotted, climbed up to meet them, and the two formations came together in a whirl of turning, diving, twisting machines.