The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  He was still wondering who’d done it when he realised that the river had become a raging torrent. The level had lifted with the rain and it was roaring down from the mountains, covering the white pebbles that lined the banks and washing high against the islands in midstream. The bridge had been destroyed not by bombs but by water.

  Leading his two companions along the valley, he saw tree trunks that had been washed downstream mingling with the wreckage of the bridge at Miroda and rushing along in a vast battering ram. The next bridge along at Rimanicci had also gone, and he reached the next one just as the wreckage arrived and crashed into it like a massive sledge hammer of timber and fallen trees that set it lifting and swaying.

  Returning to Schia, he reported what he’d seen and later in the day the Italians said that only two bridges ten miles from the coast were useable, and that all the Austrian troops on the Italian side of the river near the Montello were cut off.

  Suddenly the weather cleared, and relieved of the need to bomb bridges, they took off to drive away the enemy aircraft trying to help the stranded infantry. Bumping into a mixed group of machines near the Montello, Dicken drove down one that he couldn’t identify, which crashed in the Austrian trenches, and half an hour later he caught a Berg fighter, whose pilot never knew what hit him. The following morning he caught a two-seater which fell near Arcade.

  As the excitement died, it was clear that the Austrians were withdrawing back across the river. All they could see was the debris of disaster, dead horses, dead men, smashed wagons and abandoned guns. The Austrian offensive was over.

  Five

  In the lull that followed the fighting on the Piave, it was possible to sit back and count noses. There were new faces in the mess but there was also a great deal of new confidence because, despite the smallness of the allied air force in Italy, at no time had the Austrians gained command of the air.

  There was no Nicola, however. Though it was possible once more to go to Capadolio, the house there was being run only by the servants and Italy suddenly seemed empty, part of another world, part of another war. After six months, they had lost touch with England and Italy seemed more different than ever. Food was different, the way of life was different, the people were different, the backdrop of the mountains different, the thunder of the guns coming from forests carpeted with moss, pine needles and cones, where black-white-and-red woodpeckers tapped and eagles soared against the sky.

  With the end of the Austrian offensive, a feeling was even creeping in that the war was coming to an end, too. The newspapers had it that the Austrians would be glad to throw their hands in, and Bulgaria and Turkey were in much the same boat, while in France the German offensive had finished and the allied armies had begun to counter-attack.

  A letter arrived from Nicola from Naples. Her father had been transferred to Rome and since overwork at the hospital during the Austrian offensive had resulted in some sort of breakdown, her mother had taken her to the coast to recover.

  For a while Dicken felt bereft. Now that she was beyond his reach, his mind was full of her, how she looked, how she spoke, how she worried about her religion, and he had almost forgotten Zoë when he received a letter from her.

  “I can fly,” she wrote ecstatically. “I shall take out a licence as soon as the war’s over and probably be the first woman to fly the Atlantic. Casey Harmer taught me. He thinks I’m in love with him and he’ll do anything for me.”

  For a moment, he sat staring at the words, unexpectedly churned by jealousy and wondering what she’d been up to. Since she’d slipped into bed with him without argument, he wondered if in exchange for flying lessons she’d slipped into bed with Casey Harmer with the same ease.

  He was still choked with jealousy when he received another letter from Nicola in Naples, telling him in her solemn way that she’d finally decided that their religions shouldn’t come between them.

  “My brother says if I love you it doesn’t matter and that Protestants have married Catholics before without difficulty or shame. He’s finally decided to become a missionary and it’s this which finally made up my mind. If he can give up his family, so can I.”

  It was naïve and gentle in the way that Nicola was naïve and gentle, and it pleased Dicken. He liked the Aubreys, who were good, kind, intelligent, attractive and well-brought-up, all the things he’d learned from his mother to expect from a partner. But the idea of marriage brought a head full of new thoughts as he began to wonder what he could do after the war to support a wife. The prospect of going back to the routine of an office held little appeal, he no longer had much love for seafaring, and hadn’t used his skills with a wireless set for months. Something would surely turn up, he thought, but he couldn’t imagine the cautious Aubrey giving his daughter away without a guarantee that she could expect a stable future.

  The squadron had moved now to a field at Sottanunga and were living in a mansion full of marble busts owned by an Italian count who preferred to remain in Rome. The Austrians, showing little fight after the failure of their push, had withdrawn toward the mountain barrier to the north. It was clear they had been weakened by the failure of their offensive, which seemed to have knocked the stuffing out of them so that the possibility of the war ending became an intriguing question mark.

  Dicken was still considering his future when Hallowes took him aside in the mess.

  “You’re for home,” he said. “You’re to take over a Snipe Squadron in France.”

  Dicken was flattered. The tragedy in France still held a terrible fascination and Snipes were the latest thing. The natural development of the Camel, they were of advanced design and increased performance, and had been built to take advantage of a much bigger Bentley engine. With their excellent climb and manoeuvrability and the absence of the Camel’s viciousness, they were already being considered the best all-around single-seat fighter in service. It was a matter of pride to be given a squadron, too, and with luck it meant he could hope to stay alive until the end of the war.

  The following day, however, Hallowes took him on one side again. He was pink-faced and embarrassed. “I got it wrong, Dick,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry. I misread it. It’s the Major who’s going.”

  Dicken couldn’t think what use Diplock could be to a Snipe squadron and he was disappointed, but since he had never expected to have his own squadron, the blow was not too heavy.

  He went up early to lead a patrol beyond the river, where he caught a Hansa-Brandenburg that fought and wriggled to escape but ended up flying into the side of a hill. Before lunch he was told to provide an escort in the afternoon for the Bristols who were doing a reconnaissance over the railway junction at Vittorio.

  Hatto met him as he headed for his machine. He looked tired these days. “Sorry to drag you out,” he said. “But it’ll be the last job before you go home.”

  Dicken shrugged. “I’m not going home,” he said. “Hallowes misread the signal.”

  Hatto frowned “He didn’t seem to have misread it when I spoke to him,” he said. “He seemed very pleased. And it certainly seemed to me to indicate you were going home.”

  They made their arrangements over a map resting on the wing of Hatto’s machine but Hatto was late appearing as Dicken headed for his machine after lunch.

  “Tried to get another look at that signal,” he said. “But Hallowes says Parasol Percy’s got it in the safe, which,” he added, “is unusual. Signals of that sort are usually stuck on the notice board for everybody to see and crow about.”

  The target was heavily guarded by anti-aircraft guns but the photographs were safely made. As Hatto climbed back to take station alongside Dicken’s flight, three Austrian airplanes appeared from between the mountains, their blue and green camouflage making them hard to see against the slopes. They were a new type Dicken hadn’t seen before and they could outclimb the Camels, so he turned for the lines and incre
ased speed, only to see Hatto dropping behind with engine trouble.

  Waving him on, he swung north to guard his rear. As the leading Austrian came in close, he yanked on the stick and went up in the first part of a loop, then fell over sideways to drop into position behind, his guns clattering. The Austrian immediately started going down in a flicking spin and after a few turns began to shed pieces of wing before finally dropping like a stone, a blue-and-green-blotched coffin rapidly disappearing against the blue of the earth. The other two machines vanished.

  In the region of Monte Campolo, they were attacked again, this time by five Bergs. Turning to meet them, Dicken headed for the centre of the formation and, aiming at the right-hand machine at close range, saw it roll on to its back and dive vertically into the hills at Peralto. As the other Bergs swung away, he dropped into position behind the rearmost and it began to go down in an erratic glide towards a patch of wood in the Val Freddo. Almost immediately, he found himself face to face with yet another Berg, but the Austrian lost his nerve and, as he tried to pass above, he presented the belly of his machine. Raked from one end to the other, it caught fire and exploded and when Dicken looked down there was nothing except two red-and-white-striped wings fluttering down into the mountains. As the Camels reformed, he saw three long columns of smoke and his companions were both waving their arms wildly and pointing at themselves to indicate that they, too, had each downed an enemy.

  Hatto’s Bristol was only a speck in the distance now and as they headed after it, red Italian anti-aircraft fire rose near the lines to draw attention to an Aviatik near Disina. As Dicken fired, the observer disappeared inside his cockpit and the Aviatik began to go down in a long dive toward the south.

  Dicken’s motor was giving trouble now and, waving his companions on, he landed on a Caproni airdrome near Remido and telephoned to Sottonunga.

  As he put the instrument down, the Italian colonel appeared, full of smiles. He was a big man, as if he’d been chosen to go with the large machines he commanded, and he suggested Dicken should return with him and dine with his family.

  He had a house alongside the River Remo, which was a tributary of the Piave, and since the weather was hot, he suggested they should swim. As they were heading toward the water, the colonel’s wife and daughter appeared. The daughter was pretty and dark-eyed, and it turned out that the colonel was a count, which made her a contessa because in Italy everybody in the family carried the title, too.

  After dinner they danced on a marble-floored veranda to music from a gramophone, and the colonel offered him a bed for the night. The evening was warm enough to sit outside, the sky pearly with a cold moon; and, as the colonel and his wife and two other guests who’d turned up, went inside, Dicken managed to kiss the girl, who kissed him back with marked enthusiasm.

  He left after breakfast and reached Sottanunga in the middle of the morning. Hatto was flying and, as he arrived, Diplock greeted him with a smile. He couldn’t understand why until he realised Diplock had read the report made out by his companions.

  “Five!” he said. “The whole flight! This is remarkable!”

  He didn’t seem to know whether to be pleased or jealous but in the end, obviously deciding it was going to do him a lot of good, too, he added his praise and congratulations, and offered Dicken two or three days off to get information on the Austrian flight.

  “Go up to the Val Freddo,” he said. “Find out where they came from. This sort of thing looks good in my reports.”

  Six

  Driving the tender himself, Dicken promptly headed back to the home of the colonel of the Caproni squadron. His daughter was delighted to see him and he used the tender to take her on a picnic in the mountains.

  The day was warm, the woods were silent and the girl clearly had a crush on Dicken. Conversation was none too easy because she didn’t speak much English, so they overcame the problem by holding hands as they walked and kissing when they sat down.

  Girls, he decided, seemed to fall for him much more easily than they once had and he wondered why until he looked at himself in the mirror. Then he realised that, with dark hollows under his eyes, his face was leaner and older, even with a grittier, more assured look about it. Like airplanes, which had grown from uncertain box-kites of dubious quality and inflammable intensity to strong, fast, reliable machines with an obvious future, he had been matured by the war, fired, steeled and made into a man.

  He spent the night at the colonel’s house and the following morning was given a flight in a Caproni bomber. It had two fuselages and three engines and carried a crew of two for daytime bombing and four for night bombing. The colonel was delighted with his interest and gave him several of the leaflets they were engaged in dropping on Vienna. Since they were printed in Italian, they seemed to Dicken to have a somewhat limited value. Eating lunch in the Italian mess, he decided Italian pilots were very much the same as British pilots – just better-looking on the whole, more excitable and noisy, and with a greater tendency to burst into song.

  It was late when he continued his journey north. Troops were passing the airfield and the dust they raised drifted through the woods, catching the sunshine as it went. Near Adiero he found a Berg spread across the side of a hill. Parts of it were scattered across a distance of fifty yards and the Italians had laid the pilot’s body in a hut. His scalp had been torn off in the crash and somebody had picked it up and placed it on the bent engine cowling so that it lay like a fur mitten, blond and curling, with the parting still in place.

  Accepting the pilot’s papers and the serial number of the machine, which had been cut from the fuselage, Dicken drove on to Runduda where he found a second Berg, almost intact. The pilot, who had been wounded, had been taken to hospital.

  At Barstole, he found the remains of a third Berg and the Italians once more offered the papers and said they had taken photographs of the debris and would send him one.

  The unknown type he’d shot down turned out to be a Siemens-Schuckert, but it couldn’t be salvaged because it was within machine gun range from the Austrian lines. An Italian sottotenente who had lived in New York and spoke English with an American accent told him that the pilot had fallen out.

  “We’ve got him under a tarpaulin down the hill,” he said. “He’s a bit of a mess. Would you like to see him?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll take your word for it.”

  As the Italian produced the identity card of the dead pilot, Dicken found himself staring at the portrait of a man who looked exactly like Foote. He stuffed it hurriedly back into the envelope the Italian held out, wondering if it could somehow be Foote who had changed sides in disgust and started flying for the Austrians. But the young man’s name was there alongside the picture, Jozséf Mikzsáth, and it set him wondering if Jozséf Mikzsáth was like Foote in temperament and character as well as in looks. Then he began wondering if he ought to write to Jozséf Mikzsáth’s mother. But how do you write to a woman and tell her you had just ended her son’s life? “Dear Frau Mikzsáth, I have just killed your son. I didn’t look at the body because I was told it was a bit of a mess.” He decided to forget the idea.

  It was a brilliant day and the clouds had disappeared except for mist drifting among the mountains with the hint of an afternoon storm so that the outer bastions sparkled against the deep blue of the sky. All around him was the silence of the countryside, quite still except for the chirp of crickets and the distant song of a soldier in an orchard. The silence caught at his throat and he decided he’d had enough. The silence and the photograph of Jozséf Mikzsáth had finished him.

  It was something he had been aware of growing in him for some time, though he had constantly thrust it out of sight behind him into the darkest recesses of his mind. Now, suddenly, it was as if he no longer had the strength to combat it, as if his muscles no longer belonged to him. His mind had grown sluggish and could think of nothing but getting
away from the killing. Jozséf Mikzsáth hadn’t asked to die and he, Dicken, hadn’t asked to kill him, and suddenly the whole war seemed a huge, ignoble plot hatched by politicians, generals and financiers to destroy his generation. Aware of a sudden lost yearning for something he couldn’t define – a missed youth, frustrated hopes, the ever-present possibility of death – he came to the conclusion that he was emotionally spent and needed leave. He needed to go home. He certainly needed something badly. Until that moment, he had never accepted that he was tired, but suddenly he realised that if he carried on he would probably start doing silly things. He had passed his peak and begun to grow over-confident, certain there was nothing he couldn’t do, and it was that point that was the most dangerous.

  As he descended the mountain, he stopped for a meal at a small bar with a garden. An Italian artillery officer wearing ribbons of the Libyan campaigns joined him and, as they talked, a cloud covered the mountain and the sun disappeared. A shutter slammed and the leaves started rattling, then the dust started to whirl. As they went inside the air turned liquid and drops of rain as big as half-crowns began to fall.

  “Rain,” the Italian said, gesturing to the north. “Austrian rain. The sun’s Italian. The summer is coming to an end. And then the politicians in Rome will once more start saying ‘Not another winter in the trenches.’” He shrugged. “What do they know of it, these patriots? They have never been in the trenches. Not even in summer.”