by William Boyd
Lydecker wrenched his bulging eyes away. Her back was a broad stripe, a swathe of purpled shiny skin where static waves of silvery scar tissue and blistered burn weals tossed in a horrifying flesh-sea.
Lydecker emptied his stomach into his cupped hands and his vomit splashed over his naked body.
On the Sea-King taking him back to the Chester B. Lydecker sat slumped in white-faced silent depression. The throb of the rotor’s beat sounded remorselessly in his head. He considered his hatred and the girl’s. Now he knew why he had been so fascinated by her. They were the same. Siblings. He looked into her eyes to find himself staring back. They were both burning up inside with their hate and it was wrong. Their hate had no consequences outside of themselves. It made them sick, ate them up. It accrued only inside of them, like a miser’s hoard, poisoning everything. Their bodies couldn’t nourish such a parasite for long. Lydecker saw that. He didn’t want to end up like that girl. Infernal decades of grief and agony beamed out from those eyes. Perhaps what he needed was to cast it out into the world and let it flourish there. Like Pfitz did.
As the Sea-King approached the carrier, a great steel playing field ploughing through the choppy waters of the South China Sea, Lydecker was aware of a palpable change going through his body. He felt his breathing become shallower and perspiration break out on his forehead. It seemed as if his chest was hollow and filled with throbbing pulsating air.
Lydecker reported sick on landing and was found to be running a high temperature. The ship-board medics shot him full of penicillin and told him not to report for duty for two days. During that time Lydecker uneasily roved the corridors of the ship, a thinner and more consumptive figure than before, his mind obsessed with the violent images of his shore leave; of his casual unsatisfactory sex, fragments of obscene anecdotes he had heard, murmured accounts of battle-zone atrocities, and above them all, endlessly repeating itself like a video film loop, the vision of the young girl’s ghastly pirouette to expose her ravaged back.
Even Lydecker’s normally uninterested crew-mates commented on his yellowish pallor, the sheen of sweat forever on his forehead and upper lip, his staring red-rimmed eyes. They jokingly accused him of contracting some recondite strain of venereal disease and roared with laughter when he tried haltingly to tell them about the whore and her loathsome scars.
Gradually the nomadic circuit ofLydecker’s thoughts began to focus once again on Pfitz and his Crusader. Covertly, he haunted the below-deck hangar, distantly supervised the fuelling and rearming of the plane, observed Pasquale and Huq trundle the fat napalm canisters from the magazine elevators. He even took to discreetly following Pfitz whenever he moved from the officers’ quarters, studying the man’s corridor-filling bulk, the contours of his large skull revealed by his razored crew cut, the pink fleshiness of his neck above the stiff collar of his flying suit. The glimmerings of an idea began to form in Lydecker’s mind – he started to plot his revenge.
His nervous debility persisted, his temperature was regularly above normal and he collected sickness chits without problem.
Then, one afternoon he was lounging in a hatchway a few feet from the Crusader’s arming bay. Pfitz was talking to Lee Otis as the mechanic checked a faulty shackle on a napalm canister. Lydecker strained to catch his words.
‘. . . Yeah, there just ain’t nothing to beat this jelly, man. It’s gonna win us the woah. Shit, I can remember the original stuff. It wasn’t so hot. If the dinks were quick enough they could scrape it off. So the scientists come up with a good idea. They started adding polystyrene – yeah, polystyrene. Hell man, now it sticks better ‘n shit to a blanket.’ He chortled. Lee Otis’s eyes were glazed with boredom but Pfitz carried on, unaware in his enthusiasm. ‘Trouble was, if the dinks were fast enough and jumped underwater it stopped burning. So some wise guy adds white phosphorous to the mix, and, get this boy, now it can burn underwater.’ He reached down and patted the nose cone of the canister. ‘That thing on okay, now? . . .’
Crouched in his hatchway Lydecker waited and watched until Pfitz hauled his bulky body into the narrow cockpit of the Crusader. He tasted acid bile in his throat, his fretting hands picked unconsciously at his olive green jacket and a slight shivering ran through his wasted body. It was clear now. Beyond doubt. He couldn’t understand why he had waited so long. Pfitz was the guilty one. For that girl’s sake Pfitz had to suffer too.
It didn’t take Lydecker long to work out the technicalities of his revenge. The next day he was back on the catapult crew, silent and withdrawn, waiting for his time. In the evenings, with a rubber-based glue bought from the PX, and with sand from fire buckets and spare bolts and shards of metal from the machine rooms, he packed the beer can Pfitz had thrown at him with this glutinous hard-setting amalgam until it weighed heavy in his hand, a bright solid cylinder. To his fixated mind it had seemed only right that the beer can should be the agent of Pfitz’s destruction. There was a kind of macabre symmetry in the way events were turning out that he found deeply satisfying.
Patiently Lydecker studied the mission rotas and the catapult launch schedules, waiting for the day when Pfitz was to be first in line.
It was a bright windy afternoon that day on the Yankee station. The mission was close support on some hostile ville on the Cambodian border. Pfitz was in a good mood. He had just heard that he was getting a new Phantom the day after tomorrow. First in the flight, he was towed into position on the catapult and waited with his canopy up for the Chester B. to get up steam and turn into the wind. He saw the rescue helicopters take off and assume their positions a hundred yards out from the sides of the carrier. Pfitz looked at the catapult crew hunched against the rush of wind with their thick goggles and macrocephalic helmets. He saw the thin figure of that shithead Lydecker staring up at him, the wire launch bridle dangling from his hand. Little bastard. He began to feel uncomfortable at the insistent way Lydecker was looking at him. He seemed to remember seeing too much of the little creep around lately. He’d have to kick his butt in when he got back, get the pill to keep his distance. He hauled down his canopy as he heard the crackle of instructions in his earphones preparing him for take-off and ‘The Rose Train’s’ thirty-fifth mission. As he ran through the final cockpit checks he noticed the hunched, beetling figure of Lydecker scuttling up to the nose-wheel to secure the catapult bridle. As he moved out of his vision Pfitz reflected that he’d never really taught the little shit a proper lesson; he should have had him transferred right away.
Lydecker paused for a moment at the nose of the Crusader, out of Pfitz’s line of sight, buffeted by the rush of wind. For an instant he rested his gloved hand on the side of the plane and felt it shuddering from the power of its engine. His ear-muffles dampened all noise to a muted sea-shell roar. Then he crouched down and fitted both ends of the cables to the shackles on the nose-wheel, looping the middle over the protruding shark’s fin of the towing block. He knelt at the front of the plane for a second as if in supplication. And then, making sure his body obscured the view of the catapult officer, he swiftly withdrew the heavy beer can from his jacket and slotted it neatly into the recessed track, like a stubby bolt in a crossbow, just in front of the towing block.
Pfitz should have an unimpeded, normal take-off until the towing block reached the end of the catapult track. Then there would be a slight but vital check to the momentum imparted by the tons of steam pressure driving the block, as it obliterated the solid can jamming its clear run to the end of the track. It would be a slight, almost unnoticeable impediment but, Lydecker had calculated, a crucial one.
Lydecker ran back to his station and waved OK to the catapult officer. He barely acknowledged Lydecker’s signal. It was just one launch among hundreds he had supervised, another routine mission. Nothing would happen. You were remote on the Yankee station, the battles were elsewhere, over the horizon. Nobody attacked you and you never saw the people you atomized, shattered and burned.
Lydecker saw Pfitz lock into full afterburn
. The catapult officer swept his arm forward. The seaman across the deck punched the black rubber button on the console and the catapult’s release sent the Crusader blasting down the track.
Only Lydecker observed the tiny explosion as the towing block ploughed through the can, grinding it into the end of the track. A minute inconsequential impact. But the effect on Pfitz’s Crusader was dramatic. Instead of being thrown up at an angle into the skies the plane was flung down a shallow slope into the sea some two hundred yards in front and to the left of the carrier. It was over in a couple of seconds. With a huge gout of spray the Crusader was flipped into the sea, salt water flooding into the gaping intake, the screaming jets plunging the fully loaded aircraft deep under the surface.
There were shouts of alarm from the deck, but everything happened too quickly. Within moments they passed the spot where Pfitz had gone down; bubbling crazy water, a slick of oil, and men claimed to see the pale shape of the Crusader slipping ever deeper beneath the green surface of the sea.
Pfitz never came up and there was no further trace of the plane. The end of the catapult was found to be slightly warped and scarred and the accident was put down to yet another malfunction. The day’s mission was aborted while the mechanism was taken apart.
Lydecker stood on the edge of the deck and looked out at where the rescue helicopters futilely hovered above the oil slick. Groups of men stood about and talked of the accident. Lydecker’s heart was racing and his eyes were bright. Pfitz and his napalm somewhere at the bottom of the South China Sea. He felt good. No, he felt magnificent. He wanted to bite the stars.
Bat-Girl!
Arthur’s got this amazing tongue. Very long and pointed, pale pink and thin as a knife. He can curl it right round my fingers – very flickery. And, it’s wet and warm – not like a cat’s which is rough and dry. I can tell you it doesn’t half give me a funny feeling. I lie on my back and he licks away at my hands for hours. He seems quite happy and I get quite carried away sometimes. Shivers all through my body.
Arthur’s my bat of course, and he and I do an ‘act’ together. My aunt Reen runs the show. There’s me, Tracy, the bat-girl, and my younger sister Lorraine, snake-girl. I used to be snake-girl but that was when we only had one stall. Then someone gave Reen this big fruit bat and she thought, why not expand? She set up a new stall and here I am, having my fingers licked all day. SEE THE FABULOUS BAT-GIRL! £1000 IF ANIMAL NOT REAL!!
It sounds quite glamorous I know, but to be honest it’s not much of a job. We do the summer fairground circuit all over England and in the winter go back to Yorkshire where my uncle Ted’s got a battery-hen farm. I can tell you that after a few months with those bloody hens I’m aching to be out on the road again. You see, my big problem is that I always need some excitement in my life.
Above the pay-booth and running the length of the front of the stall there’s a big picture of a blonde girl with no clothes on and there’s a bat crawling across her body with its wings spread. The booth is new so the colours are still bright and not too badly chipped and also it’s quite warm, which is just as well because it can get quite parky lying around inside a cage all day. I’m not nude, mind you. I wear a swimsuit, one piece, pink with a big bow that holds the two halves of the front together. Arthur hangs upside down from the top of the cage licking my fingers. I dip them in a pot of honey – which he absolutely loves – and he just licks it all off.
Lorraine’s set-up is basically the same, except it’s not quite so smart. Also the python does nothing but sleep and I think that what people like about the bat-girl is that they can see the bat is actually alive. He’s quite big is Arthur; he’s got a brown furry body about a foot long with nasty looking claws. And then of course there’s his tongue, in and out, slipping all over my fingers. It seems to fascinate some people – they stare for ages. His wings remind me of a leather umbrella.
We’d been in Swindon for a week and had just come down to Oxford for St Giles fair. It was my second year in Oxford, though my first as bat-girl and I wasn’t looking forward to it that much. Funny mixture of people you get in Oxford I always say. There’s some right rough ones, don’t you believe it. And then there are these student types, they think they’re so bloody clever, with their tweed jackets and their haw-haw voices. I remember when I was snake-girl last year a whole crowd of them had stood and talked about me for twenty minutes as if I wasn’t there. Really rude too: ‘Eoh ai’m convinced she’s not alive,’ one of them says. ‘Ai’m going to claim my thousand quid.’ Gets on my wick that clever-clever lark. Give me the lads from Blackbird Leys any day.
The thing was I knew there would be extra trouble this year because of the painting Reen had put up of the naked girl. In Lorraine’s snake-girl painting she’s wearing a bikini, but for some reason Reen decided she’d make bat-girl nude. I said if they’re all coming in thinking I’m starkers I want an extra fiver a day for all the aggro I’m going to get. Reen paid up so I’m not complaining but my God you should hear some of the things that get said to me: ‘Take ’em off, darling’ and ‘Let’s have a look then’ and that’s not half of it. The problem is this revealing swimsuit Reen makes me wear and the fact that I’m fairly big up top. It’s a funny thing about being big-made – blokes seem to think they can say anything to you.
Still, it’s water off a duck’s back as far as I’m concerned. I’m used to it now so I just lie there and carry on reading my book. I always take a book into the cage because it’s a long day and it can get very boring. I read mainly men’s books: spies and thrillers, that’s what I like. I like a bit of excitement as I said. That’s really why I joined up with Reen soon as I left school. I’m eighteen now and I’m saving up for this dance course in London that I’ve seen advertised in a magazine. ‘Felaine la Strade, Ecole de Dance’. £500 for two months of lessons. You get a diploma and at the bottom of their prospectus it says ‘many of our graduettes have secured positions in West End shows’. Well, I’ve always been keen on dancing – quite good at it too – and as I say you’ve got to have some ambition and excitement in your life. I mean, look at Lorraine for e.g.; after this summer she’s decided to go back to school and retake her ‘O’-levels. I ask you, no spirit.
We’d set up in Oxford on the Sunday afternoon. The site’s right in the middle of town on a wide street with trees which is the best thing about it. We had quite a brisk Monday and one woman had screamed when she’d seen Arthur’s tongue. A couple of lads from Didcot who I’d met last year tried to chat me up in the evening. They claimed Trevor had said it was OK for me to come out with them. Trevor’s my boyfriend, he works on the Whip taking money. I told them to push off. Trev would never let them do that. He’s a very jealous sort of guy is Trev. Actually I’m not speaking to him at the moment. The last night we were in Swindon he showed up when we were taking down the stall with a big wad of cotton-wool sellotaped to his forearm. I had told him not to get any more tattoos and he’d just gone and done it. He’s got enough of them as it is, all over his arms and shoulders and in any case I’ve gone right off tattoos. He’d promised not to, so I told him to shove it.
I know we’ll get back together as Trev is really quite strong on me, but I am enjoying not having him hanging around. I’m getting on with my reading too. I finished a complete book on Monday and I’ve started a new one called Hell Comes Tomorrow. It’s really exciting.
On Tuesday after lunch business really tailed off and I was racing through the book when I realized someone had crept into the booth on their own and was staring at me. I looked round and saw a thin bloke with round gold specs who was carrying a briefcase. Only a student I thought, and went back to my book. Arthur was asleep so I prodded him awake and he hooked his wing-claw over my thumb and gave it a good licking. I thought I’d better do that so’s the guy could claim he’d got his money’s worth. However, a few minutes later he was still there so I turned round again and gave him a look – as much to say that’s your lot, mate – and he scurried out pretty sharp
ish.
But blow me if five minutes later he wasn’t back. Just standing and staring. It was beginning to get on my nerves; I couldn’t concentrate on my book at all. So I sat up and said:
‘That’s all there is you know. He doesn’t do tricks or anything.’
He looked a bit startled. He had quite a nice face and shiny clean black hair with a middle parting.
‘Oh I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I . . . I find it fascinating, that’s all.’
Well, I could tell by the way he kept touching the knot of his tie and the look he was giving me that ‘it’ didn’t refer to Arthur. He kept on standing there all the same, as if he’d never seen a girl before.
To this day I don’t know what made me do it. The heat perhaps – it was muggy and sunny outside. Maybe it was just plain boredom, and he looked so ‘nice’ and decent – the sort that wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
When I got the idea I felt this excited feeling at the bottom of my spine – a sort of electric tingling. So, very slowly – not taking my eyes off him – I leant back on the cushions and pulled out the cord of the bow on my swimsuit. Well, the two front bits kind of fell away – not completely, but he wouldn’t miss much. But then I went and laughed, I couldn’t help it, the expression on his face, I swear his specs steamed up.
‘This what you’re after then?’ I said between giggles.
You’ve never seen anyone move so fast. Out of the booth like a shot and I didn’t stop laughing for ten minutes. Arthur didn’t know what’d come over me.
Come five o’clock Reen shuts up the stall for half an hour to let me have a rest, a smoke and get to the lav. I pulled on my jersey and jeans (I keep them folded on a chair beside the cage) and went outside. I lit up a fag and had a good stretch. I normally meet Trev at this time but there was no sign of him on account of our row. But the student who’d been in the booth was there. I felt a bit embarrassed when he saw me and came over.