Damned Good Show (33 page)

They went inside. There was a hole in the roof and a strong smell of mildew. The only furniture was a sagging sofa, covered with blankets. He saw a revolver hanging from a nail, took it down, checked it. Empty. A cardboard box had some tins in it. “Pilchards,” Zoë said. “I'm getting rather sick of pilchards.”

“Can't your mother do something? She's got millions. Or that peculiar Dutchman, Flemming Thingummy.”

“Vansittart. I think he's gone to Holland to be a spy.” She picked at what little was left of the wallpaper. “Anyway, what could he do? I transferred the money, I'm guilty in law, even if someone pays it all back. I'm bound to be arrested.” The last bit of wallpaper fell. “You're awfully clever, Silko. Can't you think of something?”

“I've got one idea. But we've already done that.”

“Ages ago.”

“True, true.”

“Let's say it was an air-test. To make sure none of the screws were loose.”

“What a clever, beautiful girl you are.”

The sofa creaked, but none of its screws came loose. A Wimpy on its final approach made the windows vibrate. Silk and Zoë had heard
it all before, and they concentrated on enjoying themselves, since the rest of the world wasn't being much fun.

Rollo lay on a bed. The dentist sat on a tall stool, watching him. The male nurse stood alongside.

“The body is a wonderful machine,” the dentist said. “Take blood, for instance. First it cleanses the wound, then it coagulates and seals up the hole in the body, and all the while it keeps searching for hostile bacteria which may have taken the opportunity to sneak in, and if it finds any, it bumps them off. Meanwhile, of course, the blood is also engaged in its epic journey around the body which keeps us alive. Man has invented nothing so clever as blood.”

Rollo leaned sideways and spat a heavy gobbet of the stuff into a basin. The nurse came forward and wiped his mouth with a towel and went back to his place.

“I almost forgot to mention another quality of blood,” the dentist said “It's non-toxic. You can swallow it quite safely”

Rollo was very tired. The anesthetic had almost worn off but he was dozy. There was a hole in his jaw the size of a bucket, and he kept having to empty it.

“And here's another thing,” the dentist said. “Is it pure chance that blood is red? The perfect symbol for danger, isn't it? The body has a good reason for everything, and that includes color. Imagine yellow blood. Or green! Well, duty calls. Give him another aspirin in thirty minutes,” he told the nurse, and left.

There was nothing to look at but the ceiling. Nothing to hear but the thud of his pulse. One side on his face felt as if it had been clubbed. Rollo grew accustomed to the pain. Without realizing it, he drifted into sleep, and woke up choking on blood. After that he knew there was no point in trying to stay awake. If his body disagreed, it would wake him up, choking and spitting. That was another thing blood was good for: waking you up. The dentist had missed that one. Rollo dozed off again.

The room was in dusk when he opened his eyes, not because he was choking, but because the nurse was lifting him by the shoulders, making him sit up. Automatically, Rollo spat into the basin.

“Jolly good,” the dentist said. “Look: we're going to put a couple of stitches into that cavity. Knit the edges together. Try to stop the bleeding.”

Rollo got off the bed. He raised a finger. Big speech coming. “What's the rush?” he said. “I've still got a pint left.” They were kind enough to smile, although they had heard it before. They had heard everything before.

The signal came from Command and said:
Report King's College Cambridge 1800 hours in civilian clothes. Authority: R.G.T. Champion, Group Captain.

Skull got the Lagonda filled up with RAF petrol and wore the only decent suit he had, an Irish thornproof tweed of such a dark green that it looked almost black. Two years in uniform made him feel naked without a hat, so he borrowed a bowler from the adjutant. His sudden release from Coney Garth turned the day into a holiday. He sped west and was in Cambridge by three o'clock. He strolled along the Backs and enjoyed the calm beauty of the university during the Long Vacation. Cambridge was at its best without undergraduates, Skull thought. A pity it couldn't be a permanent arrangement.

At six he walked into King's, and the Porter's Lodge installed him in the room of an undergraduate called Cooksley, reading medicine. Skull had a bath and he was browsing through Cooksley's books when Champion knocked and came in. “We're dining at High Table,” he announced.

“I bet you didn't know that bone marrow comes in two colors, red and yellow,” Skull said.

“Here's a gown for you.”

“Not striped, you understand. Either red or yellow. The red marrow makes blood cells. That's reassuring, isn't it?”

“We'll be late.”

Skull followed him. “How the blood cells escape from the marrow and enter the arteries was not revealed. Possibly in the next chapter.” He noticed that Champion's suit, of charcoal-gray flannel, had been generously tailored to enhance the shoulders. “You look bigger,” he said. “But of course you're a group captain now.”

Champion said, “We're here to meet a chap called Butt. David Bensusan-Butt. You've never heard of him. He's only twenty-seven but he's private secretary to Professor Lindemann and Lindemann is Churchill's personal adviser on weapons and science and the like. This means that Bensusan-Butt is in the Prime Minister's office. He's a civil servant but they're not all stupid and Bensusan-Butt's got a brain like Battersea Power Station. He's a King's man. That's why I got you both here, away from London. He'll be more relaxed here.”

“Relaxed about what?”

“Good question. Bomber Command has plans. It needs to be twice as big, maybe four times as big. However, we've got enemies in the War Cabinet. My spies tell me that Lindemann has ordered Bensusan-Butt to do a deep analysis of Bomber Command and award marks out of ten.”

Skull was introduced to the man and they talked briefly, not about the war. Skull got an impression of warmth and wit, of an intense energy, and of someone who knew exactly how each sentence would end before he began it. Then they went into Hall and were seated too far apart for conversation. Skull thought:
Champion wants to run the show. This should be interesting.

When dinner ended, Champion did not linger. He led his guests to his rooms, which were much more spacious than Cooksley's. Champion's influence had evicted a professor of clinical biochemistry. Such raw power both impressed and depressed Skull.

“No piano, I'm afraid,” Champion said, and murmured to Skull, “Mr. Bensusan-Butt is an excellent pianist.”

“Purely for pleasure,” his guest said. “Some play squash, I play Haydn. Incidentally, can we drop the Bensusan? Butt is enough. David is even better.”

“Splendid,” Champion said. “I'm Ralph, and Skelton is … well, Skelton is Skull. Very apt. He's my tame brain in the field of battle.”

Skull had been adjusting the blackout curtains. Now his head turned slowly. “What did you call me?” he said.

Champion should have apologized, but he had only recently been made up to group captain and he could not apologize to a flight lieutenant. Instead, he bustled about, offering drinks: brandy, port, whisky, Madeira?

“I wouldn't mind some coffee,” Butt said.

“Of course. Skull, be a good fellow and make some coffee.”

“No.” It was said calmly but firmly.

Champion frowned. “Are you allergic to coffee?”

“No.”

Champion looked at Butt with mock-despair. “Mutiny. Is it like this in Downing Street?”

Butt smiled. “We are all mutineers in Downing Street. The Prime Minister gets restless when he is surrounded by harmony. War is not a harmonious business.”

“Well, Bomber Command has never shirked a chance to stir up trouble.” Champion went into the kitchen and filled a kettle and put it on the stove and came back. “People forget that Bomber Command has been operating against the enemy since the very first day of the war. Whenever the weather allowed we've hammered him in his own backyard. No other Service can claim that.” He went out. Rattling and clinking were heard. He came back with a loaded tray. “No coffee. Is tea all right? As I was saying, the Command hasn't had full credit for its efforts throughout almost two years. Shipping strikes, Nickels, Gardening, and then the Battle of Britain which was really
two
battles. The fighter boys did their stuff but who sank all those invasion barges? Every Channel port from Antwerp to Dieppe-Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne—all through last summer, night after night, walloped by Bomber Command! And when Hitler dropped the first bombs on London, it wasn't Spitfires that flew to Berlin the next night and gave the Germans a fright. Which is what Bomber Command has been doing ever since. Night after night. Is there a Focke-Wulf aircraft factory in Bremen? Fine. We'll send a hundred bombers and blast it. That's just what we did last January. Target destroyed. What's next? And so we've continued. We know Nazi Germany is suffering. You can't drop a four-thousand-pound blockbuster on Bremen without giving Hitler a headache.”

Butt poured the tea. “I have a feeling that was a preamble,” he said.

“Throat-clearing,” Skull said. “Delete paragraph one.”

“If you double the size of Bomber Command, you quadruple its
destructive power,” Champion said, “How? By overwhelming the German defenses.
Quadruple
the size of Bomber Command and you can utterly devastate the German war machine …” He raised a hand to dramatize the point. “… without the need for a land invasion of Europe.”

Butt sipped his tea.

“That's the view from the top,” Champion said. “But it's the squadrons that do the real work, isn't it? 409 Squadron at Coney Garth is one of the best. What is their formula for consistent success? Our eminent sleuth has the answer.”

Champion meant to flatter. Skull felt he was being patronized. This made no difference to Skull's answer but it sharpened his tone of voice. “There is no formula,” he said, “because there is no consistent success.”

“That's the trouble with academics,” Champion said. “They will quibble about words. If you don't like ‘consistent,' how about ‘conspicuous'?”

“The term I most dislike is ‘interrogation,'” Skull said.

“It's what we do to pilots after an op,” Champion explained to Butt.

“It's what we
don't
do to them,” Skull said. “Interrogation suggests a degree of mental toughness. A rigorous examination of performance. That's not what happens. A crew's report is accepted at face value, and rarely challenged. Interrogation is a poor method of measuring success.”

Champion had an instant answer. “Then it's just as well we don't depend too heavily upon it. One infallible indicator of Bomber Command's effectiveness is the enemy's response, and I don't think that even you, Skull, would dispute the evidence of flak damage which our bombers bring back.”

“Yes, it's evidence,” Skull said. “But of what?”

“That the Hun has been stung! We've laid waste so many of his cities that flak, searchlights, night fighters are top priority over there!”

“Oh, I doubt that. The Russian front is Hitler's top priority.”

“And Russia desperately wants us to keep bombing, to take the pressure off her. When the other man gets mad, you know your punches are hurting, and I've seen the German newspapers. They get very upset at Bomber Command.”

“Proves nothing,” Skull said. “Our newspapers made gloomy reading during the Blitz, but they didn't make the German bombers any more effective.”

“Thank God for that!” Champion was brisk; he seemed to be enjoying the exchange. “You were in London in the Blitz?” he asked Butt, who nodded. “So was I. Skull was in Scotland … Ask any Londoner, Skull. He'll tell you whether the Blitz was effective or not. Bombing hurts, old chap. It's already hurt Berlin. Given time we'll flatten it.”

“Hitler didn't flatten London.”

“He made a mess of it.”

“Of a small part of it. Measured on the map, only one yard in ten of Greater London is covered by a building. Inevitably, most bombs fell in the ninety percent that is open space.”

“Such as railways? All the London termini got hit. Does your open space include churchyards? That would explain all the Wren churches that we lost. Did the Germans waste those bombs?”

Skull took his glasses off and polished them with his tie. “It begs the question,” he said, and squinted hard at Butt, “that this war will be won by bombing churches.” He put his glasses on, and made a little act of locating Champion. “Ah. There you are.”

“Well, it certainly won't be won with debating tricks,” Champion said. “There's nothing tricky about high explosive. If the Luftwaffe can destroy Coventry, we can destroy, say, Hamburg.”

“Coventry wasn't destroyed. Just because Goebbels says so, doesn't make it true. I've heard too many of our pilots say they annihilated the target, and next week they got sent back to annihilate it again.”

“Repairs,” Champion said. “Salvage work.”

“You can't repair annihilation. People are too casual with words. Coventry wasn't destroyed. Its
center
was severely damaged. Its gas and electricity and water supplies were cut. Some factories were hit. But by far the greater part of Coventry was still standing next day, and all the factories were back in action within weeks, some within days.”

“They were indeed,” Butt said. “However, we don't want the Germans to know that. How did you find out?”

“Intelligence. A Waaf in my section comes from Coventry.”