Damned Good Show (34 page)

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Authors: Derek Robinson

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“Ah. And what conclusion do you draw from all this?”

Skull puffed out his cheeks. “Not a conclusion, but a suggestion. If the Luftwaffe couldn't destroy Coventry, perhaps we shouldn't be too cocksure about destroying Hamburg.”

“Too late,” Champion said cheerfully. “We've already made a start. And we've also knocked down large chunks of Kiel, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven. How can I be so cocksure of this? Because neutral businessmen see it and tell us. Foreign journalists make reports. Travelers
travel
, Skull. In and out of Europe.”

“Travelers. I see.” Skull felt that he had been sucked into playing verbal ping-pong for the amusement of an audience of one, and he was growing tired of it. “I trained to be a historian, and historians are suspicious of travelers' tales. Men like to excite their listeners. The traveler visits, say, Dusseldorf and sees one bombed street. When he returns to Sweden he tells what he saw and soon there is a report headed ‘Devastation hits Dusseldorf,' from which it is but a short skip and a jump to believe that Dusseldorf is devastated.”

“Jolly good!” Champion applauded, briefly. “The strategic bombing campaign as seen through the eyes of a Swedish news editor. That's more than I had hoped for.” To Butt he said, “He really is awfully clever, isn't he?” To Skull he said, “Thank you, flight lieutenant. Most enjoyable. I don't think we need keep you up any longer.” Skull shook hands with Butt. At the door, Champion said, “You must lunch with me at my club, old chap.”

“If I must,” Skull said.

Champion came back and poured himself a whisky. “I like old Skull,” he said. “He's got a mind like a rugger ball: you never know which way it will bounce. Of course, his weakness is he sees everything at squadron level. He can't take the broad view. I brought him along to act as a sort of devil's advocate. Not bad, was he?”

“Not bad at all,” Butt said.

“Now to serious business. Bomber Command's the only weapon we have which can seriously damage Germany. That's hard fact. And you don't need the brains of an archbishop to see that the more bombers we build, the sooner we win. Or have I overlooked something?”

“Tell me more,” Butt said.

5

Next morning, Silk bought some food at the village shop: bread, salad stuff, two Chelsea buns, four pears, lemonade. Everything else was on ration. He drove to the broken bungalow and Zoë wasn't there. He sat by the edge of the lake and watched dragonflies perform maneuvers that were strictly banned by the manufacturers. After a while she appeared, very wet. “I found a bubbling brook,” she said. “Had an all-over wash. How the rabbits stared. Golly, such red tomatoes.” She ate one. She sat beside him.

“What's that funny smell?” he asked. “It smells like carbolic soap.”

“That's because it is. All the best outlaws use carbolic, darling.”

“It smells awfully coarse. Us bomber pilots are terribly sensitive, you know. Pug Duff cries at dog shows.”

“Don't believe you.” She stretched out so that her head was resting on his lap. “Tony wasn't sensitive. Tony was an animal. Sometimes I had to bite him on the neck to make him stop.”

“Are we talking about the same chap?” No answer. Her eyes were closed. “How often did you bite his neck?”

“Once.”

“What a shocking liar you are. I was going to ask you to marry me but…”

“Jinx popsy, remember?”

“Balls. I'm on my second tour. I'm jinx-proof.”

“I won't marry you, Silko.”

“Too late. I withdrew the offer ages ago.”

“You don't really love me. You just covet my body.”

“You coveted mine first.”

“I did, didn't I?” She smiled at the memory. “Men are so slow.”

Silk thought about that. Was he really slow? Often, during the past year, he had thought about Zoë, about finding her again. Why hadn't he done anything? Because he was slow? Or because he hadn't expected to survive his first tour? Thirty ops had been too many for most crews. After that, instructing ham-fisted student pilots in clapped-out Wimpys had been a chapter of accidents. He had no right to survive that, either. Nobody on the squadron had ever finished a second tour. It was one reason why he kept putting off having a haircut. Or getting a new uniform. Or buying a book. Fancy going
to all that trouble and then getting the chop. Wasted effort. And now, as it turned out, Zoë had come looking for him, which probably proved something, but Silk didn't care what it was. He preferred to sit and enjoy the feeling of her head in his lap while he watched the dragonflies do their stunts. How long was a dragonfly's tour of ops? Bloody short, judging by their frantic antics. That was nice. “Frantic antics,” he murmured. She didn't move. Sound asleep.

Zoë wanted lunch: a real knife-and-fork lunch, not tomato sandwiches and lemonade. Silk told her she looked like a gypsy princess and no respectable hotel would serve her. “They'd better,” she said. But she brushed her hair.

They drove across Suffolk. At every crossroads or junction, she pointed and that was where he went. He felt a sense of happy irresponsibility, but he also felt hungry. “Are we going somewhere special?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Zoë, you're completely lost.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “And Tony said you were thick. You're not at all thick, Silko.”

After many more turnings, she suddenly pointed at a white-stucco hotel. “There,” she said. Silk parked, and they went in. A middle-aged woman sat at reception. She wore a straw hat with a rose tucked into the band and she was knitting a scarf, using the biggest needles Silk had ever seen. They were like chopsticks. “Hello,” Zoë said. “We'd like lunch, please.”

“Can't be done. We don't do lunches, not since my chef got called up by the army.”

“Oh.” Zoë fished a checkbook out of a skirt pocket. “In that case I'd like to cash a check for fifty pounds.”

“So would I.” She hadn't stopped knitting.

Zoë took the revolver from her other skirt pocket. “If you don't give me fifty pounds, I'll shoot this man.”

Silk put his hands up. “She's quite mad,” he said. “I'd pay her, if I were you.”

“If I had fifty pounds,” the woman said, “I'd be at the races.”

“It's a real gun,” Zoë said. “Look: give us the money and we'll
take
you to the races.”

She put down her knitting. “He's a nice boy,” she said. “What good would it do to shoot him?”

“Ten pounds.” Zoë opened the checkbook. “It won't bounce, I promise.”

“I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll let you have a room and bath, and a plate of ham sandwiches, for the afternoon, for a pound.”

“Done,” Silk said, and lowered his hands.

“It's not like this in the movies,” Zoë said.

“I was your age once,” the woman said. “I know what it's like to be young. I eloped with an Italian count when I was nineteen. We ran away to Gretna Green and the blacksmith married us, but it turned out he wasn't an Italian count, he was a vacuum-cleaner salesman with a wife in Cardiff. Still, he was lovely in bed.”

Silk gave her a pound.

“Use any room,” she said. “A hotel with no meals doesn't get many guests.”

“I'm on the run from the police,” Zoë said. Silk groaned.

“I get the occasional deserter staying here,” the woman said. “They're no trouble. D'you like mustard?”

Zoë picked the room. They lay on the bed, comfortably naked in the afternoon sunshine, and ate ham sandwiches. “She didn't play the game,” Zoë said. “What if the gun had gone off accidentally?”

“It's empty, you juggins.”

“She didn't know that. She might have killed you.”

“I think you confused her. Why did you say you would shoot me? We came in together, we were friends.”

“Who else could I shoot? Not her. Women don't shoot other women, do they? Anyway I bet if I'd been a man, James Cagney for instance, she'd have found fifty pounds. It's not as if I'm robbing anyone. My check's good. The money's in the bank.”

“Zoë, my sweet, if you want fifty quid, write me a check and I'll cash it for you. You don't need a gun.”

“Perhaps. It's all become a bit of a bore, hasn't it?” She got mustard on her fingers, and wiped them on his thigh.

“What a slut you are, Zoë.”

“Yes. Go on. More like that.”

“Slut. Floozy. Tramp, trollop, tart. Strumpet. Bitch. Double slut. Super bitch.” She was on top of him, laughing as she kissed him, smearing mustard from her lips to his. Without looking, he reached sideways and put the remaining sandwiches on a side-table. That was the hard work done. Now it was all uphill to the mountaintop.

A DIFFERENT POINT
OF VIEW

Constance Babington Smith was a beauty with brains. Her father, Sir Henry, had been private secretary to the Viceroy of India. Her mother was the daughter of the ninth Earl of Elgin. Her eldest brother was a director of the Bank of England. In the 1930s she became very interested in flying. Eventually she was such an expert on all aspects of aviation that she wrote a regular column for
The Aeroplane
magazine. When war broke out, she was commissioned in the Waaf and joined Coastal Command's Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. It was based at Danesfield, a mansion in Buckinghamshire. That was where David Bensusan-Butt went.

“I'm told you know more about interpreting air reconnaissance pictures than anyone else,” he said.

“Actually, that's quite likely,” she said, “because until recently I was the only one here who was doing it. But I'm sure the Germans must have something similar.”

“It's a subject I know absolutely nothing about.”

“Good. That means you start with an uncluttered mind.”

For the rest of the day she showed him what to look for, and how to find it, in photographs of Germany taken by high-flying aircraft. He learned much about camouflage, shadow, bomb damage, fire damage and smoke. He used magnifying glasses of various size and complexity. Next day he came back and practiced his skills.

“It makes a change to meet someone like you,” she said. “I sometimes think the various Commands don't have much faith in our Unit. Unless our interpretation confirms what they already think, they're likely to ignore it.”

“What about photographs of the target taken by our bombers at
night? Can you help me with those? I imagine that flak and searchlights are a problem.”

He came back again. By now they knew each other well enough for him to ask the name of the delicate perfume she always wore. “
L
'
Heure Bleue
,” she said. “By Guerlain. I slosh it on, in case an air vice-marshal looks in. This uniform is fearfully masculine, don't you think?”

“In your case, not for one instant,” he said. His utter honesty made it sound like a vote of thanks.

FACT ISN'T TRUTH
1

Rollo spent two days and nights at the assessment center. Even with stitches to reduce the hole in the gums, his blood was slow to form a permanent clot. He drank beef tea through a straw, listened to the radio, thought about 409 and wondered what an op would look like through a viewfinder. Then, at last, the dentist said he was satisfied. Rafferty's car arrived.

Kate was impressed when she saw him. Half his face was still swollen. “You look as if you nearly had mumps and then changed your mind,” she said. “That's a mump you've got there. One mump.”

“You feeling strong?” Rollo said. He took the wisdom tooth, wrapped in a square of bloody lint, from his pocket, and showed it to her.

“Oh my God…” She turned away, repelled and fascinated at the same time; and sneaked a last look. “That's not a tooth, it's a fang. What a size! No wonder your face is so beat-up. D'you want a drink? I do, after that.”

“Too early. They've rationed my booze. What's been going on here?”

“Not much. 409 was stood down until today. Plenty of hustle and bustle now, so my guess is ops are on tonight.”

After what he'd been through, flying didn't frighten Rollo. It couldn't be any worse than having a wisdom pulled out. He wanted to get on with it. He asked for an urgent meeting with the Wingco and the group captain. Within an hour, he and Kate were in Rafferty's office with Pug Duff. Rollo told them it was time to decide on casting.

Rafferty was puzzled. One Wimpy was much like another, he said, and so were the crews. Rollo said he had noticed a black man on the squadron. Duff identified him: Sergeant Palmer, from Jamaica, rear gunner in T-Tommy, damn good type. “I'm sure he is,” Rollo said, “but there's a problem with trying to film a black man on a dark
night. All you see is the eyes.” Rollo's jaw was still stiff. His voice was flat. He sounded tough. “Also there could be difficulties when the film gets shown in America. You know what they're like over there.”

“Forget T-Tommy,” Duff said. “How about B-Baker? No niggers, and Joe Pearson's a damn good pilot.”

“Isn't he from up north?” Rollo asked. “Yorkshire accent?”

“Salt of the earth,” Rafferty said. “Done twenty ops.”

“I can't gamble on a bloke with a funny accent,” Rollo said. “Half the audience won't take him seriously, and we'd need subtitles in America. It's got to be someone who speaks good English.”

“Which rules out the Australians, Rhodesians and Canadians,” Duff said. “And the Irish.” He took a long, hard look at the point of his pencil. “At a pinch, I suppose, I could do the job myself.”

This frightened Rollo. Duff was far too short to play the hero, but Rollo wasn't brave enough to tell him so. He was grateful when Kate pointed out that the film was supposed to be about a typical Wimpy crew. “You're the CO, sir. You plan the ops. We can't very well have you briefing yourself, can we? You're a chief, not an Indian.”

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