Damned Good Show (39 page)

“Listen …” Silk eased his backside. “Night after night, op after op, crews tell Bins and Skull, yes, they found the target and yes, they hit the target. You know that's not always true.”

“Perhaps.”

“And the
crews
know it. They know who the bullshit-merchants are. How many Wimpys completely miss the target? Ten percent? Twenty? Thirty?”

“No, no,” Duff said. “That's incompatible with good morale. If my crews start to think their efforts are wasted, they'll stop trying. Confidence and efficiency go hand in hand. Determination is half the battle.”

“Jesus,” Silk said. “You sound like Henry the Fifth on Benzedrine.”

“Never mind what I sound like. These chaps have got to believe in success before they can succeed. Don't you see that?”

“You've got a lousy job, Pug.” Silk ate the last fried mushroom. “It's got so you wouldn't know the truth if it took its clothes off and got into bed with you. Let's talk about something else.”

“I dreamt about Sergeant Felicity Parks last night,” Duff said. “What a stunner. D'you think she'd marry me?”

“I dreamt about her, too. After what she and I got up to, I don't think you'd want her, Pug.”

They talked until darkness. As they drove back to their quarters, a fog was beginning to creep across the field. That explained the scrub. Sometimes Group got things right.

The MO told Rollo he was discharged, and gave him a small packet of pills. “Benzedrine,” he said. “Only if you go on ops, and then don't take more than one. Are you familiar with this stuff?”

“Vaguely.”

The MO smiled: a rare sight. “Vague is not the word I'd choose. Benzedrine will make you so alert that you will amaze yourself with your sheer, staggering brilliance. Don't take Benzedrine lightly. Or vaguely.”

Rollo emerged into the beginnings of a full-scale flap. After days of stand-downs and scrubs, ops were on again. Group wanted 409 to make a maximum effort. An attack by an entire squadron was rare. The Wingco decided to go on this one. Gilchrist was on leave, so he took over C-Charlie. Then his phone rang for the fiftieth time and he learned that Mr. Blazer was now fit to fly. Duff was pleased: a full squadron op, led by the CO! Just the occasion to be preserved on film for a grateful posterity. Always assuming any posterity would be left when this noisy carnage was over. He called Bellamy. “Find a kite for Blazer,” he said. “You know the drill. No plug-uglies, no stutterers, no maniacs.”

Bellamy had plenty of more important things to do. He ran through the list of pilots and eliminated most. He went to the remainder and tried to find a volunteer. He didn't expect any great enthusiasm and he didn't get any. As soon as a pilot said, “Personally, I've got nothing against the chap …” Bellamy knew what was coming: the other crew members thought Blazer would jinx the trip. Look what had happened to Polly Lomas. Bellamy was running out
of names and hope when he saw Silk. “My crew all think he's a Jonah,” Silk said, “but I don't give a toss what they think. I'll take him.”

“Good. Fine.” Bellamy looked him in the eyes and saw a kind of battered tranquility that worried him. “No tricks, Silko. No jokes.”

“I was never more serious in my life,” Silk told him. “As they say in the films.”

They found Rollo in the Mess, ordering a beer. “Forget that,” Bellamy said. “No alcohol before ops. I've got you a place in D-Dog tonight.”

Rollo's stomach muscles clenched. “Lucky me,” he said. He had persuaded himself that he was brave, but now they were rushing him into it and he knew he was frightened of flying. His mouth seemed to be full of saliva. Even his body was betraying him.

“Grab your hat,” Silk said. “We're doing an NFT.”

“Haven't got a hat.” Rollo looked around for rescue.

“Night-Flying Test,” Bellamy said.

“I know what it means.” They outnumbered him.

“D'you want a parachute?” Silk asked. “If it doesn't work, you take it back and they give you another.” He gently steered Rollo out of the room. “Very old joke, that. Past its best.”

Half an hour later, Rollo was sitting behind the main spar, sweating inside his flying clobber, looking at D-Dog shaking as if it was as frightened as he was. The front gunner was sitting beside him, reading a paperback western. Half its cover had been torn off. All that Rollo could see of the title was
Gulch.
It was like the inside of this Wimpy: slapdash, disorderly, cluttered. Everywhere he looked, bits of equipment were fixed to the sides and the roof. Behind them ran cables, tubes, wires. Even
ropes.
What were ropes doing in a bomber? The engines went from a roar to a howl. Rollo went from a sitting to a fetal position, hugged his parachute, closed his eyes. He knew D-Dog was moving. By closing his eyes really tightly and curling his toes, he was helping to keep the airplane in one piece. Forget it. Wasted effort. D-Dog was too heavy to take off. He opened his eyes. The bumps got harder. The gunner turned a page. Rollo started counting the seconds. He was going to die, so he was entitled to know exactly how long he'd lived. Then the awful thumping bouncing stopped, the engine note sweetened, and he realized that, for the first time in his life, he was flying.

Soon, the gunner stuffed his book in a pocket and went forward.

Rollo felt proud and ashamed at the same time: proud because he had conquered flight, and ashamed because he knew he should have done it long ago. Kate was right. This was the guts of the film. The rest was just trimmings. D-Dog was the hero. It was up to him to capture the courage.

He climbed over the main spar and stood behind the pilots. The noise was appalling.

After a while, the second pilot, Mallaby, noticed him and showed him where to plug in his intercom lead. At once the awful roar receded to a noise like surf. Then he heard Silk say: “Welcome to the office. That's Newmarket below.” His voice was thin.

Rollo glanced down. Ah yes. Pretty little toytown. Piece of cake. “I never thought the noise would be such a problem,” he said. Mallaby reached up and turned the intercom switch on Rollo's oxygen mask. “Bloody noisy, isn't it?” Rollo said.

“The Pegasus-eighteen engine delivers nine hundred and twenty-five horsepower, and we have two of them, each about six feet from the cockpit. But really, the worst noise comes from the prop tips.” Silk pointed to the shimmering disc just to the left of his head. “They're about two feet from my ear, at their closest. Spinning awfully fast, too.” He waved at the instrument panel. “One of these dials tells us how fast, I forget which. Second pilot probably knows.”

“Oh, fearfully fast,” Mallaby said.

“But we're quite safe,” Silk said. “The props hardly ever break. Anyway, Dog's covered in cloth, so that will protect us.”

Rollo was only half-listening. He was more interested in the way Silk used one hand to hold his oxygen mask over his mouth, in order to speak into his microphone. “I can't see your lips when you do that,” he said.

“You won't hear my voice if I don't.”

“The point is, I don't see how I can film any chat between you two if half your mouth is covered up.”

“The cockpit's not a chatty place,” Mallaby said. The intercom accentuated his Australian accent. “And when we go on oxygen you won't see anything except the eyes.”

“He has wonderfully expressive eyes,” Silk said. “They speak volumes.”

Rollo decided to leave the chat problem until later. “Is it all right if I take a look around the kite?”

Mallaby unstrapped himself and led the way. It was a short tour. Forward, and below the cockpit level, was the bomb aimer's position, looking down through a window in the floor. Good close-up possibilities here, Rollo thought, provided the scene could be lit. But the front gunner's position was out of sight, sealed off by a metal bulkhead. Mallaby opened it. The gunner and his guns filled the space, and a gale whistled through slots in the Perspex where the barrels poked out. Poor show. They went back, down the cluttered fuselage, past the navigator at his desk and the wireless op at his set. Essential jobs, but not exciting. The rear gunner was also invisible behind a steel bulkhead. And that was that. There was a bed to sit on. Mallaby returned to his office. Rollo sat on the bed and worried. Sometimes D-Dog flexed slightly, or twisted a little. Normally that would have frightened him. He ignored it. He had all the anxiety he could handle.

Rollo held a post mortem in Squadron Leader Bellamy's office. Kate and Silk were there; also the Engineer Officer.

Rollo said the difficulties of filming inside D-Dog made it impossible to follow his draft script, or indeed anybody's script. Dialogue in the cockpit was out of the question. Further back, the nav and the wireless op could make themselves heard, but only if they shouted, and you couldn't have people shouting all through a film.

“There must be a solution,” Kate said. She was no longer angry with Rollo. He'd been ill, fevered, confused. They were a team again; it was time to behave professionally. “I've seen flying films where they have dialogue in the cockpit. Some guy comes in and tells the pilot the radio's bust and the pilot says do your best. They talk all the time.”

“Not in a Wimpy,” Silk said.

“I couldn't hear myself speak,” Rollo said. “Those engines just beat your voice to death.”

“Well, that's what the intercom's for,” the Engineer Officer said.

“Everybody sounds
thin
on the intercom,” Rollo complained. “Can't you make them deeper? More masculine?”

Bellamy had an idea. “Why don't you forget the voices? Film the op, and then employ a commentator to describe what's happening.”

Rollo scowled. “Might as well have
captions
, for Christ's sake.” Bellamy was offended. He remembered some urgent business, and left.

Kate pointed out that it was intercom dialogue or nothing. Rollo pointed out that he couldn't shoot film
and
record sound off the intercom. “Then I'll do the sound,” she said. “That's what I'm here for.” They both looked at Silk.

“Suits me,” Silk said. “If that's what you want.” Now they all looked at the Engineer Officer. “Leave me out of this!” he said. “It's illegal, it's dangerous, and I'm going to have a pee.”

While he was out of the room, they made the decision. She wouldn't be the first woman to go on an op, Silk said. Many a Waaf had been smuggled into a Wimpy by her boyfriend. Everyone knew it happened. As long as nothing went wrong, nobody kicked up a fuss.

The Engineer Officer came back. “We decided against it,” Silk said.

“I knew you would.”

“Next item,” Rollo said. “Oxygen masks.” But there was to be no answer to that problem. The mike was in the mouthpiece of the mask, for obvious reasons. There was nothing to be done about the cramped shape of the cockpit, either, or the impossibility of getting a camera inside the gun turrets. Rollo hated abandoning the guns; they were his only chance of capturing real, close-up, explosive action. “Couldn't I shoot over the gunner's shoulder as he lets fly at something?” he pleaded.

“All you'll get is a lot of dazzle. The turret's pitch-black.”

“We could fix up a little interior light.”

“No fear. I'm not illuminating my turrets for the benefit of a Jerry night fighter.”

Rollo had intended to ask for brighter lights inside the fuselage, and some tiny spotlights on the pilots' faces, but he knew when to quit. “I guess I'll just have to grab whatever I can get,” he said.

“Look on the bright side,” Silk said.

Rollo tried, and failed. “What bright side?”

“Port or starboard, take your pick, over the target. They chuck
fireworks up, we chuck fireworks down, and nobody gets a wink of sleep.”

“You might find this useful,” the Engineer Officer said. He gave Kate an empty paint tin. “It's a long trip.”

“Ah. How kind.”

“Not at all. When necessary, it can be emptied down the flare chute.”

“If you put out our incendiaries,” Silk said, “the crew will never forgive you.”

David Butt's handwriting was neat and legible. His draft report was quite short. Constance Babington Smith read it; then re-read it.

“If Bomber Command sees this,” she said thoughtfully, “they'll shoot you.”

He fingered the lobe of his left ear, and did not seem alarmed.

“And they'll miss you by a mile, if what you claim is true,” she said.

“Fact is fact,” he said.

“Yes, I agree. However, this report is a cookie, isn't it? And I'm trying to imagine what happens when you drop a cookie on the C-in-C, Bomber Command.”

“Good point. What do you think the response will be?”

“I think that blast waves will rock High Wycombe, shake the corridors at Air Ministry, and play merry hell with the War Cabinet.”

“Quite possibly. It's all out of my hands.”

For a moment they looked at each other. It was a curious occasion, possibly unique: two youngish, good-looking people, each highly expert but in different fields, each talking quietly and rationally about something which only they knew; something that would affect the course of a world war. “Is there anything more I can do?” she asked.

“I'm hugely obliged to you already. I couldn't have got this far without the help of your Section. Essentially, mine is a statistical investigation. It all comes down to numbers. I'd be grateful if you would scrutinize my calculations and tell me if I've misplaced the decimal point.”

He went for a walk in the grounds. He was dead-heading a rose bush when she came out and gave him the pages. “All correct,” she said.

Butt drove back to London, to his office in the War Cabinet Secretariat. In an hour he had a perfectly typed copy of his report.