Piece of Cake (88 page)

Nobody mentioned Brook when they sat down to eat their delayed lunch. Only Cattermole and Haducek had seen him go in; the others had been dodging and twisting and climbing and looking the other way. But most of them had seen the splash, and everyone had seen the gap in White Section on the way home. There wasn't much to say. He'd been a quiet sort of bloke, not a bad pilot. Too bad the 88 didn't go down with him. Tough old kite, the 88.

Barton sat down and banged his spoon for attention. “I've just been on the phone to Brambledown,” he said. “One of the Spitfire boys went missing last week. They've just fished him out of the drink. He was wearing his parachute and he was full of Germancalibre bullets.”

“Quite legitimate,” Haducek remarked. “You said—”

“I don't care what I said. From now on, any German you see, inside or outside his plane, you kill him. Understand?”

Nobody had anything to add. Barton got up and went out. He found CH3 sitting in the apple-tree, and climbed to a branch above him. “Just been on the phone to Brambledown,” he said.

“I know. Mother told me about it.”

“Oh. And what d'you think?”

“Nothing. I'm surprised it took you so long, that's all. There's no nice way to do this job, Fanny. It's a waste of time looking.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. The thrumming of bees was like an endless drumroll.

Barton snapped off twigs and shredded them. “I'm glad you've got it all worked out,” he said.

“Don't take it so seriously,” CH3 murmured. “It's not something to get worked up about.”

3:45: squadron scramble. No problem finding the raid: a hundred aircraft were scattered between Dover and Deal. Heinkels and Dorniers had bombed the advance airfields at Lympne, Hawkinge and Manston. Now there was a running fight, with 109's and 110's trying to shield the bombers from such fighters as had managed to get off the ground before the bombs started falling. There were plenty of targets: the sky was flecked with them. Bing Macfarlane shot one down within thirty seconds. It was remarkably easy. He picked out a straggling Heinkel and fired a burst at it. His wingman shouted a warning so he broke right, and found that CH3's advice worked: a 109 sailed past his left wing, skidding hard. Macfarlane broke left and there he was, most beautifully placed on the 109's tail. It was perfect, magical, inevitable, the finest thing he had done since a wonderful afternoon on the rugby field when he wrongfooted the whole defense and scored. Now he gave CH3 another chance: he eased a couple of degrees to the right before he fired. Flames wobbled at the edges of his vision: the Hurricane shook; cordite fumes drifted up and made his nose twitch. As he released the button the German pilot broke left. Macfarlane had anticipated him by a fraction of a second. He saw white coolant bubbling out of the 109's exhaust. He saw the man's head twisted—where else?—to the left. He saw the whole aircraft flare and swell until it filled his gunsight, and then his bullets touched off a charge and the enemy became a ball of orange flame with a couple of wingtips sticking out of it. Macfarlane felt wonderful.

His groundcrew heard the soft music of his open gun-ports as he drifted in to land, saw the smokestreaks behind his guns, and ran over to get the news. They too were delighted, and their pride added to his pleasure. Nim Renouf came and congratulated him. It was a golden afternoon. They stood and watched the troops refueling and re-arming the Hurricanes. Four planes were missing: Zabarnowski, Quirk, Cox and Gordon. “I think I saw Mother bale out,” Renouf said. Macfarlane nodded. There was nothing to worry about. He stretched, luxuriously, and filled his lungs with glorious air, laced with the stink of high-octane fuel. “Hell of a scrap, wasn't it?” he said. “That'll teach the buggers.” He was looking
at the field beyond the hangars, a gentle swell of soft yellow stubble. Stooks of wheat stood in neat, strong ranks.
England at her best
, he thought.
As the song says: this is worth fighting for
… Half the stooks collapsed, starting from the right and spreading rapidly, as if a giant hand had brushed the field. He pointed, too surprised to speak. A violent boom walloped the air. “That's a bomb,” Renouf said. Above the hangar roof the top of a brown fountain appeared. Macfarlane's mind was still working out the mystery of the flattened stooks, but Renouf was off and running, the klaxon was blaring, signal flares were popping, Merlins were crackling into life. As he dropped into his seat and his groundcrew fixed his straps, Macfarlane looked up. Twenty-plus bombers were doing a fly-past at two thousand. A thin dribble of black was falling from some of them. The bomb-bursts were already marching across the field by the time he came unstuck.

All told, six Hurricanes got airborne, but Macfarlane was first. Between the whistle and crump of bombs, his groundcrew raised their heads from the trenches and watched him close on the raid. They saw the sparkle of gunfire, heard its tiny rattle over the dull throb of engines, saw him swerve, bank, attack again. They saw a bomber lurch and slide out of formation. Two figures fell from it; only one parachute opened. The slide grew steeper. The bomber dived into a field like an express charging into a tunnel.

Ten minutes later the raiders were out of sight and airmen were busy sticking warning flags next to bomb craters to help the fighters when they came in to land. Macfarlane was the first back. He dived from three thousand feet, crossed the perimeter below treetop height and streaked across the field, one gloved hand acknowledging his groundcrew's waving arms. He climbed, turned, came back and performed a victory roll. The Hurricane rotated smoothly and cleanly, as if it were drilling its way through the air. The troops waved their steel helmets. Macfarlane rolled again but the Hurricane had a tantrum. It flung its tail from side to side, dropped, and slashed at the airfield with a wing. Instantly a handsome airplane became a tumbling wreck. It cartwheeled with an intense, ugly fury, as if it wanted to batter itself to bits as rapidly and painfully as possible. By the time it had exhausted itself it was broken into six large pieces: the two wings, the tail unit, the engine, the cockpit and the fuselage. Seven if you counted the pilot.

When Barton landed, he waited for CH3 and they went over to look. Macfarlane was lying on the grass, exactly as he had been found. Everything about him was broken; everything was bent the wrong way. He didn't look human. He looked like a bag of dirty laundry that someone had forgotten to take the feet and arms out of.

Ten minutes later they were all ordered back to Brambledown: there were too many unexploded bombs at Bodkin Hazel. Barton, CH3, Cattermole, Steele-Stebbing, Judd and Fitzgerald took off. They found Quirk and Cox waiting for them in the mess. Both had baled out. No news of Zabarnowski or Gordon.

Nobody else was in the mess. There was a raid on and the Spitfire squadrons were up. It had been a long day and a bad day. Nobody wanted to talk. Now that the mainspring of action had been released they were all profoundly tired, bone-weary, drained. Within fifteen minutes they were slumped in armchairs or stretched out on sofas, asleep.

After a while the adjutant came in. He was holding a signal and looking pleased. “I heard you were back,” he said, “and I thought you'd like to know that the Prime Minister, Mr. Winston Churchill himself, has just made a speech about you.”

Cattermole half-opened one eye. “Piss off, uncle,” he mumbled.

“Listen, it's jolly good stuff. He said …” Kellaway glanced around and decided to abbreviate the signal. “‘Undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger …'” Cox had begun to snore. Kellaway abbreviated some more. “Anyway, the best bit's at the end,” he said. “Listen to this: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.' How about that?”

Cattermole let his other eye drift half-open. He studied the adjutant. “Someone must have told him about our back-pay,” he said.

Later that evening there was a press conference. Baggy Bletchley had arrived with a busload of foreign correspondents: Swedes, Spaniards, Swiss, Americans, Brazilians, a Russian, a Rhodesian, a Turk, several Canadians, even a Burmese. The three squadron commanders were hastily rounded up and taken to the lecture room to meet them. In the crowd, Barton saw Jacky Bellamy. “Hell
of a bind for you, I realize that,” Bletchley whispered as the correspondents took their seats, “but overseas opinion is extremely important right now. This lot have been getting a bit shirty on a diet of Air Ministry releases, so we're giving them a tour of fighter bases to keep them sweet.”

“What d'you want us to say, sir?” one of the Spitfire commanders asked.

“Tell 'em we're winning, of course.”

Bletchley spoke a few introductory words:
Brambledown was one of the sharpest spearheads in the battle, couldn't be a better place to take the pulse of the action, these three chaps had been in the thick of it since dawn, scored some notable victories, of course not everything could be revealed yet, Official Secrets Act and all that …

The questions began, mostly about the
Luftwaffe
. Could it be beaten? Surely the RAF was hopelessly outnumbered? Why did so many raids get through? How many times had this particular airfield been bombed? How long could a fighter pilot remain efficient if he flew five or six sorties a day? How destructive was the cannon mounted on the Me-109 compared with the British machine-gun? What was the probability of invasion? The German press said that Fighter Command was on its last legs: any comment? Suppose Hitler invaded now, tonight: what could the RAF do to stop him?

The tone was not hostile; they simply wanted to know the answers. Barton gradually realized that these people had already come to the conclusion that Britain would not win, that they were reporting a plucky last stand, a brave but futile gesture against an irresistible enemy. The Canadian correspondents smiled once or twice, and sometimes nodded as they heard the optimistic replies; but he noticed that they took very few notes.

Bletchley chaired the meeting well. He courteously deflected questions that touched on secret information, he distributed the rest in rotation among the three squadron leaders, he chipped in if someone looked like drying up, and generally he kept things jogging along nicely. After half an hour he got to his feet and said: “I think we've covered most points, so it only remains for me to remind you that these very experienced young men really do know what they're talking about. Day in day out they've been mixing it
with Jerry up there in the wide blue yonder and giving him a very bloody nose. The RAF has its own peculiar phrase for the truth: we call it ‘pukka gen.' This evening they have given you the pukka gen about this battle. Before I came in here this evening I heard today's score on the BBC. RAF losses, twenty-one. German losses, fifty-nine. I need say no more.”

Jacky Bellamy stood up. “One last question?” she said.

“With pleasure.”

“Since America is neutral, my agency has a bureau in Berlin, and according to my colleagues over there, the RAF's claims are inaccurate and unreliable.”

“Sounds rather like Herr Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda,” Bletchley said. “They're experts in unreliable information, I believe.”

That got a laugh.

“More to the point,” she went on, “many air attaches at embassies and consulates in London are not convinced by your figures, and one reason for their skepticism is the growing weight of German raids.”

Nobody laughed at that.

“In fact,” she added, since Bletchley had no immediate answer, “the longer this battle goes on, the more it seems that the claims of the RAF are not compatible with the performance of the
Luftwaffe.”

“These are strong words,” Bletchley said. “I don't think this is the ideal time or place to enter into a detailed statistical analysis of the matter, especially as there is, I am happy to say, a certain amount of food and drink waiting for us all … But I would just like to say this. One of the things we're fighting for is freedom. Unlike Hitler's Germany, we welcome free speech. If anyone can prove us wrong … well, they have the freedom to do so. I myself am completely confident that we are right, and that right will ultimately triumph.”

During the coffee and sandwiches, Fanny Barton eased Jacky away from one of the Spitfire CO's, and said: “You're as bad as Skull, you are. We work our fingers to the bone, shooting down Jerries, and neither of you believes us.”

“I just asked a question, that's all. And now that I come to think of it, I didn't get much of an answer, did I?”

“Never mind, I forgive you. Especially as you're looking more delightful than ever.”

“My. You've become terribly sophisticated since you got promoted, Fanny.”

“Yes, it's the effect of power. Makes men irresistible.”

“Good luck. I notice that
you
haven't tried to answer my question either.”

“Oh, I never answer questions,” he said grandly. “I leave all that to my staff. Have another sandwich. Go on. Have two.”

She took two. “I hear that Sticky Stickwell's been posted here,” she said. “Did you know?”

“Sticky? But he's in a Defiant squadron.”

“Yes, that's right. They arrived this evening.”

“Defiants,” he said. “That's the last thing I expected.”

The first person Cattermole saw when he pushed open the doors of the
Spreadeagle
was Sticky Stickwell. He was sitting between two big blond girls who might have been sisters. They were all laughing, and each girl had an arm around him. It made a fond and heartwarming scene.

Cattermole eased through the crowd and bought himself a drink. When one of the girls took her handbag and got up, he intercepted her halfway to the ladies' lavatory. “Excuse me,” he said. “I think you should know that that officer has a wife and seven children in Stoke-on-Trent.”