War Story (13 page)

Frank Foster was ‘C' Flight commander. Shuffling to the mess in carpet slippers and dressing gown he stopped when he saw Paxton in shorts and singlet and gym shoes. Paxton was running backwards. “I say!” Foster called. Paxton came to a halt but kept working his legs and arms. “What the hell are you doing?” Foster asked.

“My daily run. It tones up the system.”

“Must you do it here? It's unsightly. You've got the whole damn aerodrome to run around.”

“I've just done that. I like to do the last two hundred yards backwards, just for fun. It gives the muscles something extra to think about.”

“I'm sure they find it hugely amusing,” Foster said. “Don't let me hold up the show.” They parted.

Collins had fresh black coffee ready for Foster in the mess. Nobody else had arrived yet. “I trust you had an enjoyable evening, sir,” he said.

“A sombre affair, Collins. Sombre and sober. Heavy with pomp and circumstance.” Foster took a cube of sugar and
dropped it and missed his cup by two inches. “Keep still, damn you,” he said to it.

“I thought it was going to be a proper beano, sir.” Collins put the sugar in the coffee and stirred it. “Sounds more like a wake.”

“George the Third's birthday. Very important date.”

“German gentleman, wasn't he, sir?” Collins forked grilled bacon onto a plate. “Hanoverian, I believe. Also not too right in the head. A bit barmy.”

“Are you sure that stuff's dead?” Foster touched the end of a strip of bacon with the point of his knife. “I thought I saw it move.”

“Funny chap to have a party for,” Collins said. “A barmy Jerry. Still, it's none of my business, sir.”

Foster picked up his cup, using both hands, but did not drink. After a while his eyes closed. The cup slowly tilted and began to spill coffee in a steady stream. “God, I feel dreadful,” he muttered. Collins placed a napkin to soak up the spillage. He removed the bacon and put it back in its hot dish.

Mayo wandered in. He wore slacks, and a white sweater over his pyjama top, and his hair was not brushed. “Bloody awful wine,” he grumbled. “Bloody awful taste. It's given me a bloody awful head. “

Foster did not open his eyes. He rested his forehead on his cup. Collins poured coffee and handed it to Mayo, who was pressing and prodding his stomach in a cautious, exploratory way. “It's not right,” Mayo said to himself.

“Gus,” Foster said. “Is that you bawling and shouting?”

“Bloody awful coffee,” Mayo said.

“It
is
you. Can't you put a sock in it? I'm trying to die.”

“Lucky you.” Mayo sipped again, and winced.

“As a matter of fact I put a pair of socks in it when I made it, sir,” Collins said,”but if you think it's not strong enough I could easily—”

“No.” Foster opened one eye and looked at Collins through the handle of the cup. “No jokes,” he added.

Mayo reversed a chair and straddled it, with his chin on the top. “Dunno how you feel, but there's only one way to describe how I feel,” he said.

“Who locked everyone out last night?”

“I feel bloody awful, that's how. Paxton.”

“Paxton.” Foster thought about that. “He runs backwards, you know.”

“Bloody well thinks backwards, too.”

Five minutes later Paxton came in. He was fully dressed and his hair was wetly slicked back. “Good morning,” he said. “I'll have some of everything except porridge,” he told Collins.

“Why did you shut us out last night?” Foster asked.

Paxton polished a knife with his napkin. “I took what I considered to be the necessary precautions.”

“Then you went to bed.” Foster threw a lump of sugar at him and missed.

“It was nothing to do with me, after midnight.” Paxton tapped his wristwatch, to avoid any misunderstanding. “At midnight I ceased to be Orderly Officer.”

“Ceased to have any brains, too,” Mayo said. “How were we supposed to get in?”

“Password.” Paxton filled his mouth with bacon.

“You're a bloody fool,” Foster told him.

“I second that,” Mayo said. “Put to the vote, passed nem con.”

Paxton kept his eyes on his plate and got on with his breakfast. He had expected criticism. He found it stimulating.

Douglas Goss came in. “I knew you were a damn fool,” he said to Paxton. “What I didn't realise is what a raving idiot you were. See this?” His right hand was heavily bandaged. “Your bloody barbed wire did that. I shall probably die of lockjaw. Glass of milk,” he told Collins. “I've got a head like a bass drum in a circus.”

“I was guarding the aerodrome,” Paxton said.

“Why? Aerodrome's no damn good without the squadron … Christ, this isn't really milk, is it, Collins?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tastes terrible.”

“So would you, sir, if you'd passed through a cow.”

Spud Ogilvy and James Yeo arrived together. “What's all this about mules, Douglas?” Yeo asked. “I say, you do look dreadful. Is it booze, or have you caught trench foot in the face?”

Foster grunted and rested his head on the table.

“What makes you two so bloody chirpy?” Mayo demanded, but Yeo was sitting at the table and was building a house out of toast.

“He's still half-cut,” Ogilvy explained. “Don't squeeze him or he'll squirt champagne from both ears and his belly button. I've seen him do it.”

“For God's sake shut up,” Mayo snarled. “I had enough bloody silly jokes played on me last night by this clown.” Without looking at Paxton he gestured at him. His hand was trembling from a mixture of anger and hangover.

“It wasn't a joke,” Paxton said. “It was a measure of security. Excuse me.” He reached across the table and removed a wall from Yeo's house of toast, which collapsed.

Yeo looked at the ruins. “Only a true Hun would do a thing like that,” he said.

During the exchange Tim Piggott and Frank O'Neill had come in and were helping themselves to breakfast. “I have the feeling that the various bits of my body are tied together with old rubber bands,” Piggott said,”so I'm going to make this very, very simple. You ordered the sentries and the barbed wire?”

Paxton said, “Yes, but—”

“And then you went to bed?”

“Yes, but you see—”

“The act of a true fart.”

“And a Hun,” Yeo said.

For a while there was silence apart from the sounds of breakfast, and occasionally of a stomach complaining as the wrong sort of food fell into an angry gut. Paxton had finished eating and wanted to leave but he didn't know how to do it. So he sat up straight and looked between people, or over their heads. A vicious little truth was beginning to take shape in a corner of his mind. That truth was that maybe he had got it wrong last night. He knew he wasn't a fool or a fart, but it was beginning to seem just possible that he had, for once, acted in a way that some people might quite well regard as the behaviour of a fool or a fart. Paxton pressed his knees together and chewed his upper lip. Surely to God breakfast must be over soon?

Charlie Essex strolled in, wearing flying goggles. “Will this damned heat wave never end?” he said to nobody in particular. He took off the goggles and peered about him. No one moved, no one spoke. “This must be purgatory,” he said. “It's too lively for limbo.” He took a seat at the table. Collins brought him coffee. He put his goggles on again and examined the coffee. Steam coated the goggles. “Just a spot of cumulus,” he said. “We'll soon climb through it.”

Paxton had enjoyed eating his breakfast. Now his stomach clenched the food grimly. Before he could suppress it, indigestion rumbled like a delivery of coal.

“Oh, I wouldn't go that far,” Yeo said to him.

An orderly tapped on the door, looked inside, saw Collins. Collins went to him, then crossed to Paxton and murmured: “Major Milne's compliments, sir, and could he see you in his office.” Everyone heard. There were grunts of satisfaction. O'Neill slid the mustard across the table. “Take it, you'll need it,” he said. “The old man's going to eat you alive.”

On the way to his billet to get his Sam Browne, Paxton passed Jimmy Duncan, who was walking carefully, as if the ground were icy. Even so, he stumbled. “Did we win?” he asked, and the words stumbled too. “We did win, didn't we?” When Paxton said nothing, Duncan looked up. “Oh, it's you.” He snuffled wetly and unpleasantly. “What a bloody fool you are, to be sure,” he said.

The sight of a mule eating the commanding officer's breakfast made up Paxton's mind for him.

He was convinced now that Hornet Squadron was a joke, and a poor joke at that. He marched up to Milne's desk and saluted. “I request an immediate transfer, sir,” he said. That wasn't what he had meant to say; in fact he hadn't meant to say anything; but when the words came out they sounded exactly right. The sooner he escaped from this fifth-rate comic opera, the better.

But Milne appeared not to have heard. His desk was close to an open window, where the mule was looking in. Milne had swung his chair around and was feeding the mule from a breakfast tray. “That business last night,” he said, sounding as mild as ever, and paused while the animal licked half a
slice of toast from his palm. “All a jolly jape, wasn't it?”

Paxton didn't know what to say. Agreeing or disagreeing seemed equally dangerous. For a moment he was flustered. Then he counter-attacked. “If you say so, sir,” he said.
That's rather clever
, he thought.
Rather adroit.
On the strength of it he stood at ease.

Milne dipped a strip of bacon into an egg yolk and offered it to the mule. Paxton could see now that Milne had a bottle in his lap. He leaned sideways to get a better view. Actually the bottle was tucked into Milne's trousers. It was full of gin. Or, if not gin, something just as clear. One hand was curled around the bottle, while the other fed the mule.
Extraordinary
, Paxton thought.
And what a shocking example to set the men. No wonder there's no esprit-de-corps here.

“This is Alice,” Milne said. He might have been running donkey rides on Margate sands. “Hasn't she got beautiful eyes?”

“No, sir.”

“Shall I tell you what I think? I think you thought that nobody was taking you seriously.”

“If you say so, sir.” It didn't work so well the second time. For no reason, Paxton suddenly suspected that his flies were unbuttoned. He dared not look down.

“The truth is,” said Milne, buttering toast for Alice,”that nobody
was
taking you seriously, and quite right too, because you're a joke, Dexter.”

“Everything is a joke here, sir.” He linked his hands in front of his flies. “I didn't come to France to play cricket. Or swim. I came to fight for my king and country.” Under cover of looking modest he glanced down. All was well, which encouraged him to add: “And I'm Paxton. Dexter's still dead.”

“You're quite right: everything
is
a joke here.” Milne got bored with feeding Alice and dumped the entire breakfast tray, coffee and milk and all, out of the window. “This whole war is a joke … Ah, I've offended you … Paxton. There, you see? I got it right.” Milne curled himself in his chair and cuddled his bottle.

Paxton sniffed. “You're entitled to your point of view, sir. One of my cousins died of wounds last year, which wasn't very funny.”

“Tall, was he?”

“Six foot two.”

“I thought so. All the tall ones go first. Their heads stick up over the tops of the trenches. If this war does nothing else it'll reduce the average height of the average man to five foot three. In fact the only visible result of this war so far has been to shrink the infantry by blowing the heads off the tall ones and standing the others in several feet of water. And that, you must admit, is a small triumph for science.” Milne smiled amiably and scratched his head with the stem of a pipe.

Paxton didn't believe a word, but hearing it from his squadron commander made him feel uncomfortable, like listening to the vicar poke fun at the Church of England. “I'm prepared to take my chance,” he muttered. “Just give me a chance to fight.”

“Ah, yes. Fighting. What exactly did they tell you about air fighting, back in dear old England?”

Paxton cleared his throat. “Enough, sir,” he lied; but since Milne wasn't serious, what difference did it make?

“Tell me some.” Alice, the mule, brayed. “She gets jealous,” Milne explained. “Pay no attention.”

Paxton remembered the ceremony when pilots had been awarded their wings. A one-armed general with hard, unblinking eyes and deep vertical lines in his face as if split by the sun, had told them he envied them. They were the new cavalry of the clouds, and superbly well mounted too.

“War's a bit like a game of rugger,” Paxton said. “It's no good hesitating because the other fellow looks bigger than you. You must rush in and tackle your man. That's the only way to get the ball.” The general's voice had become quite husky when he'd got to that point.

“God Almighty!” Milne said. “What a load of suicidal bollocks!” He stood up, tossed his pipe into a bowl and banged the bottle on the desk as if he wanted to smash it. Paxton took a pace back. “Suicidal bollocks!” Milne shouted.

“What difference does it make?” Paxton shouted back. “I can't die if I never fly, and you won't let me—”

“You want to fly? Go ahead and fly.” Milne was seized by impatience.“Go now. Do what you like.” He kicked the desk.

“You said there are no machines.”

“Take the bloody silly Quirk that whatshisname brought.” Fury was growing in Milne, twisting his face, corroding his voice. “Go on! Do what the sodding hell you like!” He kicked the desk again, savagely, hurting himself and making the bottle topple and roll. Paxton grabbed it before it fell off the edge. It was hot. The bottle was hot. He stood it upright, stared at it, stared at Milne. “Who cares?” Milne said. Fury had turned to defeat. Paxton got out.