War Story (23 page)

“What was all that gibberish about your trunk?” Kellaway said.

Paxton, frowning furiously, was searching for his keys. “I had to buy this special padlock just to keep the thieving beggar out,” he said. Kellaway came over to see. The keys turned sweetly. The shackle slid out of the staple. Paxton grunted with relief. “I've beaten the blighter,” he said. He raised the lid and it fell to the floor with a crash that made him jump.

“Hullo!” Kellaway said. “What's happened now?”

Paxton picked up the lid and examined it. “Someone's knocked the pins out of the hinges,” he said. “There's nothing holding the hinges together.” He put the lid back in place and sat on it. “It shouldn't be possible, not when it's shut and locked, but…”

Kellaway delicately fingered the ends of the stitches on his chin. The cut itched, which was supposed to be a sign that it was healing. “Why don't you get your own back?” he asked. “Hit him, or something.”

“I don't intend to sink to his level. The man's a cad, I shall treat him as a cad. Sooner or later the message will sink in.”

“Well,” Kellaway said. “You know best.”

Next day the weather was lovely and the squadron's Flying Orders were cancelled. Everyone must be available for the Court of Inquiry.

This was unpopular, not just because it meant hanging around all day in one's best uniform but because it made people feel as if they were being treated like schoolboys. “What's all the fuss?” asked the Canadian, Stubbs. “The guy crashed a tender. Happens all the time.”

“You don't understand how generals think,” Foster said. “Planned destruction is one thing. You can have all the massacre and mayhem you like, at the Front. What they won't tolerate is accidental death behind the Lines. That upsets them. It's wasteful. Untidy.”

“One of us should own up,” Essex said. “Not me, I've got an alibi, I was smashing up a hotel in Amiens at the time.”

After breakfast, Corporal Lacey sought out Paxton and handed him a diary. “I came across this when I was parcelling up Mr. Henley's belongings,” he said. “I think somebody ought to read it.”

The diary was the size of a pocketbook, with a scuffed green leather cover. “You think it might have something in it that would embarrass his family?” Paxton asked. He tried to remember what Henley had looked like. Something like a potato. Bland and harmless. “Not much chance of that, is there?”

“Somebody ought to read it, all the same.”

“D'you mean you've noticed something?”

“Certainly not. Far be it from me to read the private and confidential papers of a commissioned officer. It's simply that with the Court of Inquiry in session, nothing should be overlooked, no matter how trivial.” Lacey raised a finger. “Apparently trivial.”

“I don't see what the devil the Court of Inquiry has to do with it.” But Paxton opened the diary.

“June the fourth,” Lacey said.

Paxton found the page, and read, and grunted, and read on. “Good God,” he said, still reading, while his hand took a tighter grip of the pages. “What a pair of gibbering idiots.”

“The adjutant is in his office,” Lacey said.

Paxton showed the diary to the adjutant, who showed it to the CO, who showed it to Colonel Bliss when he arrived to reopen the inquiry.

Bliss read the entry three times.

“So,” he said. “This fathead Henley got tight, pinched the keys of the tender from the CO when he wasn't looking, realised he couldn't drive, persuaded the other fathead Kellaway to drive, they got into an argument about its horsepower and decided to settle it by seeing how many horses they could swap it for, but what they thought were horses turned out to be mules.”

“It was dark,” Cleve-Cutler said.

“Of course it was. I expect Sergeant Harris thought he was getting a Rolls-Bentley. If it hadn't been so damn dark none of this would have happened. I blame everything on the blackout. In fact, considering this joker was writing his diary in the pitch black and falling-down drunk too, it's amazing he could put two words together. I'd like to congratulate him. Wheel him on.”

“Can't,” Cleve-Cutler said. “He copped it, yesterday.”

“What bad luck. Never mind, wheel on the other idiot.” Bliss checked the page. “Kellaway.”

“No good either. He banged his head, lost his memory.”

“Really? All of it? What a dangerous place this is. First you lose your CO, then your adjutant, then Henley, and now Kellaway can't find his memory. Honestly, it's getting so a chap daren't put anything down for a minute. What's behind it, d'you think? Magpies? Squirrels? Cat-burglars?”

“You don't believe this stuff in Henley's diary.”

“Do you?”

“If it'll get us out of a hole, yes.”

Colonel Bliss went off to telephone his boss, the general. When he came back he said: “The old buffer is satisfied. He knew Milne couldn't possibly have done anything so bloody silly, and now events have proved him right.”

“So can we fly again?”

“Yes. In fact he's so pleased that he's put Hornet Squadron on double patrols for a week.” Bliss returned the diary. “I liked the bit about the argument over horse-power,” he said. “Somebody used his imagination there.”

Kellaway and Paxton were among the pallbearers at Henley's funeral. There was no coffin; the body was in a neat canvas bag resting on a board. It lay on the floor of the tender that
carried the funeral party to the graveyard at Pepriac church. Paxton was shocked by the absence of a coffin but he quickly forgot about it as he watched the body get jolted inside its bag by the bumpy ride. What fascinated him was the utter helplessness of this corpse, the way you could actually see the wobble of its feet or its head. All through the burial ceremony he kept thinking how easy it was to kill a man. You aim, you squeeze, and before he hears the bang of your gun he's dead. But even that wasn't the most exciting part. The real thrill was turning an aeroplane into a flaming wreck. That Albatros had looked so beautiful. And he had knocked it out of the sky. He, Oliver Paxton, not yet nineteen, never very brilliant at Sherborne although he'd got his rugger colours, couldn't master trigonometry to save his life but he could blast a Hun before lunch. He could count up to one! The padre finished speaking. Paxton hadn't heard a word. He glanced across the open grave at Kellaway.
He's smiling
, Kellaway thought.
What on earth is there to smile about?
An NCO shouted orders. Rifle fire crashed and echoed. Paxton smelled fumes, and tasted the scent of intoxication.

Paxton had no difficulty getting permission to leave Pepriac. Lacey fixed it with the adjutant. Now that Paxton had got his uncle to send a box of the best Havana-Havanas every other day it seemed that Lacey could fix anything.

At first he explored the land to the south, as far as the river Somme, the limits of the British Army. It was easy walking: gentle slopes, vast fields, well drained by the chalk that gleamed wherever a trench had been dug. Ten or twelve miles was nothing. And everywhere he went he met soldiers in camp, soldiers out training, soldiers on the march. The countryside was studded with regiments, and more kept arriving: not from the Trenches but from base camps, sometimes from England.

This military richness amazed and impressed him. Buglecalls delighted him. Sometimes, when the air was still, three or four buglers in different camps would overlap and he stopped to admire the sheer cleverness of the organisation. He liked watching men on parade. He liked watching the
wagontrains, sometimes six horses to a wagon, rumbling by knee-deep in white dust. But most of all he liked watching troops on the march behind a band of fifes and drums. The crunch of boots, the shrill of fifes, the thump and thunder of drumskins: all combined to make his chest swell and his legs twitch with suppressed energy. As the column marched away he felt a huge, patriotic pride mixed with a regret that he could do nothing to demonstrate that pride. He was an Englishman. That was Saint George's music. He wanted to slay a dragon or two.

One day he took the squadron dog, now named Brutus, with him for company. This worked so well that next day he asked Kellaway to come.

Dando had grounded Kellaway until he was sure he had recovered from his concussion. Kellaway was not keen on walking. “That's why I left the Somerset Light Infantry and joined the Corps,” he said. “All that marching. You walk everywhere in the infantry. Awfully tiring. I've got small feet, too.”

“Just a short stroll,” Paxton said.

“Nice lunch somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“I'm not absolutely sure it was the Somerset Light Infantry. Sometimes I think it was, sometimes I wonder. D'you ever get that feeling?”

“No. Come on, get your boots on.”

It was another fine day. The fields were awash with poppies, and there was always a skylark high above, singing as if God were holding auditions. Paxton and Kellaway walked north. They visited battalions of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Highland Light Infantry, the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, the Scottish Rifles. They were offered lunch in the mess by some Northumberland Fusiliers, newly arrived. Only eggs and potatoes, for which the Fusiliers apologised, but lots of wine and cheese. Kellaway quickly drank two glasses of wine and became very jaunty.

“Your face seems to have acquired a few battle honours lately,” one of the hosts said to him.

“Ah, yes.” He felt his bruises. “But you ought to see the other chap.”

“No, no.” Paxton made a little melodrama out of it. “Not a good idea. Might put them off their food.”

They asked him what had happened, as he knew they would. This was his party-piece. He was good at this. “Routine patrol,” he said. “Four or five thousand feet. Above the clouds, anyway. You wouldn't have seen a thing from down here.” That always impressed people. “Along came this Hun, two-seater, Fokker, nasty piece of work. Machine-guns fore and aft. One of their latest grids. Bigger than us, and faster. He knew it, too. You could tell from the way he charged at us. I reckon he must have been doing a hundred miles an hour.” There was utter silence now. He took a sip of wine.

“Then we had a scrap and I shot him down,” Kellaway said. “Pass the potatoes, old bean.”

Paxton tried to grin and be a part of the laughter, but he felt sick with rage and hatred. Kellaway had not only pinched his story, he had pinched his Hun! And he was still chattering away. Paxton gave up. He chewed the tasteless food in order to make his face do something that hid his expression.

Kellaway was saying: “… but that one doesn't count because he ran away home, and it was downhill all the way so he went very fast. Anyhow, we made up for it next day. We caught a whale.
Huge
German aeroplane. When we searched the wreckage we found a billiard table and a genuine lavatory with a chain you could pull. I put three drums of ammunition through the Lewis before that Hun went down. The barrel was so hot it glowed red like a poker.”

“So how many Huns have you shot down, in all?”

“Seven. Eight, if you count double for the whale.”

Paxton made an effort to be cheerful but he felt both angry and ashamed. They left as soon as he could contrive it, which was not until Kellaway had drunk a lot of brandy. Neither of them spoke until they were out of sight of the camp. “I must say that was the most disgusting performance I have ever witnessed,” Paxton said; but he was talking to himself: Kellaway had turned aside and was pissing on an old tree stump. Paxton walked slowly on, his face twisted in distaste, waiting for Kellaway to catch up and be condemned in style. But Kellaway didn't catch up. Paxton went back and found him
asleep with his hat over his eyes. “Sod you, then,” he said, and felt soiled by his own words. He walked away and spat to cleanse his mouth.

For half an hour he wandered about, watching troops erect tents. Then he decided to go home. Kellaway was where he had left him, still asleep. By now Paxton was too weary to be angry. “Come on,” he said.

Kellaway awoke like a child, smiling, yawning and stretching. “Goodness, I'm thirsty,” he said. “D'you know, I just had the most extraordinary dream. I dreamt I was back at school, and it was last summer, because I was captain of tennis which I was, you see – only I was in uniform, and …”

Paxton let him ramble on as they walked back, until he lost patience and interrupted. “Why did you tell all those frightful lies?”

“Steady on. It's only a dream.”

“I'm not talking about your dopey dream. I mean all the lies you told the Northumberland Fusiliers at lunch.”

“Lunch?” Kellaway kicked at a dandelion. “Did we have lunch?”

“You told them you'd shot down seven or eight Huns.”

“No! Really? What a spoof!” Kellaway was delighted.

“There is such a thing as honour, you know,” Paxton said.

“Did they believe me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I don't see how anybody's honour has suffered, then. Do you?”

Paxton felt trapped. “It's just not good enough,” he said.

Flying two patrols a day was not unusual in 1916. Plenty of Quirks went up twice a day, coming home for lunch as if they were keeping office hours. But at least the crews of Quirks had specific jobs to do, and once they had done them they could quit, put the nose down and buzz off. FE2bs led a different life.

They were built to fight. The initial stood for ‘Farman Experimental' but a lot of people assumed they meant ‘Fighting Experimental', and some of the more gung-ho pilots actually called their machines ‘fighters' instead of ‘scouts'. Cleve-Cutler was one of these. When his flight commanders complained that they hardly ever saw enemy planes, and so two patrols a day were twice as pointless as one, he said: “Not at all. Now we own the sky. If Jerry wants it back he'll have to come up and fight us for it.”