War Story (28 page)

“Where are you going?” Paxton complained. “I came here to get a haircut, you fool.”

Lacey stopped the wagon. “Surely you don't want to have your hair cut
back there
, do you?” he asked. “They're all barbarians. I wouldn't let them cut the grass. I assumed you would want to go to the place that I go to.” For a moment
they stared at each other. “It's tucked away behind
l'église St.-Jacques,”
he said. “It's called Leroux Frères.”

“You're M.N.T. Lacey,” Paxton said in a voice that was not much more than a whisper. “You played Hamlet in the school play.”

“Yes. I thought you knew.”

“You were years and years ahead of me. I was just a kid. In fact you must have been in your last year when I was in my first.”

“Probably.”

“And the moustache … It completely changes your face.”

“I recognised you immediately. But then, yours is a much smaller moustache.”

Paxton looked away. “You were a prefect,” he said. “You beat me, once.”

“Did I? Why?”

“For fighting.”

“Ah. And did the beating hurt?”

“Not much.”

“No. My heart wasn't in it, even in those days.”

They drove to Leroux Frères. From the outside it could have been mistaken for a town house. A very old man opened the door and silently took their hats and Paxton's cane. The place smelled faintly of sandalwood soap. He led them to a room that was all marble and mahogany except for a pair of barber's chairs placed back to back. Two men, black-suited, grey-haired and silent, helped them out of their tunics and into the chairs. These, Paxton thought, must be the famous
frères.
His mind was still fluttering around the discovery that Lacey was an old boy of Sherborne. “Um …” he said.
“Je voudrais que vous
… um …”

“Don't bother,” said Lacey from the other chair. “They know what's best for you.”

Paxton gave up. It was all too much. A hot towel was wrapped around his face below the eyes and the chair smoothly reclined. He found himself looking at the ceiling. It was covered in frescoes, skilfully drawn and delicately coloured and so erotic that his stomach muscles jumped like hot chestnuts. A small gathering of men and women, none with clothes on and all splendidly athletic, were doing amazing
things to one another as if it were all great fun. There seemed to be some kind of sequence to the pictures. One led to another. Heavens above! Paxton's eyeballs rolled around in their sockets while the scissors snipped.

When he was back on his feet and in his tunic, nicely brushed down and buttoned up, he suddenly remembered the need to pay. “Don't bother,” Lacey said before Paxton could reach his francs. “I have an arrangement.” Lacey shook hands with the man who had cut his hair. Paxton did likewise. The very old man showed them out.
Fancy shaking hands with your barber
, Paxton thought.
No wonder the frogs are in such a pickle.

“Quite a decent haircut,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Paxton jutted his chin. He felt in danger of being patronised. “Mind you, I'm not sure I believed it all,” he said.

Lacey looked amused. “These things can always be tested. It's early in the day, but there are a couple of places you might like to try. For instance …”

“No.” Paxton felt his face going red. “No thanks. Lunch is what I need.”

Lacey drove him to a serious-looking hotel called
Voyageurs.
“Their
terrine de canard
is not to be despised,” he said.

“Aren't you coming in?”

“It's officers only. I wear mufti when I come here. Feel free to mention my name. I shall go off to a rude, crude
cave
and eat half as well as you for a tenth of the price.”

Paxton climbed down and watched the wagon clatter away. He felt suddenly quite lost without Lacey. But that was absurd. Lacey was one of the Other Ranks, while he was Our Trusty and well beloved Oliver Arthur David Paxton, in whom King George reposed especial Trust and Confidence … He looked at
Voyageurs
, and it seemed even more serious and costly and overwhelming. He breathed deeply and ran up the steps as if he owned the place. When in doubt, get on or get out.

The restaurant took up almost the whole of the ground floor. It was busy; very busy. The head waiter was fussing with a party of staff officers who had just arrived, and when at last he came hurrying over to Paxton his flurry of apologies
and welcomes went straight past him to yet another highranking group, all spurs and red tabs, who got steered to an empty table. Paxton felt exposed and ignored. The head waiter eventually found time for him, took the news that he was alone with tightened lips, and did a lot of muttering and standing on tiptoe before he found him a small table in a dim corner and disappeared.

The menu was as long as a short story, and Paxton understood about six words of it. He couldn't see
terrine de canard
anywhere. He began to loathe Lacey.

Waiters hurried by, blinkered in their devotion to duty to others, until he lost patience and tried to stop one. Total failure. The man shrugged, said something in the usual gabbling gibberish and laughed,
actually laughed
as he went away. Paxton sat and steamed. He was helpless. He hated being helpless. He hated these arrogant frog waiters and these fat and greedy colonels and brigadiers. He was hungry. Ravenous. And still nobody came.

When he had lost all hope, and given up, a waiter did actually arrive. He placed a tulip-shaped glass of champagne in front of Paxton. Beside the glass he placed a card. Then he stood back and waited.

Paxton tasted the champagne and drank the lot in one go. The card was embossed in gold with the name
Judith Kent Haffner.
Extraordinary. He looked at the waiter, who shrugged, but then what else could you expect? He turned the card over.
Join me before you starve to death.
Green ink. Firm, confident handwriting.

There were eight or nine young officers seated at her table in the middle of the room. The oldest was a major in the Royal Sussex with a badly scarred face; he looked about 25. The rest were captains and lieutenants of Paxton's age or a year or two older. Most wore medal ribbons. It was a noisy, jolly party; everyone was talking and pointing and telling the others to shut up and listen, and failing, and laughing. Judith Kent Haffner was listening and talking and joining in the jokes too, but mainly what she was doing was smiling at Paxton as he followed the waiter. And Paxton, who was not much good at smiling and who fundamentally disapproved of strange women sending him drinks, found himself smiling
back. She was not the matron he had expected. She was young and she was startlingly pretty in a way that reminded him of the pictures of girl elves in the fairy stories read to him by his nanny: big eyes, big mouth, shiny black hair cut short and swept forward in twin curls that touched her cheekbones. She reached out a long, slender and almost naked arm and took Paxton's hand. Her fingers were firm. “Buzz off, Henry,” she said. The cavalry lieutenant sitting at her left immediately got up and cheerfully moved away. A waiter scooped up Henry's plate and held the chair for Paxton to sit. “You're one of those golden eagles, aren't you?” she said. “I can tell from your wings.”

“I potter about the sky occasionally.”

She found that very funny, and he felt flattered. “What's your name?” she asked.

“Paxton. Oliver Paxton. And you must be Mrs. Haffner.”

“No, no. Everyone calls me Judy. I don't like Oliver. Haven't you got another name?”

Paxton didn't like Arthur. “There's David.”

“Bring my friend David a lovely steak,” she told a waiter.

His glass was filled with wine. The cavalryman, Henry, had been found a place elsewhere at the table. A steady shuttle of waiters came and went. The only person not eating was Judy. She seemed able to follow half a dozen conversations at once. Occasionally she stroked Paxton's hand, even tucking her little finger inside his, and when his steak came she watched him eat and she shared in his enjoyment; he looked at her and she made a happy pout, so he sliced the most tender piece of the steak and carefully put it between her lips. She shut her eyes as she ate. For no reason at all he felt a little weak, and drank some more claret.

Everyone chatted to him; he chatted to everyone. Judy ordered apple pie for him, and it was a revelation: sweet and tangy, crisp and flaky. Apple pie at Sherborne had been stodge in stodge. How right he had been to leave school! He could easily eat another piece of apple pie but he wasn't sure if that was the done thing. In any case she took his hand, and squeezed it, and said, “Now you're going to protect me against all these hulking great thugs, aren't you, David?”

“But of course.” He felt like St. George with a freshly ground and sharpened sword.

She took his arm as they all trooped out. He realised that nobody had paid. Money didn't seem to matter to these people; this was a refreshing, exhilarating experience; an introduction to a higher level of living. He cocked an eyebrow at the smiling head waiter as they went by. The man saw it, and cocked an eyebrow in return.

Two chauffeur-driven Buick limousines were waiting. They drove out of Amiens to the west, quite fast. “This must seem awfully
slow
to you,” she said. She had an appealing way of drawling one word in a sentence; apart from that her voice was light and only faintly tinged with Irish. At first, when he saw that elfin face, he had assumed she was delicately built, even fragile, but now he saw that she was slim unfashionably slender, in fact – but very well put together. Jolly nice legs, and a jolly good chest, or whatever it was that girls called it. “I'm just glad to be alive,” he said. She opened her eyes wide. “Death by starvation,” he said. “Deadly dreary.” She laughed, and imitated his clipped style: “Deadly dreary,” and laughed again, all of which made him feel good. “Want to play a little tennis?” she said.

They were passing some grass courts. Beyond them a lake glittered in the sunshine, with a wooded hill overlooking it and part of a big, honey-coloured house visible through the trees. “Don't you lose a lot of tennis balls in the lake?” he asked.

“Hundreds!” she said with a childlike gusto. “Thousands!”

Jimmy Duncan knew he'd already killed the gunner of the Aviatik when he saw a red streak shimmering along its side. That was during the third attack, when he fired two short bursts but the German pilot jinked so hard that Duncan missed with both; however, there was no return fire and he saw the long streak behind the rear cockpit. It stood out against the Aviatik's camouflage, a pattern of green and yellow cubes, like expensive gift-wrapping. Maybe a bullet had nicked an artery. If the gunner wasn't dead he was dying fast: Jimmy Duncan knew that for sure. Now was the time to get in really close and blow the Aviatik to bits. Now. Fast.

Frank O'Neill wasn't so sure. He hadn't noticed the blood
and he thought maybe the gunner was reloading, or clearing a stoppage. Rush in now and he might pop up and make holes in them both. Besides, there might be another machine lurking high above, in the sun. It was a dazzling afternoon and he couldn't search that part of the sky but something in his gut said somebody was up there. They were three miles on the wrong side of the Lines and they'd been bloody lucky to catch the Aviatik, so lucky that he wondered whether it was a decoy and he was about to be jumped from a great height. It was late in their second patrol of the day and O'Neill was tired.

On the other hand the Aviatik was slow and probably damaged. It couldn't get away. It should be an easy kill.

He flew the FE parallel to the Aviatik, just outside the range of its gun, and tried to squint up into the semi-glare around the blinding disc of the sun. Splinters of light danced in his eyes until they were lost in the wash of tears.

“I got the gunner,” Duncan bawled. He was kneeling on his seat and facing O'Neill. “Gunner's dead.”

“Says you,” O'Neill shouted.

“Let's go, let's get the bugger.” Duncan tried to reach into O'Neill's cockpit and grab the joystick. “He's mine, I want him.”

O'Neill batted his hand away. “Okay!” he shouted. “Sit down, for Christ's sake!” If Duncan had knocked the joystick he might have been thrown out. It was a measure of Duncan's hunger for a kill after dozens of barren patrols.

Duncan sat. O'Neill nudged the throttle forward and eased the joystick across. The horizon swung like a seesaw. A touch of rudder brought the nose around until the Aviatik was dead ahead, chugging along, pouring smoke from its upright exhaust, its pilot praying for rescue, or a cloud, or a miracle. When it was obvious that none of those was going to appear he despaired and stuck his nose down.

To dive was the only thing left to do and also the worst thing to do. The FE could outdive an Aviatik, which meant that O'Neill would catch him, and when he did the German pilot would no longer be so free to jink and dodge and swerve. On the other hand it could be dangerous down there. German ground fire was notoriously lethal. All these thoughts chased
each other through O'Neill's mind when it was already too late. The FE was howling and vibrating as its dive steepened.

He caught the Aviatik after they had fallen about a thousand feet, and the strain on the German plane's wings was such that O'Neill could see them fluttering and distorting. If his FE was doing the same he didn't want to know, so he didn't look behind him. He manoeuvred so as to give Duncan a slightly upward shot. When the Aviatik exploded or fell to pieces he wanted to be out of the way. They were four lengths apart. France lay in front like a map. Duncan fired. Every third shot was a tracer. His bullets went skimming over the Aviatik's top wing. He adjusted his aim and fired again. The Lewis gun jammed.