Authors: Derek Robinson
Duncan had never before cleared a jam when he was hanging in a dive with a hurricane battering at his arms. The Lewis often jammed; he knew just what to do; but it demanded strength and skill to force the gun to reject the faulty round wedged in its breech, and then to accept a fresh round, properly cocked, while the FE rocked and shuddered. This jam was a bad one. Duncan heaved and thumped until in the end he had to fumble under his seat for the leather mallet and give the gun an almighty wallop, and then another. The third bash did the trick. He gasped for breath and relaxed. The FE lurched, and the mallet swung and knocked the ammunition drum off the top of the gun. He grabbed and missed. The drum bounced off his chest and vanished. Fear made him shout: that drum could have smashed their propeller! Maybe it sailed wide. Maybe it went clean through the disc. What difference? By the time he had unclipped a spare drum and banged it into place the dive was over. Duncan looked up and saw trees higher than his head. O'Neill was chasing the Aviatik up a valley.
The German was dipping and rising, working hard at making himself a poor target, but the valley was narrowing and O'Neill was steadily gaining. Duncan fired a couple of short bursts. The Aviatik seemed to stagger. It dropped until its wheels were parting the tall grass. O'Neill held the FE steady to give Duncan a good, final, downward shot. Both men were looking at the Aviatik. Neither of them saw the telegraph wire strung across the valley. It took Duncan's head off as
cleanly as a grocer cutting cheese and then it snapped. O'Neill felt the FE shudder. At first he thought a cylinder had blown, but the engine note sounded true. Duncan wasn't firing. Why the hell wasn't Duncan firing? Another jam? O'Neill half stood and looked down into the front cockpit. Duncan's body was flopping about and blood was jetting out. The body flopped again and O'Neill got a hot squirt in the face. He sat down and hauled the joystick into his stomach and spat. As the FE climbed away, below it and behind, the Aviatik came to rest with its tail in the air.
They all drank coffee and cognac on the terrace of the honeycoloured house. Servants brought the coffee but Judith Kent Haffner served it, strolling amongst the men with a silver coffee pot that had a neck like a swan's, while two maids followed carrying cups and sugar and cream. Paxton stood at the edge of the party and pretended to be examining the house but really he was watching her. There was a rose garden nearby; sometimes the breeze carried its scent. She reached him and now he could look without pretending. “I want to know something,” she said as she filled his cup. “I want to know how big your machine-gun is. Now be honest, David.”
“I'm not allowed ⦠I mean, I'm pretty sure that sort of thing is, you know, secret.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “Holy smoke.”
Later the men played tennis. Paxton had no tennis shoes, of course, so he played barefoot and beat Henry, who didn't try terribly hard. The breeze had dropped; the afternoon was baking hot. “Fancy a swim?” Henry said. “There's an hour till tea.”
They undressed in a boathouse that overhung the lake and smelt of tar. Several costumes hung on hooks; all were too big or too small. “Oh, forget them,” Henry said, and ran and dived in. Paxton followed him before he had time to think about it. The water was superbly cool and smooth; when he looked up he could see the surface, glowing greenly. He swam underwater as far as he could and burst up into the sunlight, gasping for breath.
They fooled about for a minute or two and then swam to a small island, little more than a huge boulder with a couple of
trees growing out of it. The rock was smooth and hot. Paxton stretched out on his back and felt the heat soak into him. “D'you do this sort of thing often?” he asked.
“Now and then. Judy keeps more or less open house. Once you've been invited you're free to pop in whenever you like.”
“Very generous.”
“Damn good billiards room, too.”
Paxton waved at what could be seen of the house. “She's awfully young for such a whacking great place, don't you think?”
“Awfully young and awfully beautiful.”
“What I mean is, how does Mr Kent Haffner fit into the picture?”
“Ah. Well, we don't see much of him. He's American, she's Anglo-Irish. I don't know all the facts, but I think she's his second wife and he wants to be the next American ambassador to Paris, so he's got himself appointed special consul or something, to prove how good he is. Apparently he spends all his time travelling around France and buttering-up people. Getting Yankee war material sent over. That sort of thing. Stinking rich, obviously.” Henry closed his eyes.
“I see. So Judy has to find her own friends.”
“She likes goodlooking young men. She's probably up in her bedroom right now, watching us through a telescope.”
Paxton laughed. “Don't be absurd.” But he sat up and raised his knees.
“Don't worry, old man. You've nothing to be ashamed of.” Henry got to his feet and waved in the direction of the house. “Her husband's a hundred years old,” he said. “Fifty, at least. Doesn't seem fair, does it?”
Tea was served on the terrace. It was lavish and Paxton was hungry. The jams and jellies were English; the scones and cakes were made English-style; there was even a genuine sherry trifle. Judy knew how to please her guests. Paxton took his time and ate his fill, and watched her dance as the gramophone played jazz. She made a game of it, dancing through and around the guests and changing partners whenever the whim took her, which was often. Eventually, inevitably, she released her partner and took Paxton's hands. “Bad mistake,” he said. “I'm dreadful.” But she was already
dancing and he did his clumsy best to match her steps. Fortunately they moved into an empty part of the terrace so he didn't have to worry about colliding with chairs and tables; nevertheless he was frowning furiously. She stopped and hugged him. “You're not dreadful, David,” she said. “You're
appalling.”
He stood, shocked and delighted, and waited to see what happened next. She led him to a stone balustrade where they could pretend to admire the view and no one could hear them. “You're as stiff as one of those great big machine-guns of yours,” she told him.
“I never said I was a dancer.”
“Absolutely right. You never did. How many German aeroplanes have you shot down?”
“One. One big one. Two-seater Albatros.”
She had linked her little finger with his. Now she tightened it. “Tell you what. You shoot down another German plane and I'll teach you how to dance.”
“That's a bargain.”
Yeo's replacement was an eighteen-year-old called Peter King who should never have been given his wings. He had impressed the interviewing officer at the War Office with his games record at Winchester and his fresh-faced keenness to get stuck into the Hun. He survived pilot training because he was lucky and because the aerodrome was so big that it disguised his faults. His instructor was a man who had been sent home after too long in France; he despised instructing and he disliked King because he was such a bad pilot, so he ignored him whenever he could. A lot of instructors were like that. They called the trainee pilots âHuns' and were glad to see the back of them.
Cleve-Cutler looked at King's logbook. “Twenty hours,” he said. “Eight solo.” He passed it to Foster.
“Yes, sir,” King said.
“You've never flown an FE.”
“No, sir.”
“Now's your chance. Go and get some kit.”
“Thank you, sir.” King went out, looking as if he had won several medals.
“Give him the worst machine we've got,” Cleve-Cutler
said,”I don't want him smashing anything new. He goes up alone, of course.”
“All right.” Foster paused on his way out. “He reminds me of someone,” he said, “but I can't think who.”
“He reminds me of everyone who comes here. Boring, isn't it?”
Foster walked with King to the aeroplane and briefed him on the take-off routine and what speeds to aim for. King nodded all the time. “You know about torque?” Foster asked. “Slight tendency of the plane to rotate the opposite way to the propeller?” King nodded. “Apply a bit. of opposite rudder to cancel the torque,” Foster said. King nodded. “The main thing is to keep your revs up and give yourself plenty of height,” Foster said. King nodded. “And no violent manoeuvres, no stunting.” King nodded. “And your crab sandwiches are under your seat,” Foster said. King nodded. Foster stopped and looked at him. King blinked, and smiled. “You don't have to do this, you know,” Foster said. “It's not compulsory.” King nodded.
He took off without difficulty. It was the ropiest FE in the squadron, heavily patched and splinted, but the engine was sound. King loved the pusher-propeller arrangement. It was a thrill just to sit in the open and enjoy the rushing air and the panoramic view.
It took him forty painstaking minutes to climb, in wide and easy circles, to three thousand feet. This was the happiest moment of his life, and the shock was all the more severe when the engine coughed and faltered. King panicked. The engine spluttered. One petrol tank was empty; it was time to switch to another. Foster had warned him of this. A good pilot â even a mediocre pilot â would have had the sense to let the nose drop, let the aeroplane make its own speed. King clutched the joystick and the FE stalled. It fell sideways, clumsily, and dropped into a spin. King kept his frantic grip on the joystick. The FE went on spinning down, chucking its tail from side to side, until King felt as dizzy and breathless as if he were in a runaway fairground ride. He clung to the joystick like grim death.
Everyone stopped to watch the plane fall. Several battalions
of infantry camped nearby saw it. So did a couple of squadrons of cavalry, and a unit of sappers, and some gunners. Not many French farmers looked up: they usually got on with their work and let the war go by. Still, King had the biggest audience of his brief life as his FE tumbled from the sky, twitching like a scrap of paper.
“Oh, Christ Almighty,” Foster said, in a voice like cracked leather. “What a waste.”
“Not your fault,” Cleve-Cutler told him.
They saw the FE hit the ground about a mile away. A second later the sound reached them. It was like a wooden hut collapsing. They saw flames, and then the bang of the exploding fuel tank made the windows rattle.
Cleve-Cutler stood and stared at the smoke. There was nothing he could do at the wreck, and in any case other men were already on their way to it. “I'll write to the parents,” he said. “What was his name? King, wasn't it?”
No reply. Foster had gone.
Five minutes later he found Foster in the anteroom, scribbling with chalk on the blackboard that normally carried Flying Orders for the day. Foster had cleaned the board and covered it with algebraic equations. He was still writing, writing so hard and so fast that bits of chalk went flying. He reached the edge of the board and stopped.
“Doesn't add up,” he said. “I can't make it add up.”
“That's because it's all junk, old boy,” Cleve-Cutler said.
Foster took a pace back. They examined the mass of algebraic nonsense for quite a long time. “Well, of course it's junk,” Foster said. “That's why it won't add up! That's the whole problem, don't you see?”
Cleve-Cutler found a cloth and wiped the board clean.
“Come on, Frank,” he said. “I'll buy you a nice big drink.”
One of the Buicks delivered Paxton back to Pepriac in good time for dinner. He sought out Kellaway and found him lying on the grass, watching a game of cricket. “Hullo!” he said. “Guess what?”
“The Kaiser's had a baby,” Kellaway said without looking up.
“No, no. Nothing like that.” He began to describe his meeting with Judith Kent Haffner. He got as far as coffee on the terrace when O'Neill sat next to him. “CO wants you,” O'Neill said.
Paxton couldn't stand being close to O'Neill, so he got up. “I don't believe you,” he said.
“You're right, the old man's lying, he doesn't want you.” O'Neill lay back and closed his eyes. “Don't let him toy with your affections like that, get over there and gouge his eyeballs out.”
“Excuse me.” Paxton walked away.
Kellaway applauded a big hit by Gus Mayo. “Why do you keep pestering him?” he asked.
“It's a dirty job, I know,” O'Neill shouted at Paxton,”but somebody has to do it.”
Kellaway didn't understand, but he didn't really care. “You're looking a bit pale, old chap,” he said. “Been sick?”
“Paxton took my rouge, without asking.” O'Neill's face was as blank as ever. “He wants to humiliate me in front of the entire German Air Force.” Kellaway gave up.
Paxton went to his billet. He was looking at his haircut in a mirror, and thinking how desirable it would be to go back and get a trim in a week or so, when Fidler arrived. “Mr. Cleve-Cutler's compliments, sir,” he said,”and could you report to his office immediately.”
Paxton forgot haircuts, forgot Mrs. Kent Haffner, forgot O'Neill and Kellaway and all. This was the call. He was going to fly again.
The CO and Captain Piggott were looking at a short length of telegraph wire. Paxton saluted and waited. “Where exactly did they find this?” Cleve-Cutler asked Piggott.
“Outer strut, left-hand side. Sawed the strut nearly in half.”
Cleve-Cutler tested the strength of the wire until he hurt his fingers and grinned with pain. “Cheap and nasty ⦠Where have you been all day?”
“Amiens, sir,” Paxton said. “Haircut.”
“Didn't O'Neill tell you I wanted to see you?”
“Yes, but⦠I'm afraid I don't trust him, sir.”
“Really! You don't trust O'Neill.” Cleve-Cutler blew his
nose: one short foghorn blast. “And how does O'Neill feel about you?”