War Story (33 page)

The adjutant disapproved of Foster's bell-tent and of the noises that came from it, and he told Cleve-Cutler so. “I don't care what school he went to,” Brazier said,”he's not entitled to behave like a gypsy. The men won't respect him for it. No respect means no discipline.”

“He's still a very good flight commander. That hasn't changed.”

“Something's changed. I remember once I had a chap in Madras who suddenly dyed his hair green and said his mother was the Queen of Sheba. Thoroughly competent officer, but he had to go.”

Cleve-Cutler shook his head. “Pilots are different. In my last squadron we had a brilliant pilot, but when he wasn't flying he was the most feckless brat you could imagine. His idea of fun was to go for a walk and throw stones at people.”

“A British
officer?”
Brazier was deeply offended.

“So you see I don't care if Frank dyes his hair sky-bluepink. He won't get the sack from me. I need him too much.”
Before long the dog Brutus chewed up Captain Foster's clarinet. Corporal Lacey managed to find a secondhand valve trombone, and Foster was in the doorway of his tent, working on
The Eton Boating Song
, when he saw the Canadian, Stubbs, out for a stroll, and called him in for a drink.

They sat on the camp bed and sipped whisky from tin mugs.

“Do you really like France?” Foster asked. “Don't you find it awfully dull after Canada?”

“Actually I'm an American,” Stubbs said. “I only joined the Canadian Army because it was a quick way to get into the RFC, but don't tell anyone.”

“America.” Foster dipped a finger in his whisky and sucked it. “America. I'd love to be an American. No ties. Free to go anywhere, do anything.”

“I never lived anywhere except Grand Rapids, Michigan.”

“Grand Rapids. That sounds exciting.”

“I guess it is if you like making furniture.” Stubbs rubbed Brutus with his foot. “Would you like a job making furniture?”

“Not… all day, no.”

“In Grand Rapids they make furniture all year.” Brutus squirmed away from Stubbs' foot and began chewing the trombone.

“Look here,” Foster said. All of a sudden he sounded tense and nervous. “I'm going to ask the most enormous favour.” He gave Stubbs the full force of his smile.

“Okay. Try me.”

“Well… the last time I went home on leave I did a damn silly thing. I met a girl, took her out, shows, dinners, dancing, all that nonsense.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yes, you might think so, I suppose. Trouble is, I sort of … well, fell in love. Can't get her out of my mind.” Foster was frowning heavily. “Absolute bloody disaster, of course.”

“Why? Doesn't she like you?”

“Oh, yes.” Foster gripped his tin mug so hard that his fingertips went white. “Yes, I'm pretty sure she was quite fond of me.”

“Sounds like a nice combination, then.”

“No. No, it's quite hopeless. I'm afraid there's absolutely no future in it.”

“I don't see why. Just—”

“No future at all, believe me. I've thought about it a great deal and it's all over, I can't go on like this, it's unfair to her, the only possible thing is to end it now, dead.”

Stubbs was briefly silenced by this burst of feeling. Then he said: “So what's this big favour you want me to do?”

Foster sighed. “She keeps writing. I can't forget her as long as she keeps writing, so I've decided the best thing for both of us would be if I arranged my demise.”

“Your demise. You mean your death?”

Foster nodded.

“Nothing but the best for the British aristocracy,” Stubbs said. “Okay, how d'you want to demise? With or without lilies?”

“I'd like you to write a letter, telling her that I was killed in action. It's got to be definite and final. No half measures.”

Stubbs gave it some thought. “I could tell her I saw you get shot down. And crash.”

“Better say I was riddled with enemy bullets.”

“Listen, I can have you blown up in mid-air. No extra cost.”

“A flamer. Make it a flamer.”

Stubbs looked away. He finished his whisky, sip by sip. “Not a flamer,” he said. “I'll say the rest, but not a flamer.”

Foster gave him pen and paper. “I'd do it myself,” he said,”but she knows my handwriting.”

“Okay,” Stubbs said. “What's her name?”

“Jenny,” Foster said. “Her name is Jenny.”

Stubbs began to write. In a corner of the tent, Brutus was testing his teeth on the horn of the trombone. “Don't tell anyone else about this, will you?” Foster said.

By 10 a.m. the day was as grey as a ghost. O'Neill flew a random pattern above a BE2c that was spotting for a shoot. About a thousand feet above him, the overcast spread from horizon to horizon. It looked like the biggest tarpaulin in the western world.

Paxton had begun this patrol eagerly. Now, after forty minutes, he was so bored that he was scratching his initials on the inside of the nacelle. The German archie was a bore. It was always in the wrong place or at the wrong height. The shoot was a bore. As soon as the guns found one target they switched to another. The German air force was a bore because it wasn't to be seen. And then, suddenly, it was. A Fokker monoplane came out of the east. Paxton sat up as if he'd been stung.

The Fokker was at about the same height as the BE2c and was heading for it. O'Neill had seen the Fokker too; he dipped a wing so as to get a better view. Paxton fired a test burst. If they went down now they could catch the Hun when he was still a mile from the BE2c.

O'Neill did not go down. He circled, and after a while he climbed. Paxton couldn't believe it. He turned and stared at O'Neill but all he got was blank goggles. Below, the Fokker was chasing the British plane across the Lines. Shellfire from both sides, black and white, littered the sky. Paxton slumped and swore. The FE levelled out and O'Neill cruised around for half an hour. Then they went home. O'Neill told Brazier there was nothing worth reporting.

Lunch was cold bully-beef, boiled potatoes and salad. O'Neill ate his meal quickly and went out. Paxton stayed in the mess.

“Hey!” Kellaway said. He was reading a week-old
Daily Mail.
”Lord Kitchener's dead!” He was amazed. Nobody else was.

“General Gordon's not feeling too good, either,” Goss said. “And Napoleon's quite poorly, so I'm told, while Alexander the Great…”

“Yes but… I mean, he was a field-marshal.” Kellaway was dismayed by their indifference.

“Who shot him?” Foster asked.

“I don't think anyone did.”

“Too bad. A good opportunity missed.” Foster lost interest.

Kellaway turned to Stubbs. “Do you know Lord Kitchener's dead?” he asked.

“No, but you sing it, and I'll pick up the tune as we go along,” Stubbs said brightly. There was a weary chorus of
groans and hisses. “That's considered a pretty damn good joke back in Grand Rapids,” he protested.

“Says here he was drowned,” Kellaway said glumly.

“How's your swimming pool coming on?” Goss asked Paxton.

“Oh, they've made a start.” The others looked interested, so he explained:”I've got a couple of dozen Chinkies digging a hole in the next field. Borrowed ‘em from a labour battalion. Dig like beavers.” The prospect of having a pool was exciting, and he answered a lot of questions. Success felt good.

O'Neill was on his bed, asleep. Paxton kicked the bed. “What didn't you like this time?” he asked. “The colour of his eyes, or the way he parted his hair?”

O'Neill took a long time to wake up.

“We had that bloody Hun on a plate,” Paxton said. “It was a damned gift from God, that bloody Hun.” He was so worked-up that he couldn't get the words out fast enough: they tripped and stumbled. “But you didn't want it! One look down, and up you went! So the poor bloody Quirk got chased home while we chased rainbows!”

“You didn't see the Albatros,” O'Neill said flatly.

“I didn't see any Albatros, nor any golden eagle, nor—”

“Why not? You're the observer.” O'Neill rubbed his face as if trying to push it back into shape.

“I observed the Fokker. One Hun's enough for me.”

“Arse-hole. Our job was to guard the Quirk.”

“Which got jumped by the Fokker.”

“Balls. They saw it coming, they quit, they knew it couldn't catch them, and it didn't.”

“But
we
could have caught it! I could have cut the blasted thing in half!”

“You never saw the Albatros.” O'Neill had taken Paxton's eau-de-cologne from his shelf and was splashing it on his neck and face. “It was in and out of that cloud like a whore who's lost her handbag.”

“Help yourself, it's free,” Paxton said.

“Thanks.” O'Neill took a mouthful, rinsed his teeth and spat out of a window. “Back home we make better booze than this out of dead dingoes … That Albatros wanted our Quirk.”

“So you say.”

“And he was fast enough to catch the Quirk. But I knew he was up there, and he knew that I knew, and we both knew he wasn't going to risk it while I was in the way.”

“I don't believe it.”

O'Neill raised one knee and broke wind. “God save the King,” he said. “Indubitably.”

In the afternoon they were listed for a Deep Offensive Patrol. The air was still and dull as they walked from the pilots' hut to the FE. The inevitable flurry of flies tried to get a taste of their sweating heads.

“I can't hit the Hun if you never get near him,” Paxton said. O'Neill said nothing. “We've got nothing to protect this afternoon except ourselves,” Paxton said. “If we see a Hun, are you going to let me fight him?”

“Depends. Depends how many there are, how high, and how late in the patrol.”

“You mean how desperately you want to get home for tea and cake?”

Their fitter swung the propeller. The Beardmore coughed and spat, banged and coughed, and grudgingly decided there was nothing else for it and so settled down to work. O'Neill slowly built the revs, and the roar broadened and deepened to a bellow, while black exhaust smoke got sucked into the propeller disc and sliced into nothingness. The wheels leaned hard on their chocks, and everything shook like a wet dog on a cold day. Paxton sat in the front cockpit and tried to focus on the dancing flies. He knew it couldn't be done but it was something to do. O'Neill slowly brought the revs down. The chocks were dragged clear. The FE rolled. The flies gave up the chase. Paxton stared at the rushing grass until it became a blur. He had a sudden moment of panic when he thought he'd left his chocolate behind, but it was in his pocket after all. By then they were flying.

O'Neill went through the overcast and into a new world where the cloud was as white and smooth as linen and the sky had the huge, friendly blueness that gave heaven a good name. Paxton blinked with approval a few times and then got down to the business of hunting Huns.

O'Neill took them up so high that cold began to seep like a stain through the flying gear, and Paxton couldn't believe he had ever been hot and sweaty. He loosened his straps and moved about, working his body as he searched. After an hour he was tired and all they had seen was a couple of British Nieuports and a Vickers Gun Bus. Paxton waved as they passed and hoped they would go away.

He no longer heard the engine-roar and the wind-rush. The FE seemed not to be moving. It hung in space, occasionally leaning one way or the other. He had eaten his chocolate. He was chilled and he had cramp in his right buttock. The whole silly afternoon was a wash-out. He was glad when O'Neill turned towards the sun and began to lose height. That way lay steaming hot baths and drinks before dinner. The FE stopped its gentle dive and began climbing, hard. Paxton, irritated, looked around and saw O'Neill pointing to the left and high, almost vertically.

It had to be an enemy machine. Only an enemy would be falling so far, so fast. Paxton fumbled for his binoculars and before he got them out he knew it was too late to use them. Already he could make out details: a biplane, sleeker than most, glossy purple, with a snout-like exhaust poking straight up. O'Neill had turned to face it, but his climb was so much flatter than the enemy's dive that Paxton had to crouch to get it in his sights. He tested the Lewis, saw a round of tracer fall away, remembered that he was firing
upwards
, must allow for that. Now the Hun seemed to be accelerating, quite startlingly: Paxton had the impression of adjusting the view through binoculars and making it rush closer. He saw propdisc, undercarriage, tailplane. When he could see the wingstruts he would open fire. He saw the struts and fired, and his tracer passed tracer jetting from the nose of the Hun, and he edged his fire down and saw it washing and wandering all around the Hun while a magnificently destructive banging hammered in his ears, and he was remotely aware of the enemy tracer flickering past, missing him, harmless, and the target was big, unmissable, perfect and suddenly it was snatched from view because the FE had been flung aside.
“You bastard!”
he shouted.
“Gutless bastard!”
He dropped
the Lewis and snatched a flare pistol from its clip, swung around to face O'Neill and fell off his seat when the FE banked even more steeply. Paxton fired. He was halfsprawled in a corner of the cockpit, left arm hooked around his seat. The flare was red, a hot brick-red, and it raged across O'Neill's cockpit and streaked between the struts of the left wing like a slice of a furnace. O'Neill threw up an arm: too late: it had missed him. But Paxton tasted joy. The red blaze of the flare matched his rage at O'Neill for cheating him of his kill. The FE heaved itself from one bank to the other. Paxton tumbled with it, got his boots against the side, stood, hurled the pistol at O'Neill, missed by a yard. O'Neill didn't even duck. He was pointing dead ahead. The FE levelled out and Paxton saw the Hun, half a mile away, turning to attack. He fell over his feet getting to the Lewis.