War Story (4 page)

Goss paused while the bowler ran up and bowled. The batsman swung and missed, and the ball thwacked into the wicketkeeper's gloves. “What exactly happened to the nuns?” he asked. “I never did get the full story.”

The chaplain was well over six feet tall. He cocked his head and glanced down at Goss. “They were ravished,” he said.

“The Huns ravished them.”

“Gosh. All of them?”

“The Huns spare no one, Douglas.”

“No, I meant all of the Huns. There can't have been all that many nuns in Belgium and—”

“Run, man! Run like a stag!”
the chaplain shouted at the batsman, who had just mishit the ball between his own legs. For a moment the batsman was too startled to move; then he stumbled as he began running; before he was halfway down the pitch the ball was flung to the other end and he was run out. “Oh, bad luck,” the chaplain said. “Still, you played a jolly plucky innings, Charles. Jolly plucky.”

“Don't talk rot, padre. I scored three.”

“And a jolly plucky three it was. Who's in next?”

While they were finding a new batsman, Goss said: “I honestly don't see how you can umpire
and
tell the chap when to run. You got him out then.”

“Of course I did. He took twenty minutes to score three.
That's not cricket… Ah, here's young O'Neill to take strike, as they say in the Antipodes. Now for some excitement.”

“Aim for his head,” Goss advised the bowler. “It's the only bit you can't damage.”

O'Neill heard, and said nothing. He was Australian, lanky and unhurried, the tallest man in the squadron. He hit the first ball high over the bowler's head, hooked the second ball far beyond the fielders, and whacked the third ball so hard that everyone could hear it fizz through the air. But the turf was less than perfect, and when the bowler flung down his fourth delivery it struck a bump. O'Neill suddenly had to change his swing to a lunge. He clipped the ball, snicked it so that it shot up almost vertically, an easy catch for the wicket-keeper, who ran forward, eyes on the ball, gloves cupped. Using the handle of the bat, O'Neill jabbed him in the stomach. He missed the catch and collapsed, gasping. All the fielders were hooting or shouting. “He ran into me,” O'Neill announced. “How can I score if silly bastards run into me?”

“You're out, old boy,” the chaplain called. “It's not cricket, you know, that sort of thing.”

“Obstruction,” Goss added.

“Of course it was obstruction.” O'Neill turned to the wicket-keeper and prodded him. “Tell them it was obstruction, Tommy. You don't want to die with a sin on your conscience, do you?” The wicketkeeper grabbed O'Neill's foot and rolled over. O'Neill fell. They began wrestling. Others joined in.

“It's disgraceful,” the chaplain said.

“You know how the boys like a brawl,” Goss said.

“I didn't mean that. I meant the state of this pitch. That ball was virtually unplayable.” The chaplain stamped on a lumpy patch. “We need a heavy roller, Douglas.”

“O'Neill seems to be doing his best,” Goss said.

“We'll take the tea interval now.”

Somewhere during the second circuit, Paxton's bladder stopped complaining. It wasn't happy, but it had been bullied so much that a sort of numbness had set in. Paxton's understanding of human biology was sketchy (Sherborne hadn't spent much time on that sort of thing) but he thought perhaps the continual pressure might have caused a kink in a tube
down there. He did his best to help by maintaining a steady height just above the air-bumps and by banking very gently when he turned corners. And at some point, although the taste of tea kept surging into his mouth, and although his knees kept wanting to knock together, his bladder had sullenly accepted its fate.

The field at Pepriac was golden green when he came in to land. The cricketers had gone. Away to his left, a soft white cloud of dust drifted above the road: probably a battalion on the march. The CO would be watching him, Paxton thought, and he tried very hard to bring off a good landing. It wasn't bad – a bit heavy, perhaps, and not exactly three-point, the tailskid came down late. He opened the throttle at once and took off. Five more landings to go.

The second was better. The third was a mess, he almost touched a wingtip and frightened himself sick. The fourth and fifth were adequate.

As he climbed away he noticed figures sitting in deckchairs outside the officers' mess. After all the stress and tension of five landings he found it quite pleasant to relax and let the Quirk climb in a long, wide spiral. Going up seemed to lessen the pressure on his bladder. The higher he went, the easier it felt.

At three thousand feet, when he levelled out, he was utterly untroubled. He switched off the engine. The sudden silence was itself an added balm. The nose dipped, the Quirk found a happy angle and started to slide back down the spiral. Its wires fluted pleasantly, drifting up and down the scale as the plane gained or lost some speed. There were clouds about, but they were small and harmless and they showed their good manners by keeping out of his way. He sailed down, shutting his eyes as the Quirk turned to face the late-afternoon sun, then opening them to enjoy the light washing over the eastern sky.

At two thousand feet he glanced below to check his position and was shocked when he could not find the aerodrome. He searched hard as the Quirk circled. The second time around he saw it, completely in the wrong place, over in the west, half-lost in the haze. At once he stopped his spiral descent and steered for the field. How had it moved so far away? All he
had done was spiral up and spiral down. What had gone wrong? He glanced up. The friendly little clouds were still scudding eastward. He saw his mistake. Because it was calm at ground level he hadn't considered the risk of wind up there. All the time he'd been climbing, the wind had been pushing him eastward.

The altimeter was lazily unwinding: he was down to twelve hundred feet, and head-on to the wind. He'd be lucky to glide home, let alone land properly. He was afraid. Fear struck at his weakest point. A spurt of urine soaked his left thigh. This weakness angered him, and he stopped the flow, but his drenched leg was still shaking so much that his boot rattled in the rudder-straps.

In the end he had forty feet to spare when he sailed over the fence. Both legs were trembling now. As he saw the grass below him, a great shudder of relief went through his body. The Quirk felt the shudder, and responded. Paxton saw the wings tremble and thought it was the start of a stall, shoved the stick forward, remembered how low he was, changed his mind, snatched the stick back and overdid it. The Quirk settled on its heels and stalled and fell out of the sky.

It was only twenty feet but Paxton heard an undercarriage strut crack as the plane bounced with a jolt that shook his head like a balloon on a stick. When the Quirk came down again the strut collapsed altogether, throwing its weight on that wing, which crumpled with much ripping and snapping. The surviving wheel-strut folded up and the Quirk slid on its belly, exhausting its momentum against the grass.

Long before then, Paxton's bladder had given up the fight. It knew its civic duty but this kind of insanity was asking too much. For fifteen seconds he gushed like an open tap.

Paxton unstrapped himself and stepped out. It felt odd to be standing on the ground yet looking over the top of the aeroplane. He wanted to weep. For five days he had been doing his damnedest to get this Quirk to Pepriac, where the RFC was crying out for them. It wasn't fair. Slightly bow-legged, he walked around the wreck. Maybe they could mend it. He was as wet as a baby.
He felt
like a baby. He felt a depth of shame and hopelessness he had not known since he was a child. Five days in the air, to end up like this. He had
let everyone down: Sherborne, England, the squadron commander. His boots squelched. The noise was shamefully loud in his ears until he realised that the squelching was outside, not inside. The ground was drenched with petrol. A fuel tank must have split. Oh God.

“Dear me,” said Rufus Milne.

Paxton turned slowly. He was too defeated to be startled. The squadron commander was standing at a wingtip tugging at a strip of fabric. Behind him a group of mechanics waited by a tender. Part of Paxton's mind wondered how they had arrived so silently. Another part didn't give a toss. His nostrils awoke to the stench of petrol and made him move away.

“I expect you hit a bump,” Milne said. He watched Paxton approach. “Did you hurt yourself?” he asked. Paxton shook his head. “Good. I thought … The way you were walking …” Milne's tugging was rewarded: he found himself holding a strip of fabric. “What d'you think we ought to do with the remains?” he said. He gave Paxton the strip of fabric like a tailor showing a customer a sample of cloth.

“I can't tell you how awfully sorry I am, sir.”

Milne found his pipe. “If we chuck the bits on a wagon and send them to the repair depot, nobody will thank us for it, you know.” He stuffed tobacco into the bowl. “By the way … Did you leave your watch in the cockpit?” Paxton nodded. “We'd better rescue that,” Milne said,”before the looters arrive.”

They went over to the cockpit. Milne undipped the pocket-watch from the instrument panel and gave it to Paxton. “You signed for that, remember. You don't want some bally Equipment Officer charging you for it when you ask him for another. I'll bring your seat-cushion. Jolly nice cushion, that.”

They turned, and Paxton trudged away. After a few paces he realized that he was alone, and he looked back. Milne had stopped and was lighting his pipe. He dropped the match on the grass and hurried to catch up. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.

They were about ten yards from the wreck when the flames went up. They made a solid-sounding
whump
, like a giant
beating a giant carpet. Paxton felt the heat on the back of his neck. Milne kept walking and did not look behind him, so Paxton did the same. “You could do with a bath, couldn't you?” Milne said. “Your kit's in your room, I expect.”

The tender took them to the huts. On the way, Milne smoked his pipe and watched the clouds as if waiting for a particularly interesting one to go by. Paxton sat hunched and silent. He felt like a victim, and that bewildered him. He felt tricked, and that angered him. He'd strained and struggled and pushed himself to the limit, and now all his effort was wasted. The tender bumped over some ruts, and Paxton's bruised backside took more punishment. Milne, he noticed, was sitting on his cockpit cushion. For a moment, anger flared into hate.

The tender stopped. He got down. Milne tossed him the cushion and pointed his pipe at a wooden hut. “Dexter, isn't it?” he called.

“No, sir. Paxton.”

“Ah, yes, of course. Too bad about Dexter.”

The tender drove on. Paxton went inside. There was a table and chairs, a stove, and three beds. At the foot of one bed was his trunk, sent by boat from England. He sat on that bed and stared at the dust swirling in the sunbeams. He found himself looking through the dust at a drawing pinned to the wall. It was a poster for a Paris revue, and it showed a pretty girl, peeking coyly over her shoulder. Someone had added a black eye. That single smudge made her smile seem lewd and knowing.

After a while his batman hurried in, introduced himself as Private Fidler, and declared that there was hot water in the officers' bathhouse, next door. Paxton took his clothes off and
put on a dressing gown. He gave Fidler his trousers. “These need something doing to them,” he said, too defeated to explain. Fidler seemed to understand. “They'll be as good as new, sir,” he said. “Don't you worry, sir.” On impulse Paxton gave him half-a-crown. That was accepted with the same ease. Paxton sensed that he had found an ally at last. “Terrible bad luck, your bus catching fire like that, sir,” Fidler said. “Shocking bad luck, if you ask me.” Paxton was briefly tempted to give him another half-a-crown, but thought better of it and gave him a bitter smile instead. Two hundred yards away the wreck of the Quirk smoked like a garden bonfire.

When he came out of the bathhouse he felt better. There had been abundant hot water; and with some Pears soap, and a new loofah, and a shampoo bought by his mother at Harrods, it was impossible not to feel better. Fidler had laid out fresh clothes and a clean uniform. After days in flying boots it was wonderful to be able to slip on a pair of shoes. Fidler offered him the monogrammed silverbacked hairbrushes he'd been given on his fifteenth birthday, and held up a mirror. “Thank you, Fidler,” Paxton said, and surprised himself by catching exactly the same casual, assured, yet slightly distant tone his housemaster had used at dinner when a servant offered a dish of vegetables. He disciplined his hair, returned the brushes, picked up his cap. “Handkerchief,” he murmured absently, and patted a couple of pockets. Fidler found a handkerchief in no time. “If anyone wants me,” Paxton said, “I shall be with the adjutant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Fidler waited until he had left, and then used Paxton's swagger-stick to pick up a soiled sock. He sniffed from a distance and grimaced. “Bleedin' officers,” he said. “Stink worse than pigs.”

When Corporal Lacey showed Paxton in, Captain Appleyard was sitting upright and trying to fasten his shirt collar. “Hullo, old chap,” he said. “Come in, take a pew. These damn buttons … Always letting you down … Settled in, have you? Who's your batman?”

“Private Fidler, sir.” Paxton had never seen such an unhealthy-looking face: flushed yet grubby. And there was, sweat in the hair.

“Old Jack Fidler!” Appleyard chuckled, and coughed, and swallowed. “A real old soldier, Jack is. He'll look after you, don't worry.
And
himself, of course.” He gave up fumbling with the button. “Play cricket, do you?”

“Look, sir,” Paxton began.