War Story (46 page)

“No.”

“No. Well then, get your strength back and see me tomorrow.”

Paxton went out and closed the door. Lacey looked up from his work. “How was the hospital?” he asked.

“Full of blokes with bits missing from them.”

Lacey nodded. “I understand that since the war began the artificial limb industry has made great strides.”

Paxton rubbed his left eye with this left hand and stared bleakly at Lacey.

“Sorry,” Lacey said. “It wasn't meant to be a joke.”

“Joke?” Paxton said. “What's a joke? I wouldn't recognise a joke if it bit me in the backside.” He walked to the door and leaned against its frame.

“Is there anything I can provide?” Lacey asked.

“No.” Paxton looked up and watched an FE climbing in a wide, easy spiral until it bored him. “Yes. Yes, there is. Can you get me a car? I can't ride a motorbike, you see. Car and driver.”

Lacey said it might take a little while, an hour or so. Paxton told him there was no hurry, he would probably be in the mess.

He walked to the mess, slowly because the afternoon was hot and still, and ordered lemonade. Plug Gerrish was reading a newspaper. “Same old tosh,” he said.

“Same old tosh,” Paxton agreed.

After a while Spud Ogilvy came in, his flying boots folded below the knee, and carrying his sheepskin coat. “Stinking hot,” he said. “D'you mind?” He took a long drink of Paxton's lemonade.

“Kellaway said you'd gone west.”

“Kellaway's a bloody idiot, isn't he?” Ogilvy threw his coat onto a chair and flopped down on a sofa. “God, I'd give a fiver for a nice cool swim.”

Paxton waited for someone to say the obvious thing but nobody did, so he said it himself. “What's wrong with the pool?”

“Out of order,” Gerrish grunted, and took his cap and went out. Paxton looked at Ogilvy, but Ogilvy seemed to be asleep; at least there was a newspaper over his face. Paxton decided to go and see for himself.

Flies followed him across the aerodrome, and through the gate into the next field. It was a nuisance having only one
hand to flap at them. They were obstinate, constantly touching his ears and eyebrows and lips, until he tied two corners of a handkerchief together and wore it like a mask.

There was a Casualty Clearing Station in the field: a cluster of khaki tents, some the size of marquees. From time to time they quivered in the heat-haze. Ambulances came over a distant rise, rolled down to the CCS, unloaded and went away by a different route. From the back of the CCS a tender drove along a chalk-white track to where the swimming pool had been. Paxton stood in the shade of a tree and watched all this for perhaps ten minutes. He didn't want to go and see what had happened to the pool. He knew what had happened to the pool. On the other hand he didn't like to think he wasn't brave enough to go and look. And so he went, and the flies went with him. They knew the way. All their friends were there already.

The existence of the pool had saved the CCS a lot of time and effort. All they had to do was divert the little stream back to its original course and the pool drained dry in no time. When Paxton reached it, the hole was about half-full and four soldiers wearing rubber gloves and sterilised face-masks were carefully stacking bodies on top of the neat rows of bodies already in place. They were working carefully, not out of any sense of respect for the dead, but because it made best use of the space and the last thing they wanted was to have to dig another fucking great hole like this one.

Paxton watched them work. The stench of decay was just tolerable as long as he breathed through his mouth. The soldiers ignored him. The flies had a gala day.

He strolled around the hole and went across and took a look inside the tender. There was one body that he recognised at once, even though it was lying face-down. It was young and small, and the cords of the neck were undeveloped, like a boy's. That body was unmistakable. He climbed inside and turned it over.

Wrong face. Wrong body.

He walked back to camp, trailing a few diehard flies behind him.

*

When the old man shuffled out of the lodge to open the gates, Paxton got out and told the driver he would walk up to the house. The day was cooler, and trees cast long shadows over the grass. The car drove on. Now that the old man was closer he could see that Paxton's right sleeve was empty. He ducked his head and gave a shaky salute.
“Merci, m'sieur,”
Paxton said, seriously. They shook hands, Paxton using his left hand. The old man's skin was as smooth and hard as a Sam Browne.

He had dozed in the car and now he felt fresh if not strong. The grounds were empty and very quiet. A heron took off from the lake and steered away from him, wings beating slow, and lost itself behind the island.

Someone had seen him: a maid was waiting at the door. She led him upstairs and along a corridor he hadn't been along before. A door opened onto a balcony. The balcony overlooked the little ballroom. Ballet music was playing and down below Judy Kent Haffner, in a black leotard, was putting her elastic body through the same old astonishing routine.

“To drink?” the maid asked.

“Whisky-soda.”

Judy danced, a different maid changed the record, she danced again. The light had faded; she was a pattering shadow, a picture in a fairy story. Paxton drank his whiskysoda and gave himself up to the show. He had the odd and very pleasant sensation he always got when he came to this house: that everything was arranged, that there was no need to think or to decide about anything, and certainly no need to worry. Just relax and make the most of life. Everything would work out fine.

When the music and the dancing finally ended she stood in the middle of the floor, hands on hips. It was too dim to see her face; he could hear faint gasps for breath. She pointed up at him, so he pointed down at her. She walked to the door.

The same maid led him through unfamiliar parts of the house and indicated that he should wait in a long, handsome room. He guessed he must be on the top floor. There was a view of the last of the sunset that made the British bombardment look like children's fireworks. He relaxed and made the most of it.

“I could murder that composer,” she said. “He makes you do things God never meant you to do … Hell's bells, David, where've you
been?
Oh!” She saw the empty sleeve. “What a stupid question.” They kissed, awkwardly because of his sling.

“Hospital. I stopped a bullet.”

“But that's
terrible.”
She didn't look as if it was terrible. Her forehead creased and her voice stretched the word thin, but her mouth and eyes smiled happily. They might have been talking about a black eye from playing rugby. Paxton didn't mind; he didn't think it was so very terrible; in fact he didn't give it much thought at all. What he thought was she looked lovelier than ever. She was wearing Turkish-style pyjamas, deep red and silky. They didn't button at the front, they just hung loosely. Whenever she moved they swung apart slightly and then came together again. He noticed, and she noticed that he noticed, so she deliberately swayed to tease him. “I like to be cool,” she said. “Don't you?” He got a glimpse of something pink that might perhaps have been a nipple, and turned to look at the dying sunset. His heart was pounding at a rate that couldn't possibly be doing it any good, and his arm had started to throb. “I shouldn't be here, really,” he said. “If the MO knew about it he'd raise the roof.”

“I won't tell him, if you won't.” She linked their little fingers and took him into the next room. It was the biggest bedroom he had ever seen, with the biggest bed. “Tell me about your great big beautiful war.” They sat on the bed. “Mr. Kent Haffner is in Paris, polishing his little apples.” She kissed his ear, gently, and tickled it with her tongue. He stretched his neck and grinned at the sheer luxury of it all. “Are you an ace yet?” she asked.

“Nearly.”

“Tell me. I want to know all about your kills.”

“Well… there was the Aviatik we scrapped with … It was a lovely sunny morning, I remember, and the Hun looked so pretty, all purple and green, and we were miles high, so everything was blue sky…” Judy Kent Haffner was taking his tunic off, easing it away from the arm in a sling. “He dived on us and I waited until I couldn't miss and he simply blew up. Nothing left but a wisp of smoke.”

“That must have been such a thrill.” She was undoing his
tie, and he saw a flicker of envy in her smile. It made him feel stronger, more confident. He knew how to please her.

“The Halberstadt wasn't so easy. Two-seater, with a hell of a good gunner …” His tie was off and she kissed his forehead. “There were twenty-three bullet-holes in the bus when we landed, not counting the wings.” She was untying his shoes,
“Twenty-three!”
she said. “That's incredible.”

Paxton leaned back and rested on one elbow. He wasn't sure about the Halberstadt. Maybe that had been the Fokker. The kills got all mixed up in his mind. Who cared? It didn't matter. She unbuttoned his shirt and said, “Tell me again about the flamer. The one like a flower.”

“Oh, that…” The right side of the shirt had been slit so that it came away easily. “I think I got a fuel tank with an incendiary bullet. It was so sudden. One second the Hun was all there, the latest style in aeroplanes, the next second he'd turned into an enormous ball of flame, all red and yellow. Rather like a dahlia.”

“Dahlia.” She pushed him back on the bed and propped herself above him. Now the pyjamas swung open and stayed open. She kissed him generously on the mouth and his chest tensed at the startling touch of her breasts. “Dahlia,” she murmured.

“Yes, dahlia.” Paxton frowned. He realised he wasn't at all sure what a dahlia looked like.

“It must be so beautiful. So wonderful.” They stood up. She undid the top of his trousers but he said:”I can do this better.” His voice was flat and empty. He turned his back on her as he stepped out of his trousers. “To tell the truth,” he said,”it might have looked more like a geranium.” He turned. “What does a geranium look like?”

She had lost her pyjamas. “Not like
that,”
she said. “So who cares?”

They got into bed and, as she had done when they lay on the boulder on the island, she sat astride his legs. At first he was worried about hurting his arm, but the act of sex turned out to be astonishingly easy. She did most of it; he just lay back and helped. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. The end felt like the way the sunset had looked. He was sorry when it was over.

That feeling of sorrow gradually intensified. He closed his
eyes. She was humming to herself, contentedly, as she moved about the room, and he resented her contentment because a sense of dejection and regret was beginning to grip him. “You really are an ace,” she said. “You know that?” He said nothing. He wasn't an ace, and he took no pride in the stories he had told her. His kills were none of her damn business.

“How did you get shot?” she asked.

He levered himself up on the pillows. She was sitting at the bottom of the bed, still naked, brushing her hair. “Listen,” he said. “You don't want to hear about all that stuff.”

“Oh, but I do. Dahlias, geraniums, the lot.”

“Most of it's fairly …” For some reason he thought of O'Neill's face the day O'Neill had said to him
It only takes one bullet.
Grief sank its tiny claws. “It's a fairly bloody business.”

“I'm tough, I can take it. Want a sandwich?” There was a tray of food and a bottle of wine on a bedside table.

Paxton took a sandwich and bit into it. It tasted of nothing. He didn't want to eat her fucking food. He put it back. “This is the closest you ever get to war, I suppose,” he said.

She glanced at him sideways. “I'd get closer if I could.”

Paxton watched her doing things to her hair. He looked down and fiddled with bits of loose bandage poking out of the sling.

“Now what are you brooding about?” she said.

That angered him. “D'you really want to know? All right, I'll tell you.” Anger swelled, and he didn't try to hide it. “I'm brooding about a man called Foster. He shot himself. Duncan got his head cut off. Milne flew slap-bang into an enemy machine. Ogilvy got badly burnt. He might be dead, he might not. Is that enough for you?”

Silence, while she looked at herself in a hand mirror.

“It's no reason to sulk,” she said.

“You don't know what you're talking about.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reached out, grabbed the hand mirror from her and threw it across the room. The glass broke. “Here comes your bad luck. Go and look in my lefthand tunic pocket. There's a couple of photographs. Group photographs. You'll recognise one of the group.”

She got up and found the pictures and carried them to the light. “There's no group here,” she said. “What's the joke?”

“It's no joke. Look harder.”

She looked again, searching the prints. Paxton heard her grunt with shock.

“German crew,” he said. “Now you know what a flamer looks like after it's stopped flaming.”

She coughed, and swallowed repeatedly.

“No point in being sick in here,” he said. “Not when you've got two dozen bathrooms.”

“I'm not going to be sick.”

“Perhaps you should.” He went and took the pictures from her. “What else would you like to know? There's lots I can tell you. Mind you, I may be sick in the middle. I'm not as tough as you.”

She put on a dressing gown. “I think you'd better leave,” she said. Her face was full of disappointment and disapproval.

“Yes, I'll leave,” he said. “I wouldn't want to bleed on your patriotism.” He wasn't sure what that meant. The words just came out.