War Story (6 page)

Paxton refused to turn his head. “I hope you've washed your hands,” he said stiffly. “You never know where they've been.” He found himself looking at Goss, standing opposite. “New boys start at the bottom,” Goss said. “Push off, quick.”

The squadron commander was coming in, chatter was subsiding. Paxton moved. He was partly numb with embarrassment and partly twitching with rage. Someone stuck out a foot and he stumbled. Stifled laughter. When he reached his place at the foot of the table he gripped the chairback and squeezed it like a strangler while the padre said grace.

Only one man spoke to him during the meal. “See any good shows in London?”

“No,” Paxton said. “Pass the cheese.”

After dinner he went back to his billet. The sky was still light but he went to bed. At three o'clock he woke up. O'Neill was snoring. Paxton glared into the blackness for the best, or worst, part of an hour. He felt lonely and miserable, and he was not looking forward to tomorrow, except that it would put an end to O'Neill's snoring. He drifted into fantasies of putting an end to O'Neill, all of them brutal and bloody and hugely satisfying.

Fidler woke him at seven with a mug of tea. O'Neill's bed was empty.

“I forgot to tell you about the mess table, sir,” Fidler said. “You come in at the bottom and you work your way up. That's how it's done here, sir. Don't worry, it doesn't take very long. You'll be halfway up that table before you know it, sir.”

Paxton buried his nose in the mug and watched Fidler busying himself. He thought about moving up the mess table. Moving up quickly. “Why doesn't it take very long?” he asked.

“Some people get posted. Other gentlemen sort of … drop out, sir.”

Paxton thought about that. “And how long has Mr. O'Neill been here?”

Oh … two months, sir.”

Paxton finished his tea and went off to shave. Now that he knew that nothing was permanent he felt better. Perhaps even O'Neill might drop out soon. Anything was possible. That was the great thing about war. The sun was bright, he had a marvellous appetite for breakfast. He felt
much
better. Soon he would go up and pot a Hun. That would show them.

There were only four officers at breakfast, and O'Neill was not among them.

One man was in a dressing gown, the other three in shirt sleeves and tieless. Paxton, in tunic and tie, felt very dressed-up. They ignored him, each half-hidden behind a newspaper. He hesitated, wondering where to sit; then took a chance and sat opposite them. He recognised them from the previous night. The dressing-gowned man was a captain called Frank, the others were lieutenants known as Charlie, Spud and James.

The newspapers, he saw, were all yesterday's editions. While he had taken five days to reach Pepriac, the
Daily Mirror
and
Morning Post
made the journey in one.

Frank cleared his throat. “They keep going on about this chap
Russell”,
he said, sounding puzzled and aggrieved. “Awful lot of fuss … What d'you think, Charlie?”

“Russell,” Charlie said. None of them had so far looked up from his paper. “Do I know him?”

“Ought to. You were at Cambridge, weren't you?”

“Just one term. Then they found out I couldn't do any sums and my spelling was rotten.” He reached for some toast. “So I got the boot, B double-0 T. I can spell boot.”

“Well, they've gone and done it to this chap Russell. He's got the boot too.”

“Absolute bastards, they are,” Charlie muttered through his toast.

“Yes, but he's a don. They don't sack dons, do they?”

“Dunno. I can't spell don. Not before lunch, anyway.”

A mess servant placed a large bowl of porridge in front of Paxton. “Actually, I don't take porridge,” he said; but he was talking to himself. The servant had gone. There was silence for about ten seconds while Paxton wondered how best to get rid of the stuff; and then James looked over the top of his newspaper and said:”The CO's keen on everyone having porridge. It's not an order, but…”

“You get the boot if you don't,” Charlie said.

Paxton poured milk on the porridge and began eating. It tasted grey and slippery. “Every day?” he asked.

“D'you mean a bloke called Bertrand Russell?” Spud said. “He's in my paper too. Says he made a statement calculated to prejudice recruiting. Fined a hundred pounds.”

“Awful lot of fuss,” Charlie complained. His nose was broken, which gave his voice a nasal tone that emphasised his drawl. “Why don't they just shoot the bugger and be done with it?”

“No, no,” James said. He looked to be the youngest of the four: fair-haired, fresh of face, with a mouth as wide as a choirboy's. “You're going too far now. You can't fine him
and
shoot him. There is such a thing as British justice, you know.”

“You ought to become a barrister, James,” Frank said. “You'd make a red-hot barrister. You could handle all my divorces.”

“No fear.” James wrinkled his nose. “Rotten uniform. I prefer the Army.”

More silence, while Paxton worked his way through his gruel.

“What do these coves want, anyway?” Charlie said;”That's what I don't understand.”

“They want peace, old boy,” Spud said. “They want the war stopped, no more shooting, everyone goes home.”

“Bloody ridiculous,” Charlie grumbled. “Stop the war? We've only just got it properly organised. The man's barmy.”

There was a long pause, while Paxton soldiered on.

“I once made a statement calculated to prejudice recruiting,” Frank said,”but I'm damned if I can remember what it
was. All I know is when I said it the colonel turned white and told me he'd have me court-martialled for treason as soon as we'd captured whatever position it was we were supposed to be capturing. Ten minutes later he got blown to bits, so that was that.”

“He should have written it all down,” Charlie said. “If he'd written it down and given the order to the adjutant, you'd have been shot at dawn, Frank, and you wouldn't have liked that a little bit.”

“Charlie's right,” Spud said. “You're not really at your best first thing in the morning.”

“Well … it's such a bloody awful time of day. It's bad enough to shoot a chap. Why get him out of bed at dawn?”

“It's a gesture,” Spud said.

“Damn rude gesture.” Frank discarded his newspaper and stood up. “Good God,” he said. Paxton found them all gazing at him. “You don't have to eat it
all
, you know,” Frank said. “A couple of spoonfuls will do.”

Paxton put down his loaded spoon. He had almost emptied the bowl, training himself to swallow each mouthful without tasting it. Now a sickly aftertaste rose in his throat like vengeance.

“It's a gesture,” Spud said.

“Personally, I can't stand the muck,” Frank said. “I usually give one of the servants a shilling to eat mine for me. Maybe you haven't got a shilling.”

Paxton nodded to indicate that he had a shilling. He didn't trust himself to open his mouth.

Spud said: “Actually sixpence would probably be enough. Private Collins here quite likes porridge, don't you, Collins?”

“No, sir.” Collins replaced Paxton's bowl with a plate of bacon and eggs.

“Too late now, Collins,” Frank said. “You should have spoken up earlier. Dexter's gone and eaten it.”

“Paxton,” muttered Paxton.

“Look here, you chaps.” Frank moved behind James's chair and put his hands on his shoulders. “If we're to do some shopping
and
have a swim before lunch …” He squeezed until James squirmed.

“Hey, that
hurt,”
James said, still reading his paper.

“Shows what a puny weed you are.”

“Are you coming, Spud?” Charlie asked.

“No, dammit, I can't, I've got to…” He stopped suddenly and stared at nothing in particular. “On the other hand, I don't see why not,” he said, and turned and smiled at Paxton. “The CO asked me to tell you that you're Orderly Officer today. There's nothing to it, really; you just stroll around with this armband on and look intelligent…” He tossed Paxton the armband. “Sign here, if you don't mind.” He held out a clipboard and gave Paxton a pen. “This gives you authority over the entire camp.” Paxton signed, and returned the pen. “What if—” he began.

“Ask Corporal Lacey, in the Orderly Room,” Spud said. “Lacey knows all.”

“Come on, you two,” called Frank from the door.

‘You're very lucky,” Charlie told Paxton. “The old man must like you. I didn't get to be orderly dog for months, but then I'm not very bright.”

They left. Paxton looked at his armband and his clipboard and finally at his pair of fried eggs, until he realised that they were looking at him. He pushed the plate away.

By eight the sun had burned off all the ground mist. The fields behind the British Front Line were a brilliant green. Tim Piggott, a mile high, located the spot where he knew the British battery was firing. A tiny cluster of miniature flames came and went. Piggott said: “Bang, one elephant, two elephants, three elephants, four elephants, five elephants, crash.” Exactly on
crash
, a cluster of little brown flowers bloomed behind the German lines, and slowly collapsed. “Missed again,” he said. “You're hopeless.”

Binns, who was Piggott's observer, banged his fist on the right of the nacelle. Piggott immediately banked the FE to the right. Then he searched where Binns was pointing and found the Pfalz, blurred in the dazzle of the sun. It had reversed direction and was trying yet again to sneak around behind the FE. “Thank you, Boy,” he said. He knew Binns couldn't hear him against the rush of wind and roar of engine, but Piggott liked to talk when he was on patrol.

He straightened out when he had put the FE between the
Pfalz and a BE2c two thousand feet beneath them. It was the BE2c that the Pfalz was after. Piggott's job was to guard it and let it get on with its work of artillery observation.

The morning was almost cloudless, with just a milkskim at enormous height, and the FE gave Piggott a magnificent view, like a box at the opera. But he had been trundling around this bit of sky for ninety minutes and he was ready to go home for breakfast. The Pfalz was a monoplane with a fuselage like a long, thin coffin and a cockpit slap in the middle of the wing so the pilot had to tip the machine on its side to look below him. This pilot had done a great deal of tipping and looking but only once in an hour had he dived at the BE2c, and he had pulled out of the dive after a couple of hundred feet when he saw that the FE would meet him first. He was a cautious, thoughtful Hun, and Piggott was bored with him. “You want this Quirk on a plate, don't you?” he said. “Not today, I'm afraid. Come down and fight me for him.”

BE2cs were slow and steady and they could be depended upon to stay in the air for two and a half hours or until they were shot up by enemy scouts or shot down by archie, whichever came sooner. When he joined the Corps, Piggott had flown a Quirk twice a day for a month. It was the Loos offensive, a bad, busy time when the generals demanded lots of artillery observation and photographic reconnaissance. Piggott soon came to hate the first and loathe the second.

Spotting for the guns meant hanging about in the same piece of sky, making random changes in height and direction to baffle the archie, you hoped. But the changes mustn't be too violent or your Morse transmissions suffered. Taking photographs, on the other hand, meant flying absolutely dead straight and level and hoping the Hun gunners couldn't believe their luck and therefore aimed somewhere else. In his four weeks with the squadron they lost sixteen BE2cs and their crews. Piggott was saved by a sliver of anti-aircraft shell. It chopped off the little finger of his left hand. When he left hospital he was posted to Hornet Squadron.

The Pfalz turned again, and again Piggott turned with it. “No imagination!” he said. “Try something different.” He searched the sky, slowly and thoroughly: nothing. He looked
down just as a string of dense black blots created themselves a hundred yards to the right of the BE2c and immediately began to spread and fade. “Pathetic!” he said. “This could go on all day. I'm hungry.”

He considered climbing up to the Pfalz and making it fight or run away. Not a good idea. It could outclimb him, and the FE didn't get better as it went higher. Besides, his job was to guard the BE2c, which (he saw) had just made the archie look silly again. Say ten shells a minute: that was nine hundred shells the enemy had wasted, not to mention the peril to their own men from the clatter of descending shrapnel on their heads. “Yah, yah!” Piggott chanted. “Can't catch me!” And at that precise instant, seemingly in retaliation for the taunt, black shellbursts straddled the BE2c and flung its nose up as if it had walked into a punch.

Piggott stopped breathing until he saw the plane straighten out. He felt painfully ashamed. It wasn't his fault; it was luck, or clever anticipation by the German battery commander; nevertheless his throat felt sick with a surge of self-disgust.

There was no way he could help but he had to do something so he shoved the stick forward and went down. The BE2c was a mess, but at least it was right-side up and the British lines were near. Something was falling, catching the light as it spun. It couldn't be a parachute. No parachutes in the RFC, except for balloonists. It looked like half a wing.
Christ
Piggott thought,
if they've lost half a wing, have they got any controh left?
The BE2c was tipping into a gentle sideslip. It had no power. The propeller had stopped. Something else fell off and fluttered behind it. All the time, archie was staining the sky with blots, like someone flicking a loaded pen. One blot touched the BE2c and the story was over.