A Good Clean Fight (23 page)

“I had crabs once,” Bruno said. “They had jaws like sharks.”

Caius said suddenly: “I had a shark once. It had jaws like . . . like . . .” He couldn't think of a good ending. “Like nutcrackers,” he ended. The others laughed. “Any Arab gets a grip of you, kid,” Oskar said, “he'll crack your nuts and eat the meat too.”

Major Jakowski tried not to show his impatience. It was common sense to halt the column on the southern side of the Tariq until all the vehicles had crossed. Forty vehicles couldn't be rushed, not with that hole in the middle deepening with the whomp of every wheel. He wanted to get on fast, but he didn't want his men to think he was the sort of commander that always nagged and moaned, never
smiled or joked. He walked over to the two captains, adjusting his walk to a saunter. They were looking at the sky.

“It's not going to rain,” Jakowski said lightly.

“We were wondering whether we ought to disperse the vehicles, sir,” Rinkart said. He was dark, almost swarthy, with a stocky build. As far as Jakowski could tell, thick black hair grew all over him. All the same, Rinkart had a sharp brain and he was good in battle: Jakowski had taken the trouble to check his records. “Whoever he is, he's seen us,” Rinkart said. “He's been circling for five minutes.”

“Where?” Jakowski could see nothing. Rinkart pointed at the speck in the blazing blue. Jakowski searched and still saw nothing, but he didn't admit it. “If he's Luftwaffe, they already know we're here,” he said, wiping his eyes. “And the RAF wouldn't send one plane this far.”

“They might if it's a Beaufighter,” Lessing said. He didn't look like a soldier: too tall, too slim, his voice slipped too easily into a drawl and he had an actorish way of standing, all the weight on one leg and the hand propped high on his waist. Yet he too had a fine combat record. “If that's a photo-reconnaissance Beaufighter, Cairo will know all about us in a couple of hours.”

“We shan't be here in a couple of hours,” Jakowski said. “Further south it's like an autobahn three hundred kilometers wide.”

Another truck came roaring and bucking through the gap.

“I'd be happier if we weren't all bunched-up like this,” Rinkart said.

“No point in dispersing now,” Jakowski said. The last truck was making its approach.

“You're lucky, you are,” Bruno said. “The Arab men won't harm you. Not you.”

“Why?” Caius asked.

“Because their women will want you.”

“Blond,” Oskar explained. “Highly prized by Arab women, a tasty young white blond boy.”

“Lucky me,” Caius said. He wished they would stop.

“If you call having to perform twelve times a day being lucky,” Oskar said.

“Seven days a week,” Bruno added.

“That's what they want from you,” Oskar said. “All day long. Dawn to dusk. If you can't deliver the goods, they get nasty.”

“You've insulted them, you see,” Bruno said. “Out come the knives. Off come your sweetbreads.”

The truck swayed as it put on speed. It lurched and bounced so hard that all its load rose up and crashed down. “Jesus Christ!” Oskar said. He had spilled the dates. At once there was a second crash, more muffled than the first, and Caius fell forward so that his face was in Bruno's lap. Bruno shoved him upright and he fell again, sideways. One boot struck Oskar on the knee. He began to curse, but stopped when he saw Caius's hands. They were trembling vigorously, as if trying to shake off something wet and distasteful. After twenty seconds they stopped and lay still.

The doctor's examination was brief.

“First, he's dead,” he told Jakowski. “Second, the only damage I can find is a small hole in the back of the skull. No exit wound, so it almost certainly wasn't a bullet.”

“Dig a grave,” Jakowski told Captain Lessing. Lessing, standing with his arms crossed, aimed a finger at a small rise. Men were already digging there. “Ah,” Jakowski said. “Good.”

Captain Rinkart joined them. “Several men heard an explosion. One says he saw a little spurt of flame near the truck as it hit that damn hole. So it looks like a thermos bomb went off.”

Jakowski said: “I thought those bloody things were safe unless you tampered with them.”

“That's the theory,” Lessing said.

“If it was lying near the crossing,” Rinkart said, “we've been tampering with it. Every time a truck hit that hole the vibration gave it a good hard shake.”

Jakowski sat on his heels and looked at the calm young face. “His war didn't last long, did it?” he said.

“It's only a skull,” the doctor said. “A man's skull is quite thin. It won't keep out fragments of shrapnel traveling at high velocity.”

“An act of God,” Jakowski said.

One of the lieutenants took charge of the burial party. He read out the short funeral service from his field service manual and when he came to the dead man's name he mispronounced it. Bruno and Oskar looked at each other. Typical. Buried the wrong man.

“Put plenty of rocks on him,” Lessing advised. “The vermin in these parts are very persistent.”

Ten minutes later the column began to move south. Oskar saw some dates lying on the floor of the truck and he kicked them over the tail-gate. Let the vermin enjoy them instead.

*   *   *

“Cleopatra had the right idea,” Elizabeth Challis said in her high, clear, expensive voice. “One has only one true love in one's life. When that love dies, one's reason for living goes.” She trailed her fingers in the Nile.

The other hand held her glass. Jack Lampard, sitting opposite, put an inch of wine into it, and said: “But think what a tragedy that would be for us poor men. Without beauty such as yours to worship, we might as well all go back to the desert and simply kill each other.”

They were in a felucca, at night, sailing past Zamalek Island, where the Gezira Club's lights blazed. Somebody's band was playing a foxtrot, “Dinah.” The music rose and fell with the breeze.

“I'm sorry,” Lampard said. “I shouldn't have said that. Incredibly crass of me, in the circumstances.”

“Tais toi
,” Elizabeth Challis said. “I'm not a porcelain doll, you know.”

“Gerald was frightfully brave at the end.” Lampard ate a few strawberries and drank some wine. “Of course I wasn't with him, I was nearby, still fighting off the fearful foe, but they told me he spoke of you.”

She turned her splendid head on its splendid neck, straight off the cover of
The Tatler
, and looked at him.
My stars
, Lampard thought.
The face that sold a thousand tubs of Pond's skin-cream.

“They say he said he didn't want you to mourn his passing,” Lampard said. He tried to see the look in her eyes, but the little lantern in the boat cast too many shadows. “I mean, not excessively.”

“Dear Gerald.”

“He was never a man to think first of himself.”

“He made the supreme sacrifice.” She sipped a little wine and uttered soft, appreciative noises with her lips. “What a frightfully good year this Chablis was.”

Lampard raised his glass. “To absent friends.”

“Yes.” She sighed, and he observed her silk dress slip sleekly across her breasts. “Yes. Isn't it dreadful? There are moments when I can't remember what he looked like. His face is just a blur.”

“Perfectly normal reaction, my dear.”

“Actually, Gerald was a brandy-and-soda man. He could be frightfully stuffy in some ways. I mean, this wine would have been wasted on him. Utterly wasted.”

“Mustn't let it get warm, must we?” Lampard refilled their glasses.

He put both hands on her waist when he helped her ashore, and he tipped the boatman quite generously. They took a horse-drawn gharri back to her house in the Garden City. He liked riding in a gharri. Its ironclad wheels made
a splendid clatter. If it had to stop in traffic, the driver could be relied upon to use his whip on any hawkers or beggars who tried to bother them. Lampard gave him a good tip, too. She noticed. “You spoil them,” she said.

“You spoil me,” he said. She had taken his arm for the walk to the front door. She gave him the key. Opening doors was a man's job.

They danced to a stock of records that dropped, one by one, from the arms of her modern American record-player: “Blue Room,” “We'll Meet Again,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Stardust,” “A Foggy Day in London Town.” She hugged him and asked: “What makes your uniform crackle like that?”

“Light starch,” he said. “Or perhaps static electricity.”

That amused her. “Might one be scorched by you?” she asked.

“You are in terrible peril,” he said gently. “Strike the slightest spark and there will be a colossal explosion.”

The record ended. “Stay,” she said, and went out. She came back dressed in silk pajamas and carrying another pair. “These were too big for Gerald,” she said, “but they should fit you.”

Lampard left the house at dawn.
Played two, won two
, he thought.

*   *   *

Strafing continued all next day.

The ground crews had worked throughout the night and Hornet Squadron was fully operational again. Barton had the pilots awoken at four-thirty a.m. Briefing was to be at five, takeoff as soon as possible afterward. The night was still very black at four-thirty. Black and cold. Hick Hooper forced himself out of bed and was immediately shivering. He pulled his uniform over his pajamas and walked around the tent, stamping and slapping to get his body going, and
he tripped over a guy-rope. “Holy Moses,” he said. The tent swayed.

“You're allowed to swear,” Tiny Lush told him. He was giving his chest a good two-handed scratch.

“My own fault,” Hooper mumbled.

“So what? Never sit on your emotions. Gives you terrible piles. Well-known scientific fact.” Lush put on a sweater and pulled a knitted stocking-cap over his ears and headed for the mess. Hooper followed. The sky was thick with icy stars.

By then the two flight commanders had already met Barton in his trailer.

“We'll hit Fritz before he's had time to put his teeth in,” he told them. “And we'll bash the Eye-ties while they're still looking for their hernia belts.” He was clapping his hands, not for warmth but to release his exuberance.

“You're bloody chirpy,” Patterson said, “sir.”

“Dawn is a bloody chirpy time,” Barton said. “If you're a bird, that is.” He spread his arms wide and flapped his hands. “Think of the worms. Wrapped in their blankets. Waiting to be strafed.” He smacked his lips.

“Yesterday, sir, you said breakfast was the best time,” Dalgleish said.

“No, no. Dawn.
Daaaaawn
.” Barton turned it into a long, theatrical groan. “Worst time of day. Everyone feels rotten. Mouth like an Arab's armpit. Then, before you can properly wake up, some bastard
Englander
comes along and blows half your head off.” At times like this, Barton had a cheerful, boyish face. He raised his eyebrows and turned down the corners of his mouth. “Be fair,” he said. “You wouldn't like it.”

“Dawn.” Dalgleish looked at his watch. “We'd better get cracking.”

“Hit 'em low,” Barton said. “Below the belt.”

“I'm not flying a hundred and fifty miles at night at zero feet,” Patterson declared. “I had enough of that insanity over the English Channel.”

“Suit yourself,” Barton told him. He gave them each a list of targets. “Just get over there and make bloody nuisances of yourselves.”

As they were leaving, Patterson stopped. He was reading his list. “This can't be right, Fanny,” he said. “We hit these yesterday.”

“You're surprised?” Barton twitched with pleasure. “Good. That means they'll be astonished.”

The mess tent was filling up with yawning pilots. Pip got his mug of tea and sat next to Dalgleish. “Hell of a gamble, isn't it?” he said.

“Maybe. Tell you at breakfast.”

“I might not get back for breakfast.”

“Then you'll know the answer, won't you?”

“That's a great comfort.” Pip drank. “Shit,” he said. “There's sand in this tea.”

“You're a lucky lad,” Pinky told him. “Usually you get tea in your sand.” He went off to brief his Flight.

The squadron took off in pairs as soon as the first gray tinge in the east gave a hint of the horizon. It was full daylight when they came back and landed, engines crackling and snapping as the power came off and the wheels touched and set off instant streamers of dust. All twelve Tomahawks came back. Only one pair had met a defense that was obviously hotter and stronger than the day before, and that was Barton and Stewart, so everyone felt good. “You wanted me to tell you something,” Pinky Dalgleish said to Patterson. They were standing in line for fried tinned bacon and tinned tomatoes. “Can't remember what. Can you?”

“Who killed Cock Robin?” Patterson was feeling marvelous. He and Kit Carson had found some trucks that blew up with a gratifying shower of pyrotechnics and they had chased a bunch of infantry like panicking sheep. “How many beans make five? Did your mother come from Ireland? Who were you with last night, out in the pale
moonlight?” He was ravenous. The aroma of fried bacon made him salivate.

“I remember now,” Pinky said. “Something about a hell of a gamble.”

“Everything's a gamble,” Pip said. “Why worry?”

“I'm not worried, Pip. If you go for a Burton today, can I have your bacon tomorrow?”

“Not a funny joke.”

“Who said it was a joke?”

Fanny Barton's second-guessing of the enemy's mind gave the squadron a good day. The dawn attacks, with pairs of Tomahawks arriving at high speed from the eye of the sun, achieved surprise everywhere except at Barton's own target. “Flak as thick as pig shit!” he told Kellaway, who was acting Intelligence Officer. “Billy would have got out and walked on it, but he didn't like getting his boots dirty. Did you, Billy-boy?” Stewart smiled and nodded. The flak had been terrifying, a sudden storm of hate that flooded the sky, but they had bashed through it all and survived. Billy Stewart had total faith in his CO. Where Fanny went, Billy followed. Their fighters were ripped and slashed by shrapnel, but so what? The Tomahawk was a tough old kite, the troops would slap on some patches. And look at Fanny, pleased as sixpence. Billy smiled. Kellaway smiled. He liked a happy squadron.