A Good Clean Fight (24 page)

They strafed again at midday, swooping through the hot and dusty haze on a different set of targets. And again at sunset, when they circled wide to the west, put themselves between the dazzle and the eyes of the German gunners, and then raced home.

Night fell at six-thirty prompt.

Supper was bully-beef stew with biscuits and tea.

“What d'you make of it so far?” Fido Doggart asked the American politely.

“Good place for a war,” Hooper said. “Nothing but sand and flies, and the flies seem to enjoy the company.”

“It's a funny thing,” Mick O'Hare said, “but I've been in the blue now man and beast for nigh on forty years come Shrove Tuesday, and I know every fly by name and by face, yet I've never seen a fly land on Butcher Bailey. Isn't that an odd thing?”

“Even flies draw the line somewhere,” Fanny said.

“Flies have got some respect,” Butcher told them. “They recognize Norman blood.”

Kit Carson had been about to eat some stew. Instead he aimed his spoon at Butcher. “You telling us your ancestors came over with William the Conqueror?”

“Don't point that thing at me,” Butcher said. “It might go off.”

“You should have seen the flies in France in '40,” the adjutant said. “Big as sparrowhawks.”

“This stuff went off last week,” Kit said, eating it.

“Polish air force was very aristocratic,” Sneezy announced. “My squadron commander, a genuine Polish count, brave as a lion. One day a pilot tries to land, forgets to lower his wheels, nasty prang. My squadron commander takes pilot behind hangar and shoots him. In the head. With a pistol.”

“That's not very nice,” Pinky Dalgleish observed.

“Did he get court-martialled?” Pip Patterson asked.

Sneezy was amused. “How could he? He was dead! Shot through the head! Besides, no time for court-martial. Germans invade.”

“Well, it's one way to fight a war, I suppose,” Barton said.

“Aristocrats got no time for peasants,” Sneezy said. “Pilot behaves like peasant, doesn't deserve to be pilot.”

“Remember that in future, you lot,” Fanny Barton said.

“You can't shoot me behind the hangar if I prang,” Fido Doggart said. “We haven't got a hangar.”

“Uncle: order a hangar,” Barton said. “A small portable hangar.”

“What we really need is a portable gramophone,” Kellaway said wistfully.

A vehicle arrived, headlights burned in the blackness, doors slammed. The doctor came in and dumped a couple of cardboard boxes. “Onions,” he said. He looked and sounded very tired. “I hope there's some grub left.” He found a space to sit at the table and looked around until he found Fanny Barton. “Schofield's dead,” he told him. “Dead and buried.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Barton said. The adjutant nodded and grunted a sort of confirmation. Nobody else spoke. This interested Hick Hooper. An American squadron would have reacted differently: somebody's fist would have slammed the table, heads would have swung toward the doctor, there would have been passionate remarks like
Jesus, can you believe it?
or
What a lousy deal
. But the RAF didn't go in for that sort of thing.

“I brought the new IO with me,” the doctor said. A cook put a plate of stew in front of him. “Old pal of yours. Skull Skelton.”

That startled Barton. “Tall bloke? Glasses, big forehead? Always disagreeing with everyone?” The doctor, spooning down stew, nodded. “Well, I'm buggered,” Barton said.

“Baggy Bletchley must have fixed it,” the adjutant said.

“Skull was Intelligence Officer when the squadron was in France,” Barton told the others. “And all through the Battle of Britain. Then he had a row with an air vice-marshal and got posted to the north of Scotland.”

“What was the row about?” Kit Carson asked. To him, arguing with an air vice-marshal was inconceivable.

“Something to do with putting extra-long-range drop tanks on the Spits,” Barton said, “so the kite flew a very very long way, but the trouble was it behaved like a constipated brick. Remember, Pip?”

Patterson shook his head at the memory. “You get jumped by a Focke-Wulf 190, there's no time to fart about with drop tanks,” he said.

“So the AVM turned out to be wrong,” Barton said. “But Skull had gone north by then. And several good pilots had gone west.”

A few minutes later Skull came in, carrying a portable gramophone and some records. He paused and sniffed appreciatively. “The aroma has something of the barnyard bouquet of a truly fine burgundy,” he said. “And is that Limburger cheese I detect?”

“My stars,” Kellaway said. “You're a squadron leader now.”

“That's desert feet you can smell,” Tiny Lush said.

Skull put the gramophone and records down. “They tell me you can't even get
The Times
delivered here,” he said to Barton. “They say this is the worst posting in all Africa.”

“Takoradi is far worse,” Barton said happily. “Anyone doesn't like it here can go to Takoradi.”

“Even the flies hate Takoradi,” Pip Patterson said. “Or so I'm told.”

“What have you got there, Skull?” Kellaway pointed to the gramophone records. “Bloody Beethoven, I expect.”

“No fear,” Skull said. “Lots of Al Bowlly singing ‘Empty Saddles in the Old Corral' and other classics. Wonderful stuff.” He picked up a record and carefully wiped it on his sleeve. “Al Bowlly is the English answer to Bing Crosby, you know,” he said.

“A crooner,” Kellaway said emptily. “Couldn't sing ‘Land of Hope and Glory' to save his life. Sorry I asked.”

*   *   *

Henry Lester took Ralph Malplacket to see an amiable major who was a press liaison officer at Middle East HQ.
“Nothing much on the books at present, I'm afraid,” the major said.

“My editor is convinced I'm goofing off,” Lester said. “He's been holding the front page so long, his arms ache.”

“War is never continuous. There are lulls. This is a lull.”

“Newspapers can't lull. Those that do, die.”

“Well, if it's death you want to cover I can steer you toward several excellent military hospitals. Or military cemeteries, come to that.”

Lester shrugged. He got up and drifted away to the window.

“It's all a matter of degree, isn't it?” Malplacket said. “We realize that it would, of course, be premature to expect a full-scale battle as such.” He twirled his Panama hat on the end of his forefinger. “For myself, any item of news would be welcome, provided it put fresh heart into the munitions workers of England as they toil in their factories. Not a swingeing defeat of the Hun, just a refreshing taste of success.” He twirled too hard and his hat spun off his finger.

Lester came and picked it up. “British Commandos use tommy-guns, don't they?” he asked the major. “Chicago
makes
tommy-guns. Now there's a hell of a good story just waiting to be written.”

“Think what it would do to the morale of our gallant American cousins,” Malplacket urged.

The major made a short telephone call.

“I can get you attached to a tank exercise,” he told them. “People like reading about tanks. All that dashing about the desert. Live ammunition, too.”

“It's not tommy-guns, though, is it?” Lester said.

“It might be. Some infantry will be training alongside the tanks. The odd tommy-gun might appear. You never know your luck.” The major was adjusting the things on his desk, squaring off the blotter, the files, the ink stand.

“So kind of you to chat with us.” Malplacket got his
hat back from Lester. “If, by chance, a Commando raid should materialize, you will bear us in mind, won't you?”

The major almost smiled. “Nobody tells me anything about Commando raids, and if they did I wouldn't believe them. If you're looking for a really good scrap, I recommend the Black Cat Club.”

“It's gone downhill lately,” Lester said. “I've seen more blood on the floor at the Chicago Chrysanthemum Show.”

“Best I can do,” the major said.

They went out and sat in a big Buick. Lester had borrowed it from Shapiro, who was in Syria looking for a story.

“I feel sluggish when there's no news,” Lester said. “I mean, news, that's what life is all about, right?”

“It's a point of view,” Malplacket said.

“The way things are now, it just depresses the hell out of me. I was in Spain in '37 and people from both sides were falling over themselves to give us their news. Most of it was crap, but at least they were
willing.
In China, for God's sake, they'd lay on a battle if you promised them ten bucks. Even in Berlin there was always news, provided you knew which stone to turn over. But here . . . It's like I'm not speaking the same language because I didn't go to the right school, or something.”

“Funny you should say that,” Malplacket said. “Yesterday I bumped into a chap called Craven, Sticky Craven, hadn't seen him since Eton. He couldn't spell to save his life and now he's an air vice-marshal! With a little squadron leader to carry his briefcase.”

“Did this Craven tell you any military secrets?”

“Um . . . No. I didn't actually ask him about the war. Forgot, I suppose. We talked about cricket, mainly.”

“Eton,” Lester said thoughtfully. “D'you reckon you might find a few more of your old school pals in high places, if you went around and looked?”

“Oh, dozens. Scores, probably.”

Lester started the car. He was beginning to feel slightly better. “Thank God for privilege,” he said. “Cheaper than corruption, and you meet a better class of person.”

*   *   *

Jakowski halted the column at noon so that the cooks could make a meal and the fitters could service the trucks. Both tasks proved impossible. The vehicles were too hot to touch and it was idiotic to light a fire in an atmosphere like the breath of a furnace. Jakowski settled for bread, dates and water. The column sat in the middle of the empty desert and fried. The men tried to sleep. The flies cruised from truck to truck, pausing only to refresh themselves with an occasional sip of sweat.

At midafternoon Jakowski reckoned that the heat had relaxed a fraction and he decided to move on. First, everyone was to get a third of a liter of water. That was when the leak was discovered. One of the water-tankers was half empty.

The news shocked him so much that for a few moments he felt ill: his chest hurt and he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. This feeling of illness came as a second shock. He did not want the sergeant who had reported the leak to suspect anything, so he squatted on his heels and traced meaningless symbols in the sand. His father had died of a heart attack a year ago. Maybe it ran in the family. He forced his lungs to do their job and he felt his heart thudding too fast, too hard; but at least it was thudding.

“Lead on,” he said. He smoothed out the symbols as if he had solved a piece of algebra, and stood up. “Captain Rinkart!” he shouted.

The sergeant showed them the hole, low down on the tanker. It was about the size of a thumbnail and it was
blocked by a metal plug. “Bullet,” the sergeant explained. “Ricochet, I expect, sir.”

“It's not leaking,” Major Jakowski said, and felt foolish because the remark sounded like a complaint. He thumped the side of the tanker with his fist.

“Beg pardon sir, but it only leaks when it moves. When the truck moves, that is, sir. That's how I spotted it. Driver brought it up here so we could issue the ration, I saw the dribble coming out. Truck stopped, dribble stopped.”

Jakowski straightened up. “I don't believe it,” he told Rinkart. “It's a conspiracy.” That was meant as a joke, but nobody smiled.

“Water is very heavy,” Rinkart said. “The truck hits a bump, it sloshes about, the tank distorts, the bullet doesn't fill the hole, we lose another mugful.”

“And nobody noticed.”

“It's the dust, sir,” the sergeant explained.

“Get it repaired,” Jakowski said. He walked away. “Five pfennigs-worth of ammunition fired by some scrofulous Arab,” he said. “Makes you sick, doesn't it?” He was beckoning to the other officers.

“We still have the other two water-tankers, Major,” said Rinkart.

“That's like saying we still have two-thirds of a chance of finding the enemy.” Jakowski waited until Captain Lessing and the two lieutenants joined him and told them what had happened. “Right, assume you're in command,” he said to Lessing. “Assume I trod on a mine like that poor bastard we just buried. What's your plan?” Inexplicably, he yawned.

“That depends on what your original orders were, sir. I mean, what is the object of the operation? Unless I know that—”

“Yes, sure, agreed. Our immediate object is to get through the Jalo Gap, into the wide open spaces where there are no hiding places and where we stand an excellent
chance of intercepting an incoming patrol of British raiders.”

“In that case, sir, I'd send the water-tanker to Jalo Oasis and get it repaired and refilled.”

“Which will take how long?”

“A day. Day and a half.”

Jakowski grunted. It was the right answer, but he still didn't like it. “I see,” he said. “Meanwhile this force sits on its fat backside, eats, drinks and plays cards for a day and a half.”

One of the lieutenants got in fast. “Not necessarily, sir. The force can move south and rendezvous with the water-tanker at a prearranged map reference.”

“Do it,” Jakowski told Lessing. “Did you find those Luftwaffe compasses? Good. Make sure every truck has one. Now let's get out of here, this place bores me.”

As he walked to the head of the column, men everywhere were moving and shouting, truck doors were slamming, motors roaring, black exhaust smoke gusting. The action made him feel better. As long as the column kept moving he felt strong and confident. When it stopped, things went wrong. Men died. Water got lost. The trick was to keep moving.