A Splendid Little War (45 page)

Wragge punched him. Lacey saw it coming and swayed. The blow skidded off the side of his head. Brazier was between them at once. “Out, out, out!” he roared. Lacey ran.

Wragge sucked his knuckles. “Sorry about that, Uncle,” he said.

“I'm not. Lacey needs to be struck often and hard. Like insolent children.”

“Blame it on the war. It's not panning out the way we all thought, is it? If we carry on like this, the whole squadron will be wiped out before we get anywhere near Moscow. I need a drink. What's wrong with us, Uncle? What's wrong with me? I've lost six men in four days. Three today. Griffin led the squadron all through the Tsaritsyn show and lost no-one.”

Brazier opened a desk drawer and took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses: essential equipment for any adjutant. He poured, they clinked glasses and drank. “Griffin killed himself,” he said. “He didn't do it for the good of the squadron. Or maybe he did it to teach you a lesson.”

Wragge thought about that. “Nobody liked him, but so what? Not the C.O.'s job to be liked.”

Brazier settled his meaty backside in Lacey's chair. “He told me he was disappointed in you. All of you. He said Russia wasn't like France. He felt badly let down.”

Wragge tried to work that out. “He blamed
us
because Russia isn't like France? That's cuckoo.”

“Well, all pilots are slightly cuckoo. You wouldn't fly if you were completely sane. He said he'd lived the life of Reilly in France. Every day in the air, getting paid to fly top-notch fighters and chase Huns. Marvellous. Time of his life.”

“Griffin told you all this? Extraordinary. Not his style. Was he blotto?”

“Slightly drunk. We were at that big Russian banquet and the vodka made him open his soul. Said he didn't believe in God until the Royal Flying Corps showed him the heavens, but the war ended and dumped him in the mud. Said he felt worthless. Worse than worthless.”

“That's ridiculous. You can't be worse than worthless. It's like …” Wragge was struggling. “Forget it. Anyway, they gave him another squadron. The Camel's a decent enough bus. What's he got to complain about?”

“Russia's not France.”

Wragge booted the waste-paper basket and scattered Lacey's rubbish. “I think I'm beginning to understand that, Uncle. It's not Mexico, either. Or Portugal. Nobody promised the silly bastard it would be France. Why blame us?”

Brazier spread his arms in defeat. “Maybe every C.O. needs somebody to blame.”

“Too deep for me. And I don't give a toss why Griffin picked a fight with all those Bolos. Who cares, anyway? I want to see the chief mechanic. Anderson. Peterson.”

“Patterson. Very good man. I'll get him.”

“Now.”

Patterson arrived, very grimy. He was twice Wragge's age and his grey hair was stained with oil. Wragge told him to take a seat, offered him a whisky which he readily accepted, and asked him for a frank account of the condition of the aeroplanes.

Patterson gave it to him: engines, guns, gauges, pumps, airframes, control wires, wing structures, struts, rudder units, wheels, fabric. He didn't waste any words – he was from Glasgow and he knew that you had to keep it simple when you talked to the English – but it took him ten minutes. The whisky was a lubricant. Brazier topped it up.

“It comes down to this,” Wragge said. “If it were up to you, they would all be scrapped.”

Patterson had been in the Service too long to be tricked into saying that. “Complete overhaul, sir. Everything stripped and tested. Everything.”

“Do it, Patterson. And thank you.”

Patterson finished his whisky, every last drop stripped and tested, and left.

“All operations are cancelled for a week,” Wragge told Brazier. “This isn't France. The bloody silly war can wait.”

“I hope your decision has nothing to do with what I said about Griffin.”

“Certainly not. Griffin was crackers. I may be batty but I'm not crackers. Big difference. That was the first thing they taught me at Eton.”

Sergeant Stevens had taken the Chevrolet ambulance to the crash sites and shovelled as much as he could find into canvas sacks. He was always guessing. Was that half a shinbone or a bit of broken strut? Never mind, shovel it in. Extra weight would be useful. He worked fast at Dextry's wreck. The Red armoured trains had gone but they might come back.

So there were three coffins and nobody had any illusions about what might be in them. Some of it could be Prod Pedlow and some of it Joe Duncan, but which was in whose coffin would never be known, just as half of Rex Dextry's remains could easily be those of the Bolo pilot he crashed into.

Oliphant went to the C.O. “No speeches. No Lacey. No heroics. And no God stuff,” he said. “That's what my bomber boys want. A few words from me about Pedlow and Duncan will do, and you should say something about Dextry, and then the coffins go down. Rifles, bugle. Dismiss.”

“Alright. Actually, I think we're all getting a bit sick of Lacey's poetry.”

“Tumult in the clouds,” Oliphant said, and they both laughed. “In the clouds is where we go to get away from the damn tumult. Lacey's a penguin. He calls himself a pilot officer but he flies a desk.”

The service lasted ten minutes. The rifle volley was crisp and the bugler did not sound any false notes. They were getting better with practice.

The ground crews worked. The air crews had a holiday.

Lacey paid everyone, which made them feel better, and he took the Chevrolet to go shopping in Orel. Borodin drove. The doctor and Jessop came along for the ride.

The car bumped across fields which were now empty of the White armies. Denikin was advancing again, northwards, ever northwards, to Tula, to Moscow. As the car drove into Orel, the doctor said, “Everything is untouched. Pleasant surprise.”

“Maybe the Bolos just did a bunk,” Jessop said.

“They could have smashed it up. Like Kursk.”

“Perhaps the Bolsheviks expect to recapture it,” Borodin said. “Or perhaps they laid the dynamite but nobody could find the matches.”

He parked the car and they strolled the streets. In fifteen minutes they had seen the sights, which were a railway station, two onion domes and the town hall, which was shut. Borodin translated the sign hanging on the door:
Open tomorrow
. “They never change it because it's always true,” he said. There were no unburied corpses in the street and nobody begged them for food; equally, nobody smiled.

Lacey found what he was looking for: an open-air market. Not big but better than nothing. He left the others and went to see what he could buy.

Borodin stood and sniffed the air. “Follow me,” he said, and quickly tracked down a house with no sign but an open front door. “This is either the Café Royale of Orel,” he said, “or someone has thrown his breakfast on the fire.”

It was a large room, very dark, with half a dozen tables and a bar. Tiny shells crunched under their feet. “Sunflower seeds,” Borodin said. “Everyone chews them.” The aroma of fried onions fought with the stale smell of tobacco smoke.

“It's not the Café Royale,” Jessop said. “You get white tablecloths at the Café Royale.” A woman appeared. “This must be the
chanteuse
,” he said. “Past her prime, I'm afraid.”

Borodin had a brief conversation.

“It's a bar,” he told them. “There are no restaurants in Orel. People eat at home. Mainly she sells vodka. As a favour to us, she can make omelettes.”

“Omelettes are good,” the doctor said. “Ask her if we may eat outside, where the stench is tolerable.”

They carried out a table and two benches. The woman brought chipped glass tumblers and a jug of red wine.

“She speaks highly of the wine,” Borodin said. “She trod the grapes with her own bare feet.”

The doctor took a sip. “That was last week,” she said. “The bacteria are dead by now.” She poured, and they drank to each other's health.

“I was hoping to find a gentleman's outfitters,” Jessop said. “My underwear is in absolute tatters.”

“I don't think they have that sort of shop here,” Borodin said.

“Then where do they buy their underwear?”

“I rather think they don't. Some member of the family knits it. In winter they sew themselves into a complete set, head to foot, and coat it with bear fat. They wear it until spring. The Russian winter can be brutal.”

“I can't imagine you coated in bear fat,” Susan Perry said.

“Heavens, no. I speak of peasants. My English nanny took care of my underwear. Silk, usually … Hullo, what can we do for you?”

A man had stopped at their table. Everything about him was ruined. His hair was tangled, his face was bruised and blackened by dried blood, his clothes were torn and stained. His army tunic lacked sleeves and his breeches had split at the seams. He had no shoes. He was trembling. His left arm hung at his side. In his right hand he held a pistol. He made a hoarse and angry statement.

“He wants our money, or he will shoot us,” Borodin said. “He was wounded fighting the Reds and now nobody cares, he hasn't eaten in a week, he says give him money or he fires.” He said a few words in Russian and got a grunt for an answer.

Jessop was suddenly furious. “Listen, you squalid little peasant. I've had enough of you ungrateful Russians.” Jessop's forefinger had been pounding the table. Now he thrust it at the robber. “We came ten thousand miles to risk our lives day in day out so you can live a decent civilized life and Russian rotters like you think you can wave a gun and
get what you want. This table isn't Russia, my friend. This is part of Britain. Put your stupid gun away and clear off.”

The flood of words made the robber gape. Borodin translated, very briefly.

“I said a damn sight more than that,” Jessop said.

“I told him you thought he was an utter cad.”

The robber mumbled something, and waved his pistol.

“You have insulted him,” Borodin said, “and he will shoot you first.”

“I don't like the way his hand is twitching,” Susan Perry said. At that point the cook appeared with three plates of hot omelettes. The robber salivated so much that he dribbled down his chin. “Tell him to sit down and eat,” she said. Borodin did. The man sat and ate and drank from her glass. His left arm hung uselessly and he ate with his right hand, which meant he had to put down the pistol. Jessop's hand sneaked across the table and stole it. His caution was wasted. The man had no time for anything but food. The cook watched with interest. Even in vodka dens like hers, customers rarely waved pistols. “More omelettes,” Borodin told her. “More wine.” She went. As the man finished one omelette, Jessop slid another in front of him.

“He has a very bad abscess on his left arm,” the doctor said. “Unless it's treated the whole arm could become infected, possibly gangrenous. He must come with us so I can treat it.”

Borodin translated, and the man cried, although he did not stop eating and drinking. “I think that means he agrees,” Borodin said.

Ten minutes later, Lacey arrived. “They didn't have what I wanted, but I drew pictures and they're getting it for me, later today. What's wrong with him?” The man was asleep with his head on an empty plate.

“He held us up.” Jessop waved the pistol. “But I read the riot act to him and he realized the folly of his ways.”

“He was starving,” Susan Perry said. “We filled him up with omelettes and he conked out. He's a wounded veteran.”

“Probably a deserter,” Borodin said. “Who can blame him? Badly armed, badly led, badly fed. But deep down he's got a heart of gold.”

“He'll need a jolly good scrub before you can find it,” Lacey said.

They drove the man back to the trains. Chef made a platter of sandwiches and he wolfed them while she washed his arm and examined the abscess, swollen red and hard, blue in the centre, where the skin was so thin that she could see the yellow pus beneath, clearly ready to rupture;
so she opened it and let the pus escape. This was painful but he didn't flinch. The sandwiches took his full attention. She finished the treatment, covered the injury with lint soaked in boric-acid solution, bandaged the arm, and told him, through Borodin, to keep the bandages on for a week.

Borodin gave him back the pistol – Jessop said it was broken anyway and wouldn't fire – and he drove the patient and Lacey back to Orel. “It was a lot of needless fuss,” he told Lacey. “He waved his gun, and I said we'd give him fifty roubles if he'd stop being a nuisance, and he was happy with that. But Jessop had a fit of indignation and nearly picked a fight.”

“Pilots,” Lacey said. “Excitable folk. Not you, Count.”

“No, of course. I have your famous British stiff upper lip. I keep it in an old cigar box.”