Hornet’s Sting (14 page)

The second time they got it right. Briskly they sang:

“We're four plucky maidens
All out on the spree!
We've got the keyhole
If you've got the key!
Now Major Cleve-Cutler, don't make us be subtler,
Can Hornets please come out and play?
We're four plucky maidens
All out on the spree!
We've got the keyhole
If you've got the key!”

It brought a storm of applause. They performed a high-stepping dance routine that was clearly under-rehearsed. One dancer turned right when the others turned left, and had his legs kicked from under him. This was very popular. He was trampled as the remaining three doggedly finished their routine, and he crawled off while they took several bows.

“What you might call the offensive spirit,” Cleve-Cutler said.

“Catchy tune,” Trenchard said.

A corporal from the orderly room came on and did card tricks. Then Count Andrei sang a Russian ballad. It lasted too long and got only polite applause.

“Not a catchy tune,” Trenchard said.

Ogilvy appeared and announced, “At huge expense, we now bring you an unforgettable dramatic performance. The padre will recite that unrivalled masterpiece, ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God'.”

The padre was in tropical kit. His shorts had been lightly starched so that they stood out like wings. He wore a pith helmet, a cummerbund and a clerical collar. He got a standing ovation. He waited for absolute silence.

“The Green Eye,” he declaimed, “of the Little Yellow God.” He struck a pose: right arm raised, fingers extended.

“There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu;
There's a little marble cross below the town;
And a brokenhearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew ...”

Sudden hubbub at the back of the hall stopped him dead. All heads turned. Simms and McWatters strode to the front, talking loudly. Simms wore his flying helmet and flying boots. McWatters wore a false nose, plum-red, and a false moustache, grey turning white. “I say, I say!” McWatters brayed as they stamped onto the stage. “Twenty years on – and look! Nothing's changed. God, what memories!”

“Do you mind?” the padre said. “I'm trying to —”

Simms ignored him. “This was your squadron?” he asked.

“Dear old Hornet!” McWatters brayed. “1917, I was here, you know. Of course, the war hadn't got into its stride then.”

“No?”

“1924, that was when things got serious. Then came ‘28 and ‘31, cracking good years, they were. Especially ‘31. Nineteenth Battle of the Somme. What a spiffing show!” By now the laughs were coming thick and fast.

“There's a one-eyed yellow idol —”

“Be a good chap,” Simms told the padre. “Put it in the mess suggestions book.”

“And here we are in 1937,” McWatters said. “D'you know ... we on the staff reckon we're really beginning to get the hang of the war.” Ironic cheers greeted this.

Simms asked, “You think we'll soon have the Hun on the run?”

“By 1941. Well ... let's say, 1943 at the very latest.”

“He was known as ‘Mad' Carew by the subs at Khatmandu . . . He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell,”
the padre said in a rush.

“Hot?” McWatters exclaimed. “I remember a dogfight in 1917. There I was, outnumbered fifty to one.”

“Good Lord,” Simms said. “What did you do?”

“The only thing I could. I roared defiance!” McWatters let out a long, hoarse bellow:
“Aaaaarrrr!”
He flexed his knees and shook his head. “I don't mind telling you, I fouled my breeches.”

“Not surprising, sir. Fifty to one against you.”

“No, no. Not
then
. Just now. When I went
Aaaaarrrrl
Damn ...” More knee-flexing. “Done it again.”

Huge laughter. The padre waited for his chance.

“There's a one-eyed yellow idol— ”

“Tradition! That's a wonderful thing,” McWatters said. “Here you are, Hornet Squadron, 1937, twenty years on, still biffing the Boche. What machine are you flying?”

“Sopwith Pup,” Simms said.

“Ah – you know where you are with the Pup ...” But McWatters' voice was drowned in a wave of laughter.

After the smoker, when the general had been escorted to his bedroom, Baring and the C.O. had a nightcap in the mess. “The 1937 sketch,” Baring said. “Is that a running joke in this squadron?”

“No. Written specially.”

“It didn't make the general laugh.”

“Perhaps because it's not such a funny joke.”

“Do you really think all this will just go on and on?”

“What's to stop it?” Cleve-Cutler said. “America? Can you really see American troops going over the top? Like the Somme? For our sake?”

“But it's such a waste. Not for me, I was middle-aged when it started, but for chaps like you —”

Cleve-Cutler laughed. “Chaps like me are having a whale of a time. I can't imagine any other life. I hope this war lasts for ever. Or until we get a replacement for the Pup. Whichever is sooner.”

“I've made a note,” Baring said.

* * *

“Gross impertinence?” Bliss said. “And Crabtree reckons it doesn't matter?”

Cleve-Cutler thought for a moment. “Actually, what Crabtree said wasn't impertinent. It was all very pertinent.”

“That's not the blasted point,” Colonel Bliss said, in a voice that silenced the rats under the floorboards. He had arrived from Wing H.Q. without warning, less than an hour after Trenchard and Baring departed. “You've given him a good kick in the goolies, I hope.”

“Oh yes. Asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, putting damnfool ideas into the minds of the others.”

“And he said what?”

“Said he couldn't resist telling the general the truth, because he might never get another chance, but it didn't matter.”

“God's teeth,” Bliss said. “It's not for every mouthy flight commander to have his say-so about the strategy of the Corps. What next? Shall we have a vote before every patrol? Elect the generals? Shall we do that? What's wrong with this Crabapple? Communist, is he?”

“Crabtree,” the C.O. said. “Not Communist. Damn good flight commander, very experienced. Perhaps we should hear what the doctor has to say, sir.”

Captain Dando brought a fat file with him. He rattled through Crabtree's medical record: “On a troopship that got torpedoed ... rescued by destroyer, sent to France by ferry which hit a mine; broke two ribs and an arm ... joined his regiment at the Front, shrapnel wound to the head ... Military Cross ... joined R.F.C., crashed, broke collarbone ... taxying accident, gashed head ... hit by Archie, crashed, concussion ... ditto, burns to legs ... ditto, dislocated shoulder ... damaged by enemy scouts, hit tree, concussion ...”

“And so on and so on,” Cleve-Cutler said. “He crashed five times in 1916 without doing himself any permanent damage. Then he got knocked down in the middle of the battle of the Somme. Missing for a week.”

“Probably spent it getting chased from shell-hole to shell-hole by the whizzbangs,” Dando said.

“He couldn't remember the battle,” the C.O. said.

“Not unusual with concussion,” Dando said. “He got packed off to a convalescent home outside Paris. Told to rest. Eat lots of cheese.”

“Cheese?”
Bliss said.

“There was a medical theory ...” Dando began; but Bliss raised his hands. “Spare me,” he said. “I suppose I'd better see him.”

Dando telephoned. The C.O.'s servant brought coffee. Bliss sipped it and frowned. “Much better than the muck they give us at Wing,” he grumbled. “No point in asking where you get it?”

“No, sir.”

Crabtree came in and saluted. The C.O. introduced the colonel. “Sit down,” Bliss said. “How's the war going? Speak freely.”

“Well, it's going splendidly, sir.” Crabtree's voice was dull, and his gaunt, lined face was blank. “We're hammering the Hun on every Front,” he said bleakly. “One more big push and Germany will crack
like a rotten egg.”

“Will it really?” Bliss pretended to be impressed. “The Somme didn't do the trick, did it?”

“The Somme was a splendid test of British guts and gallantry.” The words came out as flat as slate, as if Crabtree were dictating them. “We slogged it out. The Boche took a pasting.”

“Slogged it out. Is that how you saw the battle?”

“Well, now.” Crabtree relaxed a little. “Actually there wasn't much to see, sir. Far too loud. Frightfully noisy.” Gradually, life was creeping into his voice. “Awfully nice Gordon Highlander gave me a sandwich, bully-beef, thick as a book. Delicious. I couldn't make head nor tail of him, either. Scots, you see.
Awfully
nice chap.” Crabtree shook his head, touched by the memory of human kindness.

“Anything else?” Bliss asked.

“I see General Haig's been made a field marshal,” Crabtree said. “So the Somme must have been a victory, mustn't it? But I don't care, sir. I've heard it all before.”

When he had left, Cleve-Cutler said: “Sack him if you like, sir, but I want someone just as experienced to replace him. He may be odd on the ground, but he's damn good upstairs.”

“A week in the Somme, and all he can remember is a Scotch bully-beef sandwich,” Bliss said.

“Shaky memory proves nothing, sir,” Dando said. “I've known pilots to land after they had two scraps and bagged a flamer, and can't remember a damn thing.”

“Anyone who argues with Boom Trenchard is off his rocker,” Bliss declared. “Do something to this lunatic, give him some pills, get him drunk as a skunk, it might straighten out his head. God speed the plough! If the Somme was a victory, we'll never win.”

“Ah!” Cleve-Cutler said. “We're going to win, are we, sir? I mean, is that official?”

“Don't you start,” Bliss said.

* * *

“A brace of frogs,” Crabtree said. “Lost, probably.”

“Ask them to lunch,” Ogilvy said. “Then we can have frogs' legs for starters.”

They were stretched out in deck chairs, wrapped in blankets and enjoying the rare warmth of the weak and watery sun. Ogilvy's eyes were shut. Crabtree was looking through binoculars at a pair of biplanes, gauzy in the sunlight, circling high above the aerodrome.

“Very small frogs,” he said.

“Not so loud. The others will want some.”

“Here they come,” Crabtree said.

“That's the trouble with this war,” Ogilvy said lazily. “Everyone's in such a blasted
hurry.”
He opened his eyes.

The two biplanes were descending in opposing spirals. Each spiral turned around the same invisible central column, and the machines were so close to each other that they seemed to be on a permanent collision course. The reality was that, as the spirals crossed, one machine cleared the tail of the other by a length. It was a tiny margin. A bump in the air, a surge of power, a wobble in the controls would be enough to turn a display into a disaster.

“They may be frogs, but they can fly,” Ogilvy said.

At three or four hundred feet the biplanes peeled away from each other, came together in line abreast, sideslipped in unison, and landed simultaneously. Cleve-Cutler was there to watch and admire.

The pilots were, as Crabtree had guessed, French.
“Félicitations,”
Cleve-Cutler said.
“Qu'est-ce que vous cherchez?”
What they were looking for was his signature on the delivery documents for two Nieuport 17s, factory-fresh.

“Nobody ordered Nieuport 17s” he said. They shrugged. They were test pilots from the Nieuport company, and they wanted transport to the nearest railhead so they could go home. They gave him a pencil. He hesitated. In the British Army, once you signed for something you were stuck with it. He had once signed – hastily – for twenty mules, which had turned out to be lame. He never forgot that. He walked around the nearer aeroplane, looking for faults. When he got back, the test pilots were waving the documents to dry the ink and Duke Nikolai was screwing the cap on his fountain pen. “What the dickens?” the C.O. demanded.

“Is mine,” the duke said. He nodded at the Nieuports. “Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.”

Cleve-Cutler stared. “Are you drunk?”

“Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.”

“Not in my squadron.”

“Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.”

“It'll take more than your say-so.”

“Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.” The duke's face, grave and beautiful, showed all the confidence of a second cousin of God's appointed Tsar.

“Ah ...” Cleve-Cutler groaned. “Christ Allbloodymighty.” He went to his office and telephoned Colonel Bliss at Wing.

“Do nothing,” Bliss said. “One false move might bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.”

“What house of cards?”

“Do nothing.”

Thirty minutes later, Bliss called back. “Have you done anything?”

“No. The Russians are out there, trying to read the pilot's manual. It's in French. What's going on, colonel?”

“For a start, they've bought those Nieuports.” Bliss let that sink in. “I called the factory. They said the Russian embassy ordered the machines. I called Brigade, and Brigade called Corps, and Corps called Army H.Q., and finally somebody who went to Oxford with the Russian ambassador's first secretary got the truth out of him. Last week your Duke Nikolai bought two Nieuport 17s for cash.”

“I'll be damned. How much?”

“Five thousand pounds. He has a bank in Paris.”

“You mean a bank account.”

“No, the family owns a bank. A small bank.”

“Well, I should hope so. Nothing ostentatious.”