Hornet’s Sting (21 page)

* * *

When flying finished for the day, Woolley and Paxton and another instructor called Slattery got cleaned up, put on their walking-out uniforms and drove in Slattery's car to St Quentin's School for Boys.

Paxton had not wanted to go. The C.O. at Coney Garth, Major Venables, was normally a mild man. He had crashed a two-seater in 1915 and been somersaulted out of his cockpit. Onlookers said that he travelled fifty feet before he hit the ground, but onlookers always exaggerated. He never flew again. Now he was content to leave the instructing to the instructors, while he took care of the paperwork. That avoided headaches. Headaches made Venables angry, and anger made his headache worse, so when Lieutenant Paxton groaned and said he felt sure there were better people to go and lecture a bunch of schoolboys on the war, sir, people with more time ... Major Venables felt a hot throb bite at the side of his brain. “Do as you're bloody well told!” he shouted.

“What I meant, sir, was perhaps it might be better if a couple of
other chaps went with me. We could —”

“Take whoever you like!” Red and green zigzags began to drift into Venables' vision. “Get out!”

Paxton took Slattery because he had a car and Woolley because St Quentin's was a public school and he thought Woolley would hate it. “You may find this place rather strange,” Paxton said as the hedgerows rushed by. “I'll gladly answer any questions.”

“Oh, I went to public school,” Woolley said.

“We're lost,” Slattery said.

“I don't believe you,” Paxton said. Slattery threw the road map at him. “Not you,” Paxton said. “Him.”

“Well, we're still lost.”

“I went to St Bert's. It's in Wigan.”

“I don't believe there ever was a saint called Bert,” Paxton said.

Slattery slowed to look at a signpost. “Damn,” he said, and accelerated.

“You get snotty about St Bert in Wigan,” Woolley said, “and the lads will kick your face in.”

“Ah,” Paxton said. “A sporting school, is it?”

“We beat Eton at shoplifting,” Woolley said. “National champions ten years running.”

“Where are we supposed to be going?” Slattery asked. “I forget.”

“You really are a bloody awful driver,” Paxton said.

“Bet you don't know who the patron saint of bloody awful drivers is,” Woolley said to Paxton.

“Who?”

“Saint Bert. Coincidence, isn't it?”

St Quentin's School was a stately mansion entirely surrounded by playing fields. The headmaster was burly and bearded. He gave them tea, and then took them to the assembly hall. About six hundred boys and masters were waiting. When they saw the wings on the tunics there was a gentle hum. One click of the headmaster's fingers silenced that.

“The poet Browning wrote, ‘Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?' I think we may on this occasion forgive Browning for ending his sentence with a preposition ...” The headmaster smiled, and the older boys laughed dutifully. “The pity is that Browning is not alive to immortalise in verse those whose
reach
does
exceed their grasp, those who do, literally, discover what a heaven's for – the men of the Royal Flying Corps. Lieutenant Paxton is here to tell us something of the work of this gallant band.”

Applause.

Paxton stepped forward, carrying a chair in one hand. He placed it at the front of the stage and put his left foot on it.

“Fighting in the sky,” he said, using the clear, firm voice he had developed in the Sherborne school debating society, “is rather like a boxing match. In order to hit the other fellow you have to get close to him. So close, in fact, that
he
can hit
you
. Which makes it a straight, clean, man-to-man contest. And – this may surprise you – no ill-feeling. Plenty of excitement! When you're throwing your machine all over the sky, dodging hot lead that's spewing from some Hun's machine guns, with nothing beneath you but eight or ten thousand feet of thin air – well, the old heart pumps a bit, believe me. And when the scrap's over, and it's goodbye to another Boche aviator ...” Paxton's mouth twitched in a generous smile. “... I'm not ashamed to salute the passing of a foe who fought his best. Now, you all know there's a lot of mud and blood in France. That doesn't mean there's no room for chivalry. We in the Royal Flying Corps like to think of ourselves as a sort of cavalry of the clouds. Of course, chivalry alone isn't going to win this war. That's where you chaps come in. Why are you here? I'll tell you. A couple of years ago I was at a school very much like yours, and what I learned – apart from how to decline the subjunctive and solve quadratic equations and ...” here he turned to the headmaster “... not to end my sentences with a preposition ...” The boys laughed. “What I learned was that
cream rises to the top.”
Paxton paused and flexed the leg that was propped on the chair. “Spot of Archie in the knee,” he explained. “You've heard of Archie? He goes woof-woof and if you get too close he bites you ...” They enjoyed that. “What was I saying?” He looked at Slattery.

“Cream?”

“Ah, yes.
That's
why you're here. This is a topping school, and you chaps are the cream. No matter how hard the Hun tries – and believe me, nobody tries harder – he suffers from one awful disadvantage, which is: he's a Hun! And that's why he's bound to lose!” Applause, and some cheering. “You see, what the Kaiser didn't take into account
is, there's no substitute for breeding. The Hun doesn't understand that; it's not in his blood. He doesn't know how to make a tackle in a rugger match. He doesn't know how to face fast bowling on a bumpy wicket and smack it for six. He doesn't know how to deliver a straight left to the jaw. You do; it's in your blood. Chaps like you made the Empire, and the Empire covers half the earth. That just leaves the sky to be conquered, and you're the very chaps to do it.” He stepped back. The applause was warm, and he waved his chair in acknowledgement.

“Splendid, splendid,” the headmaster said. “Is there anything your fellow officers wish to add?”

“I could do with a Guinness,” Woolley said.

“The chaplain will propose a vote of thanks,” the headmaster said.

“The words of the Prayer Book are not unfitting,” said the chaplain. “‘He rode upon the cherubims, and did fly; he came flying upon the wings of the wind.' We have all heard, have we not, a most stimulating account ...”

* * *

They dined with the headmaster, his wife and the chaplain.

“It's good to know that the Public School Spirit is alive and well in France,” the headmaster said. He made it sound like an examination:
Discuss the following
...

“One does one's best to live up to tradition,” Paxton said.

“Ah, tradition!” the chaplain said. He was short, dark and bald, and his right arm was limp: he used his left hand to lift it onto the table. “Great stuff, tradition. How did we ever manage without it?”

The question was aimed at Slattery. “Um ...” he said.

“Pay no attention,” the headmaster's wife said. “He only does it to annoy, he should have been a politician.” She was middle-aged and pretty and lively. The chaplain smirked.

A maid was going around the table, filling glasses with water. “No Guinness at all?” Woolley asked.

“We took a pledge to abstain from alcohol,” the headmaster said, “until the cessation of hostilities.”

“We could send out for some. There must be a pub ...”

“Alas, no.”

His wife added: “We like to think that this small act of self-denial brings us a little closer to the men in the trenches.”

Paxton nodded. “We're all in this thing together, aren't we?”

“No,” the chaplain said. “Italy's in, Holland's neutral and —”

“Ah, soup,” the headmaster said. “I hope you like tomato.”

“Anyway, the Guinness wasn't for me,” Woolley said. “Lieutenant Paxton needs it for his leg. Nothing else soothes the pain, the biting, burning pain.”

“Oh, I say. Steady on.” Paxton ripped a bread roll in half.

“Matron has a wonderful liniment,” the headmaster's wife offered. “It cures rugger sprains in no time. Perhaps ...”

“What sort of cricket team have you got this year, sir?” Paxton asked, which kept the headmaster going right through the soup and into the fish pie. “So, despite everything, we beat St Stephen's by two wickets,” he said. “And it was only afterwards that I discovered young Lumley had been batting with a broken nose. Of course, I awarded him his school colours on the spot.”

“Commissioned in the field, so to speak,” Slattery said.

“He looked better for it,” the chaplain said. “Very ugly boy.”

“I went to public school,” Woolley said. “St Oscar's, in Brighton.”

“St Oscar's,” the headmaster said. “Brighton, you say?”

“I didn't know there
was
a saint called Oscar,” his wife said.

“Spent his life saving virgins,” Woolley told them. “Martyred for the cause.”

“Not much good at it, then,” Slattery said.

“You can't get sanctified nowadays unless you've been martyred,” the chaplain said. “It's a very difficult choice.” He winked at Slattery.

“Hullo!” Woolley said. “Somebody's up.”

It was a mild evening; the windows were open. A faint, lazy buzz came to them, and faded, and came again. “Excuse me,” Woolley said. He went out by the French windows and stood on the terrace. “It's a Gotha,” he said.

That ended dinner. “A damned Hun?” the headmaster said. Everyone hurried out, and looked where Woolley pointed, and saw a speck like a pinprick in the sky.

The English were a phlegmatic people. They had accepted casualty lists of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, growing to a million and more; but that was in France, abroad, invisible and glorious; even
the battle of the Somme had been a triumph, all the newspapers said so. But when Zeppelins and bombers attacked England, all stoicism suddenly dissolved in a howl of fear and fury. Death was prowling the skies. This wasn't the war the civilians had agreed to fight. This wasn't
fair
.

“Are you sure?” the headmaster asked.

“It might not be a Gotha,” Woolley said. The headmaster relaxed slightly. “It looks more like a Giant,” Woolley said. “That's twice as big as a Gotha.”

“Swine. How dare they ...” The headmaster hurried off to get all the boys indoors. His wife left to see to the servants. The chaplain escorted the pilots to their car.

“I enjoyed your visit,” he said. “You mustn't be too hard on them. They haven't the faintest idea what it's like in France.”

Suddenly Slattery understood. “But you do.”

“I went over with the Duke of Wellington's Regiment in 1914. We got rather knocked about. The army likes its padres to be able to act as stretcher-bearers, so ... I was lucky to get this job.”

“Don't be too hard on us,” Paxton said. “We've all fallen out of too many aeroplanes.” They shook his good hand and drove away.

* * *

Slattery got lost again. Suffolk was a pleasant county to be lost in. The slanting sunlight of evening burnished the fields of early wheat and barley, and brightened the greens of woodland and pasture. Enormous farm-horses looked over gates and watched the car go by and flattened their ears at the noise. Children left their games and ran and cheered, and flung old potatoes, and missed. “No idea of deflection shooting,” Paxton said.

At dusk they stopped at a pub to find out where they were. Slattery glanced into the public bar. “Full of gnarled Shakespearean types wearing corduroy trousers secured with twine below the knees,” he reported. The saloon bar was empty. The landlord brought them bottled Guinness and went away.

“We of the Royal Flying Corps,” Woolley said, “like to think of ourselves as a sort of cavalry of the clouds. Show us your roses and we shall shit on them.”

“That was you, was it?” Slattery said. “I thought it was hot lead spewing from a Hun's machine guns.”

“Archie goes woof-woof,” Woolley said. “Stanley went puke-puke.”

Paxton dipped a finger into his stout and licked the cream. He was unmoved by their comments. “The boys seemed to enjoy it,” he said.

“Ask them again in a year,” Woolley said. “When the oldest ones meet an Albatros and try to kill it with breeding.”

“Something you'll never die of, Woolley.”

“You did lay it on a bit thick, Pax,” Slattery said.

“Did I?” Paxton tipped his chair and balanced on its back legs. “Woolley takes the biscuit for talking tosh. That wasn't a bomber we saw.”

“What was it?” Woolley asked.

“Don't know, but —”

“So it
might
have been.” They stared at each other.

“Anyway,” Slattery said, “it got us out of that perfectly bloody dinner. More drink, landlord!” The man appeared. “Same again, if you will.”

“I won't. I called time five minutes ago.” He was not impressed by their uniforms. “Act of Parliament.”

“I sometimes wonder what we're fighting for,” Paxton said.

“Free speech, isn't it? So now you're free to say goodnight.”

In the car, Slattery said. “I suppose he had the law on his side.”

“He's a Hun,” Paxton said. “When we win the war I shall have him shot.”

* * *

Andrew Mackenzie's mother dressed him in skirts and blouses until he was six, and let his fair and curly hair grow to his collar. That was not uncommon in the nineties, especially in well-to-do Kensington. Then her husband came back from South Africa.