Hornet’s Sting (43 page)

The six replacements all wore the appalling R.F.C. maternity jackets. They looked like chauffeurs. He didn't care what their names were; he had seen them all before; they were forgettable.

“Welcome to this squadron, whose title escapes me at the moment,” he said. His tone of voice was affable yet lofty; he liked it and kept it. “I trust you will find the amenities to your liking. If you play croquet, there is croquet to be played. If you prefer lawn tennis, we have a new tennis court. If it is cricket you seek, then look no further. A fine swimming pool exists. Our chefs are superb. After dinner, the squadron orchestra plays. Games of chance add to the entertainment. Life is one long round of gaiety. How is it done? Sergeant Lacey here takes all the credit. I leave you in his hands.
I must go now and practise for the squadron ping-pong tournament.” He squeezed out a tight smile and went into his office and shut the door.

“May I suggest you make your wills?” Lacey said. “A tedious chore, but it pleases the adjutant if you do.” He distributed the forms.

“When do we fly?” Mackenzie asked.

“In the gaps between the gaiety,” Lacey said.

* * *

Corps H.Q. restricted all squadron commanders to two patrols a month. This was the logic of accountancy: the less they flew, the longer they would live. Cleve-Cutler couldn't alter R.F.C. policy, but he made sure his two patrols a month were seen to be difficult and dangerous. This was one of them. He was leading C-Flight along the patrol line Douai-Cambrai, the route where Gerrish and Crabtree and all the rest had gone down.

He flexed his buttocks and spread his legs apart, which made his hand twitch the joystick and the Biff rocked gently. McWatters, on his right, cocked his head, suspecting a signal. Nothing developed, so he looked away. Cleve-Cutler was restless because his left testicle itched abominably. It was stuck to the inside of his thigh by dried sweat, and it was also trapped by some twist in his underwear. Nothing he did would release it. He tried to forget the damn thing, but it would not forget him. It itched. What if the bus broke up? he wondered. There are worse things than an itchy ball. An F2B looked solid but it was only wood and wire and canvas. Bits had fallen off aeroplanes flown by his friends; he had seen it happen, big bits; seen the consequences, too. He checked his altitude. Just over fifteen thousand feet. If a wing crumpled now, how long would it take to spin down? And what would he be thinking as the ground came rushing up?

What else? Collision? The flight was six Biffs in a twin arrowhead formation, one behind and above the other. The C.O. put his experienced men beside him and new boys to the rear.
Follow, look and learn
, he'd told them. They'd all been churning along for fifty minutes, with no sign of Fritz. But he bullied his mind to stay alert. Anything might happen, in the blink of an eye. Someone might sneeze and jerk his throttle and surge forward and try to chew your tail off with his
prop. A Hun might drop out of the sun and you'd never see him because you'd be shot through the heart. Or the left testicle. Or the petrol tank under your seat. Better through the heart. Flamers were the stuff of nightmares.

Now Cleve-Cutler was very awake. His mind went on frightening him. Archie was a rotten trick. Somewhere a scruffy Hun gunner might be ramming a shell up an anti-aircraft gun. Twenty-five seconds later you got bits of red-hot Archie whizzing through your kidneys. Decent, hard-working chaps, the kidneys. You didn't get them complaining and demanding to be scratched.

That was when McWatters rocked his wings and pointed. A cluster of dots grew into a bunch of single-seat Fokker scouts, toiling up to do battle. Or perhaps not. The Biffs met them halfway and much ammunition was sprayed about the sky, but the enemy was very wary and kept his distance. After a few minutes of feints and wide circles and dives and zooms, Cleve-Cutler fired a flare. The flight came together. The Fokkers flew alongside the formation but kept well out of range. One pilot waved.

Cleve-Cutler felt excited and disappointed and tired, all at the same time. This patrol still had more than an hour to go, and he dreaded it; he wanted to go home and land
now
, something that had never happened to him before. The hour trudged by. The flight came upon an untidy scrap between a crowd of Camels and a mixture of Huns, too late to make a difference. The scrap dissolved into nothing, in the baffling way that scraps had. C-Flight returned to Gazeran and landed. Cleve-Cutler got out and shook his left leg. The itch had gone. He was alive, which was something; yet he was dissatisfied with himself. He felt wrong. His heart was juddering and bucketing like a runaway train.

The adjutant was waiting. “Good news, sir. Six replacements. Three pilots, three observers.”

“Give a pair to each flight.”

“And Captain O'Neill is our new intelligence officer.”

“Have him shot.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The C.O. had a day bed in his office. He awarded himself some medicinal whisky and went to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later he awoke, sweating and gasping, so convinced
that the phone was ringing that he lunged for it. The harsh clamour still vibrated in his head. The room was silent. “Bloody hell and double buggeration in spades,” he said. His clerk heard the noise and came in. “Mr Paxton is here, sir.” he said.

“Who telephoned?”

“Nobody, sir.”

“Change that phone. It's broken.”

Paxton was standing in the doorway. “Major,” he said. “You've given me Mackenzie. I know him. He's no damn good. I don't want him in my flight.”

Cleve-Cutler's mind was emerging from the dungeon of sleep, but his office still seemed foreign. “You'll take what you're given,” he growled.

“He's reckless, he's clumsy, he's too short.”

“And he's yours. Goodbye.”

Paxton stood and stared down. The C.O. squinted up at him. He shoved his head forward, challenging Paxton to challenge him.

The phone rang. “Don't answer that,” Paxton told the clerk. “It's broken.” He went away.

* * *

Later that day, Paxton interviewed Mackenzie alone in the flight office. Bits of German aeroplanes decorated the walls. “Let's get one thing clear,” Paxton said. “You're a damned handicap to my flight. I've seen you try to fly and you're like a pregnant duck in a hurricane. I've seen you try to shoot and you couldn't hit the garden with the garden hose.”

“That's a Rumpler.” Mackenzie pointed to a ravaged tail-fin. “I knocked down one of those.” He looked around the room and pointed to a wheel painted with a black cross. “Isn't that off an Aviatik? Got one of them too.”

Paxton cupped his hand around his ear.

“Sir,” Mackenzie added.

“Somebody has blundered and dropped you in the real war. If you want to do your patriotic duty, fall downstairs and break your neck. I don't want you. Now get out.”

Mackenzie went, looking nowhere near as subdued as Paxton had
hoped. He opened Mackenzie's file and worked backwards. A week in England, under training on the Bristol Fighter. Before that, a couple of months in France on RE8s, a newish two-seater used for reconnaissance. Before
that
, a few weeks on BE12s, an oldish two-seater with a bad reputation. His C.O. had written:
Tougher than he looks
. No mention of an Aviatik or a Rumpler.

* * *

The crews were glad to see O'Neill take over the job of recording their patrols. Uncle knew nothing about fighting in the air; he just wrote down what he thought they'd said. O'Neill had knocked about the sky, and had been knocked-about in return; he had his face and an M.C. to prove it. He knew what questions to ask.

Also he was a new joker in the pack. The squadron was tired of teasing its non-fliers: the doctor, the padre, even (if you had the courage) the adjutant. The new-fangled title of “intelligence officer” made an irresistible target in the mess.

“You know everything, O'Neill,” McWatters said. “What about this weather?” A rainstorm was hammering the roof of the mess. All flying was cancelled.

“Passing shower.” It had been raining solidly since the previous afternoon. “Lays the dust.”

“That's official, is it?” McWatters was standing at a window playing noughts and crosses against himself on the condensation. “You're sure it's not a military secret?”

“I know a military secret,” Mackenzie said. He was almost horizontal, sprawled in an armchair; only his legs were visible. He made everyone wait and said, “Damn, it's gone. Bloody good secret, it was, too.”

“What about all that thunder, up at Wipers?” Woolley asked. “Is that a secret?” Wipers was what everyone in the British Army called Ypres.

“Thunder is not intelligence,” O'Neill said. “Thunder comes under Acts of God.”

“Don't ask me,” the padre said. “Wipers is forty miles away. Not in my parish.”

“Ask the Hun,” Paxton said. “I'll bet he knows.”

“Ask Mata Hari,” McWatters said. “She told the Hun.”

“D'you really think so?” Cleve-Cutler said. He looked up from his game of double-patience.

“The court thought so, sir.” A few days before, in Paris, a French court martial had found Mata Hari guilty of passing military secrets to German intelligence officers. “That's all that matters, isn't it?”

“Oh, I can't agree there,” the padre said.

“I feel sorry for the woman,” the C.O. said. “I saw her dance, once, in Paris. Wasn't wearing much. Quite delightful. Any man there would have walked through fire for her. And now they're going to shoot her.”

“But she spied ...” Paxton said.

“The Huns shot Nurse Cavell two years ago, and she
wasn't
spying,” the doctor said. “Wasn't even accused of spying. You don't need much of a reason to shoot people in wartime.” He had stomachache: too much cherry pie for lunch. A doctor in pain never got any sympathy, so he kept it to himself. “Sometimes I think soldiers need a reason
not
to shoot anyone. It doesn't put such a strain on their brain.”

“Woman's place is in the home,” McWatters said. “Scientific fact.”

O'Neill said, “If Mata Hari got anything useful out of a British staff officer, she's a genius. I never have.”

“She went to Holland,” Paxton insisted. “She met German officers there.”

“Well, Holland's neutral,” Drinkwater said. Ever since he witnessed the slaughter of the cavalry at Arras, he distrusted any official statement about the war. “I bet it's lousy with German officers. Anyway, she's Dutch.”

“Mata Hari?” the doctor said. “Doesn't sound very Dutch to me.”

“Stage name,” the C.O. said. Dando grunted and went back to the
Irish Times
.

“Now I remember!” Mackenzie said. “My big military secret. The Huns are in Buckingham Palace.”

“Nothing's secret in a war like this,” Maddegan told them. He had been dozing. The discussion had disturbed his rest. He thought it was rambling and pointless, and he wanted to end it. “Everything's advertised, isn't it? The Hun never attacks us without putting up a hell of a great barrage first! We never attack him without shelling him for a week!”

“I know why she got court-martialled,” the C.O. said. “They're embarrassed because she got half the G.H.Q. into bed, and it's easier to shoot her than shoot them. They'll shoot her because she's pretty.”

Drinkwater stretched a leg and gave Mackenzie's foot a gentle kick. “What was that rot about Buckingham Palace?”

“Stuffed full of Huns, old chap. You thought you were fighting for King George of England, didn't you? Not a bit of it. He was born George Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, so we've all been fighting for three bits of the other side. Not to worry – the family's just changed its name to Windsor; where the soup comes from. So that's all right.”

“My real name's a military secret,” Woolley said, “but I'll give you a clue. It's Cheddar. Stanley Cheddar.”

“A word in your ear,” Paxton said to Mackenzie.

“Where the cheese comes from,” Woolley said.

Paxton took Mackenzie to an empty corner of the mess. “Don't make jokes about the royal family,” he ordered. “It's neither clever nor funny. And it's in damn bad taste.”

Mackenzie rolled his eyes. “Is there any
good
taste in this war, sir?”

“When in doubt,” Paxton said, “shut up.” He strode away. Rank had its privileges, and one was always having the last word.

* * *

The rain did not keep Lacey from his work.

He took a truck and drove around northeastern France, stopping at several camps or depots to collect or deliver the luxuries that made life bearable: toilet soap, gramophone needles, Canadian bacon, Indian curry powder, umbrellas, flashlights, fruit, tennis balls, wineglasses, carpet slippers, bicycle pumps. The biggest item he received was a billiard table, which he bought from a squadron about to be transferred to England. He gave them a cheque signed by J. T. N. Osborne, for five guineas. Lieutenant Osborne had inexplicably flown into a small hill at full throttle. Such things happened.

The adjutant was pleased to get a pair of elasticated knee-bandages; the damp weather was causing his joints to ache. He was unusually jovial. “We have a Kipling in our midst,” he said. “Or should I say a Longfellow?”

“There will never be another Longfellow,” Lacey said. “For which, God be thanked.”

Brazier waved the remark away. “That piece of poetry you wrote for the major has turned up trumps. It's been printed in several newspapers. Now the johnnies at Corps H.Q. who deal with the Press want the rest of the poem.”

“That's all there is. One verse, no more.”

“Come, come, sergeant. Get your muse on parade. It
is
a muse you writer-chaps have, isn't it? Tell it there's a war on.”