Hornet’s Sting (46 page)

“We saw,” Klagsburn said. “Belgium ain't what you'd call a pretty sight.” He had a New York twang that stretched the vowels like chewing gum.

“You don't fly the Camel here, sir?” Dabinett asked.

“No.”

“Too bad,” Klagsburn said. “Very hot piece of machinery. Small bus, big guns. If Douglas Fairbanks flew a fighter, it would be a Camel. This Bristol Fighter is too big.”

“It is not too big,” the C.O. said.

“He means too big for the cine-camera, sir.”

“Then get a bigger camera,” the C.O. growled.

“Oh, sure,” Klagsburn said. He walked away.

“I'm sorry, sir.” Dabinett was calm. “My colleague has been filming in too many trenches lately. It cramps his style.”

Brazier had only once been to the cinema, and its appeal was a mystery to him. “So ... what are you looking for?” he asked.

“Action,” Dabinett said. “We had high hopes of filming your cavalry in action, sir. The folks back home don't see this war going
anywhere. If we can show them some movement...”

“Who the hell is
that?”
Klagsburn demanded.

“That's Mackenzie,” the C.O. said. “He's just a pilot.”

Klagsburn pointed, for Dabinett's benefit. “He could be the guy ... Jesus Christ, what a face. Pray God he hasn't got a hare lip. Get him, get him.”

Cleve-Cutler beckoned, and Mackenzie changed direction. “Is he an ace?” Dabinett asked. “Knocked down a few,” the C.O. said. Bliss had ordered niceness. “He's a frightfully nice chap,” the C.O. said. “Awfully popular.”

“Will you look at that face?” Klagsburn said to Dabinett. “That's pure gold.”

“He's a bit short.”

“I'll stand him on a box. That face ... They'll love that face in Chicago. Hell, they'll love it in Milwaukee, and Milwaukee's full of krauts. Pure gold.”

“These gentlemen are from America,” the C.O. said.

“Jolly good,” Mackenzie said, and smiled.

“Thank you, God,” Klagsburn muttered.

“Would you mind taking your cap off?” Dabinett said. “We'd appreciate it.” Klagsburn was walking around Mackenzie, and grunting and nodding. “Perhaps you could ruffle your hair for us?” Dabinett said. Mackenzie did so, and laughed. “Pure gold,” Klagsburn said.

Fifty yards away, Drinkwater leaned against the doorway of the flight hut and rubbed his ribs and watched. Maybe he's right, he thought. Maybe I should take more risks. Doesn't do him any harm, does it?

* * *

Lacey found a carbon copy of the original, which he'd used as a bookmark in his
Golden Treasury of English Verse
. He took it to the padre's little chapel. Nobody would interrupt him there. The air was heavy with a religious aroma: linseed, sacred balm of cricket bats. He sat on the stool of a portable organ which he had bought for twelve guineas using Harry Simms's bank account, and he read the lines aloud:

Now God be thanked
From this day to the ending of the world!
Blow, bugle, blow! Was ever . . .

He read the rest in silence. It was awful. It just brayed and clashed and fell over its own feet. He felt ashamed. Surely he could do better than this?

It took an hour, but in the end he was pleased, even proud. He took it to the adjutant, who read it and said: “It's too short.”

“Were it longer, it would be too long.”

“We'll see about that.”

They showed it to the C.O. “It's a bit short,” he said.

“Looked at another way, sir,” Brazier said, “it's not too long.”

“True. Well, let's hear it from the horse's mouth.”

Lacey filled his lungs and orated:

Armed with thunder, clad with wings
,
Men like eagles hunt their foes
.
At home in the heavens, and Heaven's their home
.
See! In the sunset their epitaph glows
.

“Well, it certainly rhymes. Nobody can say it doesn't,” the C.O. said. “You've put ‘heaven' twice in the same line.”

“That's irony, sir.”

“Ah. Well, we can't have too much of that, can we?” He initialled the page. “Send it off, Uncle.”

* * *

Steadily the squadron's original F2As were being replaced with F2Bs. The big difference was the engine. The F2B had a Rolls-Royce Falcon III. Its twelve cylinders created such a surge of power – half as much again as the Falcon I – that unwary pilots got a punch in the back if they opened the throttle too fast and too far. The F2B's maximum speed was 123 mph, an improvement of 13 mph. That might not sound much, but if it took a pilot inside the killing range of his guns, it was very useful indeed.

The fitters and riggers had serviced Mackenzie's Biff; now he had to air-test it. He found Paxton in a deck chair outside the mess. Half the squadron was there, idling away the hour before lunch.

“Double or quits, sir,” Mackenzie said pleasantly. Paxton looked up. The sun was in his eyes. Mackenzie's face was a blank dark shape. “I'm air-testing my Biff, sir. It's a good time for our double or quits.”

“Go to hell.” Paxton pulled his cap over his eyes.

“Double or quits it is, then, sir,” Mackenzie said.

Ten minutes later, Mackenzie took off. The Biff climbed and turned, and began a shallow dive towards the mess. It levelled out at fifty feet. Something round and red fell from the rear cockpit. A few deck chairs quickly emptied. It turned out to be a football, bouncing hugely and travelling fast.

“That's his bomb,” Dando said. “Wasn't there some idiot pilot who used to drop footer balls on Jerry aerodromes?”

“A. C. H. Manton, in 7 Squadron,” the padre said. “Opened for Somerset in the summer of ‘14. I saw him make a century before lunch, on a wicket with more devils in it than you'd find in Revelations.”

Mackenzie came back and cruised by, and waved. So did his gunner, a tall young man named Tyndall, who had hair the colour of new straw. They climbed steeply away. The sky soaked up the engine's roar until it was just a buzz.

“Great sportsman, Manton,” the padre said.

“We couldn't afford sportsmanship at Bog Street School,” Woolley said. “Sometimes we had to take it in turns to cheat.”

Mackenzie reached two thousand feet and turned into the wind, which seemed to be fairly steady. At an indicated airspeed of sixty-five miles an hour, the Biff was balanced and happy. It might hit the odd invisible bump or pothole which might make it twitch or wobble. Or it might not. Best not to think of that.

“Ready?” he shouted. He unfastened his seat belt.

“Any time,” Tyndall answered. Their cockpits were so close together that when they leaned backwards their shoulders touched. An inch more, and their heads touched.

“Ready, steady,
go
!” Mackenzie shouted. Still holding the joystick, he raised his feet and hooked them on the front of his cane chair. At the same moment Tyndall stood and turned and swung his right leg out of the aeroplane. Mackenzie shuffled left and used his right hand to drag Tyndall's foot down onto the chair. With Tyndall's body fighting the gale, the Biff bucked and rocked. Mackenzie worked
the stick and got the wings level again. “Come on!” he bawled. Tyndall groped for and found the spade grip on the top of the stick. Mackenzie let go of the stick, turned to face the tail and swung his right leg over the side. The airstream blew it on its way and it fell into the rear cockpit. For a long moment both men had a foot in each cockpit and both their bodies were shaken by the rush of air. The Biff resented their antics; it twitched nervously. Mackenzie grabbed the Scarff ring and heaved, and fell into the rear cockpit, head first. When he straightened up and looked out, Tyndall was disappearing into the pilot's seat. At once the Biff stopped complaining.

They let it fly itself while they congratulated themselves on being alive.

Tyndall was a gunner only because he had failed flying training as a pilot. He knew how the controls worked. When he took the Biff across the aerodrome he was careful to stay at least a hundred feet up. Even so, everyone outside the mess could see that Mackenzie was not the pilot. Neither man wore his helmet, and Tyndall's yellow hair was like a flag. What's more, Mackenzie was putting on a show with the twin Lewises, making them spin around the cockpit and aim high and low.

Everyone thought the whole stunt was very clever and very funny; everyone except Paxton.

“You're in Queer Street, aren't you?” O'Neill said to him. “You were broke before and now you've suffered a complex fracture of the wallet. You may never play the violin again.”

“It was a cheap, childish trick,” Paxton said. “No wonder you were impressed.”

“Ask Lacey to lend you the money. He only charges 45 per cent.”

“Get out of my way.”

“And if you welsh on him, Dingbat breaks your legs.”

Paxton did not go in to lunch with the others. He saw the Biff land clumsily at the other end of the field, and taxi towards the waiting mechanics, and he sent a mess servant to tell the crew to meet him in his flight commander's office.

When they came in, he had prepared a list of their offences and he read it out. It contained a lot of reckless endangering and gross irresponsibility and utter disregard and conduct prejudicial to efficiency
in war. “Until these charges are heard in court martial, you are grounded,” he said. “Now get out.”

He went to the mess and ate a quick lunch. Nobody avoided him, but nobody came over and chatted, either. He was aware, from bits of overheard conversation and bursts of laughter, that the squadron had enjoyed Mackenzie's stunt. Go ahead, laugh, he thought. It's not your flight. It's not your responsibility. Wait till it happens to you. Wait till it all goes haywire. Not so funny then. Pulling bodies out of a wreck is no joke. He drank his coffee too fast and burned his mouth.

For the rest of the day he busied himself. Talked to the sergeant-fitters and sergeant-riggers. Looked at all the Biffs. Did an air-test. Informed the adjutant of his recommendation to court-martial. (Brazier asked for a full report.) Watched his gunners fire at the range. Reprimanded a mechanic for not saluting. Decided to have a bath. Walked to his hut, went inside and found a horse jammed in the bedroom door. Its tail swished at the eternal flies. Its rump stuck out like a tethered balloon.

As a flight commander, Paxton had two rooms. O'Neill sat in the other, smoking a corncob pipe.

“What the blue blazes is going on here?” Paxton demanded.

“It's a horse's arse,” O'Neill said. “That's an expression the Americans use. London's full of them now. They say ‘horse's
ass'
. Terribly genteel.”

“Get your demented arse out of my chair, before I kick it out.”

O'Neill pointed his pipe at the horse. “Take a good look. That's what you've become.”

Paxton was tired, and tired of being lectured in his own rooms by a man who couldn't even fly. A flush of rage created a rush of energy and he tried to kick O'Neill, but O'Neill dodged and Paxton hacked the chair instead. Pain flowered in his foot and he lurched away, cursing.

“You're a horse's arse,” O'Neill said. “You gambled and lost more than you could afford, and to a junior officer. Horse's arse! Then you took on a bloody stupid double-or-quits. Horse's arse! Now you've lost again, as everyone saw, and sooner than pay up you'll try to courtmartial the fellow. Horse's arse!”

Paxton was red with anger and guilt. “What they did was a gross breach of discipline. I won't tolerate —”

“Gross breach of horseshit! When you were my gunner we didn't behave
properly
. We behaved like a couple of thugs. Air fighting is
thuggery. Mackenzie looks like a china doll, but at heart he's a bigger thug than you.”

“I had respect for rank. He has no respect.”

“Mackenzie's a fart, but he's a brave fart. Don't expect a brave fart to salute a horse's arse. Christ Almighty, what an unholy mix of metaphors.” O'Neill went out.

Eventually Paxton climbed in through his bedroom window and persuaded the horse to back out of the hut. Once outside, it deposited an impressive amount of dung. A well-behaved horse. He told a passing airman to take it to the guardroom. He went inside and sat in his chair until dusk fell. Then he switched on the light and wrote his report. And all the time, the Wipers barrage rumbled and groaned, far to the north. It never stopped, day or night.

* * *

Out of the blue, Edith Reynolds wrote to McWatters. Somebody in F.A.N.Y. had told her that he was looking for her.

He replied; they met for dinner at a restaurant in St Pol. She turned out to be stunningly beautiful, in a trim, athletic way. For months, the only women that McWatters had seen had been French, covered in shapeless black, bent double, doing something to sugar beet in a field. Faced with Edith Reynolds he smiled too readily and too much. He knew it, but he couldn't stop. The meal was pleasant and easy. Once she glanced at the wings on his tunic, which was encouraging. By now he had got his smile under control. He ordered coffee and Benedictine.

“I have an ulterior motive for meeting you,” she said.

“I say! That sounds thrilling.”

“No. Not thrilling.” She reached for her Benedictine, and then pushed it away. “A couple of months ago, after the Arras affair, I went to a dance with some other F.A.N.Y. girls. It was at a big R.F.C. aerodrome, in the officers' mess, of course. Lots to eat and drink and a wonderful band to dance to.”

McWatters had the unbroken pleasure of examining her face, because she was looking at her hands, palms up, fingers interlaced.

“I fell for a handsome young pilot. Sounds silly, but that's what happened. We danced the first dance and I was in love, deeply.”

“Lucky chap.” Oh fuck, he thought.