Goshawk Squadron (16 page)

After a few moments he realized they were flying on an interception course. Then he remembered that Woolley had changed the course before he, Callaghan, saw the plane. Reluctantly he conceded that Woolley saw it first.

It turned out to be French: a Nieuport. Woolley led them down in a mock attack, the arrowhead formation swooping in a long, curling dive that went under the Frenchman's tail and zoomed up and leveled out, back on patrol. The excitement of that plunge affected Callaghan. If only they could catch a German! But the war was asleep today.

After two hours Woolley turned for home. Blunt gratefully recognized that they were losing height, and rested his neck; then felt guilty and started searching again. They were within sight of the airfield when Woolley inexplicably wheeled left and they climbed toward the mattress of cloud. Blunt couldn't see the reason for that. He was four or five lengths away from the next plane when one by one they angled into the quilted grayness.

Cloud frightened Blunt. It seduced his imagination: woolly wisps streaming past told him nothing; he could be flying into a mountainside … or diving … or two seconds away from a collision … What if the cloud went up to five thousand feet? Or six? Or ten?

Blunt felt the sweat break out in his armpits and trickle down his ribs. He shut his eyes tight and locked his fists around the joystick. Part of his mind queried the value or purpose of sweating. What possible good could wet armpits do? Deep purple shapes bloomed and turned orange on his eyelids, then everything went bright gray. He opened his eyes. They were in weak, hazy, winter sunlight.

Woolley flattened out, turned right and prowled over the surface for about a quarter of a mile. Then he led them down into the bloody cloud again.

Blunt closed his eyes and loathed Woolley. He locked his fingers around the joystick again and gripped it tightly in the angle of the dive, hearing the engine-note climb and the wing bracings develop a piercing whistle that merged into a slow shriek. Fear slowed his thoughts, and grudgingly granted him one consolation: at this speed they must come out at the bottom a damn sight faster than they went through at the top.

He opened his eyes and searched for a break in the streaming fog. There was nothing, and suddenly there was everything: solid, sodden fields slightly canted over, and three, four German aircraft flying across them at fifteen hundred feet. Three Pfalz scouts and a lumbering two-seater observation plane. A reconnaissance patrol.

The formation swam up as Woolley held the flight in its dive. At ten lengths the furthest Pfalz turned to meet the attack, far too late. The six SE5as went through the German formation like an Act of God, spraying fire in a red-hot probe. Woolley, Callaghan and Peacock scored bursts on the two-seater. Dickinson and Church engaged the scouts. Blunt saw nothing ahead but he shot off a dozen rounds on impulse as he plunged through a great hole. He remembered only details: the shiny, slate-blue skins of the German wings; the
old-fashioned, pinch-waisted crosses; the swept-back tail-fins. Then he was hauling back on the control column and edging in on Woolley as the flight hurtled up in a long recovery from its dive. Centrifugal force clamped his backside and spine against the seat. He screwed his neck around to try and find the enemy. Ragged black smoke led to the two-seater; the Pfalz scouts had gone, vanished.

Woolley leveled off two hundred feet from the burning aircraft and flew parallel. The pilot had collapsed inside his cockpit. The observer lay sprawled across his gun, his blond hair streaming romantically in the wind. Something erupted with a soft boom, like a distant starting-gun, and the aircraft crumpled. Its tail stood up and it fell, spinning slowly as if it were gently unwinding itself.

It crashed on one side of a thick hedge. A herd of cows had been standing on the other side, and Blunt watched them stampede away, fanning out like clumsy messengers with news for all parts.

“I can't get over your not being related to C. G. W. Peacock,” Rogers said. He shook his head and frowned at his drink. “It really is the most remarkable coincidence.”

Peacock clasped and unclasped and reclasped his hands in an embarrassment of humility and candor. “Never even met him, I'm sorry to say,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets. Nobody else had their hands in their pockets. He took his out.

“Hampshire,” Rogers said. “Opening bat. Useful bowler, too.”

“We … live in Norfolk.”

“Norfolk?” Rogers looked at him doubtfully. “D'you know, I don't think I've ever met a cricketer from Norfolk.”

“No, we … don't seem to go in for … cricket. Much.”

“Oh. Isn't there rather a lot of water up there?”

“The Broads, yes. Jolly good for sailing.”

“Ah.” Rogers drank his drink with the air of a man who had found out why Norfolk people play so little cricket.

There was an odd silence. The squadron had gathered in
the anteroom to the dining room for a drink before lunch. Everyone felt relieved to have left Pont St. Martin, with its freezing tents, and to be here in Fricourt, where the airfield had hutted accommodation and a village down the road. Everyone was pleased about the German two-seater, whose remains lay outside in the back of a truck; but nobody was going to say so while Woolley was in the room.

Rogers turned to Blunt. “There was a Jonah Blunt who turned out for Somerset occasionally,” he said.

“Sorry.” Blunt flushed with shyness. “Different Blunt.”

“I used to play cricket,” Church stated. “I played for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.”

“Pay no attention,” Dickinson told the replacements, “he's only showing off in front of the visitors.”

“In that order,” Church said firmly. “England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I was
very
good.” He smiled craftily at Blunt and got himself another drink.

There was another pause. Peacock glanced warily around him. He noticed tiny signs of strain: finger-tapping, abrupt yawning, twitching of the eyes. Some pilots stood serenely, studying their cigarette smoke; but then Peacock saw their white knuckles.

The only exception was the CO. He leaned his backside against a table, arms folded. He didn't look pleased with himself, or with anyone else, either. He looked like one of those Irish rebels whose photographs one saw in the papers: swarthy, intense, indifferent to any opinion but their own. Smudged by cheap newsprint. Hanged.

Peacock wondered if all fighter squadrons were like this. People at home said they were a gay, defiant, rather reckless band of cavaliers of the sky. Peacock turned away and saw Finlayson picking his nose.

An airman came in: lunch was ready. They finished their drinks. “This is a lot better than Pont St. Martin,” Dickinson said. “That mess tent was horribly drafty.”

“My billet has cockroaches,” Lambert complained. “Big ones.”

“Clever wee beasts,” Finlayson said. “They won't live where they can't get food and comfort. Consider yourself lucky.”

“I suppose
we
should consider ourselves
jolly
lucky,” Peacock said. “I mean, to have a German plane shot down the first time we went up.”

Lambert shrugged.

“I never expected the first scrap to be so easy,” Callaghan said. “I must say it gives a chap confidence, that sort of thing.”

Woolley stopped in the doorway and turned around. Everyone else stopped. “You found it easy?” he asked Callaghan.

“Well, sir …” Callaghan was confused at finding himself the center of attention. “I mean … they didn't really stand much of a chance, did they, sir?”

“Isn't that as it should be?” Woolley hadn't moved, but the other pilots were shifting and looking away.

“Yes sir, I suppose … all I meant was, it's nice to start off with a gift from God, so to speak.”

Killion groaned and beat his fist against his forehead. Callaghan glanced unhappily from him to Woolley.

“Understand this,” Woolley said. “While you are in this squadron, which I think will be a short time, you will never use the word ‘luck.' Luck never killed anyone except the fool who believed in it.”

“Yes, sir,” Callaghan whispered. Woolley turned and went in. Callaghan squeezed his hands to control the trembling. Dickinson nudged him. “In a sense you were right,” he said. “That two-seater
was
a gift from God. But God around here is the old man, and believe me, he organized it.”

The conversation during lunch was a little more relaxed. Killion took pity on Callaghan and tried to discuss Freud, which only confused Callaghan the more. Eventually Richards told Killion to shut up and then found himself obliged to say something else in his place.

“I knew a Dermot Cavanagh in Dublin,” he said. “I don't suppose …”

“We're not really Irish at all. Must have been once, but …
Funny thing, we had another sort of Anglo-Irishman at our flying school, only he passed out before I did. I heard he was posted here. Rather hoped to see him, actually.”

“Well, you know how it is. People come and go.”

“Yes. Still, I'd like to keep in touch. O'Shea, his name was.”

“I shouldn't bother if I were you.”

“But couldn't I get hold of his address, somehow? He and I—”

“Believe me, it's not worth it.”

Callaghan opened his mouth to beg to differ, saw Richards' expression, and shut it.

The adjutant came in. “I do think it's rotten the way none of you chaps speaks French,” he said angrily. “You get into all kinds of trouble, and they come to me and complain. Save me some lunch,” he told a steward.

“Are they causing a stink over what we did at St. Denis the other night?” Lambert asked.

“No, no. But don't worry, that'll come before long.”

“We should have paid the bill, you know,” Dangerfield said. “Dinner for ten, plus wine.”

“I'll send them a check,” Rogers said. “Remind me to send them a check, Woody.”

“I think I'll get you to make out several checks. In fact you might as well sign the lot and give them to me.”

“Thinking back on that occasion,” Kimberley said, “isn't it odd that we haven't heard a squeak from the frogs about it?”

“Frogs croak,” Church said.

“It's not odd at all,” Woodruffe said. “For a start, we got posted the very next day. That put them off the scent. For another thing, I told a friend of mine at Corps to shuffle his documents if the frogs started looking for us. He's put us down as posted to Belgium
en route
for Italy.”

“Masterly staff work,” Lambert said. “What a blessing it is to have fundamentally dishonest officers.”

A black-shawled Frenchwoman appeared at the window and rapped on it. “Oh my God. Her again,” Woodruffe said.
“Don't let her in or I'll never get any lunch. I can't understand a word she says.”

“I speak a little French,” Blunt offered.

“Go ahead,” Woodruffe said. “Tell her there's nothing we can do.”

Blunt let her in. An old man shuffled after her and hooked a horticultural implement of a hand around her arm. The woman sniffed back her tears, and drew the shawl around her body, which was heavy and useful like a sack of potatoes. Only the eyes lived in her face.

She faced Blunt and spoke bitterly in rapid French. He tried to slow her down with gestures which she interpreted as signs of denial, and so she poured it on. He looked helplessly at the adjutant, who was eating; then at Woolley, who was cleaning his ears with a matchstick; and turned back.
“Pas bon, pas bon?”
he told her, smiling miserably.
“Je ne comprends pas.”
It sounded feeble.

She stared, and said something that might have been a question or a rejection.

“Parlez plus lentement, s'il vous plaît, madame,”
he said.
“Très, très lentement.”

“He is asking her how much her daughter charges,” Lambert said in a stage whisper.

She took Blunt's arm and spoke urgently. She pointed to the window. She spoke again, led him to the window and pointed. The old man went with her and stayed there, peering through the dirty panes, scrabbling absently for something to hold on to.

“Un moment, s'il vous plaît,”
Blunt said.
“C'est très difficile.”

“Now he is asking how much
she
costs,” Lambert said. Several pilots laughed. Blunt went toward the adjutant. “I'm not at all sure, sir,” he said. “It sounds as if something has died.”

“It can't be the old man,” Kimberley said. “I just saw him move.”

Woolley said something to a steward. The man went out. Woolley continued his ear-cleaning.

“Send them to the police, for God's sake,” Dickinson said. “What do they expect us to do?”

“It does seem odd,” Blunt said. He went back.
“Je ne comprends pas, madame. Expliquez-vous encore, s'îl vous plaît.”

She looked from Blunt to Dickinson, who was peeling an apple. She began to cry. Through her tears she repeated her previous words, only with more anguish and entreaty.

“She's cutting her prices,” Lambert said. “I knew she would.”

“Mais nous ne sommes pas la police,”
Blunt told her awkwardly.
“C'est dommage, mais
…” He paused. “Damn and blast. What's French for ‘Why don't you?'” Nobody had any suggestions.
“Peut-être les gendarmes
…” he began.

Then the woman surprised them all. She pointed downward with both hands, shook them violently, and made the sound of a machine gun.

“Good God,” said Rogers. He was quite startled.

Woodruffe stared at her trembling hands and face. He swallowed uncomfortably. “Don't just stand there,” he said, “find out what the hell she means, say something.” He put down his knife and fork.

“Uh … madame
…” Blunt thought desperately.
“Je regrette …”
She snorted. “…
que … que tout ce que vous … er … disez n'est pas clair.”