Goshawk Squadron (21 page)

Woolley chased him to the nearest bomb-crater. A
shattered drain half-filled the hole with lumpy, scummy water. Woolley ordered him into it. When he hesitated Woolley fired. The rest of the squadron watched and heard Woolley cursing, kicking clods down on Callaghan, shooting into the water. They heard Callaghan splashing and collapsing in the quagmire of his own making.

“This is how those poor sods live!” Woolley bellowed. “This is what they get from asshole to breakfast. Get your head
down!”
He aimed across the water. The air split, smoke and flame grew, the bullet slammed into the crater wall and sprayed Callaghan with mud. Callaghan was now utterly terrified. He hurled himself away and tried to climb out. He gibbered and choked over an appeal for mercy. “Get your head
down!”
Woolley shouted. Again the revolver exploded, again Callaghan staggered away from the spurt of dirt. He retreated to the deepest part and stood up to the chest in filth, weeping.

“I want to hear you swear,” Woolley demanded. “Swear!”

“Bugger,” said Callaghan pitifully. “Bugger, bugger.”

Woolley fired into the muck, sewage spattered over Callaghan's face. “You piece of shit,” Woolley said. “You couldn't fight a retired German whore. Swear, swear!”

“Shit,” croaked Callaghan. “Shit, piss, oh my God, oh Christ, bugger, bugger, oh please, fuck, sod, fuck, oh please sir, fuck.”

“This is where you live now,” Woolley said. “You stay in there or I'll shoot you.” He walked away.

After ten minutes, Callaghan peered wretchedly over the rim of the crater. Woolley, sitting on a box thirty yards away, took a snap shot at him. The bullet went high. Killion heard it as he hurried down the road to see Jane Ashton. It was his birthday, and he had had enough of war for today.

Killion had arranged to meet Jane Ashton outside the Chavigny canteen. It was a big place and he waited for twenty minutes while girls came and went. After the dozenth girl Killion began to be afraid that he would not recognize her; but when she came out, even with a single dimmed-out light bulb behind her head, she was so much more than his memories of her.

Jane Ashton was a slim girl, with short, soft hair curling around a face so pleasant that people automatically smiled when they met her. Yet her eyes were serious, even speculative. You might wish to help her but you wouldn't think of advising her; and usually she needed no help, either. There was a delicacy about her which dominated Killion, and a womanliness which sent the blood pumping to his head. She made him nervous and reckless at the same time. So had every other beautiful girl, of course; but Jane Ashton was now not only the first beautiful girl Killion had kissed good night, she was the first to kiss him in return, and kiss him as if she had a great deal to give as well as take. Even now the shock trembled him, and when she put her arm in his he was afraid to speak.

“That was an awful day,” she said. “How are you?” “I'm twenty.”

“I'm twenty, too.”

“There must be a joke about that, but I've forgotten it.” She laughed, and he felt proud because he hadn't stuttered. “I should have brought you a present,” she said.

“You have.” Killion was amazed at his own sophistication: it worked, it worked. They walked toward the village while he struggled to contain and enjoy his feelings. “Would you like to eat at the same place?” he asked, taking no risks.

“Yes. Did you have a good birthday?”

“Good and bad. Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Can I see you tomorrow?” That sounded jerky, unsure, not at all sophisticated.

“We should wait until tomorrow,” she said; but it was a suggestion, not a statement. Their feet stumbled on the cobbles, and she gripped his arm. “It's simply asking for trouble,” she said. “We'd only be storing up grief for ourselves.”

“I know. But can I?”

“I may have to work.”

“The next day, then?”

“God … I was going to lead a quiet life. I gave up men after the last time.”

“Give up giving up.”

“We mustn't start … we mustn't get …”

“No. But can I see you tomorrow?”

“Oh, why? It's pointless. Anything could happen at any time. It's silly.” He said nothing. “Besides, I have to wash my hair.”

He wanted to speak, to say anything so as not to seem sullen or graceless, but there was nothing; and they went into the restaurant stiffly, not looking at each other. When they were holding menus she looked away. “You should have asked me later. It's been a rotten day, you see.”

“I just had to know.”

“What if you got posted?”

Killion looked in the menu for an answer and was saved by
the arrival of the waiter. He ordered a lot of food and a lot of wine.

“I see you're trying to guarantee results,” she said, but lightly.

During the meal they talked about England, mainly London where they had both lived. They exchanged experiences and enthusiasms. She drank a lot of wine for a small girl, and enjoyed it. They were at the brandy stage when she said; “You know, you got all that sex psychology wrong, before.”

“Nonsense. You're repressed, that's all.”

“Not half as repressed as you are. You see sex behind everything, and so you imagine that everything has sex behind it.”

The French couple at the next table heard the scurrilous word and stared reproachfully at this affront to their palates.

“It's a good rule-of-thumb,” Killion said loftily.

“Only because it's
your
thumb,” she replied. He blinked with surprise. She took his hand and squeezed the thumb. “Look, if I were hungry, I mean
really
hungry, starving. I would look for food everywhere, wouldn't I? So everything I saw would be in terms of food. If I saw this candle it would remind me of a carrot. Well, that's what you're like. You're hungry, and you see everything in terms of food. Well, there is a lot of food about, but once you start trying to live in a world of nothing but food, you're going wrong.”

“It's a nice mistake, though,” Killion said wittily.

“No, it's
not”
She surprised him by her intensity. “You can't see it now, because you can't. But when you see it like that you don't just distort the world, you distort
yourself.
Don't you understand? You're trying to see more than exists, and so you're
squinting.”

He refused to look at her. “Nice speech.”

“Oh, don't sulk. I can't like you when you're so childish and … heavy.” He blinked at the words
like you.

“How do you know so much about it anyway?” he mumbled.

She took her hand away. “I'm tired of men who look at me as if I were a fillet steak, that's all.”

He took her home to the cottage near the canteen. He was intensely miserable and, hidden by the darkness, tried to apologize. His stutter resisted him. “I'm s-sorry.” He held both her hands in his and looked down at the pale blur of her face. He felt tears, stupid, pointless, treacherous tears. “I can't help b-b-b-being the w-w-way I am.” He gave up in disgust. Her fingers tightened around his own, harder and harder, pulling him down. Briefly he refused, not wishing her to know about the tears, and then they kissed. Her mouth was searching for him, and giving to him. Killion's head surged: girls weren't like this; she had seemed not to want to … She had said … He gave up. Her arms slipped inside his tunic and encircled his thin body. Relax and enjoy your problem, he told himself.

After a while she let go of him and buttoned his tunic. “You can't come in,” she said.

“Why not?” He was all courage again.

“Because it would be a waste of time, for medical reasons.” She straightened his invisible tie. “Or didn't you get that far in your anatomy lessons?”

“Oh,” he said. “That.” Killion was both elated and deflated.

“Come tomorrow, if you still want to.”

“Yes. Good.”

“It will all end in tears,” she said, and went inside.

“Church must have had very small feet,” Lambert said. “His socks don't seem to keep me warm at all.”

“He wore eights,” Kimberley said. “I hope you had them washed first. You know what Church was like.”

“It's the worst thing about flying,” Lambert said. “Cold feet. I'd sooner be too warm than too cold.”

Dickinson said: “I knew a pilot who had cold feet one minute and was extremely hot indeed the next.”

“Who was that?” Callaghan asked, interested.

“Pay no heed to him,” Lambert told Callaghan. “Dicky's remarks are in the worst possible taste.”

They were all in a room near the adjutant's office, waiting for Woolley to get off the phone to Corps HQ and tell them where the day's flying would be. It was only 7:30
AM
, and still dark.

“I wonder
why
people get cold feet,” Killion remarked. “From a medical point of view, that is. At a time of crisis, you'd think the body would try even harder.”

“In a crisis, the body just panics,” said Rogers. Like everyone except Callaghan and Gabriel, he was sipping whisky with his coffee. “The bowels, in particular, behave with childish irresponsibility.”

“Please,” protested Dickinson.

“Well, so they do. And it's such a nuisance. Especially when everything freezes.”

Callaghan tittered. He was still trying to establish himself after the siege in the flooded crater. “I can't think of anything
worse,”
he murmured.

Lambert pulled hard on his socks, failing to stretch them. “I can,” he said.

Woolley opened the door and stamped in. His teeth were clenched against the cold, and his sleeves were pulled down over his knuckles. He stood for a moment, frowning, his head nodding, not looking at anyone. “Shit,” he grunted. He went out.

There was a pause; then Finlayson said: “That could mean almost anything, couldn't it?”

Dangerfield leaned across and whispered, with the grotesque drama of an elderly gossip: “I think he wants to be
friends,
you know.
Deep
down. He just can't bring himself to
say
it.”

Woolley came back with a wooden model of a biplane. He put it on a table where they could see it. “Somebody has started using his brains,” he said. The model looked like a stretched-out SE5a, only smoother and cleaner. “The engine generates 160 horse-power, so the speed, ceiling and rate-of-climb are all good. Top speed is about 120, ceiling is over 22,000, and I don't know the other, but you can guess.”

Woolley pointed at the wings. “Thick wings. The controls still answer at high altitudes. Very strong construction. You could dive it hard and the wings won't come off. Sensitive. Easy to turn. Might be too easy if the pilot wasn't careful. Plenty of wallop; two machine guns mounted on the engine and firing through the prop. Big prop, too.”

Rogers leaned forward and licked his lips. “What a darling creature,” he said softly.

Finlayson made a scornful show of lighting a cigarette, so that everyone looked. “It's a nice
model,”
he said, “if you like
models.
Personally I'd sooner fly what we have, even if they are slow, tired and sick of the palsy.” His hand was shaking.

“Well, bully for you,” said Woolley flatly.

“I do like that tapered wing,” Rogers said. “Do you think we might get these, sir? What are they?”

Woolley took a bacon sandwich out of his tunic pocket. “The enemy calls them Fokker D VIIs,” he said. “If you try hard you might get one this morning.”

“Oh my Christ,” said Lambert. “Now they have something better than Triplanes.” He looked sick.

“I don't fancy arguing with one of those,” Kimberley said. “That's a wicked-looking bastard, that is.”

“Isn't there any chance of our getting better planes, sir?” Rogers asked. “Couldn't we get Camels, or Bristols?”

“I expect so.” Woolley champed on his sandwich. “I haven't asked for any, and they haven't sent them.” He discovered a piece of bone in his bacon and spat it out. The pilots were looking at him with a mixture of dread and shock.

“But sir—”

“The SE5a is the best gun-platform made. It's rock-steady. It won't dip, or wobble, or swing, or scratch its ass when you tell it to keep still. I want two things from an airplane: I want it to fly me up to the enemy, and then lie still while I shoot the enemy down.”

“It's too slow, sir,” Richards said quietly. “It's too slow, and it won't fly as high as we need to go. The enemy can get on top of us. In a Camel—”

“Get there first,” Woolley said, “and catch them coming up. I'm not changing planes.”