Piece of Cake (47 page)

“What did you do?” Cattermole stretched out on the bed.

“Well, it's funny but I can't remember.”

“Nothing? Not even the old tin jerry?”

“That rings a bell.” Stickwell leaned on the bedrail. “Did I take it with me?”

“The general opinion in the mess is you went off and bombed Luxembourg with it.”

Stickwell laughed and hurt his lip, but it was worth it.

“Not Luxembourg,” he said. “I went somewhere else. Lots of colored lights. Awfully pretty.”

“Zurich, probably. Anyway, the chaps told me to tell you to hurry up and get better. You're needed at Flash Gordon's wedding.”

“Good old Flash.”

Cattermole lifted a bottle of medicine from the bedside table and sniffed its contents. “I didn't know whether you wanted to contribute to his wedding present, Sticky, but anyway I chipped in a couple of hundred francs for you … What's this stuff?”

“Oh, just some magic mixture. Of course I want to …” Stickwell searched through his pockets and gave Cattermole three hundred francs. “Is that enough?”

“What on earth does it do?” Cattermole took a sip.

“Dunno. Bucks you up, I suppose.”

“One teaspoonful three times a day …” He took a long swig, and rolled his eyes. “Christ! You shouldn't be taking this, Sticky. It's got a kick like an elephant-gun.”

Stickwell found that enormously amusing. He laughed so much that he had to sit down. “Funny you should say that, Moggy. I've just remembered something.” He felt blood dribble down his chin, and he sucked his lip. “I know this happened. It's as clear as day, honestly. There was this row of German planes, all lined up, and
I went along the row and hit them all. Blasted the lot. All blown up. I did it. I really did.”

“Good show.” Cattermole drank more medicine.

“I was tremendously angry, you see. You've never seen me when I'm really angry, have you, Moggy?”

“I nearly forgot: I had the Buick serviced for you. Here's the bill. Those brakes were in a very bad way, you know. You could have killed yourself.”

Stickwell took the bill without looking at it. “I just realized, Moggy. That makes me an ace, doesn't it? You only need five, and I must have knocked out six or seven. So I'm an ace now.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Cattermole finished off the medicine. “You're a royal flush, Sticky. I've always said so. You want to stay off this stuff, old boy, it's pure poison. Now then.” He got off the bed and lobbed the bottle at a waste bin, but missed. “Anything I can do for you? Grapes? Knitting? Lascivious ladies?”

“I wouldn't mind some decent beer.”

“You shall have a crate of it. Cheerio, Sticky. Make sure you come back to say goodbye. The squadron won't be the same without you.”

When he had gone, Stickwell tried to work out what he had meant by that, and came to the conclusion that Cattermole must have been posted.
What rotten luck
, he thought.

CH3 flew every day that the weather allowed, which in this appalling month meant no more than three or four times a week. He wore every piece of clothing he could get on: long underwear, three pairs of socks, three shirts, two sweaters, his fleece-lined jacket, a silk scarf, a woolen muffler. At ground level the air was so crisp that it stung the nostrils and the throat. At ten thousand feet the cold struck like a deathwish. At fifteen thousand he shivered so violently that his boots kept jumping on the rudder-pedals. Despite three sets of gloves—silk, wool, leather—his fingers were achingly cold. If he went up to twenty thousand the cold became more than painful: it drained the strength he needed in order to concentrate. Half an hour's patrolling at twenty thousand feet left him drowsy with fatigue, grudging the effort it cost to move his head an inch either way. Nevertheless he always made the effort, turned his heavy head more than an inch, searched the treacherous
sky. There was never anything to see except the white blaze of the sun.

One day, when he landed, Rex was waiting at dispersal.

“I'm about to do something very unwise, CH3,” Rex said as they walked toward the crewroom. “I'm about to place myself at your mercy, up to a point.”

“Yes?” CH3 heaved his parachute onto the other shoulder. “You mean, you want to do a deal.”

Rex smiled. “You're not very trusting.”

“No. Trusting others has proved unhealthy. The ones I trusted are all dead.”

“In that case you understand the limitations of power. I, of course, have very little actual power. You know, CH3, leadership is a confidence trick. You have to persuade men that you can do absolutely anything, otherwise they lose confidence in you and instead of following eagerly into the jaws of death they begin wondering whether perhaps they should go to the lavatory instead.”

“You want my advice? Always go to the lavatory. Then if you can't avoid the jaws of death, at least you're comfortable.”

“I'm sure you're right. You see, the point I'm making is that I can't do just what I want, so I certainly can't do just what
you
want. On the other hand, if the chaps start believing that all I can do is say no, then the squadron spirit suffers.”

“So say yes more often.”

“In other words, do what you want.”

“Yes.”

“Change the formation, change the tactics, change the gunnery, change the kites, change everything.”

“Yes.”

“You might as well say change the commanding officer.”

“Why? You do a good enough job in other respects. They like you, they respect you.”

“Nice of you to say so. But that's the point, isn't it? They respect me precisely because I take command. How much respect d'you think I'd get if I followed every bit of tuppeny-hapenny advice I got from every pilot officer on the station?”

“Especially an American.”

“That certainly doesn't help, I agree. The fact is, CH3, you're being damned unfair. You're exploiting your peculiar status here,
taking advantage of the fact that you have special privileges, and doing your best to make my position thoroughly awkward.”

“That's not my intention.”

“Oh, bosh! You know perfectly well that we started off on the wrong foot, and ever since then you've been taking potshots at me.”

“And you at me.”

“AH right! For God's sake, if it makes you any happier I'll apologize.” They had reached the cluster of hangars and huts, but instead of going inside, Rex stopped. “Look: I'm human enough to like being liked. How about a truce? Nobody wins but nobody loses, and we all start afresh. For the good of the squadron.” He offered his hand.

“That's a cute speech,” CH3 said, “but a lousy deal.”

Rex dropped his hand. “Oh well. I didn't really expect you to agree so easily … Come on, I've something to show you.”

He took CH3 into a hangar.

“You don't imagine that I think wooden propellers and canvas wings are the last word in aviation, do you?” he said. “It's taken me three months' hard wangling to get this crate.”

It was a new Hurricane. It had metal wings and a three-bladed metal propeller.

CH3 walked around it, slowly. He let his hand drift over the immaculately smooth skin. He swung up onto the wingroot, glanced into the cockpit, jumped down, ducked between the wheels and examined the airscrew. “Are we all going to get these?” he asked.

“Eventually. This one's yours.”

CH3 gave a snort of surprise. He turned to look at the Hurricane again, and prodded a tire with his toe.

“All new tires,” Rex said. “I'll even throw in a free tank of petrol.”

“Why me? I thought the best plane always went to the CO.”

“Call it a gesture of goodwill. You see, I've been around long enough to know that nobody ever gets everything he wants. I don't, you don't. It's important to recognize that fact. I often think one of the differences between your country and mine is in our attitude to compromise. I honestly and sincerely believe that compromise can be an honorable solution. In this case, for the good of the squadron, I'm fully prepared to compromise.”

CH3 stood facing him, with his head resting against the leading edge of the wing. “And you want me to accept the honorable solution too.”

“I want to stop all this bickering and get on with the job, which is far bigger than both of us.”

“Or, putting it another way: I can have this new Hurricane provided I keep my mouth shut.”

Rex put his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. The hangar was bleak, chilling, deserted. “I don't make deals, CH3,” he said gently. “I simply do my best, and hope that other people will do the same. The Hurricane is yours.”

“Fine. Let me tell you where I stand. My idea of an honorable solution is winning. I want every possible advantage I can get—fair, unfair or downright deplorable. I've never yet met an enemy pilot who was willing to compromise, and neither am I.”

Rex went to the door and looked at the sky. “And loyalty?” he said. “Decency, fair play, unselfishness? All the things we're fighting for?”

“Fighting
for
, yes,” CH3 said. “Fighting
with
, no.”

Rex walked away. He found his car and drove back to the château.

The adjutant met him on the stairs, and said: “Any luck?”

“I tried to make him feel like a cad,” Rex said, going up. “I don't think he knows the meaning of the word.”

CH3 got hold of his groundcrew and had the Hurricane rolled out and started up. The engine snarled happily to itself, like a dog guarding a new bone. When he released the brakes, the fighter bustled eagerly around the perimeter. The propeller blades were set at fine pitch, which meant that they cut the air more easily, and during takeoff he could be generous with the throttle. At something over half the normal distance the plane came unstuck from the ground. Even flying cautiously, he was at fifty feet when he would usually have been at ten.

He did a climbing circuit to test the controls, and then changed the pitch to coarse. The effect was remarkable. It was like changing gear in a car. As the blades bit more deeply into the air, the whole performance of the Hurricane improved without any greater effort by the engine. It flew faster, it climbed more easily, it maneuvered
more readily. CH3 took it up to twelve thousand and threw it about the sky. The wings felt splendidly sturdy. They did everything he asked of them, so he asked more and still more, until he was flinging the Hurricane into violent banks and turns that would have brought creaks and tremors of complaint from his fabric-covered machine. This new plane seemed to enjoy that sort of treatment. It still wasn't a Spitfire, but it had something even the Spitfire lacked: an enormous sense of solidity; a reassuring reservoir of strength. He had the feeling that you could treat this Hurricane very badly indeed and it would always forgive you.

He came down in a long, lazy spiral and shifted the propeller to fine pitch. The Hurricane ghosted over the barbed wire, picked its spot, leaned backward and flared its wings, and settled sweetly on all three points.

“To tell the truth, Fitz, I still don't remember an awful lot about it,” Stickwell said. “All I know for sure is I popped over to Hunland and got mixed up in a terrific scrap.”

“Well, you're looking much better.”

They were sitting on his bed in the hospital, eating dates that Fitzgerald had brought.

“Yes, I feel tremendously better. I'm a different man now, Fitz.”

“That black eye's almost gone.”

“It was like going solo. Nobody can do it for you, can they? And afterward … Everything's altered, hasn't it?”

“Jolly good.” Fitz spat out a date-stone and lobbed it onto the top of the wardrobe.

“The way I look at it, a chap's got to make the most of any experience, because that's what experience is for. Damn good dates.”

“I know what you mean, Sticky. I had an amazing experience quite recently. With a girl.”

“Whoopee.”

“A woman, really. And it's changed me completely. I mean, while it lasted it was … I don't know … very exciting. Very vivid.”

“So was mine, old boy. Colored lights everywhere.”

“It's funny, isn't it? You're really walking on air for a while.”

“Dancing on air, more like it.”

“Yes. And then … All of a sudden it's over. Finished. Just like that. Pooph!”

“Pooph indeed. Also bang-crash.”

“I mean, the whole business was such an eye-opener. Not while it was going on, of course. I thought I knew what mattered at the time, but now I know better. See what I mean?”

“Absolutely,” Stickwell said. “You've put your finger on it.”

Fitzgerald ate the last date. “Nearly forgot,” he said. “I'm collecting for Flash's present. Want to chip in?”

“Yes.” Stickwell blinked. “No, wait a minute. I thought I already did, didn't I?”

“Not so far.”

“I was sure I did.”

“Well, I ought to know, didn't I?”

“What was that I gave Moggy, then?”

“Dunno. When?”

Stickwell concentrated hard. “Damned if I can remember. The old memory's been acting a bit peculiar lately.”

“You're probably getting mixed up with the wreath we got for Dumbo Dutton.”

“Dumbo who?”

“There you are, you see.” Fitzgerald got up. “Anything I can get you? Toothpaste, books?”

“I could do with some decent beer.” Stickwell frowned and looked out of the window. “Decent beer,” he said again, thoughtful.

Suddenly Fitzgerald felt very sorry for him. “It must be rotten, getting chopped,” he said.

“Bloody appalling,” Stickwell agreed. They shook hands. When Fitzgerald had gone, Stickwell began to worry about him. Perhaps he'd got that girl into trouble and Rex was being old-fashioned about it. That seemed unlikely, though. Or maybe Fitz had given the girl the push. Or perhaps
she'd
dropped
him
.