Piece of Cake (77 page)

Macfarlane was twisting his neck to look behind him the instant his wheels were up. CH3 had startled him, frightened him, made him realize that almost everything he had put his trust in was false. Macfarlane had joined the RAF confident that British was best and life in a fighter squadron would be merry and bright, rather like being in the school rugby team the year they won every match, only a damn sight more exciting, of course, with plenty of bloody good scraps and a sporting chance of going out in a burst of glory, which didn't worry him too much because who wanted to live forever anyway? What bothered him now, as CH3 led the flight eastward, climbing hard, was this horrible fear of being jumped and killed, bang, dead, all over before he knew it. Everyone expected to be attacked, that was reasonable, but somehow Macfarlane had imagined he'd always get a chance: someone would shout a warning on the R/T, or … Or something. But it wasn't like that at all. The sky was huge and full of risk. A speck of dirt on your windscreen could turn into an enemy fighter in the time it took to look round and back again. A little smear on your goggles might hide the plane that was coming in to kill you.

Macfarlane searched. He quartered the sky and examined it section by section, stretching his neck to look from extreme left
rear to extreme right rear, with no reward at the end except to start again. What made it wearying was the utter absence of anything to look at. His eyes were laboring to focus on an object that wasn't there, and they tired of this thankless drudgery, until Macfarlane caught himself slacking and sudden fright drove him back to hunt the enemy who, given just such a moment of slackness, could kill him dead.

The patrol lasted an hour and a half. The raid they were scrambled to intercept turned back; they were then vectored up and down Kent in search of another raid that also disappeared; finally, as they were running short of fuel, they saw a couple of high flying Dorniers and watched them go. The flight landed without having fired a shot. Macfarlane was so tired that he just sat in his cockpit and let everything relax: body, mind, emotions.

The pedals twitched under his boots and he jerked awake. It was CH3, shaking the rudder. “Bloody dull, wasn't it?” CH3 said. “Sorry about that. Never mind, it's only seven o'clock. Plenty of time for business to pick up.” Macfarlane felt slightly sick.

The two sergeant-pilots flew in while the squadron was having breakfast. Their names were Verrier and Brook. Barton allocated one to each flight. As reservists they had accumulated a lot of flying time but this was their first operational posting. Barton told them to stick to their section leader like glue, keep their eyes open, learn fast and do nothing stupid. “I don't care if you don't fire your guns for a week,” he said. “Just survive.” They nodded, but he had a feeling they didn't fully understand.

The sun was up and the sky had cleared. Skylarks sang high above the fields around the aerodrome, and swifts and swallows rocketed over the grass, showing off their split-ass turns. When the pilots came out there was a butterfly resting on the brightly striped canvas of a deckchair. “Get off,” Cattermole ordered. It raised and lowered its brilliant wings, drying them in the sun. “You are trespassing on Air Ministry property,” Cattermole said. “I can have you shot for that.” The butterfly waved its antennae, fine as gold thread. “Please yourself,” Cattermole said, and sat on it. When Cox protested, he said: “It was a German butterfly. I expect it landed by U-boat during the night. You should be grateful.
Given half a chance, it would have ripped your throat out. They starve them for days on end, you know. I remember—”

“Okay, settle down,” Barton said.

“Rip your throat out
and
kick your teeth in,” Cattermole whispered to Cox.

“R/T procedure,” Barton announced.

“Ever counted their feet?” Cattermole hissed.

“Moggy, shut up,” Barton said. “I want to make sure everyone understands and follows the same R/T procedure, otherwise we'll end up in the clag.”

Flash Gordon raised his hand. Barton nodded. “I've been thinking,” Flash said seriously. “The average human adult contains eleven pints of blood. I mean, I know that for a fact. Eleven pints.”

“Seems reasonable. Now the jargon—”

“Yes, but the thing is, Fanny, if you clobber an Me-110 it's got a crew of two, so that's twenty-two pints of blood, isn't it? Double.”

“No doubt about it.”

Flash's eyes were bright, and he leaned forward in his chair. “Twenty-two pints,” he said, “is over two-and-a-half gallons. That's a lot of blood, Fanny.”

“It certainly is.”

Flash sat back, looking satisfied. “I thought it was worth mentioning, that's all. I mean, some of the other chaps might not have realized …” He smiled at Verrier. “Would you have guessed two-and-a-half gallons?” Verrier shook his head.

“Save it, Flash,” Flip Moran said.

“And it's hot, too,” Flash told him. “It steams when it comes out. I've seen it steam. You get a lot of steam off two-and-a-half gallons.”

“Jargon,” Barton said loudly. “Make sure you know it. Speed jargon: liner, buster, gate. Liner means cruising speed, save your fuel. Buster means maximum normal speed. Gate means you pull the tit and put the throttle through the emergency gate. Liner, buster, gate. Don't forget. Next—”

The scramble klaxon began its bray.

It was “B” flight's turn. They were up for an hour. Nothing.

Snowball found three raids for them, one off Beachy Head and two between Tonbridge and Maidstone, but the plots all faded and were lost. The sun was climbing, and by the time the flight returned
to base Flip Moran's eyes felt bruised and sticky. “Jesus,” he said to Barton, “I wish Ops wouldn't do that. Either Jerry was there and we didn't see him, or he wasn't and we did all that for nothing.”

“How was …” Barton had to search for the name. “Villiers.”

“Verrier. He was okay. Bit clumsy with his throttle, kept jumping backward and forward. Flash acted peculiar.”

“Yes? how?”

“He began flying inverted. Fitz asked him what he was up to. He said he was having a bit of a rest. He said Jerry couldn't see him, not with his blue side up, he was invisible.”

“Flash is getting worse. I'm having a trick-cyclist look at him.”

Moran's heavy face, with its black bar of a mustache, stiffened. “And what good d'you think that will do?” he asked. The question answered itself by its own suppressed anger.

Oh Christ
, Barton thought,
here we go again. “
It'll give us a specialist medical opinion,” he said, and although he meant to speak calmly the words came out too fast, a parry to Moran's thrust.

“You can be a damned idiot sometimes, Fanny.” Moran waited while a Hurricane taxied past, bouncing jauntily on its widespread undercarriage. “What is this fellah going to say? Flash is sane? Where does that take you? Or Flash is mad? We know that already. D'you think you can make him sane by chopping him? Or what?”

“How the blazes do I know what he's going to say?” Barton looked away, trying to force his irritation to subside. “Anyway, I don't see why you have to be so bloody awkward about it.”

“Flash is in my flight. I'm his flight commander.”

“And I'm in charge of the squadron.”

“So I've been told.”

“Have you? Good. Because it's more than a report, it's a fact. If you can't live with it—”

“Me? I can live with anything. I lived with the Ram, I lived with Rex, I've got the scars to prove it. I got the scars, you got the stripes.”

“You want a squadron, is that it?” Barton had to shout because another Hurricane was taxiing by, but he wanted to shout anyway. “Then why don't you bloody well say so?”

“What? And deprive you of the pleasure of giving me orders? Don't be so stupid.”

Barton stopped and watched Moran walk on. Part of him was furious but another part felt deeply sorry for the man. They both knew that Moran would make a lousy squadron commander. His self-pity was a new and unattractive measure of this. And by showing self-pity he had isolated himself even more. Barton had an impulse to go after him and say something to make good, rebuild Moran's confidence, assure him that he was an excellent flight commander (which he was), that this bickering was stupid. He called: “Hey, Flip!” Maybe the roar of the Hurricane was still too loud. Maybe not. Moran didn't respond, and Barton wasn't prepared to ask twice. Instead, he sought out CH3.

“If you were me,” Barton said, “what would you do?”

CH3 sat on his heels and worried about it. “Flip doesn't really give a damn about Flash seeing this doctor,” he said. “He's just using it to needle you.”

“But why? What did I ever do to Flip?”

“Dunno. You want me to ask him?”

The honest answer was yes. “No, I can handle it,” Barton said, and walked away. Discussing one flight commander with another made him feel uncomfortable. He couldn't afford to create even the impression of favoritism. So now Moran's sourness had made him keep his distance from CH3. Barton felt victimized.

The day became hot, with a breeze so slight that it scarcely moved the windsock. Before noon all the deckchairs had been shifted into the shade of some apple-trees beside the crewroom. There was a faint but constant clatter of reapers and binders in the nearby fields, and horsedrawn wagons rumbled along a lane beyond the perimeter wire. Grasshoppers chirped. The sky was a clear, cornflower-blue overhead, shading to a dusty white at the shimmering horizon. It looked like the start of a long, settled spell.

Half the pilots were playing cricket, using Flash Gordon's wonky bat and a split tennis ball. The others were dozing in armchairs.

Cox adjusted a cushion.

“By the way, Pip,” he said, “I'm moving in with you tonight, so wash your feet, will you?”

“What's happening to Haddy?”

“He's sharing with Zab. The adj has arranged it all, thank God.
Very boring, living with a bloke who keeps on saying ‘Is cock-up.'”

“Does Zab really wear silk stockings?” Macfarlane asked. “And a hairnet?”

Cox nodded. “According to Skull it's not uncommon in Poland. He said some men even use scent and lipstick.”

Groans of disgust and revulsion. “What a lot of fairies!” Macfarlane said. “We don't want them on our side, do we?”

“Steady on, young Bing,” Cattermole said gently. His eyes were closed and his arms dangled to the grass. “I happen to know that Steele-Stebbing wears camiknickers and plucks his eyebrows.”

“Balls!” Macfarlane said.

Steele-Stebbing was reading the
Daily Telegraph
. He raised it another inch or so.

“Perhaps,” Cattermole said. “One must give Steele-Stebbing the benefit of the doubt in that area. What is quite certain is that he applies just the merest touch of rouge to his nipples.”

The
Daily Telegraph
rustled as Steele-Stebbing tightened his grip.

Patterson said: “What a wonderful father you'll make, Moggy. Cold and hard outside, but underneath it all a heart of pure lead.”

“Father?” Cox said. “Have you ruined some popsy, Mog?”

“Legions,” Cattermole told him, and stretched. “Myriads. Armies of the dear things. I impregnated half the womanhood of France, and I try to bring a little bliss to the local ladies as often as my professional commitments allow. Speaking of regularity …” He levered himself up. “If anyone wants me, I shall be in the library.” He strolled past Steele-Stebbing, snatched his newspaper and set off for the portable lavatory, reading the headlines aloud. Steele-Stebbing leaned back and shut his eyes, but his hands were fists.

It was twenty minutes before Cattermole came out. By then, Steele-Stebbing had gone for a walk. Patterson watched Cattermole drop into a deckchair and sigh with satisfaction. “You really are a shit, aren't you?” Patterson said.

“I don't know what makes you say that, Pip. You and I are old pals. We flew under the same bridge, remember?”

“I never flew under the sodding thing,” Patterson muttered. “That's on your conscience; not mine.”

“What bridge?” Cox asked sharply. “Are you talking about old … What the hell was his name?”

“Dicky Starr,” Patterson mumbled. “Poor bastard.”

“Why, what happened?” Macfarlane asked. But none of them answered, and when he looked at Cattermole, Cattermole stared back.

Lunch came: sausage and mash, with rice pudding. Sector Ops. called up in the middle of lunch and White Section—Cox and Macfarlane—got sent off, only to be recalled before they were out of sight. They landed and sat down again, but Macfarlane could not eat. His ears were straining to hear the faint preliminary click of the Tannoy, or the first ting of the telephone. If someone tapped a plate with a knife, he jumped.

Fanny Barton got a fresh mug of tea and took Flip Moran aside. “I don't know why I'm drinking this,” he said. “I'll be bursting in half an hour if we have to go up.”

“Then don't drink the bloody stuff.”

“Thanks very much.” Barton chucked it away. “You're a great help, Flip. I don't need to piss all over myself. You're always ready to do it for me.” That was supposed to be a light remark, humorous even, something to ease the tension; but when Barton heard the words they sounded more like a complaint. Moran said nothing. “What I mean is, we've got to work together,” Barton explained, or tried to explain. “If I'm doing something wrong, for God's sake tell me.”

“Waste of time.”

“Try.”

Moran heaved a deep breath. “Very well. I didn't ask for this sprog sergeant you've dumped on me. I don't want him. He's bloody useless.”

Barton was taken aback. “Wait a minute. Verrier's no worse than Brook.” Moran looked away. “I don't get it, Flip,” Barton said. “What d'you want me to do?”