Piece of Cake (84 page)

Brambledown was still smoking from the night's raid. Fire hoses trailed across the roads and craters had been roped off. Hornet squadron taxied past men shoveling earth into holes. One hangar had collapsed on itself and crushed several Spitfires. Telephone wires flopped and dangled. The rumor was that three men had been killed and a couple of Waafs injured.

The morning began quietly. By ten o'clock there had been no scramble, and everyone became quite cheerful. With Zab and Haddy back the squadron was up to strength. Those two were transformed. They mixed, they talked, they made obscure European jokes which might not have been very funny but any sort of joke was better than none when there was time to kill. At the same time, Cattermole seemed to have given up his vendetta against Steele-Stebbing, and Steele-Stebbing himself was remarkably chatty. He'd never played cards but when Quirk organized a pontoon school he watched keenly and soon joined in. He even said “Blast!” when Quirk aced him out. The other players gaped and recoiled.

“I've never heard such language,” Barton said. “What
can
it mean?”

“It means balls and buggeration,” Steele-Stebbing said. “Now deal the sodding cards.”

Skull brought news of Nim Renouf. He was in Ramsgate hospital, alive and conscious. That was all, but it was more than most people had expected, and it further increased the general cheer-fulness. Skull, however, was not popular. In his hearing, Fitzgerald said loudly: “How many Stukas make nine, Moggy?”

“Six!” Cattermole exclaimed. “Get that into your skull, boy. Six Stukas make nine.”

“Sorry, sir. And please, sir: how d'you know when you've shot down a Heinkel, sir?”

“You get a chit from the Jerry pilot, obviously. You are a fool, boy.”

“In triplicate, sir?”

“Of course in triplicate. One for you, one for Berlin, and one for the intelligence officer to wipe his bottom with.”

“And make sure it's got a twopenny stamp on it,” CH3 muttered. Barton nudged him warningly. CH3 grunted, tipped his cap over his eyes and had a snooze. Six or nine, who cared what the records said as long as the Huns had bought it?

At five to eleven “B” flight got scrambled. They came back forty minutes later, gun-ports fluting as they drifted in to land. There were only five planes: Mother Cox had gone down.

“Absolute shambles,” Fitzgerald reported. “Two dozen Dornier 17's had a go at those socking great aerials at Beachy Head. By the time we got there it was too late, they'd dropped their load and they were off home, lickety-split.
And
we were the wrong height.”

“Too low,” Barton said: more a statement than a question.

“Angels five. Should have been seven, or eight! Anyway, we spotted Jerry departing, so we cut the corner and bust a gut and we just about caught him.”

“Not really caught,” Zabarnowski said. “Got close, but …”

“Bloody nippy, those Dorniers,” said Quirk.

“Everybody tore up and blasted away at them,” Fitzgerald said, “and they all blasted away at us, and Mother must have stopped a bullet in the radiator or something because all of a sudden there's glycol coming out of him like spilled milk. He turned back and headed for home. He told us to keep on chasing, so we did, but I don't think we hit anything.”

All in all it had been a thoroughly duff interception: scrambled too late, vectored too low, outpaced, and nothing to show for it but
the loss of the flight commander, who might be anywhere, in the drink, wrapped around a tree, anywhere. Poor show.

Later, Barton asked Quirk what he thought of his first bit of real action.

Quirk swallowed, and cleared his throat.

“Look,” Barton said, “I don't want an official statement from the admiralty. Just tell me.”

Quirk took his hands from, his pockets and raised them. The fingers were trembling. “I can't make them stop,” he said.

“Don't try. If they want to shake, let 'em shake. After a scrap I usually drink my tea through a straw.”

“The funny thing is, I wasn't scared during the scrap. I got a bit twitchy when we made the tally-ho, but later on there was too much to do … Anyway it was all over so quickly. Fifteen seconds of ammo soon goes, doesn't it? I couldn't hit anything. Couldn't get
near
anything. I never realized it was so hard to hit a twinengined bomber. It's impossible. How does anyone do it?”

“You've got to get damn close. A Dornier looks big on the ground. It's not very big in the sky.”

“Well, I reckon we were two or three hundred yards behind that lot and the nearest one looked to me about the size of that sparrow.” Quirk stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “In any case I was always bucketing about in their slipstream, and they were always bouncing up and down like mad, so I never even got one in my sights.”

“I don't suppose the others did either. It's a bit different from firing at the towed target, isn't it?”

Quirk laughed. “It's like riding a merry-go-round and trying to swat flies.”

“In a gale,” Barton said, “with a crowd of maniacs shooting at you.”

“And a very wet left leg,” Quirk said.

“Ah. Welcome to the club. Remember: if you see a fighter pilot walking lopsided it's because one leg has shrunk in the wash.”

When they sat down to lunch there was a huge blow-up of the group photograph pinned to the wall. It was the first picture, the one taken just as the police corporal fired his revolver. Everyone was chest-on to the camera but the heads had swiveled and no faces could be seen. They found it very amusing.

“This proves something I always suspected about the British,” Haducek said. “They certainly have their heads screwed on, but unfortunately they are pointing the wrong way.”

“Personally, I think it's brilliant,” Macfarlane said. “You can't tell who's who, so it'll never wear out, will it? What we've got is the first permanent, everlasting squadron. Brilliant.”

“What was happening here?” Zabarnowski asked.

Flash Gordon began a rambling explanation. CH3 murmured to Barton: “Their English has made a startling improvement, hasn't it?”

“Not really. I knew they were pretty fluent when they arrived, that's why they were sent here. They were just being bloody-minded. Now, are you going to reveal what this peculiar snapshot is all about?”

CH3 banged a spoon on the table. “Take a good look,” he said to them. “There's something special about this picture.”

“Moggy's flies are undone,” Patterson said. “But then, they usually are.”

“Colossal pressure on them,” Cattermole said. “No wonder the buttons pop.”

“Look at the heads,” CH3 said. “Nearly everybody turned his head to the left. Why?”

“Because the bang was on the left?” Quirk suggested.

“No, the bang was in the middle.” He waited, but nobody else spoke. “The fact is, most people, if they want to look behind them, turn to the left. Maybe it's because the right-hand neck muscles are stronger or something, I don't know.”

“Iron Filings turned
his
head to the right,” Barton pointed out.

“I'm left-handed,” Steele-Stebbing said.

“The point of that picture is this,” CH3 said. “When the average pilot suddenly has to look behind him, it's ten to one he'll turn his head to the left. So if you're lucky enough to get on Jerry's tail, the best place to be is not slap behind him but slightly to the right.”

“About five degrees to the right is good, I find,” Haducek said.

Barton said: “You give him a squirt, he looks left, doesn't see you, and that gives you time to give him another squirt. Nice. I like it.”

“There's something else,” CH3 said, and paused.

They all looked at the blow-up on the wall.

“Suppose it's the other way around,” CH3 said. “Now all of a sudden
he's
on
your
tail.”

“Ah, yes!” Zabarnowski said. “Break right. Am I correct?”

“It's up to you, but it's certainly worth thinking about. Most people, when they're jumped, break left, for the same reason most people
look
left, I suppose. So Jerry instinctively expects you to break left too. If you break right, you may just shake him off, or at least it might give you an extra half-second.”

“Very interesting,” Barton said. “Well worth remembering.”

“I happen to know for a fact,” Flash Gordon said, “that all German pilots are left-handed.”

“Bring on the grub,” Barton told a cook.

“The
Luftwaffe
deliberately chose left-handed pilots in order to baffle us,” Gordon explained. “Cunning buggers … Ah! Fish and chips. Wizard prang.” He smiled genially. “Whatever that means.”

During lunch a signal arrived, releasing “B” flight immediately. They were to return to Brambledown to attend Flip Moran's funeral. Fanny made Fitz temporary flight commander and they took off as soon as they had shoveled down their fish and chips.

Fitz worried all the way. He had never been in charge of a funeral. Those he had attended had all produced cock-ups of one sort or another. Above all he was nervous of that ceremonial sword-drill. So he was delighted to find Cox standing talking to the adjutant when he taxied to dispersal. “Hello, Mother!” he shouted. “You okay? You can have your flight back now. What happened?” He climbed down.

“This is a most extraordinary war, Fitz,” Cox said. He was in full flying kit and carrying his parachute. “I managed to glide back and I put her down on a cricket pitch near Eastbourne. Big expensive boys' school, lovely bit of grass, perfect three-pointer, not a scratch. Got out, nobody there. Place was deserted. Not a soul. School holidays, see. So I sniffed around, found a bike, kind of thing the butcher's boy rides, stuffed the parachute in the basket, stooged off. Rode down the hill, guess what: lovely big railway station. Only trouble is, the stupid bloody ticket inspector won't let me on the platform. No ticket, see. No money, of course, so nothing doing. Utter deadlock.”

“You should've clocked him one,” Fitz said.

“Six foot four, chum. Anyway, I explained everything to him
but I don't think he believed it. Thought it was a practical joke. Took a very dim view of me, actually.”

“Bloody fool.”

“Yes, that's what I told him, but he still didn't agree, so I toddled off and found a pawn shop.”

“Hey, that's clever.”

“Thanks. Well, they weren't too keen, they didn't want my watch, it's got ‘RAF property' engraved on the back, so I offered them the parachute but they turned up their noses at that too, and in the end I popped the bicycle.”

“Good show. What did you get for it?”

“A quid.”

“That's not much.”

“Well, it wasn't my bike, was it?”

“Look here, you two,” Kellaway said. “You'd better get cracking.”

“You know, they ought to give us travel vouchers,” Fitz said. “In case we get forced down.”

“They ought to give us lots of things,” Cox said. “Starting with back-pay.”

“I'm doing my best,” Kellaway told him. “You'll get it eventually.”

Cox grunted. “Flip didn't,” he said. Kellaway wisely let that pass.

They went off, got changed into their best blue, and reported to the station chapel. All the stained-glass windows had been blown in by the bombing, and bright sunlight lit up the flag that covered the coffin. A young airman was playing Bach on the organ.

“All right, this is the form,” Cox told his flight softly. “We carry the doings out. Three a side. Me, Zab and Pip on the left, the others on the right. Drive to the cemetery, it's just around the corner, take the doings to the hole, the adj knows where, we follow him. Short service, back here. Okay? Oh … One little thing. There wasn't very much left, so they've put a few sandbags in the box to help sort of pack it out. If you hear things sliding about when we pick it up, don't worry.”

“So we're doing all this just to bury a bit of Southend Sands,” Patterson said wearily. “What a pathetic joke.”

“It's the thought that counts,” Gordon observed.

“Well, I think it stinks.”

Gordon sniffed like a rabbit. “No, you're wrong there,” he said. “That's Quirk's Brylcreem. Totally different pong.”

“Hello hello,” Zabarnowski said. “There are guests. Relatives, maybe?”

The adjutant had arrived with a middleaged civilian couple, evidently man and wife. Cox went over. “This is Mr. and Mrs. Burnett,” Kellaway said. “Next-of-kin. Flight Lieutenant Cox.” They shook hands. The man was wearing a blue suit and carrying a bowler hat; his wife's face was almost invisible behind a gray veil. “Very kind of you to come all this way,” Cox said.

“Only London,” Burnett said. “No distance, really, on the train.” His face was tanned as far as the line of his hat and baby-white above. His grip was hard. There was still plenty of Ulster in his voice.

“Our last chance to pay our respects,” Mrs. Burnett said. Her accent churned the syllables like butter. “Poor dear Maurice,” she said. “A lovely boy.”

Cox was startled. Maurice? It seemed an unsuitable name. Maurice. Good God. Fancy old Flip …

Burnett was speaking. “I hope we got here in time,” he was saying. “So we can have one last glimpse of the dear man before … you know …”

“Ah … well …” Cox glanced sharply at the adjutant.

“It would give Maurice's poor mother such tremendous comfort, I know it would,” Mrs. Burnett said, “if we could tell her we were the last to set eyes on her Maurice, us being his own flesh and blood too, d'ye see.”

“Oh dear,” Kellaway said. “What a shame. What a very great pity. I'm afraid it's too late for that now. I am sorry.”

“'twould only take a couple of minutes,” she said. “His poor dear mother in Ballymena …”