Piece of Cake (92 page)

“The poor dears,” Cattermole said. “We must take up a collection.”

“Bloody controllers,” Gordon said from the door. “They're all Huns.” CH3 turned on him with a raised fist. Gordon dodged back.

“Half the scrambles don't lead to interceptions,” Barton said. “And making an interception doesn't always mean you get a crack at Jerry. That's the luck of the draw. Nothing we can do about that. What we
can
do a hell of a lot about is gunnery.”

He sat and CH3 stood. “This is not a magic death-ray,” he said. He was holding up a Browning salvaged from a wreck. “And these aren't magic bullets.” He raised a belt of ammunition. “You can
hold the enemy in your sights and still miss, for at least five reasons. One is bullet-drop. As soon as it leaves your gun, that bullet starts to fall. The further it goes, the more it falls. Two is bullet-topple. Every bullet wobbles a tiny bit, and the further it goes, the more it wobbles. Three is recoil. Recoil shakes the gun-platform a fraction, and that fraction's worth ten, twenty, thirty feet when the bullet carries a quarter of a mile. Four is deflection which of course you all know about but how many of you think about the
combined effects
of deflection and bullet-drop? If the bastard is not only crossing you but also climbing, it's no damn good aiming ahead of him, you've got to figure out how far ahead
and above
his line-of-flight to put your bullets, on account of they fall faster when you fire upward than when you fire level, right? That was four. Five is harmonization. Harmonize at two hundred yards and the bullet-streams converge at two hundred, and after that they
diverge
and they keep on diverging as if they can't stand the sight of each other, which is good news for the enemy if he happens to be four or five hundred yards away.”

“And
that”
Barton said, “is the range too many of you open fire.”

“Which is why you miss,” CH3 said.

“You saw the film,” Barton said. “Eight hundred yards, in a couple of cases.
Eight hundred!”

“Quite absurd,” Flash Gordon said, looking in through a window.

“Beat it!” CH3 cried.

“None of this is new,” Barton said. “You've all heard it in umpteen lectures ever since you began flying, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in. You've got to get in
close.”

“That's dangerous,” Gordon said doubtfully.

“Don't shoot unless you can read the numbers on the fuselage,” CH3 said. “Better yet, get close enough to count the crew.”

“Count their teeth,” Gordon said. “Like buying a horse.”

“Beat it before I kill you,” CH3 told him.

“And always attack from behind if you can,” Barton said. “Stick your nose up his tailpipe. Don't fart about with fancy deflection shots, leave that to experts like Haddy.”

“This is all a load of cock,” Gordon said. His arms dangled inside the window, his chin rested on the sill and his eyelids drooped
goofily. “What's wrong with the old Area Fighting Attacks, I say? Bloody good fun, they were.”

Fury gripped CH3. It showed in his face: the eyes suddenly widened, the jaws clamped together, the color intensified. Barton saw this and tried to grab his arm but CH3 went out of the hut like a sprinter from his blocks. Gordon had a few yards' start. Giggling with fear, he dodged behind the wheels of a Hurricane. CH3 plunged after him, tripped over the chocks and fell on his face. By the time he was up, spitting out grass and obscenities, Gordon had escaped. CH3 saw him trying to hide behind some deckchairs and went for him. Barton, watching from the doorway, knew that this was no joke: the chase was too savage, the cursing too vicious.

CH3 caught Gordon as he was scrambling up an apple-tree. He seized him by a foot, yanked at it and twisted it as if he wanted to screw it off. Gordon howled with pain and lashed at him with the other foot. CH3 grabbed that too and was clawing his way up Gordon's body when Barton and Cox dragged him off.

As suddenly as the rage began, so it ceased. He stood limp and exhausted, ashamed to look anyone in the face. Eventually he walked slowly away. Barton stayed and said: “That'll teach you not to be such a lunatic, Flash. Come on down.” But Gordon politely refused, and he stayed in the apple-tree until the scramble sounded.

Mary came back again next day. They could see her from dispersal, a small, dark, plump figure standing just beyond the wire. She rarely moved.

The fourth scramble of the day led to a prolonged fight at high level. A squadron of Spitfires had drawn off the escorting 109's just before the Hurricanes arrived. The bombers were Ju-88's, fast, capable of being thrown about like a fighter and apparently tough enough to absorb any number of bullets. Hornet squadron chased them all across Kent. Con-trails unfurled neatly, like endless bandages that soon sprawled and wore thin until the sky seemed littered with discarded dressings. The Hurricanes made hit-and-run attacks until they ran out of ammunition. When they withdrew, a couple of bombers were flying on one engine only and more
fighters were being scrambled, but the raid reached its target, which was Manston, and bombed it.

Barton was talking to his rigger as the last member of “A” flight was coming in to land. The Merlin growled, then picked up with a roar, then sank to a growl again. “Who's that?” he asked.

“Looks like Mr. Phillips, sir.”

Barton dumped his parachute on the wing and strode across the field. “You!” he shouted when Phillips got out. “What's the matter? Tired of life? Ready to end it all?”

Phillips was startled and puzzled. “Sorry?” he said.

“Sorry?
Sorry?”
Barton shouted. Half the squadron had stopped to listen. “You're worse than sorry, Phillips, you're bloody tragic! Why did you open up just now?”

“Open up?” Phillips had been awake since before dawn, had flown four sorties, seen several deaths, been scared speechless more than once. He was very tired, but Barton looked thoroughly angry, so he made an effort to think, and failed. “Don't understand,” he said.

“You opened up. Opened the throttle.
Throttle”
Barton pointed a furious finger at the sky where it had happened.

“I was a bit low,” Phillips said.

“Low? You were nearly bloody underground! What if your engine hadn't opened up? Where would you be now?”

Phillips looked across the field. “In the hedge, I suppose.”

“No! The kite would be in the hedge and
you
would be in the morgue and
serve you bloody well right!”
They could hear him in the control tower. “Never trust your engine after a scrap! Always give yourself more height than you need! Play safe! Understand?”

Phillips nodded. He felt bruised by this blast. Barton strode away. CH3 nodded as he went by and said: “Serve him right.”

Without pausing, Barton said: “He's in your flight, chum. You should be bollocking him, not me.”

Skull had a bright idea. If estimating range was so difficult for most pilots, why not erect dummy German aircraft at the correct distance so that their size and appearance would become familiar? Barton told him to do it. He requisitioned a truckload of plywood and a dozen carpenters and painters. They worked through the night. Next morning three mock-ups were ranged in an arc, two
hundred yards from the crewroom: a Dornier 17 seen head-on, a Junkers 88 seen from the left rear, and a Messerschmitt 109 seen from the side and slightly above. The pilots, when they landed, were amused and impressed. “That is what your target should look like,” Skull told them. “If it's not that big then you're not close enough to open fire.”

“If I get you the wood,” Cattermole said, “will you make me a Sunderland flyingboat for my birthday?”

Skull yawned so hugely that his jaw hurt. He was trembling with fatigue but he was so pleased with his creations that he couldn't leave them. About an hour later he was drinking tea in the control tower when he heard rifle-fire. Gordon, Cattermole and Renouf were standing outside the crewroom, shooting at the mockups. “What the devil d'you think you're doing?” Skull shouted, but they couldn't hear. He hurried to the stairs. Barton grabbed his arm. “Leave them be,” he said.

“But …” Skull gestured helplessly with paint-streaked hands.

“They're doing what you want, aren't they? Besides, they hardly ever hit the bloody things. Just watch.”

The rifles banged like fireworks. “Look over there,” Skull said. “The black widow's back.”

“Is that what they call her?” Barton aimed his binoculars. “Yes. I see. She does look a bit gloomy, doesn't she?”

“Bloody Mary,” Skull said. “That's another name they've given her. They say she sends pilots to their doom.”

“Superstitious claptrap. She's waiting for Fitz, that's all. I wish there was something we could do …” Then the telephone rang and he had more urgent things to think of.

CH3 saw Jacky Bellamy sitting at a table in the corner of the
Spreadeagle
with a sergeant-pilot he vaguely remembered having seen at Brambledown. He went over to them.

“Excuse me, old boy,” he said, “but you're wanted on the phone. They said it's urgent.”

“Damn … Thank you, sir.” He disappeared into the crowd, and CH3 took his place. “You shouldn't associate with sergeant-pilots,” he said. “They're terribly lower-class. What's his name?”

“White, and I like him. Have you turned into a snob at last?”

“Sure. You can't live in this country for a whole year without
becoming class-conscious. It's the great British pastime. That's what they're all fighting for: the freedom to sneer.”

She gave him a sideways glance and then looked away. “Everything you say to me is fake,” she said. “We've never had a simple, honest, natural conversation all the time I've known you. Why do you have to be such a phony with me? What are you afraid of?”

“Okay, what d'you want to talk about?”

She made rings on the table with her glass. In the next bar they were singing
Roll Out the Barrel
. Somebody dropped a drink, which smashed, and everyone cheered.

“I used to be in love with you,” she said. There was no nostalgic regret in the way she spoke: it was a straightforward statement. “That was in France. It didn't last long: you saw to that. Now I'm definitely not in love with you, and I don't think I ever shall be again. That's a pity, because there's not much love about so it's a shame to waste it. And I certainly wasted mine on you.”

“I'm sorry. It's an area of life I'm not very good at.”

“No, you're not. As I found out the other night, when we went for that walk. I wish now I hadn't phoned you up. Big mistake.”

“Come on, it wasn't that bad. In fact I enjoyed it.”

“Yes. That was the mistake. I think you enjoyed it too much. Look, CH3: after what's happened between us, or maybe what
hasn't
happened between us, I don't want you falling in love with me. And I only say that because of the way you behave when we're together. It's ominous.”

“Really? How do I behave?”

“Like a bad actor reading a bad script. I've met it before and I know what it means. It means trouble.”

The sergeant-pilot returned. “Must have been a mistake, sir,” he said. “The phone's on the hook.”

“Someone's hung it up. You'd better go and call back.” The man looked doubtful. “You are Sergeant White, aren't you? Chalky White? It was the sergeants' mess. Bit of a flap on. D'you need any change?”

They watched him squeeze through the crowd again.

“Suppose I stopped reading the bad script badly,” he said. “Would there be any hope?”

“No.”

He sat leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees and his
fingers locked together, and watched her adding to the chain of rings. The singers had started on
Tipperary
.

“How is your wreck-hunting getting on?” he asked.

“I never give interviews. People like you always get it wrong anyway, and besides, what I do is nobody's business but my own.”

“I see. I guess I asked for that. All the same, how
is
your wreck-hunting getting on?”

“I'm not going to tell you.”

“I don't believe you're doing it at all.”

“Oh, I'm doing it all right. What's more I'm doing it in the comfort of an Air Ministry car. You see, I'm not the only skeptic in the press corps. These claims of yours have been getting some bad reviews abroad, so now Air Ministry has decided to double-check the figures, with me as an observer. Every day we drive around, me and the man from Air Ministry, with a long list of claims, when and where each plane was shot down. And we look, and we look, and then we look some more.” She smiled wryly. “Here comes Chalky.”

CH3 stood up. “You'd better hurry,” he said. “Hitler might get here first and spoil your story.”

She shook her head. “Hitler won't invade.”

“You have inside information on that too?”

“In a way,” she said, “I guess I have.”

Baggy Bletchley stood in the middle of the ops room at Brambledown and looked at the fluffy clouds drifting overhead. A near-miss by a five-hundred-kilogram high-explosive bomb had folded two walls flat and the roof had collapsed. Mobile cranes had been brought in to lift the jagged slabs of concrete and men had worked through the night, shoveling rubble. The bodies of four Waafs and two airmen had been removed, the blood washed off the plotting table, most of the lines reconnected. Everything was makeshift but at least the ops room was working. “Bloody good show,” he said.

“Why they didn't put these places underground beats me,” the sector controller grumbled.

“Presumably they thought they were safe enough above ground.”