Brazier nodded. He was looking to the left. “What’s going on over there, count?”
Two hundred yards away, a crowd of men were digging a hole. It was long and deep; already they had created a heap of earth along one side. The setting sun caught the steady action of shovels being swung. Nobody paused, nobody looked at the carriages. At least two hundred men were at work. Probably more.
“A place to bury the typhus victims,” Borodin said. “The disease is raging in Tsaritsyn, I’m afraid.” End of conversation.
Two miles on, the carriages reached the drive of a handsome country house, busy with arrivals. It was not yet dark but the windows were blazing with lights. At the portico, the airmen were greeted by someone who was so magnificently dressed that he could have been the butler or the Brazilian ambassador. Borodin made the introductions. The man turned out to be Denikin’s brother-in-law. “The owner is in Switzerland. It’s a long story,” Borodin said. “Please follow me.”
The house throbbed with male talk. This was not an evening for the ladies, although the fragrance of eau-de-cologne was everywhere. The uniforms of the Russian guests were never less than brilliant, the tunics rich with decorations, the epaulettes heavy with gold braid, the calf-length boots as glossy as glass. Every man wore a sword and every sword hilt glittered with jewels. “How many generals are here?” Hackett asked.
“About seventy or eighty,” Borodin said. “And a few colonels and one or two admirals. The Bishop of Tsaritsyn is somewhere.”
“They stare at me as if I’m in my underwear.”
“Pay no attention. This is just the throng. We shall join the favoured few.”
He led them to an anteroom. The chandeliers were dazzling and the uniforms were even more heavily hung with awards, gold-tasselled lanyards, silk sashes. General Wrangel left a group of a dozen and shook hands with Griffin. “Dobry vecher,” he said.
“We are honoured by your invitation to such a distinguished gathering, sir,” Griffin said.
Wrangel looked at the count, who translated: “Congratulations on your brilliant victory over the fiendish enemy.”
“They don’t speak our language, do they?” Wrangel said to him. “Well, tell them that half the guns they’ve sent are useless and their boots are too big for my soldiers, but we are glad to get their money and please send more.”
“The general admires your famous British courage,” Borodin told the airmen, “and he applauds the way your skilful flying terrifies the enemy.”
Wrangel gave them a friendly nod and went away.
They turned to the delights on display. A cut-glass bowl as big as a baby’s bath was full of vodka. A swan carved from ice appeared to float in the middle. Lying on the bottom were what seemed to be gemstones, and probably were. The goblets were of crystal and the ladle was solid silver. They helped themselves.
Pancakes were being served, in abundance. “These are blinochki,” Borodin said. “Famous in Russia as an appetizer. The stuffings are too many to mention. Next will be blinochki’s syrom, a Ukrainian speciality, filled with numerous cheeses. Then there are bliny, served with melted butter and caviare.” For the airmen, lunch was a distant memory. They sampled everything, washed down with vodka. “I should warn you,” Borodin said, “these are merely hors d’oeuvres. The true banquet is yet to come.”
“The Russian Army does things in style, doesn’t it?” Wragge said. “What a pity Bellamy isn’t here to enjoy it.”
“Here’s to Bellamy!” Hackett said. They all drank to that. The vodka was beginning to work. “He owed me a quid, so I’ve bagged his flying boots.”
“That’s in very poor taste,” Wragge said.
“I agree,” Oliphant said. “Show some respect for the dead.”
“Why?” Hackett said. “He didn’t die for me, or for you. He ran out of luck, that’s all. He’s gone and I’m still alive. What else matters?”
“There’s no point in arguing with him,” Wragge told Oliphant. “He went to the wrong school. Not his fault.”
“Boolabong Academy,” Hackett said. “Very exclusive. Highest standards. If you couldn’t spell ‘illicit intercourse’ properly, they beat the living shit out of you.” But Wragge and Oliphant had moved on.
James Hackett’s former C.O. was right: he was a tenacious bugger. At the age of twelve he knew what he wanted: to be the best swimmer in Sydney, in New South Wales, in all of Australia. He swam every day until he could easily swim twenty-five yards underwater. When he was fourteen his chest was two sizes larger than normal and his shirts wouldn’t fasten at the collar. Then his father, who was a printer, got a savage pain in his side and a burst appendix killed him. Peritonitis, the doctors said. Dead, whatever you called it.
The unfairness of his loss left James stunned, and then angry. He abandoned swimming and decided to become a surgeon.
After that, in every spare minute, he read second-hand medical books. His friends said he was off his trolley, his mother said it was unhealthy, all this reading, it wouldn’t bring his dad back, why didn’t he get a job at the printer’s, bring in some money, God knows they needed it. Within a year she had remarried. Soon there was an infant brother and she had no time left for James. He decided to go to Victoria College. “Not on my money, you’re not,” his stepfather said. “You’ll work in my butcher’s shop. Get some real blood on your hands.” By then James was out the door, out the house. Soon, out of Sydney, out of Australia. He lied about his age and joined the Royal Australian Navy.
He shovelled coal in a cruiser for a year. Off-duty he learned semaphore and got promoted to Signals, had a spell in Guns, finally won a place on the bridge as captain’s messenger. It was from the bridge that he saw his first aeroplane, a seaplane, and knew at once that he had to learn to fly. They were at war; the cruiser was in England, in Portsmouth harbour; he couldn’t escape a grinding tour of Atlantic patrols. This almost certainly saved his life. Only in 1917 did the Australian Navy grudgingly agree to his transfer to the Australian Army. The army was happy to give him a commission and send him to the Royal Flying Corps, which was eager for any volunteer to replace the wastage in France.
He handled engine controls as clumsily as most trainee pilots, but once in the air he managed the lurching, wandering, underpowered craft with the skills he had learned from keeping his balance in a cruiser that was battling the Atlantic gales. For Second Lieutenant Hackett, aeroplanes were an extension of boats: you sailed on the air and you paid close attention to the wind and the weather. Forward momentum made it possible to steer. Watch the birds and learn.
And get your hands dirty. At the end of a day’s training, most pupils headed for the Mess and aimed to get blotto. Hackett went to the hangars and talked to the mechanics. When he got posted to France, he knew almost as much as the ground crew about the Sopwith Camel and its Rhône rotary engine.
The mechanics knocked some planks from a packing case and they made a coffin. The plennys dug a grave in the steppe, two feet wide, six and a half feet long, six feet deep. They struck clay, and it was dusk by the time they finished.
Lacey was acting C.O. during the period of the banquet. The sergeant medic told him that Mr Bellamy had to be taken care of now, they couldn’t wait until morning. The smell was bad and getting worse. Lacey told Maynard to select five other officers who would form a firing party. A sergeant gave them rifles and showed them how to load and fire. Some wanted to practise. Lacey foresaw trouble and said there was no time for that. A fresh squad of plennys — the first lot were wet with sweat and stained with clay — lifted the coffin from the train. Lacey and the sergeant carried hurricane lamps and the whole party set off.