In The Dregs, the adjutant had taken Tusker Oliphant into a quiet corner and was trying, and failing, to persuade him to be the new C.O. Tusker was the most senior officer. He had an unblemished record. King’s Regulations were very clear.
“It won’t work, Uncle.”
“It must work, Tusker. You’ll have my full backing.”
“That won’t change the chaps. I’m a bomber boy. Fighter boys won’t accept me. D’you know what my chaps call them? Camel-drivers. Often worse. And they call us Number Nines. You know what they are.”
“Sick-parade pills. Cure for constipation.”
“Well, then.”
“Schoolboy behaviour. They’ll do as they’re bloody well told.”
Oliphant rubbed his eyes, and sat with his head in his hands. “Remember McCudden? James McCudden?”
“Never met him. Different squadron.”
“He shot down fifty-something Huns. Got the V.C., D.S.O. and Bar, etcetera. But first he won an M.M.” Oliphant looked up. “Not an M.C., Uncle. An M.M.”
“So McCudden rose through the ranks.”
“Started as an air mechanic. Ended as a major. When he got his V.C., the generals offered him command of 85 Squadron. One of the best. They didn’t want him. Turned him down.”
“The pilots decided?”
“He hadn’t been to the right school, Uncle. His father was a sergeant-major. And 85 was stuffed with public-school types.”
Brazier rubbed his chin. He shaved twice a day and it would soon be time. “You know this for a fact?”
“I know McCudden went to 60 Squadron instead. Everyone believed 85 wouldn’t have him because he wasn’t one of them. Well, neither am I. But the Camel-drivers are. Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Sherborne, Tonbridge.”
“They accepted Hackett.”
“He frightened them. And he wasn’t a Number Nine.”
“You’d get a squadron-leader’s pay,” the adjutant said, but he knew from Oliphant’s sad smile that money couldn’t change anything.
Sergeant Stevens had rescued a percolator from Colonel Kenny’s Pullman. Lacey watched him brew coffee. “I’ve decided to make you my fag,” he said. “I take it you served your time as a fag at Winchester.”
“It happened. There was an American boy in my year. He found fagging very amusing. It means something very different in his country.”
“Yes. Did you suffer from homosexuality at Winchester?”
The percolator started to go bloop-bloop. “I don’t think anyone actually suffered,” Stevens said. Bloop-bloop went the coffee. Lacey sprawled, and enjoyed the sound. It domesticated the radio room. “It hurts me to say so,” Stevens said, “but I should congratulate you on your poetic tribute to our late leader.”
“Written in haste, I’m afraid.”
“It was a touch too long.”
“Perhaps. I didn’t have time to write a shorter piece.”
Stevens looked at him sideways. “Pascal said that first, didn’t he?”
“Did he? Quite possibly.”
Bloop-bloop.
“Your first line: ‘Calm is the morn…’ Tennyson, isn’t it? His In Memoriam. But…” Stevens hunched his shoulders. “Not entirely Tennyson.”
“I changed the ending. ‘Without a sound’ is what Tennyson wrote but it sounded flat, so I made it ‘after direst duress’, which also rhymes with line three, ‘one ray the less’. The chaps like poetry that rhymes.”
“So, not content with pinching bits of Tennyson, you mess them about too.”
“Enhance, Stevens. I enhance them.”
“Who else did you rape?”
“Oh… Shelley. Line two: ‘For the sword outwears its sheath’. I wasn’t convinced by ‘sheath’. Not a very manly word. I changed it to ‘clasp’, which rhymes with ‘blast’ in line four.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Near enough. And towards the end, I needed a rhyme with ‘stone’. Campbell wrote: ‘The meteor flag of England shall yet terrific burn’, which is a big disappointment. What he should have said is ‘has gloriously flown’. And now he has.”
“Shameless,” Stevens said. “At least you didn’t fool around with your last lines. The Burial of Sir John Moore, wasn’t it? Every schoolboy’s read it.”
“It was irresistible. ‘We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, so we left him alone with his glory’. Perfect bull’s-eye. I know two handkerchiefs came out. At least two.”
Stevens lifted the percolator from the Primus and let it rest. “So what didn’t I spot?”
“Bit of Wordsworth, bit of Byron, rather too much Walter Scott.” Lacey, deep in his armchair, fingertips making an arch, looked professorial. “But you know how Scott burbles on. Hard to stop him.”
They were drinking their coffee when the adjutant came in. “Oliphant’s funked being acting C.O.,” he said. “So I’m in charge until Taganrog. They’ll want a report on what happened to Hackett. Give me a copy of your flowery verse. Something to bulk out the sad facts.”
“Oh,” Lacey said. “Is that absolutely necessary?”
“The curse of genius,” Stevens said. “The price of a raging talent.”
The same amiable, plump captain who, long ago, had been chatting to Maynard at lunch in Novorossisk, was waiting on the platform when the trains pulled into Taganrog and everyone piled out. After five days of trundling across the empty, unchanging steppe, the squadron hoped Taganrog was Paris on the Black Sea. With a slice of Sodom and Gomorrah thrown in.
The captain quickly picked out Brazier as the most responsible man. “Welcome to Tag,” he said. “Good journey?”
“Tedious. Got shot at by bandits. One engine exploded.”
“Yes. That’s how it is in Russia.”
“The C.O. got killed.”
“My dear chap, what rotten luck. Do you need a C.O.? Yes, of course you do. We can fix you up, I’m sure of it. We’ve got everything here. Our H.Q. is huge. As soon as Denikin began his Big Push, all the chaps from Novo and Ekat came up here, to be nearer the Front.”
“And where is that?”
“Oh, hundreds of miles away by now. They say Denikin’s taken Kharkov. And he may have got Kiev. Come to lunch, somebody will tell you.”
“First things first. You want Colonel Kenny V.C. He’s boxed up, ready to go.”
“Of course, of course. Slipped my mind. These chaps will take care of him.” The captain waved to a waiting army lorry. “Tragic event, truly tragic… About lunch. I’ve got a car. You’ll enjoy Tag; it’s like Brighton, bright and breezy. Awfully friendly.”
Brazier pointed at the Camels and Nines lashed to the flatbed trucks. “We’re here to fight.”
“Yes, exactly. No time to waste. Did I say that you leave here tomorrow? Slipped my mind. Who else would you like to bring to lunch? I can get five in the car. Six, at a pinch.”
When the squadron heard that it had only twenty-four hours in Taganrog, nobody wanted to waste any of it on lunch at Mission H.Q.
“Don’t worry about us, Uncle,” Junk Jessop said. “Our behaviour will be in the finest tradition of the Service.”
“That means you’ll get blotto and act batty,” Brazier said. He found Wragge. “For God’s sake, Tiger, keep them out of the red light district. Tell them pox is a court-martial offence. Any man gets thrown in jail will stay there and rot. We’ll leave without him.”
“Uncle, their conduct will be exemplary. Impeccable.”
“And take Borodin with you. I don’t want any stupid misunderstandings.”
“What could possibly go wrong?”
Brazier widened his eyes and stared. “More things than you could imagine,” he said, “and worse.”