Lacey allowed a long pause for the words to fade, and stepped forward and did his best to improve the tone of the occasion.
He took a pace back. Three rifle volleys echoed back from the trees. The bugler sounded the “Last Post”. He cracked a couple of notes but nobody remembered that when he held the last, saddest note so sweetly that even Brazier gave a slight nod of approval. That was as good as a standing ovation. Lacey almost smiled.
The Camel Flight was getting smaller, so a few bomber crews had been invited to join The Dregs: Tusker Oliphant, Douglas Gunning, Prod Pedlow, Joe Duncan. They were expected to contribute to the conversation. At lunch, after the ceremony, Gunning broke the silence. “Ah, soup,” he said. “I like a drop of soup.”
Nobody added to that.
“Summer’s going fast,” Oliphant said.
“Not in Australia,” Jessop said. “Summer hasn’t begun there.”
“How did you get in the Corps, Junk?” Pedlow asked. “Who did you bribe? I ask because my mentally defective cousin wants a commission.”
“Is he any good at ground-strafing?” Dextry said. “He can have mine.”
“It’s true, about Australia,” Joe Duncan said. “They count backwards, they stand on their heads, and they have very hairy feet. To keep the sun off.”
“How did you get a commission?” Jessop said. “Find it in a Christmas cracker?”
“The thing about summer,” the C.O. said, “it’s getting to the end of the county cricket season, and cricket, I think you’ll agree, is what made Britain great. Any cricket news on your magic box, Lacey?”
“Alas, no.”
“Cricket. Is that the game they play with racquets?” Dextry said.
“You’re thinking of the University Boat Race,” Gunning said. “Who won that, Lacey?”
“Oxford. Or perhaps Cambridge. There was some dispute.”
“I joined a boat club once,” Jessop said, “but it fell apart when we put it in the water.”
“There’s a pint of arsenic in your soup, Junk,” Dextry said. “Drink up while it’s hot.”
“Used the wrong type of glue, you see,” Jessop said. “I joined it but… Never mind.” He stirred his soup. “Where can you get arsenic in Russia?”
“Drink up and I’ll tell you.”
“Nip in the air this morning,” Oliphant said. “Soon be autumn. Rugger season.”
“Not the same as cricket, is it?” Wragge said.
“Flannelled fools or muddied oafs,” Dextry said. “Take your pick.”
Merlin Squadron’s gypsy existence continued. Borodin heard from Denikin’s staff of an abandoned Red air force field about five miles this side of Orel. Wragge got the flights in the air and in tidy formation, and they circled the woods where Hopton and Blythe probably lay: a farewell gesture. They followed the railway north and, surprisingly, Denikin’s staff had forgotten their vranyo because the field was just where they said. Well, even staff officers tripped up occasionally.
The Nines landed. Wragge took the Camels onward to have a squint at Orel. They flew over great numbers of troops, guns, cavalry. Nobody was on the move. The railway was clogged with trains. None had steam up. Orel was safe for today.
The Camels took a good look at it from a thousand feet. Compared with Kharkov and Kursk, this was a small town with pretty little onion domes. The biggest building was the railway station. Orel was a quiet, civilized place where the citizens were too polite to fire guns at visiting aeroplanes.
The C.O. waved the other Camels away and dived hard, pulled out at little more than rooftop height and zigzagged across town, showed off with a vertical banking turn around the onion domes and made his exit on the other side. Some women shook their fists at him. He’d probably woken their sleeping infants. He climbed and picked up the Flight and they cruised home. No trade today. Maybe the Bolos had given up. What a swindle.
The train was on the move.
The adjutant, the doctor, Stevens and Lacey were playing whist in The Dregs. The track was in bad shape, and as the train swayed, it jolted the needle back to the start of the gramophone record. “What is that curious music?” Brazier said.
“American ragtime,” Lacey said. “Henry sent it. It’s by a man called Scott Joplin. The tune is “The Entertainer”. Joplin has been called the J.S. Bach of our time, but you don’t think much of Bach, so you won’t like Joplin.”
“On the contrary. His ragtime would make a good regimental march. Stick to ordering groceries, lad. That’s your level.” He played his card and took the trick.
“Chef says we’re nearly out of cheese,” Susan Perry said. “Can’t you order some more?”
“I can order whatever you like,” Lacey said. “But will it arrive? We’re five hundred miles from Taganrog. Any train not guarded by British troops is bound to be looted, probably by our allies.” He took the trick, and played a low club. “I can see your cards, Stevens.”
“They’re dreadful, aren’t they? I was hoping you’d feel sorry for me.”
“Play your six of clubs,” Brazier suggested.
“That card? It’s got jack of hearts written on it.”
“So who has the real six of clubs?” Susan Perry asked. Nobody had. “What d’you want it to be?”
“Ideally, the ace of diamonds,” Stevens said.
She plucked out the card and played it for him. “Ace of diamonds, by majority vote.” The train jolted, and the needle jumped back to the start of “The Entertainer”.
“Maybe we can buy some Russian cheese,” Lacey said.
“It’s foul.” Brazier trumped Stevens’ ace with the two of spades and won the trick. “Inedible.”
“That’s the second time you’ve played the two of spades,” she said. “This is my idea of purgatory — playing whist with a crooked pack and a batty gramophone record.”
“And to complete your suffering,” Brazier said as he tore up his two of spades, “Lacey reciting his poetry.”
“The C.O. thanked me for it,” Lacey said. “He told me the last four lines really hit the bullseye.”
“Remind us,” she said.
Lacey quoted: “Nor law, nor duty bade them fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds. A lonely impulse of delight, Drove to this tumult in the clouds.”
“W.B. Yeats,” Stevens said.
“One of my contributors. It sums up the squadron, according to the C.O.”
“Good for him,” she said. “I hope we never hear it again. But I fear we shall.”
Stevens played the four of diamonds, Lacey played the five. “Bloody officers,” Stevens said. “There’s no justice.”