Nobody hung about. Once you’ve seen one crash site, you’ve seen them all. And no amount of looking would improve this one.
Orel fell, without being pushed.
The town sent spokesmen, under large white flags, to say that the Red Army had all gone, were probably halfway to Tula by now, and Orel was glad to offer every assistance to the splendid White armies, including a gala banquet in the town hall that very night.
An invitation to Merlin Squadron was politely declined. “Nobody feels like getting hilariously drunk,” the C.O. told the adjutant, “and we’re not going to sing funny songs for the benefit of a lot of fat, over-decorated…” He couldn’t find the right insult. “Fiascos,” he said.
They were in the Orderly Room. Lacey was filing his radio reports. “Strictly speaking, a fiasco is a total failure,” he said. “Originally a term used by Venetian glassblowers. If one of them blundered, he turned it into a flask, a fiasco. Perhaps the word you seek is farrago, which means—”
Wragge punched him. Lacey saw it coming and swayed. The blow skidded off the side of his head. Brazier was between them at once. “Out, out, out!” he roared. Lacey ran.
Wragge sucked his knuckles. “Sorry about that, Uncle,” he said.
“I’m not. Lacey needs to be struck often and hard. Like insolent children.”
“Blame it on the war. It’s not panning out the way we all thought, is it? If we carry on like this, the whole squadron will be wiped out before we get anywhere near Moscow. I need a drink. What’s wrong with us, Uncle? What’s wrong with me? I’ve lost six men in four days. Three today. Griffin led the squadron all through the Tsaritsyn show and lost no-one.”
Brazier opened a desk drawer and took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses: essential equipment for any adjutant. He poured, they clinked glasses and drank. “Griffin killed himself,” he said. “He didn’t do it for the good of the squadron. Or maybe he did it to teach you a lesson.”
Wragge thought about that. “Nobody liked him, but so what? Not the C.O.’s job to be liked.”
Brazier settled his meaty backside in Lacey’s chair. “He told me he was disappointed in you. All of you. He said Russia wasn’t like France. He felt badly let down.”
Wragge tried to work that out. “He blamed us because Russia isn’t like France? That’s cuckoo.”
“Well, all pilots are slightly cuckoo. You wouldn’t fly if you were completely sane. He said he’d lived the life of Reilly in France. Every day in the air, getting paid to fly top-notch fighters and chase Huns. Marvellous. Time of his life.”
“Griffin told you all this? Extraordinary. Not his style. Was he blotto?”
“Slightly drunk. We were at that big Russian banquet and the vodka made him open his soul. Said he didn’t believe in God until the Royal Flying Corps showed him the heavens, but the war ended and dumped him in the mud. Said he felt worthless. Worse than worthless.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t be worse than worthless. It’s like…” Wragge was struggling. “Forget it. Anyway, they gave him another squadron. The Camel’s a decent enough bus. What’s he got to complain about?”
“Russia’s not France.”
Wragge booted the waste-paper basket and scattered Lacey’s rubbish. “I think I’m beginning to understand that, Uncle. It’s not Mexico, either. Or Portugal. Nobody promised the silly bastard it would be France. Why blame us?”
Brazier spread his arms in defeat. “Maybe every C.O. needs somebody to blame.”
“Too deep for me. And I don’t give a toss why Griffin picked a fight with all those Bolos. Who cares, anyway? I want to see the chief mechanic. Anderson. Peterson.”
“Patterson. Very good man. I’ll get him.”
“Now.”
Patterson arrived, very grimy. He was twice Wragge’s age and his grey hair was stained with oil. Wragge told him to take a seat, offered him a whisky which he readily accepted, and asked him for a frank account of the condition of the aeroplanes.
Patterson gave it to him: engines, guns, gauges, pumps, airframes, control wires, wing structures, struts, rudder units, wheels, fabric. He didn’t waste any words — he was from Glasgow and he knew that you had to keep it simple when you talked to the English — but it took him ten minutes. The whisky was a lubricant. Brazier topped it up.
“It comes down to this,” Wragge said. “If it were up to you, they would all be scrapped.”
Patterson had been in the Service too long to be tricked into saying that. “Complete overhaul, sir. Everything stripped and tested. Everything.”
“Do it, Patterson. And thank you.”
Patterson finished his whisky, every last drop stripped and tested, and left.
“All operations are cancelled for a week,” Wragge told Brazier. “This isn’t France. The bloody silly war can wait.”
“I hope your decision has nothing to do with what I said about Griffin.”
“Certainly not. Griffin was crackers. I may be batty but I’m not crackers. Big difference. That was the first thing they taught me at Eton.”
Sergeant Stevens had taken the Chevrolet ambulance to the crash sites and shovelled as much as he could find into canvas sacks. He was always guessing. Was that half a shinbone or a bit of broken strut? Never mind, shovel it in. Extra weight would be useful. He worked fast at Dextry’s wreck. The Red armoured trains had gone but they might come back.
So there were three coffins and nobody had any illusions about what might be in them. Some of it could be Prod Pedlow and some of it Joe Duncan, but which was in whose coffin would never be known, just as half of Rex Dextry’s remains could easily be those of the Bolo pilot he crashed into.
Oliphant went to the C.O. “No speeches. No Lacey. No heroics. And no God stuff,” he said. “That’s what my bomber boys want. A few words from me about Pedlow and Duncan will do, and you should say something about Dextry, and then the coffins go down. Rifles, bugle. Dismiss.”
“Alright. Actually, I think we’re all getting a bit sick of Lacey’s poetry.”
“Tumult in the clouds,” Oliphant said, and they both laughed. “In the clouds is where we go to get away from the damn tumult. Lacey’s a penguin. He calls himself a pilot officer but he flies a desk.”
The service lasted ten minutes. The rifle volley was crisp and the bugler did not sound any false notes. They were getting better with practice.
THE JOLT OF BULLETS
The ground crews worked. The air crews had a holiday.
Lacey paid everyone, which made them feel better, and he took the Chevrolet to go shopping in Orel. Borodin drove. The doctor and Jessop came along for the ride.
The car bumped across fields which were now empty of the White armies. Denikin was advancing again, northwards, ever northwards, to Tula, to Moscow. As the car drove into Orel, the doctor said, “Everything is untouched. Pleasant surprise.”
“Maybe the Bolos just did a bunk,” Jessop said.
“They could have smashed it up. Like Kursk.”
“Perhaps the Bolsheviks expect to recapture it,” Borodin said. “Or perhaps they laid the dynamite but nobody could find the matches.”
He parked the car and they strolled the streets. In fifteen minutes they had seen the sights, which were a railway station, two onion domes and the town hall, which was shut. Borodin translated the sign hanging on the door: Open tomorrow. “They never change it because it’s always true,” he said. There were no unburied corpses in the street and nobody begged them for food; equally, nobody smiled.