Frank cleared his throat. “They keep going on about this chap Russell”, he said, sounding puzzled and aggrieved. “Awful lot of fuss… What d’you think, Charlie?”
“Russell,” Charlie said. None of them had so far looked up from his paper. “Do I know him?”
“Ought to. You were at Cambridge, weren’t you?”
“Just one term. Then they found out I couldn’t do any sums and my spelling was rotten.” He reached for some toast. “So I got the boot, B double-0 T. I can spell boot.”
“Well, they’ve gone and done it to this chap Russell. He’s got the boot too.”
“Absolute bastards, they are,” Charlie muttered through his toast.
“Yes, but he’s a don. They don’t sack dons, do they?”
“Dunno. I can’t spell don. Not before lunch, anyway.”
A mess servant placed a large bowl of porridge in front of Paxton. “Actually, I don’t take porridge,” he said; but he was talking to himself. The servant had gone. There was silence for about ten seconds while Paxton wondered how best to get rid of the stuff; and then James looked over the top of his newspaper and said:”The CO’s keen on everyone having porridge. It’s not an order, but…”
“You get the boot if you don’t,” Charlie said.
Paxton poured milk on the porridge and began eating. It tasted grey and slippery. “Every day?” he asked.
“D’you mean a bloke called Bertrand Russell?” Spud said. “He’s in my paper too. Says he made a statement calculated to prejudice recruiting. Fined a hundred pounds.”
“Awful lot of fuss,” Charlie complained. His nose was broken, which gave his voice a nasal tone that emphasised his drawl. “Why don’t they just shoot the bugger and be done with it?”
“No, no,” James said. He looked to be the youngest of the four: fair-haired, fresh of face, with a mouth as wide as a choirboy’s. “You’re going too far now. You can’t fine him and shoot him. There is such a thing as British justice, you know.”
“You ought to become a barrister, James,” Frank said. “You’d make a red-hot barrister. You could handle all my divorces.”
“No fear.” James wrinkled his nose. “Rotten uniform. I prefer the Army.”
More silence, while Paxton worked his way through his gruel.
“What do these coves want, anyway?” Charlie said;”That’s what I don’t understand.”
“They want peace, old boy,” Spud said. “They want the war stopped, no more shooting, everyone goes home.”
“Bloody ridiculous,” Charlie grumbled. “Stop the war? We’ve only just got it properly organised. The man’s barmy.”
There was a long pause, while Paxton soldiered on.
“I once made a statement calculated to prejudice recruiting,” Frank said,”but I’m damned if I can remember what it was. All I know is when I said it the colonel turned white and told me he’d have me court-martialled for treason as soon as we’d captured whatever position it was we were supposed to be capturing. Ten minutes later he got blown to bits, so that was that.”
“He should have written it all down,” Charlie said. “If he’d written it down and given the order to the adjutant, you’d have been shot at dawn, Frank, and you wouldn’t have liked that a little bit.”
“Charlie’s right,” Spud said. “You’re not really at your best first thing in the morning.”
“Well… it’s such a bloody awful time of day. It’s bad enough to shoot a chap. Why get him out of bed at dawn?”
“It’s a gesture,” Spud said.
“Damn rude gesture.” Frank discarded his newspaper and stood up. “Good God,” he said. Paxton found them all gazing at him. “You don’t have to eat it all, you know,” Frank said. “A couple of spoonfuls will do.”
Paxton put down his loaded spoon. He had almost emptied the bowl, training himself to swallow each mouthful without tasting it. Now a sickly aftertaste rose in his throat like vengeance.
“It’s a gesture,” Spud said.
“Personally, I can’t stand the muck,” Frank said. “I usually give one of the servants a shilling to eat mine for me. Maybe you haven’t got a shilling.”
Paxton nodded to indicate that he had a shilling. He didn’t trust himself to open his mouth.
Spud said: “Actually sixpence would probably be enough. Private Collins here quite likes porridge, don’t you, Collins?”
“No, sir.” Collins replaced Paxton’s bowl with a plate of bacon and eggs.
“Too late now, Collins,” Frank said. “You should have spoken up earlier. Dexter’s gone and eaten it.”
“Paxton,” muttered Paxton.
“Look here, you chaps.” Frank moved behind James’s chair and put his hands on his shoulders. “If we’re to do some shopping and have a swim before lunch…” He squeezed until James squirmed.
“Hey, that hurt,” James said, still reading his paper.
“Shows what a puny weed you are.”
“Are you coming, Spud?” Charlie asked.
“No, dammit, I can’t, I’ve got to…” He stopped suddenly and stared at nothing in particular. “On the other hand, I don’t see why not,” he said, and turned and smiled at Paxton. “The CO asked me to tell you that you’re Orderly Officer today. There’s nothing to it, really; you just stroll around with this armband on and look intelligent…” He tossed Paxton the armband. “Sign here, if you don’t mind.” He held out a clipboard and gave Paxton a pen. “This gives you authority over the entire camp.” Paxton signed, and returned the pen. “What if—” he began.
“Ask Corporal Lacey, in the Orderly Room,” Spud said. “Lacey knows all.”
“Come on, you two,” called Frank from the door.
‘You’re very lucky,” Charlie told Paxton. “The old man must like you. I didn’t get to be orderly dog for months, but then I’m not very bright.”
They left. Paxton looked at his armband and his clipboard and finally at his pair of fried eggs, until he realised that they were looking at him. He pushed the plate away.
By eight the sun had burned off all the ground mist. The fields behind the British Front Line were a brilliant green. Tim Piggott, a mile high, located the spot where he knew the British battery was firing. A tiny cluster of miniature flames came and went. Piggott said: “Bang, one elephant, two elephants, three elephants, four elephants, five elephants, crash.” Exactly on crash, a cluster of little brown flowers bloomed behind the German lines, and slowly collapsed. “Missed again,” he said. “You’re hopeless.”
Binns, who was Piggott’s observer, banged his fist on the right of the nacelle. Piggott immediately banked the FE to the right. Then he searched where Binns was pointing and found the Pfalz, blurred in the dazzle of the sun. It had reversed direction and was trying yet again to sneak around behind the FE. “Thank you, Boy,” he said. He knew Binns couldn’t hear him against the rush of wind and roar of engine, but Piggott liked to talk when he was on patrol.
He straightened out when he had put the FE between the Pfalz and a BE2c two thousand feet beneath them. It was the BE2c that the Pfalz was after. Piggott’s job was to guard it and let it get on with its work of artillery observation.
The morning was almost cloudless, with just a milkskim at enormous height, and the FE gave Piggott a magnificent view, like a box at the opera. But he had been trundling around this bit of sky for ninety minutes and he was ready to go home for breakfast. The Pfalz was a monoplane with a fuselage like a long, thin coffin and a cockpit slap in the middle of the wing so the pilot had to tip the machine on its side to look below him. This pilot had done a great deal of tipping and looking but only once in an hour had he dived at the BE2c, and he had pulled out of the dive after a couple of hundred feet when he saw that the FE would meet him first. He was a cautious, thoughtful Hun, and Piggott was bored with him. “You want this Quirk on a plate, don’t you?” he said. “Not today, I’m afraid. Come down and fight me for him.”