Private Fidler came up to him and saluted.
“Mr. O’Neill’s compliments, sir, and could you come and look at something suspicious he’s found lying in the grass, you being Orderly Officer and all.”
Paxton distrusted anything connected with O’Neill. “What is it?” he asked.
“If we knew that, sir, it wouldn’t be suspicious, would it? Personally, I kept well clear of it, myself.”
Paxton hesitated, but he saw no alternative. “All right, lead on,” he said, and unbuttoned his revolver holster.
They walked through the camp. “I must say I’m surprised to find an Australian in the squadron,” Paxton said, allowing his distaste to show. “God knows there are still plenty of decent Englishmen left.”
“Bless your heart, sir, Mr. O’Neill’s not what you’d call a real Australian,” Fidler said. “It’s more of an act, with him.” He chuckled at the thought.
Paxton wanted to know more but he wasn’t willing to ask and it seemed that Fidler had nothing to add. They walked in silence for a few yards. “What about Toby Chivers, then?” Paxton asked. “Was he English?”
Fidler began to speak but then stopped and cleared his throat. “Sometimes I can’t believe Mr. Chivers has really gone, sir,” he said. “It makes no sense. Not in his case.”
They turned the corner of the cookhouse and saw O’Neill standing in a patch of knee-high grass. Paxton let his hand rest on the butt of his revolver and approached O’Neill cautiously. “All right, what is it?” he asked.
“See for yourself.” O’Neill nudged something with his foot. “Come on, it won’t dare bite you. You’re the bloody Orderly Officer.” The Australian accent made his voice slack and contemptuous.
Paxton took out the revolver and advanced. Fidler had vanished. Paxton looked at what O’Neill was looking at and saw nothing but grass. “I can’t see anything,” he said.
“Jesus.” O’Neill sighed, and shook his head. “If you can’t see it I’d better pick it up and show you. Here, hold this for a minute.” He thrust something hard and heavy into Paxton’s left hand. Instinctively, the fingers closed. When Paxton looked up, O’Neill was ten yards away and running. “Keep the spring in!” O’Neill shouted. Paxton squeezed until his fingers hurt. He was holding a hand grenade. His stomach clenched at nothing, as it had nothing to clench, and gripped it hard.
By the time he had worked out that the obvious solution was to fling the bloody thing as far away as possible, he knew it wasn’t going to explode. That meant he was holding the spring in. He knew very little about hand grenades but he felt sure that this one was safe as long as he kept a tight grip. His stomach slowly unclenched.
He could still chuck it away, of course; there was plenty of open space. But that would be much less satisfying than finding O’Neill and giving the grenade back to him. And if O’Neill wouldn’t take it, Paxton would toss it to him and leave, fast. These japes were all very jolly but enough was enough.
Paxton marched back through the camp, holding the grenade in one hand and his revolver in the other, and soon saw where O’Neill was. O’Neill was playing cricket. Splendid! There would be plenty of spectators for the showdown. He headed across the field.
Tim Piggott was batting. He was enjoying himself, the ball looked big to him, he was whacking it vigorously over or between the fielders, and so far he had scored forty-seven runs, a squadron record. O’Neill was fielding very close to Piggott. “Not now, old boy,” Piggott called out as Paxton advanced. “Buzz off.”
“But this is important.”
“Dont talk tripe. I only need three for my fifty. Get out of the way, I can’t see the bowler.”
The bowler was beginning his run-up. Reluctantly, Paxton moved back. The bowler flung down a fast delivery. Piggott smacked it crisply over Paxton’s head, and ran two. Paxton stared at O’Neill, who was squatting on his haunches, chewing a stem of grass. “Forty-nine,” Piggott said, gasping. “Now for the love of Mike, shut up and stand back. I’m going to sock this one into the middle of next week.”
Paxton had heard the whizz of the ball; he knew how hard it was, how painful it could be. He circled around behind Piggott and approached O’Neill. “I believe this is yours,” he said.
“For God’s sake!” Piggott complained. The bowler bowled and Piggott played a dreadful shot, a cross-batted lumberjack’s swipe, his head up, his feet all wrong. The ball squirted high off an inside edge. Piggott swore, several people shouted, somebody ran to catch the ball and collided violently with Paxton. Both men fell to the ground. “Now look what you made me do,” Piggott said crossly. “You made me break the squadron bat.”
“Grenade!” Paxton shouted hoarsely. He had stopped an elbow with his nose and his eyes were watering from the pain. “I dropped a grenade!”
“Practice grenade,” O’Neill said. “Not real. Don’t bust your truss about it.” He was tossing it from hand to hand.
“What a swizz,” Piggott said, examining the bat. It was thoroughly broken: the handle had come loose and the blade was split from end to end.
“You swine,” Paxton tried to say, but his nose had begun to bleed and his speech was clogged.
“End of game,” said Goss, the man who had collided with Paxton. “End of cricket as we know it in our time. And incidentally I seem to have cracked my elbow.”
“Really?” Foster, the bowler, had joined them. “You’ve scarcely recovered from yesterday’s dislocated shoulder, Douglas. And what was it last week? A double rupture?”
“Torn muscles, actually.”
“You do keep up a giddy pace. How you manage it on those poor clubbed feet of yours I just don’t know.”
“It’s broken, I tell you,” Goss insisted, flexing his arm carefully. “I shall never play the violin again.”
“Forty-nine,” Piggott said. “Forty bloody nine. It’s tragic.”
“Anyway, you were out. I would have caught that ball easily if Dexter hadn’t run into me. Wouldn’t I, Frank?”
Paxton glared. He blew his nose and made it bleed. “Paxton,” he mumbled.
“Don’t mention it,” Foster said.
“I think that chap’s decided to land after all,” said Goss. “He’s been hovering about up there for ages, waiting for Tim to get his half-century.”
It was a BE2c. The plane came drifting down, the pilot giving the engine brief drumrolls of power to keep the nose up, and landed nearby. They walked over to meet him.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. He was short, and when he shrugged off his flying coat he looked even shorter. He had the kind of face that only a mother could love: decent, cleancut, obedient, trusting and honest. “I wasn’t altogether sure where I was,” he said. “You were here,” Goss told him. “You’ve been here ever since you arrived.” The pilot’s face was spattered with oil except where he had worn goggles, and there the skin was milk-white and freckled. He took off his helmet. His hair was a deep rich red. “Hullo, Paxton,” he said.
Paxton recognised the voice before the face. “Hullo, Kellaway,” he said. He had dismissed Kellaway from his mind six days ago. Kellaway had gone down in the Channel. “I thought we’d lost you.”
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“They thought they had lost each other,” Foster explained to Piggott and Goss. Kellaway slapped his gloves against his thigh and shook his head at the wonder of it all.
“I expect you’d like a nice cup of tea,” said Piggott.
“Gosh, yes!” Kellaway said.
They all trailed off towards the mess. “It’s probably none of my business, old boy,” Foster said to Paxton,”but were you on your way to shoot someone?”
Paxton remembered that he was holding his revolver. He stuffed it in its holster. “Now that the cricket’s over,” he said thickly,”maybe we can all start shooting someone.” His nose began to bleed again. He threw his head back but a scarlet trickle escaped and splashed his tunic.