“He can’t hear you, sir,” Fidler said.
Together they hauled Kellaway, spluttering, into a sitting position, Paxton getting soaked to the elbows in the process. “Look here,” he said,”I’ll hold the silly ass and you wash him.”
Fidler sucked his teeth and screwed up his face so that one eye was shut. “Don’t know about that, sir,” he said. “He’s not my officer, properly speaking. Mind you, supposing…”
Paxton waited. “Supposing what?”
“I was just thinking, sir, any problem can be solved with a bit of what you might call… give-and-take.”
“Take the soap,” Paxton said,”and give him a scrub.”
Fidler sniffed. “You realise what I’m doing is above and beyond the call of duty, sir.”
Even when Kellaway had been washed and vigorously towelled, he was still more asleep than awake. “He’s no blasted good like this,” Paxton said bitterly as they walked him back to the billet. “He’ll fall out of the cockpit. What else can we do? There must be something else we can do. How about brandy?”
“Just as likely to put him to sleep altogether, sir.”
O’Neill was about to leave as they brought Kellaway in. “No luck?” he said. He strolled over, adjusting the silk scarf inside his shirt collar, and studied Kellaway’s limp body. “Well, no wonder he won’t start,” O’Neill said. “You forgot to pull the choke out.” He gave Kellaway’s shrunken penis a sharp yank, and walked away.
Kellaway gasped. His eyes bulged and his limbs jerked as if they were on strings. “I say!” he breathed. “Play the game!”
Paxton was first astonished, then encouraged. “Did you see that?” he said to Fidler.
“Yes sir, and don’t ask me, because you gentlemen can get away with it but any private soldier touches an officer’s private parts gets himself court-martialled.”
Kellaway, meanwhile, had shuffled off to his bed and was sitting down, hands guarding himself against further attack. “Not bloody fair,” he whispered.
Paxton looked at his watch, and looked at the huddled figure. Kellaway licked blood from his lip. Fidler said, as if to himself: “It might work, if…”
“What might work?”
Fidler was looking the other way. “Needs a bit of what you might call give-and-take, sir.” He shook his head. “That’s what it needs. Yes.”
Paxton gave him ten francs. Fidler went out. Within two minutes he was back with a medical assistant who was carrying a bottle of sal volatile and a small cylinder of oxygen connected to a facemask.
The sal volatile put Kellaway back on his feet, coughing and cursing. Several lungfuls of oxygen restored his strength, if not his health. His eyes were red, but so were his cheeks. The medic took his pulse. “Hammering away like a machinegun, sir,” he said.
It took Kellaway ten minutes to get dressed, with occasional pauses for a whiff of oxygen. Paxton paced up and down and looked at his watch. ‘C’ Flight took off; he went to the window and watched them climb eastward. Kellaway brushed his hair. “Never mind that,” Paxton said. “Come on, we’re late. Get a move on.”
But the night had changed Kellaway. It remained in his memory largely as a blur of noise and colour and misery, but he knew he had experienced astonishing heights and depths: people had been cheering him and giving him endless drinks, and other people had been cursing him and picking him out of stinking puddles in total blackness. He was nineteen, and he had survived a CO’s party, which was more than Paxton could say. Kellaway wasn’t afraid of Paxton any more. “I’m hungry,” he said.
Paxton shouted. Kellaway put his hat on and went to the mess, where he ate a bacon-and-egg sandwich that tasted metallic, so he poured lots of Daddies Sauce on it. Paxton stood with his arms crossed, and watched. His fingers clenched and unclenched. He counted every mouthful. At length he said: “I can’t tell you how unspeakably filthy you looked this morning.”
“Then don’t,” Kellaway said. He drank a second cup of tea.
“I wouldn’t drink too much of that if I were you,” Paxton said. “Then don’t.”
Paxton’s eyes widened. His heartbeat made a sudden rush. “Don’t let the war hurry you,” he said harshly, and wished he hadn’t.
“I won’t,” Kellaway said, and he didn’t.
They said nothing as they went to the pilots’ hut and put on their flying kit: fleecelined, thigh-length boots, sweater, scarves and double-breasted, high-collared sheepskin coat. Gently sweating, they lumbered across the field to the aeroplane. Paxton went straight over to the fitter and rigger, who were standing by the engine, and so he failed to see Piggott, sitting on the grass beyond the tailplane. “Who’s driving today?” Piggott called out.
“I am, sir,” Kellaway said. Paxton turned and gaped.
“Then listen to me.” Piggott got up. “No stunts. No low flying. Don’t bully the engine, it won’t thank you for it, and don’t go faster than seventy. If you can’t see Pepriac, you’ve gone too far. Learn the landmarks. Stay out of trouble. Don’t even think about doing anything heroic. See you at lunch. Goodbye.” He walked away.
“You little swine,” Paxton said. He tried to duck under the wing, and banged his head on the leading edge. “This is my show. The CO gave this flight to me.” But Kellaway was already climbing into the rear cockpit. “Hard cheese,” he said. “I’ve just taken it back. Get in, I’m ready to take off.”
“It’s a rotten swindle.” Tears of pain and frustration blurred Paxton’s eyesight. “You watch, I’ll get you for this.”
“Can’t hear you,” Kellaway announced, as he fastened the strap of his helmet.
Chapter 6
Milne dropped a pile of papers into a sack held by one of the Orderly Room clerks. “I should have done this months ago,” he said. “It’s all nonsense, you know.” He dumped the contents of a desk drawer. “All bally nonsense, every bit of it”
“Beg pardon, sir,” the clerk said. “Wasn’t that your cheque book just went in?” He fished it out.
“My stars, so it was. What big eyes you’ve got, grandma.” He stuffed the cheque book into a tunic pocket. “Time for a little rest.” A young lime tree grew outside his office. As the breeze shook its leaves, a constant flicker of shadow and sunlight chased itself across Milne’s desk. “What does that remind you of?” he asked, pointing.
The clerk cocked his head. “A sideboard?” he said. Milne wasn’t listening. “It reminds me of the way you get a run of fast water in a river, and then it gradually smooths out,” he said. “This is June, isn’t it? Best month for trout on some rivers.”
“Don’t know, sir.” The clerk gave the sack a shake.
“I always got sick in a boat, never got sick in a river,” Milne said. “The ripples used to look just like that. Alive. And I’ll tell you something else…” His telephone rang. “Can you get this bloody instrument in your bag?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“I was afraid not. Oh well. Go and burn that lot.”
He picked up the phone. “Mary, Queen of Scots,” he said. “You have an appointment?”
“She’s dead,” said a voice he knew. “Try again.”
“Dead, is she? Where did she cop it?”
“Shut up, Rufus. This is serious.”
“So is war. War is hell. Ask Colonel Bliss. He knows.”
“This is Colonel Bliss. Listen—”
“What a coincidence, I was talking to him just a moment ago and—”
“Shut up, Rufus. I mean it, this is really serious.”