Milne sighed. “Hang on, Bob.” He found his hot bottle and wedged it in the top of his trousers. “You were more fun when you had a squadron. Go on, fire away.”
“That was your mob that ran amok in Montvilliers last night, wasn’t it?”
“Dunno. I was miles away, playing whist with the vicar’s wife.”
“What matters is the Corps Commander’s told me to kick your arse till your balls ring like a bell-buoy in a gale. His words, not mine.”
“I’m innocent,” Milne said. “Nice turn of phrase, though.”
“You were seen, Rufus, by dozens of people. Those bloody mules caused absolute havoc. The Assistant Provost-Marshal’s raising hell. The sergeant you got the mules from went and crashed your tender right through a shop window. Killed himself.”
Milne was briefly silent. Then he said: “And he swore to me he’d been a crack racing driver. The man’s a fraud. Don’t believe a word he says.”
“I’m coming over. Now.” Bliss hung up.
Milne took the telephone and stretched out on the floor. He suddenly felt utterly weary, washed-out, drained. He telephoned the cookhouse. “I’m going to have rather a large party for lunch,” he said sleepily. The sergeant cook asked how many. “Hundred. Hundred and fifty.” What should they prepare? “Everything. Cook everything.” Milne said. Then he called the hangars and told them to warm up his aeroplane. Then he fell asleep.
The sight of a buzzard, circling a hundred feet to their left and fifty feet above them, startled Paxton out of his boredom. He shouted and pointed. The rush of air pressed his arm back as the buzzard was quickly left behind. He sat down. Excitement over.
They had been flying for fifty minutes. Kellaway had climbed to fifteen hundred feet and cruised around Pepriac at a safe sixty miles an hour. The morning had been golden and clear at the start but now clouds of all sizes were beginning to tumble out of the west, and the BE2c occasionally shook or even bounced. Each time, of course, it steadied itself without any help from him. It was very comforting.
For Paxton it was very tedious. He had forgotten to bring a map, so the landmarks meant little. Besides, the countryside was dull and he’d seen it all before. Lots of troops in lots of camps, tens of thousands of them, and all about as interesting as ants. Even the river Somme wasn’t worth a second glance: not big, and in no hurry to get anywhere.
Paxton played with his Lewis gun instead.
It was longer and heavier than he’d expected. It had a cocking handle on the end shaped like a shooting-stick, a drum of .303 cartridges on top and a pistol grip below. The barrel was a good two feet long and encased in a cylinder. In the middle of the gun, at its balancing point, was a socket that fitted onto a metal prong attached to the rim of the observer’s cockpit. There were several of these mountings, and Paxton practised shifting the Lewis gun from one to another, firing at an imaginary foe, then shifting again. It was cramped and awkward. He stopped for a rest and noticed that his final aim had been dangerously close to the propeller disc. He swung the gun further out. Now his aim crossed a bracing wire that ran from nose to wing. He avoided the bracing wire and found himself looking at the exhaust pipe, which rose vertically until it cleared the upper wing.
After more experimenting he came to the conclusion that it was virtually impossible to fire forwards without hitting something. Firing sideways or downwards or upwards, you had to avoid the wings or the wing struts. You could fire backwards quite safely provided you took care not to shoot off your own tail, but that involved kneeling on your seat and aiming above your pilot’s head. And what if the enemy pilot failed to place himself where you could hit him? What then?
Paxton looked around, and wondered who had put the gunner inside this birdcage of struts and wires and why he had thought it was such a bright idea. That was when he noticed the buzzard. He shouted and pointed, but Kellaway didn’t seem to notice. What dull company Kellaway was. On impulse, Paxton fired a short burst over the top of the tail. That made him jump!
Kellaway gestured. “We nearly got bounced by a buzzard,” Paxton bawled. “Or maybe an Albatros.” He grinned. Kellaway didn’t hear or understand, but then, Kellaway was an idiot.
The telephone awoke Milne. He felt as if he had slept for hours but it was only ten minutes. Sergeant Widgery told him his aeroplane was warmed-up.
The mule Alice followed him as he walked to the hangars. “I wish I’d learned to swim.” he told the beast. “I wish I’d done lots of things. Wish I’d taken a chorus-girl to a champagne supper. Taken lots of girls to lots of suppers Wish I’d seen the Pyramids.” He returned a salute. “You ever seen the Pyramids, Jennings?” he asked, not pausing.
“No, sir.”
“Shame, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll learn to swim today, though.”
His FE was ticking over, the wash from the propeller making the tailplane flutter. A mechanic stood by each wingtip. to help steer when he taxied out. The legs of the undercarriage stretched slightly as Widgery jumped down from the cockpit. The mule, disliking the noise, hung back. “No kit. sir?” Widgery said. “It’ll be chilly up there.”
“I’m only going for a stroll. Want to come? Just for balance You won’t have to shoot anyone down. You can take a pot at a pheasant, if you see one.”
They took off. Milne levelled out at three hundred feet. Two miles away he found a cavalry regiment in camp and he landed in the next field. The officers’ mess welcomed him. “Come to lunch, all of you.” he said. “We’re celebrating.” Jolly decent of you, they said. What’s up? “Don’t know yet.” he said. “I haven’t decided. Who else is around here? I want cheerful chaps, like you.” Well, they said, the Artists’ Rifles were just up the road. A laugh a minute, they were. Widgery swung the propeller and scrambled aboard, and they took off.
Kellaway had never flown through cloud, and on this morning he didn’t feel brave enough to start. The stuff seemed far too crisp and dense. When he looked to the west it was like being in a small boat on a stormy sea: whitecaps everywhere. He decided to get well above it and worry about getting down later.
It worked. There was clear air above twenty-five hundred feet, a colossal amount of it in fact, reaching upwards and outwards for miles and miles to a sky that was so big and so blue it made his head swim if he tried to see it all. The sun was more than he could take: even with goggles on, his eyes watered when he looked eastward.
Which made map-reading quite hard. He ducked his head into the cockpit and blinked while he worked out where he was. Thus he was in a crouched position when the BE2c flew into a patch of turbulent air and dropped into a hole fifty feet deep.
The metallic taste of bacon and egg rushed up his throat. He forced it back. The aeroplane rocked and slithered as it bounced into and out of a series of air pockets. His breakfast surged and surged again, backed now by a tide of sweet tea laced with Daddies Sauce. Kellaway got his head outside the cockpit and was horribly sick. Each new air pocket pumped a little more from his stomach until the plane flew into calm air and he was drained and spent and useless.
Paxton glimpsed some of this, and enjoyed it. A couple of minutes later he heard a fist being banged on the outside of the fuselage and turned to see Kellaway reaching forward with a scrap of paper.
The message read: Compass bust. Which way Pepriac?
Paxton did not hesitate. He pointed towards the Trenches. Kellaway looked uneasily to left and right, and did not change course. Paxton gestured more strenuously. Kellaway turned the aeroplane and flew to the east. Paxton settled down, out of the draught, and ate some chocolate to show his stomach who was boss. He reckoned that in four or five minutes Kellaway would start getting worried again and look for holes in the cloud. By then, they should get a good view of the Front.