Milne watched the sunset develop. The colours became absurdly rich, vast sweeps of lemon yellow and rose and buttermilk and brick red, as if a drunken genius had been turned loose. It deserved a symphony, Milne thought, but what it got was a lone piper leading a company of Scots infantry along the road that flanked the aerodrome. In the distance an engine coughed and died, coughed again and roared. He nudged the mule with his knees. After dinner the adjutant went to bed, hot with fever. “Waste of time, old boy,” he had said when Dando offered to examine him. “You don’t speak the lingo. This is an old Hindustani curse, this is.” The padre and Dando settled down to chess in the anteroom. After five minutes, Paxton came over and looked. “Who’s winning?” he asked. No answer. He went for a walk, and was watching some of the men playing football when Corporal Lacey approached. “You have been sent a box of cigars, sir,” he said.
“Yes? From my uncle, I expect.”
“And you may have noticed that we have no hot water.”
“Nothing to do with me. Go and tell the adjutant.”
“Mr. Appleyard generates his own heat. What’s more he rarely takes a bath. However, with your agreement and your cigars I can get hold of a lorryload of coal this evening, thus guaranteeing hot water for the rest of the month.”
Paxton stared. “Sounds very fishy to me. Why don’t you just—”
“Why don’t we just ask the Army for more coal? Because the squadron’s had its ration.” Lacey was calm, almost placid. “Why have we run out? Because the adjutant swapped a quarter of the coal ration for thirty cases of wine. Why was that a mistake? Because he forgot to give any wine to the officer commanding the fuel depot. Why should that matter? Because the officer hates his job, and if we tell him we’ve run out of coal he will enjoy greatly not giving us any more for as long as possible. How long is that? Until our next ration is due.”
They watched the football. Someone scored a goal, and performed a handstand to celebrate. “But perhaps you like cold water,” Lacey said.
“You want me to give my cigars to this wretched officer at the fuel depot,” Paxton said.
“No fear. The sentry at the back gate gets the cigars. He’s reliable. I wouldn’t trust the officer with a bar of chocolate, the man’s a scoundrel, an absolute rogue.”
Despite himself, Paxton laughed. “Your idea sounds fairly crooked to me.”
“In the Army,” Lacey said,”the shortest distance between two points is a crooked line.” At eight thousand feet it was still as bright as mid-afternoon. The flood of sunlight coming from behind him meant that Milne could see everything to the eastward with astonishing clarity. Only one thing annoyed him: he had forgotten his silk scarf, and now every time he turned his head to search the sky, cold air whipped around his neck. That meant stiffness and aches. It was such a stupid mistake. He knew exactly where he had left the scarf; he could see it now, hanging over the back of a cane chair. Idiot.
Eight thousand feet was as high as this FE2b would climb. If he eased the stick back he immediately sensed the plane flirting with a stalclass="underline" the engine simply couldn’t shove the wings through the thin air fast enough. Even so, eight thousand didn’t guarantee safety; plenty of Huns got a lot higher than that. Far to the south a tiny trickle of black archie showed itself. Probably a French patrol going home. Elsewhere, the sky was empty. Millions of men down below, all cramped and crowded and crushed together. Nobody else up here. What a silly war.
The German archie ignored him as he crossed the trenches. Maybe they agreed with him. Maybe they were all too busy eating their sausage and sauerkraut. He hunched his shoulders, trying to keep out that persistent, chilly draught. The pain that was not dyspepsia came out of nowhere and hurt and made him pound a fist on his knee and shout at it: “Shut up, you bloody fool!” It hurt so much that his eyes ran with tears. He took his goggles off and stuck his head in the airstream. For a few seconds he was blind. He pulled his head back and blinked hard. The tears went, and he saw a cluster of dots about two miles ahead and below.
They soon noticed him and turned to intercept. Milne was pleased to see that they were Roland C IIs, a new type of two-seater, big, heavily armed, valuable. There were five of them. They spread apart as the gap closed. No doubt they had all worked out their tactics for cross-fire. It made no difference to Milne. He pushed the throttle wide open. The leading Roland grew and grew until he could see the perforated barrel of the pilot’s Spandau on top of the engine. It fired. The FE raced into the wandering line of bullets, soaking up damage, until the Roland veered away. Milne banked hard in the same direction. He kept turning and chasing until the eggshell smoothness of the Roland’s fuselage magnified and filled his eyes and the rising drumroll of its engine deafened him. The impact of the collision welded the aeroplanes like mating insects. They fell in one piece for a thousand feet, and blew themselves apart. But by then Milne was feeling no pain.
Chapter 8
“When I was in 23 Squadron,” Mayo said,”we had a pilot who could blow smoke through his ears.”
“That doesn’t make him dotty,” Goss said.
“It might have kippered his brains,” Jimmy Duncan suggested. “That’s the way fish get kippered, you know. With smoke.”
“Has anybody ever seen the old man blow smoke through his ears?” Goss asked. Nobody had. “So much for that theory,” he said.
Most of the squadron was sitting around in the mess anteroom. ‘A’ Flight’s patrol had been uneventful, and nobody had seen the commanding officer’s aeroplane. It was now more than two hours since he had taken off.
“I don’t know what you’re all worrying about,” said an observer called Binns. He was teaching himself to be a cartoonist, and he was always sketching the others. “The old man’s come down somewhere.”
“I knew a chap who made twelve forced landings in a week,” Duncan said. “He was always late back.”
O’Neill nudged Piggott. “You’re very quiet.”
Piggott sighed. “I reckon he ran out of fuel ten minutes ago. So he’s either crashed or forced-landed or something…” He stirred his drink with his finger, and sucked it. “I’m wondering whether I should go and tell Frank Foster.”
“What for?” Mayo said. “He’s asleep.”
“He’s also senior flight commander. Which makes him acting CO.”
That silenced them. Dando, glancing at their faces, caught glimpses of shock and even the foreshadowing of grief. Milne had always led Hornet Squadron. Now, suddenly, they might have to live without him. They felt damaged. The room was completely still.
Paxton came in, and strolled to the middle of the group. “You will be pleased to know,” he said happily,”that there will be hot water for all in the morning.” His smile was radiant, but when nobody looked at him it steadily burned itself out until there was nothing of it left. “I knew you’d be pleased,” he said, peevishly. “I expect you’d like to know how I did it.”
“I’d like you to stick your head up your arse,” O’Neill said,”and take a close look at your brains.”
Paxton glanced at them: sprawling, grubby, pouchy-eyed, defeated-looking. He sniffed, and said loftily: “Three cheers for the red, white and blue…” He never knew who picked him up. Someone seized him by the collar and the seat of the pants. His feet scrabbled against the floor as he was rushed to the door. It opened outwards. He was thrown into the night, which turned out to be made of gravel and quite painful. He crawled away and picked the bits out of his hands and face.
It had been a long day, and there would be more patrols tomorrow. One by one the pilots and observers left the mess. Paxton sat on the grass and watched them go. After half an hour he went up the steps and opened the door. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Piggott said. His voice was flat as spilled ink. He and Dando were standing at the bar.