“Any good?” Elliott asked.
“Well, they nearly hit a cloud. Not the cloud our Hun has gone behind, however.”
Charlie Essex settled back and closed his eyes again. “Bloody nerve,” he grumbled. “Probably a tradesman. Tell him to go around the back, Frank.”
Dando said: “Can’t you do anything? Go up and shoo him off?” Nobody bothered to answer. “I thought that’s what you were here for,” Dando said. “My mistake.” He picked up his book.
“Oh, he’s far too high for us,” Foster said, still using his binoculars. “If I told Spud and Gus to go and chase him, now, they’d take ten minutes to get dressed and thirty minutes to climb up there and frankly I don’t think he’s willing to wait that long.”
“So he’s just going to get away.”
“Don’t get shirty with us, old boy,” Mayo said. “It’s his fault for not making an appointment.”
“Hullo, he’s dropped something,” Foster said. “Parachute, I think.”
The parachute took fifteen minutes to fall. The pilot had judged welclass="underline" it landed in the next field. Several of the squadron were there waiting for it.
“Message-bag,” said Ogilvy. “I bet it’s booby-trapped. Where’s the squadron booby?”
“Inspecting the latrines,” Jimmy Duncan said.
Foster turned it over with his foot. “No, the German air force woulda’t be so crude,” he said. “I know what’s in here.” He undid the drawstring. The bag held the scorched fragment of a British officer’s tunic, two fire-blackened medal ribbons, a broken cockpit watch, half a shoe, and the remains of a cheque book. “That’s that, then,” he said.
“There’s absolutely no doubt?” Dando asked.
“None. They knew where to drop it, you see. Their intelligence is pretty good.”
“In that case,” Dando said,”I’m free to tell you that he had cancer of the stomach. He probably suspected something for a month. It was pretty well confirmed a couple of days ago.”
Foster shoved the bits back into the bag. “I wish I’d seen his last fight,” he said. “You’d better tell the new CO about the cancer.”
“Don’t tell Dougie Goss,” said Essex. “He’ll think he’s got it too.” Nobody laughed. “Still, I suppose it’s not infectious or contagious or whatever,” he said. Dando didn’t answer. They began to walk back to camp.
Later that afternoon, some of ‘B’ Flight returned from leave. The flight commander, Captain Gerrish, was tall and bony, with big hands and feet and a broken nose above a sprawling black moustache that did something, but not enough, to hide the absence of two front teeth, which had gone at the same time that he broke his nose in a small crash during training. His eyelids were heavy. He had been nicknamed ‘Plug’, short for ‘Plug-ugly’. It was dangerous to call Gerrish ugly. He was usually amiable, but sometimes he grew silent and gloomy and then he was liable to hit people who made jokes about him.
He was cheerful enough when he came into the anteroom.
“Have a good leave, Plug?” Goss said. “Ah, new records!” He took them from him. “This is Dando, by the way,” he said while he glanced at the labels. “That’s his surname, he hasn’t got a Christian name, I think it got amputated by mistake… I say: ragtime!”
Gerrish shook hands with Dando, and called for tea. “Anything exciting happen while I was away?” he asked.
“No, it’s been very dull.” Goss was winding the gramophone. “Fritz is being feeble. No fun at all.”
Mayo put aside his newspaper. “Were you still here when Toby Chivers…”
“Yes. That was the day before I left.”
Mayo grunted and went back to the paper.
Jimmy Duncan heaved himself out of an armchair, and stretched. “The old man went west last evening,” he said.
“East, actually,” Goss said,”and then west. Collision.”
“Bad luck,” Gerrish said.
“He wasn’t very well,” Goss said. “Tummy trouble… Okay, everyone, stand by for Temptation Ragl” He lowered the needle. Dando watched Gerrish stir his tea and tap his foot, slightly missing the beat all the time, and he saw Goss click his fingers and strut around the gramophone, and he realised that nobody would mourn Rufus Milne. People came and went. While they were here they mattered, more or less; once they’d gone they mattered not at all, so it was bad form to make a fuss about them. Foster had got it right, when he’d put the bits back in the bag and said, “That’s that, then.” That was that. Now this is this. Very English. Very sensible.
“I hear you’ve been sacked, Uncle,” Piggott said. “Is it true?”
Appleyard nodded. He took down a framed photograph of a group of polo players and laid it carefully in a suitcase. “Surplus to requirements, old chap.”
“But that’s ridiculous. The old man must have given you a reason, for God’s sake.”
“Wheels within wheels.” Appleyard tapped the side of his nose. “Ours not to reason why.” He opened a drawer and searched it thoroughly. Piggott could see that it was empty. “My shoulders are broad, old boy,” Appleyard said. “I’ll carry the can, don’t worry.”
“Well, if you’re definitely going, I thought I’d better collect that fiver you borrowed.”
Appleyard closed the drawer and patted him on the arm. “I hope you profit from my example, old chap,” he said. “Never do anyone a favour unless you’ve got it in writing. And witnessed.” He took the photograph out of the suitcase and studied it, his head nodding. “This sort of thing wouldn’t have happened when Brendan Lucas had the regiment. That’s him in the middle.”
“Yes… Can you let me have that fiver, Uncle?”
“Yes, yes, of course, of course… You’ve no idea how awkward they’ve made it for me. It makes a chap wonder just what’s going on, it really does.” He took out his fountain pen and unscrewed the cap and looked at the nib.
“What is going on, Uncle?”
Appleyard put the pen away and sat on the bed. He sighed, and looked glumly at Piggott. “Politics, old chap,” he said. “Politics. Sometimes you have to run fast just to stay in the same place, as the White Rabbit said. I couldn’t run fast enough.”
“I think it was the Red Queen said that.”
Appleyard blew his nose.. “I didn’t have your educational advantages,” he said. “Just a simple soldier, me.”
“I really could do with that fiver, Uncle.”
“Nobody ever said I don’t honour my debts. It’s as good as paid.”
“Yes, but… I meant now.”
“Tell you what…” Appleyard took out his pen again. “I’ll send you a cheque, backdated to… to whatever today’s date is.” He put the pen away and stood up. He looked under the bed and pulled out a cardboard box. Bottles clinked. He shoved it back. “Politics,” he said. “I should have seen it coming. Too trusting by half, that’s my trouble.”
Piggott felt defeated. “You’ll come and have a drink before you go, won’t you?”
Appleyard shook his head. “Shakespeare understood,” he said. “To everything there is a season, and so on.”
“Yes. Isn’t that the Bible?”
“You know best. Simple soldier, me.”
On his way back to the mess Piggott met Binns and Mayo, who had only just heard the news. Appleyard owed them money, too. While the three men were talking, Duncan appeared. “I thought I was the only one,” he said. “What on earth has he spent it on?”
“Politics,” Piggott told him. “Maybe he’s bought a peerage.”
Chapter 9