Talk at breakfast was subdued.
“They ought to call the war off on days like this,” Charlie Essex said.
“You mean like Wimbledon?” O’Neill said.
“Exactly. The grass gets dreadfully cut-up if you fight when it’s wet.”
Goss got up and took his coffee to a window. At the far end of the field, the windsock almost came to life-and then lost interest again. The adjutant walked past, under a large and brightly striped golf umbrella. It made him look ten feet tall. “I don’t see how anyone at the Front can see anything through all this muck,” Goss said.
The adjutant came in and gave the umbrella to Collins. “Porridge with plenty of salt,” he said. The chair creaked as he sat down. “Reminds me of the day we counter-attacked at Mons,” he said. “Same sort of rain. Perfect cover. Master Fritz never saw us coming. Scarcely a shot fired. All bayonet work. I encouraged thrift, you see.”
“Nice to know we won something at Mons,” Piggott said.
“No, we lost. The Hun brought up his guns and blew us all to blazes.” His porridge arrived. “This is what the ground looked like after the barrage.” He stirred it with his spoon. “Exactly like this.”
“No good for mixed doubles, then,” Essex said. Brazier raised an eyebrow. “Sorry,” Essex said. “Family joke.”
“Come on, let’s go and do this bloody silly patrol,” Piggott growled. Men stood, chairs grated, boots scuffed.
“Don’t be late back,” Brazier said. “There’s to be a court of inquiry starting at eleven o’clock into the circumstances leading up to the death of a sergeant muleteer while driving a squadron tender when unauthorised so to do. You may be wanted to attend.”
“What good’s an inquiry?” Goss said. “He’s dead. They’re both dead.”
“But not authorised so to be.” Brazier looked for Collins. “More salt,” he said.
The first three FEs took off one after the other, their propellers blasting the drenched grass and leaving a wake of spray that ceased as each machine came unstuck and began to climb. Douglas Goss was in the fourth plane, with an observer called Henley. Towards the end of his take-off run, with the aeroplane feeling ready and willing to stop jolting and start flying, the engine quit. In the sudden silence, the wings lost their lift and the weight of the aeroplane – nearly a ton, fully loaded – settled on the tricycle undercarriage. The FE took a hundred yards to run to a halt, squeaking and groaning all the way.
“What’s wrong?” Henley asked.
“I think the wheels need oiling. Or maybe you weren’t praying hard enough.”
“I’m agnostic, you know that.”
“Well, so’s the engine. It certainly doesn’t want to go to heaven.”
“Suits me. We can play ping-pong instead.”
A lorryload of ground crew came out and pushed the FE back to its hangar. “Sorry about that, sir,” said Goss’s fitter. Within two minutes he had found the fault. “Magneto’s gone dud, sir,” he said. “Can’t understand it, I tested it three times yesterday and—”
“Never mind.” Goss took the magneto and kicked it away, and hurt his foot. “Put another one in, and this time make sure it’s brand new.”
“The other one was brand new, sir.”
“Charming. Just what I wanted to hear.” Goss supported himself on Henley’s shoulders and limped off. “I’ve broken several toes,” he said.
“Frankly, Dougie, I think this war is going to be the death of you.”
It took twenty minutes to fit and test the new magneto. Cleve-Cutler came out to see what the trouble was. “We’ve missed the rendezvous by now, sir,” Goss said. “Anyway, I expect they cancelled the shoot and forgot to tell us.”
“Don’t hang about here. Get over the other side and make a nuisance of yourselves.”
The new magneto worked. The cloud ceiling turned out to be less than a thousand feet, which was far too low for Goss’s peace of mind. He kept climbing until they popped into sunshine. This was pleasant. Goss went up a few thousand feet, cruised idly from nowhere to nowhere and waited for business.
Nothing happened. Once or twice he thought he might have seen something but it was less than a dot, it was a pinprick and it vanished. After an hour he was getting sunburn and cramp and he wasn’t at all sure that he knew where he was. Henley seemed to have gone to sleep, and then maybe died peacefully in his sleep.
Goss cut back the engine until it was ticking over and let the weight of the machine carry it down in an easy dive. Slicing into the cloud looked like falling into a bed of melting snow. The first thing he realised when they dropped into dull daylight was that the cloud base had gone a long way up in the past hour. The second thing was they were five miles behind the German Lines. He knew this because he could see three German observation balloons flying in the north: podgy, sausage-shaped bags tugging amiably at their cables. Goss opened his throttle. He probably couldn’t get near enough to destroy any of them but he could make a bloody nuisance of himself. Henley was awake now, testing the Lewis gun with a brief burst.
Already the nearest balloon was on its way down. The Germans had high-speed winches and well-trained crews: in the time it took Goss to arrive, the balloon would be on the ground. Gunfire was flashing and flickering all around the balloon site and the sky was dirty with a protective barrage. The FE wallowed through the fading, acrid remains of a shellburst and Goss turned steeply away. The gunners chased him. There was nothing to do but fly the plane up to the cloud cover, but all the way he could feel sweat coating the ribs under his arms.
He flew north above the cloud for three minutes and circled for three minutes more to give them time to forget about him. Then he went straight down, as fast as he could. They had not forgotten about him. There was a balloon less than a mile off. He turned to it and frightened it but at the same time tracer began streaking up so he kept turning and saw the third balloon in the distance. Goss did a quick reckoning. He’d panicked two balloons and annoyed a mob of gunners To go for a third balloon would be reckless and idiotic. He felt reckless and lucky. He went for it. The winch crew began winding it down within twenty seconds. Goss laughed aloud. It was like driving fat cattle: you shouted and they ran. Quite bloody right, too. Teach them not to snoop.
He turned and flew east, away from the groping, barking archie, and climbed through the cloud yet again.
Nothing interesting happened on the way home. He found Pepriac, landed rather more neatly than usual and taxied to the hangars. As usual, Henley seemed to have gone to sleep, but appearances were misleading. Henley was dead. He had a firm grip of his Lewis gun and his eyes were open. He’d been killed by a burst of heavy machine-gun fire that came up through the floor. Dando took four bullets out of his chest.
Chapter 10
After ten minutes’ walking along the lane Paxton had done enough saluting for one day. The roads around Pepriac were amazingly busy. He opened the first gate he found and set off across the fields.
Once, when Paxton first got his commission, saluting had been the greatest fun; he’d walked about town, seeking out private soldiers who must salute him or, if they failed, be reprimanded, which was almost more satisfying. But now, here, with so many units on the march, saluting had become a chore, no more exciting than inspecting the men’s latrines, which he had already done.
He avoided an infantry camp, went past a silent and apparently deserted Casualty Clearing Station, and paused to examine a large hole, freshly dug, about the size of a tennis court. An experimental trench? Wrong shape. Something to do with latrines, perhaps? Unlikely. Paxton finally decided it was intended to be a swimming pool. He walked on, skirted a wood that was packed with stores, and passed an artillery battalion in camp.