By now it had stopped raining. The air was warm; steam was rising from the rows of khaki bell-tents. Paxton got a whiff of horse-dung. Somewhere out of sight, a blacksmith was making his anvil ring. A row of guns could be seen, lined up as if ready to fire a salute. Just the sight of them excited Paxton. He could visualize the flash from the muzzle, the recoil, the smoke blowing over the half-naked gunners slinging shells to each other, the distant flowering of an explosion as the enemy’s position disintegrated in flying gobs of blood and mud. What fun! What simply ripping fun!
He walked on, and was leaning on a gate and thinking how pleased his parents would be when he won a medal (his father was an architect, and Oliver had always pitied him for leading such a dull life) when an elderly major came along. “You weren’t thinking of crossing that field, were you, laddy?” the major said. “You might get your head chopped off if you do.” His manner was distant rather than critical.
“Chopped off for thinking it, or for doing it, sir?”
The major lit a pipe and carefully broke the match in two. “You’re Flying Corps, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Try not to be as big a bloody fool on the ground as you are in the sky.”
“Very good, sir.” Paxton felt too bouncy to be squashed. “Is something about to happen here, sir?”
“Cavalry charge. Ever seen a cavalry charge? No, of course you haven’t. You were a dribbling infant in 1914.” He pointed with his pipe. “There stands the enemy, that double line of stakes.” They were about six feet high and each had a turnip stuck on top. “Any moment now a detachment of the Third Dragoon Guards will appear to my left. Then watch out.”
Paxton glanced at him. The major’s chin was thrust forward and his lower lip was twitching with eagerness.
The cavalry suddenly appeared, cresting a rise that Paxton hadn’t noticed, in a solid-looking column of fours. At first the drumming of hooves was felt as a vibration, then it was heard. The column fanned out and formed two lines abreast, one well behind the other. Now Paxton could see clods of earth sent flying as the gallop began and the drumming was a soft, insistent thunder. Steel flickered along the line. Swords! “Golly!” Paxton said and wished he hadn’t, but the old major was deaf and blind to anything except the Third Dragoon Guards. The first line swept past, tall men on big horses. Swords fell and hacked at the turnips on the poles, the line charged on. “I say!” Paxton said. The second line carried lances. Their targets were the fallen hunks of turnip. As each trooper bore down and thrust he gave a long rising whoop of triumph that did strange things to Paxton’s testicles. “I say!” he said. The drumming faded. “What an absolutely splendid stunt!”
“That’s what you’d call it, would you? A stunt?” The major carried a crop stuffed down the side of his right boot. He pulled it out and whacked his leg several times. “That stunt, as you call it, is going to cut the German army to ribbons and win this war in half a trice, if only we’re given half a chance.”
They climbed over the gate and walked to the scene of the charge. The major picked up half a turnip. “That’s what Master Boche will look like after the Dragoon Guards have parted his hair,” he said. “All we need is half a chance.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir,” Paxton said daringly,”but aren’t there rather a lot of Huns?”
“Not just the Dragoons. Life Guards. Royal Horse Guards. Lancers. Hussars.” The major ran out of fingers on his left hand, so he began prodding Paxton in the chest with his crop. “Second Indian Cavalry. That’s the Deccan Horse, Hodson’s Horse, Poona Horse. Canadian Cavalry. My God, man, we could finish the job with half that number. Just given half a chance.” He gave Paxton the half turnip.
They walked back to the gate. “Pay no attention to me,” the major said. “My impatience gets the better of me sometimes. The way things have been going, you chaps see more action in a week than we do in a year. What?”
Paxton nodded. “I had a scrap with a Fokker just the other day, sir. Managed to knock him down in the end.”
“Good for you. Come and have a drink. Meet the chaps.”
Paxton dropped the half turnip when the major wasn’t looking. “People sometimes call us the cavalry of the skies,” he said. “I must say I think that’s the most enormous compliment we could have, don’t you, sir?”
The RFC was very efficiently organised to provide replacements. The adjutant phoned the Officers’ Pool at St. Omer and a new observer was delivered by tender to Pepriac in time for tea. He was Canadian and his name was Stubbs. He was built like a heavyweight and he had a face like a baby. Gus Mayo had got permission to go to Amiens to get his hair cut. When he came back he went to his billet and found his batman changing the sheets on Henley’s bed. At the other end of the room Stubbs was playing darts against himself.
“Hullo!” Mayo said. “Henley gone?”
“Yes, sir,” the batman said. “Shame, isn’t it?”
“Oh.” Mayo came to a halt. He watched him smooth out a creased blanket. “Gone for good, you mean.”
“Funeral’s tomorrow, sir. This is Mr. Stubbs, sir.”
They shook hands. “You’ll like it here,” Mayo said. “Grand bunch of chaps. I don’t suppose you brought any new gramophone records?”
“No. Should I have?”
“Dougie Goss trod on our one and only ragtime record last night, the silly sod. What about Mr. Goss?” he asked the batman. “Did he get pipped too?”
“No, sir.”
Mayo grunted. “Bloody good pilot, Dougie. I just wish he’d watch where he puts his feet. Feel like a drink?”
The Court of Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of 2533409 Muleteer-Sergeant Harris J., Attached Royal Engineers, During the Night of 4-5 June 1916, While Driving RFC Tender No. 04379 in the Town of Breteuil, adjourned for lunch after two hours, resumed at half-past two and adjourned again at four, the Court (presided over by Colonel Bliss, supported by a major and a captain) having questioned everyone in Hornet Squadron it could lay its hands on and having discovered, in the words of its president, bugger-all.
That wasn’t what went into the official record. It was what Bliss told Major Cleve-Cutler and Captain Brazier. “Personally I don’t give a toss about Sergeant Harris J.,” the colonel said. “None of this would matter if he hadn’t utterly demolished a double-fronted grocer’s shop. The owner is demanding a fortune in compensation. You know how the general hates grocers.”
“Look, Bob,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Isn’t it obvious that Rufus Milne’s your man?”
“The general won’t wear that.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t believe squadron commanders go around at night swapping army tenders for mules. It’s simply not the way they behave, in his experience.”
“Milne was ill.”
“Well, he doesn’t believe that, either. He’s never heard of someone that age getting stomach cancer. Milne looked perfectly all right the last time he saw him.”
“And then went off and killed himself?”
“The general believes Milne died while battling against great odds. He thinks all these stories about Milne are in very poor taste.”
“Jolly considerate of him.”
“Rufus is going to get a posthumous medal,” Bliss said. “Probably a bar to his MC. So I need a villain for my villain, not a hero. See you tomorrow.”
With the arrival of Stubbs, Paxton no longer had the lowest place at dinner; in fact he was now third from the bottom, because Kellaway had returned from hospital. Kellaway had a black eye and some yellowing bruises on his forehead and a little thicket of stitches on his chin, but he seemed cheerful enough, although his eyes sometimes crossed without warning and he had to shake his head vigorously in order to uncross them.