Cleve-Cutler saw the look on Foster’s face and rapidly put himself between the two men. “Captain Foster is a most experienced and capable flight commander,” he said. “If Captain Foster says it was a fatal crash, you can be sure it was exactly that. Captain Foster is an officer I have complete and utter confidence in.”
“Of course, of course,” Bliss said. He was on his way out. “It’s a shocking business. The French Air Force will be given hell, believe you me.”
“They’ll get more than that,” Foster said.
Bliss pretended he hadn’t heard. “Absolute hell,” he said. “It’s too bad you weren’t able to spot the identification letters on those Nieuports.”
“We got them,” Foster said. “It’s all in my report, for God’s sake.”
“Is it? I must have lost the file.” Bliss remembered that he was holding the pen and gave it to Cleve-Cutler. “No, it really is too bad, because otherwise I might have been able to tell you that they belong to the 27th Escadrille of avions de chasse stationed at Selincourt. Shame, isn’t it?”
They walked with Bliss to his car, and then went to the mess. It was the end of the afternoon, a grey day, no wind. Cleve-Cutler sent Private Collins to round up all those pilots and observers who were on the aerodrome. He went behind the bar and began opening bottles. “I’ll make a few gallons of Hornet’s Sting,” he said to Foster. “You’d better hurry if you don’t want to miss the party.” Foster nodded, and went out.
Paxton went to his billet to change and found that his chest had been painted bright red. Well, it was just another insult. He could tolerate it. He moved the chest and found that the paint was wet. His hands were red. He shouted for Fidler, and sent him to get petrol and rags.
While Paxton was standing waiting, holding his hands as if supporting an invisible tray, Kellaway came in from the bathhouse. “Hullo!” he said. “You’ve got red hands.”
“Shut up before I kill you.”
“Please yourself.” Kellaway began to dress. “There’s a party in the mess, you know. CO’s party. Remember Yeo?”
“Of course.”
“Well, you can forget him.”
At first Paxton was amazed by Kellaway’s coldblooded announcement; then he realised that it meant another move up the table. To make sure, he said: “What about his observer?”
“Gone west too. The frogs did it.”
Paxton didn’t know whether to believe that or not. The more he thought about it, the less it mattered.
Kellaway put his cap on. Paxton said, distantly: “You might give O’Neill my compliments and ask him to spare me a few minutes.”
Kellaway left. Paxton walked up and down. He found a loose floorboard and made it creak. O’Neill arrived, whistling. Paxton showed him his red hands. “If you are a gentleman, which I very much doubt,” Paxton said,”you’ll put your fists up and we’ll settle this affair here and now.” His lungs were pumping double-time, ready for the fight.
“You first.” Nothing seemed to excite O’Neill.
Paxton clenched his fists and raised his arms and put one foot forward.
“Your lace is undone,” O’Neill said. Before Paxton could look down, O’Neill had knelt and was retying the lace. He seized Paxton’s ankle in both hands and heaved it waist-high. Paxton staggered. O’Neill turned and walked him out of the room. Paxton hopped behind, shouting and windmilling his arms. O’Neill led him to the mess, passing Fidler as he returned with a can of petrol. By the time he hopped up the wooden steps of the mess, Paxton’s working leg was so exhausted that when O’Neill let go he fell over. He tried to stand on the other leg and fell over again.
A loud and violent race was going on inside the mess. It involved jumping from one piece of furniture to another, while holding and drinking a tankard of Hornet’s Sting. Paxton lay on the floor and watched furniture collapse and splinter, and heard the raucous howling of his fellow-officers. Collins gave him a full tankard. He got red paint all over it. Nobody cared. O’Neill had vanished. Paxton didn’t care. He drank the filthy muck. It didn’t taste too bad. He finished it and threw the tankard at Collins. Collins caught it, onehanded. Somebody went through the piano with a noise like a harp having a nightmare.
Foster reached Selincourt and remembered nothing about the journey. He had climbed to three thousand feet; he remembered nothing of that either. He circled Selincourt. It looked just like any other aerodrome, from the air.
He had to wait twenty minutes for a Nieuport. A monoplane took off, probably a Morane, and a big heavy biplane flew by. He ignored them both. The Nieuport came out of the east, as expected. It carried identification letters and numbers on its fuselage but he didn’t look for them because he didn’t care what they were. He dropped, turning his height into speed, and followed the Nieuport down to the field, gaining on it all the time, until the FE was bouncing about in its wash, only a couple of lengths behind.
That was when the French began firing off rockets, to warn the pilot. Foster’s observer killed him before he could look around to see what they meant. Foster’s observer shot him dead, in the back, as Yeo had been shot. The Nieuport tumbled as if it had tripped over its own feet. Foster climbed away and watched it crash and burn.
He flew home, and remembered nothing about the journey. If the French tried to chase him they took too long getting off the ground because they never caught him. He landed and gave the machine to his groundcrew.
Cleve-Cutler was waiting. “Well, that squares the account,” Foster said. “Now maybe we can get on with the war.” In the distance the racket from the mess rose and fell.
“I’ve kept it warm for you,” Cleve-Cutler said.
The noise of snoring woke Paxton, and hatred flared like a fire in sudden wind. It was a primitive, grunting snoring, typical of O’Neill. Paxton snarled. The snoring stopped. Too late, of course: sleep was impossible now. He sat up. The billet was empty.
Kellaway came in, swinging his sponge-bag. “I can’t tell you how unspeakably filthy you look this morning,” he said.
Paxton tried to speak but his mouth seemed to be stuck together. He was wearing his uniform, including shoes. He must have slept in his clothes. He got his lips apart and cleared his throat. The effect was nothing to be proud of. “Unspeakably filthy,” Kellaway said.
Paxton got to his feet and walked to the foot of the bed. His knees wobbled as if taken by surprise and he had to clutch at a chair. For a few seconds the floor receded enormously until he felt as if he were looking down from a mountaintop. His ears made a note higher than any violin could reach.
O’Neill kicked the door open and came in whistling. Paxton had to sit down.
This whistling was slow torture. It was never loud and it never stopped; it just warbled on and on, endlessly, like the whistle of a kettle always coming to the boil but never making it. Half the time O’Neill was flat. If he had been flat all the time Paxton could have accepted it but instead O’Neill’s whistling slipped off-key and then, after a bar or two, found it again, for a short while. He often skipped a beat; sometimes he skipped whole bars and picked up the tune at odd and disturbing places. His whistling never paused but it was always sluggish. It dragged. It was slipshod. It drove Paxton mad. He hunched his shoulders and clenched his teeth.
“Hard cheese on Jimmy Yeo, wasn’t it?” Kellaway said.
O’Neill stopped whistling. Paxton slowly relaxed. “Oh well,” O’Neill said. “There are worse ways to go. Bloke I knew caught the Queensland potato blight. His name was Lewis. He looked so bloody awful he had to go round with his head in a sack. Five years he lingered. They called him Lingering Lew.”