“Dear me,” said Rufus Milne.
Paxton turned slowly. He was too defeated to be startled. The squadron commander was standing at a wingtip tugging at a strip of fabric. Behind him a group of mechanics waited by a tender. Part of Paxton’s mind wondered how they had arrived so silently. Another part didn’t give a toss. His nostrils awoke to the stench of petrol and made him move away.
“I expect you hit a bump,” Milne said. He watched Paxton approach. “Did you hurt yourself?” he asked. Paxton shook his head. “Good. I thought… The way you were walking…” Milne’s tugging was rewarded: he found himself holding a strip of fabric. “What d’you think we ought to do with the remains?” he said. He gave Paxton the strip of fabric like a tailor showing a customer a sample of cloth.
“I can’t tell you how awfully sorry I am, sir.”
Milne found his pipe. “If we chuck the bits on a wagon and send them to the repair depot, nobody will thank us for it, you know.” He stuffed tobacco into the bowl. “By the way… Did you leave your watch in the cockpit?” Paxton nodded. “We’d better rescue that,” Milne said,”before the looters arrive.”
They went over to the cockpit. Milne undipped the pocket-watch from the instrument panel and gave it to Paxton. “You signed for that, remember. You don’t want some bally Equipment Officer charging you for it when you ask him for another. I’ll bring your seat-cushion. Jolly nice cushion, that.”
They turned, and Paxton trudged away. After a few paces he realized that he was alone, and he looked back. Milne had stopped and was lighting his pipe. He dropped the match on the grass and hurried to catch up. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.
They were about ten yards from the wreck when the flames went up. They made a solid-sounding whump, like a giant beating a giant carpet. Paxton felt the heat on the back of his neck. Milne kept walking and did not look behind him, so Paxton did the same. “You could do with a bath, couldn’t you?” Milne said. “Your kit’s in your room, I expect.”
Chapter 2
The tender took them to the huts. On the way, Milne smoked his pipe and watched the clouds as if waiting for a particularly interesting one to go by. Paxton sat hunched and silent. He felt like a victim, and that bewildered him. He felt tricked, and that angered him. He’d strained and struggled and pushed himself to the limit, and now all his effort was wasted. The tender bumped over some ruts, and Paxton’s bruised backside took more punishment. Milne, he noticed, was sitting on his cockpit cushion. For a moment, anger flared into hate.
The tender stopped. He got down. Milne tossed him the cushion and pointed his pipe at a wooden hut. “Dexter, isn’t it?” he called.
“No, sir. Paxton.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Too bad about Dexter.”
The tender drove on. Paxton went inside. There was a table and chairs, a stove, and three beds. At the foot of one bed was his trunk, sent by boat from England. He sat on that bed and stared at the dust swirling in the sunbeams. He found himself looking through the dust at a drawing pinned to the wall. It was a poster for a Paris revue, and it showed a pretty girl, peeking coyly over her shoulder. Someone had added a black eye. That single smudge made her smile seem lewd and knowing.
After a while his batman hurried in, introduced himself as Private Fidler, and declared that there was hot water in the officers’ bathhouse, next door. Paxton took his clothes off and put on a dressing gown. He gave Fidler his trousers. “These need something doing to them,” he said, too defeated to explain. Fidler seemed to understand. “They’ll be as good as new, sir,” he said. “Don’t you worry, sir.” On impulse Paxton gave him half-a-crown. That was accepted with the same ease. Paxton sensed that he had found an ally at last. “Terrible bad luck, your bus catching fire like that, sir,” Fidler said. “Shocking bad luck, if you ask me.” Paxton was briefly tempted to give him another half-a-crown, but thought better of it and gave him a bitter smile instead. Two hundred yards away the wreck of the Quirk smoked like a garden bonfire.
When he came out of the bathhouse he felt better. There had been abundant hot water; and with some Pears soap, and a new loofah, and a shampoo bought by his mother at Harrods, it was impossible not to feel better. Fidler had laid out fresh clothes and a clean uniform. After days in flying boots it was wonderful to be able to slip on a pair of shoes. Fidler offered him the monogrammed silverbacked hairbrushes he’d been given on his fifteenth birthday, and held up a mirror. “Thank you, Fidler,” Paxton said, and surprised himself by catching exactly the same casual, assured, yet slightly distant tone his housemaster had used at dinner when a servant offered a dish of vegetables. He disciplined his hair, returned the brushes, picked up his cap. “Handkerchief,” he murmured absently, and patted a couple of pockets. Fidler found a handkerchief in no time. “If anyone wants me,” Paxton said, “I shall be with the adjutant.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fidler waited until he had left, and then used Paxton’s swagger-stick to pick up a soiled sock. He sniffed from a distance and grimaced. “Bleedin’ officers,” he said. “Stink worse than pigs.”
When Corporal Lacey showed Paxton in, Captain Appleyard was sitting upright and trying to fasten his shirt collar. “Hullo, old chap,” he said. “Come in, take a pew. These damn buttons… Always letting you down… Settled in, have you? Who’s your batman?”
“Private Fidler, sir.” Paxton had never seen such an unhealthy-looking face: flushed yet grubby. And there was, sweat in the hair.
“Old Jack Fidler!” Appleyard chuckled, and coughed, and swallowed. “A real old soldier, Jack is. He’ll look after you, don’t worry. And himself, of course.” He gave up fumbling with the button. “Play cricket, do you?”
“Look, sir,” Paxton began.
“Not sir, old boy. Adj. Or when we’re in the mess, Uncle. Sir makes me feel ever so, ever so old.” He blew his nose, hard, and gazed into the handkerchief. “Dreadfully old,” he said. “Horribly old.”
“Very well. Adj. I think you ought to know about something rather odd that happened to my aeroplane when I landed this afternoon.”
“Tell your fitter, old boy. I know absolutely damn-all about flying-machines.”
“It involved the CO.”
“I’m strictly non-technical.” Appleyard was fussing with the mass of papers on his desk. “Don’t know one end of an aeroplane from the other, especially now they’ve gone and put the propeller in the middle. What?” He grinned, encouragingly. Paxton caught a glimpse of his tongue, and looked away.
“The CO deliberately put a match to my plane this afternoon,” he said. Appleyard was still fussing, so Paxton raised his voice a little. “It was brand new, I spent five days getting it here, and he deliberately set fire to it. Result – complete and utter destruction of a machine in perfect condition…” Honesty checked him. “Well, almost perfect, I mean it wasn’t all that badly damaged, just the undercarriage and the—”
“Heavy landing, eh?” Appleyard dumped files in a tray.
“Yes, I admit I—”
“Don’t worry, old man.” Appleyard came around the desk and squeezed his shoulder. “Happens all the time. Nothing to lose any sleep over. Beg pardon,” he said as a slight belch escaped him. “You’re a lucky chap, you know. Wish I had your problem. I can’t stay awake for two minutes on end, that’s my problem.” He chuckled again, and coughed his way back to his chair.