Damned Good Show (11 page)

“The stockbroker with the eyebrows.”

“You didn't like him, Charlie,” Philly said.

“Because he was obsessed with his banjo,” the bishop said. “There is more to marriage than the banjo, which is perfectly useless for procreation, for instance.”

“We're going to procreate, aren't we, darling?”

“Morning, noon and night.” Langham was amazed at his own
candor; but nobody else seemed to notice. “Here, there and everywhere,” he added. Still no effect. Philly was asking the bishop if he had backed the horses she had tipped at Kempton Park.

A superb cheese soufflé was served, with a Provençal rosé.

“Have you noticed,” the bishop said, “how we keep fighting our wars in
northern
France, where the wine is lethal, instead of, say, the Rhône valley, where it's at least robust?”

“Charlie was in the Trenches,” Philly said.

“Were you really?” Langham said. “What did you think of the Royal Flying Corps?”

“We thought they made a jolly good target.”

“You mean you fired at them?”

“If they came close. Mistakes happen in war. We made our mistakes before they could make theirs.”

“Talking of mistakes,” Philly said. “I had drinks at the American embassy yesterday. Joe Kennedy reckons this war is a poor joke. He says France hasn't got the guts to fight, and England hasn't got the money.”

“Kennedy's just an old bootlegger, mummy,” Zoë said. “He's a dreadful thug. Everyone knows that. He doesn't understand Europe.”

“He's a successful thug. Bought and sold the Democrat vote in Massachusetts, didn't he? After Massachusetts, Europe is a kindergarten, believe me.”

“This is a silly question,” the bishop said to Langham, “so feel free not to answer. Are we going to win?”

“At a canter,” Langham said; which at least made Philly laugh.

Pears in red wine. Coffee. Brandy.

Mother and daughter went off to discuss wedding plans. The men strolled in the grounds.

“Remarkable lady,” the bishop said. “I can't imagine what it was like to be married to her. Good food but not much rest, probably.”

“Who gave her the title?”

“Lord Shapland. Second husband. Killed when his airplane crashed, poor devil.”

“It's a quick way to go.”

“Mm.” The bishop decided not to pursue that subject. “Some say he was her third husband. Rumors of a liaison in Texas with an oil millionaire. The Church is awfully sticky about divorce. I prefer to turn a blind eye.”

“She's not at all what I expected. Very forceful. I must admit I'm glad Zoë isn't a bit like her mother.”

“No.” The bishop thought about it. “I mean yes.” He cleared his throat. “Shapland left Philly a vast amount of property. She's a major landowner, you know.”

“I do know. She's just given this place to me. Well, to us.”

They turned and looked at the building. From this angle, a separate chapel and a stable block were visible.

“You'll need a bicycle to get from the bathroom to the breakfast room,” the bishop said. “I'd sell it, if I were you.”

Langham was shocked. “But it's a wedding present.”

“Then buy a tandem. Put the butler on the front seat. You'll need all your energy, once you're married.”

When the Friesian Islands came into view they were the wrong size and shape. They were also twenty minutes late. Hunt couldn't believe it.

For nearly two hours his trio of Hampdens had cruised across the North Sea, seeing nothing but cloud above and water below. The cloud was gray tinged with black, the water was gray spiked with white. At first Hunt was able to let the automatic pilot do the flying. Then the cloud base came down to a thousand feet and the sea was more white than gray. The air should have got warmer as he flew lower, but it felt much colder. And much bumpier.

His observer was an experienced flight lieutenant called Paddy Mason, and he saw the island first. “That's Terschelling on the starboard quarter, skipper,” he said.

“It can't be,” Hunt said. “Terschelling's Dutch. We're miles past Holland by now. Aren't we?”

There was silence on the intercom while Hunt and Mason and the two gunners looked at the island. It was too distant to reveal anything except a thin, flat silhouette. “It's Terschelling, all right,” Mason said. “Look at the length of it. Twice as long as any German island.”

“Come up here, Paddy. Bring your maps.”

Mason crawled up the tunnel, plugged in his intercom, spread the maps. Hunt's finger traced the line of the Friesians from west to east. Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland, Schiermonnikoog. “Extraordinary language,” he murmured. Then some driblets of land before Holland ended and Germany began with the island of Borkum. Next came Juist, Norderney, Langeoog, somewhere unreadable in the crease of the map, finally Wangeroog where you turned right for Wilhelmshaven, which was where he had expected to be. “If that's Terschelling,” he said, “we're ten degrees off track, and your dead reckoning is completely duff.”

The Hampdens had no radio communication between them, but Stubby Gurnee had seen the island and guessed that Hunt was slightly lost. “Try and get some bearings,” he told his wireless operator. “See if you can cook up a rough fix.”

His wireless operator was Aircraftsman First Class York. His RAF trade was radio mechanic; flying was a bonus. He searched until he got a strong signal: a band playing “Twelfth Street Rag.” He switched on his intercom. “Skipper, I'm pretty sure I've got Radio Hilversum on a bearing of one eight two degrees.”

“That puts us off Terschelling,” the observer said.

“Let's hear it, Yorky,” Gurnee said. York connected the music to the intercom. The dash of jazz trumpet, witty and cheerful, was wasted in this gray alloy tube. “Louis Armstrong,” Gurnee said. “Never,” the under gunner said. “More like Tommy Dorsey.” York blew a raspberry. The jazz ended, an announcer chattered happily. “Is that Dutch?” Gurnee asked.

“Sounds kind of like Belgian,” his observer said.

Gurnee listened some more. “What does Belgian sound like?” he asked. “Never mind. Search east, Yorky. Maybe there's a Radio Hamburg.”

In the third bomber, Happy Hall was not surprised to see a Dutch island. “I never trusted those bloody predicted winds, Kenny,” he told his observer. “Silly sod of a Met man's got everything wrong again. What's our true ground-speed?”

“Pretty pathetic. I'll do some sums. Fuel consumption must be up.”

“Wireless op,” Hall said. “Stop picking your nose and come up here and give me some coffee and a sandwich.” Buffeting made his voice shake. “I don't intend to die hungry. This weather is turning into a
real bitch. There goes Terschelling.” While he was speaking, rain blotted out the island.

The Wingco did what he must: he slogged on. At least he knew where he was. A course of seventy or eighty degrees should take the Hampdens parallel to the Friesians, provided they crabbed hard enough into the wind. Everything depended on its strength and direction. The North Sea was getting beaten to a froth. Wherever he looked, it resembled white corduroy.

In fact, the bombers never saw another island. Rain closed in until visibility was down to a few hundred yards. The silly sod of a Met man had got one thing right: the storm met them just as they reached their search area.

When Paddy Mason reckoned they were ten miles north of Wangeroog, Hunt began a square search for the convoy: ten miles north, west, south and then twenty miles east to set up the next ten-mile box. The cloud base kept dropping, pressing them down, seven hundred feet, six hundred. The wind hammered the bombers until it was impossible to keep formation. Hunt looked left and right and saw his wingmen dropping and climbing like horses on a fairground roundabout, only more so. Much more so. When they blundered into rain, which was often, it coated the Perspex and everyone was flying on instruments. Hail was worse.

He kept up the search for two hours. Maybe there was a convoy. Maybe it was in port by now. Paddy Mason got out the Aldis lamp and signaled to the other Hampdens:
Return to base.
At least the storm would blow them home.

Stubby Gurnee lost the other two in an especially black rain squall. It didn't matter; he couldn't miss England. After two and a half hours there was no sight of land; only the perpetually angry sea. The radio was playing up: York couldn't get a fix. At last Gurnee got a QDM from some station, but the signal was faint. When an aircraft asked for a QDM, the station responding gave a magnetic bearing. If the pilot flew along that bearing, then eventually, and making allowance for wind, he should reach that station. Gurnee got a QDM of zero three five degrees, which was almost northeast. But if England was northeast, Gurnee must be southwest. That would place him somewhere over the English Channel.

“D'you believe that?” he asked his observer.

“Only if the wind changed and blew us south.”

Gurnee tried to get another QDM. No luck.

The English Channel widens dramatically as you go west, so Gurnee was moving further and further away from the English coast. He heard nothing more. He didn't trust that faint QDM. If it was wrong, and he turned and headed northeast, he would simply fly deeper into the North Sea. An hour later—after more than eight hours' flying—he knew the QDM must have been right. Now he turned north; but now his tanks were down to the dregs, and soon the angry sea swallowed the Hampden like a titbit.

Langham found Silk in his room, lying on his bed, not reading a book. “Guess what,” he said. “My popsy's mother has just given us a house to live in.”

“Fancy that.”

“Big place. It's even got peacocks.”

“Well, that's nice.”

“Near Lincoln. Made me think, life's a bit like playing Monopoly, isn't it? Last night I was knee-deep in muck, running away from the army. Today I won a socking great country house.”

“More like snakes and ladders,” Silk said. “Stubby Gurnee's overdue. In the drink, probably. Him and his crew.”

“Ah,” Langham said. “Yes. I suppose that is different.”

For a few days, the MO discreetly observed the reaction of the aircrews, and saw their lack of reaction. Perhaps the Mess was slightly quieter the day after Gurnee was missing. It soon recovered. People were always coming and going on a bomber station: they got posted, sent on courses, developed tonsillitis, got lost and pranged the kite when they came down in Scotland and weren't seen again for a fortnight. Everybody moved, sooner or later. Nobody lost any sleep over it.

The Americans were beginning to call it the Phoney War. For the French it was
la drôle de guerre:
the joke war. In Germany they watched nothing happen on the Siegfried and Maginot Lines and christened it Sitzkrieg: sitting war. Churchill, who was in Chamberlain's Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty, called it the Twilight War, which was too poetic for the British. They preferred the Bore War. It was a pun on the Boer War. All but the thickest recognized that. And Britain had won the Boer War. Britain always won, in the long run. Everyone knew that.

Rafferty and Hunt were determined that 409 was not going to be allowed to be bored. The crews were kept busy. If they couldn't fly, they trained. They did PT, ran around the aerodrome, were drilled on the parade ground; and they went to lectures, endless lectures, on meteorology, bomb-aiming, optimum cruising speeds and fuel consumption, air-firing, aircraft recognition, the history of the RAF, military law, oxygen depletion, more meteorology, astro-navigation, first aid including resuscitation, aircraft recognition again. And then one afternoon, when “B” flight was on standby, “A” Flight went to a distant corner of the aerodrome for a lecture by Black Mac on Why Bombs Explode.

He stood beside an array of bombs, set up on the floor of a flatbed truck. The crews gathered in a half-circle. Silk and Langham hid at the back.

McHarg enjoyed lecturing aircrew. It allowed him to put them in their place. For a start, he adopted a bogus, over-educated Scottish accent: Edinburgh, not Glasgow: the kind of sing-song style he imagined a university don or a successful advocate might use.

“There are some folk,” he began, “who regard the British bomber pilot and his friends as the cream of the Royal Air Force. Gallant knights in armor, sallying forth to fight His Majesty's foes. Nnn?” This tiny, nasal snort punctuated his lecture. “A romantic view. Truth is, the bomb does the damage, so the bomb deserves the credit. Nnn? Rather like the butcher's boy on his bicycle, delivering the meat. Which matters more, the meat or the boy? Nnn? So now—”

“Don't agree,” said Tom Stuart, the flight commander. “Your sausages are no good if your butcher's boy takes them to the wrong address.”

McHarg recoiled an inch. “That thought never entered my mind, squadron leader. Totally miss the target, d'you mean? Is that a common occurrence, would you say?”

“No, but…”

“That's a relief, then. We can ignore such a rare event. Nnn? Yes. All agree, the bomb is king.”

“He's taking the piss,” Silk whispered to Langham.

“Is there a question at the back?” McHarg asked, and stood on tiptoe. Silk and Langham ducked. “No? Well now, let us meet the bomb family. Here we have the General Purpose two-hundred-and-fifty-pound and five-hundred-pound.” The bigger bomb was about five feet high and was painted olive green. He patted and stroked it like a pet dog. “How many here think ‘General Purpose' means it's good for all jobs?” A few tentative hands went up. “You're all buffoons,” McHarg said. “GP simply means it will fit in the bay of any RAF bomber in service. We have three main types of this bomb: high explosive, armor-piercing, and fragmentation. HE overwhelms the enemy, armor-piercing underwhelms him, and fragmentation whelms what's left standing.” Nobody even smiled. He hid his disappointment. That had been his only joke, written down when he heard it told at an Advanced Armaments Course in 1937. Well, sod the lot of them.