Damned Good Show (37 page)

Skull stood up and was horrified to see how much worse the flak was. Nothing could fly through that, it was madness. And still the discussion went on. He had a parachute, he knew the exits, he could leave, now. The Wimpy rocked like a boat in a swell. “Turbulence,” Gilchrist said. “There's a kite ahead. We'll follow him.” Skull had to sit down again. After a minute, Gilchrist said: “Ah … poor devil. You should see this, Skull.” He got up, weak at the knees. Far below, searchlights coned a Wellington. Flak chased it, tickled it. Flame streaked from a wing and the aircraft exploded. “Log that, would you, nav?” Gilchrist said.

He found Essen because, he said, he recognized the smell. A peculiar chemical stink, he said, that only Essen produced. The nav crawled down to his bomb-aiming position. Gilchrist lost height, circling widely, until Skull could see light flak bursting all around.
Quickly, quickly, drop the bombs
, he thought. The nav said he was sure he recognized the steel works, but too late, C-Charlie had overshot. Someone said it looked more like Gelsenkirchen. “We'll go
round again,” Gilchrist said. Skull unplugged his intercom. “I'll kill you, you incompetent idiot!” he screamed. Nobody heard.

Second time round, they dropped the bombs and held steady for the flash and the camera. Skull was shaking with cold. He tripped and fell on his way to the bed, bloodied his nose. A piece of shell had nicked the fabric beside the bed, ripping it away. He lay down and let freezing air crash against him. When C-Charlie landed at Coney Garth, Skull couldn't walk, couldn't speak. The blood wagon took him to the MO, who gave him a big sedative and a nice warm cot.

Zoë was bored with being cooped up in the Blazers' house, and she wanted to go for a walk. Silk brought her a pair of Waaf overalls and a bucket. “Nobody ever stops a Waaf if she's carrying a bucket,” he said. “Everyone assumes she's doing a job. Carry it in your right hand and you won't even have to salute.”

She tried on the overalls. “Primitive,” she said. “Barbaric. Quite odious. No thank you.”

“What's wrong with them?”

“They're an obscene joke. They make me look shabby.”

“That's the whole bloody point, you stupid woman.”

She gave them back. “I can remember when you had a sense of style, Silko. Look at you now.” They were in the kitchen, and Kate was making toast for breakfast. “He keeps proposing to me,” Zoë said. “Look at that grubby uniform. Would you marry him?”

“Like a flash.”

“I look much sexier without the uniform,” Silk said. “Isn't that right, Zoë?”

“Rather a coarse remark.” She nibbled some toast.

“Zoë can be pretty coarse herself,” he said. He was irritated: getting those overalls had not been easy. “The rich are like that.”

“I'm not rich. I'm not on the run. And I want to see my friends from the old days. Jonty Brown and Tom Stuart and Tubby Heckter. Pixie Hunt, too.”

“Not at home to callers, sweetie. Got the chop, all of them,” Silk said. “Finish your toast, we're off. I smuggled you in, now I've got to smuggle you out. Then I can bring you back in, legally. Why? Because you haven't been signed
in
at the Main Gate, so legally you can't be signed
out
.”

“That's utterly asinine.”

“You're the expert in that field.” He hustled her out, just as Rollo came downstairs. “What was all that about?” Rollo asked. “They're not in love,” Kate said.

“Neither are we. That makes two happy couples. She's stunning, isn't she?”

“Forget it, Rollo. She's mad and you're nuts. Think of the children.”

As soon as they were out of sight of the aerodrome, Silk pulled off the road and stopped. Zoë kicked aside the sacking and got into the front seat. “I'm hungry,” she said. “Where can we get a good black market breakfast?”

Sunlight streamed through ancient oaks and dappled the Frazer-Nash. A pair of hefty cart-horses wandered up to a fence and blinked at the visitors. In the distance, a thrush tried out variations on an original theme. It was a scene made for lovers. Rollo Blazer would have shot it at once, before he lost the light.

“What a ghastly woman you are,” Silk said.

“Abuse like that is slightly premature, darling. Save it until we're in bed.”

“You're worse than your bloody mother. At least she was honest about her greed. You can't be honest about anything, can you?”

“If we don't have breakfast, then we can't have sex. That's not blackmail, it's pure biology. And I was honest about those Socialist overalls. Too honest for you, Silko. Start the car, before I eat one of those charmingly rustic horses.”

Silk got out, and took the keys with him. It was easier to deal with Zoë from a distance. “You lie about everything. I can't take that.
Everyone cheats a bit, but you … You never had a baby, did you?”

She was too hungry to argue, so she did the next best thing and gave a smile of childish innocence. “How did you know?”

“Absence of stretch marks.”

“Clever Silko. Not so slow, after all.”

“And I doubt if your mother's in Dublin.”

“No. In Kentucky. For the racing.”

“And all that junk about charity funds and the special constable and being a jinx popsy was all junk.”

“No. I had a fling with a couple of pilots, both killed in action. Anyway, nothing really mattered after I lost Tony. Mummy did a bunk to America to escape the Blitz. Maybe I should have gone too. Everyone else was being frightfully patriotic and I honestly didn't give a damn. There you are, Silko: a bit of your foul honesty at last.” She got out of the car and stood with her face turned away from him. “Why don't you ask me what I'm really doing here? I came looking for Tony, and don't tell me it was very foolish. I told myself that a hundred times. I honestly didn't expect to find you. You were a big surprise.”

“So you adopted me as a sort of substitute Tony. Is that the truth?”

No answer.

“I still don't see why you had to lie so much. You're such a fraud, Zoë.”

“And you're such a prig, Silko.”

That hurt. That drew blood. “I don't mind being fucked about,” he said, “but I can't stand being buggered about.” He checked his watch. “Look: I'm on duty soon.”

He drove her to Bury St. Edmunds railway station. Neither of them spoke until it was time to say goodbye. “Has the squadron still got that lovely boxer dog?” she asked. “Handyman? I gave him to 409 as a mascot.”

“Got knocked down in the road,” Silk said. “Dead.”

Zoë looked him in the eyes. “You couldn't even lie about that, could you?” she said sadly. “You're hopeless, Silko.” She kissed him on the lips and walked away, leaving him feeling that he had found the truth and it wasn't worth the price he had paid, so he should have stuck with the lies.

Too late now. He got back to Coney Garth just in time to hear that he was on ops. Bloody Bremen again. Good. When all else failed, there was always bombing.

Rafferty always found time to visit wounded aircrew, but Skull wasn't aircrew and he had no serious injuries, so Rafferty asked the Ops Officer, Bellamy, to pop in and see the chap.

Skull was in bed, eating porridge. He was unshaven and the spoon seemed heavy. There was a small cut on his nose. Bellamy asked how he was feeling.

“Somewhat sluggish. The brain feels like …” He gazed at the porridge, and finally shook his head.

“You're probably still a bit doped.”

“Sometimes I can smell flak. It smells strange. Pungent.” Speaking was like laying bricks: every word had to be found and placed. “Flak is close when …” He aimed his spoon at nothing. “When you can smell it.”

“Still, you got back, didn't you? Takes a lot to stop a Wimpy.”

Skull licked the spoon and thought. “Cold treacle,” he said carefully. “Brain feels like …” He yawned hugely. “Feels like … Damn. Forgotten again.”

“Treacle. Doesn't matter.” Bellamy took the porridge bowl from Skull's hand before he spilled it. “You should get some sleep.”

“Flak. Horrible. We were lost, Bellamy. Stooged about, looking for … um… Essen. Half an hour, in the flak, over the Ruhr. Big mistake.” Skull clutched Bellamy's sleeve. “I know a better way.”

“I see. Well, I suppose you'd better tell me, so I can tell the Wingco.”

“Forget the damn target. Forget bloody Krupp's. Bomb Essen. Then—go.”

“Bomb the city? I honestly don't think that's on the cards, old boy”

“The kites have to fly round and round. In all that flak.”

Bellamy took Skull's hand from his sleeve. “Right, I've got the message. You get some rest.”

“A Wimpy blew up.” To Bellamy's horror there were tears on Skull's face. “And we never even bombed Essen. We never even found Essen.”

Bellamy reported to Rafferty that Skull was exhausted and not making much sense. The sight of flak seemed to have unbalanced him. “Kept babbling about making the city the target, the whole city. At least I think that's what he meant.”

“That's what happens when you put a Cambridge don in uniform,” Rafferty said. “I don't want our tame Yank going anywhere near him. See to it, would you?”

Colonel Kemp was found in a hangar, watching a Wellington get an engine change. He knew of Skull's Essen op, and was impressed by it. He hoped the wound wasn't serious.

“Concussion,” Bellamy said. “They're taking X-rays. Meanwhile, absolute quiet. No visitors, I'm afraid. Poor chap's incoherent at times.”

“Good Lord. What hit him? A shell splinter?”

“Nothing hit him. He tripped over the main spar and landed on his head. We warned him beforehand, but you know what these academic types are like. They live in a world of their own.”

Colonel Kemp nodded, and made a mental note: beware the main spar. He was determined to go on an op, and soon.

At Coney Garth, the group captain was king. Just the sight of four rings on a sleeve was enough to make a corporal square his shoulders and look alert. It was enough to make an AC2 scuttle out of sight. But at High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, group captains were small change.

High Wycombe was the headquarters of Bomber Command. Its
C-in-C, Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse, had flown with the Royal Naval Air Service in World War One and gone on to build a solid career in the RAF. He knew very well that, having been given Bomber Command, he had to defend it. Whispers had reached him that the Prime Minister might be having second thoughts about strategic bombing, whatever that meant. Downing Street had asked for certain files and photographs to be sent to a civil servant, name of Butt, and that was bad enough, but this Butt was an economist by training, a youngster of twenty-seven, not long down from Cambridge. It was known that Butt had visited the PRU at Danesfield, several times, and not to ogle the delightful Constance Babington Smith, either. What the devil was going on? The chief of Bomber Command—an air marshal and a knight of the realm—couldn't very well ask young Butt what he was up to. However, there was no reason why Champion, not much older than Butt and also a Cambridge man, shouldn't continue the friendship begun at King's and invite Butt to lunch at his club.

The Sheldrake was a blackened ruin. They went to the Army and Navy Club, and ate in a private room.

“Security,” Champion explained. “I'm just a dogsbody in operational planning, but you live and work in the throbbing heart of the war … Look, I've got us a salmon, which has the great virtue of being off-ration, as does the salad. Not desperately exciting but… is that all right?” Butt assured him it was more than all right. “And this white Burgundy is quite sturdy,” Champion remarked, “which is more than can be said of the French performance last year … Oh dear. How horribly indiscreet of me. I never spoke.”

“Didn't you? I never heard.”

“Splendid. That makes us quits.”

Lunch was good, and Champion was not so clumsy as to spoil it by talking shop. It was only when they got to the coffee that he said, “This reminds me of Skull. What a brain! Yet capable of such
naiveté.
You remember how concerned he was to give words their precise meaning? To him, a target is a target. Either you hit it or you miss it. If a raid doesn't succeed, it fails. Well, as you know better than I, strategic bombing isn't that simple.”

“Some raids are partially successful, you mean.”

“And some are doubly successful.” Champion sipped his coffee. He cocked an eyebrow at Butt, who was looking politely baffled. “What
Skull couldn't fathom,” Champion said, “because he's not a pilot, because he doesn't look beyond the words, is that Bomber Command aims to hit two targets with one bomb.”

Butt blinked a couple of times. “We're talking about area bombing.”

“Exactly”

“Perhaps we should say ‘approximately.'”

Champion smiled. “Or even ‘allegedly.' My lords and masters at Command are no fools. They've never believed that
every
bomber hits
every
specific target, no matter what the crew may claim. Flak, cloud, smoke, different winds at different heights, an enemy searchlight smack in the bomb-aimer's face—a dozen factors might spoil the attack. The difference is, this time last year pilots were told that if they couldn't find a specific target, they must bring their bombs back. Not any more. Now they
always
bomb a target, because the target is enemy morale, and they can't miss that.”

“Assuming that the target area is big enough.”

“It always is. For many months now, every military target we attack is in a German town. If we hit that specific target, hooray. If we miss it and hit the built-up area, three cheers for that, too. German factories are no good without German workers.”