Goshawk Squadron (17 page)

She glared. She stamped to the window and thrust the old man aside.
“Vos avions!”
she shouted.
“Vos mitraillettes!”
She stamped back and seized Blunt's arm, rapping on his wrist-watch.
“Aujourd'hui!”
she screamed.
“Aujourd'hui vous avez tué ma petite!”
And then she really began weeping.

“Jesus Christ,” the adjutant said. “I hope I didn't get that right.” He looked at the stiff, unhappy faces of the pilots. “Come on,” he called out over her sobs. “You were up there, you should know.”

The mess steward came in with Woolley's piano accordion and gently laid it on the table.

“All I got was ‘airplanes' and ‘today,'” Finlayson said. “What the devil is the old bitch up to?”

“She says we shot her daughter,” Blunt said.

Finlayson held his breath, and then let it out in a rush. “Bloody nonsense,” he snapped. “How the hell could we? She must be mad.”

Woolley eased the broad straps around his shoulders and opened the bellows with a wheeze.

“As far as I can make out,” Blunt said, “the girl was in the fields under our dog-fight, and somebody's bullets hit her.”

“That wasn't a dog-fight,” Kimberley said contemptuously.

“Shut up.” Woodruffe turned to Dickinson, while Woolley played a few experimental chords. “Dicky, you were there. Could you—could we have done that?”

“I suppose so.” Dickinson made a helpless gesture. “Any-thing's possible, isn't it? We were low enough. Anyway, high or low, the damn bullets have to end up somewhere, haven't they?”

“It's a wonder more people aren't killed,” Church said darkly.

Woolley edged his way into a shanty:
The Death of Tom Bowling.

“I still don't see what we can do, anyway,” the adjutant said.

“Ah … madame
…” Blunt hesitated, waiting for a pause, and finally tapped her on the arm.
“Je vous en prie … uh … Que voulez-vous?”

This brought on such a bout of weeping and incoherence that the old man shuffled forward to lend his support. Blunt retired in despair. “What can anyone do?” he asked. “If she's dead, she's dead.”

Woolley swung into a second chorus, and gave it greater volume. There was now a touch of jauntiness about his phrasing.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Richards cried. “What exactly did she say? She said
ma petite,
didn't she? How do we know it was her little
girl?
It could have been her little anything.”

“Little cow,” Dickinson suggested.
“Vache
is feminine.”

“Ask her how old it was,” Woodruffe told Blunt.

“Ask what?” Blunt called across the vibrant sea-shanty.

“How old it was,” Woodruffe shouted. He looked impatiently at Woolley, but Woolley was putting his heart and soul into the music.

“Uh … madame
…” Blunt said.
“Votre petite
… uh …
quel age?”

She turned away and sank to her knees. With her arms crossed over her breast, she rocked to and fro, while long, shuddering sobs twisted her face. The old man looked accusingly at Blunt.

“I don't think it can be a cow,” Blunt called to the adjutant. Woolley released three loud chords, and started on a ponderous version of the Sailors' Hornpipe.

For a few moments the pilots sat there, appalled by the racket, upset by the tragedy, unwilling to leave. Woolley picked up the tempo. His fingering was dreadful and his chords were wild approximations, but he pressed on, bashing out his hornpipe in direct competition with the Frenchwoman's lament.

Rogers stood up and said: “This is no good.”

Woodruffe shouted: “What?”

Rogers walked out. Lambert got up, and with him Killion and Church. Soon the rest of the squadron was trailing cautiously and apologetically past the French couple, until only Woodruffe and Blunt were left. Woolley began the hornpipe again. Blunt looked confusedly at the adjutant, but Woodruffe had his head in his hands.

Blunt went to the door. Woolley followed, playing him out. He hooked the door shut with his foot, and walked away, spilling wrong notes behind him like a gardener sowing weeds.

Fifteen minutes later Woolley had the squadron in the air. They repeated the morning's patrol, landed, refueled and took off again. No German aircraft were seen.

Once, Woolley took his flight a little farther over the Front
than usual, just to provoke the gunners. For the new pilots it was a disturbing experience. Dirty blots of smoke appeared, leaking quickly into the sky like bad ink on cheap paper. Then came the wicked
crack-boom!
and the tossing, jarring turbulence. Next the murdering puffs of explosive charge and ragged steel fragments dissolved into weak smoke and the plane was butting through the piece of sky which, seconds before, had been laced with violence; and meanwhile, other shell bursts erupted just as unpredictably ahead, and behind, and below.

Woolley browsed this area, changing course and height every fifteen or twenty seconds to confuse the gunners. Finally he had exhausted the new pilots' capacity for fear. They loathed the German guns and they looked with longing and detestation at Woolley, but in each of them fear had given way to a curiously objective fatalism. Some shells were distant. Some were close. The next might kill you. So what?

They survived and flew home, and Peacock found himself savoring the memory. Even mortal danger was not entirely unpleasant.

Kimberley's engine failed and he crash-landed in a field, without harm; the others touched down safely. The adjutant watched them stroll back to their billets, unbuttoning their flying coats, stamping and kicking to work the stiffness away. They shouted obscene greetings to him, treating him like a commissionaire, or a barman. Nobody asked about the French couple.

Woolley trudged toward the adjutant. He recognized the pastel forms in his hands: indents and returns and vouchers and reports, all the papers that had to be signed to authorize the war to continue. Then he saw bolder colors: huge red crosses against a white panel on a muddy truck. He started to run, turning away from the adjutant. He was carrying his handbell by its clapper, and he shifted his grip to the handle and began clanging. Startled pilots stood aside. Church was too slow and Woolley's shoulder barged him out of the way. The bell clashed all the way to Woolley's billet until he kicked
open the door. Then it was still. Margery was sitting on the bed holding a bottle of Guinness that foamed all down her hand and wrist.

“I heard you coming,” she said. “I never could open these damn things.”

“How did you know this was my hut? Did they tell you?”

“Certainly not. To have asked would have been indiscreet. I went around and smelled them. This one smelled like yours.”

Woolley took the bottle and licked the Guinness off her wrist.

“I don't smell so bad,” he said.

“All men smell lovely,” Margery said. “But you smell magnificent.”

Peacock, Callaghan and Blunt walked to the village after dinner. It was night; a brisk breeze drove chubby clouds to the east, effacing and revealing the stars as if polishing them for display. When the wind dropped an occasional rumble in the distance reminded them of their first taste of war's excitements. The sharp night air made them step out. Stepping out made them feel bold and confident and strong.

Peacock said: “I've been thinking about our commanding officer. You know, he can't be more than twenty-three at the most.”

“He's twenty-three,” Callaghan said. “Rogers told me.”

“How old is Rogers?”

“Twenty-one and a good bit.”

“The old man looks twice his age.”

“He has that sort of face,” Blunt said. “You know, degenerate.”

“He's not my idea of a leader, I must say,” Peacock said. “Not the sort of chap you'd want to be captain of a team.”

“That uniform!” Callaghan said. “He'd get shot if he turned up like that in England.”

“You really trod on his pet corn before lunch, didn't you?” Blunt said.

“All I said was we were lucky to get a two-seater on a plate
on our first flight,” Callaghan protested. “No cause for him to be so stuffy, no cause at all.”

They walked in silence for a while, passing the first, blacked-out cottages.

“Actually, Dickinson told me that it almost certainly
wasn't
a matter of luck,” Peacock said. “He seems pretty sure that the old man saw them coming.”

“Yes, but how did he know they would stay on that course?” Blunt asked.
“That
must have been luck.”

“Dickinson thinks not,” Peacock said. “He said it was ten to one the Huns would fly over our field, since the two-seater was on reconnaissance and they'd want to take a picture or something.”

“Oh,” said Callaghan. “Of course.”

“You seem to have been pretty thick with Dickinson,” Blunt said. “Did he give you any other advice?” Blunt still felt hurt about the old Frenchwoman.

“As a matter of fact, he did. He said if you fire long bursts, you risk jamming your gun, so you should get in close and fire short bursts. Apparently the old man has been hammering this into them for weeks.”

“Apparently the old man is a bit of a Prussian,” Blunt said.

“One tries to be open-minded,” Callaghan said, “but that sort of approach does put one off, rather. Frankly, I'd respond more if a chap came up to me and said, ‘Look here, we've been doing this for rather a long time now and we find that this way seems to bring the best results.'”

“Exactly,” Blunt said.

“Oh, well.” Peacock pointed to an inn. “I suppose we should be glad the fire-eater is on our side, and not the Germans'.”

“From all I've heard,” Callaghan said, “some of the German pilots are jolly decent chaps.”

“Of course they are. It's absolute nonsense to say that chivalrous men can't fight a chivalrous war,” Blunt said. “That's why I put in for the RFC. We're literally the only sportsmen left.”

Killion saw the three men come in, and turned his back on them. He was sitting at a corner table with an English girl called Rose Franklin. She was a nurse at a hospital on the other side of the village, and Killion had met her the previous evening by simply walking into the hospital and asking the first girl he saw if she would come out with him. Because Killion was young and trembling with desperation, Rose Franklin had agreed. She had laughed very loudly, but she had agreed. Rose was a strikingly handsome girl, big-breasted, high-colored, dancing-eyed. It was Killion's bad luck that she was boisterous, unromantic, insensitive and recently married. Nevertheless, her presence was potent, and he persevered.

“F-funny,” he said, his sexual hunger overcoming his stutter, “I knew as soon as I saw you.”

“Did you, now,” Rose said brightly. “And what did you know, may I ask?”

Killion frowned with terrible sincerity. “Well, you know,” he said, clenching his fists on the table. “Y-you and me.”

“I certainly
don't
know. Are they friends of yours, over there? They seemed to recognize you.”

“I bet you're j-jolly good at s-s-swimming. Anyone can t-tell just by looking. Are you k-keen on swimming?”

She laughed, more for the exercise than anything else. “Well, if you go to the seaside you have to bathe, don't you?”

“Not half!” Killion spread his hands on the table, in the hope that she would rest an arm within stroking range. “D'you like that? I think bathing is jolly good f-fun. Especially when you don't have to w-wear anything.”

She laughed again, but reproachfully. “I really couldn't say about
that.”

“They have s-swimming pools where you can swim in the b-b-b-buff. It f-feels awfully g-good. You ought to t-try it.”

Rose re-arranged her gloves and purse. “How stuffy it gets in here!” she said. “It quite affects my head.”

“Have some m-more wine,” Killion urged. He tried to add to her full glass.

“Golly! The very idea. If anyone from the hospital sees me I'll never hear the last of it.” She stared unblinkingly over his shoulder.

“No, honestly, I m-mean it,” Killion tried to smile, but felt foolish, so he went back to looking sincere. “You really are the m-most m-marvelous girl.”

“There's something written on the wall over there.” She tilted her head and frowned. “Do you read French?”

“No,” said Killion. “Not a bloody word.” That made her jump.

“Yes, it's definitely him,” Callaghan said.

“If you ask me, it's a grave mistake for a chap in our position to get too involved with women,” Blunt said. He sipped his wine. “Not too dry for you, is it? I can always make them change it …” Blunt had ordered the wine. The others told him it was just right.