The Aerodrome: A Love Story (15 page)

CHAPTER XV

Discipline

SHORTLY AFTER THIS I was appointed to a position in the aerodrome to which in my most ambitious moments I could hardly have aspired. I was given the post of private secretary to the Air Vice-Marshal himself; and now, in the light of what followed after, it is difficult to summon up again to the imagination the feelings of pride and satisfaction with which at that time I was filled. There were other feelings as well. I regretted being no longer able to live the life of the squadron to which I had been attached and amongst which I had made many friends. My vanity, too, was flattered by the esteem with which I was looked upon by other ranks; for this was a unique appointment. In the past the Air Vice-Marshal had had no confidential secretary but, with the aid of two or three stenographers and by delegating some of his work to various senior officers, had personally superintended an immense field of activity. Now I was to share his confidence, and the knowledge of this fact and my pride in it easily outweighed every other feeling that I may have had. When I was first called to his office and informed of my new appointment I remember that together with my pride and my surprise at being selected for such a post, I felt also a kind of reluctance and an extreme diffidence; for I knew what I could do as a pilot, whereas of many of the other and more important activities of the Air Force I knew too that I was almost entirely ignorant. The Air Vice-Marshal, I think, must have understood the hesitation that my face, no doubt, expressed. He was sitting, I remember, at a long table in his room, and a shaft of winter sunlight through an open window passed behind his head, which was inclined forward, and just touched the edges of the fingers of one hand which rested on the dark wood beside a blotting pad. When he informed me of my appointment and when I had, from a variety of feelings, failed to give an immediate answer, he smiled and at once began to speak again. "I dare say you remember," he said, "the display of aerobatics which some time ago I arranged for you to watch. You will know now that the work which you are doing at present, invaluable as it is as a part of your training, is in itself practically worthless. I should like you to realize that the same is true of any other of our specialized activities. Specialists, of course, we must have, and a sound knowledge of the basis of their work is also necessary for anyone who, like myself, has the duty and the delight of exercising control." I noticed that when he pronounced the word "delight" his lips curved in a smile that in any other man I should have taken as an expression of sensuality. Now he looked up at me quickly, and from the animation of his eyes I could see that he was deeply moved. "All these people," he continued, "are invaluable; and all of them are, in the last analysis, worthless. Even our great mathematician with whose wife, I believe, you are carrying on an affair." He smiled again, and looked at me intently. Uncertain of what attitude I should adopt, I found myself smiling also. He leant back in his chair and said: "Good. I congratulate you. She is an estimable woman. I am glad that it is not too serious. You must remember" (and here his face changed so that he was looking at me with an expression of extraordinary gravity) "you must remember what your duty is and what is more than your duty, what is the whole purpose of our life." Here he paused, keeping his eyes fixed on me as though he were expecting an answer, and I again hesitated, for, to tell the truth, I was not exactly certain as to his meaning, whether he was speaking of our duties in the Air Force or of something else. He might have been prompting me in a part which I had momentarily forgotten as he continued in a low voice: "To be freed from time, Roy. From the past and from the future. From shapelessness." He had never before, I think, and certainly not since I had joined the aerodrome, called me by my Christian name, and this fact impressed itself now more forcibly on my mind than did the sense of his words. However, he had either not noticed that he was speaking to me more familiarly than usual or else attached no significance to what form of address he used. His eyes had left mine and he seemed to be staring fixedly at the edge of the table. His lips continued to move though no words came from them, and there was a look of such concentration on his face that I could not believe that he was any longer aware of my existence. As I watched him I noticed for the first time the long lines that ran from his cheekbones to his chin, giving him in this brief moment of withdrawal from the outside world a haggard appearance which in some way I was shocked to see. For an instant I was reminded of the Rector's face as I had seen it in his study when he was confessing aloud the murder of his friend. The Air Vice-Marshal did not remain for long in this state. Quite suddenly the tension of his face relaxed. He raised his eyes from the edge of the table and looked at me sharply. Then he pushed his chair back, smiled, and began to tell me about my hours of work and some of the duties which I should have to perform, and as he spoke I became amazed at the confidence which he was bestowing on me and at the extent of the responsibility of my new work. At this first interview I was only told in the roughest outline of the tremendous aims which the Air Vice-Marshal had set before himself and before us; indeed, much of what he said to me at that time seemed to me then almost incomprehensible, almost fantastic; for I had not yet learnt how detailed and meticulous were the means already arranged for each far-reaching end. It was only gradually, as a result of many hours of routine work and many long conversations, that I began to form in my mind anything like a complete picture of the scope and the ambition of our operations. Then I realized the importance to us of those large sections of the aerodrome staff who were engaged on work which had previously seemed to me to have little or nothing to do with flying. There was, for example, not only the enormous propaganda department, but there were other departments whose work consisted in an investigation of such subjects as banking, agriculture, fisheries, and factory organization. And though our aerodrome was far the largest and most important in the country, there were many others large enough to contain corresponding specialist departments, with all of which we were in constant touch. I remembered that at the time when the Air Vice-Marshal had addressed us in the chapel he had informed us that our aim was not only to protect but to transform the country, and I remembered the contempt with which on various occasions he had alluded to judges, lawyers, politicians, industrialists, agricultural and factory workers--to all those in fact whose professional life is usually held to constitute the fabric of civilization. Now he would speak to me of such people with even greater acrimony and with more precision. "I should like you to understand," he would say, "that it is by no means sufficient to blame society for its inefficiency, its waste, its stupidity. These are merely symptoms. It is against the souls of the people themselves that we are fighting. It is each and every one of their ideas that we must detest. Think of them as earth-bound, grovelling from one piece of mud to another, and feebly imagining distinctions between the two, incapable of envisaging a distant objective, tied up for ever in their miserable and unimportant histories, indeed in the whole wretched and blind history of man on earth. Religion, which for many centuries did exercise an ennobling, if a misleading, effect, has gone. The race which we, of all people, are now required to protect is a race of moneymakers and sentimentalists, undisciplined except by forces which they do not understand, insensitive to all except the lowest, the most ordinary, the most mechanical stimuli. Protect it! We shall destroy what we cannot change." And as I listened to him I would feel that I understood more clearly now than before, when I was in the chapel, what it was at which we aimed. I remembered how from the air the valleys, hills, and rivers gained a certain distinction but wholly lost that quality which is perceived by a countryman whose day's travel is bounded by the earth of three or four meadows, and whose view for most of his life may be constricted by some local rising of the ground. In the air there is no feeling or smell of earth, and I have often observed that the backyards of houses or the smoke curling up through cottage chimneys, although at times they seem to have a certain pathos, do as a rule, when one is several thousand feet above them, appear both defenceless and ridiculous, as though infinite trouble had been taken to secure a result that has little or no significance. I began to think now in the same way of those inhabitants of the earth who had never risen above it, never submitted their lives to a discipline like ours, a discipline that was unconnected with the acquisition of money or of foodstuffs. Many of these people, I knew, were miserable; many were content; but both their misery and their happiness seemed to me at this time of my life abject and pointless. From this class of people, I thought, could never come the initiation of any grand idea, and I began to detest those organizations that were outside our own, for I saw that they were aimless and that their power was accidental. But we had an aim which was nothing less than to assume ourselves the whole authority by which men lived, and we had a power that was not an affair of cyphers, but was real and tangible. We were set to exercise our brains, our nerves, our muscles, and our desires towards one end, and to back the force of our will we possessed the most powerful machines that have been invented by man. It was not only our dexterity with these machines, but the whole spirit of our training which cut us off from the mass of men; and to be so cut off was, whether we realized it or not, our greatest pleasure and our chief article of pride. As I began gradually to understand the elaboration and the grandeur of the Air Vice-Marshal's plans, I realized that already we were equipped at any moment to take over the direction of the country whose servants nominally we were. In some of the key posts of administration we already had our own men; as for the other posts we could fill them at a moment's notice with officers who had already been trained for the purpose. And at the centre of this vast organization was the Air Vice-Marshal himself. He alone was in contact with the leaders and sub-leaders of the numerous groups connected with each other through him. Nor was this all; for it was only he who could exercise complete and unquestioned control over others who, without him, would certainly have disputed among themselves for preeminence. As it was I never knew of his authority or of his decisions being at any time questioned; and this was natural enough for, talented and resolute as were many of his subordinates, there was none of them who possessed that seemingly certain vision of the future that made the Air Vice-Marshal so uniquely able to inspire confidence. It was not long before I became aware that I was being entrusted with secrets that were not shared even with the highest of these officials; and my surprise at being selected for such a post of trust was equalled by my determination to show myself worthy of my position. I would work day after day and late into the night, keeping always in the forefront of my mind the aim and certainty of our conspiracy. Indeed, I did not think of our purpose as a conspiracy, but rather as a necessary and exciting operation. We constituted no revolutionary party actuated by humanitarian ideals, but seemed to be an organization manifestly entitled by its own discipline, efficiency, and will to assume supreme power. Outside us I could see nothing that was not incompetent or corrupt, and I remember as on various occasions I piloted the Air Vice-Marshal's plane from one aerodrome to another I would look down on the hills and forests, the coal mines and factory towns over which we flew, and would wonder with a kind of joyful trepidation how much longer we would have to wait before the word was given to us to seize into our own hands all the resources and all the power that we traversed with our wings. But it was not with our ultimate aims that my day-today work was chiefly concerned. There was still much to be done in the village which we had recently occupied, and indeed in this small province of our activity there was already something disquieting. For there was no doubt that, after the initial surprise of our occupation and the excitement which it caused, the mood of the villagers had changed to one of hostility, and there were signs that this hostility, sluggish and undetermined as it was, might grow to dangerous proportions. Already one of our junior aircraftsmen had been murdered in the meadows by the river where he had been walking with the young daughter of one of the men whom I remembered in the past as having been a bellringer. In spite of a strict inquiry we had been unable to find the murderers, and although the girl's father and the girl herself had been dealt with under military law, and a large fine had been levied from every household in the village, we could not but feel that, since the real criminals were still at large, our punitive measures had not been wholly successful. It was certain that the villagers had felt the same thing. I remember that for a week or two following this incident there were reported a number of cases of slackness and insubordination, trifling in themselves, but indicative of a dangerous tendency. All these cases were dealt with severely so that complete discipline was soon reestablished; and yet it was somewhat disturbing to us to have to realize that it was still necessary to devote a certain proportion of our time and energy to the task of suppressing discontent in our immediate neighbourhood. Most of the reports on this subject from our police officers passed through my hands, and it soon became evident to me that among several centres of disaffection the circle of people who surrounded the Squire's sister and the Rector's wife was one of the most important. It appeared to me that the hostility towards us of the village women was more bitter and more homogeneous than was that of the men, and there was no doubt of the influence which many of these women exercised on their husbands, relations, and lovers. They seemed to have formed some sort of club which, under the name of sewing parties, mothers' league, or other such titles, was constantly meeting for malicious gossip either in the church or in the house shared together by the Squire's sister and the
Rector's wife. The Flight-Lieutenant often attended these gatherings, but the reports which he gave of them seemed both to the police and to me also, singularly feeble and unconvincing. Moreover, in the course of his sermons he had on several occasions made remarks that might be construed in a sense prejudicial to our organization; nor was his apparent interest in the church itself a thing which commended itself to any of us. I remember that when I put before the Air Vice-Marshal these reports and my conclusions upon them, he surprised me by appearing somewhat more worried with the facts than the situation demanded. I was used to quick decisions from him, and on this occasion had expected him to order some immediate action, perhaps the transportation of the two ladies to another part of the country, and perhaps the relegation of the Flight-Lieutenant to some less important post. But for some moments after I had concluded my report he remained silent, leaning back in his chair and tapping the top of the table with the knuckles of one hand. I noticed particularly his strong and delicate fingers curving upwards, tense as though he were holding a foil. When he spoke he said: "I imagine that of these two ladies the younger is the more dangerous. I mean the sister of the Squire. She, I believe, is a little younger than her friend." I was surprised at the accuracy of his knowledge, for I had forgotten myself which was the elder of the two. "Yes," I said. "The other lady is more difficult to understand, but she seems to have a much more placid temperament." The Air Vice-Marshal smiled at me, and it struck me that he was smiling in approval of the fact that I had not mentioned my mother by name. As it happened I had made no conscious effort to comply with his wishes in this respect, for, although if I had been asked, I should certainly have admitted that the Rector's wife was, indeed, to the best of my knowledge, my mother, I had long ceased to regard this fact as important. The Air Vice-Marshal went on speaking. "As for that young man," he said, "he must be told what his duty is. I can't understand what has happened to him. He was never brilliant but he used to be competent enough." Here he frowned and looked at me as though I could enlighten him on this subject. The keenness of his eyes and the directness of his look were almost embarrassing to me, and I felt something like relief when he smiled again, looked hurriedly at his watch and rose to his feet. "Come," he said. "You and I will go to church. There is, I believe, a service in progress or just starting." I had grown accustomed to unexpected decisions, but was surprised at this one. He had not visited the church since the day of the Rector's funeral, and it was something of a shock to me now to remember that occasion when I had been indignant at his interruption, and then to reflect on how radically my feelings had altered. As we left the office and entered the car I thought it strange that the Air Vice-Marshal should be willing to waste an hour of his time in a personal inspection of the Flight-Lieutenant's activities and perhaps a few minutes' conversation with the Squire's sister. It seemed that he had read my thoughts, for when we were in the car, he said: "It would really be somewhat ridiculous to have to arrest two old women and a boy. It should be sufficient to scare them. We shall see." He did not speak again until we reached the church. Then, as we stood still in the porch listening to the singing beyond a red curtain that separated us from the congregation, he turned to me and smiled. "Some of these tunes," he said, "I can remember quite well." And he looked away from me with his lips tightly pressed together. As I followed him into the church I found myself wondering, as I had never done before, what sort of a youth and upbringing he had had; for he had never in my presence alluded to the period of his life that had gone by before he joined the Air Force. We took our places almost unobserved at the back of the church, and saw that, as the last verse of the hymn was being sung, the Flight-Lieutenant had left the reading desk where he had been standing and was walking slowly towards the pulpit. To our surprise he was not wearing uniform, but was dressed in a cassock and surplice. So far as I knew he had no authorization whatever to wear this costume, and I guessed from the movement of surprise in the congregation and the faces turned towards each other that he was giving this performance for the first time. I could just see the faces of the Squire's sister and the Rector's wife who were standing in a pew to the right and a little in front of us. They had looked into each other's eyes and smiled while the Flight-Lieutenant was on his way to the pulpit, and when after the brief prayer which he pronounced the congregation had resumed their seats, I observed the heads of the two ladies slightly tilted backwards in an attitude of respectful attention such as I had often seen in the days when the place which the Flight-Lieutenant now occupied had been filled by the man whom he had shot. I leant back in the pew and listened as the preacher began to speak, but before many words had been uttered I turned in surprise to the Air Vice-Marshal; for it was clear at once that the Flight-Lieutenant was greatly exceeding or actually transgressing the instructions which had been given to him. He looked, I thought, remarkably young and handsome as he stood there in his surplice; and yet his looks and whole bearing had altered greatly since the days when I had first become acquainted with him. He had almost lost that careless and irresponsible air which I had so admired. When he spoke now there was a diffidence, almost a timidity, in his manner, and it seemed that he was afraid to let his eyes rest long on any single object. He looked round the congregation absent-mindedly, being quite unaware, I am certain, of the Air Vice-Marshal's presence; but when he spoke it was in a voice of strange solemnity. "Isn't it true," he began, "that you and I, that all of us, are, in comparison with what we desire, poor fools, incapable of directing either our own lives or those of others? We all want to be happy; we all know that if the world were good then the people in it would be happy. We can imagine goodness and we can imagine happiness. Why is it that we are neither happy nor good? Our very love divides us as often as does our hate. As for our work, are there many of us here now who find pleasure and fulfilment in our jobs? "Yet we read in old books of the peace which passeth understanding, of joy and love and tranquillity, which the world cannot give. So far as we can discover, this joy and this peace have actually been experienced by people living on the earth. How is it that we do not experience them? What is it that we have lost? These are questions that I must ask, but which I cannot answer. I can only tell you that when I read of these things I realize that something of the utmost value is being mentioned, something which I have never known, something with which you, perhaps, who have only recently come under the control of an impersonal force, are better acquainted than I am." Here the Flight-Lieutenant paused and licked his lips. There was a look of such desperation in his eyes that it was impossible to question his sincerity. It was evident that, in this mood, he could be of no use to us whatever, and I looked again at the Air Vice-Marshal who was leaning back in his pew, the tips of his fingers pressed together below his chin. He was frowning as though in perplexity, and I was surprised to see him so. "It seems to me," the Flight-Lieutenant continued, "that it is only honest for me to say that in my opinion you were much better off, so far as the things of real value are concerned, in the time before your village was occupied by the Air Force." At this extraordinary and daring statement a hush fell upon the congregation, and I could see that the limbs of the people stiffened as they leant their heads farther forward as though to be certain of hearing the speaker's next words. I felt a movement at my side, and saw that the Air Vice-Marshal had risen to his feet and stepped past me into the middle of the aisle. Those in the pews in front of us began to turn round, and their movements excited the notice of others, so that in a short time the attention of the audience had been diverted from the Flight-Lieutenant to the slight tense figure of his superior officer. The Flight-Lieutenant himself gripped the edge of the pulpit with one hand and licked his lips. He stretched out his other hand in front of him in a kind of appeal, vague both in itself and in its direction. The Air Vice-Marshal spoke slowly and distinctly. "This religious service," he said, "is at an end. The church will be closed until further notice." Then, looking directly at the Flight-Lieutenant, he spoke more sharply. "You, sir, are under arrest. Be so good as to come down from that pulpit immediately." He stopped speaking and in the short silence that followed I looked at the Flight-Lieutenant and saw, what surprised me, that he was evidently deliberating whether or not he should obey the order that he had received. His face was very pale and his lips quivered as he looked down at us. But the shocked silence which had succeeded the Air Vice-Marshal's words was now broken by voices from the front of the church. People out of sight, both men and women, were muttering together angrily. I could see fists brandished above heads, and heard one man shout: "Throw him out! Make an end of the lot of them! There are enough of us!" The Air Vice-Marshal looked away from the pulpit and in the direction of this voice. He drew his revolver from his side and, as he did so, I and two or three of our special police who were sitting at the back of the church took our places beside and behind him. "Silence!" he shouted, and such was the authority of the man that the complete silence which followed his command did not appear to any of us as surprising. He added in a quieter voice: "The first person who leaves his pew will be shot." The Flight-Lieutenant had now left the pulpit and was standing by the chancel steps. He seemed about to address an appeal to someone, but whether it was to the Air Vice-Marshal or to his congregation it would have been impossible to say. Before he could open his mouth, however, the Air Vice-Marshal spoke again. "Go to the vestry," he said, "and report back here to me in uniform." The Flight-Lieutenant took a step forward, towards us and not in the direction of the vestry. I noticed the concentration of his eyes upon the revolver which the Air Vice-Marshal held in his hand, and I felt a quick pang of terror, something that was almost an impulse to move forward myself to prevent what I feared might happen. I glanced at the Air Vice-Marshal's face, and saw that it was strangely tense. When he opened his mouth, as though about to speak, I was extravagantly relieved. Yet before he spoke our attention was distracted to a new quarter. There was a sound of scuffling from the pews to our right, and I saw that the Squire's sister had torn herself free from the Rector's wife who had evidently been holding tightly to her arm in an effort to restrain her from some action. Now she began to speak in a high voice that was almost a shout. Her hair was disordered where it was uncovered by her hat, and one lock had straggled down her neck on to her shoulder. There was a fierce light in her eyes, and I remember that I was suddenly and unreasonably struck with the thought that in her youth she must have been a remarkably handsome woman. She turned her head to the Air Vice-Marshal and cried out: "Leave my son alone!" Then, before anyone had had time to grasp her meaning or to be startled at it, she stretched out her arm towards the group of us and cried out again, "Listen! Listen all of you." And she stepped into the aisle with her finger still pointed at the Air Vice-Marshal and her mouth open and distorted as though she were in a frenzy. He fired his revolver at once and she, I observed, turned up her eyes to him with a look that seemed to show more of surprise than of any other feeling; she fell on to the fibre matting that carpeted the aisles. A murmur of fear and of horror filled the church and soon came the sound of women sobbing. Many of the congregation sat down in their pews covering their faces with their hands. I saw the Rector's wife move forward and then, as the Air Vice-Marshal caught her eye and waved her back, collapse in a fault where she had been standing. But the Flight-Lieutenant had run towards us uninterrupted, and was now kneeling by the side of the dead body. He was holding the limp hand and staring into the distorted face, seeming to be unaware of the danger in which he stood. I looked at the Air Vice-Marshal and was startled both by the pallor and the severity of his face. He was staring fixedly not at the body nor at the Flight-Lieutenant, but at a portion of the young man's surplice which was already stained with blood. There was complete silence in the church except for the intermittent sounds of choking or sobbing which came from some of the pews. After a moment or two the Air Vice-Marshal looked up at me, and I was astonished to see something like a smile on his face. Then he turned to the police officers. "Take him away," he said, pointing towards the Flight-Lieutenant, and I just saw them lay their hands on the elbows of the surpliced figure before I followed the Air Vice-Marshal from the church. When we reached the car he turned to me again, and I was almost ashamed to meet his eyes, so dreadful to me had been the scene in which we had taken part. "Go and have a drink at the club, Roy," he said. "I shall return by myself." As I raised me eyes to his I noticed a strange expression of kindliness on his face. "This has not been pleasant for me either," he said, and I could see from a sudden contraction of his lips that he was speaking the truth.