Earthquake Strength 3:

Hanging objects swing.

Snow fell, and ended flying. Cleve-Cutler searched for ways to keep the pilots fit. The adjutant suggested bayonet-fighting. “The bayonet is on the rifle,” he explained. “There are certain moves and countermoves. It’s very similar to sword-fighting.” A space was cleared in a hangar, and within the hour two men were being stitched up by Dando. Cleve-Cutler cancelled bayonet-fighting.

Brazier retired to the orderly room in disgust.

“They were only puncture-wounds,” he said.

“Rather like the Crucifixion,” Lacey said. “And what a fuss people made about that.”

“You haven’t the slightest idea of physical pain, sergeant. One of these days I might perforate your hide with a bayonet, just to educate you.”

“Yes, sir. You’re strangely interested in mutilating the other ranks, aren’t you? Were you whipped a good deal when you were a child?”

“I was never a child, sergeant. I was issued by the War Office in 1891. You can find the military specifications engraved upon my left buttock.” He put his glasses on and stared at Lacey. Lacey went away to brew some tea.

Ration wagons trundled up and down the lanes leading to the Front, but otherwise the war virtually stopped. Without aeroplanes and balloons to spot for them, the guns were blind and silent. Brazier hired fifty Chinese labourers to dig a runway across the aerodrome, but snow kept falling. They never gave up, but they made no progress either. The temperature kept falling, too. The ground was iron-hard; trenches were difficult to repair and impossible to dig. “God’s a conchie,” McWatters said to the padre. “He’s decided He’s against this war on religious principle, and He’s gone off to play with the angels.”

“Too deep for me, old man. Very dodgy area, religious principle. Look: which of these cinema films d’you think the chaps would enjoy?”

McWatters glanced at the list. “Get westerns. William S. Hart, Douglas Fairbanks. Lots of violence.”

“There’s a rather stirring one about the Battle of the Somme. Don’t you think ...”

“Not violent enough.”

“Surely —”

“Get westerns. Revolvers and brawls and bars getting bust-up, that’s the ticket. Just like a good mess-night party.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Next day the padre had to report that the mobile cinema was stuck in a snowdrift, miles away, near a place called Beauquesne. Lieutenant Dash immediately volunteered to go and unstick it. Moving pictures didn’t excite him, but the name Beauquesne did. It was where Sarah Beverley, of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, lived. Ogilvy asked how he proposed to get there, since he certainly wasn’t taking any squadron transport. Dash said he would ride; at home, in Herefordshire, he’d ridden all sorts of horses. “I’m glad you’re good at something,” Ogilvy said, “since you’re obviously a tenth-rate pilot.” The adjutant phoned a nearby artillery unit and borrowed a horse. It was a huge, shaggy beast, accustomed to hauling field guns over rough country at the hard canter, and it had a mouth like a steel trap.

Sergeant Lacey fed it carrots while Dash got into the saddle and bunched the reins. “Should you come upon a reputable épicene,” Lacey said, “the mess is in need of a good Dijon mustard.” Brazier slapped the animal’s rump and it set off at a sedate trot that kicked up clods of snow like broken plates.

The name on the bridle was Daisy. It didn’t suit. The horse was entirely black, and as broad as a sofa; Dash’s knees were far apart. Because one eye was milky, the horse led with the other eye, and this caused it to trot obliquely, aiming to the left while moving to the right. Daisy was a gun-carriage horse. It disliked the saddle and it disliked Dash. After half a mile it locked its front legs and tossed him as easily as a farmhand tossing a sheaf of wheat.

He landed in a snowdrift. Daisy trotted on. By the time Dash got his breath back, cleared the snow from his ears and found his hat, Daisy was a small black shape, growing steadily smaller. He chased hard. Daisy would not stop for him. He ran alongside and managed to vault into the saddle. His breeches were slippery with snow. Daisy threw him twice more in the next hundred yards. The second time, there was something hard in the drift: ice or stone or wood; and he crawled out bruised and cursing, ready to quit; but an oncoming ration wagon had seen his trouble and a soldier had jumped off and captured the brute.

They waited for him to limp up to them.

“Bit frisky, is she, sir?” said the sergeant in charge.

“Just a trifle.”

“Your nose is bleedin’, sir. Rub some snow on it.”

Dash tried to laugh. “That’s all I’ve been doing since I set out, sergeant. This isn’t a horse, it’s a catapult.”

“Too frisky, sir. Give ‘er a good gallop, make ‘er blow a bit. Once she’s fucked she won’t be so fuckin’ frisky, pardon my French. Women are all the fuckin’ same.”

Dash remounted and banged his heels against the ribs. Daisy went off at a slow canter and nothing changed that. He wished he had worn spurs. He disliked spurs but he loathed Daisy. The horse seemed to be developing a jolting, sideways prance. This did his bruised backside no good at all. On the other hand he was still in the saddle when they reached a crossroads. Beauquesne was to the right. Daisy had already decided to go left.

“Come right, you bitch!” Dash shouted. He doubled the reins in his fists and dragged hard. His feet were braced against the stirrups. It was like trying to turn one of the lions in Trafalgar Square. Snow was falling, and he felt the flakes melting on his sweating face. The horse was winning. Dash had come all the way to France to fight for his country, and now he was being beaten by a bloody nag. “You lousy whore!” he screamed. Another ration wagon was approaching. He didn’t care. He kept the reins in one hand and unbuttoned his holster with the other and took out his service revolver and cocked it and fired a thunderous shot past Daisy’s left ear. The horse shied. He fired again, a blast of noise that flung the head to the right. He whacked with his heels. Daisy broke into a gallop. Dash fired at the sky and whooped. Faintly, he heard the ration party cheer.

* * *

Chlöe Legge-Barrington slid back the bolts and heaved on the door of the nunnery of Sainte Croix. “Goodness,” she said. “You look like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.”

Dash stood in the night, layered with snow, too tired to shrug it off. Behind him the horse raised its great head, black capped with white, and looked at the young woman; then it let its head droop.

“Is this First Aid Nursing Yeomanry?” Dash said. “Because I’m looking for Sarah Beverley.”

“This is F.A.N.Y., but Sarah’s in England. Would you like some supper? Lancashire hotpot with apple crumble to follow.”

“That’s frightfully decent of you.”

“Well, frightful decency is something we have rather a lot of, around here.”

They stabled Daisy and came back inside. She led Dash to a cheerless bathroom and ran a hot tub for him. “Thank God the nuns had a new boiler put in before they left,” she said. “They believed in self-sacrifice but they drew the line at chilblains.”

“Where are they now?”

“Orleans.” She gave him a pair of workman’s overalls. “Best I can do. Bring your things, they’ll need drying.”

Dash eased his aching body into the bath. The cold retreated from his limbs like a beaten army. It put up a brief resistance in his toes and then surrendered to the heat. He ducked his head and blew a fanfare of bubbles.

He found the kitchen by following the noise. Six stunningly beautiful young women turned and looked at him. All wore smartly tailored uniform. Most were without their tunics. “Golly,” one of them said. “Such a lot of freckles.”

“Sorry.” Dash tugged sideways at the overalls and made them look like a blue sack. “I thought it said fancy dress on the invitation.”

Chlöe Legge-Barrington took his clothes. “Left to right,” she said, “Edith Reynolds, Laura da Silva, Nancy Hicks-Potter, Jane Brackenden, Lucy Knight. You’ll never remember them, but don’t worry, they’re all thoroughly forgettable.”

“Charles Dash. This is really awfully —”

“I say!” Chlöe was draping his uniform on a clothes horse and she’d found the wings. “Royal Flying Corps.” Again, they all gazed at him.

“Guilty.” This time he smiled back. It was an engaging, wide-mouthed smile; he knew this because he had practised in front of a mirror at home. As he smiled he saluted. It had been an exhausting afternoon and the hotpot smelled delicious.

“My stars, a hero,” Lucy Knight said. “I must get a clean tablecloth.”

“Are you a pilot? How high do you fly?” Laura da Silva asked.

“Oh ... a mile or two. Or three. Depends where the Huns are.”

“How many Huns have you shot down?”

Dash looked away, while honesty fought temptation. “Oh well,” he said. “It’s a team game, you know. The squadron gets the credit.” That wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t a total lie either; and he could see that his modesty impressed them.

Supper was easy. All he had to do was smile – not all the time – and tell funny little stories about flying. He fascinated them, and the more casual he was, the more attentive they were. He mentioned the Mad Major. “He used to fly upside-down, just above the enemy trenches, and pelt them with old beer-bottles.” Edith Reynolds asked why. “Dunno. An expression of contempt, I suppose.” He spoke of the banned practice of chasing staff can full of British generals until they drove into the ditch. “Isn’t it awfully risky?” Chlöe asked. “Not if they can swim,” Dash said, and tried to look puzzled by their laughter. He told of a marvellous chap called Captain Ball (they had all heard of him) who developed a frightfully clever trick. “He flies straight into the middle of a flock of Hun scouts, and they daren’t fire at him in case they hit each other.” Then what does he do? “Oh, he knocks one or two down and streaks home for breakfast.” It was easy. He had never met a Mad Major, nor chased a staff car, nor talked tactics with Captain Ball, but he had heard a lot of chatter in the mess, and by the end of the meal, with a couple of glasses of red wine inside him and these wonderful girls all saying How spiffing! and What a corker! Dash almost believed that he’d done it. Or at least seen it done.

They gave him a second helping of apple crumble and cream. He said they looked awfully smart.

“We’re all volunteers, in F.A.N.Y.,” Chlöe Legge-Barrington said, “so we buy our own uniforms. A bit like the Red Cross.”

“Only much, much more swanky,” Lucy Knight said. The others hear-heared. “We don’t wait for orders from the army. We knew the troops wanted a cinema, so we bought our own, but Edith drove it into a snowdrift.”

“All the same,” said Nancy Hicks-Potter, “you mustn’t think we’re not nurses. We could remove your appendix right here and now, on the kitchen table.”

“Bet you sixpence you can’t.”

She opened a drawer and took out a carving knife.

“It’s gone,” he said. “Two years ago. Just when I was about to become captain of boats. C’est la vie.”

She cocked her head. “Show us the scar.”

“Please,” Chlöe said. “No shop during meals. Anyway, Charles here is exhausted.” He opened his mouth to protest and was overtaken by a yawn.

She took him to his bedroom. It was on the second floor, at the end of a corridor. “Sorry about the mattress,” she said. “You know what nuns are like.”

“Actually, no.”

“Well, you soon will. Here’s a nightgown. Best we can do, I’m afraid. Goodnight.”

The nightgown carried a faint scent of roses. The mattress was hard, but he scarcely noticed. He was asleep before her footsteps had faded.

He had never learned to swim, and now waking up was like swimming to the surface of a very deep pool: quite impossible, so he stopped trying and just let it happen. He had no idea where he was, or when it was, and there was no point in looking, because everything was black. Only one thing was certain: a very naked mermaid was lifting him, he could feel her breasts on his chest and her legs entwined with his. Sweetly and easily he became fully awake, and his brain informed him that mermaids had no legs, and he told his brain that he didn’t care. He hadn’t the faintest idea which of the six girls was doing these exciting, inviting, rhythmic things to his body. At first he had nothing to say. Later he had little breath to spare for talk. Eventually he was speechless with delight.

The last thing he remembered was his nightgown being tucked around his legs and the blankets being pulled over him. While he was trying to think of suitable words he fell asleep.

The whole splendid experience happened again, complete with a climactic firework display on the inside of his eyelids. Or did he dream the second event? He woke up in broad daylight to find a mug of tea steaming on the bedside locker. As he sipped it, he wondered: once? Twice? The same person? Two different visitors? And how best to behave when he met them all again?

As it happened, only Chlöe Legge-Barrington was in the kitchen when he went down. The others were all out on duty. He ate porridge and two lots of bacon and eggs, while they chatted about holidays in Cornwall.

There was nothing he could do about the cinema truck: it had a broken rear axle. He saddled Daisy.

“Come again, won’t you?” Chlöe said.

He took a risk, and said: “Certainly – if I’ve got the strength,” and smiled as he looked her in the eye. She didn’t even blink. Which could mean everything, or nothing.

* * *

The snowstorm slackened and gave way to blue skies. The Chinese squad dug and dug and when two good runways were open, Wing H.Q. ordered a D.O.P. for the following day, at dawn.

Munday hated these early patrols.

He came from a large family, mainly girls, who lived in a Cotswold manor house with no lack of servants. His father had inherited a small coal mine in Nottinghamshire, and so money came naturally out of the ground, not that the boy ever saw it happen. He drifted through school. At home, his sisters ran and fetched for him, laughed at all his jokes and treated him like a young god. In uniform, they said, he was quite stunning. He was eager to win a few medals. Marching came as a nasty shock. His feet ached abominably. The more he saw of the infantry – especially bayonets, which actually had a channel for the blood to run out – the more he liked the R.F.C.

But he could never get used to being shaken awake at 4.30 a.m.

He dressed mechanically, shivering as he dragged uniform over pyjamas, and stumbled through icy blackness, a scarf around his mouth. The mess was chilly. He chewed on boiled eggs and bread. Always the same awful food for the early patrol. Why? Nobody knew. Tradition. Hot tea, too, but Munday knew how his bladder would feel about that in an hour, at fifteen thousand feet. He would have to take off his gauntlets and his gloves and unbutton two or three outer layers and fumble his way through the flies of his underwear, and by the time his thing had done its stuff it would be dead of frostbite.

There was just enough light to read the instrument panel when C-Flight took off. Spud Ogilvy led the first three aircraft, with the Russians flanking him. Munday led the others, angled to the right so as to avoid Ogilvy’s wash. They settled down to a hard climb, and this soon pumped the sun over the horizon. It began as a sliver of deep red. With every thousand feet it swelled and burned brighter until it was a white-hot disc that made the eyes water. An armada of aircraft could be hiding there; and if they were, they would have seen the Pups by now. There was nothing Ogilvy could do about that except keep on climbing.

They crossed the Lines at about nine thousand feet. Normally the German batteries would be spattering the sky with Archie. Today a silver-grey mist was enough to keep the German gunners indoors. Munday looked down and envied them, especially their warm feet. Cold was seeping up his legs. Already his toes had lost all feeling.

A freezing gale swept past his cockpit, and it was impossible to search the sky without getting hit in the face. Munday searched the sky. There was something colder than the gale, and that was terror.

On his second patrol – weeks ago by now – he had watched from high above as Ogilvy stalked a Hun two-seater, crept closer, and killed it with a five-second burst. Whenever Munday felt himself getting weary, or cocky, or bored, he terrified himself with the memory of that burst of flame, lemon-yellow with a core of red, that jumped out of the two-seater and exploded it in a flurry of wings and body and tail.

Ogilvy took them up to seventeen thousand feet. There they floated, and froze, for an hour.

One of Munday’s wingmen was a Canadian called Barnard, very keen, not very bright, too tall for his weight but filling out month by month. Barnard didn’t mind the cold but the height bothered him. His ribs were thin. Running made him dizzy. Now, at this height, his Pup wobbled as his lungs laboured to drag in enough thin air, and there was never enough. He knew he was getting sleepy, he knew that was bad. Munday was waving to him, pointing up. Barnard’s eyes were watering long before he found a tiny cluster of Albatros scouts, almost transparent against the bleached blue of the sky. Jesus, Barnard thought. How can they breathe up there?

For twenty minutes, nothing changed.

Barnard was no longer sleepy. From somewhere his body had found a reserve of energy and pumped it into his brain, with the message: Stay awake, godammit, that’s death floating up there. A muscle in his left thigh was jumping, which was a waste of energy, so he told it to stop, and it ignored him, so he hit it with his fist, and something went bang! in the engine. The Pup shuddered violently. Oil sprayed on the windscreen until it overflowed and ragged black gobbets blew into the cockpit. Barnard stuck his head out to see what was wrong. Oil slammed into his face, oil covered his goggles. He was blind and the Pup was shaking like a wet dog. It shook Barnard too. His hands lost the controls and blundered about, found the switch and killed the engine.

Instant, total peace. No racket, no shuddering, just black blindness. He dragged off his goggles and saw the rest of the flight, many hundreds of feet above and ahead, droning away from him. He eased the Pup through a gentle turn and began the long glide home.

You could glide a mile for every thousand feet of height you lost. Seventeen thousand feet should be enough to see him across the Lines, provided nobody interfered, provided the headwind wasn’t too bad, and provided all the Hun gunners were blind drunk. Barnard forgot all that nonsense and concentrated on nursing his Pup so that it neither stalled nor dived but simply slid down a slope between the two.

He had fifteen hundred feet in hand as he crossed the Lines. The wind whistled softly in the wires, and everything was so quiet that he could hear men shouting orders, the hoot of a distant locomotive, the whack of someone pounding in stakes. Nobody fired on him. The mist was still too thick. Now that was a fat slice of luck.

Mist, of course, was a two-sided coin. It hid Barnard from the ground and then it hid the ground from Barnard. It hid a company of pioneers who were marching back to their billets after a weary night of digging new reserve trenches. Their boots, and the blanketing fog, dampened the soft whistle of the approaching Pup. When they saw its silhouette charging at them, head-high, they scattered. Barnard saw none of this but he felt the jolt when the right lower wing clipped a running man.

The Pup’s speed was about fifty miles an hour, more than enough to break the man’s back. Barnard was luckier. His machine left its undercarriage in a stone wall and racketed across a sea of ancient shell-holes.

The pioneers pulled him out of the wreckage, carried him back to the roadway and laid him beside the dead soldier. Barnard’s forehead had whacked the gunsight and he was out cold. Of the two men, Barnard – blackened and bloodied – looked far the worse.

* * *

The mist that saved Barnard was the prelude to a week of rain. It dissolved the snow and saturated the Western Front and settled down to a persistent drizzle.

“Not like English rain, is it?” the padre said. “English rain generally has the decency to turn up when needed, do its stuff, maybe with a spot of thunder and lightning to add to the merriment, and then buzz off and rain on somebody else, like the Norwegians. But this French rain ... I mean, look at it. Day after day. You can’t tell me that’s proper weather. That’s just ...”

“Incontinence,” said Lynch.

“Exactly.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Cleve-Cutler said. They were sitting in the mess. At the distant edge of the airfield, a row of Chinese labourers could be dimly seen, digging a drainage trench. He knew it would do no good. Fifty trenches might get rid of the surface water, but one alone was useless. Still, he let them dig on. “Total piffle,” he said. “Utter tosh.”

“Well, if you’re going to baffle us with science,” Dando said.

“I grew up in Cornwall. It rained like this all year round. My cousins have got webbed feet.”

“Not uncommon in Britain, actually. We are nearer the primeval swamp than we like to think.”

“About ten yards away,” Lynch said. “At a guess.”

Plug Gerrish, dozing in an armchair, yawned hugely and said: “O’Neill sent us another postcard. He wants us to send him cheese. Says you can’t get a decent Rocquefort in London now. Scandalous, he says.” Gerrish yawned again.

The C.O. watched a soldier on a bicycle raise waves as he cut across a large puddle. “I bet it’s pouring in London right now,” he said.

“If I were you, sir,” Dando said, “I’d go there and see for myself. After all, nothing much is likely to happen here, is it?”

Cleve-Cutler hadn’t been to England for a year. He telephoned Wing and got ten days’ leave. Within an hour he was in a car, heading for Boulogne.

Charles Dash was given permission to have another stab at rescuing the cinema truck, which was now assumed to be stuck in mud. He took Daisy. As the horse splashed unhurriedly to Beauquesne, there was plenty for Dash to brood over.

It was assumed by both their families that he would marry his cousin Jessica. She looked a little like him: lots of freckles, good strong legs. They had been warm friends for years, taken holidays together (Jessica with Charles’ family to Cornwall; Charles with Jessica’s family to Norfolk), and they shared an interest in horses and dogs. They knew all about breeding, so Charles’ father saw no need to explain the whys and hows of sex to him. You couldn’t live in rural Herefordshire without seeing it all around you, bulls and stallions and rams going at it like steam-hammers. Ample time to discuss all that with the boy when marriage loomed; and when suddenly the boy went off and joined the Yeomanry his father merely told him to remember always that he was a gentleman but that not all ladies were, well, ladies. “Aren’t they?” Charles said. His father winked and tapped one side of his nose and walked away, duty done. Charles was baffled. He felt sorry for his father, who was forty-four and losing his wits. Well, he’d had a good innings.

Then, when some nameless nymph – well, all right, one of six names, but which? – slid out of the blackness and into his bed and stole his virginity, twice in one night, it was not only a delicious experience, it was a severe shock. This wasn’t how it was done in Herefordshire. In Herefordshire a chap took a girl to lots of dances and proposed marriage and after much fuss and expense they went off somewhere and had a honeymoon. It all took time, and announcements, and organisation. It didn’t happen like a thunderclap in the night. Two thunderclaps. For days afterwards he could think of nothing else.

For his second visit, Dash took his razor kit, toothbrush and pyjamas. Also a bottle of Madeira. This time each of the F.A.N.Y. nurses welcomed him with a kiss on the cheek. Lucy Knight (small, curly black hair, face like a cherub) was the last to kiss him and she saw how flattered and flustered he was. “Life’s too short,” she told him. “Men are so slow.”

“Only because bullets are faster.” Did that make sense? It sounded rather clever.

“All the more reason!” she said, cheerfully. “And you can’t tell me anything about bullets. I’ve been up to the elbows in gore all afternoon.”

During supper he wondered whether it was Lucy.

He had few clues. One was the memory of the startling sensation of breasts brushing his skin. Lucy certainly had initiative, and a chest that drew his glance like a magnet. To take his mind off it he talked to Chlöe Legge-Barrington. She had an athlete’s figure and a restless energy that he found exciting. Nothing wrong with her chest, either. Could it be Chlöe? She urged him to take more cabbage. “Fortifies the blood,” she said. A secret signal? He took more cabbage.

After supper they all played whist. When he tried to shuffle the pack, the cards sprayed from his fingers. “I’m not much good at this, I’m afraid,” he said. Edith Reynolds said, “Men are only good at two things,” which provoked a flurry of comic suggestions. Edith said no more; simply smiled. Wonderful lips. Chest okay, too. Might well be Edith ... The Madeira went around. Jane Brackenden proposed a toast to women’s suffrage. “Equality now!” she cried.

“Onwards!” said Nancy Hicks-Potter.

“And upwards!” said Laura da Silva.

Dash stopped trying to guess. They were all topping girls, all. They all had crystal-clear, expensively educated voices. They all had spiffing chests.

The whist ended. He said goodnight, took his candle, hurried upstairs, got into his pyjamas, then had a better idea and took them off. The bed was so cold that he jumped out and put them on again. He lay awake, occasionally squirming as lust visited his loins. Eventually Madeira overtook lust and he slept.

He awoke smoothly and swiftly when the bed was invaded by a silky tangle of limbs. By now he was a veteran of this business of nocturnal seduction; he knew exactly how to handle it. He did a lot of handling and a steady amount of kissing and he did his level best to prolong the thrill, until his body leapfrogged his good intentions and exploded like a firecracker and left him as limp as yesterday’s salad. That was the time to speak. The room was so black that he could make out nothing, not even the shape of her head. What to say? In his mind he rehearsed phrases. May I know your name? Awfully formal. What about: I don’t think we’ve been introduced ... Not in good taste. He cleared his throat. As he did, she slid out of the sheets. “I say ...” he whispered. The door clicked shut. Too late.

Twice more, that night.

He awoke feeling fuzzy in the head and stiff in the thighs and bruised about the balls. Everyone was at breakfast, full of chat and bustle. He ate an enormous meal and realised how impossible it was now to ask anyone anything. He should have spoken up at the time, in bed. But if he had done so, she might never have returned. No secret, no sex. He was caught in a wonderful trap.

Nothing he had been taught at Monmouth School had prepared him for this. At Monmouth he had dissected a frog and got the impression that reproduction was all a matter of tubes. Well, clearly that was not an adequate explanation.

It was time to leave. He kissed everyone and said goodbye. Everything was delightfully bewildering.

When Daisy carried him into Pepriac, he was ravenously hungry and so pale that his freckles seemed to float on his skin. He ate, and immediately went to bed. “Give it up,” Simms advised. “It’s only Charlie Chaplin, after all.” But Dash shook his head. “I can’t disappoint everyone now. Isn’t this what we’re fighting for?” Simms stared. “No, it isn’t,” he said. Dash blinked three times and then his eyes closed.

* * *

Dash got up in time for dinner. With the C.O. away, and the aerodrome so boggy that there was no prospect of flying, the atmosphere in the mess was relaxed and cheery.

“O’Neill sent me a postcard,” the doctor said. “Packs of wolves are roaming in Westminster. They ate the Home Secretary.”

“O’Neill couldn’t tell a wolf from a white elephant,” Gerrish said. “He’s blind as a bat.”

“I’ve often wondered about bats,” McWatters said. “Clever little creatures. Fly like the devil and never hit anything. Your churches are full of them, padre. How’s it done? What’s the trick?”

The padre took some more roast potatoes. “God moves in a mysterious way,” he said.

“Chap called Mannock in 40 Squadron,” Lynch said. “Only got one good eye. The other’s not worth a damn.”

“That’s nothing,” Simms said. “The whole of 56 Squadron’s only got one ball.” It was an old joke, and it produced a few tired groans. A new man, called Griffiths, looked puzzled. “Albert Ball,” Simms told him.

“Oh, yes! Captain Ball,” Griffiths said. He was glad to be part of the conversation at last. “People were talking about him at the depot. What’s his score?” It seemed a perfectly natural question, but as soon as he’d asked it, Griffiths knew it was wrong. Bad form to discuss scores during dinner. “Doesn’t matter, really,” he mumbled. His face was hot.

Lynch took pity on him. “A couple of dozen,” he said. “The answer to your question is a couple of dozen, which puts Captain Ball far out in front.”

“And all done in a Nieuport,” Ogilvy said. “Ball prefers the Nieuport.”

“I want Nieuport,” the duke said abruptly.

“Get me Nieuport too,” the count said.

Everyone looked. They were serious. They sat straight-backed, heads high, and looked down their beautiful noses at them. “This is not the time or the place,” Ogilvy said. They spoke to each other in Russian. “Two Nieuports,” the duke said. “Quick. Tickety-boo.”

“You mean lickety-split,” Munday said. “Tickety-boo means all-serene.”

“Tickety-boo and lickety-split,” the duke said.

“We’ll discuss it later,” Ogilvy said.

“Please, sir, can I have a new bicycle?” McWatters said.

“Tell me, Uncle,” the doctor said, speaking slowly and clearly so as to distract attention from the Russians, “tell me, why is the British Army so fascinated by Ypres? It’s a smelly bog. I should have thought the Allies had all the bog they needed. Yet every time I pick up the paper, there’s another thumping great Battle of Ypres going on.”

“Only two battles,” the adjutant said. “Strategic necessity.”

“Oh. I see. Well, that’s all right then.”

“Russia got biggest bog,” the count said with a gloomy pride.

“Pinsk Marshes. Big as Switzerland.”

The duke said: “German Army invades Pinsk Marshes. Russian Army attacks German Army.” He knocked his knuckles together. “All lost in marshes. All.” That silenced the rest of the squadron. “Great victory for Tsar,” he added.

“Plenty more armies in Russia,” the count said.

“My goodness!” the padre exclaimed. “Rice pudding. With currants in it. What a treat.”

The wind howled suddenly in the chimney, and the stove roared. The doctor glanced at the adjutant. “How are our coal stocks?”

“Excellent. All thanks to Lieutenant Dash and his cousin, the pork sausage maker.”

“Ah. Well done, lad.” A dozen fists briefly pounded the table in applause, and Dash nodded. For the first time, he felt accepted by the squadron.

* * *

As he walked to his hut, Captain Brazier heard music coming from the orderly room. He found Sergeant Lacey playing the gramophone as he worked at his desk.

“Sounds like a fight in a fireworks factory,” the adjutant said.

“Stravinsky. His music for the new Diaghilev ballet, Les Arbeilles. It’s on in Paris. You’d love it. Pure joy.”

“Stravinsky,” said the adjutant. “Isn’t he that anarchist-musician johnny? Caused a riot?”

“And a very splendid riot it was,” Lacey said. “At the première of The Rites of Spring.”

“I suppressed a riot once. At the market place in Peshawar. And a very splendid suppression it was.” Lacey rolled his eyes. “I assure you, sergeant. I had the ringleaders tied to the mouths of our cannons and I blew their little Indian lights out. Blew them clean out!”

“Rather like a birthday cake,” Lacey said. He was flicking through a batch of signals. He held up a pink form. “Plum jam. Brigade are still unhappy. The quartermaster insists that we have two hundred pounds more than our entitlement.” Lacey polished his glasses with the flimsy paper.

“We explained all that. Didn’t we?”

“We said that he sent us strawberry jam in error and that we returned it.”

“Well, tell him again.”

“No, no. The man is a halfwit. He needs guidance.” Lacey rolled a form into his typewriter and rattled out a reply:

Plum jam, squadron entitlement for, mislabelled as supplied, local transfer of. Your PNT/14Q dated 06.03.17. Can confirm manufacturer’s error resulted 200 lbs jam labelled plum in fact contents half strawberry half raspberry therefore transferred to 40 Squadron on authority Duty Officer that Squadron.

The adjutant read this. “Blame it on the manufacturer. Quite right. I suppose you had a reason for picking 40 Squadron.”

“They moved to England last week.”

“Ah.” He signed the paper. “Duty officer, eh? Could be anybody. Poor chap’s probably gone west by now.”

Lacey leaned against the doorframe, his thumbs hooked in his pockets. “Probably,” he said. Brazier sat squarely, and cleaned the nib of his pen with a bit of blotting paper. Eventually Lacey looked at him and said: “Strawberry jam.” Brazier raised a bushy eyebrow just a fraction. “Isn’t there something horribly symbolic here?” Lacey asked. “The army can afford to lose millions of men, year after year. But not a few cases of strawberry jam. Jam matters.”

“Civilian talk,” Brazier said briskly.

“Jam matters more than men?”

“Regulations matter more than anything.”

“War isn’t regulated. War is confusion and disorder and luck and waste, especially waste. Every week – even now, when nothing is happening – hundreds of men, wasted. Thousands of tons of shells, wasted. So why this obsession about jam? I apologise for interrupting you.”

“Not a bit of it. I’m pleased to see you developing the Fighting Spirit, Lacey.”

“Mere bile, sir.”

“You should apply for a commission.”

“I should take one of Beecham’s Pills.”

“We need keen young subalterns at the Front.”

“Only because you keep losing them. Which reminds me. Your ammunition has arrived.”

He fetched a wooden box stencilled Signal Flares (Very Pistol) Handle With Care, and placed it on the adjutant’s desk. “A posthumous token of respect from the late Lieutenant Morkel.”

Brazier prised open the lid and eased a few records from their straw packing. “Band of the Grenadier Guards ... ‘Blaze Away’ ... ‘Colonel Bogey’ ... ‘Sussex by the Sea’ ... Good. Real music, this.” He dug deeper. “Hullo ... Orlando Benedict and his Savoy Orchestra?” He peered at the labels. “‘I’m Lonesome for You’ ... ‘Here Comes Tootsie’ ... ‘If You Could Care for Me’ ... ‘Poor Butterfly’ ...” One nostril flared. “Tosh. Utter tosh.”

“I think Captain Lynch hoped it might soften your stony soul, sir.” Lacey pointed at a label. “Novelty foxtrot. Splendid exercise for the deskbound office worker.”

Brazier grunted, and put ‘Blaze Away’ on the gramophone. “Keep your jazz,” he said. “This is real music.”

* * *

The day after he left France, Cleve-Cutler was eating breakfast at Taggart’s hotel, near Piccadilly. Taggart was a gloomy Irishman with an eyepatch and a bad limp. He had been invalided out of the R.F.C. early in 1915 when a friendly shell had rushed through the gap between his wings and removed several vital struts, forcing him to make a messy landing in a wood. Now he sat at Cleve-Cutler’s table and helped himself to toast. “My advice,” he said. “Wear mufti. Otherwise wherever you go, the bloody civilians will buy drinks for you, and then they’ll ask you how many Fritzes you’ve shot down.”

“Fritzes? They really say Fritzes?”

“They know nothing. All they know they read in the bloody silly newspapers, and that’s lies dreamed up by the bloody silly War Office. Cavalry of the clouds, that’s you. Take their drinks, tell them any old lies, fuck their women if you want to, they’ll consider it a privilege, with those wings on you and all, like being fucked by an angel. Just don’t take anything they say seriously. They know nothing.” He limped away, dropping crumbs.

Cleve-Cutler wondered what to do with his week. If he moved fast, he could catch an express and be in Cornwall by tea-time. Grey seas, grey granite, soggy moorland. His parents would ask a lot of questions. Then their friends would visit and ask the same bloody silly questions: what’s it really like? When are we going to win? And, no doubt: how many Fritzes have you shot down? Resentment gripped like indigestion. If he told them what France was really like, they’d never believe him. Bugger Cornwall.

So he stayed at Taggart’s and went to a different show every night; often two shows, with supper in-between or after or both. The West End of London was bustling with young officers. He quickly fell in with a bunch hellbent on squeezing the most out of their leave. They called him the Mad Major – to the infantry, any R.F.C. major was mad – and when they ended up at Taggart’s, he made jugs of Hornet’s Sting for them. They thought he was a hell of a fellow. He relaxed in the luxury of not being a commanding officer. For the first time in a year, he did what he damn well pleased. It was a strange experience, like taking his clothes off in a crowded room, and he soon grew sick of it, but for a few galvanic days he thought he was happy.

He went to a dance. It was a tea-dance, held at Malplacket House. The young Lord Malplacket had gone to France with his regiment in 1914 and soon was Mentioned in Despatches for conspicuous gallantry, too conspicuous for his own good: a German sharp-shooter picked him out and picked him off. Nobody in the British Army wore a steel helmet in those dashing, innocent days. Eventually the remains got shipped home and placed in the family vaults while a cannon left over from the Civil War boomed out the dead man’s years. His widow wondered what to do with herself. Belgian refugees needed help. She found them dull. The Red Cross wanted people to roll bandages: not a thrilling prospect. She decided that her war-work was to give tea-dances at Malplacket house for officers on leave. Every afternoon, the ballroom was brisk with the foxtrotting of subalterns and widows. Cleve-Cutler went, and found it the most enormous fun.

The second time he went, he saw a girl sitting in the gallery that overlooked the ballroom. Emerald dress, dark red hair. Quite alone. He danced a waltz and got some lemonade for his partner and looked up. Still there. Still alone. He excused himself and found the stairs to the gallery.

“Hullo,” she said, as if they had known each other for years. “You’re wasting your time with me.”

“Well, I’ve got plenty of time, and I can’t think of a better way to waste it... May I sit and talk?” He really wanted to sit and look.

She was unfashionably slim and her face had a delicacy that made him feel powerful and protective, until she looked him in the eyes. Fear did strange, apparently useless things to a man, as he knew; it dried the mouth, it tightened the lungs, it made the heart hammer and the palate detect strange metallic tastes. Now he discovered what sudden love could do. It knocked the stuffing out of a chap. Fear multiplied; love subtracted. This was all new to him. Cleve-Cutler had confronted fear and overcome it. He wasn’t going to submit tamely to love. “You know, you remind me of someone,” he lied.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You can do better than that.”

“Um,” he said. He looked away, but looking away was pain. “What I meant was ...” He looked back, and was ruined again. “Look here, you’re being jolly unfair.”

“Am I? Well, do something about it.” She was infuriatingly calm. He was in a fever; what right had she to be so calm? “For a start,” she said, “you can tell me who you are.”

You crass ass, he told himself. “Hugh Cleve-Cutler,” he said.

“Ah.” She was looking down at the dancers, which he resented. “I used to know a Stanley Cleve-Cutler.”

“Very remote cousin. Went into the Foreign Office. Never seen again.”

“There you are. I knew you could do better if you tried.” Hope surged in him. “I’m Dorothy Jaspers, which makes me a remote cousin of our hostess.”

“Splendid. May I ask for the honour of a dance?”

“You may ask, but the answer’s no.”

He felt as if he’d swallowed a stone. A sane man would get up and leave. He wasn’t quite sane at that moment. “Look,” he said, “I’m somewhat confused about exactly what’s going on here.”

She turned to him and took hold of his face with both hands and looked into his eyes. “Tell me true,” she said. “Do you know where we can get a drink at this hour of day?”

“Yes, I think so.”

She let go. “Get your hat and find a cab. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

He helped her into the cab. She was smaller than he had thought. The emerald silk dress brushed the ground. Tricky dancing the foxtrot in that, he thought. They went to Taggart’s Hotel. On the way, she said nothing. Cleve-Cutler watched her, secretly, and marvelled that no man had captured her. Were they all blind? Was he massively lucky?

Taggart opened the bar for them.

They all drank brandy-sodas and talked about the new shows and the best songs in them, until Taggart went off to organise dinner and left them in charge.

“Decent chap, old Taggart.”

“Yes,” she said, crisply.

“That show he mentioned. We might —”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps some supper? There’s a place —”

“Yes.”

“Splendid.” But this was all moving too fast for Cleve-Cutler. “Fancy you knowing Stanley,” he said. “Not that I knew him well.”

“Forget Stanley. This face of yours: it’s not your real face, is it?”

“Good God, no.” He’d explained his jaunty looks to so many people—family, army doctors, medical boards – that he was ready with the answer. “Dodged an idiot in a Gunbus, flew into a barn. The quacks stitched me together again. Improvement on the original, some say.”

She freshened his drink with brandy. “Well, damn it all to bloody blazes,” she said, and freshened her own drink. “There are three things I wish I could do. I wish I could dance, and run, and go swimming at the seaside, but I never shall because I have a wooden leg, and it’s definitely not an improvement on the original. If you want to see it I charge nothing for public displays but from the funny look on your funny face I suggest you take a big drink first.”

Cleve-Cutler was too shocked to move or speak.

“Take a drink and have a look,” she advised. “Otherwise you’ll never believe me.”

“But you’re wearing shoes.” His voice was husky; he drank to strengthen it. He watched, fascinated, as she raised the hem of her long green silk ballgown, and he saw a wooden leg fitted into the right shoe. The hem kept rising. The wooden leg ended just below the knee. Leather straps secured it.

She let the dress fall. He finished his drink in one gulp. “Told you so,” she said.

* * *

It had happened when she was six. Her father was a banker. Liked horses, liked hunting, had an estate in Berkshire. He gave young Dorothy a pony-and-trap, a miniature of the real thing. She wasn’t allowed to drive it alone, but one day all the grooms were busy, so she took it. And for fun, she rode the little pony bareback, and they were trotting along a farm track, all going as fine as ninepence, when the pony shied. She was thrown. The trap ran over her leg. Very bad fracture. Lots of operations, but in the end it had to come off.

“That’s so dreadfully unfair,” Cleve-Cutler said.

She took his face in her hands, as she had done in the gallery, and looked into his eyes. “Tell me true,” she said. “If your washer-woman’s husband had a wooden leg, would you think it dreadfully unfair?”

“Um ... no. Possibly not.”

She released him. “Well, then. It’s just people of our class who are supposed to be unblemished.”

“I suppose that’s so.”

“I know shops that sell artificial hands and fingers. Even artificial noses. Factory work is dangerous. So is farm work.”

“Excuse me.”

He went to the lavatory and washed his face in cold water. He had seen many violent deaths and mutilations in France. He had seen a pilot walk into a spinning propeller. He had seen men blinded, and men gutted, and men incinerated in the gush of petrol from bullet-holed tanks. But that was war, and they were only men, and they were fighting for decency and purity and all that was best in the world, as symbolised by this wonderful creature he had found in the gallery. Who turned out to be a fraud, a swindle. So maybe the war was a fraud and a swindle too. He leaned on the wash basin and looked at his reflection “We make a fine pair,” he said. He dried his face and went back.

“I know the best place for oysters,” she said.

“I never doubted it for a moment,” he told her. He still loved her. From the knees up, anyway.

* * *

Taggart gave them a large room with a large bed.

Dorothy had been staying at Lady Malplacket’s place. She telephoned from the hotel and had someone pack a bag and bring it over.

Cleve-Cutler said: “Won’t your cousin think it strange? Moving out like this?”

“Do you care what she thinks?”

They had each undressed separately, in the bathroom. Now she was sitting on the bed, brushing her hair. It caught the light as she moved, black chasing red chasing black.

“I don’t want to ruin your reputation,” he said.

“Do you care about my reputation?” She spoke easily, lazily. It had been a long and happy evening. “Now? At this very moment?”

“No.” He sat beside her.

“Good. Because I certainly don’t care about yours.” She used the tip of the hairbrush to comb his moustache. “What do you care about?”

“You. I care about you. Absolutely.”

“Including the woodwork?” Her arms slipped around his body.

“To be perfectly frank,” he said, “no, I don’t feel any affection for the woodwork.”

“Then suppose,” she said. “Suppose I take it off, and you remove your pyjamas.”

“Excellent suggestion.” He stood up. “Long overdue. Warmly welcomed and strongly endorsed by all right-thinking men. Put to the vote and passed nem con.” He threw the pyjamas into a corner and turned around. She was lying on the bed, equally naked.

“My goodness,” she said. “Rather less of me, but a good deal more of you. Isn’t that a lucky coincidence?”

“Reminds me of a jigsaw puzzle I got for Christmas,” he said. “Hours of innocent fun.” It made her smile, which was worth more to him than winning his M.C.

* * *

They slept for an hour, and then he awoke, wondering where the hell he was, not France, it didn’t feel or smell like France, so what the devil ... And then he remembered, and relaxed. Sharing a bed was a strange experience. He was afraid of disturbing her; on the other hand the lush warmth of her presence was exciting and before he could stop himself his hand had stroked her body; and as if he had touched a trigger she was awake and sitting up, propped on one arm, reaching for his face and kissing it. Soon she was straddling him. Now there’s a surprise, he thought. No complaints, though. He worried, briefly, about hurting her damaged leg, before he realised that she was twice as lithe as he was; and in the tangle of limbs, who was counting feet?

After that he slept deeply and awoke grudgingly, he knew not why. The room was black. She was mumbling. Or was she crying? He put his hand on her shoulder. The noise stopped.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Poor butterfly.”

That made no sense to him.

“’Poor butterfly’,” she said. “Do you remember? They were dancing to the tune, this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon. ‘Poor Butterfly’ ...” She sang a couple of bars. “Isn’t it a lovely tune? Just perfect for dancing.”

There was nothing he could say to that. He held her and she quickly fell asleep. He was glad of that. He was very tired.

* * *

By dawn she was out of bed and dressing. He allowed himself the luxury of watching, without feeling that he had to abandon the warm sheets. The cold air made him sneeze, and she glanced sideways.

“You’re very nimble,” he said.

“Well, I’ve done it before.”

“Do I mean nimble?” He yawned. “Makes you sound like an acrobat.”

“Do you like racing?” She was as blithe as a blackbird. “Do you like Scotland?”

“Let’s see ... Where the whisky comes from?”

“They’re racing at Edinburgh this afternoon, Hugh. There’s a fast train, Monarch of the Glen, first stop Edinburgh, gets us there in time for the second race.”

“Edinburgh. That’s —”

“Four hundred miles. It’s a very fast train.”

“You’re quite mad. We’d never get seats. Not a hope.”

“What a shame.” She put her hat on. “Perhaps I’ll send you a picture postcard.”

“Wait! Look, I haven’t shaved.”

They went by cab to King’s Cross. She called on the stationmaster, and they travelled first class on the Monarch of the Glen. Cleve-Cutler shaved. They had a long, lazy breakfast in the dining car as the fields and woods of Hertfordshire rushed past. The ticket collector came by. Dorothy showed him a dull gold medallion, slightly larger than a sovereign, and he saluted and moved on. “Ahah,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Now I know. You’re head of the Secret Service.”

“What a wonderful idea.” The sun had come out and she was drowsy in its warmth. “Then I could be invisible. I’ve always wanted to be invisible.”

“I don’t think it works quite like that.”

“Well, I’ll be tremendously secret, then. So secret that nobody knows who I am except you, because nobody else knows the password ...” It was a highly satisfying fantasy. She could never be a total part of this world, so she would invent her own world and vanish into it. “What is the password?” she asked.

The words poor butterfly came to his mind. He decided not to take the risk. “The password is Poppycock,” he told her. “Because I say so ... Now, explain that medal-thing.”

She explained. Father was a director, past chairman, of the railway company, and so travelled free; the medallion was a perpetual ticket for two, anywhere, first class. “He lets me borrow it,” she said. “I’m afraid it doesn’t pay for breakfast.”

He rested his head against the cushioned seat. The train strummed through a length of meadows, cattle standing as steam rose from their backs. Suddenly the train hammered into a cutting and made him blink. Now he could see her face reflected in the window. This time yesterday we were strangers, he thought. Lucky, lucky, lucky. And she thought: We could keep travelling for ever, just him and me. On Father’s medallion. Together for ever. Then the cutting ended and the dark battering fell away, and the train went back to its tidy racy strum.

“Do you remember singing ‘Poor Butterfly’ last night?” he asked.

She nodded, and hummed a few bars. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh ... just feeling brave, I suppose.”

“You are braver than you know. So many men, when they discover my leg – or rather when they discover no leg – they panic. They decide that the rest of me is ... oh ...”

“Not in full working order?”

“I frighten them. They wonder what other terrors await them if they take me to bed. Men are so nervous.”

“Well, nanny told them if they kept on playing with it, then it would fall off.”

“Did your nanny say that?”

“No. My nanny said if I told her where father kept the whisky hidden, I could do what I damn well liked. So I did and she got the sack, father being nobody’s fool.”

“Well, I think you were jolly brave with me.” She looked thoroughly happy. Cleve-Cutler had never made anyone happy before. He was pleased with himself.

* * *

A taxi got them to Edinburgh races. Hugh, betting by instinct, lost a fiver. Dorothy, going always for the second favourite, won thirty pounds. They dined at the Waverley and went back to London by sleeper, thanks to her father’s medallion. Hugh took a large fresh salmon with him for Taggart.

“Edinburgh?” Taggart said. “You must be exhausted, so you must.”

“We came by sleeper,” Hugh told him.

“I can never get any rest in those things.”

“No. Ours was a bit rackety.”

They went to their room. “Rackety,” she said. “I’ve never heard it called that before. Rumpty-tumpty. Hanky-panky. Jig-a-jig. Lots of things. But never rackety.”

“Well, that’s our word. Our password.”

“Oh.” For the first time, she seemed unsure of herself. “You mean ... whenever ...”

“Just say rackety.”

“Heavens above. And to think that Father keeps complaining that the art of conversation is lost.”

“Does he? Well, next time you see him you can tell him we found it again. Tell him it was in the bed. The maid must have left it there.”

She glowed with pleasure, and this gave him some idea of a stern but loving father whom he had no wish to meet. “Is it too early for me to say rackety?” she asked.

“It’s odd ... In an aeroplane, at fifteen thousand feet, I feel okay. But when you look at me like that, I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

“I don’t know much about men’s anatomy.” She loosened his tie. “But I don’t think the pit of your stomach comes into it, actually.”

Cleve-Cutler tried to grin, and failed, and realised it was a wasted effort because his face was hooked into a grin anyway. He was trapped by his own desires. Part of him itched to peel off her clothes, and his, and to carry on where they had left off in the sleeper. Another part cringed away from the prospect, scared of failure. His balls ached while lust sent his heart pounding. Make up your bloody mind! he told his body. “Oysters,” he said. “Let’s go out and eat a bucket of oysters.”

Taggart saw them leave hand-in-hand. “I thought you two were going to have a nice lie-down,” he said.

“Oysters,” she told him, smiling like a bride.

Taggart went into his office and spat on the fire. He really disliked loving couples. They peacocked around as if they knew the answer when they didn’t even know the bloody question.

* * *

All across the Atlantic, masses of air jostled and spun and drove east. What began as a warm front off New England dropped its rain into the ocean and matured into a sequence of brisk westerlies that swept across Europe and gave the fields a chance to drain and dry. Thanks to the Chinese labourers’ ditches, the aerodrome at Pepriac dried quickly. Soon Hornet Squadron was flying again. As usual, Wing wanted Deep Offensive Patrols.

* * *

For three more days they were never apart, and then he had to go back to France.

He wanted to say goodbye in London. “Dover is dreary. Nothing but troops. Worse than a garrison town. You’ll hate it.”

“I’ve never been to Dover,” she said, and put the medallion in her eye like a monocle. “This is Field Marshal Haig speaking. Don’t sulk, or I’ll get Taggart to kick you.”

“I’m not sulking, I’m furious.”

“Well, you’re a soldier. You’re paid to be furious.”

“Why aren’t you furious?”

“Oh, Hugh, just look at me.” She let the medallion drop into her hand. “Poor butterfly. Can you imagine a furious butterfly? People would think I was drunk.”

On the way to Victoria, he stopped the cab at a music shop and bought a record of “Poor Butterfly”.

“This is for you. A keepsake.”

But she wouldn’t take it. “Being a butterfly is bad enough.” She was pleasant but firm. “I’d rather not be reminded.” Which left him feeling foolish, carrying a gramophone record that neither of them wanted. Why the devil couldn’t she just take the thing and throw it away later? Why did she have to be so damned honest?

They had little to say on the boat train, and not much to see through windows streaked with rain. They travelled with a bunch of cavalry officers who spoke gruffly among themselves about polo.

At Dover the showers had all blown away, the sun was out, and it was a lovely day for anything except what they were there to do.

They stood on the platform while a porter got his bags out. “There’s no point in your coming down to the harbour,” he said. “You’d just have to come back here again.” His voice was hard. Almost accusing. He wondered why, and he made himself laugh. “Why are we so gloomy? I don’t understand.”

“Look at that,” she said, and pointed high behind him. “What is it? You must know.”

He turned and squinted at the bright blue sky. “Sopwith Camel.” He had heard the rasping buzz of its engine and he had resisted looking; now he could get his fill. “First-rate machine. They get ferried to France from here. Wish I had them on my squadron. Climbs like a rocket, turns on a sixpence, twin Vickers to blow the Boche to bits. Beautiful.”

“I can’t compete with that,” she said, without bitterness. “No woman can.” She kissed him on the lips: one quick kiss. “Off you go and enjoy your war. It won’t last for ever.”

“Of course it won’t. Anyway, I’ll be back soon.”

“No, you won’t.”

She was calm; he was baffled. He said, “I will, I tell you. I’ll write. We’ll meet.”

“No, we shan’t.”

The porter was waiting.

“Don’t take it so badly,” she said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“But this is absurd.”

“Yes, it’s absurd.” And she limped away.

On the boat, he brooded over the bloody silly mystery of women. In mid-Channel he took the record of “Poor Butterfly” and sent it skimming into the waves. By the time they landed in France he was actually, and to his great surprise, looking forward enormously to getting back to the war, back to Pepriac and the men he commanded. It was a relief to be out of England. Taggart was right: England knew nothing.

* * *

Dusk came early to Pepriac. Grimy clouds drifted out of the west and built a barricade too strong for the setting sun. Electric lights burned in the orderly room and the kettle sang on the cast-iron stove, which glowed a soft mauve in places. Occasionally rain rattled on the roof and the odd drop plunged down the chimney and died a martyr’s death.

Sergeant Lacey was listening to the gramophone playing Ravel’s string quartet, while he practised the signature of Daniel T. Latham. It was difficult because Daniel was much bigger and bolder than T. Latham. Usually there was a final flourish to a signature, but this one ended in a weak dribble of ink. Perhaps, Lacey thought, Lieutenant Latham hadn’t liked his name. Perhaps he hadn’t respected his father or his family.

He made ten more attempts and then reached for Latham’s cheque book and dashed off the signature. The cheque was payable to the Polperro Home for Distressed Mariners, in the amount of twenty-five guineas. It was dated six weeks earlier. Lacey slid it into an envelope and addressed the envelope to Polperro. He threw the experimental signatures into the stove just as Ravel reached his closing chord and Cleve-Cutler came through the door, grinning like a shark. “God’s teeth!” he cried, and went straight to the adjutant’s room.

“I trust you enjoyed a good leave, sir,” Lacey said.

“None of your damned business.” He kicked the adjutant’s desk and came out. “What’s the score? Nobody in the mess, nobody at the Flights, nobody here. Where’s Brazier?”

“At the churchyard, sir. Would you like some tea?”

“Oh.” The C.O. came to an abrupt halt. “Churchyard, eh?” He found himself looking at the gramophone and he twisted his head to read the record label. “Churchyard. Well I’m damned. The usual?”

“Mr Cooper and Mr Radley, sir.”

“Good Christ.” All the way from Boulogne, Cleve-Cutler had been enjoying a mounting gusto for the war. Dorothy was a dear sweet woman, but his memory of her faded with every mile until now it was almost erased. He was impressed by his own callousness. Still, he hadn’t bargained on coming back to this. “Accident or ... or what?”

“Archie, sir.”

The C.O. grunted. “Rotten luck.” Yet he was relieved: at least they were killed in action. And probably quickly. Archie was all or nothing. Either Archie missed, or he blew you to bits. But invariably the bits came down in Hunland. “Sure it was Archie?”

“No lack of witnesses, sir.” Lacey was making tea. “It was British Archie.”

“Sodding bastards,” the C.O. said. “Blind murdering sodding bastards.”

“The battery commander sent his apologies.”

“Stuff ’em up his arse.”

“Also a pair of wreaths.”

“Ten francs each. Twenty francs, two pilots. What a rotten waste.” All his gusto had gone, and bitter rage had taken its place. The military part of his brain reacted quickly. Losses, it told him, just losses, that’s all, you’ve had ’em before, don’t stand there mumbling, do something! “Where are the replacements?” he demanded. “And where’s the bloody adjutant, for God’s sake?”

“Still at the churchyard, sir.” Lacey was pouring the tea.

“Churchyard? That’s not his job, it’s the flight commander’s job. Tim Lynch’s job.”

“Mr Lynch died a week ago, sir. We buried him the following day.”

Cleve-Cutler took a mug of tea and sat on the nearest desk. “God speed the plough,” he muttered.

Lacey took the record off the turntable and slipped it into its brown-paper sleeve. “Perhaps I should tell you everything, sir.”

“More deaths, you mean?” Lacey nodded. “Telephone the mess,” the C.O. said. “Tell them I want a bottle of whisky sent over.” Lacey went into the adjutant’s office and came back with whisky. “Totally irregular,” the C.O. said. “Someone will pay for this.” Lacey poured whisky into his tea. “Is Brazier a secret drinker?” the C.O. asked. Lacey shook his head. “The adjutant before him was an awful soak,” the C.O. said. “Applegate, Appleford, something like that. I had to send him packing. Bit of a crook, too.” He drank his tea-and-whisky. “Hell of a crook, in fact. Applecart? Appletart?”

“Appleyard, sir.”

Lacey leaned against a wall, arms folded. He watched and waited, and wondered why the C.O. was being so evasive. Casualties had never upset him before. They had caused regret, but not distress. Death struck and life went on, that was Cleve-Cutler’s style. Brisk. Positive.

“Well, I suppose you’d better tell me,” the C.O. said.

“Mr Lloyd-Perkins in A-Flight was a landing accident, fractured skull and internal injuries. Died in hospital. Mr Lynch was shot in combat, it seems. He managed to return, but by then he had lost too much blood and there was no time to take him to hospital. Wing has sent us Captain Crabtree to take command of B-Flight, but as yet we have no replacements for Mr Cooper and Mr Radley. In C-Flight Mr Shanahan has a touch of pneumonia and a broken nose.”

“From flying?”

“Only a very short distance. His motorcycle hit a cow and he flew into a ditch.”

“A cow? Was he drunk?”

“The night was dark, sir. And the cow was black.”

“And Shanahan’s an idiot.”

“The mess bought the cow, sir, at a very fair price.”

Cleve-Cutler stared. “Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it? As long as we get our steak-and-kidney pie, the squadron can go to hell, can’t it? What? Straight to hell!” he banged his mug on the desk. Tea slopped. “Dammit,” he said.

“We also lost a rigger,” Lacey said gently. The C.O. took a deep breath and held it, while he looked at the roof. Then he let it out. “He obtained a small German bomb as a souvenir,” Lacey said. “He attempted to defuse it and blew the fingers off his right hand. Corporal Blunt. The obvious jokes have been made, sir.”

“Oh?” The C.O. thought about that. “Jokes, you say. Some people think it’s funny, do they?”

“I believe I see the adjutant coming, sir.”

Brazier shouldered the door open. He was carrying a wreath in each hand. “Hullo, sir,” he said. “Good leave?”

“What the blazes have you got there?” Cleve-Cutler snarled. “You look like a two-handled teapot.”

“If I’d left them in the churchyard, the goats would have eaten them.”

“Best thing could have happened. Get ’em out of my sight. Where are the flight commanders?”

Brazier frowned. “Now let me see ...”

The flight commanders were quickly rounded up and sent to the C.O.’s office. He shook hands with the new man, Captain Crabtree, and welcomed him to the squadron. He thought Crabtree was the most unpleasant officer he had ever seen. A thin face, slightly twisted so that one corner of his mouth sagged; a chin raddled with acne scars; hostile eyes; ears like rudders; and hair that was uniformly white. God dealt you a bloody awful hand, the C.O. thought. If there is a God. If He plays cards.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t join us at a happier time,” he said bleakly. “For this unhappy state of affairs I blame myself entirely. I go away for ten days and when I get back I find my squadron in tatters. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”

“That’s a bit hard, sir,” Plug Gerrish said. “Lynch was leading his flight when he met a flock of Fokkers, and he copped a bullet. That’s no disgrace. He did his best.”

“No doubt. Did Lloyd-Perkins also do his best?”

“He was out of petrol, he had to land, there was a rainstorm. He made a pig’s ear of it. I might have done the same thing.”

Ogilvy said, “And if you’re going to ask about Cooper and Radley, sir, nobody’s to blame for Archie, especially when it’s British Archie. A shell hit Radley, and it blew Radley into Cooper.”

“And Shanahan?”

“Well, Shanahan’s a bloody idiot, sir.”

“He’s another pilot I haven’t got. Five pilots in ten days. At that rate the whole squadron will have gone west in a month! Well, I have news for you.” Cleve-Cutler’s artificial grin was frozen. “I am going to revive a quaint, old-fashioned notion called discipline. We are going to tighten up this squadron until every man squeaks when he salutes! You will train your flights to fly together, fight together, kill together and land back here together, in one piece, ready for orders from Wing to go off and do it again! Do I make myself clear?”

They left. Cleve-Cutler looked around him and saw framed photographs of people he did not wish to remember. He turned off the light and sat in the darkness, waiting for his anger to fade. Tim Lynch had been a decent chap, a competent flight commander, deserved a posthumous medal, wouldn’t get one. He imagined Lynch’s last fight, a dozen machines all whirling around the sky like leaves in a squall, until suddenly Lynch got a bullet in the leg. Must have been a long slog home, against the wind, against the Huns, and all the time blood getting pumped into his boot. There was a clever act that Lynch had performed on guest nights in the mess: he rode a bicycle, facing backwards, and blindfold, while he sang “The Skye Boat Song”. Not any more. Cleve-Cutler would miss seeing him do that trick. Rode all around the mess and never missed a note. Oh, well.

Cooper and Radley had been new boys, keen and cheerful and totally interchangeable. He would have to write to their parents. The same wording would serve for each. Brazier would know what to say without actually lying. Ditto re Lloyd-Perkins.

Writing letters was a frightful chore. There was that woman in London. He had promised to write to her. He knew now that he would never write, just as she had told him he wouldn’t. Was he so transparently selfish?

The question left him feeling shabby and unworthy, which was infuriating, so he thought instead of Lieutenant Shanahan and the dead cow. Bloody idiot. Men like Shanahan let the squadron down. Not good enough! He’d make them jump through hoops of blazing fire. Discipline!

* * *

Late next afternoon, when the patrols had returned and the air in the anteroom was grey with the lazy writhings of tobacco smoke, a staff car approached the camp. The duty N.C.O. in the guardroom was alert, which was just as well. The car was a Rolls-Royce. In it was General Trenchard. He commanded the Corps.

“Unexpected pleasure, sir,” Lieutenant Heeley said. He was duty officer; he had run from the mess; one epaulette was flapping.

“Assemble your mechanics.”

“Yes, sir. Where, sir?”

Trenchard looked down. He was six feet four. In his greatcoat he seemed massive. His face was as gaunt as a Highland shepherd. Heeley felt his guts churn, and he tasted the last of his lunch, and he said, “Number one hangar, sir!” in a curiously reedy voice. He turned and ran.

Trenchard was known throughout the corps as “Boom”. He was not comfortable with the English language; he boomed words as if they were shells to be discharged, in case they blew up in his face. Now he stood on a box and did his gruff and gloomy best. Behind him stood Cleve-Cutler and Baring, Trenchard’s private secretary.

“You fellows,” Trenchard told the mechanics, “are. The backbone. The backbone of. The Corps. Without you. And. Your skills. We are nowhere. At all. You have toiled. Wonderfully. I can promise. You. Even greater toil. Before. Victory.”

Cleve-Cutler glanced sideways. Baring shook his head.

“Arrives,” Trenchard boomed.

Baring nodded.

“Three cheers for the general!” the C.O. cried.

The Rolls-Royce carried them to the mess. On the way, Trenchard said, “How is morale?”

“A few kills will buck it up, sir.”

Trenchard grunted. “You’ve had losses.”

“Yes. We need the rub of the green, sir.”

Trenchard grunted again.

All the officers were gathered in the anteroom. Most had never met the Corps commander before, and they were surprised to see wings on his tunic. “Pontius Pilot,” McWatters whispered. Ogilvy frowned. It was an old joke.

“Don’t complain,” Trenchard boomed, “about your aeroplanes.” He let that soak in. “Do your best. With what you’ve got. Next point. The aeroplane is good for only one thing and that is attack.” He breathed deeply after this rush of words. “Your motto. Attack! Search. Find. Attack the enemy. Conquer his sky. Give the Hun. No peace until. One day. The Hun will. Beg. For peace.”

Cleve-Cutler glanced at Baring. Baring shrugged. The C.O. took a chance and stepped forward. “Thank you, general. I’m sure we are all in total agreement with your every word.”

“Hear, hear,” the adjutant said.

“Not total,” Crabtree said softly.

There was a moment of frozen time, and then a shuffling of feet as men tried to get a better view.

“What, then?” Trenchard said.

“I don’t agree, sir. Not totally.”

By now Trenchard had picked him out. Crabtree was of medium height, thin, his face deeply lined, eyes almost haggard.

“Captain Crabtree,” the C.O. murmured. “Commands B-Flight.”

“Why not totally?” Trenchard asked.

“Well, it’s not a fair fight, sir, is it?” Crabtree said. His tone was mild; he sounded a little regretful. “The Hun has the advantages. We fight over there. If he doesn’t like it he runs away. If we don’t like it, we’ve got a headwind against us. You say: conquer the enemy sky and make him beg for peace. Up there, performance counts and the new Hun machines are better than ours. Always attack, you say. And fighting spirit is a fine thing. But on its own it won’t conquer the sky, sir.”

Trenchard leaned his great shaggy head forward and examined the medal ribbons below Crabtree’s wings. “You’re a brave man, captain,” he said. “You have told me. What not to do. Now give me. Your alternative.”

Crabtree sighed, and glanced around the room. “Get hold of a few squadrons of the new Albatros, sir,” he said gently; and the shout of laughter seemed to startle him.

Trenchard did not smile. He let the laughter fade to an expectant silence. “Not a fair fight. You said. War is not. About fairness. It’s about. Winning. Stop fighting and. The battle’s lost. We learn to win. By fighting. Don’t complain. Fight hard. With what weapons. You’ve got. When a better. Weapon arrives. You’ll know. How best to use it. War is hard. But it makes. Victory. All the more. Sweet.”

Cleve-Cutler did not need to call for three cheers; the applause broke out spontaneously. Baring murmured into Cleve-Cutler’s ear: “D’you know, I’ve never heard him so eloquent.”

As they went in to dinner, the adjutant sought out Crabtree and took him aside. “What the blazes possessed you?” he demanded. “He’ll think we’re all pansies.”

“I don’t care,” Crabtree said. He was still calm and untroubled. “I just don’t care.”

“Well ... For God’s sake, pull yourself together. You volunteered to join the Corps, didn’t you?”

“That was a long, long time ago, Uncle. I’ve flown five hundred hours. More than a lifetime. Now I don’t care.”

Brazier’s temper ran out. “You ought to be shot,” he growled.

“I certainly shall be,” Crabtree said. “Beyond a doubt.” His nose twitched. “Pork. I like pork.”

* * *

Baring sat between Spud Ogilvy and Duke Nikolai.

“Is America really in the war?” Ogilvy asked him.

“Yes. President Wilson finally took the plunge,” Baring said. “The U-boats, you know. The Kaiser let them off the leash and so they sank the Housatonic, which was American, and the Sussex, which was American, and the California, which was very American, a big liner, nine thousand tons. No warning. Straight to the bottom. Oh, I say: celery soup, how wonderful. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“My Uncle George is in Alberta,” Munday said. “Everything’s awfully big and everyone’s tremendously tough. They all carry guns and chew tobacco and eat steak for breakfast. Quite terrifying, he said.”

“Russian Cossacks more terrifying,” the duke said. The others nodded.

“I think you’ll find that Alberta is in Canada,” Baring said. McWatters smirked.

“Medicine Hat isn’t in America?” Munday asked.

“Scarcely at all.”

“Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter. Uncle George hated Medicine Hat. Rotten whisky, and he couldn’t get the county cricket scores. He’s probably in Arizona or Texas by now, and sucks to you,” Munday told McWatters.

“What news from Petersburg?” the duke asked Baring.

“Let me see ... The Tsar has appealed for unity. All must work for victory, that sort of thing.”

“Of course. All will work! Russians devoted to Tsar.”

Simms, sitting nearby, heard this. “Then it’s all a bit pointless, isn’t it?” he said. “If everyone loves him, why does he need to appeal for unity?”

The duke stiffened. He frowned at his plate.

“Oh, there’s some story about a minister called Protopopoff,” Baring said. “He claims to be in contact with the spirit of the late Mr Rasputin, who tells him how to fight the war.”

“Protopopoff is cockroach,” the duke said, more loudly than was necessary.

“Obvious nonsense,” Ogilvy said.

“But if it’s nonsense,” Simms said, “the Tsar wouldn’t pay it any attention, would he?” Simms rarely had an idea, but when he did he clung to it. “Surely he’s got advisers? Isn’t there a sort of House of Commons?”

“He means the Duma,” Baring said.

“Duma is cockroach.” By now the duke was staring at nothing. He clutched his soup-spoon, rigidly, as if someone might steal it from him.

“I’m beginning to be sorry I asked.” Simms tried a warm chuckle but nobody joined in.

“When do you think the Americans will be here?” Ogilvy asked Baring.

Duke Nikolai spoke a few harsh words in Russian. He stood up so abruptly that a mess servant had to grab his chair. He turned towards Trenchard and Cleve-Cutler. “With permission,” he said, and marched out, still holding the soup-spoon. Ogilvy got to his feet but when he saw the adjutant hurrying after the duke he sat down.

“If you mean the American Army,” Baring said, “it barely exists at present. When they have one, no doubt we shall see it, brandishing its revolvers and eating steak for its breakfast.”

The duke was outside, arms folded, looking at the stars. After the noise of the mess, the night was so silent that his ears heard the tiny whistle of his blood.

“What’s wrong, lad?” Brazier asked. No answer. “Pay no attention to those clowns in there,” he said. “They’ve got trench foot in the brain. Ever seen trench foot? Yes, of course you have. Nasty-looking stuff, isn’t it? Doesn’t smell very nice, either.” Brazier was surprised to hear himself sounding so friendly, even protective. Well, damn it, he might be a duke but he was a good ten inches shorter than the adjutant, and too slim to be a proper soldier, and a very long way from home. “Getting chilly, isn’t it?” Brazier said. “How about a hot toddy? We might play some chess.”

The duke made a fierce kick at the snow and sent it whirling. A door slammed and Count Andrei came towards them. He and the duke had a short, subdued conversation in Russian.

“I am in the dark,” Brazier said. “In every sense.”

“Treachery,” the count said. “Tsar is stabbed in back. Russia bleeds. Duke bleeds.”

“My goodness. That wasn’t in the newspapers, was it?”

Duke Nikolai flung his arms out wide. “I love Tsar! I give my life for Tsar! If I die Tsar will live!”

“Full marks for loyalty,” the adjutant said.

They went back to the mess. They were just in time for the pudding: plum cobbler. “Give me a big helping,” Brazier told the servant, “and don’t stint on the cream.”

* * *

After dinner there was to be a smoking concert. While the anteroom was being prepared, Cleve-Cutler took Trenchard and Baring to his room for coffee.

“That captain,” Trenchard said. “Ugly fellow.”

“Crabtree, sir. He’s crashed rather a lot. ‘Crash’ Crabtree, they call him.”

“No fool. Brave, too. Dangerous combination, that.” Trenchard looked at Baring.

“On the other hand, sir,” Baring said, “if Crabtree were to be ... um ... sacked, or sent home, the rest of the squadron might think that perhaps ...”

“He was right all along,” the C.O. said.

“Of course he was right,” Trenchard said. “Only a lunatic would fly Deep Offensive Patrols if there was any alternative. Worst possible way to fight.”

“Except for all the others,” Baring said.

“Show Cleve-Cutler the memorandum.”

Baring gave him a sheet of paper, headed VIGOROUS OFFENSIVE.

An aeroplane is an offensive weapon.

An aeroplane is not a defensive weapon. Hostile aircraft can always cross the enemy’s Lines.

The policy of British air fighting is one of relentless offensive.

This gives the enemy no opportunity to make hostile raids.

Thus superiority in the air is achieved.

An aeroplane is an offensive weapon. An aeroplane is not a defensive
         weapon.

“Most interesting,” Cleve-Cutler said. He returned the paper to Baring, handling it carefully, as if it were part of a rare and valuable archive.

“Attack!” Trenchard boomed. “Take the battle to the enemy! Fight the Hun on your terms. Not on his.”

“Oh, absolutely.” There was much more to the air war than Trenchard’s plan allowed for. There was the little matter of sending undertrained pilots in outclassed aeroplanes so deep into enemy territory that British losses were four times greater than German losses. How did that achieve superiority in the air? But the C.O. looked at the general’s craggy face, granitic with certainty, and decided not to debate the point. “D’you know, I think they might just be ready for us,” he said. “Shall we toddle back?”

* * *

The smoker began with a song-and-dance chorus. Four of the youngest pilots, lavishly made-up and dressed in split skirts, overstuffed blouses and flaxen pigtailed wigs, danced onto the makeshift stage with such enthusiasm that one stepped off the end and fell over the piano. Loud laughter surprised the other three and they stopped. Spud Ogilvy was master of ceremonies. He stepped forward. “Silly girl crashed on take-off,” he announced. “The patrol is cancelled.” For that he got thoroughly booed. “Well, all right, then,” he said. “Postponed, slightly.”

The second time they got it right. Briskly they sang:

“We’re four plucky maidens
All out on the spree!
We’ve got the keyhole
If you’ve got the key!
Now Major Cleve-Cutler, don’t make us be subtler,
Can Hornets please come out and play?
We’re four plucky maidens
All out on the spree!
We’ve got the keyhole
If you’ve got the key!”

It brought a storm of applause. They performed a high-stepping dance routine that was clearly under-rehearsed. One dancer turned right when the others turned left, and had his legs kicked from under him. This was very popular. He was trampled as the remaining three doggedly finished their routine, and he crawled off while they took several bows.

“What you might call the offensive spirit,” Cleve-Cutler said.

“Catchy tune,” Trenchard said.

A corporal from the orderly room came on and did card tricks. Then Count Andrei sang a Russian ballad. It lasted too long and got only polite applause.

“Not a catchy tune,” Trenchard said.

Ogilvy appeared and announced, “At huge expense, we now bring you an unforgettable dramatic performance. The padre will recite that unrivalled masterpiece, ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’.”

The padre was in tropical kit. His shorts had been lightly starched so that they stood out like wings. He wore a pith helmet, a cummerbund and a clerical collar. He got a standing ovation. He waited for absolute silence.

“The Green Eye,” he declaimed, “of the Little Yellow God.” He struck a pose: right arm raised, fingers extended.

“There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu;
There’s a little marble cross below the town;
And a brokenhearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew ...”

Sudden hubbub at the back of the hall stopped him dead. All heads turned. Simms and McWatters strode to the front, talking loudly. Simms wore his flying helmet and flying boots. McWatters wore a false nose, plum-red, and a false moustache, grey turning white. “I say, I say!” McWatters brayed as they stamped onto the stage. “Twenty years on – and look! Nothing’s changed. God, what memories!”

“Do you mind?” the padre said. “I’m trying to —”

Simms ignored him. “This was your squadron?” he asked.

“Dear old Hornet!” McWatters brayed. “1917, I was here, you know. Of course, the war hadn’t got into its stride then.”

“No?”

“1924, that was when things got serious. Then came ‘28 and ‘31, cracking good years, they were. Especially ‘31. Nineteenth Battle of the Somme. What a spiffing show!” By now the laughs were coming thick and fast.

“There’s a one-eyed yellow idol —”

“Be a good chap,” Simms told the padre. “Put it in the mess suggestions book.”

“And here we are in 1937,” McWatters said. “D’you know ... we on the staff reckon we’re really beginning to get the hang of the war.” Ironic cheers greeted this.

Simms asked, “You think we’ll soon have the Hun on the run?”

“By 1941. Well ... let’s say, 1943 at the very latest.”

“He was known as ‘Mad’ Carew by the subs at Khatmandu . . . He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell,” the padre said in a rush.

“Hot?” McWatters exclaimed. “I remember a dogfight in 1917. There I was, outnumbered fifty to one.”

“Good Lord,” Simms said. “What did you do?”

“The only thing I could. I roared defiance!” McWatters let out a long, hoarse bellow: “Aaaaarrrr!” He flexed his knees and shook his head. “I don’t mind telling you, I fouled my breeches.”

“Not surprising, sir. Fifty to one against you.”

“No, no. Not then. Just now. When I went Aaaaarrrrl Damn ...” More knee-flexing. “Done it again.”

Huge laughter. The padre waited for his chance.

“There’s a one-eyed yellow idol— ”

“Tradition! That’s a wonderful thing,” McWatters said. “Here you are, Hornet Squadron, 1937, twenty years on, still biffing the Boche. What machine are you flying?”

“Sopwith Pup,” Simms said.

“Ah – you know where you are with the Pup ...” But McWatters’ voice was drowned in a wave of laughter.

After the smoker, when the general had been escorted to his bedroom, Baring and the C.O. had a nightcap in the mess. “The 1937 sketch,” Baring said. “Is that a running joke in this squadron?”

“No. Written specially.”

“It didn’t make the general laugh.”

“Perhaps because it’s not such a funny joke.”

“Do you really think all this will just go on and on?”

“What’s to stop it?” Cleve-Cutler said. “America? Can you really see American troops going over the top? Like the Somme? For our sake?”

“But it’s such a waste. Not for me, I was middle-aged when it started, but for chaps like you —”

Cleve-Cutler laughed. “Chaps like me are having a whale of a time. I can’t imagine any other life. I hope this war lasts for ever. Or until we get a replacement for the Pup. Whichever is sooner.”

“I’ve made a note,” Baring said.

* * *

“Gross impertinence?” Bliss said. “And Crabtree reckons it doesn’t matter?”

Cleve-Cutler thought for a moment. “Actually, what Crabtree said wasn’t impertinent. It was all very pertinent.”

“That’s not the blasted point,” Colonel Bliss said, in a voice that silenced the rats under the floorboards. He had arrived from Wing H.Q. without warning, less than an hour after Trenchard and Baring departed. “You’ve given him a good kick in the goolies, I hope.”

“Oh yes. Asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, putting damnfool ideas into the minds of the others.”

“And he said what?”

“Said he couldn’t resist telling the general the truth, because he might never get another chance, but it didn’t matter.”

“God’s teeth,” Bliss said. “It’s not for every mouthy flight commander to have his say-so about the strategy of the Corps. What next? Shall we have a vote before every patrol? Elect the generals? Shall we do that? What’s wrong with this Crabapple? Communist, is he?”

“Crabtree,” the C.O. said. “Not Communist. Damn good flight commander, very experienced. Perhaps we should hear what the doctor has to say, sir.”

Captain Dando brought a fat file with him. He rattled through Crabtree’s medical record: “On a troopship that got torpedoed ... rescued by destroyer, sent to France by ferry which hit a mine; broke two ribs and an arm ... joined his regiment at the Front, shrapnel wound to the head ... Military Cross ... joined R.F.C., crashed, broke collarbone ... taxying accident, gashed head ... hit by Archie, crashed, concussion ... ditto, burns to legs ... ditto, dislocated shoulder ... damaged by enemy scouts, hit tree, concussion ...”

“And so on and so on,” Cleve-Cutler said. “He crashed five times in 1916 without doing himself any permanent damage. Then he got knocked down in the middle of the battle of the Somme. Missing for a week.”

“Probably spent it getting chased from shell-hole to shell-hole by the whizzbangs,” Dando said.

“He couldn’t remember the battle,” the C.O. said.

“Not unusual with concussion,” Dando said. “He got packed off to a convalescent home outside Paris. Told to rest. Eat lots of cheese.”

“Cheese?” Bliss said.

“There was a medical theory ...” Dando began; but Bliss raised his hands. “Spare me,” he said. “I suppose I’d better see him.”

Dando telephoned. The C.O.’s servant brought coffee. Bliss sipped it and frowned. “Much better than the muck they give us at Wing,” he grumbled. “No point in asking where you get it?”

“No, sir.”

Crabtree came in and saluted. The C.O. introduced the colonel. “Sit down,” Bliss said. “How’s the war going? Speak freely.”

“Well, it’s going splendidly, sir.” Crabtree’s voice was dull, and his gaunt, lined face was blank. “We’re hammering the Hun on every Front,” he said bleakly. “One more big push and Germany will crack like a rotten egg.”

“Will it really?” Bliss pretended to be impressed. “The Somme didn’t do the trick, did it?”

“The Somme was a splendid test of British guts and gallantry.” The words came out as flat as slate, as if Crabtree were dictating them. “We slogged it out. The Boche took a pasting.”

“Slogged it out. Is that how you saw the battle?”

“Well, now.” Crabtree relaxed a little. “Actually there wasn’t much to see, sir. Far too loud. Frightfully noisy.” Gradually, life was creeping into his voice. “Awfully nice Gordon Highlander gave me a sandwich, bully-beef, thick as a book. Delicious. I couldn’t make head nor tail of him, either. Scots, you see. Awfully nice chap.” Crabtree shook his head, touched by the memory of human kindness.

“Anything else?” Bliss asked.

“I see General Haig’s been made a field marshal,” Crabtree said. “So the Somme must have been a victory, mustn’t it? But I don’t care, sir. I’ve heard it all before.”

When he had left, Cleve-Cutler said: “Sack him if you like, sir, but I want someone just as experienced to replace him. He may be odd on the ground, but he’s damn good upstairs.”

“A week in the Somme, and all he can remember is a Scotch bully-beef sandwich,” Bliss said.

“Shaky memory proves nothing, sir,” Dando said. “I’ve known pilots to land after they had two scraps and bagged a flamer, and can’t remember a damn thing.”

“Anyone who argues with Boom Trenchard is off his rocker,” Bliss declared. “Do something to this lunatic, give him some pills, get him drunk as a skunk, it might straighten out his head. God speed the plough! If the Somme was a victory, we’ll never win.”

“Ah!” Cleve-Cutler said. “We’re going to win, are we, sir? I mean, is that official?”

“Don’t you start,” Bliss said.

* * *

“A brace of frogs,” Crabtree said. “Lost, probably.”

“Ask them to lunch,” Ogilvy said. “Then we can have frogs’ legs for starters.”

They were stretched out in deck chairs, wrapped in blankets and enjoying the rare warmth of the weak and watery sun. Ogilvy’s eyes were shut. Crabtree was looking through binoculars at a pair of biplanes, gauzy in the sunlight, circling high above the aerodrome.

“Very small frogs,” he said.

“Not so loud. The others will want some.”

“Here they come,” Crabtree said.

“That’s the trouble with this war,” Ogilvy said lazily. “Everyone’s in such a blasted hurry.” He opened his eyes.

The two biplanes were descending in opposing spirals. Each spiral turned around the same invisible central column, and the machines were so close to each other that they seemed to be on a permanent collision course. The reality was that, as the spirals crossed, one machine cleared the tail of the other by a length. It was a tiny margin. A bump in the air, a surge of power, a wobble in the controls would be enough to turn a display into a disaster.

“They may be frogs, but they can fly,” Ogilvy said.

At three or four hundred feet the biplanes peeled away from each other, came together in line abreast, sideslipped in unison, and landed simultaneously. Cleve-Cutler was there to watch and admire.

The pilots were, as Crabtree had guessed, French. “Félicitations,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Qu’est-ce que vous cherchez?” What they were looking for was his signature on the delivery documents for two Nieuport 17s, factory-fresh.

“Nobody ordered Nieuport 17s” he said. They shrugged. They were test pilots from the Nieuport company, and they wanted transport to the nearest railhead so they could go home. They gave him a pencil. He hesitated. In the British Army, once you signed for something you were stuck with it. He had once signed – hastily – for twenty mules, which had turned out to be lame. He never forgot that. He walked around the nearer aeroplane, looking for faults. When he got back, the test pilots were waving the documents to dry the ink and Duke Nikolai was screwing the cap on his fountain pen. “What the dickens?” the C.O. demanded.

“Is mine,” the duke said. He nodded at the Nieuports. “Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.”

Cleve-Cutler stared. “Are you drunk?”

“Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.”

“Not in my squadron.”

“Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.”

“It’ll take more than your say-so.”

“Is part of Imperial Russian Air Force.” The duke’s face, grave and beautiful, showed all the confidence of a second cousin of God’s appointed Tsar.

“Ah ...” Cleve-Cutler groaned. “Christ Allbloodymighty.” He went to his office and telephoned Colonel Bliss at Wing.

“Do nothing,” Bliss said. “One false move might bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.”

“What house of cards?”

“Do nothing.”

Thirty minutes later, Bliss called back. “Have you done anything?”

“No. The Russians are out there, trying to read the pilot’s manual. It’s in French. What’s going on, colonel?”

“For a start, they’ve bought those Nieuports.” Bliss let that sink in. “I called the factory. They said the Russian embassy ordered the machines. I called Brigade, and Brigade called Corps, and Corps called Army H.Q., and finally somebody who went to Oxford with the Russian ambassador’s first secretary got the truth out of him. Last week your Duke Nikolai bought two Nieuport 17s for cash.”

“I’ll be damned. How much?”

“Five thousand pounds. He has a bank in Paris.”

“You mean a bank account.”

“No, the family owns a bank. A small bank.”

“Well, I should hope so. Nothing ostentatious.”

“Don’t get huffy, old boy. And for God’s sake don’t get snotty with those two. Strange sounds are coming out of St Petersburg, so I’m told. It’s crucial that you don’t rock the boat.”

“Suppose my Russians want to play with their toys.” Cleve-Cutler suddenly felt reckless. “If I say no, that’ll rock the boat and it might bring down the whole house of cards. Then the cat will be out of the bag and the fat will be in the fire.”

Bliss was not amused. “Do nothing,” he said. “Wait for my call.” He hung up. A minute later he called again. “It really is no joke,” he said. “The fate of nations may be in your hands.” The phone went dead.

Cleve-Cutler stared at the ink-stains on his desk. There was one that looked like a squashed rat with a stupid grin. “Idiot,” he said, and banged it with his fist. The real rats under the floorboards started squeaking. “Nobody asked your opinion,” he said. He sent for Captain Ogilvy. “Keep your Russians on the ground, Spud. Invent a reason. What are they doing?”

“Still trying to read the pilot’s manual. And there’s a nice yellow fog coming down.”

“Good.”

The fog did not keep Colonel Bliss away from Pepriac. “Couldn’t call you,” he told Cleve-Cutler. “This business has become too hot for the telephone.” He made sure that the C.O.’s office door was shut. “It seems that a potential heir to the Russian throne may be on your squadron.”

“Good Lord ... And you’re taking him away? I’ll tell his servant to pack.”

“The devil you will. He’s staying here.”

“But the risk —”

“The risk is just as great in Russia. Maybe greater. A month ago your Duke Nikolai was twenty-seventh in line for the throne. Since then, princes and grand dukes have been dropping like flies. Two had heart attacks and one drowned when he fell off his horse. Diphtheria has killed a couple more and influenza took five. The rest got eaten by wolves or mammoths or Cossacks or something, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. The point is, Duke Nikolai is now only thirteenth in line.”

Cleve-Cutler made a couple of whisky-sodas and thought about this astonishing development.

“Only twelve to go,” he said. “Still, the Tsar has a big family, hasn’t he?”

“Four daughters, unfortunately. One son, with haemophilia. If he takes a toss from his rocking-horse he’ll bleed to death.”

“Crikey. What a gloomy crew.” When Colonel Bliss gave him a sharp, sideways look, Cleve-Cutler added: “Or, to put it another way, sir, our staunch and gallant allies in the east.”

“Who need a hero. Now, more than ever, they need a thumping great hero.”

“He’s a lousy pilot, sir. Just because he’s got a Nieuport he believes he’s Albert Ball. He thinks Hun pilots are going to drop dead out of sheer humiliation.”

Bliss wasn’t listening. “Look what Ball’s done for morale in England. Bucked it up wonderfully. Russians are a melancholy lot. Bad losers. They need a Ball of their own to buck them up.”

“He can’t shoot, sir.”

“Thirteenth in line for the throne! An ace, and close to the Tsar! They’ll cheer their gloomy heads off!”

“Sir, he couldn’t hit a Zeppelin if you tied it to a tree.”

“Oh yes he could. And will.” Bliss slowly waved his hat. “Huzzah,” he said softly. “Huzzah.”

“I see.” Cleve-Cutler dipped his little finger in the ink bottle and made the blot of the squashed rat even uglier. “You want me to send the Russians on D.O.P.s.”

“Far more important, I want you to bring ’em back.”

“Which means ... large escorts.”

“Use the whole damn squadron, if you have to. Just give me a Russian hero. Preferably two.”

That was that. The decision was made. “You’ll stay to dinner, colonel?”

“Another time. We’ve got lamb cutlets tonight, at Wing. Also a Stilton which is at its peak.”

They walked to his car. “I might as well say what I think, sir,” Cleve-Cutler said. “This is a bloody silly way to fight a war. I mean, why don’t you simply lie? Give Duke Nikolai an M.C. and a D.F.C with bar, and say in the citation that he shot down six Albatroses and four Halberstadts and a Hun carrier pigeon, and ship him home to Russia?”

“He wouldn’t wear it, old chap. Nikolai is an honourable duke. He won’t lie, and he won’t let us lie about him. I don’t pretend to understand it, but I believe it’s called breeding.”

“It works for pigs and horses,” Cleve-Cutler said, “but it’ll be the death of us out here.”

* * *

Nikolai and Andrei celebrated the arrival of the Nieuports by taking a couple of bottles of pepper vodka – a gift from their Paris embassy – down to Rosie’s Bar. The place was busy. Cavalry officers were celebrating somebody’s birthday. A bunch of gunners were celebrating an M.C. Two lots of sappers were trying to out-sing each other. When a crowd of Hornet Squadron pilots arrived, the atmosphere became highly charged.

McWatters was in the party; so were Crabtree, Simms, Dash and an Australian called Maddegan, just arrived in France, almost nineteen years old, straight from flying training in Kent, and so pleased to be on a fighting squadron that he couldn’t keep still. He wasn’t especially tall, but he was broad and heavy: the floorboards groaned as he shifted from foot to foot, anxious not to miss any casual remark. Crabtree watched him. “You’re jolly hefty, aren’t you?” he said.

“Comes from heaving barrels around, sir. My father owns the biggest brewery in New South Wales, sir.”

Despite his menacing bulk, Maddegan had an innocent face and an eager smile. Only his crooked nose spoiled his looks. “You box?” Crabtree said. Maddegan nodded. “Dad taught me not to hurt the other fellow unnecessarily. I smack him hard in round one, sir.”

Crabtree was impressed. “Goodness,” he said. “A philanthropic bruiser.”

Count Andrei was glad to see the pilots arrive. Success and vodka had made Duke Nikolai very Russian. He had harangued Andrei about the divinely-appointed genius of the tsars, of Ivan the Terrible, of Boris Godounov, of Peter the Great, of the magnificent Catherine, of the bravest of the brave, Tsar Alexander, who had flung Napoleon out of Russia ... Andrei occasionally put in one or two words of support. But not three words, or four. Nikolai was not a good listener. On the other hand, he was not a great speaker, either, especially when the vodka led him to try to quote heroic Russian poetry and he mangled the words and crippled the lines and choked a little at the tragic beauty of it all. Andrei sat quietly and knocked his fists together under the table. He was relieved when Crabtree came over.

“You fly tomorrow,” Crabtree told them. “Orders from Wing. In fact we all fly tomorrow.” The duke stood and embraced him. “I say, old chap,” Crabtree said. “Not in front of the children.”

“Big killings tomorrow,” Nikolai said happily. “Big Hun massacre.”

“Well . . . That’s as maybe.” Crabtree was uncomfortable: boasting and bragging wasn’t done in the R.F.C. “We’ve got a new boy. He’s from Australia. Maddegan, meet our Russian bigwigs.”

They shook hands. Crabtree drifted away.

“Magellan,” Duke Nikolai said. He turned to Count Andrei. “Discovered Pacific Ocean. Here is relative! We drink toast.”

“It’s Maddegan,” the Australian said. “But most people call me Dingbat, because that’s the way I box.”

“Dingbat.” Nikolai liked the sound. He turned it into a toast. “Dingbat!”

“Sorry, but I never drink ...” Maddegan began. Count Andrei pressed a tiny glass into his hand. Its contents were clear as water. “Well, I reckon one little sip won’t harm,” he said.

Nearby, Charles Dash and Harry Simms found a table and ordered a bottle of wine. “Pepriac’s a rotten dump, isn’t it?” Simms said. “I haven’t seen a girl in weeks. And just look at this mob.”

Dash poured the wine. “On the subject of girls, I need some advice,” he said, “but only if you promise to keep it secret.”

“You’re speaking to the tomb, old man.”

“Thing is ... I seem to have struck it rich with a rather ... um ... generous girl.” Simms’ eyes opened wide. “Or girls,” Dash said.

“You mean you can’t remember how many? You must have been well ginned that night.”

“No gin. And it was more than one night. The circumstances were somewhat ... strange.”

McWatters arrived with a glass and helped himself to wine.

“Go away,” Dash said. “This is a personal matter.”

“Women keep raping him,” Simms explained.

“Shocking business,” McWatters said. “Eat lots of anchovies, that’s what I do. Anchovies put starch in your dicky.”

“Anyway, where’s the problem?” Simms said. “Popsies falling over themselves to oblige, doesn’t sound like a problem. More like a solution.”

“I’m not going to discuss it,” Dash muttered.

“You’ve got the pox, is that it?” McWatters asked.

“Don’t be disgusting.”

“Doc Dando is your man. Sorted out my athlete’s foot in no time.” He signalled for more wine.

“It’s not the pox. I just wonder if I’ve overdone it, that’s all.”

“Ah ha!” Simms said. “Now I understand. It’s a question of quantity, not quality.”

“At the time, it was a question of sheer bloody survival,” Dash said. “I mean to say, is there a limit?”

“A chap can pump himself dry, I suppose,” McWatters said. “It’s just spinal fluid, after all. You can’t have much of a reserve tank in your spine, can you?”

“I don’t want to rupture myself.”

“My father has a stallion on stud,” Simms said. “Won the Cesarewitch. Earns his corn twice a day, seven days a week. Fifty guineas a poke.”

Dash said curtly: “I wasn’t in a position to ask for payment.”

“Maybe all you’re suffering from is cramp,” McWatters said. “Try anchovies. Very good for cramp.” He saw the Russians and their bottles and moved to their table.

“It’s supposed to be perfectly natural,” Dash said, “so why did it give me such a headache?”

Maddegan, sitting between the Russians, was explaining that his family was teetotal. “After working all day in a brewery the last thing you want is beer. I never touched the hard stuff because I was always in training.” He took another sip. “Hot, isn’t it?” This was his third glass. The first two had gone down easily.

McWatters slid into a chair. “You’re a lucky chap, Dingbat. This stuff is like Holy Water in Russia. Turns your blood to fire. You’ll soar like an eagle tomorrow.”

Nikolai gave everyone half an inch of vodka.

“I suppose the pepper makes it so hot,” Maddegan said.

“Dingbat is the heavyweight boxing champion of all Australia,” McWatters told them.

“Hey, steady on. I won a few fights, but —”

“A toast,” Nikolai announced. “Victory to Tsar and champion Dingbat!” Maddegan saw the others knock their vodka back, and he did the same. He sat quietly until his eyes stopped watering. The amazing thing was McWatters was right: the stuff did turn his blood to fire. With enough of it inside him, he could easily be heavyweight champion of anywhere.

“Confusion to the Tsar’s enemies!” McWatters declared. “Let battle commence! The Hun is doomed.”

“And we’re here to doom him,” Maddegan said.

It seemed like an obvious toast, but Nikolai failed to pick up his glass.

“Hun is not real enemy,” he said. Hunched shoulders made him look even smaller. He was staring into the smoky, noisy room as if it were a battlefield. “Real enemy is Socialists.”

“Absolutely correct,” McWatters said. “D’you know, I can see one of the bastards from here. That ginger-haired chap over there. Notorious Socialist. See him, Dingbat?” Maddegan stood and stared. “Hates Australians too,” McWatters said. “Dingbat, why don’t you go and knock him into the middle of next week?” He gave Maddegan a shove, just enough to get him going.

Maddegan vanished into the crowd. Quite soon, there was uproar at the other end of the room as a table crashed and glasses shattered. “Damned Etonians,” Simms said. “You can’t take them anywhere.”

“I’m still not sure what to do next,” Dash said.

“Reinforce success,” Simms said. “That’s the army’s motto, isn’t it?”

Maddegan found people side-stepping out of his way. Or maybe he was side-stepping out of their way, it was hard to tell, because sometimes he saw two of everybody. But a path always opened up and he found the Russians’ table and dropped into his chair far more heavily than he intended. “Blocked his knock off,” he said. They drank to that.

“I doomed the bastard,” Maddegan said. “Doomed him.”

“Medal for Dingbat,” Nikolai told Andrei.

“I say,” McWatters said. “I’ll be damned if there isn’t another bloody great Socialist!” He pointed at a sapper captain. “That bald fellow.”

“Watch me doom the bastard,” Maddegan said.

“Please,” Andrei said to McWatters. “Is this wise?” But he was too late. Maddegan was already up and weaving his way towards the sapper. “The duke should leave now,” Andrei said. “We must not risk a diplomatic incident.”

“Sacré bleu,” McWatters said. “Your English got better very fast, didn’t it?” Shouts of rage, and the sound of breaking furniture, reached them.

Simms and Dash went over to the Russians’ table. “What’s all the racket about?” Simms asked.

“Diplomatic incident,” McWatters said.

Maddegan came back, jumping from table to table, leaving a trail of curses and spilled drinks. He was dirty and his face was bleeding and he was gasping for breath. “Doomed the bastard,” he said. “Doomed him!”

“I had nothing to do with this,” McWatters said. He was speaking to several officers who had come barging through the crowd. They had been in a fight and were very ready for another. “Just arrived,” McWatters told them. “Just leaving.”

“Fucking Flying fucking Corps!” roared a young gunner. Both his lips were split and, in his fury, he spat blood. “I say we chuck the fuckers out of the window! See how they fly!” That got a harsh cheer. Dash felt his guts shrivel as if trying to hide inside him. These lunatics were going to break his neck. It was a twenty-foot drop. He wasn’t going to die fighting the Hun. He was going to die on a filthy stretch of French cobblestones. Dead at nineteen, and now he’d never know her name. And then all the lights went out. The blackness was blinding. He held up his arms to guard his face and ran for his life, bouncing off men, cracking his shins on stools, ignoring the pain.

* * *

“We shall be like an umbrella,” Cleve-Cutler said. He wanted his breakfast. His voice had an edge like a rusty knife. The duke stood erect, his head tilted back so that he could look under the steep peak of his cap. His calf-length boots made a liquid gleam, and his buttons shone like gold. Maybe they are gold, the C.O. thought. Maybe his blood is blue. Maybe his nerves are steel and his balls are brass and his brains are pure cauliflower. “I suppose you have umbrellas where you come from,” he said.

Duke Nikolai and Count Andrei spoke briefly in Russian. Nikolai cleared his throat but Cleve-Cutler got in first: “Not in Imperial Russian Air Force,” he said.

Nikolai frowned until he was looking through slits. He seemed confused, as if the C.O. had suddenly barked like a dog.

Andrei said, “His Highness is a little low this morning.”

“Not in Royal Flying Corps, chum. Nobody in this Corps is allowed to be low. He wasn’t low last night, was he? High as a kite, so I’m told. And now His Highness is going to be high again. As soon as you’ve discovered how to fly these buses, tell me. Big offensive patrol today. You’ll be at ten thousand. The rest of the squadron will be at twelve and fifteen thousand. Like an umbrella. Because the sky is going to be raining Huns over there.”

They were standing at the edge of the airfield. The sky was all bare blue, made lovely by a sun that promised warmth and wellbeing to all. It lied. Early spring was full of such lies. The wind would bring cloud and veils of rain and sudden, black squalls.

“Why ten thousand?” Nikolai asked.

“High enough to be above the worst Archie, low enough for you to find the enemy. Find some nice fat slow two-seaters doing reconnaissance. Good targets. Easy meat.”

“Albatros is better.”

“Not for you. Murdering bastards are Albatroses. You go and knock down some rabbits first and —”

“Albatros is better.”

“A kill is a kill. Learn your trade. Now – breakfast.”

Already the fitters were testing the engines, the riggers were checking the tension of the control cables, the armourers were cleaning the guns, oiling the interrupter gear, fingering the belted ammunition in search of an irregular round that might jam the breech and leave the pilot defenceless.

The Pups were not in the best condition. Most had spent the winter in the open, rocking and shuddering in the wind and the wet. They were made of wood and canvas, stressed by wires. Sometimes the weeks and months of rain and fog and snow made small but significant warps in the structure. A one-inch distortion in a wing was enough to alter the airflow and spoil the performance: lift was lost, speed was lost, perhaps – in a fight – everything was lost. Dope never made canvas totally waterproof. Moisture might gather inside the aeroplane. In time, it secretly rotted corners of the fabric. How could anyone tell, except by stripping off the canvas? There was another method of discovery, and that was the violent manoeuvre of combat. Sometimes a Pup fell out of battle with ragged flags flailing from its wings. Perhaps the canvas was unstitched by enemy bullets, perhaps by French mildew. There was rarely a chance to know.

Cleve-Cutler was eating bacon when he heard a dull drum-roll of thunder. He stopped chewing. The thunder exhausted itself. “Nasty frog weather,” Crabtree said.

“Come with me,” the C.O. said to Crabtree.

Cloud was building up on the western horizon.

“Doesn’t smell like thunder,” Cleve-Cutler said.

Gerrish joined them. “Probably an ammo dump went up. I remember hearing one that was fifty miles away.”

But there was more thunder, dotted with the gloomy thud of individual explosions. It came from the east. This was an artillery barrage. “Damn,” Crabtree said. “They’re at it again.” He sounded like a tired schoolmaster at the end of a long term.

“Us or them?” Cleve-Cutler wondered.

The adjutant had appeared and was lighting his pipe. “Not us,” he said. “No build-up. No reserves.”

“Can’t be a Hun offensive,” Gerrish said. “No-man’s-land is still a bog.”

“That leaves the French,” Crabtree said. “They’re probably shelling the Portuguese.” The others ignored him. “Not an easy target,” he said, “Small and elusive.”

The C.O. telephoned Wing H.Q. “It’s the Boche,” Colonel Bliss told him. “God knows what they’re up to. Maybe it’s a decoy, maybe it’s a Teutonic blunder. Intelligence were taken completely by surprise. How are your Russians getting on?”

“No complaints, sir.” Almost true, he thought.

“Good. One thing about this barrage, there should be lots of trade for you upstairs. Huns directing guns and so on. You’ll be spoiled for choice.”

By mid morning, every pilot had flight-tested his Pup and the mechanics were making final adjustments. The Russians were an exception. They taxied their Nieuports up and down the field, then got out and reread the manufacturer’s manual. Finally, Spud Ogilvy went over to them.

“What is mitraillette?” Nikolai asked.

“Machine gun.”

Nikolai nodded. “Naturellement,” he said. He made it sound like a test of Ogilvy’s knowledge. He tossed the manual to Andrei and walked away.

“What’s his problem?” Ogilvy said.

“Pepper vodka. Afterwards he is depressed.”

They looked at Nikolai, who was kicking a wheel of his Nieuport. “He’s not stupid,” Andrei said. “But when you grow up knowing that everyone will always do exactly what you say, there is no incentive to think.”

“What about you? Can’t you get your machine off the ground?”

“He must fly first. For me to fly before the duke would be bad manners.”

“I don’t suppose we could forget manners and just concentrate on the war?”

“Not in Imperial Russian Air Force,” Andrei said lightly.

Cleve-Cutler briefed the flight commanders. He would lead the squadron a mile or two inside enemy territory and prowl up and down until the Russians found something slow and stupid to knock down. If any Hun scouts tried to interfere, then it was all hands to the pumps. Above all, the Russians must get home intact.

“That’s assuming they can fly,” Ogilvy said. “The duke’s got a royal hangover.”

“Everyone flies. Which reminds me: what the hell happened to the new boy? Maddegan? He looks as if he fell downstairs.”

“He fell downstairs, sir,” Crabtree said. “The lights went out at Rosie’s and he fell downstairs.”

Ogilvy said, “Didn’t he go slightly berserk, first?”

“Not berserk,” Crabtree said. “Amok, perhaps. He was running amok, so the lights went out. I did it. I went outside and smashed the generator.”

“No more parties,” Cleve-Cutler ordered. “Rosie’s is now out of bounds. For God’s sake try and fight one war at a time. Can Maddegan fly?”

“He flies like he fights,” Gerrish said. “He’s all over the place.”

“Make sure he gets the worst Pup. Right, we’ll take an early lunch.”

As they walked to the mess, a Nieuport flew low overhead, roaring lustily. The other soon followed. “Progress,” Cleve-Cutler said. “You’ll have to pay for that generator, you know.”

“I don’t care,” Crabtree said placidly.

“Is there anything you do care about?”

The crevices in Crabtree’s face deepened as he made himself think. “Does Wiener schnitzel count? I used to be passionately fond of a good schnitzel.” He spoke without passion. “But we can’t get it now, can we?”

“If it’s any consolation, neither can they. Or so the newspapers say.”

“Dear me,” Crabtree said. “Everybody’s fighting for it and nobody’s got it. Someone’s made an awful jorrocks of this war.”

They were halfway through their soup when a waiter told Ogilvy that a sergeant-fitter wanted to see him. It was about the Russian gentlemen. “Crashed,” Gerrish guessed.

But Ogilvy came back with a different report. “They’ve gone. They refuelled the Nieuports and told the sergeant they were going to get an Albatros. Then ... cheerio.”

The soup plates were cleared. Curried sausages and rice were served. The flight commanders waited for Cleve-Cutler to speak. He said nothing. He ate unhurriedly and enjoyed the illicit pleasure of allowing time to slip by when he might have been hurrying the squadron into the air. He thought: Sod ’em. Let ’em go. They’re so keen on getting killed, I can’t stop them. But the correct course of action was to abandon lunch and lead a search ... Search where? Nobody knows where the silly sods have gone. But inaction was a dereliction of duty. Too late. Never find ’em now. If it was too late, that was caused by delay ... Sod it, he thought. Let them play silly buggers, I’m having my lunch. And so more time slipped by; until steamed treacle duff was served and by then it really was far, far too late.

* * *

Plans were changed. The squadron would still fly, but now it would carry out a Deep Offensive Patrol.

There was a sense of muffled regret among the pilots as they ambled over to the flights. So much time had passed since the last man was lost in action – two weeks? three? – that nobody was sure who it had been. Crabtree had replaced Tim Lynch, yes, but when did Cooper and Radley catch a packet? The discussion was half-hearted. Anyway, Nikolai and Andrei were a special case. They had chosen to fly into oblivion. Eccentric in life and dotty in death. Ogilvy summed it up when he said, “They’ve gone looking for trouble in a sky lousy with Huns. They can’t shoot straight, they can’t fly crooked, and they’re actually trying to find a bright, shiny Albatros. Or two. Or ten.”

A-Flight taxied to the far end of the field and ruddered around to face into the wind. Cleve-Cutler was leading; Gerrish would fly beside him. The C.O. raised his arm and glanced left and right. The other five Pups were waiting, trembling in the prop-wash, smoke pumping from their exhaust stubs. B- and C-Flights were bumping and swaying around the perimeter. He felt enormous pride in his command. Women were pretty, sex was fireworks, but to be leading a squadron of scouts into battle – that was bliss. Two black shapes wandered into his vision. He looked up. A pair of Nieuports drifted ahead of him, losing height, reaching for the grass, bouncing and then running safely. “Fuck,” said Cleve-Cutler.

The Pups could not wait: the engines would soon overheat. This was turning into a rotten day. He unclipped the Very pistol and fired a red flare, straight up. It was the wash-out signal. Within a minute, all eighteen Pups were taxiing back to where they had come from.

Duke Nikolai had his helmet off and he was brushing his hair. “Waste of time,” he said. “No Huns.”

“You disobeyed orders.” Anger made Cleve-Cutler hot. “You took off without permission.” Nikolai shrugged. “No Huns,” he said. “Waste of time.” Oil fumes had coated his face, leaving white circles where the goggles had been. “Could that be,” Cleve-Cutler said, “because you failed to cross the Lines?”

Nikolai looked at him as if he had tried to borrow money. He picked up his helmet and said: “What is lunch?”

“Bugger lunch.”

Count Andrei was approaching. “He knows,” Nikolai said, and headed for the mess.

“The guns have stopped,” Andrei said. The last Pup engine had been switched off and the silence was total.

“Bugger the guns. You took off without permission. Where did you go?”

“We flew east. Crossed the Lines, a little Archie, not much. No Hun balloons. No Hun aeroplanes. We flew on, ten miles, fifteen. Still no Huns. Some English types, FEs I think, they waved, we waved. But still no Huns. So we went down low and looked around. Nothing. Empty. No Huns in the sky, no Huns on the ground.”

“Impossible. They’re hiding.”

“The trenches are empty, major.”

“But that’s ridiculous.” Cleve-Cutler saw his squadron all around him, fuelled and armed and ready to fight. Five minutes earlier he had been about to lead it in combat; he still had a trace of the metallic taste of adventure in his mouth; and now these Russian jokers strolled home and said there was no enemy to fight ... “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Empty trenches? No Huns anywhere?” The bottom had dropped out of his world.

The flight commanders were standing nearby, waiting for fresh orders.

“Didn’t you see anything at all?” Ogilvy asked Andrei. “Cars, horses, trains, tents, fires?”

“Burning buildings we saw. But nothing that lived.”

“For fifteen miles?” Cleve-Cutler said. “That’s absurd.”

“Jerry’s done a bunk,” Crabtree said. “He’s a treacherous customer. A slithy tove.”

“Shut up!” Cleve-Cutler said. “If you can’t talk sense, don’t talk tosh.” That left everyone silent. “Oh, sod it,” he said. “I’d better go and speak to Wing. If anyone tries to take off,” he told Gerrish, “shoot him. Shoot him somewhere painful.” He strode away.

Bliss and all the senior officers had been summoned to a meeting at Brigade. Eventually a middle-aged lieutenant came to the phone. “To be honest sir, there’s a bit of a panic here,” he said. Cleve-Cutler banged the receiver on its rest. As usual, loud noises made the rats squeak. “At least you vermin are loyal,” he said.

* * *

One Pup refused to start. Another threw a cylinder while it was taxiing. The C.O. took a sixteen-strong squadron across the Front at six thousand feet: well within range of light Archie and heavy machine guns. He skirted a cloudbank, ready to duck into its cover. Nothing fired. A few shells burst in the fields behind the German lines: probably British batteries still searching for enemy guns. Far below, two RE8s were trying to help. He pushed up his goggles and used his binoculars to search the ground. The image jumped and blurred with every bounce and twitch of the Pup, but he got one good look at a long stretch of German trench and it was empty.

They flew east for five or six miles, climbing steadily and always looking up, past the towering hills of cloud, at the high spaces where packs of Albatros and Pfalz and Fokker liked to lurk. A flight of SE5s went by, returning home; that was all.

Cleve-Cutler took the squadron up to fifteen thousand feet, half a mile above the clouds. It was a glorious afternoon and they owned it. For the next fifteen minutes, his sixteen Pups sat high in the sky, their chocolate-brown skins gleaming in the sunlight. And still nobody came up to argue.

When they were at least fifteen miles beyond the enemy Lines, he put the flights into line astern and led them in a shallow dive, picking out the canyons and tunnels through the clouds. He flattened out at two thousand feet and waved B- and C-Flights away to left and right. In this wide formation they cruised home. Nobody fired a shot at them. Nothing down there moved, nothing lived. Crabtree was right: Jerry had done a bunk. “Bastards,” Cleve-Cutler said.