Earthquake Strength 6:

Persons walk unsteadily. Small bells ring.

The sky above Gazeran had been washed clean by the rainstorms of winter and blown dry by the gales of spring, and now Cleve-Cutler thought he had never seen a more delicate blue. Of course he knew this was nonsense. He had often flown above the weather, and he knew the sky was always blue, come rain or shine or thick grey fog. But a C.O.’s job left precious little time to enjoy beauty, it was mostly a matter of kicking junior officers up the arse before Wing H.Q. discovered their mistakes, and so when he found himself standing at the window of the anteroom he chose to look at the serenity of the sky rather than at the oily chimney of smoke that was boiling up and spoiling it all.

“Who’s in camp over there?” he asked.

“Australian infantry,” Plug Gerrish said. “I expect they saw it coming and got out of the way.”

“I was on the phone at the time. Lousy line, bloody idiot at Brigade bawling and shouting, I never heard the klaxon.”

A waiter brought two whisky-sodas.

“Heard the bang, though,” Cleve Cutler said. “Come on, Plug, speak up.”

“Well, it’s either Maddegan or the new boy, Stamp. They went up to have a practice scrap. One got in a spin. Quite a slow spin. Don’t suppose he thought it was slow, poor devil.”

“Don’t suppose he thought anything. Too giddy for that.”

The smoke was thinning. Not much petrol in a Pup. This one probably had about ten gallons in its tank when it hit, enough for a short, hot fire. The rescuers would be there by now. The squadron had a well-drilled rescue team. No point in rushing over and getting in their way.

“It wasn’t Dingbat, because here he comes,” Gerrish said. “The original kangaroo.” They watched the Pup make its approach and bounce four times before it ran. “He’s getting better.”

Cleve-Cutler finished his whisky-soda. “Keep them flying, Plug. Nobody broods. I’m off to write the bloody letter.”

The orderly room at Gazeran field was in a gloomy barn that was suffering from age and war and rats. For nearly three years the place had been swept daily by the troops of whichever squadron was stationed there, but it still radiated the warm, peppery smell of horse dung. On the day he moved in, Captain Brazier had ordered that Jeyes Fluid be liberally sprinkled about the place. The disinfectant overlaid the ancient aroma, but could not defeat it. Soon the smell of horse dung reappeared like a peasant army which has fled to the hills only to creep back and reclaim its homeland. Next day the adjutant had talked of stronger measures: bleach, creosote, ammonia; even chloride of lime, used in the trenches against the stench of rotting corpses. “You are fighting history,” Lacey had warned him.

“History and flies, sergeant.”

It was true: squadrons of heavy French flies cruised around the barn, pilgrims at a shrine. Brazier thrashed the air with his copy of King’s Regulations. A dozen fell dead.

“Now you are fighting history and natural history,” Lacey said. “But I may have the answer.” He got on the phone to a Royal Navy storekeeper in Boulogne and swapped a lambskin flying jacket, slightly bullet-holed, for six big tins of pungent black pipe-tobacco. Inhaled, its smoke made the adjutant’s eyes water. Exhaled, it sent the flies racing to the nearest window.

Half an hour after the crash, Cleve-Cutler went into the adjutant’s office. Brazier was with a couple of officers. The air was bruised blue with tobacco smoke.

“Look here, Uncle ... I’ve knocked something together, but ...” The C.O. looked chirpy, but he sounded annoyed. The officers moved away. “I mean, it’s all well and good to tell his folks he made his mark on the squadron, but what did he actually do?”

“Stamp was quite keen on getting a cricket team going here, sir. You could say he never let the side down.”

Cleve-Cutler grunted. “Didn’t exactly cover himself with glory, either.” He folded the paper and used a corner to clean his fingernails. “Covered himself with broken Pup, more like. What d’you call that, Uncle? Go on, give me an epitaph.”

The adjutant blew smoke at a solitary, inquisitive fly. It whirled and tumbled to the ground. “Sorry, sir,” he said, comfortably. “No can do.”

The fly lay on its back and buzzed.

“See that?” Cleve-Cutler said. “Made the same mistake as young Stamp. Stalled and spun, stalled and spun. Silly boy.” He trod on the fly, and immediately wished he hadn’t. “Spinning is such a plague,” he said. “It’s worse than Archie. You can dodge Archie, but a bad spin ...” He shook his head.

“There’s an answer to it,” one of the officers said.

Cleve-Cutler turned and saw an angular, black-haired pilot in a uniform that should have been pressed a week ago. His face had a grubby quality. His eyes looked old, but that was not unusual among pilots: even the best goggles could not protect eyes from the bitter gale that hammered at an open cockpit. What was unusual was his mouth. It was a wide mouth in a thin face and it curled in a way that might mean something or nothing. Either way, the C.O. disliked it.

“Captain Woolley, sir,” the adjutant said. “And you remember Lieutenant Paxton, of course.”

“Good Christ, Paxton,” the C.O. said. “What a dreadful moustache.”

“Thank you, sir.” A year ago, Paxton would have burned with shame. Not now. A year ago, when he had left Sherborne School and got his wings and joined this squadron, he had been stiff and priggish, and the other officers had made his apprenticeship very sticky indeed. During the battle of the Somme he had grown up very fast. He survived a bad crash and was sent home to instruct, and now he was back with good old Hornet. The C.O. could say what he liked. Paxton was fireproof.

“Mr Woolley,” Cleve-Cutler said. “A machine in a bad spin is a coffin. The answer is not to let the machine get into the spin to start with. That’s what we teach on this squadron.”

“A pilot can get out of a bad spin if he knows how,” Woolley said. “Sir.” He wasn’t arguing.

“Captain Woolley has been instructing, sir,” the adjutant said.

“Ah! Instructing, has he? That explains why we get replacement pilots who never last long enough to pay their mess bills! What d’you teach them? Hopscotch?”

“They get their wings too soon,” Woolley said. “That’s not my fault.”

“They get their funerals too damn soon. And I have to write these bloody letters! So don’t come bragging to me about your brilliant methods, captain. We shovel the results into coffins every week.” Cleve-Cutler hadn’t finished. He didn’t like Woolley’s unreadable face or his easy stance or his grubby uniform. “Chaps like you make the Hun very happy,” he said. “Mr God-Almighty-Richthofen depends on chaps like you to send him the bunnies he knocks down before breakfast.”

“Richthofen depends on his skills, sir. He’s a professional.”

“He’s a bloody butcher.”

“Butchery is an honest trade.”

Cleve-Cutler gave up in disgust. He turned to the adjutant. “This officer is a tradesman who has been sent, in error, to a squadron of gentlemen. Make him duty officer until further notice. Since he regards himself as no better than the municipal rat-catcher, he can get rid of the rats that plague this camp.” He left. The door banged, and its shock shivered the remnants of tobacco smoke hanging in the air.

“The major’s a bit touchy,” Brazier said. “We’ve had a few losses lately.”

“That’s all right, Uncle. I never wanted to come here, anyway,” Woolley said. “I bet there’s no draught Guinness in the mess.”

Brazier gave him a duty officer armband and a clipboard. “The funeral’s tomorrow morning. The burial party know the drill. I trained them myself.”

“See? This is a top-notch squadron,” Paxton told Woolley. “Keen as mustard.”

They left. Brazier strolled into the orderly room. “You fancy yourself as a scribbler,” he said to Lacey. “The C.O. needs something to spice up his next-of-kin letters. Knock out a few patriotic lines.”

Lacey was slightly nettled. “Certainly, sir. Do you want sentimental rhymes, or deathless prose? I should warn you that the latter may take a lifetime.”

Brazier nodded. “Start now,” he urged.

* * *

Only a handful of Bristol Fighters had been sent to France. Hornet Squadron was to get six. The day before they were ferried in, General Trenchard sent for Cleve-Cutler. A single Bristol Fighter, he told him, was worth two of any other type. The squadron had three weeks to learn how to use it. And the enemy must know nothing of its existence. “You,” Trenchard said, “are entrusted. With a weapon. That could well turn the tide. Of battle.”

Rashly, Cleve-Cutler said, “The battle of Arras, by the look of things, sir.”

Trenchard gazed down at him from his great, gaunt height.

“That’s pure speculation, of course,” Cleve-Cutler murmured.

“Impure,” Trenchard growled.

Next day, six Bristol Fighters circled Gazeran and the first sight of them was a disappointment. “It’s an elephant,” Spud Ogilvy said. He handed his binoculars to Crash Crabtree. “What a monster! Must weigh a ton.”

“Perhaps it’s a Bristol Bomber. Or a clerical error.”

Nobody wanted to hear that. The R.F.C. had bomber squadrons, brave chaps who flew deep into enemy territory, bombed from beneath the clouds, and got harried all the way home. No thanks.

The Bristol Fighters landed neatly and in quick succession. Cleve-Cutler and his pilots ambled towards the aircraft, hands in pockets, out of step, exercising the privilege of airmen to be unmilitary.

“We shall need bigger hangars,” the C.O. said. He walked around the nearest machine.

Plug Gerrish paced out the wingspan. “Forty feet,” he said. “Half as wide again as a Pup. Nose to tail, I’d say a good six feet longer.”

McWatters approached the C.O. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, sir,” he said, “but the bottom wing seems to have come away from the fuselage.”

“I’d noticed.”

“You can see daylight between them, sir. The bottom wing’s actually hanging from the top wing.”

“So it appears.”

“Sloppy workmanship, sir.”

“Try not to be a greater idiot than nature created, McWatters.”

“Yes, sir. They seem to have forgotten to give the pilot a Vickers, sir.”

Cleve-Cutler nodded. It was true: where the Pup had a machine gun bolted on top of its nose, this had nothing – just a hand-held Lewis in the rear cockpit. He was looking at a hulking aeroplane with a vast spread of wings, a disturbingly experimental design and no weapon for the pilot. It was not the thrilling new fighter he had expected to see. He remembered other models that had disappointed: the DH2 Gunbus, soon known as the Spinning Incinerator; the BE12, which refused to dive with the engine full on, and if the engine was throttled back the interrupter gear failed and the pilot often shot his propeller off; the RE8, underpowered and a bitch to land because two fat exhaust pipes stuck up in front of the pilot ... Then he saw a familiar figure in a flying suit: Colonel Bliss.

“Gather your chaps, Hugh,” Bliss said. “I bring them tidings of great joy and bloody slaughter.”

While the pilots assembled, Bliss climbed into the pilot’s cockpit and stood on the seat.

“This is the F2A, popularly known as the Bristol Fighter,” he announced. “No other aeroplane, in any air force, can fly as fast, and climb as fast, and fly as high, and stay up as long, and carry as many guns, as this machine. No Albatros can do it. No Fokker can do it. No Pfalz, no LVG, no Halberstadt. This machine, gentlemen, is the last word in fighters. And it is yours.”

“Guns, colonel?” Cleve-Cutler said. “No sign of a Vickers.”

“Absolutely none. That’s because the gun is tucked away inside, on top of the engine, which keeps it warm. A frozen gun is therefore a thing of the past. If you care to look above the propeller hub you will see a discreet hole in the radiator. From this orifice will emerge a string of bullets.” They surged to look. “Greatly to the shock and chagrin of the foe,” Bliss said; and thought: No, no. That’s too much. Keep it simple

“Sir, some of us were wondering,” Ogilvy said. “The wings —”

“Ah yes, the wings. Now, Captain Frank Barnwell designed this bus. Barnwell’s an R.F.C. man. He knows what you want when you go on patrol. Above all, you must see the enemy! If you can’t see him, you can’t kill him. But the wings obstruct your view. They’re a damned nuisance. So Barnwell did something so simple that it’s brilliant. He moved the top wing down. Down to the pilot’s eye-level. So now you’ve got perfect vision forward, sideways and upwards, because you can look over the wing! If you lower the top wing, you’ve got to lower the bottom one. And that, Captain Ogilvy, is why the lower wing is slung six or nine inches below the fuselage. Or, to put it another way, Barnwell left the wings where they were, but he put the fuselage midway between them. Very accessible. Makes dusting so much easier, don’t you know.”

“Big aeroplane, sir,” Gerrish said. “Big engine?”

“Rolls-Royce Falcon. One hundred and ninety horsepower. Treat it nicely and she’ll stay up for three hours. Maybe more.” Bliss allowed the rumble of comment to die down. “Now, Barnwell remembers the bloody awful layout of other two-seaters. The BE2c, for instance. More wires than a birdcage. Every time the observer fired his Lewis, bang went a wire.” He pointed at Heeley. “You, sir. Jump up and try this one on for size.”

Heeley climbed into the gunner’s cockpit. Bliss slid down into the pilot’s seat. They were back-to-back, their shoulders only inches apart. “Can you hear me, gunner?”

“Perfectly, sir!”

“Give that gun a spin. See what you can see.”

The Lewis was mounted on a Scarff ring, which was a hoop that fitted the circular cockpit. Heeley rotated it enthusiastically through a full circle, and then back the other way. “I can see everything, sir!” he cried.

“Of course you can, my dear chap.” Bliss climbed onto his seat. “Notice how the fuselage tapers downwards towards the tail,” he said. “Observe how much of the rudder is placed below the level of the tailplane. All this gives the gunner a wonderful field of fire. He can hit virtually everything except his own pilot. And we’re working on a new design to let him do that ...” They laughed generously. “No further questions? Good. There will be a silver collection at the door, and meanwhile I’m looking forward very much to a large drink, major.”

A tender carried them to the C.O.’s office. Bliss took off his flying suit while Cleve-Cutler poured the whisky.

They toasted each other in silence, and drank in silence.

“What’s wrong with it, Colonel?” Cleve-Cutler asked.

“That’s for you to find out.”

“So it’s not perfect.” He got no answer. “But if it out-flies and out-climbs and out-shoots —”

“I never said that.” Bliss took his whisky to the fire. “I said no other aeroplane combines all the abilities you’ve got in this one fighter. The latest Albatros is slightly faster, but it has no rear gunner. The Fokker Triplane climbs faster, but it lacks endurance. The Halberstadt can stay up for ever, but the Bristol Fighter climbs faster. And so on and so on. Nobody else combines what we combine. That’s what I said.”

“With respect, sir, a three-hour endurance is no damn use if you can’t catch the Hun.”

“Well, every aeroplane is a compromise. If you want this one to go faster, jettison the wheels and you’ll get an extra ten miles an hour. Probably kill yourself when you land, but ...” Bliss kicked the coals and made sparks fly. “That’s part of the compromise, isn’t it?”

His bland equanimity began to annoy Cleve-Cutler. “Sir: you just told my chaps they’ve got the best fighter in the world. How can I —”

“No.” Bliss used his little finger to clear a stray lash from his eye. “No, I never said that. What I said was the F2A is the last word in fighters, and so it is. Tomorrow, there will be a new last word. Different. Maybe better, maybe worse; we shall have to wait and see.”

“With respect, sir —”

“Oh, bugger respect, Hugh. Half the battle up there is confidence. Men fight better when they believe they can win. You know that. Well, the F2A is a damn good bus, so they stand a damn good chance, provided they use the thing properly. Here.”

He gave the C.O. a thick envelope, heavily sealed.

“Read it carefully,” Bliss said. “Apply it faithfully. I dined with Frank Barnwell in Bristol last night. Salmon fresh from the Severn, new potatoes, mashed turnip; delicious. His fighter is built to a special design, and it works best when it’s flown in a special way.” He tapped the envelope. “Train your squadron until that way is second nature. Come the battle, they’ll do great slaughter.”

“I see.”

“And now I’m off. Incidentally, how are your Russians?”

“One’s suicidal, sir, and the other isn’t.”

“Yes. I think I saw the play. Chekhov, wasn’t it? Not many jokes.”

* * *

Cleve-Cutler announced that he himself would be first to fly this thundering brute. If it killed anyone, it should kill the C.O. The crews applauded.

One ferry pilot had stayed at Gazeran to help the squadron convert to the F2A. Cleve-Cutler got into the rear cockpit and looked over the man’s shoulder. He was pleased to see that starting the engine was simple: a mechanic swung the prop while the pilot wound the magneto and with no reluctance at all the Falcon fired and uttered a huge, deep-throated roar. Cleve-Cutler watched the pre-take-off checks as the pilot pointed to them. Run up the revs and check oil pressure, water temperature, both magnetos. Set the tail adjustment. Test the controls. The rest was routine. They turned into wind, the throttle was eased open, the fighter bustled forward. Cleve-Cutler gripped the cockpit rim and braced himself against the torrent of air; he wanted to see what revs it took to get the tail up. Too late: the tail was already up. Now he wanted to know their take-off speed. Too late: the wheels had already unstuck. He looked down: the ground was falling away. Take-off had used less than two hundred yards. The thing was as big as a bomber and it soared like a Pup.

When it was his turn to fly it, he felt that this was the first real aeroplane he had ever known. Everything was beautifully balanced; the F2A actually felt graceful. The surge of power when he nudged the throttle was like nothing he’d ever got from a buzzing rotary. At seven thousand feet he was so happy that he felt anxious. He wondered: suppose I saw a couple of Huns down there? He eased the stick forward and the nose fell like a diver off the high board. Suddenly he remembered the sheer weight of this machine. The way the air-speed indicator was hustling around its dial was startling, and exciting, and then alarming. He got both hands on the stick and hauled, and the big elevators bit on the slipstream and sent the fighter curving into a pull-out that made the blood retreat from his eyeballs.

After that he behaved himself. The Bristol Fighter, with a little help from its pilot, returned to earth, stalled nicely in a three-point position at forty-something miles an hour, and ran to rest in no distance at all.

“Colonel Bliss was right,” he told the crews. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.” His conscience could live with those words.

* * *

“Teamwork kills,” Cleve-Cutler said. “That is our new motto.”

He had studied the tactical orders delivered by Bliss, and selected his crews. Six Bristol Fighters needed twelve men. For pilots, he chose his flight commanders plus Snow, McWatters and Simms. As gunners he chose Munday, Dash, Heeley, Maddegan and the two Russians. Since the fall of the Tsar, London seemed to have lost interest in them. Cleve-Cutler let them keep their Nieuports but he took away their extra servant. Duke Nikolai did not complain.

Cleve-Cutler assembled the crews. “This is a new kind of fighter,” he said. “It’s been tested in mock combat in England, and it scored best as a killing machine when it was flown in close formation. That’s because, if you give the pilot freedom to manoeuvre, he can give his gunner the best shot at the enemy. Apply those tactics to a whole formation, and the gunners can provide crossfire, so they can attack the enemy from several quarters at once. Of course the pilot still has the Vickers. If he can get in a burst too, that’s a bonus. But what makes the F2A so lethal is teamwork. The pilot concentrates on flying the bus, because he knows his gunner is protecting him. And his gunner knows he’ll be perfectly positioned to hammer the Hun. Two experts are better than one. Teamwork kills.”

For the next five days they practised formation flying. Every morning, weather permitting, the six fighters flew westward, away from the risk that any stray German reconnaissance machine might see them, to a disused landing ground at Braye. The C.O. came with them, in a Pup. They flew box formations, arrowheads, echelons to left or right, single file, double file, diamond, line abreast. They learned hand signals to change from one formation to the next. They got to know and like the Bristol Fighter, which was too much of a mouthful. They called it the Biff.

On the sixth day, Cleve-Cutler introduced simulated fighting. The flight commander fired a flare to signal an attack, and they altered formation so as to be broadside to the imaginary oncoming machines. The method worked well. When a colour arched across the sky, all six fighters swung into their new positions as if worked by wires. Six Scarff rings rotated and six Lewis guns ranged on the supposed Huns.

Cleve-Cutler was impressed. He watched through binoculars and wished he could see six beady lines of tracer pulsing into one cocky Boche. When the flight landed, he mentioned this to Plug Gerrish. “I keep hoping some lost Halberstadt will wander by,” he said. “Give you something to blow to bits.”

“We saw a French Spad yesterday.”

“Certainly not.”

“The bastards shoot at us.” But Plug knew it was a lost cause. “Balloons,” he suggested. “Not observation balloons. Small things. Five or six feet across would do. You send them up, we knock ’em down.”

Amazingly, the Royal Flying Corps had a stock of balloons, aerial, disposable, size medium. “Six-foot diameter,” the quartermaster told Cleve-Cutler on the telephone. “How many d’you want?”

“Can I have fifty?”

“You can have five thousand. They’ve been cluttering up my stores for the last two years. I suppose you’ll want gas cylinders too?”

The balloons were a great success. They zoomed up to four thousand feet, by which time they had been picked up by whatever wind was going and sent bounding and spinning and still climbing. The gunnery was not a great success. The first six balloons sailed through a spray of bullets. Each time Gerrish, leading the flight, had to cut short the attack and change formation because a fresh balloon was racing towards them from a different angle. By the time the seventh balloon came blowing along, most gunners were out of ammunition.

They landed at Braye to re-arm.

“I think you may have slightly wounded a small white cloud,” Cleve-Cutler said, “for which, since it was French, we shall have to pay compensation.”

“The damn balloons don’t fly straight,” Crash Crabtree said. “They bobble about like lunatics.”

“It’s hard to gauge distance when the target’s spherical,” Spud Ogilvy said. “I think we’re far too far away from it.”

“Then get closer,” Cleve-Cutler said, trying to be thrustful and sounding petulant. He wondered why. Perhaps he was jealous. Perhaps he was getting old, losing his grip. “Get very close. If you can’t shoot it, then bite it to death.”

Sandwiches and coffee, while the armourers worked.

McWatters sat on an oil drum and threw small stones at the sparrows hunting for crumbs. Duke Nikolai joined him. “I made secret army,” he said quietly. “Bring back Tsar. You join my air force.”

The other men were walking back to the aircraft. A bird came zigzagging at high speed, a foot above the grass, stunted around a deckchair, landed and raced away, simultaneously it seemed, with a bit of bread in its beak. “Clever little devil,” McWatters said. “Makes our bus look like a rather tired slug. How much will you pay me?”

“I have million dollars.”

McWatters picked up his helmet and goggles. “Why dollars? Why not sovereigns?”

“Is secret army. Secret dollars.”

“All right, I’ll join your secret air force and fight in secret for the Tsar and all his inbred family. Now that I’m part of the secret, you can tell me. Where did you get the money?”

“Yankee government.”

“No, no. The Yanks don’t like royalty. They even revolted against George the Third, a perfectly decent king, slightly mad when there was an R in the month, but not a cruel and tyrannical brute like your chap. America won’t support the Tsar. Americans don’t like Tsars.”

“Don’t like Bolsheviks also,” Nikolai said. “Bolsheviks give Yankees big jitters.”

Crabtree was shouting at them to hurry. “A much-maligned man, the Tsar,” McWatters said. “We should not be too hasty in passing judgement on him.”

The second gun-practice was more successful. They destroyed five balloons out of twelve. But they missed seven. “If the Kaiser ever decides to attack us with toy balloons, we’re done for,” Cleve-Cutler said to the sergeant armourer.

“It’s a different skill, sir, firing to the beam. Your gunners up there are used to firing forward, in the Pup. Not the same thing at all, sir.”

Cleve-Cutler telephoned Wing. Next day six gunnery instructors arrived at Braye. After that, the score improved.

* * *

A high-pressure system drifted in from the Atlantic and sat over central Europe as if it had nothing better to do than spoil an elaborate and expensive war by dumping fog on it.

The officers strolled to breakfast. The air tasted both smoky and clammy. A hurricane lamp hung outside the mess, but its glow was muffled and the smell of grilled bacon was a better guide. This was an excellent fog. It might well last all day.

“I shall celebrate with a fried egg,” Munday told a mess servant. “No, dammit, let joy be unconfined. Two fried eggs.”

“Give him some sausages too,” the medical officer said. “Fry him some bread. Devil a kidney for him, hell’s teeth, put some black pudding on the poor fellow’s plate, throw in some bubble-and-squeak! What are you being so stingy for?”

“No, no.” Munday waved the waiter away. “Just the eggs. Perhaps a slice of toast.” A newcomer called Dufee watched with interest. “This fog could be gone by ten,” Munday said to him. “It pays to be careful.”

“Munday has a gut like a raging compost heap,” Spud Ogilvy explained. “At five thousand feet his fried breakfast turns to gas and blows both his boots off.”

“Well!” McWatters declared. “Did you see this?” He was reading an old copy of The Times.

“Knew a chap in hospital,” Crash Crabtree said. “Ate nothing but fresh tomatoes for six months.”

“It says here the Duke of Beaufort has suffered a nasty accident,” McWatters announced. “Look.” He showed the headline to Duke Nikolai. “Very worrying.”

“Doesn’t worry me,” Snow said.

“You’re just a crude Canadian,” Simms remarked from behind the Daily Mail. “You don’t appreciate the implications.”

“Yeah? So implicate me.”

Munday’s eggs arrived. “I shall regret this,” he said.

“Think how the eggs feel,” Dash said.

McWatters shook The Times, loudly. “While hunting with the Beaufort Hounds, the duke had the misfortune to fall from his horse. His Grace was a good deal shaken and badly bruised, but luckily no bones broken.”

“Next time you blighters feel like complaining,” Spud Ogilvy said, “thank your lucky stars you don’t live in the Cotswolds. Can’t go for a walk without a fat duke falling on you.”

“Russia’s worse,” Crabtree said. “The Tsar fell in Russia. Made a hell of a dent.”

“Dando ...” Simms, deep in his newspaper, had heard nothing. “What’s the first thing you ask your patients?”

“Money. Can the patient pay the bill?”

“Wrong. The bowels. First thing the doctor always asks about is the bowels. Says so here. Are the bowels in good order? If the liver is right you will always be cheery and well. Don’t wait to be bilious, take Carter’s Little Liver Pills.”

“Please. Not in the mess,” Crabtree said.

“My liver is all right,” Dando said, “and I’m buggered if I’ll be cheery for anyone.”

“Can we please change the damned subject?” Ogilvy said.

Silence, apart from the crunch of toast and the rustle of Simms’s newspaper as he turned the pages. “How about this?” he said. “Here’s a picture of a chap with a moustache who reckons unwise living weakens the kidneys. He says Doan’s Backache Kidney Pills —”

“Out! Out! Out!” Ogilvy roared.

Simms retreated to the anteroom. Ogilvy’s temper had been getting worse lately, and he had been known to throw things: bread rolls, plates, chairs. It was probably his liver, Simms decided. Or his kidneys. Simms wasn’t sure of the difference between them, but he knew they got worse with age, and Ogilvy must be twenty-three at least.

Plug Gerrish strode into the mess, his eyebrows glistening with fog. “No flying,” he said. “The C.O. wants the Biffs stripped down and cleaned-up. Kippers,” he told a waiter. “Three. You lot look down in the mouth.”

“Duke of Beaufort fell off his horse,” Snow said. “We’re in a state of shock.”

* * *

Duke Nikolai faced Cleve-Cutler in his office and announced that it was necessary to have Count Andrei shot. The C.O. thought about that, while noticing that most of Nikolai was rigid with anger while parts were trembling with distress. “Not in the Royal Flying Corps,” he said.

“I have been hit by count. Hit with Bible.”

“Not in the Royal Flying Corps.”

“Is insult to Tsar. Is act of ...” He checked his pocket dictionary. “Act of treachery.”

“Not in the Royal Flying Corps.”

“Is impossible. Not live in same hut. I must have different hut.” Tears were dribbling over his handsome cheekbones. Cleve-Cutler glanced out of the window and counted to five.

“Not in the Royal Flying Corps,” he said comfortably.

* * *

Captain Brazier liked to walk around the aerodrome after breakfast. Corps H.Q. had sent units of heavy machine guns to protect airfields near the Front, and Brazier liked to keep the crews on their toes. He examined the weapons, inspected the haircuts and shaves, moved on to the next gun-pit.

He had found a man wearing slovenly puttees, and he was telling his sergeant of an attack at Neuve Chapelle in 1915 during which a soldier had tripped over his own loose puttees and accidentally shot the company commander dead; when Sergeant Lacey came looking for him.

They walked back to the orderly room.

“A Captain Lightfoot is on his way here, sir, from the assistant provost-marshal’s office,” Lacey said.

“Damn. Still ... He’s only a captain. Can’t be anything serious.” But the adjutant was thoughtful. The A.P.M. investigated the army’s crimes, and Brazier was experienced enough to know that there were always crimes, even in the best of units. What was this Lightfoot up to? Why drive forty miles through thick fog? “Did he send us a signal?” the adjutant asked.

“No. I have a friend in the A.P.M.’s department. A mere sergeant like myself. We share a passion for the cello sonatas of Saint-Saëns, although we differ on the piano concerti.”

“Don’t we all. I take it he’s done us a small favour.”

“An understatement, sir. Saint-Saëns’s contribution has been enormous.”

“Get a grip of yourself, Lacey. What’s Lightfoot up to?”

They discussed possible crimes and criminals. Brazier went to the mess and called together Maddegan, McWatters, Crabtree and Dash.

“Go to Arras,” he said. “Get a haircut. Have lunch. Get another haircut. Don’t come back till dark. The A.P.M. is on his way.”

“Look here,” McWatters said. “If it’s about some drunken old frog who got knocked down, I wasn’t even driving, and I’ve got witnesses.”

“You never said that,” Brazier told him, “and I never heard it.”

“Why me? I haven’t done anything wrong,” Dash said; but he remembered the nights in the nunnery at Beauquesne, and his ears went red.

“I haven’t done anything either,” Crabtree said, “so the A.P.M. can accuse me of anything he likes, can’t he? That’s how the system works.”

“It’s called carte blanche,” the adjutant said. “The French police have been doing it for years.”

* * *

Ralph Lightfoot had the body of a warrior and the eyes of a mole. He was brave, and he wanted to fight for his country, but even the British Army – which since 1916 had been taking boys who were only eighteen and a half years old and five feet tall—even the British Army drew the line at a man who could not tell a general from a gatepost if his glasses fell off. Lightfoot had a decent law degree and a bucketload of patriotism, so he got a commission and a place in the A.P.M.’s department. Without the pebble glasses he looked every inch a fighting man, but of course without the pebble glasses he might walk into the nearest wall and break his nose.

Sergeant Lacey showed Lightfoot into the adjutant’s office, and then stayed to take shorthand notes.

“Lightfoot. Lightfoot?” Brazier immediately went onto the attack. “Not the M. N. T. Lightfoot who played rugby for the Harlequins in ’13?”

“Alas, no.”

“Well, take a pew.” Brazier remained standing. “Now, I expect you’ve come about the duff ammo.”

“No, again.”

“It’s damn serious. Defective rounds jam the Vickers. Looks like sabotage. Don’t you investigate sabotage?”

“No,” Lightfoot said, sadly. “I mean, not me personally.”

“Well, Christ Allbloody Mighty, man,” Brazier said. Exasperation hardened his voice. “Men are dying up there because of this.” But Lightfoot was pulling files out of his briefcase, muttering as he checked the labels, shuffling the sequence until he got it right.

“Second-Lieutenant Maddegan,” he said. “Let’s start with him. Causing an affray, assaulting an officer – several officers – and conduct prejudicial etcetera etcetera.”

Brazier took a monocle from a desk drawer and clamped it to his right eye. He reached across the desk and plucked the file. “Ah, Maddegan. Yes. A most gallant officer. Hopelessly outnumbered. Fought like the devil. His bus was shot to matchwood. Crash-landed. Still unconscious.”

“I see.” Lightfoot kept nodding his head, but he could think of nothing more to ask except the name of the hospital, and he felt sure no good would come of that. “Well, let’s move on to Captain Crabtree. Destruction of civilian property, to wit: one electricity generator.”

Again, Brazier took the file. He shut his left eye and scanned the pages through his monocle. “M.C. and Croix de Guerre,” he said softly, as if to himself. “A most gallant officer. At present in Ireland. Pall-bearer for Tommy Fitzallen. Died of wounds. But of course you knew that?” He raised his eyebrows. The monocle fell. He caught it without looking.

Lightfoot searched for a handkerchief, polished his glasses, put them on again and stared at the adjutant. In a distant hangar an engine was being tested. The pitch of its thunder intensified and, abruptly, died.

“There was a Portuguese deserter at Pepriac,” Lightfoot said. “Lieutenant McWatters and Second-Lieutenant Dash were in contact with him. In close contact. My information is —”

The adjutant’s massive hand reached out and gripped the files. For a moment the papers buckled as Lightfoot refused to let go, but when they started to tear his fingers relaxed and Brazier had won again. “McWatters and Dash, you say.”

“Most gallant officers, no doubt,” Lightfoot said bleakly. “Let me guess. Salmon-fishing on the Spey? Sudden appendicitis?”

Brazier roared with laughter and beat the files against his desk so furiously that the draught ruffled Lightfoot’s hair. “That would be fun, eh, Lacey? What? Splendid fun. No, this is a fighting squadron and those two gallant officers are at war.”

“In the fog.”

“Certainly, in the fog. Don’t ask me where. Military secret.”

Lightfoot closed his briefcase and stood up. “Two hundred pounds of plum jam went missing at Pepriac,” he said. “Now the quartermaster at Brigade reports that you have indented for, and received, exactly twice your proper allocation of cheese.”

Brazier shrugged.

“The first allocation was destroyed by bombing, sir,” Lacey said.

“Bombing,” Lightfoot said. “Have you evidence of this?”

Lacey led the officers into the fog. Somewhere in the area of the cookhouse, he found a small hut. “The bomb fell exactly here, sir.”

“But this structure is undamaged, sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. This hut replaced the hut that was bombed.”

Lightfoot walked around it. “The ground is not even scarred. There is no sign of a crater.”

“It was a small bomb, sir. Enough to start a fire which, although soon extinguished, ruined the cheese.”

Lightfoot opened the door, and struck a match. The hut was full of potatoes. “This is not a cheese store,” he said, accusingly.

“Certainly not,” the adjutant said. “We lost our cheese to the Hun once. We’ve made damn sure it won’t happen again.”

Lightfoot declined an invitation to lunch. Brazier excused himself: urgent operational business. Lacey escorted the visitor to his car. When he got back to the orderly room, he found the adjutant studying the A.P.M.’s files. “Bloody idiots,” he growled. “Why do staff officers make life so difficult?”

“Probably for the same reason they make death so easy.”

“Very glib. What do you know about it?”

“I know it’s two sides of the same coin.”

Brazier wasn’t listening. “I know that sort,” he said. “He’ll be back. A pound of cheese is like the holy grail to him.”

* * *

Arras was never big. It had been a medieval town of about fifty thousand Flemish people, famous for making tapestry, until the autumn of 1914 when the German Army settled down in the eastern suburbs. They shelled the place for the next two and a half years. By March 1917, nearly all the high, handsome, gabled houses were gutted and skeletal. The cathedral was a ruin, few shops survived, there wasn’t a civilian to be seen. When the four pilots drove into Arras, the fog was thickened by drifting smoke from fires that lurked deep inside the wrecked buildings.

“This is a bloody silly place to come to,” McWatters grumbled. “We should have gone the other way. Doullens. Amiens. Abbeville.”

“Uncle told us to come here,” Dash said.

“Grow up, laddy. He’s only the bloody adjutant. Just look at this squalor. I need handkerchiefs, and there isn’t a decent haberdashers anywhere.”

“Look, I’ve got a spare snotrag you can borrow,” Maddegan said.

“I’m sure you have, Dingbat. Fortunately, its use in war is banned under the Geneva Convention.”

“Look,” Maddegan said. “Choo-choo.”

They were in a cobbled square that had a narrow-gauge railway track running across it. Trundling by was a train of trucks loaded with rocks and dirt. “Can it be,” Crabtree said, “that the French have found a market for their debris?”

“Souvenirs de la guerre,” Dash said. “Five francs a lump.”

“Hey! I see an Australian,” Maddegan said. He was out of the car and striding towards a group of men, some in slouch hats. Much hand-shaking and back-slapping, and then he was back. “Trust a Digger to find the best grub in town,” he reported. “It’s down a hole.”

The hole was a cellar as big as a ballroom, converted into a restaurant and doing a brisk business. A little old Frenchman, bandy-legged by the weight of years, brought them bread but no menu. “Leave this to me,” McWatters said. “Garçon, s’il vous plait . . . Pour commencer ...”

Dash had never seen such a collection of uniforms from so many countries in one room. It thrilled him to think that all these fine chaps had rallied to the Old Country. Soon they would stand shoulder to shoulder and give the Hun one hell of a hiding. Then he saw a face that made him kick a leg of the table. He half-stood to get a better view. No doubt about it. His loins crawled with excitement. “Excuse me,” he murmured.

It was Chlöe Legge-Barrington, and as he went towards her, the officer at her table got up and walked away. Dash was astonished by his luck. “Hullo!” he said. “Remember me? The chap on the white horse.”

“Charles ...” She tugged at his sleeve. “Sit down. What a relief. I’ve just been bored to death by a man who is going to be the next prime minister but five. You’re looking well.”

“And you’re looking spiffing. Isn’t this the most marvellous luck? Bumping into each other.”

“Not really. Arras is getting ready for the next Big Push, isn’t it? So F.A.N.Y. is here in strength. We go where we’re needed.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that. “Still, it’s a far cry from Sainte Croix.” She nodded. “D’you know,” he said, “those were the happiest days of my life.” He discovered that he was chewing his lower lip, so he stopped doing that. Now he felt like a sack of potatoes. “Definitely the happiest,” he said. “It’s an awful cheek, but d’you think you could put me in touch ...”

She propped her chin on her hand and examined his freckled face. “My dear Charles,” she said, “either you led a very dull life until we met you, or there was something special about Sainte Croix that escaped me.”

“The latter.” Dash felt his ears go red.

“Ah. And you want ...” She was looking him in the eyes. He tried not to blink. “You want to repeat the happiness,” she said. He nodded. “Well, tell me who it was,” she said, “and I’ll tell you where she is.”

Now his cheeks were burning. “It’s not as simple as that.” She raised her eyebrows. “The lights were out. It was pitch black. I couldn’t tell... She didn’t say ... Oh, damn and blast,” he said, weighed down by a wretched pride in his experience, “it wasn’t the time for conversation, was it?” He was close to tears.

“Golly, no,” she whispered. “But —”

“Charles!” McWatters boomed. “Been looking all over for you! Introduce me, or I’ll box your enormous ears.”

“Go to hell.”

“In that case, I’m Captain Ball,” McWatters told her. He kissed her hand. “I hope young Charlie hasn’t been bothering you. I have a car, perhaps I can take you —”

“Here comes my escort now. Where are you based?” She asked Dash.

“Gazeran.”

She smiled, and left. They went back to their table. “Why can’t you mind your own bloody business?” Dash demanded.

“A beauty like that is my business, laddy. What’s her name?”

“Lady Macbeth,” Dash said.

“I’ll find out. A chap like you shouldn’t attempt to fly and fornicate so much. There’s only room for one joystick in the cockpit. Anyway, you’ve had more than your fair share of rumpty-tumpty. A decent chap would spread his good luck among his pals.”

“Listen!” Maddegan said. Somewhere a locomotive hooted. “Choo-choo,” he said.

“Goodness, Dingbat,” Crabtree said. “What a fierce intellectual pace you set, to be sure.”

* * *

The gunnery instructors soon changed Hornet Squadron’s thinking about beam attacks. The whole business turned out to be very complex.

Everyone understood the need to lay off for speed: it was like shooting pheasant, you had to aim ahead of the bird. (And at two hundred yards’ range, an Albatros was a target no bigger than a game bird.) With the Biff, the rear gunner had to lay off for three separate speeds, perhaps four. If his machine was flying at one hundred miles an hour and he fired at right-angles to its course, then its speed would tug the bullets forward of the target. If the target approached at right-angles, it would be drifting sideways in relation to the fighter; so allowance had to be made for that too. Then there was the wind, which – if strong enough – would nudge the stream of bullets one way or the other. Not forgetting bullet-drop. Bullets were heavy and they fell away. At long range it paid to aim high. Unless, of course, the enemy was already diving, in which case it might be better to aim low, all things being equal, which they never were.

One thing the instructors were adamant about: the need for the pilot to fly absolutely straight and level during combat. The gunner couldn’t shoot straight if the machine was bucking and skidding all over the sky. “You do your job,” the instructors told the pilots, “and the gunner can do his. That’s your best chance.”

The formula certainly worked on the balloons. They got blasted so fast that Cleve-Cutler abandoned them and sent up pairs of Pups to carry out mock attacks instead. The Biffs changed formation slickly, and their gunners had a clear view of oncoming targets that seemed generous after the hobbling balloons. Two of their Lewis guns had been replaced by cine-cameras. The films showed that the Pups would have been caught in a lethal crossfire. “We doomed you,” Maddegan said, as casually as if it had been a cricket match. Next time, Cleve-Cutler doubled the number of Pups. The padre set up a cinema screen in the anteroom and the whole squadron watched the results. “We double-doomed you,” Maddegan said. “No hard feelings.”

* * *

March had ended by the time Lieutenant Paxton and Captain Woolley arrived at Gazeran. Apart from the C.O., the doctor and the padre, only Plug Gerrish and Spud Ogilvy remembered Paxton. He was mildly surprised to find them still alive. They looked a lot older, but then he knew that he himself looked older: probably the moustache did that. Gerrish had always been a gloomy specimen but now Ogilvy seemed worried too. His head had developed a funny little jerk, like a chicken. Not always, but often enough to make Paxton wonder if Dando was giving Spud some of his magic sleeping pills. The squadron would need a new flight commander if Ogilvy got rested. Paxton felt ready for promotion. What fun it would be to have a flight commander’s streamers flying from one’s rudder ...

Meanwhile, the squadron was occupied with its Biffs.

“Make yourselves useful,” Gerrish told Paxton and Woolley. “The mess piano needs tuning. Forget the Biffs, they’re all fully booked.”

“You might get a flip in a Pup,” Ogilvy said. “We do local patrols. Discourages the Boche.”

“Frankly, I don’t know why they sent you,” Gerrish said.

“We’ll go back, if you like,” Woolley said. “The band at the Grosvenor Hotel wants me.”

“He plays the saxophone,” Paxton explained.

“No gentleman plays the saxophone,” Ogilvy said woodenly.

“This piano-tuning,” Woolley said. “I shall need a claw hammer and a crate of Guinness.”

“A word of warning,” Ogilvy said. “The major has no sense of humour.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Paxton said. “He made Woolley the station rat-catcher.”

“Then my advice is to start catching rats.”

The war had come as a pleasant surprise to the rats of the Western Front. The lice enjoyed it too. Millions of men arrived and brought food, warmth and shelter: all that the typical rat or louse asks. At the very front of the Front, conditions were more primitive but no less attractive. The first-line trenches were, of necessity, also latrines. Meals were a perpetual picnic. What the army called “ablutions” were scarce or non-existent. On the whole, the lice came off worse than the rats. Billions grew fat on soldiers at the Front, but the same billions were soon slaughtered in de-lousing stations at the rear. True, some rats got blown to bits by artillery, just as some men did, but the survivors had the benefit of a landscape littered with remains. Behind the Lines there were rich pickings, too. Maconochie tinned stew was more than many British troops could stomach; the rats made sure none was wasted. But Maconochie was dull stuff compared with the diet at R.F.C. camps. Fliers ate well. Occasionally some of them threw up their half-digested meal in the hour before take-off, but that was no criticism of the cooking. At Gazeran airfield the food was good and plentiful, so the rats were sleek and plentiful.

* * *

Low cloud had put an end to flying for the day. Dufee, the new boy, had trodden on the last ping-pong ball and was in disgrace. The mess had run out of gramophone needles. Nobody wanted to play poker. When Woolley came in and asked if anyone felt like joining a rat hunt, half the squadron followed him. “You’ll need your Service revolver and a club,” he said. “Wear your flying boots.”

They assembled at the cookhouse. Woolley had borrowed six dogs from nearby farms. He spread men and dogs until they ringed the area. He loaded a Very pistol, reached under the building, tucked the nozzle into the biggest rat hole he could see and fired a red signal flare into the colony. After a while, dirty red smoke leaked back. Nothing else happened.

“Cock-up,” Snow said. “They don’t know the Colours of the Day. Try yellow.”

Woolley reloaded and fired a yellow. At once the dogs were yelping and chasing, pilots were lashing out with clubs, rats were racing and squealing, and a tattered volley of gunfire rattled the windows.

Woolley went around with a sack. “Ten,” he said. “One’s fat enough to be a major-general. Onwards.”

The shots awoke Cleve-Cutler. For a long moment he felt kidnapped and abandoned and lost. He was in his office, but the dream that had gripped him was far more real than the dark walls. He had been at school, and failing miserably to find the room where he must sit an examination and knowing all the time that he was in the wrong building, perhaps in the wrong school, and he hadn’t done nearly enough work, and then he was being plonked down in the wrong chair and discovering that this was the wrong examination, and desperately seeking help only to find he was alone at fifteen thousand feet, which was utterly the wrong height and there was no way down and the joystick came away in his hands, which meant death. Terror woke him. He was sitting at his desk and his head was resting on the blotter. When he straightened up a piece of paper was stuck to his forehead. It was the draft of his letter to Lieutenant Stamp’s next-of-kin. The badge of failure.

He went in search of the padre and found him sorting out cricket equipment in a hut he used as a chapel.

“Bloody next-of-kin,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Bigger pest than the Boche.”

“Yes? An original viewpoint.”

“I’ve got the answer, padre. Shoot the blighters! Shoot ’em all.”

“Well, yes, I can see that shooting might be a solution of sorts. It rather depends on the problem.”

“Here’s your problem.” Cleve-Cutler showed him the letter. It was sweat-stained and grubby. “Hate writing these things. Loathe and detest ’em. All lies, anyway.”

“Funny things, lies.” The padre held a cricket ball up to the light. “There’s not a word against lying in the Ten Commandments. Lots of jolly stuff putting the kybosh on adultery and on coveting and on bowing down to graven images, but nothing against telling fibs.” He tossed the ball from hand to hand, making it spin. “Do we really want total honesty? I’ve never known one of these things to be perfectly round. And I’ve yet to meet the bowler who’d want it.”

“Shoot the bastards,” Cleve-Cutler growled. He was wandering around the room, hands in pockets, kicking the wall. “Why should I apologise? Dear sir, I regret to inform... They knew the odds, didn’t they? Bloody next-of-kin. Make me sick.”

“Paul says something interesting in Philippians four, eight,” the padre began, but Cleve-Cutler snatched the ball in mid-air and grabbed a bat and strode to the door and smashed the ball hard and high. It soared and vanished. “Look here, I say, old chap,” the padre complained. “I took five for thirty-three with that ball last season.”

“Well, I’ve just hit it for six. Gone for good. See? That’s what I’m clever at. Sending chaps up there where they never come back. I’m bloody brilliant at losing chaps. Ask Bliss, he keeps score.”

“Five for thirty-three.” The padre peered out, but the cloud was even lower, the light even poorer. “My best before that was four for forty ... Was that absolutely necessary, sir?” he said reproachfully.

“Essential, padre. Waste is my forte. I’ve wasted two perfectly good squadrons already. I’m good at waste.” Another distant spattering of gunshots made him frown. “What’s going on out there?”

“I heard nothing,” the padre said briskly. He was willing to do his pastoral duty, but he refused to be a punchbag for angry self-pity.

“I heard shots,” Cleve-Cutler said.

“Shots, eh? Always possible in wartime, I suppose.”

Cleve-Cutler gripped the cricket bat so hard that his knuckles clicked. He was alone with the padre, nobody had seen him come in, he could say he found the fellow with his head smashed . . . Why not? Why should this man live when all the others were being killed? His fingers ached and he had to relax them.

“Ever been up in a ’plane, padre?”

“No, never.”

“Soon put that right. Every man on my squadron should get a taste, otherwise how can he understand what we do? I’ll take you up in a two-seater. That’ll test your innards. Nearer my God to Thee, eh? Eh?”

He left, feeling triumphant, but in less than a minute he remembered the failed letter to Stamp’s parents, and his triumph turned sour. Worse: his heart began to pound like a drunken drummer. He walked very slowly to the adjutant’s office.

Brazier shut the door and got out the whisky. The C.O. shook his head. “Well, I need a mouthful,” Brazier said. “You look as if you’ve been kicked in the crotch by a bull elephant. Is this a gift? Thank you kindly.” He took the cricket bat and put it in a corner. Cleve-Cutler sat in a chair. His shoulders were hunched and his hands made fists. “I speak from experience,” Brazier said. “I saw a bull elephant kick a man exactly as described.” He took a sip of whisky. “In India, of course. Only a private soldier. That was before it happened. Afterwards, still a soldier but not so much of the private part.” All the time, the adjutant was keeping a covert watch on the C.O. Whatever this crisis was, he was confident he could handle it provided the man didn’t cry. Brazier couldn’t stand tears. It disgusted him that men should weep just when a difficult situation demanded their full attention. You didn’t see a lion or a buffalo break down and cry when the odds were against it. Certainly not. “I was on the elephant’s side,” he said. “No, I tell a lie. I was on the elephant’s back.”

“I just almost killed the padre,” Cleve-Cutler said. “With that thing.”

“Yes?” At least this was better than tears. “Well, I would have used a trench-knife, personally.” He glanced at the bat. No bloodstains, no bits of skin. “Did he annoy you?”

The lower half of the C.O.’s face still had its jaunty grin, but his eyelids had slumped so heavily that he seemed about to fall asleep. “Look, Uncle,” he said. “What if this bloody silly battle doesn’t work? I mean to say ...” But he had nothing more to say.

“Well, we try again, of course.”

“Yes, but we did that already ...” He was stopped by the dull banging of revolver fire. “What the deuce is going on out there?”

“Lacey!” the adjutant roared. The sergeant opened the door. “Be so good,” Brazier said softly, “as to send someone to investigate that shooting. I’m infinitely obliged to you.” Lacey closed the door.

“What if it doesn’t work, Uncle?” Cleve-Cutler was fumbling with his smudged and grubby letter. “I can’t write another twenty letters like this. I can’t even write this one. They’ll all go west, Uncle. I know, because I’ve taken two squadrons through two battles and where are they now? Gone west. It’s easy for them. They just sod off and die. But who gets left with all the bloody silly letters to write?”

Brazier suddenly snapped his fingers. “Damnation! Why didn’t I remember? My sergeant’s been writing something ...” He hurried out. The C.O. sat and, occasionally, blinked. Brazier came back with Lacey. “It’s poetry,” he warned.

Cleve-Cutler felt his heartbeat lurch, and then settle down to a steady thud. He drank a little of the adjutant’s whisky. “All right,” he said. “Do your worst.”

“For the next-of-kin, sir.” Lacey handed him a sheet of paper. On it was typed:

Now God be thanked
From this day to the ending of the world!
Blow, bugle, blow! Was there a man dismayed?
Who rushed to glory, or the grave?
Land of our birth, we pledge to thee:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!

The C.O. read it twice. “What d’you think, Uncle?”

“It’s honest, sir. Doesn’t dodge the sad event. But it’s plucky, too. Not some damn dirge. Quite chipper, in fact.”

“This last line,” Cleve-Cutler said to Lacey. “It’s in Latin.”

“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. A widely held opinion, sir.”

The C.O. grunted, and stared at the paper. “This bit in the middle . . . You can’t tell me dismayed rhymes with grave.” Another broken volley of gunshot made him clench his teeth. “Speak up.”

“What about ‘parade’?” Brazier suggested. ‘Was there a man dismayed? Who rushed to glory, or the parade!’ Eh?”

The C.O. wrinkled his nose. “Reminds me of Cheltenham. Clarence Parade, Cheltenham. Aunt of mine lived there. Terrible old trout. Last thing I’d want to do is rush to that parade.”

“Suppose you made it ‘Who rushed to glory or the last parade’ ...” Lacey said.

They tested it silently, their eyes half-shut. “That’s damn clever,” the C.O. said. “‘Last parade’ could mean ...”

“Exactly,” the adjutant said. “Gone, but still here. Damn clever. Well done, sir.”

Cleve-Cutler was suddenly alert and alive again. “Can I use it on what’s-his-name’s parents, d’you think?”

“Certainly,” Brazier said. “Use it on everyone.”

“Patent elastic design,” Lacey said. “One size fits all.”

There was a knock on the door. A corporal came in. “That noise, sir,” he said. “It’s Captain Woolley, huntin’ rats with a Very pistol.”

Cleve-Cutler felt his heart begin another sprint. “Maniac!” he said.

The rat-warrens had been cleared under the cookhouse, and under the stores and under the billets. Now the hunt moved on, to the doctor’s quarters.

The afternoon was fading fast. Woolley used a flashlight to find the biggest rat hole. “Stand by!” he called. He reached in, fired a signal flare into the hole and hurried around the hut. A ring of men and dogs waited. He was just in time to see a streak of burning yellow burst out of the ground. It ricocheted off someone’s leg and raced into the dusk, a line of fizzing light, head-high. Shouts of astonishment, dogs yapping, the thud of clubs, and something else: the intermittent drone of an aeroplane engine.

Halfway across the camp, the C.O. heard it too, and stopped. “What’s that?” he said. The adjutant listened, and heard only the rattle of the wind. “Not a Pup,” the C.O. said. A truck clattered across the field and spoiled everything. “Lost, probably. Like the fool in a Camel who landed here the other day.” They walked on and got a fine view of the runaway flare making its long horizontal streak. There was a bang of shattered glass. They began to run.

They found McWatters first.

“Christ on crutches!” Cleve-Cutler barked. “What the hell’s going on?”

“We’ve got three sackfuls, sir. Dingbat shot a dog, and Dufee’s not very well, but otherwise —”

“Get Woolley.” But Woolley was already approaching. “You crass clod,” Cleve-Cutler told him. “You feeble fart. You’ve turned my squadron into a fairground!”

“Sir, you ordered —”

“I didn’t order this hooliganism.” Woolley cocked his head and looked at the sky. The pilots stood in a guilty circle, except for Dufee, who was held up by two men. “What’s wrong with him?” the C.O. demanded.

“That last flare knocked him down, sir,” Woolley said.

“You shot one of my pilots.” Cleve-Cutler’s voice was harsh with rage. “Is this your idea of war, captain? Big-game hunting?” He booted a sack and it spilled dead rats. “Small-game hunting?”

“That machine may be trying to land, sir,” Woolley said. “As duty officer I should —”

“As duty officer you’re not fit to clean latrines! Go, before you kill someone!”

Gazeran airfield had an ambulance. The crew saw Woolley jogging towards them and they started the engine. He jumped onto the running-board and they drove along the edge of the airfield until he told them to stop. The motor died.

No sound except faraway birdsong in the holes in the wind.

The cloud was lower, or maybe it just seemed lower in the gloom of dusk. The wind made fools of everyone: it blustered and then fell silent and then rattled in their ears. Woolley walked over to the nearest gun-pit.

“He’s been wandering around up there for ten minutes, sir,” the sergeant said. “Wetting his breeches, I ’spect.”

They listened. A soft growl came and went with the wind. “Ration wagons,” the sergeant said. “Goin’ up to the Lines.”

The growl hardened to a flat drone. “Not wagons,” Woolley said. The wind blustered. He turned and searched the sky downwind, the approach for a machine trying to land. Nothing in sight, only the specks of whirling crows. The sergeant shouted and pointed. Woolley saw the head-on outline of a biplane, its wings razor-thin. It was too low and too fast and it was coming in cross-wind. The ambulance engine started. The rescue truck arrived. Woolley blinked, lost sight of the machine and listened hard for a crash.

Then he saw the thing vault the hedge and skitter as a gust caught it, straighten out and turn towards the flights. The silhouette said Albatros exactly as its guns made their mechanical rattle. Six Pups stood in a row. Incendiary bullets swept along them in a gracious gesture, and in quick order they began to burn. The gun-pits were hard at work, and the air was dense with their hammering and cordite. But their bullets went too high because the enemy was too low, down where the guns dared not fire. And then the Albatros slipped between two hangars and was gone. The second Pup from the right exploded. All the others were burning briskly.

Six Pups in ten seconds, Woolley thought. That’ll cost him a packet. Drinks all round in the mess tonight.

He found the C.O. and the adjutant watching a bucket-chain try to put out the fires.

“Didn’t you see that Hun approach?” Cleve-Cutler asked quietly.

“Yes, sir. It was too dark to identify until —”

“Too dark? He identified us without any trouble. No doubt your firework display helped him. No doubt he saw signal flares blazing and thought that’s a juicy target. Eh?”

The charred Pups hissed and steamed.

“I was wrong about you, Woolley. You’re not fit to be a ratcatcher. You’re fit for one thing: court martial. The adjutant will prepare the papers.” He walked away.

“I was court-martialled once,” Brazier said to Woolley, quietly. “It’s nothing to get upset about.”

“My uncle Sid got hung for murder,” Woolley said. “Told me he never felt a thing.”

Something went bang, and blazing splinters flew. They moved to a safer spot.

“How on earth did you get a commission?” the adjutant asked, curiously.

“It’s not mine. I’m looking after it for a friend.”

“That’s a bloody stupid answer.”

“Well, it was a bloody stupid question,” Woolley said. Brazier snorted. “And if you want to fight over it,” Woolley said, “it’s Very pistols at ten yards. I’m lethal. Ask Dufee.”

* * *

Lieutenant James McWatters could write his name and that was about all. He wasn’t ashamed of his failing; plenty of boys he had known at school either couldn’t or didn’t write. They came from the upper middle class of Edwardian England and they assumed that somebody would always be there to write for them, just as somebody would always be there to clean the boots and lug buckets of coal up the stairs. You didn’t have to be stupid to be semi-literate. All it took was perseverance.

His father was a minor Anglican bishop and his mother was the heiress to a shipbuilding fortune. She had become very active in the women’s suffrage movement, which scuppered any chance of advancement for the bishop. A man who couldn’t control his wife didn’t deserve a bigger diocese. At the age of six, James got packed off to prep school. He knew his father spent all day writing. He was damn sure he wasn’t going to be like his father. “Bugger writing,” he told the master who gave him a slate. He had learned the word from stable lads, and enjoyed its impact. He threw the slate through a window.

The master had just come down from Oxford. He did not have the same steel as young McWatters. They made a silent truce: no writing, no slate-chucking. James had cracked the code. If you were bloody-minded enough, you never had to do what they wanted you to do.

He changed schools quite often. He liked reading. Sometimes the headmaster was more interested in fees than in academic performance, and James did nothing but read and talk. And play footer or cricket. If something must be written, he paid another boy to write it.

It worked until he was sixteen. Then he came to suspect that the rest of the school was treating him as a joke. He was the tallest boy in the school and he couldn’t write: what a hoot! He got nicknamed Invisible Ink. He went to his housemaster and announced that he was leaving. “Good idea,” the man said. “I’ll give you a lift to the station on my motorbike.”

Next day, his father asked him to come into the study. “I’ve been wondering,” he said. “What plans have you made for the rest of your life?”

The question caught James off-guard. “Motorcycling,” he said. It was all he could think of.

“Ah. Forgive my ignorance – how is that likely to increase the sum of human happiness?”

“Well, sir, last year a chap rode from Land’s End to John O’Groats in less than two days.”

“And was there an ethical element to this journey?”

“Um ... He didn’t cheat, if that’s what you mean. He used the pedals on the steep hills, but that’s allowed.”

He bought a motorcycle, found a mechanic, and made a small reputation in local races, scrambles, sprints. Got bored. Bought a car, raced that, got bored. Took flying lessons, got his Royal Aero Club certificate, and might have become bored with flying if Europe had not stumbled into war.

In the autumn of 1916 he was transferred to Hornet Squadron. When he arrived, the doctor examined him for venereal disease. “The old man’s very hot on this,” Dando explained. “He’d had to sack two pilots. You’re clean. Put your bags on.”

McWatters dressed slowly. “Girls, and so on. They’re the very devil, aren’t they?”

“Here’s my professional advice. If you can get a girl, she’s probably got the pox. If you can’t get her, she probably hasn’t. That’s Dando’s First Law of Motion.”

“Thanks. I’ll stick to poker.”

Dando recognised that tone of voice, brave yet brittle. It meant McWatters was a virgin and resented the fact. Dando had heard it before, often. Most pilots had left one all-male environment – school, sometimes university – for another: an R.F.C. camp, where women were never seen and seldom spoken of, never in the mess.

This made Charles Dash’s erotic adventures at the nunnery of Sainte Croix all the more fascinating. Some officers refused to believe him. “He’s got a neck like celery,” Snow said. “He’s got more freckles than my kid sister. He thinks his dick is there to stir his tea with. That’s what they teach you at your famous public schools, isn’t it?”

“If he made it all up,” McWatters said, “why isn’t he boasting about it?”

“Because he knows it’s bullshit,” Maddegan said. “That’s a very, very old Australian word. You can borrow it provided you promise not to get it dirty.”

“Something definitely happened,” McWatters said. “I mean, he went to see Dando. Something must have happened.”

Charles Dash came back to his billet from the officers’ bathhouse and found McWatters lying on Dash’s bed, reading Dash’s mail. “Perhaps you should move in here,” he said, “and I’ll live in your hut and read your letters.”

“The doctor’s wife died, pneumonia. And the daffodils look splendid. Otherwise, nothing special from home. However ...” McWatters waved a letter. “Chlöe Legge-Barrington has come up trumps.”

“Give it here, or I’ll report you to my flight commander.”

“She’s found where Jane Brackenden and Laura da Silva are. It’s nowhere near here. I have a car.”

Dash’s hatred was great, but his lust was greater. “No poaching,” he said, “or I’ll kill you.”

After an hour of taking wrong turnings and backing up muddy lanes, they found a F.A.N.Y. unit in a field of ambulances. McWatters reluctantly stayed in the car while Dash went looking. Laura da Silva was in a tent, unpacking medical supplies. “Hullo,” she said. “Come to help?”

They chatted for a while. Dash had a mouth full of words he couldn’t find a way to use. Finally a thought blundered into his head. “Unusual name, da Silva. Are you Catholic, by any chance?”

“Yes.”

Oh well, that’s that, he thought. But he blundered on: “It’s just that, when I was staying at the nunnery, someone left ... um ... left an earring in my . . . um ... bed.”

“Ah.” She linked her hands behind her head and looked him in the face. Treacherously, it turned red. “Well,” she said, “the priests would give me hell, so it wasn’t me. And no-one in F.A.N.Y. wears earrings, so maybe it was something else she left in your bed.”

“Maybe,” Dash mumbled.

“Poor you,” she said. “Men get no rest, do they?” She kissed him on the forehead. “That’s all you get! Goodbye.”

He went back to the car. McWatters wanted a detailed report. “Go to hell,” Dash said. “I’m sick of this nonsense. I quit.”

“Do you, indeed? Well, I don’t.”

The address given for Jane Brackenden was only twenty minutes away. It turned out to be a primary school, requisitioned by the Medical Corps. In the playground a few walking wounded played walking football. “Be frank,” McWatters urged. “Be blunt. Women like that sort of thing.” But Dash had already slammed the car door.

He met her coming down a corridor. “Charles! Good heavens . . . I was just thinking of you.” Optimism soared like a skylark. She was stunningly beautiful: red hair, delicate features, healthy chest. “Not half as much as I have,” he said. “You were awfully keen on women’s suffrage, weren’t you?”

“Still am.”

“Equality now, that’s what you said ...” The corridor was suddenly busy. She saw the strain in his eyes and took him into a classroom where empty stretchers were stacked head-high. “The thing is,” he said, “somebody at the nunnery really believed in equality between the sexes.” Already his ears were hot. “And that somebody practised it in my bed.” Her eyes widened and he heard her gasp. Fuck fuck fuck, he thought. Wrong again.

“It’s a lovely idea,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’m not nearly brave enough to ... Dear oh dear. And you’ve come all this way.”

“It was dark, you see. Pitch black.” Dash felt that he had been saying this to everyone he knew.

“Such a shame. I wish we could go somewhere and talk, but I’m in charge here. Can’t leave, not for hours.”

McWatters was not discouraged by his failure. “Now it’s better odds,” he said. “Only three to one.”

* * *

The six Pups destroyed by the strafing Albatros were quickly replaced: another squadron was getting Camels and its C.O. cheerfully donated his ageing Pups to Cleve-Cutler. Pilots were not so easily found. Dufee’s leg had been broken by the signal flare. One man was in Amiens having a wisdom tooth pulled. Another had double vision, the result of smacking his head on the gun butt in a heavy landing. Two had ’flu.

Training must go on, and more intensively. The C.O. made himself leader of the Pups that were making mock attacks on the Biffs and he ordered Paxton and Woolley to fly with him.

First, he briefed them. They came to his office and stood, while he sat at his desk and worried.

“I know you of old,” he told Paxton. “Not a bad pilot, although God knows what cock-eyed ballyhoo you’ve picked up in England. As for you,” he told Woolley, “I could be unpleasant, but I won’t. You’re a fart, and I hope to see the back of you soon. Meanwhile, remember this, both of you. The air war has changed while you’ve been away. It’s not man-to-man any more. It’s formation against formation. We fly and fight as a formation. That’s what this training is all about. Clear?”

“Admirably so, sir,” Paxton said.

“Don’t talk like a butler. I don’t want your damned admiration. I want your obedience.”

Six Biffs and six Pups flew to Braye. Whenever the weather allowed, they practised interceptions. Cleve-Cutler made these as difficult as possible. Some threats were real and the Pups pressed home their attacks, charging at the fighters until they were the focus of all six imaginary bulletstreams. Other threats were fake, meant to tug and twist the formation until it was ragged and slow to respond.

Cleve-Cutler failed to fool them. His flight commanders were experienced air-fighters. They could read the sky at a glance; what’s more they could read the C.O.’s mind. Their crews were as welldrilled as Guardsmen. Whenever the Pups made a charge, the Biffs turned as if tied together and crossed their path. If the gunners had actually fired, the Pups would have flown into a cone of bullets and been hacked down. Repeatedly, the cine-films proved this.

* * *

The adjutant handed Count Andrei the leather-bound Bible. “Jolly kind of you,” he said. “Your people in Paris are a bit jumpy, so I’m told.”

“Terrified of being ordered home to Petersburg, I expect. Who’s in charge there now?” Brazier gave him a piece of paper. Andrei read it. “Crumbs,” he said. “Whatever that means.”

He found the duke in the officers’ bathhouse, sitting on a reversed chair, being shaved by Private Bugler. Snow was soaking in a hot tub. Maddegan sat on the edge, playing with the soap, making it squirt between his fingers. He saw the Bible and groaned.

“Is big change in Petersburg,” Andrei announced. “Is time to swear new oath.”

“I don’t swear,” Nikolai said quietly.

“He’ll hit you,” Maddegan said.

“I don’t swear.”

Bugler was slow taking his hands away. The Bible clouted Nikolai’s head and rocked it like a balloon on a stick, and the razor nicked his ear. Flecks of lather drifted and fell. Bugler retreated and hid the razor behind his back. Blood created small red rosettes on the floor.

Andrei hooked a foot around a leg of the chair and tipped Nikolai out. He trod on his stomach. He shoved the Bible into his hands. “You swear allegiance to Prince Lvov, leader of the Duma.”

“I swear,” Nikolai wheezed. He dropped the Bible and got up and scrambled to the door. “Prince Lvov is lousy greedy no-brain piece of pox!” Blood ran off his chin. “Tsar will chop head off!” He left.

“Bugler!” Snow roared. “Find the doctor.” Bugler hurried away, grumbling hard.

“Look, I’m all for loyalty,” Maddegan said, “but must you keep walloping him? That’s the third time.”

“Fourth,” Snow said.

“The Romanovs are finished,” Andrei said. “Now he is the servant. Now I give orders.”

“Seems kind of pointless,” Snow said. “He says no, you thump him, and he says yes. Still, I’m just a crude Canadian, what the hell do I know of your quaint old aristocratic ways.”

* * *

Nothing memorable happened to Adam Gillespie Keith Heeley for seventeen years. Then he spent the summer holidays with his aunt, in Sidmouth. She was only twenty-six and looked twenty-two. On the other hand, he was only seventeen and looked fifteen. She liked dancing with him, teaching him the waltz, and looking into his cool grey eyes. She knew enough about the rest of him. In his bathing costume he made a good shape, and when he came out of the sea, with the costume clinging pointedly, she felt tremors of a lust that made it hard for her to speak. One dull afternoon she seduced him in her bedroom.

What surprised the boy most about his first sexual experience was the violence of it. He had not thought passion could be quite so passionate. When he got his breath back he said, “Crikey.” That made her laugh. He said, “Why me?” He was bewildered by the fact that a grown-up should choose to do such a grown-up thing with him. “I suppose,” she said, “I’ve nothing to be afraid of, with you.” It was a spontaneous, honest answer, but not very flattering.

It explained Adam Heeley to himself. It explained the long-suffering glances that scores of schoolmasters had given him, and the brutal way that hundreds of schoolboys had ignored him. He was nothing special. The sober truth of that summer in Sidmouth was that his aunt craved his body but otherwise he bored her, as he bored most people. He went to an eminent school, wore its uniform, spoke the language of the English upper class, not because he was different but because his parents were rich. He had assumed he was special. Now he felt tricked. A long failure beckoned.

When the war came along, he didn’t take much interest in it. He was only eighteen. War was a job for professional soldiers and hearty patriots, people who liked doing that sort of thing. Late in 1915 he was flicking through the latest Illustrated London News when he saw the face of a boy called Taverner, now a lieutenant in the uniform of the King’s Rifles, with a Military Cross, and dead.

In a spell when he had been very lonely at school, Heeley had heroworshipped Taverner from afar. They had never spoken, but Taverner had grinned at him, once. Oh well, Heeley thought, if Taverner’s gone I might as well go too. The whole page was taken up with awards, most of them posthumous. He shut his eyes and stabbed with a finger. Royal Flying Corps.

Everyone is good at something. The trick is finding it. When Heeley went up in an aeroplane, and looked down on people like insects in a world like Toytown, he felt special. This was why God had put him on Earth: to fly above it.

He did six months as an observer, spotting for guns and photographing enemy trenches; crashed twice, nothing serious; re-trained as a pilot; joined Hornet Squadron and had never been so happy as when he was flying a Pup. After three months of D.O.P.s, he was still alive. It came as a surprise. His confidence grew. Three months ago, he wouldn’t have dared to go up to Captain Woolley and say there was a rumour that he knew how to get out of a bad spin; and if so, would he reveal the secret?

Woolley was outside his hut, sitting on a log. He thought for a long time before he said, “D’you like this war?”

“I like my bit of it. Damn good fun.”

“Well, that’s got to stop, hasn’t it?” Woolley’s voice was hard and square, not contorted to the drawl of the Home Counties. “If it’s fun, it’ll go on for ever. That’s human nature. Right?”

“Look ... if you don’t want to tell me . . .”

“Got twenty-five francs? I’ll tell you, for twenty-five.”

Heeley was amazed. “That’s very ... mercenary.”

“Your life’s not worth twenty-five francs? Well, you know best.”

Heeley gave him the money.

“Stop fooling around with the rudder. You can’t turn out of a bad spin. Centre the rudder. Forget about using the ailerons. Centre the stick. You can’t control the machine unless it’s going forward, so make it go forward. Switch off the engine. Centre everything and push the stick hard forward. The elevators will start to bite. The tail goes up, the nose goes down. Now you’re diving, you’ve got wind over the wings and past the rudder, and you can correct what’s left of the spin.”

“Thank you,” Heeley said.

“And if it doesn’t work, don’t come running to me.”

Heeley went away, feeling as if he had been hustled into buying a pair of rabbits from a poacher, except that he had nothing to show for his money. Was it possible that Woolley had sold him a lot of nonsense? He stopped and tried to remember exactly what the fellow had said, and he was gazing at a cloud when the great bombardment began.

It beat the air like a punishment. Heeley’s documents said he was Church of England, but if he got caught in a storm, and the sky was split by thunder, all the hairs on his neck bristled like a dog’s and briefly he knew no god but fear. Now a hundred thunderstorms roared in the east. Heeley knew the guns were ten miles away, probably more, but still his neck bristled.

Dando and Duke Nikolai came out of the doctor’s hut. Silk thread trailed from the Russian’s ear. “Bloody neighbours,” Dando said. “Can’t a man get a wink of sleep?”

“Battle begins now,” Nikolai said.

“Not yet,” Heeley said. “This is just spring cleaning. The P.B.I. are chucking out their old pots and pans.” He noticed the ear. “What happened to you?”

“I stitched him up,” Dando said.

“Why?” Heeley met the doctor’s glittering glance. “Never mind,” he muttered.

The thunder brought everyone out. Experienced men compared it with other occasions. Spud Ogilvy remembered the bombardment before the Somme as having been louder. Crabtree offered to run a sweepstake concerning the duration of the barrage. “On the Somme, the gunners kept it up for ten days,” he said.

Paxton sniffed. “Didn’t do much good, did it?”

The adjutant cleared his throat so forcefully that he silenced them all. “Valuable lessons were learned at the Somme,” he announced.

As if to endorse his view, the barrage intensified. He cocked his head and enjoyed it. The day was strangely flat and airless, under a drab, blank sky; a forgettable day, only fit for demolition. Brazier said, “The Hun Front Line won’t survive this shelling. I have friends in the infantry, and they tell me we have a little trick up our sleeves.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Try as he might, the Hun won’t shell our troops in Arras. He’ll do his worst, but his guns won’t harm a single British soldier.” He rocked on his heels and looked longingly to the noisy east.

“The Boche machine guns will get them all?” Crabtree suggested.

Brazier took his arm. “A word in your ear,” he said. They strolled away.

“We can shell them,” Paxton said to Woolley, “but they can’t shell us. Is that what Uncle said?”

“It’s not Christian,” McWatters said. “I wouldn’t have joined up if I’d known there was cheating involved. What’s going on, padre?”

“Not for me to say, old chap. Just a simple cleric, me. I leave the tricky stuff to the bishops.”

“My dad was a bishop,” Woolley remarked. “Very hard on the knees, he said.”

“Well, prayer often involves self-denial.”

“That wasn’t prayer. That was rescuing fallen women in Huddersfield. When you’re a bishop in Huddersfield, you can’t turn a corner without tripping over a fallen woman.”

“How distressing. Would anyone like to play ping-pong?”

“Weak ankles,” Woolley said. “That’s what causes their downfall.”

Out of earshot of the group, the adjutant said gruffly, “I’ve nothing against an honest joke, but there’s no place in war for cynicism. For God’s sake, man, think what effect your remarks have on others.”

“My dear chap.” Crabtree plucked a grey hair from the adjutant’s lapel. “I had no idea I caused you such distress. You should have spoken sooner.”

“I did, damn it.”

“The damage is done now, of course.” He found another hair. “You must be brave, Uncle. Can you last out? It’s only for a few more days.” He patted Brazier on the arm and walked away. “Be not dismayed!” he called back.

“Lunatic,” Brazier said.

Crabtree waved a friendly arm. “My pleasure.”