The following night Killion was awakened by the drumming of a loose pane of glass. He found his watch: 5 AM. The window frame vibrated steadily, producing a buzz like a trapped fly. Killion got out of bed and went over and rested his brow on the cold glass. He heard a dull thunder that was not the blood in his ears. He opened the door and listened. From the east came the roar of ten thousand blast furnaces. Killion stood and let the cold air chill him, as a kind of left-handed penance for not being at the Front where all that pounding and pulverizing of flesh and bone and blood with steel and explosive was taking place.
Somebody walked past, and said: “Damn noisy, isn’t it?” It was Dickinson.
Killion asked: “Is this it, d’you think?”
“No, no. They’re just loosening up. The real barrage comes later.”
Killion got dressed and went to the mess. He saw some figures on the roof and climbed a ladder to them. “This is definitely worse than Passchendaele,” Rogers was saying. “I mean, just look at it.” The entire eastern horizon was red. “It’s like the Great Fire of London, 1666.”
“I suppose it is the Hun, and not us,” said Finlayson gloomily.
“We don't have the guns to do a quarter of that damage,” Dickinson said, “and in this weather it would take a week to bring them up. Good God Almighty!” A huge explosion bloomed and reverberated on the skyline. “Somebody holed out in an ammunition dump.”
As if this were a signal, the entire barrage magnified and intensified itself. Now the horizon was brighter, with little curling lights flaring into the glow. The battering clamor seemed to shake the air. “It’s not possible,” Rogers muttered. “No one can live through that.”
“We kept it up for ten days before Passchendaele,” Finlayson said. “I wonder how long they’ll do it for?”
“They don't have ten days to waste,” Dickinson told him. “I’ll give you fifty to one the Jerry infantry is drinking its Schnapps in the front row of the stalls right now.”
Rogers produced a flask that had belonged to Church, and they circulated this while the appalling display went on.
“How far are we from there?” Killion asked.
“About twenty miles. Far enough,” Dickinson said. “Nobody’s advanced twenty miles in this war since the soldiers settled down to do their gardening.”
A figure climbed on to the roof and came toward them. It was Gabriel. “What d’you think of that for hellfire?” Finlayson asked him sourly.
“The Lord shall smite thee with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish,” Gabriel said firmly. “Thy carcass shall be meat unto all the fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth.”
“It beats me why you want to fly with us at all, Gabriel,” Rogers said. “If that’s the way you feel.”
“To me belongeth vengeance and recompense,” Gabriel told him. “Their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”
“Ah,” Rogers said. “Well, I suppose that’s different, then.”
“The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.”
“How disgusting,” Dickinson declared. “I shall go and make them cook me some breakfast.” He climbed down the ladder. “The botch of Egypt, indeed! And the emerods …” His words were lost in the violent pounding from the east.
Rogers and Lambert took off at first light to see what was happening. More than three hours after it began, the German barrage was still going full blast. They heard it through the clatter of their engines, but they could not see its results. Dense fog covered the Line. Whatever war was being fought below them was taking place either at the long range of bombardment or the short range of a brawl. It was curious. Rogers had flown over the Front many times, and he thought of it as two huge armies entrenched against each other, launching and repelling attacks massively and obviously; but now, he supposed, the fog must have dissolved the armies into isolated soldiers, each fighting his own tiny battle, with no way of knowing whether his side was winning or losing.
Well, Rogers thought, it’s the same for both sides. Our chaps can’t see their chaps, but their chaps can’t see ours. And our chaps will be ready for them.
Lambert, nervously watching a couple of single-seaters at height, thought: please God get me home, I don’t want to land down there … His face was twitching; he tried to stop it, and failed; looked for Rogers and couldn’t see him; lost track of position and direction and why he was up there at all. His brain moved with a mocking ponderousness, deliberately not helping. He panicked because he wasn’t keeping a look-out. Found his flask, gulped from it. Nobody fired at him. Rogers was alongside. Slowly his panic faded.
The fog was still thick when they crossed the German Line, but it thinned out on higher ground. Rogers took advantage of the absence of flak to fly low. Everywhere that he saw ground, he saw troops moving up. The gray lines patterned the green-brown earth like odd bits of carpet. He turned north and searched for more openings and found more troops. They hurried forward, ignoring the planes. Other patches revealed supply columns, horse-drawn wagons, ambulance units, strings of gun carriages. Then more troops, more troops. More. Hurrying forward with the absorbed attention of worker ants moving their colony. Hurrying toward the square miles of deafening battering that had been provided to smash open the British Line for their benefit.
After a while Lambert stopped looking. He had seen too many troops already. There was no point in measuring how much was too much.
The sun was shining at two thousand feet, but it did no more than lacquer the fog. Rogers gestured toward home. As they recrossed the submerged inferno, they saw other aircraft, Germans, further down the Line. Presumably the attack was not considered a secret anymore, for nobody made any move to intercept. In any case, there was nothing anyone could do about the men in the trenches until the fog lifted. And precious little after that.
“Like all bad ideas,” Woolley said, “this one is brilliantly simple.”
He sat on the big table in the mess, one bare foot tucked up, and cut his yellow toe-nails with heavy scissors. The pilots stood out of range of the parings.
“You will load your airplanes with TNT,” he said, “fly in line-astern to Corps HQ, and crash on to the roof of the Corps commander’s château, in alphabetical order.”
Nobody laughed. Dickinson lit a cigarette, and they watched the match burn out.
“When you have done that,” Woolley said, “you will fly to Berlin, where you will stand to attention in your cockpits and piss on the Kaiser, thus ending the war.” He sheared laboriously through a horny overhang.
Lambert looked at his watch, and yawned.
“And after that,” Woolley said, “you will come back here and stop the German air force from examining the hole which their artillery has just blown in the British Line, a hole about the size of Lancashire, and that will be the biggest waste of time of all, because the German Army found that hole an hour ago, and is now galloping through it as fast as its little legs will carry it, heading in the direction of …” he snipped the final toe-nail and straightened his leg to study the result “… us.”
Rogers had been looking out of a window. He started, and turned, pretending a well-bred confusion. “Awfully sorry, sir,” he said. “Miles away, I’m afraid. What is it you want done, again?”
Woolley pulled on a sock. “Just get up there and fend them off,” he said. “Stay over the Jerry lines, and keep them busy, that’s all.” He stamped his foot into his flying-boot. “Keep them away from the fighting until the poor bloody infantry gets a chance to stop running.”
“How long do you think that will be, sir?” Callaghan asked.
“About a week.”
They looked at him, but Woolley was serious.
“Well, that seems simple and straightforward enough,” Rogers said.
“You’re simple,” Woolley told him. “The plan is utterly bloody impossible, but if you can’t see that, you’re probably better off.”
“I hope you told the Corps commander it was impossible,” Finlayson said sourly.
Woolley laughed through his nose. “On the contrary, you sickly convalescent, he told me. He doesn’t expect us to succeed, but on the other hand he doesn’t expect the German attack to succeed, either. He has to do something with us, we’re on his ration strength. If you want his exact words, he said ‘Get up there and make bloody nuisances of yourselves until I tell you to come down.’”
“What a way to win a war,” Lambert said in disgust.
“Don’t talk daft. You’re not here to win the stupid war, you’re here to help make sure nobody loses it. You’re not Henry the Fifth on a flying bloody charger, you know. You’re a semi-skilled mechanic, just like the municipal ratcatcher, on piece-work. Keep your mind on your job, or some big gray bastard will bite you in the thumb.” A fitter rapped on the window. “They’re ready. We’ll fly in pairs. Shufflebotham, you come with me.”
Goshawk Squadron flew all that day, and came back from the patrols badly mauled. German aircraft crossed the Line in a constant stream: two-seater observation planes, single-seater scouts, twin-engine bombers, heavily escorted photographic planes. By noon all the squadron’s reserve aircraft were in use, and the mechanics were sucking blood from cut fingers and grazed knuckles as they worked too fast on battered planes which had just creaked home with streaming canvas and smashed spars, or laboring engines, or cracked fuel lines, or crippled controls, or lopsided undercarriages. Half a mile away smoke still rose from Dangerfield’s machine, where he had crash-landed on fire after stopping a burst of tracer in the wing. The fire had spread to the fuselage and reached the cockpit by the time he got the wheels on the ground and jumped out. He flew again within the hour, fat blisters coming up on his right hand and not much left of his eyebrows.
In the late afternoon Dangerfield and Killion were flying together on their fifth patrol when they saw a formation of five Pfalz fighters climbing toward them. Dangerfield had started the day tired; now, after repeated bouts of combat and the shock of his crash-landing, he was weary beyond anything he had ever known. He watched the Pfalz D VIIs coming up out of the east, with all the loathing and resignation of a slum-dweller who sees yet another street-brawl lurching his way.
Two against five. The advantage of height, the disadvantage of numbers, and of fatigue. Dangerfield felt a deep desire to rest his head and just let the enemy go by. He had done enough, it was unfair to ask for more … He slumped and waited for God to save him. Suddenly, definitely, he decided to quit, turn back, go home, leave everything until tomorrow. He straightened up and waved at Killion, pointing hard to westward.
Killion waved back and dived into the attack. Horrified and enraged, Dangerfield watched him go. Killion looked back. Dangerfield swore and thrust into a dive. His disgust mixed with despair as the Germans drove toward him, and the emotions drugged his tired brain. When the enemy formation scattered he took a second too long to pick out an opponent, and one of the Germans slid under his tail. The first burst from his machine gun hammered through Dangerfield’s weary back and smashed his instrument panel.
Killion saw the SE5a topple and fall over, but he was too busy fighting off the circling scouts to see if Dangerfield crashed. A formation of six Camels came to his rescue and the battle broke up, drifting away to other parts of the sky, leaving Killion to cruise home, alone.
The adjutant found Woolley with the armorer, checking ammunition before he allowed his machine-gun drums to be filled. Woolley looked as if he had been fighting a forest fire: his eyes were red, his face was filthy, and one ear had bled down his neck. He sucked at a bottle of Guinness, and went on fingering the rounds.
“Corps wouldn’t tell me the latest position on the phone, sir,” Woodruffe said. “I had to go over and get it in person. They say too many of our telephones have been captured, you never know who you might be talking to at the other end.”
“What have we lost?”
“Well, it’s not as bad as it might have been.” The adjutant settled down and looked through his notes. “They attacked along about sixty miles, from Lens down to La Fère, more or less. They just about leveled our Front Line with that bombardment.”
“I know. I saw it.”
“Yes, of course. Well, they broke through on about a forty-mile stretch. Where they really gained ground is up toward Arras, they made about five miles there, and down around St. Quentin. It looks as if we might have to pull back behind the Crozat Canal and hold St. Simon. That would mean they’ve taken something like ten miles at that point. Of course we’re digging in now—”
“Five miles. Ten miles. How long is it since anyone advanced five miles in one day?”
Woodruffe shifted uncomfortably. “Not since 1914, unless you count—”
“How did they do it?”
“Well … that’s the extraordinary thing, nobody quite knows. The bombardment destroyed our first system, of course, and there seem to have been a lot of gas shells landing amongst our gunners—those that weren’t killed—and they say the Hun did a lot of damage with his trench mortars and those awful minenwerfers. But it was the mist that really let him in. The Jerry troops just sort of walked right through in a lot of places, and the next thing anyone knew we were retreating. It took Corps rather a long time to adjust, I believe. They’re not accustomed to moving five miles in one day. Especially backward.”
Woolley held up a bullet and showed it to the armorer. “Piece of shit?” he said.
“Piece of shit, Mr. Woolley.”
He threw it into a bucket. “Presumably the cruel, implacable, scheming Teuton hordes will do the same tomorrow,” he said.
“Ah, well, now that’s an open question,” the adjutant said. “Corps rather thinks not. Corps feels that with all the losses they must have taken, the Germans will almost certainly be consolidating tomorrow. Evacuating wounded and bringing up supplies and generally tidying up.”
“Corps is an asshole full of farts.”
Woodruffe smiled uncertainly. “Also, sir, you must remember that we’ve brought up all possible reserves to plug the gap.”
“You amaze me,” Woolley said. “You truly do. What happened today? They attacked our Line. It wasn’t a very brilliant Line, but at least it was a Line, with trenches and wire and stuff. They bashed hell out of it so much that it burst wide open, and we had to use all our reserves to hold them. By which time they were miles inside our Front.”
“Yes, but we shall do better tomorrow,” Woodruffe insisted. “I mean, we won’t be taken by surprise tomorrow, shall we?”
“And tomorrow they won’t be attacking strong positions, they’ll be hitting us out in the open. Good Christ, if they can make five miles a day when they have to fight through four systems of trenches and get right inside our Battle Zone, how bloody far d’you think they’ll go when we have nothing to hide behind except cow turds and haystacks?”
“The reserves are fresh,” Woodruffe said. “The reserves will hold them.”
“The Hun has reserves, too. What happens when he makes another hole? What do we plug that with?”
“It’s never happened before,” Woodruffe said stiffly. “I suppose we should have to ask the French for help. Or the Americans. Frankly, sir, I doubt if the occasion will arise.”
“You mean you hope it won’t. It looks to me as if we’ve forgotten how to retreat. I don’t suppose the Germans have forgotten how to advance, and if they do it again tomorrow we shall have to learn something new, won’t we?”
Major Gibbs came in. “Ah, Woolley. Sorry to bother you, but this squadron has assumed unusual significance in the present difficult situation. The French have been accusing us of lack of cooperation lately—military cooperation, that is. Naturally they are plotting to get us to take over the dangerous bits of the Front, and launch all the expensive attacks, and so on. Typical dago trickery. Anyway, they’ve seized on this legal brouhaha as an example of Albion’s perfidy, so to speak. How can they help us if we don’t help them? That sort of thing. I needn’t tell you what a nuisance they can be.”
“Then don’t. The French can go and fuck themselves, for me.”
“Me too. Unfortunately we need their help too much at the moment. Unless we get some French reinforcements soon, we’re going to have nothing left to fight with. Assuming that the Hun keeps attacking, of course. Anyway, Corps commander has promised them immediate action, which being translated means: a couple of your pilots will have to face the music, I’m afraid.”
Woolley finished his Guinness. “Next week,” he said.
Gibbs shook his head. “Now.”
“Tell Corps we’re flying from dawn to dusk. Tell them about the war against the Germans.”
“That’s exactly it, though. The generals are falling over themselves to get French divisions sent up as reserves. We can’t risk any friction. It’s all thoroughly political, but you must see the military sense behind it.”
“But surely we can’t need reinforcements as desperately as all that,” Woodruffe said.
“Oh yes we do. We do indeed.”
“All right, you can court-martial someone,” Woolley said. “Invite the French police along.”
“On what charge?”
“Desertion in the face of the enemy.”
“Good Lord, that’s a bit stiff. The penalty’s death.”
“Serve the bastard right. I never did like him.”
“Who is it?” the adjutant asked.
“Any of ’em.” Woolley looked at them with stony satisfaction.
It was three miles to Jane Ashton’s place. Killion trudged it with a kind of dogged stupidity, too tired to think after the all-day violence. He passed bivouacking troops on their way up, and had to stand in gateways while supply columns clattered by, or lines of ambulances rumbled back. He got lost, he forgot where he was going; he gave up and sat down; he set off again. When at last he got there and knocked on the door with a sticky bottle of claret, a stranger let him in.
“I’m Mary,” she said, as if there were nothing more to be said about that. “You must be Jack. Jane’s in the bath, I’m cooking dinner.” That accounted for everyone.
“I see,” said Killion. “You’re the other girl.” He blinked at the bright lamplight. Jane should have been here, not … whoever this was. Mary? Mary.
“What’s that you have?”
“This? Bottle. Wine,” Killion explained.
Mary took it. “I could have used some half an hour ago, in the sauce. We’ll just have to drink it. Sit down. You look like something the cat brought in.”
Killion sat down and fell asleep. Jane woke him. “Dinner’s ready, Jack,” she said.
“Don’t want any,” he mumbled. “Too … tired …”
“Rubbish,” Mary told him. “If I’ve cooked it you’ll eat it. You can wash your hands in the bathroom. They look as if they need it.” She began dragging chairs up to the table. Jane smiled and helped him up. He washed his face in cold water and came back red-eyed but awake. The table was laid, and a roast chicken lay waiting for him to carve.
Mary organized the plates and kept an eye on his carving. Killion felt her watching, and sawed clumsily at the bird. Hot grease spotted the fresh tablecloth. Eventually he managed to hack off a wing, in two parts. The knife slipped and cut his finger. He sucked it, sniffing, and then started on a leg. Drops of blood fell on to the chicken. “Here, give me that,” Mary said impatiently. “Suck your finger.”
Killion sucked and sipped while Mary sliced the chicken rapidly and efficiently. Jane watched him. “I feel like a walking wounded,” he said.
“I thought you said he was a medical student,” Mary muttered.
“So I was, once,” Killion protested.
She discarded the shattered wing. “You’ll never take my appendix out, I can tell you that.”
“Poor Jack.” Jane kissed him behind the ear. “Have you had an awful day? I hear it’s been bad at the Front.”
“Flying all day. Flying, flying, flying. Never stopped.”
“I don’t know what you men make such a fuss about,” Mary said. “As far as I can see you don’t do anything, you just sit up there. Take some more potatoes.”
“Honestly, I have enough.”
“Rubbish.” She gave him more. “You need to keep your strength up. The war’s going to last a long time yet.”
“Anyway, what do you do?”
“Me? Same as Jane. I work in the forces’ canteen. We seem to spend most of the day rejecting indecent propositions.”
“Here’s to indecency,” Jane said. “The only thing that never dies.”
Mary sniffed, but she drank the toast.
The meal was solid, orthodox and delicious. Killion tucked in. After twenty minutes he was quite awake, and he suddenly noticed Mary’s face. “Good heavens,” he said. “How good-looking you are, Mary. I only just noticed.”
She half-smiled. “What was I before, then?”
“I don’t know. Maternal, maybe.”
“But you didn’t say so.”
“No. Still, we know each other much better now, don’t we?” She began collecting their plates, and Killion saw a wedding ring on her finger. He swung around on Jane. “You’re not saying much, funny face.”
“Perhaps I’m waiting for you to ask me how I am.”
“Ahah. How are you?”
She looked away, played with a spoon, looked back. “Only wonderful,” she said. They laughed, unexpectedly, even Mary. They had spoken their unknown passwords; now they recognized each other. For half an hour their talk was easy and pointless, and then Killion began to wonder whether Mary was going to stay in all night and he became uncomfortable, chatting pleasantly to someone he wanted to get rid of.
When Jane went into the kitchen, Mary cleared her throat and looked at him seriously.
“Jane has told me a lot about you,” she said. “Of course, I’m two or three years older than she is … I have no possible right to interfere, of course; however, I would just like to ask you one thing. Do you plan to marry Jane?”
Killion had never even thought about it. “Of course,” he said.
Mary seemed satisfied. She leaned back.
“Of course I do,” Killion said. The idea attracted him.
“I shall be going on duty in ten minutes, you see,” Mary said.
“Why, of course,” Killion said again. “I mean, why not?”
Jane came in. They both looked at her with satisfaction; Mary sober, Killion a little drunk. She raised an eyebrow. “Have I done something clever?” she asked.
Simultaneously, Mary said “No,” and Killion said “Yes.”
When Mary had left for the canteen, Jane asked: “What was all that yes-no about?”
“Nothing. Everything.”
“Well, tell me then.”
Killion stood up. “Mary wanted to know if I planned to marry you. Of course I said I did.” He sat down.
Jane perched on the arm. “Well, I certainly don’t intend to marry you,” she said.
Killion was shocked. Jane smiled cheerfully, so that he thought she was being charitable, or even contemptuous, and he looked down at his hands. Then he looked back. “But don’t you love me?”
“Yes, I do. Does that mean we have to get married?”
“Uh …”
“I think it’s a good reason for not getting married.”
“Really? But we could fix it up now, if we wanted. I mean … Well, this week, anyway.”
“What good would that do?”
“I’ve no idea. Mary seemed to think—”
“Mary’s different. She can’t help hating me because I’m single and she’s a widow.”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“She hates the fact that I’ve lost nothing and she’s lost everything.”
“Oh. Well. Yes. I see. Well, I suppose we needn’t get married, need we?”
Jane slid on to his lap and kissed him on the mouth. “My lovely Jack … We would make a perfectly rotten married couple.”
“But lovely lovers.”
“Lovely.”
She groped underneath and found something angular in his tunic pocket. “Are you carrying a gun, just like the cowboys?”
“It’s for you.” He dragged out a beautiful, silver-backed hairbrush. “Sorry about the monogram. I won it off a chap at poker.”
“What was his name?” She fingered the lettering J.T.D.
“Dangerfield.”
“It’s beautiful. Won’t he need it?”
“No. He got posted.”
“Poor Dangerfield.”
“Poor me. I nearly got court-martialed tonight.”
“Why? Because you were gambling?”
“No, no. It’s all to do with the CO. He wanted to court-martial me, only I heard them trying to find me so I hid in the latrines and I don’t know what happened in the end. I think they gave up on me and started looking for Finlayson instead. Maybe the old man decided to court-martial old Finlayson instead …”
Jane was not listening; she was unbuttoning his tunic, and then his shirt. “Shall I undress you?” she whispered; and Killion nodded. Away in the east the barrage had begun again, but as they lay in front of the fire it was remote and harmless. Nothing could touch them now.
Next day the German attack repeated itself with meticulous Prussian efficiency. The bombardment chewed the British defenses as savagely; the dawn advance was cloaked in the same white mist of invisibility; within hours the storm troopers had overrun the new Front and the retreat was on again.
Woolley had the squadron in the air very early. They crossed the booming fog-bank, shapeless and lethal like some fungoid growth, and patrolled behind the German lines in flights of two or three.
For an hour and a half no German aircraft came near. The flak was heavy, relentless as hounds chasing a cornered stag up and down high ground. Rogers was flying with Lambert. They droned about, surrounded by the black, dissolving snorts of high explosive. As they climbed so the flak followed them; as they dived so it came down to harry them. They dodged and doubled back between ten and twelve thousand feet, where the gunners were not accurate; but the chance of flying into a burst was always there.
The changes of height and course became automatic after a while. Rogers was thinking about a cricket match in which he had made a good score, reliving the running between the wickets, as he bucketed about between the shell-bursts. He braced himself to clout the ball, and watched it race away, like a round of tracer …
He started, sweating guiltily: he hadn’t been checking the sky. The flak cracked on, bad-temperedly, puffs of charcoal, sharp-edged in the cold sunlight. Two miles below, the mist was thinning, revealing God knew what disasters. Rogers waggled his wings and they turned for home.
Within minutes they met another flight: Richards and Gabriel. The flak tailed off, mercifully, and Dickinson and Finlayson angled across from the north to join them. In this formation half the squadron, with guns unfired, intercepted a solitary German two-seater heading eastward. Almost certainly it had been on camera-reconnaissance, photographing the British reserves being rushed up. Where was its escort? Perhaps the Germans thought it would be less conspicuous on its own. Perhaps they hoped that it would be able to hide in the fog. But now the fog was collapsing, evaporating, dying.
Rogers and Lambert dived ahead of the two-seater and turned it. The machine seemed to maneuver heavily, as if pregnant. The other four Goshawk aircraft came down in an angled line which allowed each gun to rake the target from nose to tail in a continuous devastation of bullets. The teamwork was superfluous, because the pilot was dead before the second burst hit him, his plane was on fire before the third burst cut it apart, and the fourth simply knocked sideways a wreck which had only to fall to the ground.
Finlayson found Major Gibbs and the adjutant waiting for him.
“I know you have a lot going on,” Woodruffe said, “but Major Gibbs says it’s absolutely essential that you be charged properly, according to King’s Regulations.”
“Oh Christ,” said Finlayson. He sat down on an oil drum. “Is the old man still playing that game? I thought that was last night’s bad joke.”
“We must have something to show the French,” Gibbs said. “A formality, and some documents. Something they can see and feel, and be impressed by, and tell all their pals in the Ministry of Justice about.”
“Let them squeeze the old man’s balls, then. They’re about the biggest thing in this squadron.”
“Quite. But at the moment, I suggest we adjourn to the adjutant’s office. The French lawyers are waiting there now, and I’d like them to hear the CO actually make the charge.”
“So would I,” said Finlayson bitterly. “I’d like to know exactly where and when I deserted in the face of the enemy.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Gibbs said. “That’s all been changed. He’s decided to make it cowardice now.”
“Cowardice?” Woodruffe frowned. “Are you sure? He told me he was going to make it incompetence.”
“Good God, I hope not. I can’t change everything at this stage. It’ll have to be cowardice.”
The two French civil servants shook hands with everybody. They seemed competent and satisfied. Woolley was making a long telephone call. The line was bad and he kept shouting. Gabriel sat by a window, reading his Bible. Woodruffe saw Finlayson looking at him. “Gabriel has agreed to defend you after all,” the adjutant said.
“I don’t want the silly bastard!” Finlayson exclaimed. Gabriel turned a page.
“I’m afraid you must,” Gibbs said. “Everyone else is liable to court-martial too, and you must be represented.”
Woolley shouted: “Nonsense!” and hung up. “Get on with it,” he told Gibbs. “We’re off again in ten minutes.”
Finlayson and Gabriel stood up. The Frenchmen watched carefully. Woolley picked his teeth with a matchstick. Gibbs read out the charge: there was a great deal of florid preambling, all about the defense of the realm, and the jurisdiction of the provost-marshal, and the patriotic obligations of the King’s subjects to defend the royal allies against the common enemy, most of which Gibbs and Woodruffe had cooked up to impress the French. The charge itself was brief. Lieutenant George Yates Finlayson had displayed cowardice in the face of the enemy all the previous week. Signed, Stanley Woolley, Major.
Despite the transparent nonsense of it all, Finlayson felt his guts tighten at the word cowardice. His head was half-bent; he looked up at Woolley, stiff with disgust and hate; and saw Woolley watching him coolly, almost curiously.
“Jolly good,” Woodruffe said. “Now, what I propose is, I propose a week’s adjournment before we fix the date of the hearing, if that suits the defending officer.”
Gabriel took his Bible from under his arm as if it were loaded, and opened it. “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me,” he read out, “then will I walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” He closed the book and nodded to Finlayson and Woodruffe.
“Time to fly,” Woolley said. To Finlayson’s surprise, he took him by the elbow and steered him, quite gently, to the door. When they were outside and walking toward the aircraft, Woolley said: “The French make such a fuss, you see. And we need their reinforcements, or something.”
“Yes. Woody explained.”
“I could have made it something piddling, like embezzling the mess funds, but I thought it might as well be, you know, melodramatic.”
“I see.”
“The frogs like melodrama. Besides, Goshawk Squadron has never been known for doing things half-heartedly, has it?”
“No.”
“I knew you’d understand. I didn’t want it to get you down. After all, it’s not going to make any difference, is it?”
Finlayson watched Woolley’s face for a trace of sarcasm and found none. “Why should it?” he said.
“You’re right,” Woolley said warmly. “Nothing’s going to make any difference.” They parted.
Finlayson met Rogers. “I think the old man’s cracking up,” he said. “I think he’s finally out to lunch. I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s just been nice to me.”
“I thought he was going to charge you—”
“Yes, yes, he did all that. But nicely, as if it didn’t matter.”
“Oh.”
They looked uneasily toward Woolley. He was leaning against his machine, arms resting on the upper wing, head resting on his arms, eyes closed.
“Odd,” said Rogers.