Derek Robinson - A Splendid Little War

“There’s a pint of arsenic in your soup, Junk,” Dextry said. “Drink up while it’s hot.”

“Used the wrong type of glue, you see,” Jessop said. “I joined it but… Never mind.” He stirred his soup. “Where can you get arsenic in Russia?”

“Drink up and I’ll tell you.”

“Nip in the air this morning,” Oliphant said. “Soon be autumn. Rugger season.”

“Not the same as cricket, is it?” Wragge said.

“Flannelled fools or muddied oafs,” Dextry said. “Take your pick.”

Merlin Squadron’s gypsy existence continued. Borodin heard from Denikin’s staff of an abandoned Red air force field about five miles this side of Orel. Wragge got the flights in the air and in tidy formation, and they circled the woods where Hopton and Blythe probably lay: a farewell gesture. They followed the railway north and, surprisingly, Denikin’s staff had forgotten their vranyo because the field was just where they said. Well, even staff officers tripped up occasionally.

The Nines landed. Wragge took the Camels onward to have a squint at Orel. They flew over great numbers of troops, guns, cavalry. Nobody was on the move. The railway was clogged with trains. None had steam up. Orel was safe for today.

The Camels took a good look at it from a thousand feet. Compared with Kharkov and Kursk, this was a small town with pretty little onion domes. The biggest building was the railway station. Orel was a quiet, civilized place where the citizens were too polite to fire guns at visiting aeroplanes.

The C.O. waved the other Camels away and dived hard, pulled out at little more than rooftop height and zigzagged across town, showed off with a vertical banking turn around the onion domes and made his exit on the other side. Some women shook their fists at him. He’d probably woken their sleeping infants. He climbed and picked up the Flight and they cruised home. No trade today. Maybe the Bolos had given up. What a swindle.

The train was on the move.

The adjutant, the doctor, Stevens and Lacey were playing whist in The Dregs. The track was in bad shape, and as the train swayed, it jolted the needle back to the start of the gramophone record. “What is that curious music?” Brazier said.

“American ragtime,” Lacey said. “Henry sent it. It’s by a man called Scott Joplin. The tune is “The Entertainer”. Joplin has been called the J.S. Bach of our time, but you don’t think much of Bach, so you won’t like Joplin.”

“On the contrary. His ragtime would make a good regimental march. Stick to ordering groceries, lad. That’s your level.” He played his card and took the trick.

“Chef says we’re nearly out of cheese,” Susan Perry said. “Can’t you order some more?”

“I can order whatever you like,” Lacey said. “But will it arrive? We’re five hundred miles from Taganrog. Any train not guarded by British troops is bound to be looted, probably by our allies.” He took the trick, and played a low club. “I can see your cards, Stevens.”

“They’re dreadful, aren’t they? I was hoping you’d feel sorry for me.”

“Play your six of clubs,” Brazier suggested.

“That card? It’s got jack of hearts written on it.”

“So who has the real six of clubs?” Susan Perry asked. Nobody had. “What d’you want it to be?”

“Ideally, the ace of diamonds,” Stevens said.

She plucked out the card and played it for him. “Ace of diamonds, by majority vote.” The train jolted, and the needle jumped back to the start of “The Entertainer”.

“Maybe we can buy some Russian cheese,” Lacey said.

“It’s foul.” Brazier trumped Stevens’ ace with the two of spades and won the trick. “Inedible.”

“That’s the second time you’ve played the two of spades,” she said. “This is my idea of purgatory — playing whist with a crooked pack and a batty gramophone record.”

“And to complete your suffering,” Brazier said as he tore up his two of spades, “Lacey reciting his poetry.”

“The C.O. thanked me for it,” Lacey said. “He told me the last four lines really hit the bullseye.”

“Remind us,” she said.

Lacey quoted: “Nor law, nor duty bade them fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds. A lonely impulse of delight, Drove to this tumult in the clouds.”

“W.B. Yeats,” Stevens said.

“One of my contributors. It sums up the squadron, according to the C.O.”

“Good for him,” she said. “I hope we never hear it again. But I fear we shall.”

Stevens played the four of diamonds, Lacey played the five. “Bloody officers,” Stevens said. “There’s no justice.”

Count Borodin awoke to the sound of rifle fire. The noise came in irregular bursts, like the faraway crackle of burning stubble. Experience told him that the firing was more than a mile away, probably two miles, and the blackness said it was the middle of the night. He closed his eyes and guessed how many men were fighting. Perhaps two battalions. A small battle. The firing grew more intense and then faded and died. He went back to sleep.

At breakfast, the talk was all guesswork. “What d’you think happened, Count?” Jessop said.

“I think you have egg on your chin.”

“I know. I keep it there in case I get peckish later.”

Borodin ordered a pony to be saddled. He visited the staff train, came back and joined a meeting of the C.O. and the flight leaders. “There was a small Red attack during the night,” he said. “Several, simultaneously. All beaten off.”

“Where did they spring from?” Wragge said. “There were no Reds in Orel when we looked. Nobody fired a shot at us.”

“Wise restraint. If they fire at us, we bomb them. So they don’t fire, and we go away.”

“The Huns learned that trick,” Oliphant said. “We bombed their cities at night and at first they were easy to find because when they heard us coming they turned on their searchlights, but then they realized they were advertising themselves so they stopped. Hid in the darkness. Not easy to find a blacked-out town in the middle of Germany. If we found it, of course, their searchlights came on and they chucked all kinds of filth at us.”

“Cunning buggers, Huns,” Dextry said.

“What are you saying?” the C.O. asked. “Orel’s full of Bolos, hiding in back alleys, waiting to do their worst?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Moscow by Christmas,” Borodin said. “That’s all everyone thinks of. Some of Denikin’s people have even picked out the white horses for their triumphant entry.”

“Why not?” Oliphant said. “Denikin’s made mincemeat of the Bolos.”

“Mincemeat, you say. Russians prepare many a hearty meal from mincemeat.”

“So what was last night’s nonsense all about?” Dextry said. “The Bolos made a nuisance of themselves and then went home. Not very heroic.”

“Delaying tactics,” Borodin said. “Spoiled our troops’ sleep.”

“Or maybe it was a last gasp.”

“We’re guessing,” the C.O. said. “What does Denikin want us to do?”

“Ground-strafing,” Borodin said. “Targets of opportunity.”

“So he’s guessing too. Well, let’s get in the air. With any luck, someone will try to kill us.”

Wragge took the whole squadron, four Camels and four Nines.

From two thousand feet, Orel still looked peaceful. Still no burning buildings, no heavy machine guns chucking filth at the sky. No point in strafing something that might be a barracks but was more likely to be a hospital. Proves nothing, Wragge thought, even a hospital might be a hiding place full of Bolos. Or it might be an orphanage, and we’d end up strafing a hundred blond-haired blue-eyed boys and girls. Hard cheese. Teach them not to grow up to be ruthless Bolsheviks. And anyway they’re orphans, nobody would miss them, so nichevo . And we’d vranyo Mission H.Q. and Denikin and say the Camels were returning enemy fire.