Derek Robinson - War Story

Frank Foster was ‘C’ Flight commander. Shuffling to the mess in carpet slippers and dressing gown he stopped when he saw Paxton in shorts and singlet and gym shoes. Paxton was running backwards. “I say!” Foster called. Paxton came to a halt but kept working his legs and arms. “What the hell are you doing?” Foster asked.

“My daily run. It tones up the system.”

“Must you do it here? It’s unsightly. You’ve got the whole damn aerodrome to run around.”

“I’ve just done that. I like to do the last two hundred yards backwards, just for fun. It gives the muscles something extra to think about.”

“I’m sure they find it hugely amusing,” Foster said. “Don’t let me hold up the show.” They parted.

Collins had fresh black coffee ready for Foster in the mess. Nobody else had arrived yet. “I trust you had an enjoyable evening, sir,” he said.

“A sombre affair, Collins. Sombre and sober. Heavy with pomp and circumstance.” Foster took a cube of sugar and dropped it and missed his cup by two inches. “Keep still, damn you,” he said to it.

“I thought it was going to be a proper beano, sir.” Collins put the sugar in the coffee and stirred it. “Sounds more like a wake.”

“George the Third’s birthday. Very important date.”

“German gentleman, wasn’t he, sir?” Collins forked grilled bacon onto a plate. “Hanoverian, I believe. Also not too right in the head. A bit barmy.”

“Are you sure that stuff’s dead?” Foster touched the end of a strip of bacon with the point of his knife. “I thought I saw it move.”

“Funny chap to have a party for,” Collins said. “A barmy Jerry. Still, it’s none of my business, sir.”

Foster picked up his cup, using both hands, but did not drink. After a while his eyes closed. The cup slowly tilted and began to spill coffee in a steady stream. “God, I feel dreadful,” he muttered. Collins placed a napkin to soak up the spillage. He removed the bacon and put it back in its hot dish.

Mayo wandered in. He wore slacks, and a white sweater over his pyjama top, and his hair was not brushed. “Bloody awful wine,” he grumbled. “Bloody awful taste. It’s given me a bloody awful head. “

Foster did not open his eyes. He rested his forehead on his cup. Collins poured coffee and handed it to Mayo, who was pressing and prodding his stomach in a cautious, exploratory way. “It’s not right,” Mayo said to himself.

“Gus,” Foster said. “Is that you bawling and shouting?”

“Bloody awful coffee,” Mayo said.

“It is you. Can’t you put a sock in it? I’m trying to die.”

“Lucky you.” Mayo sipped again, and winced.

“As a matter of fact I put a pair of socks in it when I made it, sir,” Collins said,”but if you think it’s not strong enough I could easily—”

“No.” Foster opened one eye and looked at Collins through the handle of the cup. “No jokes,” he added.

Mayo reversed a chair and straddled it, with his chin on the top. “Dunno how you feel, but there’s only one way to describe how I feel,” he said.

“Who locked everyone out last night?”

“I feel bloody awful, that’s how. Paxton.”

“Paxton.” Foster thought about that. “He runs backwards, you know.”

“Bloody well thinks backwards, too.”

Five minutes later Paxton came in. He was fully dressed and his hair was wetly slicked back. “Good morning,” he said. “I’ll have some of everything except porridge,” he told Collins.

“Why did you shut us out last night?” Foster asked.

Paxton polished a knife with his napkin. “I took what I considered to be the necessary precautions.”

“Then you went to bed.” Foster threw a lump of sugar at him and missed.

“It was nothing to do with me, after midnight.” Paxton tapped his wristwatch, to avoid any misunderstanding. “At midnight I ceased to be Orderly Officer.”

“Ceased to have any brains, too,” Mayo said. “How were we supposed to get in?”

“Password.” Paxton filled his mouth with bacon.

“You’re a bloody fool,” Foster told him.

“I second that,” Mayo said. “Put to the vote, passed nem con.”

Paxton kept his eyes on his plate and got on with his breakfast. He had expected criticism. He found it stimulating.

Douglas Goss came in. “I knew you were a damn fool,” he said to Paxton. “What I didn’t realise is what a raving idiot you were. See this?” His right hand was heavily bandaged. “Your bloody barbed wire did that. I shall probably die of lockjaw. Glass of milk,” he told Collins. “I’ve got a head like a bass drum in a circus.”

“I was guarding the aerodrome,” Paxton said.

“Why? Aerodrome’s no damn good without the squadron… Christ, this isn’t really milk, is it, Collins?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tastes terrible.”

“So would you, sir, if you’d passed through a cow.”

Spud Ogilvy and James Yeo arrived together. “What’s all this about mules, Douglas?” Yeo asked. “I say, you do look dreadful. Is it booze, or have you caught trench foot in the face?”

Foster grunted and rested his head on the table.

“What makes you two so bloody chirpy?” Mayo demanded, but Yeo was sitting at the table and was building a house out of toast.

“He’s still half-cut,” Ogilvy explained. “Don’t squeeze him or he’ll squirt champagne from both ears and his belly button. I’ve seen him do it.”

“For God’s sake shut up,” Mayo snarled. “I had enough bloody silly jokes played on me last night by this clown.” Without looking at Paxton he gestured at him. His hand was trembling from a mixture of anger and hangover.

“It wasn’t a joke,” Paxton said. “It was a measure of security. Excuse me.” He reached across the table and removed a wall from Yeo’s house of toast, which collapsed.

Yeo looked at the ruins. “Only a true Hun would do a thing like that,” he said.

During the exchange Tim Piggott and Frank O’Neill had come in and were helping themselves to breakfast. “I have the feeling that the various bits of my body are tied together with old rubber bands,” Piggott said,”so I’m going to make this very, very simple. You ordered the sentries and the barbed wire?”

Paxton said, “Yes, but—”

“And then you went to bed?”

“Yes, but you see—”

“The act of a true fart.”

“And a Hun,” Yeo said.

For a while there was silence apart from the sounds of breakfast, and occasionally of a stomach complaining as the wrong sort of food fell into an angry gut. Paxton had finished eating and wanted to leave but he didn’t know how to do it. So he sat up straight and looked between people, or over their heads. A vicious little truth was beginning to take shape in a corner of his mind. That truth was that maybe he had got it wrong last night. He knew he wasn’t a fool or a fart, but it was beginning to seem just possible that he had, for once, acted in a way that some people might quite well regard as the behaviour of a fool or a fart. Paxton pressed his knees together and chewed his upper lip. Surely to God breakfast must be over soon?

Charlie Essex strolled in, wearing flying goggles. “Will this damned heat wave never end?” he said to nobody in particular. He took off the goggles and peered about him. No one moved, no one spoke. “This must be purgatory,” he said. “It’s too lively for limbo.” He took a seat at the table. Collins brought him coffee. He put his goggles on again and examined the coffee. Steam coated the goggles. “Just a spot of cumulus,” he said. “We’ll soon climb through it.”

Paxton had enjoyed eating his breakfast. Now his stomach clenched the food grimly. Before he could suppress it, indigestion rumbled like a delivery of coal.