Derek Robinson - Damned Good Show

“Stabilized yaw,” Langham said croakily. “Thought I’d got the chop, Silko.”

“Stabilized bollocks. Come on, move. It’s your big day. Stabilized marriage, that’s what you’ve got lined up.”

“No, not that. Oh God, please save me.” His head was in his hands, his skin felt like rubber, he wanted to hide. “Please, God…”

By now Silk was in the corridor, shouting for Langham’s batman.

When they got out of the Rolls, outside the cathedral, Silk said quietly, “Anyone would think you’re being tried for murder. Cheer up, for Pete’s sake. Smile. Like this.” Langham watched him carefully, and copied him. “Not so desperate,” Silk said. “Never mind. Keep it.” He had got Langham to the church. Now all he had to do was get him down the aisle and deliver him to the bishop.

Langham went quietly. He was still in shock. He was in the third-largest cathedral in England, and its echoing gloom reminded him of a huge railway station. After a while, he was convinced of this. Individuals passed to and fro in the shadows: passengers waiting for a train, like him. He wondered where they were going, but when he looked for a destination board, he saw the glowing splendor of the east window. That explained everything. This was where you went when you got the chop. This was the terminus for the terminus. He saw beautiful flowers. He heard the trickling notes of an organ. He whispered into Silk’s ear: “They give a chap a jolly good send-off here, don’t they?” Silk frowned, so Langham said no more. Silk probably hadn’t got the chop. It was different for him.

After that, proceedings were just a blur. Zoë appeared, in an awfully pretty dress, and so did the bishop, in a kind of ball-gown, both there to see him off, presumably. It all went on and on. At one stage he was high in the roof, looking down, watching himself going through some kind of ceremony. Answering questions. Could it be a customs examination? Seemed unlikely. He felt light-headed. He shouldn’t be at this height without oxygen. Bad for the brain. He came down to earth at a hell of a lick and made a perfect three-point landing. Not possible. He looked at his feet and counted them. Not three. See what oxygen starvation does to you? At that very moment the train came in. He felt its mighty power rumble up through the soles of his shoes. It was playing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, gale force ten. It was so loud that it blew him out of the cathedral.

He got carried along by a tide of congratulations. When the bridal party arrived at Bardney Castle House he knew he was married. Everyone was happy, so he joined in the fun and agreed with what they told him. But after a while he grew very tired of shaking hands and smiling. He wanted to be alone with Zoë. Where was she? Gone to change her clothes. An extraordinarily tall man gripped his elbow. “Saw you admiring our cathedral,” he said too loudly. “Fascinating place. I wrote a book about it.”

“Ah.” Langham got his elbow back. “Fancy that.”

“Fifty-seven thousand square feet. Diocese was huge, you see. Reached from the Humber to the Thames. First cathedral was finished in 1092.”

“Good show.”

“Burned down in 1141,” he boomed. “Major restorations were necessary, of course.”

“Yes. If you’ll excuse me—”

“Worse followed.” He had Langham’s elbow again. “Disastrous earthquake in 1185. Whole structure largely destroyed.”

“Look, I must go, so—”

“Hugh of Avalon! Became bishop. Started rebuilding.”

“You’re bloody deaf, aren’t you?”

“The nave is thirteenth-century. The style is Early English.”

“Let me go or I’ll kill you.” The pulses in Langham’s head were pounding. This deaf maniac couldn’t hear him and wouldn’t release him, he kept barking on about a copy of Magna Carta kept in a cathedral chapel, so Langham snatched a bottle of champagne from a passing waiter and would have cracked it on the man’s head if Pug Duff hadn’t taken it from him. Others appeared: Silk, Tom Stuart, Jonty, Happy Hall, the MO, and they hustled him out of the room, along a corridor, away from the crowd.

“You’re spoiling the party, Tony,” Stuart said. “And you’re letting the side down.”

“Mind your own bloody business.” Now he was nine years old.

“It is our business,” Duff said. “You damn near put up a very large black, back there.” He waved the champagne bottle, and drank from it.

“Give me a swig.”

“Not likely. You don’t deserve it.”

“Don’t what?” He almost choked on rage. “I nearly went for a Burton this morning. Lost the kite at five thousand, pulled out at a hundred! Bloody good job I did, or you bastards wouldn’t be getting pissed now.” He lunged for the bottle, and missed.

“Wasn’t a hundred,” Jonty said. “More like five hundred. I was there.” He yawned. “I had every confidence in the pilot. He knew what he was doing.”

“No I bloody didn’t.”

“I blame the kite,” Happy Hall said. “Lousy heap of scrap.”

“I blame the weather,” Silk said. Who cared? He certainly didn’t. He wandered over to a window. The overcast had gone. A lazy sun shone in a soft blue sky.

“My theory is different,” the MO said. “I don’t believe you really wanted to get married, and now you’re disappointed that you didn’t get the chop.” He shrugged.

“I think he’s bats,” Silk said. “I know his family. They’re all bats.”

Langham had turned away. He was looking at the parkland.

“If you don’t want her, I’ll have her,” Jonty said. “Anything for a friend.”

“Pigeons,” Langham said, and pointed. “Fucking pigeons.”

“Definitely pigeons,” Silk said. “But otherwise engaged.”

“They were all over the cockpit.” Langham was calm now. “I couldn’t see for feathers. I’m going to kill those pigeons.”

“Good,” Duff said. “We’ll come with you.”

The butler was not surprised. Killing pigeons was one of the amenities at Bardney Castle. He supplied shotguns, and the airmen roamed the park for twenty minutes, blasting the innocent sky and even knocking down a few sluggish birds.

When they went indoors, Langham seemed much better. “Try and get some rest,” the MO said to him.

Lady Shapland overheard this. “What an absurd suggestion,” she said. She was dancing with the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. “That boy is going to fertilize my daughter if he has to gird his loins every hour on the hour all through the honeymoon.”

“I rather think that girding the loins has an opposite effect,” her partner said.

She wasn’t listening. “I need an heir, Henry. He’d better not be firing blanks or I’ll have him annulled.”

“You can’t annul a bridegroom, Philly.”

“Just watch me. Stand and deliver, that’s the name of the game.”

“My stars, Philly, you’re full of zip. You wouldn’t like to govern Nigeria, would you?”

Langham was dancing with Zoë. The shock of survival had passed; he was beginning to see its advantages. “I nearly killed my crew this morning,” he said.

“Only nearly? I nearly slipped in the bath. Nearly broke my neck. Nearly spoiled your day.”

“Poor show. I don’t like the sound of that bath. In future we shall bathe together. That’s my decision, as an officer commissioned by His Majesty King George the Sixth. I’m jolly good at decisions.”

“Silko doesn’t think so, darling.”

“Silko is the most stupid man I’ve ever met.”

“He thinks I’m making a great mistake. He said I should have married him.”

“Well, there you are. Pure stupidity on two legs. He should be an exhibit in a traveling circus.” They waved and smiled at Silk, who was dancing with a bridesmaid. “That’s a pretty girl.”