Derek Robinson - Damned Good Show

Vansittart turned out to be a very good cook. He was also amusing and interesting about his travels in exotic parts. Langham reacted by addressing him formally. “Look here, Mr. Vansittart,” he began.

“Please: call me Flemming.”

“If you insist. Got a better idea. Call you Flem, for short. Okay, Flem? Good old Anglo-Saxon word, Flem.” After that he said Flem every time he spoke. The Dutchman did not seem offended. Nothing upset him. Nothing disturbed his flow of conversation. He had a habit, when he wished to make a point, of reaching toward Zoë as if to gently tap her arm, yet never quite touching her. Once he turned to Langham and did briefly squeeze his wrist, for emphasis. The wrist tingled long after.

Vansittart embraced Zoë when he said goodbye. Langham escorted him to his car. “A most enjoyable evening,” Vansittart said. “Thanks for the steaks,” Langham said, “and stay away from my wife or I’ll break your neck.”

Even that didn’t disturb him. “I think you have misread the situation,” he said. “Your charming wife has absolutely no sexual interest in me nor I in her. You, however, are a different cup of tea.” He got into his car. “You appeal to me enormously.” The same half-moon that shone on Sylt now shone on his smile. Langham’s pulse leaped twenty points. He slammed the car door. As the car pulled away he kicked the rear wing.

Zoë was in the bathroom. “You rather overdid the Flem joke, darling. I mean to say, it’s not a very pleasant word, is it?” She began brushing her teeth.

“He’s as queer as a coot. Did you know that?”

She didn’t hurry. Brushed every tooth. Rinsed the basin.

“Of course I did. Wasn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me. How could you tell?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Come to bed, darling.”

“No, I think I’ll read the papers. You get your sleep, dear. Get your strength back.” He went downstairs, telling himself: Two can play at that game, missy.

They didn’t talk about it next day. They lunched at Bardney Castle and drove to Lincoln and did some shopping. She bought him a pair of dark glasses, silver frames, very lightweight, to baffle the German searchlights. He bought her a little porcelain boxer dog, its muzzle on its paws, half-asleep. It delighted her; she had never had a pet, she said. They went to the pictures: Errol Flynn and Flora Robson in The Sea Hawk; ate a quick supper in a restaurant; drove home and went straight to bed. This time there was no need for invitations.

“Goodness,” she said. “That should be enough for one small baby. I thought you would never stop.” He smirked in the darkness. Normal service had resumed.

April 1940 was a busy month at Kindrick.

It began with a Tannoy message that crackled and droned throughout the camp as men walked to breakfast. “Attention. All code-letters for aircraft have been changed in order to improve communications with the French Air Force. With immediate effect, A-Able is changed to A-Ingénieux and B-Baker to B -Boulanger. C-Charlie has been deleted. D-Dog is now D-Chien. E-Easy is E-Facile , et cetera. A full list is being circulated. Anyone requiring assistance with French pronunciation, report to the Orderly Room.”

It was the first of April. The adjutant was only mildly amused. “Dafter things than that are going to happen before this war is over,” he told Bins as they sat down to porridge and kippers.

“You can’t stop progress,” Bins said. He had no time for practical jokes. He was more interested in the Times crossword.

The adjutant considered trying to find out who the joker was and decided he had better things to do. There was the problem of Black Mac’s Bentley. McHarg had left no will, and he had no next of kin. The safe thing would be to hand it over to some gloomy department of the Air Ministry. Rafferty disagreed. “They don’t know it exists. What they don’t know can’t harm them. Raffle the beast.”

“Risky, sir. Suppose some bolshy erk wins it? One minute he’s sweeping out the hangars, next minute he’s driving to the Naafi and half the camp’s saluting him.”

“Good point. Officers only, then.”

Rafferty won the raffle. “Bugger,” he said and donated the Bentley to 409, to replace the crew wagon. Silk refused to use the Bentley. “It brought me nothing but trouble,” he said, “and look what happened to Black Mac. I’d sooner walk.”

“Superstition,” Langham said. “You surprise me, Silko, an educated twerp like you. That Bentley’s perfectly safe, as long as you remember to walk nine times around it backward and spit on the tires.”

“It’s bad luck,” Silk insisted.

The first two crews to be taken to their Hampdens by Bentley were on Nickel ops. The Met man’s predictions turned sour, and fog covered much of Europe. One crew made a forced landing in Holland, thinking it was Kent, and got interned. The other crew, short of fuel, bailed out over a mountainous corner of Lorraine and were lucky to end up in a French hospital. “Double bugger,” Rafferty said. It didn’t make him feel any better, and it didn’t solve the problems of navigation over Europe in foul weather.

On the other hand, losses were good for promotion. Rafferty and Hunt recognized leadership when they saw it. Before long, Pug Duff was a flight lieutenant.

The Phoney War seemed to be over on April 9, 1940, when Germany overran Denmark and captured the main Norwegian ports and airfields, including Oslo. Allied forces hurried across the North Sea to fight for Norway. 409 Squadron rejoiced. It had been a long winter: months of training, and then the grind of Nickels, stooging around Germany for the doubtful pleasure of bombarding the enemy with paper. Now he had replied with high explosive, so at last there was the prospect of Bomber Command being turned loose to do the job it was designed for, and actually bombing something on land, anything, just as long as it blew up and hurt the Hun. 409 couldn’t wait to do its stuff.

And then Bins told them that the Phoney War was not entirely dead, except in Norway. Elsewhere in Europe, the Roosevelt Rules still applied. No bombs on the enemy mainland, where civilians might get hurt.

However, the German army was shipping men and supplies from Kiel to Oslo as fast as it could. That part of the Baltic, Bins pointed out, is rather cramped. Ships had to pass through narrow channels between the large islands of Denmark. So 409 would drop magnetic mines in those channels.

As usual, the group captain ended the briefing with words of encouragement. “Minelaying has been codenamed Gardening. Mines are Vegetables, very special weapons, very secret. Hitler must not get his sweaty hands on a Vegetable. If you can’t drop it, or fly home with it, then crash the kite. No half-measures. Point your bomber at the nearest mountain, open the throttles, bale out, and wait for an extremely large explosion as you float down. Duty, gentlemen! Duty.”

At first, Gardening was a pleasant eight-hour trip. Sometimes a crew would go to the pictures in Lincoln, get fish and chips, return to Kindrick, take off before midnight and be back with the dawn for a good breakfast. After a week, Bins had good news: four German troopships had struck mines and sunk with devastating loss of life. 409 liked that. However, nothing is static in war, and German flak ships appeared in the Channels. Bins constantly stressed the importance of accuracy when Gardening. First the pilot must find a landmark and make a long, straight, timed run, quite slowly, letting the airplane sink gently to about two hundred feet, the navigator counting down the seconds to the precise spot. The mines fall and make silent splashes, white on black. The navigator makes a note in his log. The pilot opens the throttles and begins to climb. That was the standard procedure and that was what Happy Hall did. A flak ship blinded him with searchlights and boxed him with shellfire and sprayed him with tracer and turned the Hampden into blazing scrap in ten seconds. In twenty seconds the Baltic had received the remains and quenched the fire. The searchlight died.