Derek Robinson - Damned Good Show

“Hitler didn’t flatten London.”

“He made a mess of it.”

“Of a small part of it. Measured on the map, only one yard in ten of Greater London is covered by a building. Inevitably, most bombs fell in the ninety percent that is open space.”

“Such as railways? All the London termini got hit. Does your open space include churchyards? That would explain all the Wren churches that we lost. Did the Germans waste those bombs?”

Skull took his glasses off and polished them with his tie. “It begs the question,” he said, and squinted hard at Butt, “that this war will be won by bombing churches.” He put his glasses on, and made a little act of locating Champion. “Ah. There you are.”

“Well, it certainly won’t be won with debating tricks,” Champion said. “There’s nothing tricky about high explosive. If the Luftwaffe can destroy Coventry, we can destroy, say, Hamburg.”

“Coventry wasn’t destroyed. Just because Goebbels says so, doesn’t make it true. I’ve heard too many of our pilots say they annihilated the target, and next week they got sent back to annihilate it again.”

“Repairs,” Champion said. “Salvage work.”

“You can’t repair annihilation. People are too casual with words. Coventry wasn’t destroyed. Its center was severely damaged. Its gas and electricity and water supplies were cut. Some factories were hit. But by far the greater part of Coventry was still standing next day, and all the factories were back in action within weeks, some within days.”

“They were indeed,” Butt said. “However, we don’t want the Germans to know that. How did you find out?”

“Intelligence. A Waaf in my section comes from Coventry.”

“Ah. And what conclusion do you draw from all this?”

Skull puffed out his cheeks. “Not a conclusion, but a suggestion. If the Luftwaffe couldn’t destroy Coventry, perhaps we shouldn’t be too cocksure about destroying Hamburg.”

“Too late,” Champion said cheerfully. “We’ve already made a start. And we’ve also knocked down large chunks of Kiel, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven. How can I be so cocksure of this? Because neutral businessmen see it and tell us. Foreign journalists make reports. Travelers travel , Skull. In and out of Europe.”

“Travelers. I see.” Skull felt that he had been sucked into playing verbal ping-pong for the amusement of an audience of one, and he was growing tired of it. “I trained to be a historian, and historians are suspicious of travelers’ tales. Men like to excite their listeners. The traveler visits, say, Dusseldorf and sees one bombed street. When he returns to Sweden he tells what he saw and soon there is a report headed ‘Devastation hits Dusseldorf,’ from which it is but a short skip and a jump to believe that Dusseldorf is devastated.”

“Jolly good!” Champion applauded, briefly. “The strategic bombing campaign as seen through the eyes of a Swedish news editor. That’s more than I had hoped for.” To Butt he said, “He really is awfully clever, isn’t he?” To Skull he said, “Thank you, flight lieutenant. Most enjoyable. I don’t think we need keep you up any longer.” Skull shook hands with Butt. At the door, Champion said, “You must lunch with me at my club, old chap.”

“If I must,” Skull said.

Champion came back and poured himself a whisky. “I like old Skull,” he said. “He’s got a mind like a rugger ball: you never know which way it will bounce. Of course, his weakness is he sees everything at squadron level. He can’t take the broad view. I brought him along to act as a sort of devil’s advocate. Not bad, was he?”

“Not bad at all,” Butt said.

“Now to serious business. Bomber Command’s the only weapon we have which can seriously damage Germany. That’s hard fact. And you don’t need the brains of an archbishop to see that the more bombers we build, the sooner we win. Or have I overlooked something?”

“Tell me more,” Butt said.

Next morning, Silk bought some food at the village shop: bread, salad stuff, two Chelsea buns, four pears, lemonade. Everything else was on ration. He drove to the broken bungalow and Zoë wasn’t there. He sat by the edge of the lake and watched dragonflies perform maneuvers that were strictly banned by the manufacturers. After a while she appeared, very wet. “I found a bubbling brook,” she said. “Had an all-over wash. How the rabbits stared. Golly, such red tomatoes.” She ate one. She sat beside him.

“What’s that funny smell?” he asked. “It smells like carbolic soap.”

“That’s because it is. All the best outlaws use carbolic, darling.”

“It smells awfully coarse. Us bomber pilots are terribly sensitive, you know. Pug Duff cries at dog shows.”

“Don’t believe you.” She stretched out so that her head was resting on his lap. “Tony wasn’t sensitive. Tony was an animal. Sometimes I had to bite him on the neck to make him stop.”

“Are we talking about the same chap?” No answer. Her eyes were closed. “How often did you bite his neck?”

“Once.”

“What a shocking liar you are. I was going to ask you to marry me but…”

“Jinx popsy, remember?”

“Balls. I’m on my second tour. I’m jinx-proof.”

“I won’t marry you, Silko.”

“Too late. I withdrew the offer ages ago.”

“You don’t really love me. You just covet my body.”

“You coveted mine first.”

“I did, didn’t I?” She smiled at the memory. “Men are so slow.”

Silk thought about that. Was he really slow? Often, during the past year, he had thought about Zoë, about finding her again. Why hadn’t he done anything? Because he was slow? Or because he hadn’t expected to survive his first tour? Thirty ops had been too many for most crews. After that, instructing ham-fisted student pilots in clapped-out Wimpys had been a chapter of accidents. He had no right to survive that, either. Nobody on the squadron had ever finished a second tour. It was one reason why he kept putting off having a haircut. Or getting a new uniform. Or buying a book. Fancy going to all that trouble and then getting the chop. Wasted effort. And now, as it turned out, Zoë had come looking for him, which probably proved something, but Silk didn’t care what it was. He preferred to sit and enjoy the feeling of her head in his lap while he watched the dragonflies do their stunts. How long was a dragonfly’s tour of ops? Bloody short, judging by their frantic antics. That was nice. “Frantic antics,” he murmured. She didn’t move. Sound asleep.

Zoë wanted lunch: a real knife-and-fork lunch, not tomato sandwiches and lemonade. Silk told her she looked like a gypsy princess and no respectable hotel would serve her. “They’d better,” she said. But she brushed her hair.

They drove across Suffolk. At every crossroads or junction, she pointed and that was where he went. He felt a sense of happy irresponsibility, but he also felt hungry. “Are we going somewhere special?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Zoë, you’re completely lost.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “And Tony said you were thick. You’re not at all thick, Silko.”

After many more turnings, she suddenly pointed at a white-stucco hotel. “There,” she said. Silk parked, and they went in. A middle-aged woman sat at reception. She wore a straw hat with a rose tucked into the band and she was knitting a scarf, using the biggest needles Silk had ever seen. They were like chopsticks. “Hello,” Zoë said. “We’d like lunch, please.”

“Can’t be done. We don’t do lunches, not since my chef got called up by the army.”

“Oh.” Zoë fished a checkbook out of a skirt pocket. “In that case I’d like to cash a check for fifty pounds.”