Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

Barton was talking to his rigger as the last member of “A” flight was coming in to land. The Merlin growled, then picked up with a roar, then sank to a growl again. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“Looks like Mr. Phillips, sir.”

Barton dumped his parachute on the wing and strode across the field. “You!” he shouted when Phillips got out. “What’s the matter? Tired of life? Ready to end it all?”

Phillips was startled and puzzled. “Sorry?” he said.

“Sorry? Sorry?” Barton shouted. Half the squadron had stopped to listen. “You’re worse than sorry, Phillips, you’re bloody tragic! Why did you open up just now?”

“Open up?” Phillips had been awake since before dawn, had flown four sorties, seen several deaths, been scared speechless more than once. He was very tired, but Barton looked thoroughly angry, so he made an effort to think, and failed. “Don’t understand,” he said.

“You opened up. Opened the throttle. Throttle” Barton pointed a furious finger at the sky where it had happened.

“I was a bit low,” Phillips said.

“Low? You were nearly bloody underground! What if your engine hadn’t opened up? Where would you be now?”

Phillips looked across the field. “In the hedge, I suppose.”

“No! The kite would be in the hedge and you would be in the morgue and serve you bloody well right!” They could hear him in the control tower. “Never trust your engine after a scrap! Always give yourself more height than you need! Play safe! Understand?”

Phillips nodded. He felt bruised by this blast. Barton strode away. CH3 nodded as he went by and said: “Serve him right.”

Without pausing, Barton said: “He’s in your flight, chum. You should be bollocking him, not me.”

Skull had a bright idea. If estimating range was so difficult for most pilots, why not erect dummy German aircraft at the correct distance so that their size and appearance would become familiar? Barton told him to do it. He requisitioned a truckload of plywood and a dozen carpenters and painters. They worked through the night. Next morning three mock-ups were ranged in an arc, two hundred yards from the crewroom: a Dornier 17 seen head-on, a Junkers 88 seen from the left rear, and a Messerschmitt 109 seen from the side and slightly above. The pilots, when they landed, were amused and impressed. “That is what your target should look like,” Skull told them. “If it’s not that big then you’re not close enough to open fire.”

“If I get you the wood,” Cattermole said, “will you make me a Sunderland flyingboat for my birthday?”

Skull yawned so hugely that his jaw hurt. He was trembling with fatigue but he was so pleased with his creations that he couldn’t leave them. About an hour later he was drinking tea in the control tower when he heard rifle-fire. Gordon, Cattermole and Renouf were standing outside the crewroom, shooting at the mockups. “What the devil d’you think you’re doing?” Skull shouted, but they couldn’t hear. He hurried to the stairs. Barton grabbed his arm. “Leave them be,” he said.

“But…” Skull gestured helplessly with paint-streaked hands.

“They’re doing what you want, aren’t they? Besides, they hardly ever hit the bloody things. Just watch.”

The rifles banged like fireworks. “Look over there,” Skull said. “The black widow’s back.”

“Is that what they call her?” Barton aimed his binoculars. “Yes. I see. She does look a bit gloomy, doesn’t she?”

“Bloody Mary,” Skull said. “That’s another name they’ve given her. They say she sends pilots to their doom.”

“Superstitious claptrap. She’s waiting for Fitz, that’s all. I wish there was something we could do…” Then the telephone rang and he had more urgent things to think of.

CH3 saw Jacky Bellamy sitting at a table in the corner of the Spreadeagle with a sergeant-pilot he vaguely remembered having seen at Brambledown. He went over to them.

“Excuse me, old boy,” he said, “but you’re wanted on the phone. They said it’s urgent.”

“Damn… Thank you, sir.” He disappeared into the crowd, and CH3 took his place. “You shouldn’t associate with sergeant-pilots,” he said. “They’re terribly lower-class. What’s his name?”

“White, and I like him. Have you turned into a snob at last?”

“Sure. You can’t live in this country for a whole year without becoming class-conscious. It’s the great British pastime. That’s what they’re all fighting for: the freedom to sneer.”

She gave him a sideways glance and then looked away. “Everything you say to me is fake,” she said. “We’ve never had a simple, honest, natural conversation all the time I’ve known you. Why do you have to be such a phony with me? What are you afraid of?”

“Okay, what d’you want to talk about?”

She made rings on the table with her glass. In the next bar they were singing Roll Out the Barrel . Somebody dropped a drink, which smashed, and everyone cheered.

“I used to be in love with you,” she said. There was no nostalgic regret in the way she spoke: it was a straightforward statement. “That was in France. It didn’t last long: you saw to that. Now I’m definitely not in love with you, and I don’t think I ever shall be again. That’s a pity, because there’s not much love about so it’s a shame to waste it. And I certainly wasted mine on you.”

“I’m sorry. It’s an area of life I’m not very good at.”

“No, you’re not. As I found out the other night, when we went for that walk. I wish now I hadn’t phoned you up. Big mistake.”

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad. In fact I enjoyed it.”

“Yes. That was the mistake. I think you enjoyed it too much. Look, CH3: after what’s happened between us, or maybe what hasn’t happened between us, I don’t want you falling in love with me. And I only say that because of the way you behave when we’re together. It’s ominous.”

“Really? How do I behave?”

“Like a bad actor reading a bad script. I’ve met it before and I know what it means. It means trouble.”

The sergeant-pilot returned. “Must have been a mistake, sir,” he said. “The phone’s on the hook.”

“Someone’s hung it up. You’d better go and call back.” The man looked doubtful. “You are Sergeant White, aren’t you? Chalky White? It was the sergeants’ mess. Bit of a flap on. D’you need any change?”

They watched him squeeze through the crowd again.

“Suppose I stopped reading the bad script badly,” he said. “Would there be any hope?”

“No.”

He sat leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees and his fingers locked together, and watched her adding to the chain of rings. The singers had started on Tipperary .

“How is your wreck-hunting getting on?” he asked.

“I never give interviews. People like you always get it wrong anyway, and besides, what I do is nobody’s business but my own.”

“I see. I guess I asked for that. All the same, how is your wreck-hunting getting on?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“I don’t believe you’re doing it at all.”

“Oh, I’m doing it all right. What’s more I’m doing it in the comfort of an Air Ministry car. You see, I’m not the only skeptic in the press corps. These claims of yours have been getting some bad reviews abroad, so now Air Ministry has decided to double-check the figures, with me as an observer. Every day we drive around, me and the man from Air Ministry, with a long list of claims, when and where each plane was shot down. And we look, and we look, and then we look some more.” She smiled wryly. “Here comes Chalky.”