Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

Fraser was astonished. He had blinked when the shell burst and all he had seen of his leader was a flickering blur rising faster than he could move his eyes. The Heinkel swam toward him, wobbling in the turbulence, so he gave it a four-second burst that knocked down its undercarriage, which struck him as an odd reward, and he broke, hard and high.

The sky was spattered with action: streaks of smoke, sparkling gun-muzzles, hanging snowballs of flak. The whole bloody-minded display of banditry was still thrusting north, except for one item. Falling behind the raid was an unhappy Hurricane, flopping and staggering as a 110 laced it with fire. Fraser guessed it was Haducek and he chased back with the tit pulled out and the Merlin screaming for revenge. The 110 quite wisely held its course and sped toward France, drawing away from Fraser all the time. In any case, Fraser’s attempt at rescue was wasted. A shell splinter had penetrated Haducek’s skull behind the left ear. He was stone dead long before his Hurricane buried him ten feet below a field of cabbages.

“Come and see this” Skull said to Kellaway

They went to Haducek’s room. “Everything was packed,” Skull said. “All his clothes, all his belongings.” He pointed to a big envelope. “Personal papers. He’s marked them ‘to be destroyed.’ There’s a check to pay his mess bill. Five pounds for his batman.”

“Five?” Kellaway frowned. “That’s far too much. You don’t want to spoil them.”

“Well…” Skull turned the banknote over as if there might be a message written on the other side. “It’s Haddy’s money. I mean, it was Haddy’s money.”

“I suppose you’d better let the fellow have it. Five quid… In the last show a batman was lucky if he got ten bob.”

“And there’s this.” Skull picked up a much-read copy of Das Kapital . “He’s left it to Moggy Cattermole.”

“Oh dear.” Kellaway took the book and flipped through it. “Better not tell Moggy about the fiver. It’ll only make him jealous.”

Next morning the steamroller was back at work, but not all the new craters had been filled in. An army truck stood in a distant corner of the field, with red flags fluttering around it to mark unexploded bombs.

Most of the pilots were dozing by the trenches, caps pulled over their eyes to keep out the sunlight. The air held a faint tang of autumn. The portable gramophone was playing Thanks for the Memory . There were two or three new faces. CH3 wandered from one to another, asking questions but only half-listening to the answers. He was endlessly polishing his goggles.

Barton came down from the tower and walked across to the squadron. Around his neck he wore the lavatory seat from the portable toilet. “Rise and shine,” he said. “We’re now on two-minute standby. Lots of lovely trade building up.”

Quirk slowly woke up and blinked at Barton. “You look rather like a horse,” he said.

“He always did,” Cattermole said.

“Yes, but now he looks like the front end.”

“Don’t talk rubbish,” Gordon said. “Whoever heard of a horse wearing a bog-seat round its neck?” They were putting on Mae Wests and zipping up flying-boots.

“This is no bog-seat,” Barton told them. “This is the Baggy Bletchley Memorial Trophy.”

Cattermole said: “I had an uncle who thought he was a Derby winner. He always wore a bog-seat around his neck.”

“Sounds very unlikely to me,” Renouf said. “I don’t remember any Cattermole winning the Derby.”

“No, he lied about that,” Cattermole said. “The best he ever did was second in the Oaks.”

“This trophy,” Barton said, “will be awarded each day to the biggest piss-artist in the squadron, as decided by popular vote.”

“Moggy,” Steele-Stebbing said.

Cattermole nodded graciously.

“I nominate Flash,” Renouf said.

“I nominate Nim,” Gordon said. “I saw him wave his hanky at a Dornier the other day. What a ponce! What a piss-artist!”

“I was waving goodbye,” Renouf said. “Some of us still have manners, you know.”

“It had spots.”

“Very rare, spotted Dorniers,” Quirk said.

“Who gets your vote, CH3?” Barton asked.

“Haducek,” he said bleakly. “Haducek, Todd, Phillips, Flip Moran, Fitz and Zab. Every one a prize piss-artist. Must have been. None of them lasted the course.”

“I want to talk to you,” Barton said.

They went to the crewroom. As soon as they were inside, Barton threw the lavatory seat at the wall. “I’ve had enough of you,” he said. “You’ve become a pain in the ass. You think you can solve everything by planning, and holding briefings, and organizing people. You think if you organize the kites, and the pilots, and the guns, and the tactics, and the controllers, and the bloody weather too I shouldn’t be surprised, then everything will be perfect and nobody need get hurt except Jerry. You think you can get it all scientifically worked out so that nothing, absolutely nothing, gets left to chance. You’re a typical fucking Yank. If there’s a scientific way to break wind you’ll get a patent on it. That’s what’s wrong with you, CH3. I used to think you were a brain. You’re just a bleeding ulcer.”

“And what’s your alternative? Swanning about with a broken bog-seat round your neck?”

“It bucked them up a bit, poor buggers. And with you around, they could do with a bit of bucking up.”

“Fun and games,” CH3 said bitterly. “Half the squadron don’t know a 109 from fried chicken and you waste their time on dumb jokes.”

“They’ll be scrambled in ten minutes. What they don’t know now they’ll never learn by then.”

“You can try , for God’s sake. Tell the new boys which way to break when they get jumped. Tell ’em about blind spots. Deflection. Sun.”

“There isn’t time,” Barton said. “It can’t be done.”

“Wrong. Anything can be done.”

“How? Are you going to buy an extra week for a million dollars?” Barton’s temper was about to snap, and he knew it; but he couldn’t slow down. “You don’t like this battle. You reckon it’s a cock-up. Let me tell you something: it is a cock-up! This whole war’s been a cock-up, ever since the Ram fell on his head a year ago. Every war’s a cock-up, because that’s what war is: organized cock-ups. And I’ll tell you something else: I don’t need you to help me cock it up. Flash Gordon can lead ‘A’ flight. I like Flash. His brains are in his guts. You’re grounded for twenty-four hours. Now get off this field and out of my sight.”

CH3 went out and walked away, without a word, without a glance. Barton returned to the pilots. He felt a curious mixture of guilt and exhilaration. “Flash, you’re acting ‘A’ flight commander,” he said.

“Excellent judgment,” Gordon told the replacements. “Fanny is a very brilliant CO. One day he will be queen of England, mark my words.”

A couple of minutes dragged by. Everyone was restless, fidgety. Some of the replacements were sweating more than the heat required. They were all breathing rather quickly and shallowly.

There was a field telephone on a box. It clicked softly. Nim Renouf turned away and was sick. Barton caught the phone as it rang, and listened.

“Both flights scrambled,” he said. “I’ll lead ‘B’ flight. Flash takes ‘A.’” They were already hurrying toward their aircraft, Renouf spitting and swearing as he went. “Two big raids,” Barton called. “We’ve got one each. Lucky us.”

Flash was trembling, not with fear but with excitement. Fear had touched him when he first saw the raid. It hung between two plump clouds like a swarm of bees, and he looked away, not wanting to know how many aircraft or what type. What did it matter, how many? Too many was always too many: there was no comfort in figures. All the same, one part of his mind insisted on proceeding with an estimate. Sixty plus.