Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

Cattermole frowned. After a moment Stickwell set off up the lane. Cattermole watched him and, without enthusiasm, followed. Trapped between high hedges, the fog seemed, if anything, thicker and colder.

“Shit!” Cattermole said. He stood on one leg and looked at the other foot. “Come on, Moggy,” Stickwell called, “or we’ll be late.” Cattermole put his foot down and squelched after him. The lane angled sharply to the left. After fifty yards it was crossed by another and even more primitive lane. Stickwell paused briefly, and then turned right. Cattermole followed. Both his feet were soaking wet, and having wet feet was a condition that Cattermole had disliked intensely, ever since childhood.

“One thing’s certain, sir,” said the sergeant of police, “it won’t be a bit like last time.”

“Mmm.” Kellaway didn’t want to talk about the last time, but he was drinking the guardroom’s tea and eating the guardroom’s biscuits so he had to be polite. “Ah well,” he said.

“I mean, I can’t see us going through all that business with trenches and stuff, can you, sir?”

“Hope not, sergeant.”

The sergeant broke a biscuit in half, considered dunking it, glanced at the adjutant, and thought better. “You were in the last lot, weren’t you, sir?”

“Yes.” Kellaway walked to the window. The fog drifted past like wet smoke.

“Still, I don’t suppose it was all bad, was it, sir?” The sergeant dunked while he had the chance. “From what I hear there used to be quite a bit of what-you-might-call chivalry when you and Jerry had a scrap.”

“Chivalry?” Kellaway gave it some thought. After a while he saw his own reflection in the window and blinked with surprise. He didn’t think he looked forty-two. He thought he looked a rather rumpled twenty-one. “Oh, in the beginning I suppose… Of course I wasn’t there then, but for the first year or two I don’t think either side took flying all that seriously. Later on, when it mattered and things got somewhat desperate, I can’t honestly remember much in the way of chivalry.”

“But it wasn’t like being stuck in the mud getting shelled to kingdom-come by someone you couldn’t even see, was it, sir?” the sergeant persisted. “I mean, at least you blokes were out in the open. More of a duel, like.” The sergeant dropped a duster onto the linoleum and worked it with his foot, removing a couple of faint prints. He should really have left it for the defaulters to do, but he hated looking at smudged linoleum. “I read somewhere that your average RFC pilot lasted three weeks, sir,” he said. “Three weeks!” He shook his head.

“Oh, I knew a chap who lasted two years,” Kellaway said. The sergeant smiled politely but Kellaway could tell that he was disappointed. “On the other hand the new boys usually got knocked down pretty swiftly,” he added. A runner emerged from the fog. Kellaway opened the door and waved. “My goodness, Barton’s absolutely covered in mud…” He went out and counted the gasping runners as they finished their first lap and began their second; waited for a while; came in and shut the door. “Two missing,” he said. “Maybe they’ve got cramp.”

“I’ve seen that tree before,” said Cattermole.

Stickwell stopped, and looked at the twisted trunk climbing into the fog. “Don’t be preposterous, Moggy,” he said coldly.

Cattermole went over and touched it. “Definitely the same tree,” he called back. “I’d know it anywhere.”

“Impossible. We’ve never been in this field before. You’re imagining things.”

“Same tree,” Cattermole insisted. “You know what that means, don’t you?” He walked back to Stickwell.

“I never trusted that bloody silly path in that sodding great wood,” Stickwell muttered savagely. “Damn thing went round and round like a drunken corkscrew.”

“Talk sense, Sticky. You can’t have a drunken corkscrew, for Christ’s sake. It’s not possible.”

Stickwell glared. “All right, then. All right. Since you’re the expert, you pick a route. Go on.”

Cattermole sighed, and looked unhappily at the wandering gray walls of damp and cold that blotted out all landmarks except the twisted trunk. “There’s only one way out of this,” he said. “Dead reckoning.” He tapped his wristwatch. “Point the hour hand at the sun, bisect the angle between that and twelve o’clock, and you’ve got true north.”

Stickwell wiped moisture from his face. “Where did you learn that?”

“Boy Scouts. I was nearly a patrol leader.”

“Nearly? What went wrong?”

“I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, oh, oh.”

“Where’s the sun?” Cattermole asked, raising his wrist.

The fog had a slightly more luminous quality in one area. “Over there,” Stickwell said. He waved his arm through a wide arc.

Cattermole shuffled about until the hour hand was pointing in that general direction. “Bisect the angle…” he muttered, and carefully pointed with his right hand over his left shoulder. “If that’s north, then the airfield must be…” He looked inquiringly.

“South,” Stickwell said confidently. “Main gate’s on the north side, isn’t it?”

“Jesus, I’m cold,” Cattermole said.

They strode briskly into the fog. “Whatever happens we must stay on this bearing,” Stickwell said. Cattermole, trying to look at his watch and also avoid cowflaps, grunted.

Within a minute the ground underfoot began to be boggy. They plodded on. Stickwell lost a gym-shoe, sucked off by a particularly greedy bit of bog. They came to a ditch, waded through it, and climbed the bank to find a barbed-wire fence on top. Cattermole went over first and got his shorts hooked while straddling the wire. Stickwell tried to free him and dragged the barbs across the inside of his thigh. “Stupid bastard!” Cattermole shouted.

“Don’t you talk to me like that,” Stickwell said. He was very angry, but he was also on the wrong side of the wire; and he was a lot shorter than Moggy.

Fanny Barton finished the run first. The fog had begun to fade, and Kellaway saw him fifty yards away, running as easily as most people walk. God, what a splendid-looking chap he is, the adjutant thought. I wish I could draw him. I wish I could draw his smile. As the figure came closer he imagined Fanny Barton’s smile, the way it began with the eyes, wide-set above high cheekbones, and then suddenly reached the mouth and stretched the slim lips so that they made deep, bracketing creases outside them; and then just as quickly the smile faded and left Barton’s usual expression: alert, watchful, ready.

“Well done, Fanny,” Kellaway said, and was rewarded with that flash of smile. “Jolly good show.” The others were soon in sight, their wet gym-shoes pattering on the roadway like faint applause. Barton jogged up and down while they came in, everyone mud-streaked and panting dragon-breaths. “Jolly fine, damn good effort,” Kellaway called out. “Sterling stuff. Rule Britannia.” Billy Starr was the last to finish. They cheered him in, and he ran the last ten yards backward.

“Truly magnificent,” the adjutant said. “Has anyone seen Moggy and Sticky? You should have lapped them.”

No answer.

“How odd,” he said.

“Those blasted cows are following us,” Stickwell said.

“They’re not cows, they’re heifers,” Cattermole told him.

“Thanks very much, Moggy. That’s a great help. When the buggers trample me to death I’ll feel a lot better for knowing they’re not cows. Bloody hell, there’s millions of them.”

The fog had lifted a little, and the field they were trudging across was indeed full of cattle, many of which were trotting after them.