Derek Robinson - Piece of Cake

“They’re just curious, Sticky. Ignore them.”

“Oh, sure. Ignore a dirty great horn up my rear end. Let’s get out of here.”

Stickwell began running. The cattle increased speed to a slow gallop. By the time he had covered fifty yards a small herd was cantering after him.

Cattermole plodded on, watching them fade into the fog. Several minutes later, when he caught up, Stickwell was on the other side of a fence and he was throwing lumps of mud at the animals. “Bloody brutes tried to eat me,” he complained.

Cattermole climbed the fence. They walked along a farm track and met a man mending a gate. “Which way to Kingsmere aerodrome?” Stickwell asked.

The man looked at them and tossed his hammer from hand to hand. “How do I know you’re not German spies?” he asked.

Stickwell glared. “What makes you think German spies go wandering about Essex in their underwear, covered in shit and chased by wild bloody cows?”

“Heifers,” Cattermole said.

The man whacked the gatepost a few times while he thought about that. “Go back the way you came,” he said. “Take the second turn on the left, and Kingsmere’s three mile straight on.”

“Three miles?” Cattermole said faintly. “Three miles?”

“He’s lying,” Stickwell said. “He thinks we’re spies, he’s deliberately sending us the wrong way.”

The man contemplated his gatepost and gave it another whack. “Now get off my land afore I set the dogs on you,” he said.

“Come on, Sticky,” Cattermole said. They trailed back the way they had come.

Shouts of challenge, and unoriginal insults, and howls of pain, and hoots of laughter echoed along the corridor. Fanny Barton lay in a hot bath and listened: that was Moke Miller’s laugh, so it must be Fitz Fitzgerald trying to pick a fight with Mother Cox, since Moke and Fitz usually stuck together; and those forthright Lowland curses must be coming from Pip Patterson, who didn’t usually put himself out to protect Mother, so he was probably just trying to get past the others without being flicked with a wet towel. The bathroom door shook as bodies crashed against it. Barton breathed deeply and easily. He knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. There was a powerful rumor going about that the Ram intended to weed out several pilots, so this would be a very bad moment to annoy a flight commander; what’s more, Fanny had always made it clear that he didn’t enjoy horseplay. If the others wanted to wrestle and chase and chuck things at each other, that was okay as long as it didn’t involve him. He wasn’t being stuffy; it just wasn’t his style, that’s all.

Fanny’s real name was Keith. He’d been christened Keith Donald Hugh because his father was intensely keen on cricket; one day, he hoped, his son would play cricket for New Zealand, in which case he would need three good initials to distinguish him from all the other Bartons. The boy was hopeless at cricket. He was good at athletics, but that meant less than nothing to his father: running round in circles, waste of time, where does it get you? After cricket, only two things mattered to Mr. Barton: sheep, and the royal family. His house had very few pictures, but what there were showed either prize Merino rams or King George in his robes. Both subjects had a heavy-lidded, overdressed look, and Keith grew up associating the one with the other. He came to hate life on the farm. It was dreary, exhausting, repetitive work with a lot of greasy, clumsy, bloody-minded animals. The first chance he had, he got out: out of the farm, out of New Zealand, right across the world to Britain, into the Royal Air Force.

That was a very long time ago. Now he was twenty-four and a flight lieutenant. He couldn’t even remember how he’d got the nickname Fanny. Everyone had a nickname in the squadron, it was part of Fighter Command’s undergraduate quality: an implacably bright, slangy, superficial attitude, the kind of outlook that took nothing seriously except the supreme importance of being in Fighter Command; and that went without saying.

He pressed his feet against the bath, rested his neck on the other end, and slowly tightened his muscles until his body began to emerge from the water. He pushed harder until his buttocks were clear and he was arched, dripping and steaming, in the cool air. After a few seconds the strain made his muscles quiver. Outside, the horseplay had ended; the corridor was quiet. Fanny Barton held his breath and idly wondered what would happen to a well-trained and beautifully coordinated body when it received a burst of machine-gun fire at a height of three or four miles. The idea did not disturb him. He had thought about it too often for that; and in any case it would be somebody else’s body taking the bullets, not his. He lowered himself, welcoming the warmth, and reached for the soap.

“You’re bleeding all over my leg,” said Cattermole. He was carrying Stickwell on his back.

“I know,” Stickwell said. “Don’t worry, it’s only my toe. Mind you,” he added, “it hurts like hell.”

The fog had continued to lift, and now it was only a tawny haze. The lane stretched in front of them, dead straight for at least half a mile.

“You wouldn’t have cut your stupid foot if you hadn’t lost your stupid shoe,” Cattermole grumbled. He stopped, heaved his passenger to a more comfortable position, and plodded on. “I didn’t lose my shoe, did I?”

“Think yourself lucky, Moggy. Very, very lucky.”

Cattermole thought, and glanced down at the fresh blood streaking his leg. “I hope you haven’t got anything, that’s all,” he said.

“What d’you mean, ‘got anything’?”

“I mean I don’t want to get infected.”

“How the hell can you get infected? I’m the one who’s hurt, for God’s sake. If anyone’s going to catch lockjaw it’ll be me.”

“Lockjaw? Why lockjaw?”

“Oh…” Stickwell tried to remember some sixth-form biology. “Blood poisoning. You cut yourself and then tread in cowdung and… Anyway, it’s not very nice, I can tell you. You go paralyzed and die, or something.”

“I see,” Cattermole said. “And that’s the filthy muck you’re spreading all over my leg, is it? Thanks very much. Charming, I must say.”

Stickwell leaned out and looked down. “You’ve already got every other kind of filthy muck on your leg, Moggy. Mine won’t do you any harm.”

“For Christ’s sake stop rocking about.” They covered another forty or fifty yards in silence. Then Cattermole said: “What time is it? I can’t see my watch.”

Stickwell twisted to the left. “Looks like ten past ten,” he said.

“Ten past ten… Say we left about nine… Hell, the others must have finished hours ago.”

Stickwell grunted.

“The Ram’s not going to like this,” Cattermole said. “You know how keen he is on physical fitness.”

“Potty about it,” Stickwell muttered. He was getting pins-and-needles in his legs.

“Kellaway says the Ram keeps talking about chopping chaps who aren’t fit enough.”

“I’m fit,” Stickwell said. “Nothing wrong with me. I just can’t walk, that’s all.”

“Imagine getting chopped and posted to some bloody awful Battle squadron,” Cattermole said. “I don’t fancy that.”

“Do get a move on, Moggy,” Stickwell said.

“All because of coming in last in a damn-fool cross-country run. No fear.” Cattermole dropped his passenger and began running. Stickwell’s legs folded and he sprawled on his back. “Moggy!” he cried. “Moggy, you bastard!”

“I’ll tell him you’re on your way,” Cattermole called back.

“But I can’t walk.”

“Then hop!” Cattermole shouted. “Hop!” He demonstrated the action, a lanky, filthy, half-naked figure hopping down the middle of the lane. Stickwell sat and watched him go. A breeze was at work on the remains of the fog. He shivered, and got to his feet. “Bollocks,” he said to the world at large.