Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

After a comparatively civilised feast of roast beef, followed by bread-and-butter pudding, and after the loyal toast, Fluke made a speech in honour of Daniel, comparing him to Albert Ball, and Daniel made a speech in honour of Fluke, comparing him to Billy Bishop. These were accompanied by jeers and cheers, and the hurling of buns at the speakers. The Wing Commander, who had arrived in his personal Sopwith Pup for the occasion, stood up and made an elaborate speech in honour of them both, describing them as stout fellows and Hun-getters the like of which we will never see again, now that the Huns have all been got, and mighty pippers and balloonatics before the Lord. He proposed a toast to ‘Good old Boom and Baring’.

Then the ragging began. Pilot Officer Jenkins played cakewalks on the piano until someone kicked the stool from under him. Daniel stood on the table and sang ‘She Was Poor But She Was Honest’ in the filthiest and longest version he knew, and then sang it again, accompanied by a banjo player who was playing something else altogether, in a different key. They all sang ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, and Jenkins woke up and played ‘Any Time’s Kissing Time’ and then passed out again. Inspired by this, Fluke took his turn on the table and danced an imaginative Highland fling, like a grasshopper in a frying pan, until the table collapsed, amid great splintering. Not to be undone, the Wing Commander, who was a real Scot, crossed two knives on the rug and demonstrated how to do the Highland fling properly.

Fluke climbed on the piano and tried a Cossack dance, but it was an upright, and the top was hardly wide enough, so his left foot became jammed between it and the wall. Carter and Bressingham cleared everyone to the perimeter of the room and had a duel with chairs, which Bressingham won, to great acclamation.

Then Bressingham proposed a bullfight, and brandished the tablecloth as everyone in turn put their fingers to their foreheads and charged him at a crouch. ‘Olé, olé, olé!’

The gramophone was wound up and Wootton demonstrated how to dance whilst performing a handstand. A small group of them played Cardinal Puff, with champagne and whisky, until there was no choice but to go outside and vomit in the fresh air.

‘Drunk last night, drunk like the night before,

And we’re going to get drunk again tonight

If we never get drunk no more.’

Daniel shouted for silence and said, ‘Brothers, over many months I saw many empty chairs, and nothing gives a sentimental airman like me a greater pain than the sight of empty chairs in the mess. Tomorrow there will be two empty chairs. But grieve not! Fluke and I will return, yea, just like Robin Hood, in the hour of need. We are not dead. We are merely sleeping in the wings.’

‘Like King Arthur, you BF,’ said Bressingham.

‘Like King Arthur,’ said Daniel. ‘I said King Arthur. Robin Hood? Who said Robin Hood? Nunc est bibendum! ’

‘ Nunc est bibendum! ’ they roared, and, at this signal, the rumpus began with high cockalorum, and continued with Harry Kelly’s tank game. Fluke emptied out the coal scuttle into a corner, and Daniel went to his hut to fetch another. Then he and Fluke went to one end of the mess and put the empty scuttles on their heads. The sky pilot blew the whistle for the commencement of battle, and Daniel and Fluke charged blindly for the other end of the room whilst their baying and jeering comrades pelted them with coal. It pinged and clanged on the scuttles, and Fluke and Daniel blundered about trying to find the surviving table.

At last the table was found, climbed upon and occupied, and the ammunition had run out and needed to be gathered up. Daniel and Fluke had won, as they always did, once again proving the invincibility of the tank, even when the drivers can’t see anything.

There was a wheelbarrow race round the huts clockwise, and then a three-legged race around them anticlockwise. Somebody ripped up the ludo board, and somebody else poured the chess pieces in the piano to see if he could make it jangle.

Boom alert! Take a note, Baring! The Wing Commander will now make shampoo! Orderly! Fetch the whisky and the champagne! Yes, sir! Two bottles, orderly! Yes, sir! Orderly, fetch the sponge and the bucket! Yes, sir!

The Wing Commander emptied the whisky and champagne into the bucket, the sponge was dipped, and the Wing Commander ceremoniously baptised each in turn. The men attempted to catch the drips that ran past their mouths.

We shall each sup in turn from the bucket! Orderly! Time to pass the bucket! Yes, sir! Dis manibus! Deo invicto Mithrae! To us! To the dead Huns! To good old George! To Albert and Mick and Arthur and James and the whole damn lot of ’em! Orderly! Whisky, champagne! Yes, sir! Orderly, arm us with siphons! Yes, sir! Let battle commence! B flight against A and C! Wait … wait … stand by … on my order … Open fire! Orderly, the fire extinguisher, the fire extinguisher! Yes, sir, the fire extinguisher, sir!

There was a treetop battle. Men climbed on the shoulders of another, and a general melee ensued, which did not finish until the last pair remained standing. Carter broke his wrist and did not realise until the following morning, when the pain of it surpassed that of his hangover. When it was clear that no more mayhem was conceivable or possible, and that they could not be more sodden, they sang to the melody of ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’ their own squadron’s version of the Flying Corps anthem.

‘A poor aviator lay dying

At the end of a bright summer’s day.

The weeping ack emmas had gathered

To carry his fragments away.

The engine was piled on his wishbone

His Vickers was wrapped round his head,

A spark plug he wore on each elbow,

’Twas plain he would shortly be dead.

He spat out a valve and a gasket,

And stirred in the sump where he lay,

And then to his wondering comrades

These brave parting words he did say.

“Take the magneto out of my stomach,

And the butterfly valve from my neck,

Extract from my liver the crankshaft,

There are lots of good parts in this wreck.

Take the manifold out of my larynx,

And the cylinders out of my brain,

Take the piston rods out of my kidneys,

And assemble the engine again.

Pull the longeron out of my backbone,

The turnbuckle out of my ear,

From the small of my back take the rudder,

There’s all of my aeroplane here.”

So hold all your glasses right steady,

And let’s drink a toast to the sky,

And here’s to the dead already,

And here’s to the next man to die.’

‘Encore! Encore!’ cried Fluke, and they sang it over and over until at last, for the first time in years, it seemed funny again.

Then the Wing Commander ordered a rag, A and B flights against C flight, and Fluke grabbed a cushion. They scrummed down, arms locked about each other, and the Wing Commander tossed the cushion into the middle. Until the cushion burst apart and filled the air with white feathers, they had as good and rowdy a game of indoor rugby as one could possibly hope for inside a large wooden hut. The Wing Commander got a black eye, even though he was non-combatant.

Finally there was no one left standing except Daniel and Fluke, staggering with their arms about each other’s shoulders as they surveyed the spillage and the ruin of the furniture and the fallen. Even the gramophone was wrecked.

They collapsed side by side against the wooden wall, sliding down it together, and Fluke put his head back and sighed. ‘Ripping binge. The rippingest. Verily, I am by the waters of Babylon.’

‘It’s the saddest day of our lives,’ said Daniel.

‘It’s all postscript now,’ said Fluke. ‘Nothing but bloody postscript. We got matched to the hour, thanked God for it, got through it, binged and biffoed, cursed God and the politicians and generals, shouted and laughed, lost our friends, hurtled about in the sky, slaughtered and murdered and nearly got killed God knows how many times, got the gust up so we could hardly drink for the shakes, and now it’s all gone. Do you remember Albert, lighting a magnesium flare in the dark and walking round it ’til it went out, playing his violin? And Mick playing that “Caprice Viennoise” on his violin and always saying it was too hard? Do you remember the bombing raids with fruit? I got a rigger with an orange, once. What happened to Mick’s cat?’