Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

‘Piddle the Puss? Don’t know, old chap,’ said Daniel. ‘I always expected to go underground in a wooden kimono.What are we supposed to do with so much life unexpectedly left over?’

‘I expected to go down in a flamerino. Sizzle sizzle wonk. Good God! The thought of it! I dream about it every night, and I dream about all the boys roast-pigged and sent west, and now I can’t remember which ones are alive and which are dead. The nightmares have got everything muddled up. Sometimes I’m surprised to see you. How many friends did we lose? A hundred and fifty? How many got sent west in a couple of days, and now we can’t remember them? Tell me, what now? For what have we been spared?’

‘I just asked the same question. Buck up,’ said Daniel.

‘Nothing to buck up about,’ said Fluke.

‘We could have ended up as penguins.’

‘Fie upon thee. Quel horreur! ’

‘Do you remember Room 613A? Lord Hugh Cecil?’

‘Christ, it seems like a lifetime ago. Another life altogether. Have you got a gasper?’

‘All gone. Do you remember how we all got worked up over “The Song of the Sword”, and thought what a fine piece of work it was? How inspired we were? Look at it now, and it’s utter bilge and bunkum,’ said Daniel. ‘Do you remember “The Abode of Love”? And how utterly ghastly the depot at Candas was?’

‘Frolicking in the river in midsummer,’ said Fluke.

‘The crack of Spandaus. Crickety-crack.’

‘Won’t miss that much.’

‘Needing to piss at twenty thousand feet,’ said Daniel. ‘What did you do? Funnel and rubber tube?’

‘Just pissed on the joystick. Devil of a job buttoning and unbuttoning. No feeling in the fingers at all.’

‘Christ, I’ve never been so cold.’

‘You didn’t go to Harrow,’ said Fluke.

‘At Westminster we had frost on the inside of the windows,’ said Daniel. ‘Wish I’d known about whale grease back then.’

‘Par for the course,’ replied Fluke. ‘At Harrow we had lumps of ice in our tea in place of lumps of sugar.’

‘I won’t miss the stench of whale grease,’ reflected Daniel. ‘Did you take chlorodyne, before long flights?’

‘Had to. Castor oil plus wind up equals runs, n’est-ce pas ?’

‘I didn’t take chlorodyne,’ said Daniel. ‘I always made a point of going before I went, so to speak.’

‘No more Comic Cuts ,’ said Fluke.

‘Wish I’d kept them. I’ve got some Wipers Times .’

‘No more DOPs, thank God. Or trench-strafing. Or tennis with the padre. Wonderful forehand.’

‘Wait for the next war, old fellow.’

‘God forbid,’ said Fluke. ‘Did you know that No. 9’s leaving? Going to set up a surgery in Fife, apparently.’

‘You know,’ said Daniel, ‘I never felt so lonely in my life as when we were flying, even in a flight formation.’

‘It was the awful distortion of time that got me muddled,’ said Fluke. ‘All that hanging around from dawn ’til dusk, going on missions at a moment’s notice, having two breakfasts and no lunch and sleeping whenever you could. Time stopped. Or it stretched. Like knicker elastic.’

‘And then the time had all suddenly gone,’ said Daniel. ‘Did I tell you about my horrible dream?’

‘Lots of times.’

‘It’s vile. Keeps coming back, just about every night. And now you’re going to be split-arsing all over the pampas.’

‘So I am. Lucky I’m fond of beef. I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘It might be warmer in Argentina. Does one’s moustache freeze at twenty thousand feet in Argentina?’

‘What happened to the Wing Commander?’

‘Tight as a tick. Passed out. By the piano.’

‘Let’s cut off half his moustache.’

‘I’ve got some nail scissors in my hut. Back in a jiffy.’

Having accomplished the evil deed without opposition, they settled back against the wall of the hut and set about downing a jug of water. With great pathos Fluke sang:

‘Wrap me up in my old yellow jacket,

Give me my joystick to hold, to hold,

Let me fly once again o’er the trenches,

And thus shall my exploits be told, be told.

‘Let’s drink more water,’ he said. ‘We shall be peeing all night, but we might get away with not having a hangover.’

‘It’s me I feel sorry for,’ said Daniel. ‘I’m dreading saying goodbye to my bus. There’s nothing worse than bidding farewell to your bus. I still miss my Pup. What a sweetheart it was.’

‘You got over it when you swapped your Camel.’

‘I loved my Camels, by God, I loved my Camels, but I did get through three of them, and I had to crash one on purpose because it was such a dud and they wouldn’t give me another. Now I love my Snipe. Let’s go upstairs in the morning. One last time. Say goodbye to my bus. And you say goodbye to yours.’

‘The only answer is to marry a rich woman and buy one.’

‘You can buy them for a song these days. But where would I put it? And I’m married already.’

‘So you are. Poor bugger. So am I. Poor bugger. Thank God for the children, eh? Only thing that makes it worthwhile.’

‘Thank God for the children,’ said Daniel, thinking of Esther, tucked up and asleep in Eltham.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ said Fluke.

‘You know what, Fluke? We did win an astounding victory.’

‘Did we?’

‘Against ourselves. We did reckless things, got terrified for months on end ’til we were so FSD’d that we came out the other side in a loop and did it all some more and again and again, and we did it by always winning against our sensible selves. We beat the Huns too. That’s something.’

‘Did we beat them enough, though? The beaten always come back for another try. It’s a matter of honour, isn’t it? I come back when I get beaten. That’s how I got that bright green Fokker that forced me down at Amiens. And they still think they’re better than us. I blame Beethoven.’

‘Beethoven?’

‘Bound to make you arrogant if you’ve got the best composer.’

‘I expect we’ll get the woofits now, ad aeternitatem ,’ said Daniel sadly.

DANIEL PITT LEFT the RAF with great misgivings and much heartsickness. He had loved the wild and thrilling times he had recently passed through, but like everyone else who survives in an armed service after the end of a war, he had realised that the last thing anyone wants in such a peacetime service is a warrior with real combat experience. After the fighting, the time arrives for merely keeping things running smoothly. If it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t, polish it. People who remember how things were done, what works and what does not, are of no further use to those who are compiling books of regulations, and watching their own backs as they enforce them. Daniel realised that there was no point whatsoever in being a warrior when there was no war to speak of.

In addition he knew that the last two years of the war had taken a terrible toll on him. The stress of fighting is cumulative, and the measures you take to deal with it never quite meet the need. There are a few men who are utterly fearless, but most men have a bank of courage which one can only draw upon until the account is empty. An overdraft on this bank is an impossibility. Like everyone else in the mess he had, almost every night, consumed pints of whisky that should have killed him, and like everyone else he had smashed up the furniture and made a fool of himself every time there was a binge, and you had a binge every time one of your comrades was posted away or survived a crash. He had sung idiotic songs, danced on tables, fallen off tables, woken up in the wrong hut, vomited, gone out and railed at the Hun night bombers, got sentimental and maudlin before passing out, had diarrhoea almost every morning, gone looking for local girls or WAACs from a Waacery because tomorrow we die, cursed the staff officers who stayed behind the lines and awarded themselves medals. He had flown missions blind blotto, stupefied and hilarious, and never been able to get out of his memory’s vision the dozens of comrades he had grown to love or had only known for two days who had crashed to earth, leaving behind them fob watches, books, cigarette cases, accordions and violins, and bundles of letters that they had always asked should be destroyed in the event of their deaths.