Hornet’s Sting (29 page)

Training must go on, and more intensively. The C.O. made himself leader of the Pups that were making mock attacks on the Biffs and he ordered Paxton and Woolley to fly with him.

First, he briefed them. They came to his office and stood, while he sat at his desk and worried.

“I know you of old,” he told Paxton. “Not a bad pilot, although God knows what cock-eyed ballyhoo you've picked up in England. As for you,” he told Woolley, “I could be unpleasant, but I won't. You're a fart, and I hope to see the back of you soon. Meanwhile, remember this, both of you. The air war has changed while you've been away. It's not man-to-man any more. It's formation against formation. We fly and fight as a formation. That's what this training is all about. Clear?”

“Admirably so, sir,” Paxton said.

“Don't talk like a butler. I don't want your damned admiration. I want your obedience.”

Six Biffs and six Pups flew to Braye. Whenever the weather allowed, they practised interceptions. Cleve-Cutler made these as difficult as possible. Some threats were real and the Pups pressed home their attacks, charging at the fighters until they were the focus of all six imaginary bulletstreams. Other threats were fake, meant to tug and twist the formation until it was ragged and slow to respond.

Cleve-Cutler failed to fool them. His flight commanders were experienced air-fighters. They could read the sky at a glance; what's more they could read the C.O.'s mind. Their crews were as welldrilled as Guardsmen. Whenever the Pups made a charge, the Biffs turned as if tied together and crossed their path. If the gunners had actually fired, the Pups would have flown into a cone of bullets and been hacked down. Repeatedly, the cine-films proved this.

* * *

The adjutant handed Count Andrei the leather-bound Bible. “Jolly kind of you,” he said. “Your people in Paris are a bit jumpy, so I'm told.”

“Terrified of being ordered home to Petersburg, I expect. Who's in charge there now?” Brazier gave him a piece of paper. Andrei read it. “Crumbs,” he said. “Whatever that means.”

He found the duke in the officers' bathhouse, sitting on a reversed chair, being shaved by Private Bugler. Snow was soaking in a hot tub. Maddegan sat on the edge, playing with the soap, making it squirt between his fingers. He saw the Bible and groaned.

“Is big change in Petersburg,” Andrei announced. “Is time to swear new oath.”

“I don't swear,” Nikolai said quietly.

“He'll hit you,” Maddegan said.

“I don't swear.”

Bugler was slow taking his hands away. The Bible clouted Nikolai's head and rocked it like a balloon on a stick, and the razor nicked his ear. Flecks of lather drifted and fell. Bugler retreated and hid the razor behind his back. Blood created small red rosettes on the floor.

Andrei hooked a foot around a leg of the chair and tipped Nikolai out. He trod on his stomach. He shoved the Bible into his hands. “You swear allegiance to Prince Lvov, leader of the Duma.”

“I swear,” Nikolai wheezed. He dropped the Bible and got up and scrambled to the door. “Prince Lvov is lousy greedy no-brain piece of pox!” Blood ran off his chin. “Tsar will chop head off!” He left.

“Bugler!” Snow roared. “Find the doctor.” Bugler hurried away, grumbling hard.

“Look, I'm all for loyalty,” Maddegan said, “but must you keep walloping him? That's the third time.”

“Fourth,” Snow said.

“The Romanovs are finished,” Andrei said. “Now he is the servant. Now I give orders.”

“Seems kind of pointless,” Snow said. “He says no, you thump him, and he says yes. Still, I'm just a crude Canadian, what the hell do I know of your quaint old aristocratic ways.”

* * *

Nothing memorable happened to Adam Gillespie Keith Heeley for seventeen years. Then he spent the summer holidays with his aunt, in Sidmouth. She was only twenty-six and looked twenty-two. On the other hand, he was only seventeen and looked fifteen. She liked dancing with him, teaching him the waltz, and looking into his cool grey eyes. She knew enough about the rest of him. In his bathing costume he made a good shape, and when he came out of the sea, with the costume clinging pointedly, she felt tremors of a lust that made it hard for her to speak. One dull afternoon she seduced him in her bedroom.

What surprised the boy most about his first sexual experience was the violence of it. He had not thought passion could be quite so passionate. When he got his breath back he said, “Crikey.” That made her laugh. He said, “Why me?” He was bewildered by the fact that a grown-up should choose to do such a grown-up thing with him. “I suppose,” she said, “I've nothing to be afraid of, with you.” It was a spontaneous, honest answer, but not very flattering.

It explained Adam Heeley to himself. It explained the long-suffering glances that scores of schoolmasters had given him, and the brutal way that hundreds of schoolboys had ignored him. He was nothing special. The sober truth of that summer in Sidmouth was that his aunt craved his body but otherwise he bored her, as he bored most people.
He went to an eminent school, wore its uniform, spoke the language of the English upper class, not because he was different but because his parents were rich. He had assumed he was special. Now he felt tricked. A long failure beckoned.

When the war came along, he didn't take much interest in it. He was only eighteen. War was a job for professional soldiers and hearty patriots, people who liked doing that sort of thing. Late in 1915 he was flicking through the latest
Illustrated London News
when he saw the face of a boy called Taverner, now a lieutenant in the uniform of the King's Rifles, with a Military Cross, and dead.

In a spell when he had been very lonely at school, Heeley had heroworshipped Taverner from afar. They had never spoken, but Taverner had grinned at him, once. Oh well, Heeley thought, if Taverner's gone I might as well go too. The whole page was taken up with awards, most of them posthumous. He shut his eyes and stabbed with a finger. Royal Flying Corps.

Everyone is good at something. The trick is finding it. When Heeley went up in an aeroplane, and looked down on people like insects in a world like Toytown, he felt special. This was why God had put him on Earth: to fly above it.

He did six months as an observer, spotting for guns and photographing enemy trenches; crashed twice, nothing serious; re-trained as a pilot; joined Hornet Squadron and had never been so happy as when he was flying a Pup. After three months of D.O.P.s, he was still alive. It came as a surprise. His confidence grew. Three months ago, he wouldn't have dared to go up to Captain Woolley and say there was a rumour that he knew how to get out of a bad spin; and if so, would he reveal the secret?

Woolley was outside his hut, sitting on a log. He thought for a long time before he said, “D'you like this war?”

“I like my bit of it. Damn good fun.”

“Well, that's got to stop, hasn't it?” Woolley's voice was hard and square, not contorted to the drawl of the Home Counties. “If it's fun, it'll go on for ever. That's human nature. Right?”

“Look ... if you don't want to tell me . . .”

“Got twenty-five francs? I'll tell you, for twenty-five.”

Heeley was amazed. “That's very ... mercenary.”

“Your life's not worth twenty-five francs? Well, you know best.”

Heeley gave him the money.

“Stop fooling around with the rudder. You can't
turn
out of a bad spin. Centre the rudder. Forget about using the ailerons. Centre the
stick
. You can't control the machine unless it's going forward, so make it go forward. Switch off the engine. Centre everything and push the stick hard forward. The elevators will start to bite. The tail goes up, the nose goes down. Now you're diving, you've got wind over the wings and past the rudder, and you can correct what's left of the spin.”

“Thank you,” Heeley said.

“And if it doesn't work, don't come running to me.”

Heeley went away, feeling as if he had been hustled into buying a pair of rabbits from a poacher, except that he had nothing to show for his money. Was it possible that Woolley had sold him a lot of nonsense? He stopped and tried to remember exactly what the fellow had said, and he was gazing at a cloud when the great bombardment began.

It beat the air like a punishment. Heeley's documents said he was Church of England, but if he got caught in a storm, and the sky was split by thunder, all the hairs on his neck bristled like a dog's and briefly he knew no god but fear. Now a hundred thunderstorms roared in the east. Heeley knew the guns were ten miles away, probably more, but still his neck bristled.

Dando and Duke Nikolai came out of the doctor's hut. Silk thread trailed from the Russian's ear. “Bloody neighbours,” Dando said. “Can't a man get a wink of sleep?”

“Battle begins now,” Nikolai said.

“Not yet,” Heeley said. “This is just spring cleaning. The P.B.I. are chucking out their old pots and pans.” He noticed the ear. “What happened to you?”

“I stitched him up,” Dando said.

“Why?” Heeley met the doctor's glittering glance. “Never mind,” he muttered.

The thunder brought everyone out. Experienced men compared it with other occasions. Spud Ogilvy remembered the bombardment before the Somme as having been louder. Crabtree offered to run a sweepstake concerning the duration of the barrage. “On the Somme, the gunners kept it up for ten days,” he said.

Paxton sniffed. “Didn't do much good, did it?”

The adjutant cleared his throat so forcefully that he silenced them all. “Valuable lessons were learned at the Somme,” he announced.

As if to endorse his view, the barrage intensified. He cocked his head and enjoyed it. The day was strangely flat and airless, under a drab, blank sky; a forgettable day, only fit for demolition. Brazier said, “The Hun Front Line won't survive this shelling. I have friends in the infantry, and they tell me we have a little trick up our sleeves.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Try as he might, the Hun won't shell our troops in Arras. He'll do his worst, but his guns won't harm a single British soldier.” He rocked on his heels and looked longingly to the noisy east.

“The Boche machine guns will get them all?” Crabtree suggested.

Brazier took his arm. “A word in your ear,” he said. They strolled away.

“We can shell
them,”
Paxton said to Woolley, “but they can't shell
us
. Is that what Uncle said?”

“It's not Christian,” McWatters said. “I wouldn't have joined up if I'd known there was cheating involved. What's going on, padre?”

“Not for me to say, old chap. Just a simple cleric, me. I leave the tricky stuff to the bishops.”

“My dad was a bishop,” Woolley remarked. “Very hard on the knees, he said.”

“Well, prayer often involves self-denial.”

“That wasn't prayer. That was rescuing fallen women in Huddersfield. When you're a bishop in Huddersfield, you can't turn a corner without tripping over a fallen woman.”

“How distressing. Would anyone like to play ping-pong?”

“Weak ankles,” Woolley said. “That's what causes their downfall.”

Out of earshot of the group, the adjutant said gruffly, “I've nothing against an honest joke, but there's no place in war for cynicism. For God's sake, man, think what effect your remarks have on others.”

“My dear chap.” Crabtree plucked a grey hair from the adjutant's lapel. “I had no idea I caused you such distress. You should have spoken sooner.”

“I did, damn it.”

“The damage is done now, of course.” He found another hair. “You must be brave, Uncle. Can you last out? It's only for a few more
days.” He patted Brazier on the arm and walked away. “Be not dismayed!” he called back.

“Lunatic,” Brazier said.

Crabtree waved a friendly arm. “My pleasure.”

Difficult to stand. Furniture broken
.

The Biff crews had a keener appetite for training now that the opening of the bombardment meant the Big Push was near. Cleve-Cutler felt the strain of waiting for action fall away. He had exhausted his capacity for anxiety and mistrust. Optimism flooded in. It was time for another mess-night party, time for a bathtub of Hornet's Sting.

Heeley knocked back a glass of the mixture. It rushed down his throat like friendly lava. “Christ!” he said. His voice was strangely husky and virile; he sounded ten years older. The drink hit his stomach and the happy uproar of the party faded and twisted in his ears, and then surged back. “God speed the plough!” he said, just to enjoy his new voice.

“Plough be damned. Send for the fire brigade.” The other voice, strong and plummy, came from behind him. “What the deuce is in this drink? Apart from gunpowder and Brasso, that is.”

Heeley turned and saw a tall man with a big face and a chest fit for an opera singer. He was over thirty, balding, and he wore the uniform of the Blues. Heeley squared his shoulders and tried to look intelligent in the presence of a staff officer. “The formula's a military secret, sir,” he said. The man blinked, and twitched his nose. Heeley looked again, and saw he was only a lieutenant. Wearing wings. For the love of Mike, he thought. We're not that hard up, are we? “Sorry,” he said. “This stuff turns you blind. Heeley.”

“Savage.” They shook hands. “Just arrived. Are we celebrating something?”

“Well, there's going to be a battle.” Heeley had never met such an elderly new pilot. “You must be Dufee's replacement.”

“Probably. What happened to Mr Dufee?”

Heeley thought, briefly. “Better you don't ask,” he said. “Let's find the Old Man.”

Cleve-Cutler was impressed by Savage. Most replacements said
yes, sir
and
no, sir
and were happy to walk away. Savage enjoyed a chat. From time to time he hooked a thumb in his tunic pocket and surveyed the crowd of drinkers. He might have been in his club in Pall Mall. The C.O. asked him where he had come from.