Hornet’s Sting (36 page)

A couple of the replacements came into the bathhouse and McWatters couldn't stand their chattering. He got out and got dressed and took an umbrella and walked to the orderly room.

Sergeant Lacey was reading a Harrods catalogue and listening to a gramophone record of guitar music.

“Something's wrong with that banjo,” McWatters said. “Needs tuning.”

“The government of Panama has just declared war on Germany,” Lacey said. “I'm playing this as a tribute to Panamese pluck.”

The guitar went idly in search of its melody; found it; lost it; and lingered lazily over a few final chords. McWatters grew bored and took the catalogue from Lacey's fingers.

“I expect they'll wear straw boaters when they go over the top,” Lacey said. “Boaters and blazers and creamy bags. Everyone flashing the most tremendous tropical smiles, and all encouraging each other with shouts of ‘Remember, men, you are Panamanian!' as the Prussians flee in panic and —”

“Shut up, Lacey. Why have you got this?”

Lacey took back the catalogue and showed him an illustration of a croquet set. “A bequest from Duke Nikolai to the squadron. Perfect for those idle summer evenings.”

“I'm damn good at croquet.” McWatters played a full-blooded imaginary shot. “I can sock the ball until it begs for mercy.” He turned away, and noticed eight valises stacked against a wall. “That reminds me ... Mr Dash borrowed some letters from me. I wonder if ...”

Lacey gave him a small bundle of letters. “Mr Dash left a note. He wanted you to have them if...” He shrugged.

“They're from a mutual friend,” McWatters explained.

“Miss Legge-Barrington, I believe.”

“Charles Dash was a damn good sort, Lacey.”

He ran back to his hut. The letters were in chronological order. The latest was on the top. It gave Nancy Hicks-Potter's address. McWatters shut his eyes and dreamed of illicit sexual ecstasy. The prospect was as intoxicating as the idea of victory over the Boche, and now it was a damn sight closer.

* * *

Northeast France is mostly flat and dull. The ground is heavy and good for sugar beet, which thrives on water, but in 1917 it did not make good trenches for the British Army, who preferred a nice chalk soil that drained quickly. Because of the low-lying nature of the terrain, nowhere here drained quickly. This was not ideal cavalry country. Even so, given a long spell of drying weather, the area around Arras might conceivably have offered the British dragoons and the lancers a decent charge at the enemy.

In April 1917 the battle of Arras opened in driving rain and the weather got steadily worse. When the infantry went over the top they were slogging through mud. High above their heads was the perpetual scream of shells. It was Easter weekend, and the infantry
prayed that the barrage had destroyed the German wire and smashed the German trenches and shattered the concrete strongpoints that were built into the Hindenburg Line which looked down on Arras and the whole fifteen-mile stretch of the Big Push.

The key was Vimy Ridge, only a few hundred feet high, just a long crease running north to south; but it was steep-sided and the German Army had it. Or, more accurately, they had what was left after the Allied barrage had pounded it. Now the guns were pounding it again. The bursting shells might look like boiling porridge from the sky, but what the infantry saw was a wall of smoke and flame that grew uglier and more raucous as they plodded across no-man's-land.

This was not a walkover, and nobody had ever supposed it would be. Some German machine-gun posts had survived. They chattered and stuttered and cut holes in the troops toiling up the slopes. Nobody turned back. To retreat was more dangerous than to advance. The safest place to be was in the enemy trenches. In many places, British soldiers rushed the trenches and met an enemy that the bombardment had entirely killed, or terrified into surrender, or driven insane. Elsewhere there was plenty of desperate fighting, especially by the Canadians. They were given the highest and hardest stretch of Vimy Ridge to climb, and they had to buy every foot of it with their dead. Attack and defence were reduced to a primitive ferocity. Rifles became clubs. A Mills bomb, chucked around the corner of a trench, was the best weapon. By noon on the first day, the Canadians were on top. Vimy was captured.

Soon, all the first-day objectives were taken. The battle of Arras had advanced the Front by a mile, sometimes two miles: the biggest gain since ... Nobody could remember when. Men hurried across noman's-land and scrambled up the slopes to revel in the thrill of standing where yesterday the Boche had stood. Across the plain, faintly visible, were the spires of Douai. Douai, for God's sake! Until now, as remote as the far side of the moon.

It was a splendid start, a thumping victory, a crack in the Kaiser's armour. The newspapers all said so, and for once they were nearly right.

* * *

Cleve-Cutler was back in Taggart's Hotel.

The Committee of Inquiry into the loss of his Bristol Fighters had moved from Wing H.Q. to Brigade H.Q. After a gloomy session of many questions and few answers, the chairman sent Cleve-Cutler to England. He was to seek the views of experts at the War Office, the Directorate of Military Aeronautics, the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company in Bristol, and the curators of the British Museum, too, if he felt they might throw some light on the matter.

“Hullo,” Taggart said. “You look fucked.”

“Rough crossing,” Cleve-Cutler said.

“I thought you'd be in Arras.” Taggart poured two nips of brandy. “Up your kilt.”

“Up yours.” The brandy tasted like a small reward for long service and good conduct. “Since we're being so frank and bloody candid, you don't look unfucked yourself.”

Taggart grimaced. “This lousy weather. Bits of bullet keep doing a route march around my body. Since you're not in Arras, I reckon you're here because your shiny new fighters took such a pasting the other day.”

“Firstly, that's not true. And secondly, how did you find out?”

“Chap from 60 Squadron told me yesterday. I suppose you want a room. I'm full up, but ...” He ran a finger down the entries in the register. “Snotty little captain in the Sherwood Foresters: I'll kick him out. Unless...” Taggart scratched an eyebrow. “A man's entitled to go to hell his own way. You might like to know that your old friend Lady Jaspers has a room.”

The title fooled Cleve-Cutler for a moment; then he understood. A pulse began throbbing in his forehead, as urgent as a klaxon. “Well, that's a coincidence,” he said.

“No such thing. She's kept a room here ever since... Well, ever since” Taggart glanced at the clock: almost noon. “Should be up by now”.

Cleve-Cutler climbed the stairs with a kind of military stride, to hide the fact that he was both eager and reluctant to meet her. A very young man in a khaki shirt and officers' slacks opened the door. What Cleve-Cutler noticed at once was the way the light caught the golden down on that part of his cheeks left unshaven, which was the greater part. “Oh well,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Damn it all to hell.”

“Let him in,” she called. “It's only grumpy old Hugh, he won't bite you.”

“Don't be so bloody sure of that.”

The young man closed the door behind them and tiptoed away. He was barefoot. Cleve-Cutler saw a tunic hanging on a chair. Second-lieutenant, Durham Light Infantry. Hell's teeth! he thought. A dribbling infant! He would have given a month's pay to punch the fellow in the teeth, but a major could not strike a subaltern. Not in a lady's bedroom. Not in the Royal Flying Corps. Not before lunch. “I'm looking for my umbrella,” he said. “Did I leave it here?”

“Come and have some champagne.” She was sitting up in bed. She didn't look like a million dollars, but she certainly looked like fifty thousand guineas. Even with the brandy inside him, he felt like sixpence by comparison. “Tell me all about this battle,” she said. Newspapers lay on the bed.

“You know more than I do.” He took a glass of champagne. “This is pretty rich, even for you, isn't it?”

“Well, everything else is so scarce. Taggart can't get decent tea or coffee, and Fortnums are always out of sugar, so I'm doing my bit for England like this.”

He drank. Champagne merged with brandy to spread wellbeing. “Not one of your worst ideas,” he said.

She topped up his glass. “You need it. You look as if you've
walked
from France.”

“Bloody awful crossing. Hell of a sea, and we zigzagged like fury to dodge the U-boats.” He drank. “My dinner's in the Channel. Breakfast, too.” He drank again.

“I like you thin. Have you stopped feeling grouchy?” He nodded: he couldn't resist her. Nobody could resist her. “Good,” she said. “Promise not to fight, and I'll introduce you.” He nodded again. “This is Tommy. Tommy, this is Hugh.”

They shook hands, very briefly, reaching across her bed. Tommy kept his eyes down and went straight back to the other side of the room.

“There,” she said. “That didn't hurt, did it?”

“I'd better be pushing off,” Cleve-Cutler said.

“Not before lunch. I'm hungry, Tommy's
always
hungry, and you
must be
empty
. Besides, we're both stony broke, so you'll have to pay.”

“I've got an appointment at the War Office at three.”

“So have I. We'll share a taxi.”

They ate at a nearby restaurant, Studleys, in a curtained booth. While he supped his soup, Cleve-Cutler took stock of Tommy and decided that he was a young eighteen. His collar was a size too big. He looked tired, perhaps drained of energy by a night of carnal excess, or several nights, or several days and nights ... He did not have the face of a soldier. He took a second helping of soup. Perhaps he was still growing.

Nobody said much. They ate dishes of whitebait, and then mutton chops with redcurrant sauce, buttered parsnips and braised onions. Tommy had an extra chop and parsnips. He concentrated on his food. Obviously it mattered greatly to him.

The table was cleared.

“I take it you're on leave,” Cleve-Cutler said. Tommy blinked a couple of times before he agreed. “When does it end?” Cleve-Cutler asked.

Again, there was a pause. “In a little while, sir,” Tommy said.

It was such an unmilitary answer that Cleve-Cutler repeated it: “In a little while?” Tommy nodded, once, sadly. “I see,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Well, we're not on parade so you can drop the ‘sir'. I don't know your other name.”

“Blanchflower.”

“Oh. Bad luck.”

“You
can't be on leave,” Dorothy said. “You just were. What brings you to London?”

“Can't say. Top secret.”

“I'll ask my chums in the War Office.”

“You're awfully thick with the generals, all of a sudden. What are you up to?”

“Can't say. Terrifically top secret.”

He made a sulky grunt. “Whatever it is, it doesn't pay very well.” He covered the bill with money.

“Poor Hugh,” she said. “You're not much fun when you're jealous, are you?” He ignored that. He ignored Tommy Blanchflower. He ignored the waiter who gave him his hat. The surgeons might have
hitched his face into a permanent, jaunty smile, but they couldn't stop him brooding if he wanted to brood.

Tommy went back to Taggart's. Hugh and Dorothy took a taxi to Whitehall.

“I suppose he's another trophy from your tea-dances,” he said.

“Far from it. I met him on Waterloo station. We go to the races together, on my gold medallion. That's why we're flat broke.” She said nothing more, and neither did he.

* * *

British and Canadian troops began a painful campaign for villages whose quaint names they soon learned to hate: Mericourt, Arleux en Gohelle, Willerval, Oppy, Monchy le Preux, and many more. Before long these places ceased to exist, battered into brick-dust by one side after the other, in a series of attacks and counter-attacks.

And still it rained. The British had tanks, but they bogged down or broke down or both. The British guns had to be dragged forward through a chaos of their own making, a pox of flooded craters and sucking bog.

Hornet Squadron, like every R.F.C. unit, was in the air all day.

A-Flight went first, led by Woolley. Ten miles over and one mile up, they got into five or six fights within an hour, all without loss, all without success. The sky was a murky tangle of cloud, much of it leaking rain, and visibility was poor. Much tracer stabbed the gloom;much smoke got pumped from exhausts; nobody scored a kill.

They landed at Gazeran. One Pup was coughing so hard that it barely crossed the hedge; it would not fly again that day. All the machines were slick with rain. One Biff showed a stream of red from cockpit to tail: its gunner had bullet-wounds that bled down his arm and ran through a hole in the fuselage. He would not fly again that year.

B-Flight left and came back with much the same to report, except that the casualty was a Pup pilot, shot in the foot. He was barely conscious when he landed, which he did with such a bang that the pain flowered into total oblivion and the Pup touched a wingtip and made destructive circles in the grass. The doc had to cut away
his flying boot before he could be lifted out.

“Can you patch him up?” Paxton asked.

“There are nineteen bones in the human foot,” Dando said, “not to mention seven in the ankle. He's broken most of them. What do you think?”

“Don't get shirty with me, old man. I didn't shoot him.”

At lunch, Woolley briefed them about the afternoon patrols. “And I'm acting major until the old man comes back,” he said. “You can cheer if you like.”

They chewed their food.

“I've got a pain in the bum,” Maddegan said. “That means there's rain on the way.”