Hornet’s Sting (58 page)

“Damnation.” Mackenzie touched his eyepatch. “And I don't suppose this thing can have helped.”

“It created a difficulty.”

“Well . . . God damn it all to hell.” Mackenzie felt his day was falling apart. “Where are you off to now? Back to Wipers?”

“Oh no. Not the trenches. We're going to Palestine. Much more movement there, so it seems. Camels, and so on. And of course the light...”

He stopped because Brigadier Tunney was back, waving his clipboard. “Your mother is here,” he announced. “I want a photograph of you both.”

“She's in Scotland,” Mackenzie said.

“Far from it. We notified her, the Palace invited her, and here she is.” He pointed.

Mackenzie looked. His mother, wearing more furs than Genghis Khan, was advancing with her arms outstretched and a smile to match. “Andrew, darling!” she cried. “We're all so proud!”

“Get away from me,” he said. “I don't want your pride.”

“Now darling, don't be selfish. As soon as I heard, I couldn't wait —”

“What?
You couldn't wait to blackmail me into uniform. You've never written, not even a postcard. There's only one reason you're here now. You're greedy for glory.”

“I'm shattered,” she said. Her head recoiled, and her eyes narrowed. “That my own flesh and blood could be so cruel.”

“You're a vain and hypocritical bitch, mother.”

She struck him. It was a sweeping slap, and as she was right-handed she hit the wounded side of his face. Pain roared like a fire in a wind. He flung a punch and hit her just below the cheekbone. Three bystanders went down with her.

The next thing he knew, he was being hustled through the crowd by Dabinett on one side and Dorothy on the other. They didn't stop until they were in the palace courtyard. Mackenzie was spitting blood.

“This won't do,” Dabinett said. “We need to keep moving.”

“That's her car,” Mackenzie said, and spat again. “And her chauffeur. Know him anywhere.”

It was a Daimler, one of a dozen limousines parked and waiting for their owners. He managed to walk to it. “Hullo, Tom,” he said. “It's
me. My mother wants you inside, in a hurry. Give me the keys.” The chauffeur trotted off.

Dabinett drove. They stopped at Dorothy's apartment; she packed a suitcase in five minutes flat. On the way to Taggart's, Mackenzie said, “Sodding medal. Sodding factories. Sodding photographers. Sodding cinema. Sorry, Dabinett.”

“I'm on your side, sir.”

Mackenzie went in and packed his valise and paid Taggart and came out. Dabinett had left. “Where d'you want to go now?” Dorothy asked. She was on holiday.

“Scotland,” he said. “And sod the lot of them.”

The tank was full. Before nightfall they were far up the Great North Road, well into Nottinghamshire.

* * *

Next morning, deep inside Yorkshire, he said, “Well, that's two nights wasted.” The words sounded bitter, almost an accusation, which was not what he intended. But he had been thinking about them for half an hour, as he drove and she read the map, and it was time to release his feelings.

The previous evening he had driven until his arms ached and he got cramp in his right calf. They had stopped at a hotel and registered as Captain and Mrs Mackenzie. The only rooms available were single rooms, on different floors. He was so tired that when he reached his room, he couldn't remember the number of hers. He slept badly and had many dreams, all bad-tempered. At breakfast Dorothy was fresh and blithe and each time he looked at her he felt cheated.

Now she put the map aside. “Only the working classes believe that sex is done in the dark,” she said. “Has the army turned you into a peasant, Andrew?” He sounded the horn and scattered some sheep. “Perhaps you weren't talking about sex,” she said.

“Yes I was. D'you realise I've got three sisters and I've never, ever seen a naked female?”

“French postcards?”

“Bits of cardboard.”

“Still, they stretch the imagination.”

“Not good enough. I want the real thing.”

“Just show your stunning face. Girls are bound to come running.”

He hunched over the wheel. “This bloody face of mine is a curse. I look like an angel, and the minute I don't behave like one, girls are shocked. They cry. They scream, they run away. It's damn difficult for a chap like me.”

“You don't look terribly angelic now.” She tickled his ear. “Anyway, it's time you realised that sex is a gamble. Take a chance.”

“That's all very well, but... The point is, I don't know ... I mean, how does one start?”

“Just ask.”

“It's not that easy. What do I say?”

“Say what you feel.”

“You mean ... something like ... May I have the pleasure of ... the honour of...”

“Let's leave honour out of it. Pleasure, yes. Definitely. Positively. Without delay.”

“Does that mean ... um ... now?”

“Yes, now.”

He straightened up. “I'm not going back to that rotten hotel.”

“We've got all of Yorkshire.”

The moors rolled to the horizon. Compared with the wet plains of France and Flanders, this was wild, romantic country. Half the sky was bustling cloud and the other half sent bright patches of sunlight racing across the hillsides. He played a little tune on the horn.

“Well then, what about here?” He slowed.

“Too sunny.”

He picked up speed. After a mile, the sunlight ended. He slowed again. “What about here?”

“Not sunny enough.”

“For God's sake! What difference does it make?” He put his foot down. The Daimler charged uphill and down, hammering the bumps, lurching and swaying, and finally making Dorothy laugh. This was not fright or hysteria; something genuinely amused her. He let the speed fall away. “What's funny?”

“Look at you, Andrew. You're trying to fly. You've made me into one of your beastly Huns.” She was still gurgling with laughter.

“Nonsense.” He recognised his tone of voice: it was Brigadier Tunney's. Damn, she's right, he thought. Bloody women . .. They
topped a hill. Far ahead, tucked away in the next valley, was a beech wood. “There.” She pointed. “Go there.”

Against all the odds, a cart track ran from the road to the woods. The beeches were in the lea of a hill and they soared like columns in a cathedral. “Frightfully noble,” she said. Nevertheless, when they got out of the car, the breeze was chilly.

“More comfortable in the back seat,” he suggested.

“No, no. This place was made for us. Everything's so tremendously phallic. Don't you find it wonderfully stimulating?”

“I don't need to be stimulated, Dorothy. I don't need to be frozen, either.”

“Light a fire, darling.”

It was one of the skills his father had taught him. In five minutes the flames had seized the kindling and small logs were beginning to crackle. “Done,” he said. “Ready.”

“Big decision.” She had found a pile of travel rugs. “Do you want me with or without the woodwork?”

“Oh ... With. I'm not going to be shortchanged.” She liked that.

They undressed. Each stood, hands on hips, enjoying the sight of the other. “Not hairy,” she said. “Good. I prefer men with silky skin. Your body is adorable.”

“And so is y-yours. P-perhaps a sus-suspicion more hair than I ex-expected.” The stutter surprised him. He was trembling, too, and not from the cold. “I'm not com-complaining.”

“French postcards never tell the whole story ... Why are you shaking? What are you afraid of?”

“Dunno. S'pose I make a m-m-mess of it?”

She took his hand and they lay on the rugs. “Your parents didn't make a mess of it. Nor did their parents, and so on
ad infinitum
. It must be very easy. Think of all the stupid people in the world. No, on second thoughts, forget them. Forget everything. Especially the silly war. You're out of uniform, this isn't a battle. I've surrendered to you. Have you surrendered to me?”

“Yes.” None of this made sense to him.

“Good, good. When nobody fights, nobody loses. That's something they never told you in the army.” They kissed, and after that all conversation ended. The exchange of pleasure made a far better dialogue. Soon he was wondering why he had ever worried.

Above the beeches, a kestrel drifted, paused and hovered, searching the ground for food, and drifted on. It saw the glow of the fire, the gleam of the Daimler, the flicker of white flesh. It knew that this was no meal and it moved away at once.

A minute later it flew back, not pausing, not hovering, just sailing the length of the wood and vanishing.

* * *

They were lying in a tangle of limbs, half sweaty, half chilled, still slightly stunned by their achievement. It took a while for the breeze to awaken them. They got up, clinging to each other, and stood beside the fire. Its warmth dried the sweat and took away the chill. The flames had a fascination, and they were looking at them when a man gave an angry shout. He was striding down the track. He had a shotgun and a dog.

“Gamekeeper,” Mackenzie said.

“Yes. Frightful moustache. Looks as if it died in the night.”

The man kept bellowing at them. Every other word was an obscenity. He stopped when he was ten yards away. His face was thin and leathery and distorted by disgust. “What the bloody hell d'you think you're about?” he shouted.

“Fornication,” Mackenzie said. “And it's far too good for the likes of you.”

“And who the bloody hell d'you think you are?” The shotgun was raised.

“Excuse me,” Mackenzie said. He went to the car.

“He is Viscount Haig, son of the Field Marshal,” she told the man, and took a few steps towards him. “And I am his sister.” The man gaped, and his gun drooped. “Not the usual effect I have on men,” she said. Now he had seen the wooden leg, and he was speechless. “My brother will be with you in a moment,” she said sweetly.

Mackenzie got his Service revolver from his valise, cocked it and fired a shot well above the man's head. The crack-boom raised a panic in a hundred crows. The dog fled. “Be off with you!” Mackenzie cried and advanced, flourishing the revolver. Echoes were still reverberating. The man turned and ran. Mackenzie fired a second bullet
into the treetops, and the man ran faster. He was two hundred yards away before he stopped.

“Well, he
was
surprised,” Dorothy said.

“Probably never seen a Daimler before,” Mackenzie said.

* * *

An hour after they crossed the border into Scotland, the damaged side of his face began seeping blood. He asked her to kiss it better, and she refused even to touch it with a handkerchief. “It's only blood,” he said, and licked the trickle that had reached his mouth.

“I don't care. I don't care what pain men inflict on each other. Hack yourselves to bits, if you think it's fun. Just keep the blood away from me.”

This angered him. It was, after all, an honourable wound. “So you'd prefer me intact?” he said. No reply.

He stopped in a town somewhere north of Glasgow and found a doctor. Dorothy came with him into the surgery. “There's bound to be gallons of gore,” he warned.

“Don't care. I need some cream for my stump.”

The doctor took off the dressings and the eyepatch and did not like what he saw. “Did all this happen on active duty?” he asked.

“Yes and no.”

“His mother hit him,” Dorothy said. “She wasn't satisfied with what the Boche had done. Very demanding woman.”

“Well, she hasn't improved the situation. There may be some infection. D'you see?”

For the first time, she looked at the raw, battered face. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered.

“If you must blaspheme, go into the waiting room.” He re-dressed the wound. “What can you see with that eye?” he asked Mackenzie.

“Three of everything. Sometimes four.”

“You need plenty of rest. Nothing else will replace that. No alcohol. And no strenuous physical exercise, of course.”

The roads north became worse: narrow, twisting and stony; and he was weary. But he was determined to finish their journey. It was late at night when he stopped the Daimler in the gravel circle outside the high, iron-studded, oak double doors of Castle Mackenzie. He had
to rouse the servants; they came bearing candles. “The generator gets switched off at night,” he explained.

He was warmly welcomed. The warmth was redoubled when he introduced her as his wife. They stood in the hall while their bags were brought in and the car was garaged. The candlelight showed several large and faded Turkish carpets that covered less than half the floor. It showed parts of granite walls. It failed to show the ceiling, although Dorothy got a glimpse of hanging banners, which proved that there must be something up there somewhere.

They ate ham sandwiches and drank claret in the library, while a fire was lit in their bedroom. Mackenzie was so tired that he stumbled while going upstairs. She had to help him undress. He looked younger than eighteen. Maybe he wasn't eighteen. Plenty of youngsters lied about their age in order to get into the R.F.C. He lay naked on the bed. The firelight gleamed on his chest. She watched the pale gold skin being gently nudged by his heartbeat. “Why are we here, Andrew?” she asked.

“I forget.” He looked at her with his one good eye. “We're going to get married, aren't we?”

“
No
. Definitely not.”

“Why not?” His lips barely moved.

“There's more to be wed than four legs in a bed. Shakespeare.”

“Well . . . I'm not going back to bloody old France.”

She stretched out her arm and, with one fingertip, touched his heartbeat so lightly that the finger gave a tiny kick with each throb.