Piece of Cake (6 page)

It was a long, restless afternoon. At about four o'clock Fanny Barton tried to contact the Ram at Air Ministry, just to know what was really happening. A harassed telephonist connected him to an air commodore called Ramshaw, who seemed to be in a crowded and noisy room; he let Barton say a dozen words, barked “How the hell should I know?,” and crashed the phone down. Ten minutes later the adjutant telephoned Barton. “I got some sort of message that you'd got some sort of message,” he said. “Not really,” Fanny said. “I just wanted to keep in touch with the CO.” Kellaway laughed. “So do I, old boy. Haven't seen him for hours.”

“What's happening?”

“God knows. This place is pure bedlam. I can't even get a cup of tea.”

“We're on standby.”

“Are you? Jolly good. Actually I think everyone's on standby, except me. I'm at instant readiness, although for what I really haven't the faintest … Ah, thanks
immensely
… Tea at last,” he told Fanny.

“They say some Spits got a Dornier over Kent,” Fanny said. “Is that right?”

“Spits? I heard it was Defiants from 264 Squadron. Only it wasn't a Dornier, it was a—”

The line went dead.

“Any joy?” Cattermole asked, from an armchair.

“Not much,” Barton said.

“Come and play ping-pong, Fanny,” Starr called. “I've smashed everybody else. If I beat you I'm world champion.”

They were released by the controller at 8 p.m. “So much for your wonderful war-clouds,” Cattermole said as they peeled off their flying overalls.

“A little more respect, young man,” said Patterson, “or you won't get invited to my twenty-first birthday party.”

“When?”

“Today, actually. Not that I've arranged anything …”

“Don't worry about that, Pip. Sticky, d'you feel like a party? Silly question. Okay, you can drive. Where's Mother Cox? Mother, lend us a couple of quid.”

“No fear.”

“Well, all right, a fiver then. It's for a good cause. We're going to get blotto.”

“I might come with you,” Cox said. “I could do with a glass of ale. We won't be late back, will we?”

“Heavens, no!” Cattermole said.

When Squadron Leader Ramsay and his adjutant arrived at Air Ministry, they were told that the meeting had been rescheduled for later in the day; meanwhile a secret briefing had been laid on, so secret that Kellaway was excluded; so secret, indeed, that nobody seemed sure where it was taking place. An elderly warrant officer with a clipboard searched repeatedly through a sheaf of duplicated papers and eventually directed the Ram to a remote anteroom. This turned out to be full of Bomber Command aircrew. One by one they were called out until, after an hour, only the Ram and a Fleet Air Arm liaison officer remained. Nobody knew why they were there. Nobody knew anything about the elderly warrant officer. The Ram cornered a civil servant and for ten minutes there was intensive telephoning around the building. “Group Captain Matthews wants to see you both,” the civil servant said at last. “Room 4502.”

“Who's he?” the Ram asked.

“I'm not sure. He's either DTA to the AOCFFU, or he's deputizing for PQLO on the ADGB, You'll have to ask him, I'm afraid.”

They had no opportunity to ask him. As soon as they entered room 4502, Matthews handed each of them a booklet called
Glossary of Anglo-Polish Aeronautical Terms.
“See what you make of that,” he said. “Back in ten minutes.” He hurried off.

The Ram waited half an hour and then went in search of fresh orders. The corridors were full of urgent figures clutching important documents. He saw a flight lieutenant whom he recognized as the assistant to the staff officer of an air vice-marshal in Fighter Command, and explained his problem. “Crikey, you ought to be in Conference Room G,” the flight lieutenant said. “Something to do with anti-aircraft fields of fire, I believe …” But when the Ram found Conference Room G it was occupied by a pack of wing commanders arguing about aviation-fuel stocks.

He thought hard for a couple of minutes, and decided to cut his losses and get back to Kingsmere. The adjutant, however, was not where he had left him. He asked at the reception desk. Nobody knew anything about Kellaway but there was an urgent message waiting for Squadron Leader Ramsay: call extension 7171 immediately.

The Ram dialed the number and got a group captain called Blakey. “Ramsey, where the hell have you been?” he asked. “You've missed two crucial meetings already. See me before you go. I'll try and brief you. Oh for Christ's sake
shut up”
he said as another telephone shrilled.

Inevitably, Blakey was no longer in his office when the Ram got there. The day continued like that. By six o'clock, when he was almost too tired to be angry, he came across Group Captain Matthews again. “You can forget about that Anglo-Polish glossary,” Matthews said wearily. “It's all been changed. I don't know what the new plan is yet. If I were you I'd get myself a room in a hotel.”

“I must find Group Captain Blakey first, sir. He said—”

“Blakey? Blakey's gone to France.”

Matthews hurried off. The Ram leaned against a wall and watched the endless tide of Air Ministry staff and RAF personnel flow past. Quite soon, Flight Lieutenant Kellaway flowed with it, chatting to a young WAAF. “Ah, there you are, sir!” he said. “I've been looking all over … These are for you.” He held out a bundle of dun-colored files, tied with green ribbon.

“What's that?”

“I wasn't told. The usual bumf, I expect.”

“I've seen enough bumf today. Come on, adj, I'm starving. We're going to find a hotel.”

They found a hotel and had dinner. During coffee a message came from Air Ministry ordering the Ram to report at 11 p.m. to receive a telephone call from Group Captain Blakey. At 11:15 he was sitting in Blakey's office when the call came through. Blakey was in Paris and the line was bad. The Ram strained to make sense of the cracklings and distortions. The only words he could be sure of came at the very end. “Got all that?” Blakey demanded. “No!” the Ram shouted. Blakey hung up.

The Ram went back to his hotel, went to bed, and awoke at 3
a.m., his brain urgent with anxiety. He considered telephoning Air Ministry for orders. No, no, no: waste of time. He thought of telephoning Kingsmere. But what could they tell him? Or he, them? No, no, no. He walked around the room and saw the bundle of files on the dressing-table. He undid the green ribbon. Reports and records of the squadron's performance at various summer training camps and exercises: air-to-air gunnery, cross-country navigation, tactics of air fighting, formation flying …

Ten minutes later he went next door and roused the adjutant. “Get dressed,” he said. “We're going back to Kingsmere.”

He was waiting behind the wheel when Kellaway hurried out of the hotel, unshaven and sticky-eyed. The Ram had the car moving before the door was shut, and he had it up to sixty before they reached the first corner. Kellaway blinked as the intersection hurtled toward them, and he fumbled for the leather grab-strap as the tires hammered over some tramlines. “Is there a flap on?” he asked, his voice shaking.

“Not yet,” the Ram said. “But there soon will be.”

He heaved the bundle of files up from between his feet and dumped it in Kellaway's lap. “My squadron has degenerated into shit condition, adj,” he said, and clenched his teeth as the car bucked over a stretch of lumpy road repairs. “The
Luftwaffe
is fighting fit while my lot are fit to drop. They're all cretins.”

“Surely not all, sir.” Kellaway was struggling to untie the green ribbon.

“No, not all. Some of them are imbeciles, and one or two are mental junkyards. Pilot Officer Cox, for instance. Just look at Cox's score on that elementary navigation test. Just look at it.”

“Shocking weather that day,” Kellaway said, still picking at a knot. “Wind and rain and—”

“Ah! Goering's promised not to attack unless it's nice upstairs, has he?” The Ram bullied the gearbox into submission as he took a sharp bend. “That's good news for Pilot Officer Cattermole then, because it seems he's utterly incapable of maintaining formation in anything stronger than a mild breeze.”

“I seem to remember young Cattermole wasn't terribly well that day, sir,” Kellaway said. “Nasty head-cold.”

“Yes? And what was Flying Officer Stickwell suffering from when he missed the towed target three days in a row? Scarlet
fever? Beri-beri? St. Vitus' Dance? Not that Pilot Officer Miller did any better with the fixed target, did he? Somewhere in that bumf you'll find a fascinating account of how Miller and his Hurricane slaughtered several innocent sandbanks but mercifully spared the target. What's Miller's problem, adj? Can't he fly and shoot at the same time? Or was his mother frightened by a bunker?”

Kellaway tried to think of an excuse for Miller and couldn't. “The chaps did do rather well in the aircraft-recognition competition,” he said.

“Yes, they did, didn't they? Amazingly well. Came fifth out of nine. By their standards that's bloody brilliant. I expect they all thought they deserved DSO's for that. They only failed to recognize four aircraft in ten. Quite a triumph. Makes you proud to be British.”

Kellaway gave up: the knot was unpickable. “It's been rather a difficult summer,” he said.

“Don't worry, adj, I've got some solutions lined up. All those jokers will get the boot. You watch me shake the tree, adj. See the rotten apples fall.”

Even with the Ram's heavy foot on the accelerator it took them an hour to get clear of London. They made good time up the old Roman road to Colchester and then got stuck behind a succession of milk-trucks and, after them, an army convoy, trundling fieldguns at a sedate thirty miles an hour. The sun was high enough to be dazzling when they turned east at Chelmsford. Now the roads were narrower, with fewer passing-places, and the Ram's foot jumped repeatedly from accelerator to brake. Kellaway's arm ached from gripping the grab-strap. His stomach groused loudly about hunger made worse by continuous nervous tension. At last Kingsmere aerodrome came in sight. The RAF policeman saluted and raised the barrier, and the Ram sprayed gravel as he parked outside the officers' mess. It was just six o'clock.

Kellaway got out, and massaged his numbed backside. The sunshine was pleasantly warm and blessedly silent. “Breakfast,” he said. It sounded like a one-word history of Western civilization.

“Bugger breakfast,” the Ram said. “You take ‘A' flight, I'll take ‘B.' I want them on parade in ten minutes, maximum.” He strode off.

Kellaway had the easier task: only two members of “A” flight were in their rooms, Fanny Barton and Dicky Starr. As the pilots assembled, yawning and doing up tunic buttons, he said: “I'm afraid there's no sign of Stickwell, Cattermole, Patterson or Cox, sir.”

The Ram stared. His eyes had widened slightly, his nostrils were tight, his whole face seemed stretched. He turned away. “I don't care a damn if you all get killed tomorrow,” he said.

That woke them up.

“I do care if this squadron fails to play its full part in the air defense of Great Britain,” he said. “I care if these scarce and valuable Hurricane fighters get shot down. I care
very much
if the German bomber fleets not only destroy these Hurricanes but also proceed to destroy their targets, killing God-knows-how-many civilians who at this very moment are gullible enough to put their pathetic faith in your supposed skill and determination when, if they knew what I know, they'd realize you probably couldn't hit a Zeppelin even if you could see one, which is unlikely, because according to these reports, nine out of ten of you can't piss against a wall without filling your left boots to overflowing!”

He paused for breath. The pilots frowned, or gazed at the ground. The adjutant sucked his teeth and thought about bacon.

“This squadron is incompetent,” the Ram said. “It cannot fly straight, it cannot navigate efficiently, it does not know its battle tactics, and its aerial gunnery is a waste of good bullets. You are not fighter pilots. You are a cheap, dishonest imitation of fighter pilots. This state of affairs will change, with effect from now. You will do one of two things extremely rapidly: you will get better, or you will get out. That is not a threat …”

The adjutant cocked his head. He thought he had heard the sound of horses' hooves.

“… nor is it a warning. That is a statement of fact. I estimate that within seven days half of you will have been chopped. Always assuming the
Luftwaffe
does not get here first and perform the eliminating for me …”

The adjutant strolled to one side and listened. Yes, definitely horses' hooves. Odd.

“… which I can tell you seems more and more likely with every passing hour. You can also take it from me—”

Two large and shaggy farm-horses cantered around the corner, their broad hooves kicking up pebbles. Cattermole and Stickwell rode one, Patterson and Cox the other. The horses wore rope bridles, with the pilots' neckties fastened to them as reins. Cattermole whooped, huskily: he had been whooping a lot; it kept the horse going. Patterson saw the pilots and waved. “You're saved!” he shouted. “The cavalry's here!” Then he saw the Ram. “Oh my Christ,” he muttered.

An RAF police corporal came after them on a bicycle, pedaling hard. The horses circled the group of pilots, gradually losing speed. The corporal halted, dismounted, saluted. “Very sorry, sir,” he said, breathing fast. “Couldn't stop them, sir. Jumped the barrier, sir. Broke the pole, sir.”

The Ram nodded.

“Stop, blast you, stop,” Cox said bitterly to his horse. The animals were down to a trot. “Let me off, damn it.”

“Cowboys,” the Ram said bleakly.