‘I’ll be damned if I will.’
‘Then I’ll have to get …’ he hesitated: a second: then rapidly, cunningly: ‘… Monaghan. He’ll do it. Especially if I can overtake the van or the staff-car or whichever it is, and borrow the jerry general’s hat. Or maybe just the monocle will be enough——no: just the pistol to hold in my hand.’
‘Take your own word for it,’ Bridesman said. ‘You were there. You saw what they shot at us, and what we were shooting at that two-seater. You were right on him for five or six seconds once. I watched your tracer rake him from the engine right on back through the monocle.’
‘So were you,’ he said. ‘Get in.’
‘Why dont you just let it be?’
‘I have. Long ago. Get in.’
‘Do you call this letting be?’
‘It’s like a cracked record on the gramophone, isn’t it?’
‘Chock the wheels,’ Bridesman said. He found two chocks for the wheels and steadied the fuselage while Bridesman got into the cockpit. Then he went around to face the nose and it was all right; he could see the slant of the cowl and the Aldis slanting a little since he was taller than most, a little high still. But then he could raise himself on his toes and he intended to put his arms over his face anyway in case there was something left of whatever it was they had loaded the cartridges with last night by the time it had travelled twenty feet, though he never had actually seen any of them strike, bounce off the two-seater, and he had been right on top of it for the five or six seconds Bridesman had talked about. And the airscrew was already in open position so the constantinesco would be working or not working or whatever it was doing when it let bullets pass. So all he had to do was line up the tube of the Aldis on Bridesman’s head behind the wind screen, except that Bridesman was leaning out around the screen, talking again: ‘You promised.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘It will be all right then.’
‘You’re too close,’ Bridesman said. ‘It’s still tracer. It can still burn you.’
‘Yes,’ he said, backing away, still facing the little black port out of which the gun shot, ‘I wondered how they did that. I thought tracer was the bullet itself burning up. However did they make tracer without a bullet in it? do you know? I mean, what are they? bread pellets maybe? No, bread would have burned up in the breech. Maybe they are wood pellets dipped in phosphorus. Which is a little amusing, isn’t it? our hangar last night locked tight as .… with an armed guard walking back and forth in the dark and the cold outside and inside somebody, maybe Collyer; a chess player ought to be good with a knife, whittling sounds philosophical too and they say chess is a philosopher’s game, or maybe it was a mechanic who will be a corporal tomorrow or a corporal who will be a sergeant tomorrow even if it is over because they can give a corporal another stripe even on the way home or at least before he is demobbed. Or maybe they’ll even still keep the Air Force since a lot of people came into it out of the cradle before they had time to learn to do anything else but fly, and even in peace these ones will still have to eat at least now and then——’ still backing away because Bridesman was still waving him back, still keeping the Aldis aligned; ‘—out here three years, and nothing, then one night he sits in a locked hangar with a pen knife and a lap-full of wooden blocks and does what Ball nor McCudden nor Mannock nor Bishop nor none of them ever did: brought down a whole German general: and get the barnacle at Buckingham palace his next leave—except that there wont be any, there’s nothing now to be on leave from, and even if there was, what decoration will they give for that, Bridesman?—All right,’ he said, ‘all right, I’ll cover my face too——’
Except that he wouldn’t really need to now; the line of fire was already slanting into the ground, and this much further away it would cross well down his chest. And so he took one last sight on the Aldis for alignment and bowed his head a little and crossed both arms before his face and said, ‘All right.’ Then the chattering rattle, the dusky rose winking in miniature in the watch-crystal on his lifted wrist and the hard light stinging (They were pellets of some sort; if he had been three feet from the muzzle instead of about thirty, they would have killed him as quickly as actual bullets would have. And even as it was, he had leaned into the burst, not to keep from being beaten back but to keep from being knocked down: during which—the falling backward—the angle, pattern, would have walked up his chest and he would probably have taken the last of the burst in his face before Bridesman could have stopped it.) bitter thock-thock-thock-thock on his chest and the slow virulent smell of burning cloth before he felt the heat.
‘Get it off!’ Bridesman was shouting. ‘You cant put it out! Get the sidcott off, damn it!’ Then Bridesman was wrenching at the overall too, ripping it down as he kicked out of the flying boots and then out of the overall and the slow invisible smoldering stink. ‘Are you satisfied now?’ Bridesman said. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ he said. ‘It’s all right now.—Why did he have to shoot his pilot?’
‘Here,’ Bridesman said, ‘get it away from the bus——’ catching up the overall by one leg as though to fling it away until he caught hold of it.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get my pistol out. If I dont, they’ll charge me with it!’ He took the pistol from the sidcott’s knee pocket and dropped it into his tunic pocket.
‘Now then,’ Bridesman said. But he held on.
‘Incinerator,’ he said. ‘We cant leave it lying about here.’
‘All right,’ Bridesman said. ‘Come along.’
‘I’ll put it in the incinerator and meet you at the hut.’
‘Bring it on to the hut and let the batman put it in the incinerator.’
‘It’s like the cracked record again isn’t it?’ he said. Then Bridesman released his leg of the sidcott though he didn’t move yet.
‘Then you’ll come along to the hut.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’ll have to stop at the hangars and tell them to roll me in.—But why did he have to shoot his pilot, Bridesman?’
‘Because he is a German,’ Bridesman said with a sort of calm and raging patience. ‘Germans fight wars by the rule-books. By the book, a German pilot who lands an undamaged German aeroplane containing a German lieutenant general on an enemy aerodrome, is either a traitor or a coward, and he must die for it. That poor bloody bugger probably knew while he was eating his breakfast sausage and beer this morning what was going to happen to him. If the general hadn’t done it here, they would probably shoot the general himself as soon as they got their hands on him again. Now get rid of that thing and come on to the hut.’
‘Right,’ he said. Then Bridesman went on and at first he didn’t dare roll up the overall to carry it. Then he thought what difference could it possibly make now. So he rolled up the overall and picked up his flying boots and went back to the hangars. B’s was open now and they were just rolling in the major’s and Bridesman’s busses; the rule-book wouldn’t let them put the German two-seater under a British shed probably, but on the contrary it would doubtless compel at least six Britons (who, since the infantry were probably all gone now, would be air mechanics unaccustomed both to rifles and having to stop up all night) to pass the night in relays walking with guns around it. ‘I had a stoppage,’ he told the first mechanic. ‘There was a live shell in. Captain Bridesman helped me clear it. You can roll me in now.’
‘Yes sir,’ the mechanic said. He went on, carrying the rolled overall gingerly, around the hangars and on in the dusk toward the incinerator behind the men’s mess, then suddenly he turned sharply again and went to the latrines; it would be pitch dark inside, unless someone was already there with a torch (Collyer had a tin candle-stick; passed going or coming from the latrines, cloistral indeed he would look, tonsured and with his braces knotted about his waist under his open warm). It was dark and the smell of the sidcott was stronger than ever inside. He put the flying boots down and unrolled it but even in the pitch dark there was nothing to see: only the slow thick invisible burning; and he had heard that too: a man in B Flight last year who had got a tracer between the bones of his lower leg and they were still whittling the bone away as the phosphorus rotted it; Thorpe told him that next time they were going to take off the whole leg at the knee to see if that would stop it. Of course the bloke’s mistake was in not putting off until day after tomorrow say, going on that patrol (Or tomorrow, for that matter. Or today, except that Collyer wouldn’t have let him.) only how could he have known that a year ago, when he himself knew one in the squadron who hadn’t discovered it until people shot blank archie at him and couldn’t seem to believe it even then? rolling up the sidcott again and fumbling for a moment in the pitch dark (It wasn’t quite dark after you got used to it. The canvas walls had gathered a little luminousness, as if delayed day would even begin inside them after it was done outdoors.) until he found the boots. Outside, it was not at all night yet; night wouldn’t even begin for two or three hours yet and this time he went straight to Bridesman’s hut, pausing only long enough to lay the rolled sidcott against the wall beside the door. Bridesman was in his shirt sleeves, washing; on the box between his and Cowrie’s beds a bottle of whisky sat between his and Cowrie’s toothmugs. Bridesman dried his hands and without stopping to roll down his sleeves, dumped the two toothbrushes from the mugs and poured whisky into them and passed Cowrie’s mug to him.
‘Down with it,’ Bridesman said. ‘If the whisky’s any good at all, it will burn up whatever germs Cowrie put in it or that you’ll leave.’ They drank. ‘More?’ Bridesman said.
‘No thanks. What will they do with the aeroplanes?’
‘What will what?’ Bridesman said.
‘The aeroplanes. Our busses. I didn’t have time to do anything with mine. But I might have, if I had had time. You know: wash it out. Taxi it into something—another aeroplane standing on the tarmac, yours maybe. Finish it, do for two of them at once, before they can sell them to South America or the Levantine. So nobody in a comic opera general’s suit can lead the squadron’s aeroplanes in some air force that wasn’t even in this at all. Maybe Collyer’ll let me fly mine once more. Then I shall crash it——’
Bridesman was walking steadily toward him with the bottle. ‘Up the mug,’ Bridesman said.
‘No thanks. I suppose you dont know just when we’ll go home.’
‘Will you drink, or wont you?’ Bridesman said. ‘No thanks.’
‘All right,’ Bridesman said. ‘I’ll give you a choice: drink, or shut up—let be—napoo. Which will you have?’
‘Why do you keep on saying let be? Let be what? Of course I know the infantry must go home first—the p.b.i. in the mud for four years, out after two weeks and no reason to be glad or even amazed that you are still alive, because all you came out for is to get your rifle clean and count your iron rations so you can go back in for two weeks, and so no reason to be amazed until it’s over. Of course they must go home first, throw the bloody rifle away forever and maybe after two weeks even get rid of the lice. Then nothing to do forever more but work all day and sit in pubs in the evenings and then go home and sleep in a clean bed with your wife——’
Bridesman held the bottle almost like he was going to strike him with it. ‘Your word’s worth damn all. Up the mug.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. He put the mug back on the box.—‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ve let be.’
‘Then cut along and wash and come to the mess. We’ll get one or two others and go to Madame Milhaud’s to eat.’
‘Collyer told us again this morning none of us were to leave the aerodrome. He probably knows. It’s probably as hard to stop a war as it is to start one. Thanks for the whisky.’ He went out. He could already smell it even before he was outside the hut and he stooped and took up the overall and went to his hut. It was empty of course; there would probably be a celebration, perhaps even a binge in the mess tonight. Nor did he light the lamp: dropping the flying boots and shoving them under his bed with his foot, then he put the rolled sidcott carefully on the floor beside the bed and lay down on it, lying quietly on his back in that spurious semblance of darkness and the time for sleeping which walls held, smelling the slow burning, and still there when he heard Burk cursing something or someone and the door banged back and Burk said,
‘Holy Christ, what’s that stink?’
‘It’s my sidcott,’ he said from the bed while someone lit the lamp. ‘It’s on fire.’
‘What the bloody hell did you bring it in here for?’ Burk said. ‘Do you want to burn down the hut?’
‘All right,’ he said, swinging his legs over and getting up and then taking up the overall while the others watched him curiously for a moment more, De Marchi at the lamp still holding the burning match in one hand. ‘What’s the matter? No binge tonight?’ Then Burk was cursing Collyer again even before De Marchi said,
‘Collyer closed the bar.’ He went outside; it was not even night yet, he could still read his watch: twenty-two hours (no, simple ten oclock p.m. now because now time was back in mufti too) and he went around the corner of the hut and put the overall on the ground beside the wall, not too close to it, the whole northwest one vast fading church window while he listened to the silence crowded and myriad with tiny sounds which he had never heard before in France and didn’t know even existed there because they were England. Then he couldn’t remember whether he had actually heard them in English nights either or whether someone had told him about them, because four years ago when such peaceful nightsounds were legal or at least de rigeur, he had been a child looking forward to no other uniform save that of the Boy Scouts. Then he turned; he could still smell it right up to the door and even inside too though inside of course he couldn’t really have sworn whether he actually smelled it or not. They were all in bed now and he got into pyjamas and put out the lamp and got into bed properly, rigid and quiet on his back. The snoring had already begun—Burk always snored and always cursed anyone who told him he did—so he could hear nothing but night passing, time passing, the grains of it whispering in a faint rustling whisper from or into whatever it was it ran from or into, and he swung his legs quietly over again and reached under the bed and found the flying boots and put them on and stood up and found his warm quietly and put it on and went out, already smelling it before he reached the door and on around the corner and sat down with his back against the wall beside the overall, not any darker now than it had been at twenty-two (no, ten p.m. now), the vast church window merely wheeling slowly eastward until almost before you knew it now it would fill, renew with light and then the sun, and then tomorrow.
