“It gets you wet feet,” Silk said. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“I’ll pick you up at ten tomorrow morning.”
When he arrived, Silk was wandering about the room, naked, reading the Gideon bible. His body was covered in a bright red rash. “The hotel doctor doesn’t like the look of it,” Silk said. “Personally, I think it’s hideous. What do you think?”
The consulate cancelled Silk’s tour. It sent a specialist in skin conditions, a burly, amiable American with a touch as delicate as a concert pianist’s. Throughout his very thorough examination he chatted with Silk about England, and bombers, and where he’d been in America. It was a relaxed and comfortable conversation. “Do you see a lot of people like me?” Silk asked. “Red all over?”
“Well, there’s Hollywood, of course. Movie-making can be hard on the nerves. All that make-up doesn’t help.”
“I knew a chap who wore make-up. Polish pilot. A touch of rouge on the cheeks, and he always slept in a hairnet. Brave as a lion. What we call a press-on type. Got the chop, of course. Over Osnabrück.”
“Was he a good friend of yours?” the doctor asked.
“Certainly not,” Silk said. “Chap gets the chop over Osnabrück, he’s no friend of mine.”
“Eyes wide open.” The doctor stared into one, then the other. “Clear as gin... You play any sports?”
“Sex. Lots of sex. Not enough, though. And none at all, recently.” He walked over to a full-length mirror. “You don’t get as red as that from a touch of rouge,” he said. “Looks more like a bucket of blood.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow. Drink lots of orange juice. It won’t stop your rash, but it helps our economy.”
4
Silk never saw him again.
There was a strong English colony in Hollywood which did its duty by providing hospitality for any compatriot in uniform who was passing through Los Angeles. Ronald Colman was accepted without question as the leader of the colony. He had played the perfect Englishman in so many hits that he was the unofficial British ambassador on the West Coast. His male secretary tapped on Silk’s door, didn’t even blink at what he saw, explained that Mr Colman thought Mr Silk might feel more comfortable as his guest in Beverly Hills. Stroll in the grounds, swim in the pool, watch a little cricket...
“Can’t wear my uniform,” Silk said. “Odd, isn’t it?”
“Try this.” The secretary had brought a pure silk dressing gown. “Belongs to Myrna Loy, but she has plenty more.”
“Crikey.” Silk slipped it on, warily. It felt like a cool evening breeze. “Strewth... Can I go out like this?”
“With your figure, I think you can carry it off.”
The car was a white Rolls. When it stopped at lights, some passers-by shaded their eyes and waved. Silk waved back.
“What if they want my autograph?” he asked.
“Just write Errol Flynn. That’s what I do.” The white Rolls seemed to know its way home. With only a little help from the chauffeur, it strolled up a driveway and circled what Silk took to be an unusually handsome country club but which turned out to be Ronald Colman’s home. His secretary had not been joking about cricket: the lawn was big enough. Sprinklers tossed small rainbows back and forth. Mexican gardeners hunted down weeds.
The Rolls stopped at a fake-Tudor cottage under a group of big shade trees. “Everything you need is in here,” the secretary said, “and if it isn’t, just pick up the phone. Mr Colman returns from the studio at six. Cocktails by the pool at seven.”
“What should I wear?”
“Anything. An air of quiet confidence would be fine.”
Silk searched a chest of drawers and found a pair of shorts, so flimsy that he wondered if they too belonged to Myrna Loy. He put them on. Not too painful. The kitchen was well stocked. The bathroom had a dozen towels, the thickest he had ever seen.
He went out and walked around the cottage, and saw a lush tropical bush where a hummingbird was doing its act. It glowed like a jewel. The wings were a blur, the tiny body shimmered with a golden green, a crimson, a purple, a bronze. This wasn’t flying the way Silk flew. The hummingbird stood on thin air and tickled the depth of a blossom with its probe, an action that was pure sex without the embrace. Silk blinked and the creature had gone.
He moved on and found it again. Or maybe its pal. Another blossom was in luck. Next to this genius, an aeroplane was just a truck with roaring propellers. Other hummingbirds visited other bushes. He studied them until his eyes began to lose focus.
The day slipped away, pleasantly, painlessly. He sat in a garden chair. After a while, a yellow butterfly as big as his hand landed on his knee. Its antenna uncurled and tasted the red skin. “Mustard?” he asked. “Horseradish sauce?” It flew away, dodging imaginary enemies. “Drunk on duty,” he said. “Court martial.”
Later, he walked through the trees to the cricket pitch, moving from one piece of shade to another. There was a white wooden pavilion with a scoreboard. He went inside and at once the cool gloom swamped his senses. Cricket gear lay scattered about, just like school, and that special smell, what was its name? You rubbed it into the bat to preserve the wood. His damn stupid brain knew the word but it was being bloodyminded. He picked up a bat and swung it. Whoops! There was that schooldays smell again, ten times stronger. How idiotic, six thousand miles from home, in Los bloody Angeles, to get ambushed by the smell of cricket!
He dropped the bat and walked back to the cottage. His suitcases were in the bedroom. Somebody had gone to the hotel, packed his clothes and brought them over. Thanks very much. Awfully decent. They wanted him to relax. He hadn’t relaxed in four years. Flying Hampdens, then Wellingtons, then Lancs, it didn’t pay to relax. He put an Artie Shaw record on the gramophone. Relax and you might fly into a stuffed cloud. He looked at his watch. Eight hours’ difference. Back at Kindrick the crews would be getting ready for ops, maybe. Not relaxed, certainly. Guts as tight as fiddlestrings. Artie Shaw was relaxed, music just tumbled out of his clarinet like... He couldn’t think what it was like, until he remembered how a stream of incendiaries looked as they tumbled into a searchlight beam and scattered, pretty as confetti. Artie Shaw seemed to have an endless bombload, his stuff kept tumbling and tumbling. Now Silk felt too tired to stand. This relaxation business was exhausting.
As he stretched out on the bed, the word came to him. Linseed oil. Thank you, brain. About bloody time. He fell asleep.
5
Drinks by the pool. Ronald Colman welcomed Silk like an old pal who’d been away for a week, said nothing about the bright red rash, just gave him a half-pint tankard. “It’s called Buzzard’s Breath. Don’t ask what’s in it,” Colman said. “The President of Mexico sold me the recipe. State secret, he said.” Silk drank deep. It tasted like liquid moonlight with firecrackers, a bloody silly turn of phrase, very unSilklike, must be caused by his vulnerable condition, so he took another swig to wash it away.
“What d’you think?” Colman asked.
“It’s a far cry from linseed oil,” Silk said.
Colman smiled. “Indisputable,” he said. “Come and meet Ginger.” Who turned out to be Ginger Rogers. She was very easy to talk to. She made Silk realize that he was a very interesting chap. Somebody kept filling up his tankard. Later there was food, delicious food. He made more friends, people with famous names. Ginger walked him back to the cottage, kissed him goodnight. See? That’s what a double DFC gets you. Almost worth the effort.
* * *
A week passed, painlessly.
The consulate seemed to have forgotten about him. The war was making steady progress without his help. He slept a lot, swam a bit, played some casual tennis with a man who talked like Charles Boyer and turned out to be Charles Boyer. People were always dropping in at Colman’s and they were nearly all Famous Names. Quite soon, Silk stopped thinking of them as Hollywood stars; they were just Ronald’s friends. A chap who has been kissed goodnight by Ginger Rogers grows up fast. The possibility th
at they might feel privileged to meet a battle-scarred squadron leader never occurred to him. He didn’t talk about ops and they didn’t ask.
The rash faded a bit and his skin felt slightly less anxious. He could take a shower and walk away intact, provided he was careful with the towel. He had the use of a Cadillac convertible. Joan Fontaine asked him to take her shopping. She picked out a lot of clothes that were just right for him. No money changed hand, no cheques were written, nobody seemed concerned, the stores had people who carried the purchases to the car, and Silk realised he had strayed into the Shangri-la of Hollywood where money didn’t talk because it didn’t speak the language. If you were in, money wasn’t necessary; if you were out, money wouldn’t help. That was how it seemed to Silk; but he wasn’t thinking very hard, he was just letting himself be sucked into the slipstream of Ronald Colman and friends.
They took him to the races, a private box high in the stands; to the movies, a private preview, invitation only; to Romanoffs, dark as a speakeasy, for lunch. He stopped saying thank you. He didn’t feel especially grateful. Not getting blown to buggery by a German night fighter was partly down to luck; well, so was this holiday. Everything in life and death was luck.
One day he stayed in the cottage and wrote to Zoë about his luck. After two pages he stopped and read the letter. What a load of self-important guff. It was stiff and jokey and shapeless; he could imagine her mounting impatience with it. He tore it up and burned the bits. Then he wrote something simple and safe:
Darling Zoë,
A lot has happened since I last wrote from, I think, Kansas. Much of it was the same thing over and over again: another factory, another speech although of course it was always the same old gung-ho speech with local variations. (Gung-ho means bloody good show, keep up the good work. You probably know that.)
Now I’m in California on sick leave with a boring condition which would be total sunburn if I’d been in the sun. As I haven’t, the quacks are baffled. I’m in a sort of rest home for heroes, run by English movie actors, damn good types. God knows when I’ll be ordered home. I’m sure you’re holding the fort brilliantly. Stalin’s troops seem to be hotfooting it after the frightful Huns, no doubt helped enormously by your ladies’ warm socks.
Much love from me and my two gongs, Hanky and Panky. Kiss Laura for me – if you can.
Silko.
Good enough. The bit about the rest home was a white lie. Was he afraid Zoë might think he was bonking Piper Laurie? That didn’t sound like a happy marriage. What had happened to true love and complete trust and all that cobblers? “Bollocks,” Silk said. He addressed the envelope and set off to the house. Colman would have someone who could stamp it and mail it. On the way he met Barney Knox, and that changed everything.
6
The man was carrying a butterfly net. When they were still ten yards apart, he said to Silk: “I was playing poker with the Andrews Sisters, they can read each other’s minds, I swear it, they took a week’s pay off me in ten minutes flat, so I told them I was going on a butterfly hunt, and hey, look, the butler gave me this. You’re the squadron leader. I’m Barney Knox.” They shook hands, gently: he could see the rash.
Knox was tall, with close-cropped hair. Some time ago, his nose had been in collision with something hard; faint white surgical scars showed around his cheekbones and forehead. Silk had seen that sort of marking before. It often followed a forced landing, when the instrument panel went backwards and met the pilot coming forwards.
“Our host told me all about you,” Knox said.
“Did he? Very clever of him. He doesn’t know all about me.”
“Right. He told me two things. One is you’re bullshit-proof.”
“Evidently you didn’t believe him.”
“The other’s anger. You’re a very angry man, Mr Silk.”
“More bullshit.”
Silk walked on, and Knox went with him. “Letter to England?” he said. “Give it to me and I’ll get it on a plane tonight. Otherwise it’ll take a month.” Silk stopped. “No bullshit,” Knox said.
“Why should you care? And who the hell are you?”
“I’m a guy who flew B-24s in England, what you call Liberators. I’m flying one this afternoon. Test flight. Want to come along for the ride?”
Silk scratched his head with a corner of the envelope. His scalp flinched, a warning sign; so he stopped. “Not in uniform. I can’t wear uniform.”
“Flying overalls okay?”
Silk gave him the letter. “Why bother? What’s in this for you?”
“Wrong question. You should be asking what’s in it for you. And the answer’s not down here with the butterflies.”
7
The Liberator looked fat. It squatted on its tricycle undercarriage, close to the ground, as if its size and weight were pressing it down. Silk was biased, he thought the bomber was a tub of lard compared with the tight lines of a Lancaster, but he sat in the co-pilot’s seat and said nothing for the first half-hour, while Barney Knox did his pre-flight checks and got airborne and climbed to eight thousand feet, following the Pacific shoreline southwards. He went through a sequence of manoeuvres and made notes on his knee-pad. Then he briefed Silk on the controls, the taps and switches and dials. “She’s yours,” he said. “Leave the fuel to the flight engineer. Just throw her about a bit.”
It was hard work. The Liberator was agile enough but it had to be kicked and shoved every inch of the way. Four Pratt and Whitney engines gave buckets of power, yet the aircraft felt heavy. Even flying straight and level was perpetual work. Instability seemed to have been built into the design. Nevertheless, flying the beast was the best thing that had come Silk’s way in months.
Knox took the bomber home to its base, just outside Los Angeles, and landed with only a slight bounce. They got out. Silk took a deep, refreshing breath of high-octane fumes. He pinched his nose and blew hard and his ears popped. A sudden world of fresh sounds arrived. A small wave of happiness came with them. He felt hungry. He hadn’t been truly hungry in a long time.
“Don’t tell me what’s wrong with the B-24,” Knox said. “The nose is so long that it blocks the pilot’s view, and sometimes the automatic pilot forgets its manners and flies aerobatics, and you want to land but the goddamn nose wheel won’t extend, so now the flight engineer has to crawl into the nose-wheel compartment and wrestle the bastard down which shouldn’t take more than five minutes provided he remembered to bring his toolkit, by which time the airfield defences will have blown us out of the sky from sheer boredom. I know it all. She’s a bitch, but she’s our bitch and I love her. Don’t talk to me about your lovely Lancasters. This bitch can hit a target a thousand miles away and bring her crew back safe. Now, one question. You want to fly with me?”
“Yes.” They shook hands. “Can you clear it with the consulate?”
“From what I hear, they’ll pay us to take you off their hands.”
“What a peculiar war it is,” Silk said.
8
Colman was working late at the studio. Silk left a note of thanks, packed his things, and Knox drove them back to the base.
Next morning, he was having breakfast when Knox came and sat opposite him. “Shaved yet?” he asked.
“Yes.” Strange question.
“Did you look in the mirror? The rash has gone.”
“Good Lord.” Silk felt his face. “I forgot all about it.” He looked at his arms, unbuttoned his shirt and squinted at his chest. “All gone. Gone as fast as it came. Extraordinary.”
“You reckon? I don’t. Everybody says hail the much-decorated squadron leader, what a hell of a flier, but you don’t fly. It’s the only thing your body wants to do. You keep talking about flying, you never do it. Your skin goes on strike. Won’t wear the wings.”
“So...” Silk leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “You’re saying I did this to myself?”
“And now you’ve undone it. You’re a natural-born pilot, Silko. You’re good for
one thing only, and that’s flying. You and the airplane are in love. I may cry.” A waiter put a plate of blueberry pancakes in front of him. “How would you like to demonstrate the corkscrew to a bunch of trainee fliers?”
Silk drank some coffee. “One day I must tell you about my great-aunt Phoebe,” he said.
“Did she fly?”
“She thought so. That’s the important thing, isn’t it?”
WHY THE HELL NOT?
1
Silk spent the rest of the war on attachment to the U.S. Army Air Force. Barney Knox was a colonel with a good record as a formation leader over Germany. Now he had a roving commission to travel around the many aircrew training schools and tell them stuff he wished he’d known on his first bombing mission.
They developed a Pat-and-Mike routine. To a class of trainee pilots, Knox said: “Who here has seen a corpse up close?” Three hands went up. “Shot to death?” Two went down. “See here.” He passed out some 8-by-10 prints. “My old command,” he said. “Consequences of flak. Or fighter attack.” Some trainees glanced and quickly passed the pictures, others kept looking. “Battle damage happens,” Knox said. “You better be ready.”
“Each of you has eight or nine pints of blood in him,” Silk said. “All of it gets pumped around your body three times a minute. If a crewman gets badly hurt...”
“Arm blown off,” Knox said.
“...he’ll lose blood twice as fast because in a crisis the heart pumps twice as hard.”
“Three pints looks like six gallons,” Knox said.
“Your casualty is swimming in blood,” Silk said. “And screaming. Crewmen are panicking.”
“First thing you do?” Knox asked.
Total silence. Grim faces. This wasn’t why they volunteered.
“Disconnect the casualty’s intercom,” Silk said.
“Restore silence!” Knox shouted.
“Rear gunner’s trying to report enemy fighters three o-clock high,” Silk said, “but he can’t because...”
“Shit, you know why,” Knox said. “Questions so far?”
Hullo Russia, Goodbye England Page 4
