Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

by Derek Robinson

  “You volunteered for Vulcans,” Silk said. “No, forget I said that. Awfully bad form.”

  Tucker was fooling about with the cello. He plucked hard on the bass string, making it buzz as it boomed. “Hear that? I can play this fat fiddle better than Silko, and I’m piss-poor.”

  “Hands off,” Silk said. He took the cello away, before Tucker broke it.

  ASK THE REINDEER

  1

  That was in late August. September went by easily. Silk felt untroubled and complete in a way that he hadn’t known since he’d stooged across America with Barney Knox in the Harvard. There was a boyish pleasure in being one of the gang. Two gangs, in fact: Quinlan’s crew, and Tess Monk’s friendship. Where Zoë fitted in, he wasn’t sure and didn’t care. She was away most of the time: CND conferences, rallies, seminars. Parliament was on its summer break but politics never stopped. Nor did television. “Saw your wife on the box last night,” someone at Kindrick would say. “On top form, as usual.”

  Silk always gave the same reply: “Everyone needs a hobby.” Neutral. Untroubled. Brief.

  Zoë was fit and busy doing what she liked, and so was he. Whenever he could, he got off the base and drove to the farmhouse. If Tess wasn’t there he knew where she hid the key. Sometimes he took the bull-terrier for a walk in the back garden. The dog was old and barrel-chested, and it wheezed as its paws left prints in the grass. At the end of the garden they both rested, and Silk told it jokes. Sometimes it dozed. Once he couldn’t wake it and he had to load it in a wheelbarrow and trundle it up the garden. Tess came home as he was rubbing his side. “Pulled a muscle,” he said. “Heavy dog.”

  “Leave him be. He’ll come when he’s hungry. I have just the stuff for your muscle.”

  He went inside and upstairs and undressed. She came in, carrying a quart bottle whose faded label said Dr Sloane’s Liniment. “That’s for rugby players and dead horses,” he said.

  “I’ve jazzed it up. I cut it with rubbing alcohol and aftershave and dissolved some red ants in it.” She cupped her hand and poured a little. “If this doesn’t work, you deserve to die.” She rubbed his side. His eyes widened; he stood on one leg and waved her away. “Enough!” he cried. “I’d sooner die. Jesus wept... That stuff’s banned under the Geneva Convention.” He walked in a circle. “Whooo.”

  She was looking at his loins. “Aphrodisiac, too.”

  “I’ll strangle you first.”

  “Make a man of you.”

  “Ain’t bust. Don’t fix. And go scrub up. Those hands are lethal weapons.”

  She went out and washed. He climbed into the four-poster. His side was cooling to a pleasant glow. She came in, wearing nothing but elbow-length gloves of scarlet silk. As they began to enjoy the first, slowly accelerating ski-ride of sex, he wondered: Was Zoë ever like this? And rapidly lost interest in any answer.

  Sometimes she cooked supper for him, usually sausage and mash or egg and chips. Once in a while they drove into Lincoln for a Chinese meal. The risk of their being seen together worried him a little. There was no reason why he shouldn’t take his music teacher to dinner after his lesson. There was no lesson, although he carefully carried his cello into the farmhouse and carefully carried it away when he left. That meant he could truthfully say, if anyone asked, that he’d gone for a cello lesson. And he always paid, thinking She needs the money. Anyone who takes a bath under a hose in the back garden is hard up.

  He never mentioned his work and she never asked. Otherwise, they talked freely. Silence bored her, so she filled it with information. She said her father had been a racing driver called Fast Eddie. Also that women made the best barbers and she could shave him with a cutthroat razor in thirteen seconds. Also her late husband had three testicles and webbed feet. Also that Al Capone was not dead but hidden by Catholics in Mayfair. And so on, and on, anything to make Silk argue. She said her father was a blind jazz pianist until he got hit with a bottle and his sight returned.

  “In time to become a racing driver, I take it.”

  “I never said he was a racing driver.”

  “Didn’t you? I can’t keep up with your phenomenal family.”

  “You’re too slow. Listen faster, Silko. Dogs have better ears than men. Dogs hear earthquakes coming hours before they happen.” She rubbed the bull-terrier’s belly with her toes. It almost woke, and it drooled on the carpet.

  “See? Tidal wave coming,” Silk said. “We’re all doomed.” He thought: Zoë would have that carpet cleaned instantly. The dog, too. He smiled.

  “What’s funny?” she said.

  “You are. We are. It is.”

  Something other than good sex and pinball-machine talk kept Silk coming back to the farmhouse. Tess Monk lived for the moment. She wasn’t a prisoner of the past and the future didn’t interest her. By contrast, everyone else – all the men on 409 Squadron, all of Zoë’s friends and colleagues, Zoë herself – seemed to be trapped on an upward escalator. Silk liked meeting Tess Monk because there were no goals in her life, no targets, no scores. He was getting tired of targets. Especially targets that nobody was allowed to hit. It was about as much fun as coitus interruptus, and Silk had never been a fan of that.

  2

  The Vulcan got repaired. It went through a series of ground tests, and then a flying test, and was declared operational.

  Skull briefed the crew for an unusually long-range training exercise. They would stand by for a scramble, fly to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, refuel, and make a high-level approach over Turkey and Iran to the Black Sea in order to simulate a Blue Steel attack on Sevastopol, then reverse course and fly home.

  “Crimea,” Quinlan said.

  “Indeed. We fought a war there once, nobody knows why. Nearby is the town of Balaclava, named after the famous British woolly hat. Sevastopol is the home port of the Soviet Black Sea fleet. Various Soviet air bases are in the area – Adler, Saki, Oktyabr’skoyn – so if you miss Sevastopol you’re bound to hit something useful.”

  “We shan’t miss.”

  “Of course not.”

  “How many cathedrals has it got?” Dando asked.

  “Three. St Sophia’s is particularly splendid. Today is her saint’s day, so the cathedral should be very full. Also the beaches, of course, since it’s the school holidays. We expect large carnage, not to mention the nuclear annihilation of many warships. Now, your alternative targets...”

  They sat in the aircrew caravan until the phone rang. Quinlan cried: “Kick the tyres and light the fires!” and they sprinted to the bomber. Take-off took one minute thirty-eight seconds. Soon there was little for the pilots to see and to do except to follow the navigator’s instructions and to switch fuel tanks.

  They completed the exercise, taking care to stay out of Russian airspace. A carpet of cloud covered Europe. They lost height over the North Sea and landed at Kindrick in steady rain.

  * * *

  Debriefing was simple and straightforward.

  “We missed the cathedral,” Dando said. “Hit the monastery, though. Next to the dogs’ home. Do we get an extra point?”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” Skull said.

  “There isn’t a cathedral in Sevastopol,” Silk said. “Nor a monastery.”

  “Who cares? There isn’t a Sevastopol,” Quinlan said. He was hungry. “Not much of a Crimea, either. Are we through?” They got up and went out. Silk stayed.

  “How is the cello coming along?” Skull asked.

  “You’re full of shit. Sevastopol has no cathedral.” Silk sat slumped in his chair. It had been a long day. “Neither does Tartu. Remember that? Tartu was our Blue Steel target the day we got bounced by the Swedes. You said it had a cathedral. That was all balls. It’s got a big university, one of the oldest in Europe. You never mentioned that. Why not? Are you so queer for cathedrals that you’ve got to invent them?”

  “It’s a game, Silko. We’ve been playing it since long before you arrived.” Skull was sorting his paperwork. “The chaps identi
fy Russia with cathedrals. You know: onion domes. So I give them cathedrals. Nobody takes it seriously. You’ve been reading books, haven’t you?” Silk nodded. “A great mistake,” Skull said. “We always discouraged it at Cambridge.”

  “Tartu is in Estonia.”

  “It is.”

  “Conquered by Russia.”

  “Occupied, technically.”

  “And we’re going to wipe out Tartu, and half Estonia with it, in the defence of freedom.”

  Skull dumped his files in a briefcase. “Now you’re beginning to sound like Zoë.”

  “Haven’t seen her for weeks. I can look at a map without Zoë’s help. One of our targets is Murmansk East. That’s seventy miles from the Norwegian border.”

  “And you want to know how the Norwegians feel about getting doused in radiation clouds when you H-bomb Murmansk East. Beats me. Ask the reindeer. Nothing else lives up there except two hairy trolls, manners none and habits vile.”

  “It’s all a joke to you.”

  “Far from it. I know –”

  “No you don’t. You haven’t a clue what our job is like. No penguin has the right to tell us what to do.”

  “I flew on ops, in ’43. We bombed Essen. In a Wellington.”

  “And when you landed you couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, they tossed you into a blood wagon and you were in Sick Quarters for a week.”

  Skull took out a large handkerchief and polished his glasses. “It was a very hazardous raid. The flak...”

  “Bugger the flak. You wouldn’t last ten minutes over Russia.” When Skull held his glasses up to the light, Silk said. “You’re scared. You’re bloody terrified. A fiver says you can’t stand the thought of a simulated op, never mind a real one.”

  Skull breathed deeply and stood tall. 409 was a very small club. If he backed out now, soon everyone would know. It was only a simulator, a giant toy. “I’ll do it if you will,” he said.

  Silk stood. “What you puke, you clean up,” he said.

  His years in the RAF warned Silk that he had gone too far: flight lieutenants don’t make bets with wing commanders, not when it involves using expensive simulators. He went looking for Quinlan, told him what had happened, asked for his help. Quinlan was amused. “Forget the money,” he said. “Call it training. Skull’s idea. I’ll clear it with the CO. The rest is up to you. What you break, you pay for.”

  Silk tried to book time on the simulator, and failed. Other crews were ahead of him. He added his name to the list.

  3

  Next day Silk attended a couple of lectures on Soviet Air Defence, played squash, spent an hour in the Ops Block going over target routes, got bored and drove to The Grange.

  “Her ladyship is in the Music Room, sir,” Stevens said. He lifted the cello case from the Citroën. “And Mr Davis is in the mortuary.” Silk stared. “Mr Davis the bookmaker, sir. It seems he just slipped away.”

  “Tough luck.”

  “Mr Hallett might think otherwise.”

  Silk saw a small scratch on the side of the car, and rubbed it with his sleeve. Did no good. “I was having a not-bad day until I met you,” he said. “What’s your game, Stevens? Blackmail? Forget it. You make more money than I do.”

  “I merely sought to put your mind at rest.”

  “You failed. Stick to polishing the spoons, do me a favour, stay out of my life.”

  “Ah, life.” They went inside. “What is life? The poet Longfellow spoke well, did he not? Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not the goal ...”

  “You’re pulling my pisser again,” Silk said.

  “Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the

  soul ... It must have taken courage, don’t you think, to rhyme earnest with returnest?!

  “Move your ass, Stevens.”

  “If pressed, I would rate Auden higher. The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews, he wrote. Is that your experience, sir?”

  “You’re a smooth sod, aren’t you?”

  “And you are as curly as a corkscrew.”

  They stopped and looked at each other, Silk stiff with rage, Stevens calm, one foot on a stair, nicely balanced. “If you weren’t carrying that Cabrilloni,” Silk said, “I’d smash your face in.”

  “Further evidence, if such were needed, of your appetite for violence, sir.”

  Stalemate. Silk strode ahead. The Music Room doors were open and someone was at the piano, playing tidy, unhurried jazz. Variations on Duke Ellington tunes, perhaps. Or maybe Hymns Ancient and Modern played backwards. Silk didn’t know or care.

  Zoë was leaning against the piano. She wore a blue sleeveless dress. He remembered the time when she had got out of that dress faster than he could unbutton his shirt. Long, long ago. Last year, at least. The pianist saw him, stopped playing, stood up. Before the man spoke, Silk knew he was American: the crewcut, the clothes, the loafers with tassles: ads in The New Yorker magazine were full of men like him, over thirty under forty, white, fit and not poor.

  “Silko!” she said. “What a nice surprise. Meet Ray Glover, covering Europe for the L.A. Times. This is Silko Silk, devastating Eastern Europe for... I don’t know who for. Not me, anyway.”

  They shook hands. “I lived in L.A. once,” Silk said. “With Ginger Rogers. Nice girl.”

  “Hell of a dancer.”

  “Yes. We didn’t dance.”

  “Too bad. A missed opportunity.”

  “Well, it wasn’t so straightforward.” He thought of describing the red body rash and knew at once it would be a mistake. He glanced at Zoë. What was this suave West Coast johnny doing here? Christ, that blue dress would fall off in a blink. “Looking well, dear,” he said.

  “You’re a musician?” Glover said. “Why don’t we play something?” He waved a hand at the cello case.

  Silk looked. Bloody Stevens had dumped it in full view and gone. “I’m hopeless,” he said. “Just a beginner.”

  “You can play something, Silko,” Zoë said. “He’s had dozens of lessons,” she told Glover.

  “You’d hate it. I just make... you know... noise.”

  “Play anything,” Glover said. “Simple nursery rhyme, for instance. Can you play Three Blind Mice?” He sang the tune: dah-dah-dah, dah-dahdy-dah. Zoë joined in. “You do that,” he said, “and I’ll fool around on the piano.”

  Silk felt hot. Maybe the rash was coming back. “Honestly, I don’t know any tunes,” he said.

  “No tunes?” Zoë said. “What has Tess been teaching you?”

  “Technique. We practise technique.” That sounds bad, Silk thought. He played an imaginary bow on an imaginary cello. “Hours of technique.”

  “Play a middle C,” Glover suggested. “One note. I’ll do the rest.”

  Silk clenched his teeth. He made a feeble gesture at the cello case. “It’s...” He shook his head. “The thing is...”

  “One solitary sodding note, Silko.” Zoë was enjoying this. “Don’t tell me –”

  Stevens coughed. They all turned. He was at the door. “The telephone, sir. An urgent call from the aerodrome.”

  “Damn, damn,” Silk said. “What a bloody nuisance.”

  “Probably a Micky Finn,” Zoë said. “I’ll explain later,” she told Glover. Stevens picked up the case. “I don’t believe there’s a cello in there,” she said. “I bet it’s an enormous tommy-gun.” Silk was halfway to the door. “Apologies,” he said.

  Stevens led the way. When they reached a telephone, it was resting on its cradle. “The aerodrome must have changed its mind,” he said. “What a bloody nuisance.”

  “Horseshit. Nobody called.” Silk stuffed his hands in his pockets and rattled his keys and his small change. “Don’t expect any thanks. I can handle pushy Yanks without your help.”

  “He tips very well, sir. Better than you.”

  “Good. You can start paying for the claret you steal.” Silk grabbed his cello case. “Now bring my Citroën around pronto.”

 
He was too slow. By the time he reached the front doors, Stevens had opened them. And the Citroën was already standing in the drive, with its doors open. Silk slid the case onto the back seat, and Stevens closed the door.

  “This place is a dump,” Silk said. “It’s full of politics and ponces like you. I’d like to bomb it flat.” He got in, turned the key, accelerated away, foot to the floor, spitting gravel at Stevens. It gave him little pleasure. It had become a routine exit.

  ALL ROGUE MALES

  1

  The canopy of the four poster had split long ago, and they could see the ceiling. They had thrown off the sheets and their bodies were cooling in the soft breeze from the open windows. She pointed up, and they watched a foot-long cobweb come loose and perform a slow-motion wave as it fell. When it got closer they both blew hard. It wandered off and missed the bed. “Takes more than a cobweb to bother us,” she said.

  She swung her long legs and rolled out of bed. He watched her stroll around the room, picking up items of clothing. “You’re as lithe as a leopard,” he said. “Although I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a leopard in the wild.”

  She found a green sock. It wasn’t his, and it had a big hole in the toe. She threw it out of the window.

  “How many poor fools are in love with you this week?” he asked. “Not counting me.”

  “Hullo,” she said, and pointed. “Here comes a vicar,”

  “Bloody hell.” Silk jumped out of bed and grabbed his trousers. “It better not be the station padre. I’ll hide up here.”

  “Don’t agitate yourself, Silko. It’s me he’s after.” She pulled on a pair of slacks and a sweater. “I’ll get rid of him.”

  Silk listened to the fading patter of her bare feet on the stairs. Then he heard voices. He went to a mirror and watched himself knot his tie. “Why are you hiding?” he asked quietly. “It’s a music lesson. You used the bathroom. Lesson over. Going home. He’s only a parson.” He buttoned his tunic and went to the bathroom and flushed the lavatory and clumped downstairs.

  “Ah! Flight Lieutenant Silk. A pleasure and a privilege, sir.” They shook hands, and Silk knew why Tess hadn’t got rid of him: tallish, bald with a grey ruff, bright brown eyes, clerical collar above a burgundy shirt, houndstooth jacket, dark trousers freshly pressed, brogues polished to a deep glow. No ordinary vicar. “Simon Gladstone. A distant relative of the great man.”