B for Buster

by Iain Lawrence

  “Stuck?” asked Buzz.

  “Oh, the birds ’ave to be stuck,” said Bert. “They ’ave to learn that the place is their ’ome. My mates will do that.” He rubbed his forehead, looking doubtful. “But you’ll be AWOL, sir, if we don’t get back before morning.”

  Pop raised his head from the motor. “Not a chance of that,” he said. “Not a chance you’ll even get as far as Sheffield. It’s just rust and hope that’s holding this together.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Bert.

  “You might not get through the gate.”

  Bert sighed. “That’s torn it, then.”

  “I say.” Lofty took the pipe from his mouth. “We could make it there in the Morris, you know.”

  And so our plan was made, and everyone fell in with it. Bert told the crew what he had already told me, that he used to live near Trafalgar Square. Pop interrupted him. “You’d have to be mighty posh to live near the Square,” he said.

  “No, not really, Sarge,” said Bert. “Not anymore.” He said his friends would be there, and that they would be willing to help.

  Pop sat down to calculate in his head the fuel we would need. Simon measured a pigeon box and went off to figure out the best way to stack fifty of them on a Morris.

  Then Ratty spotted the flaw in our plan. “What about the cook?” he said. “What about all those crusts he’s making?”

  Buzz shook his head. “Are you really that dumb? We take them with us, eh? We dump them somewhere on the road, and we stop at a bakery coming back and pick up chicken pies.”

  Maybe Buzz wasn’t so stupid after all. His was a better idea than anyone else could come up with. So we raced to the huts and sat through debriefing. Then we raced back to the loft and got everything ready. Simon went round and talked to the cook, who was only too glad to get out of the chore of baking his pies. He even came with us that night, in his white apron and his tall cook’s hat. His pie crusts were stuffed in the car’s little boot.

  Bert took off his coveralls. He combed his hair and shined his boots, until he looked so spick-and-span that Lofty didn’t recognize him at first. No one said a word about the blank spaces on his sleeves, and Bert didn’t explain. He just kept his hands there at first, blushing and shy, until it was obvious that everyone had seen what he was trying to hide, and that no one would bind him for it.

  As soon as it was dark, we roared out through the gate in the Morris. Will perched on the very front of the bonnet, with a road map in his hands. Simon navigated from the starboard fender. Buzz and Ratty, on the boot, watched for policemen coming behind us. Bert and the cook and I balanced the stacks of pigeon boxes that rose from the passenger seat and the running boards, that covered every inch of the windshield. Lofty couldn’t see a thing except boxes, so the old guy got up behind him— just where he’d be in old Buster—with his helmet and goggles on, his head in the slipstream. He sat on the boxes and passed steering directions to Lofty, with taps of his feet on the pilot’s shoulders.

  We raced south toward London, flying through the blackness behind the dim glow of our hooded lights. We hurtled through Sherwood Forest, through little villages closed up in the blackout. Simon took us down the narrowest, emptiest roads, winding through curves with the boxes teetering and the pigeons shouting inside them. From county to county, we roared through the night— seven airmen, a cook, and a pigeoneer balanced on the little black roadster.

  It was two hundred miles to London, and we made it in less than three hours. We came into the city through Chipping Barnet, then steered through the grounds of Hampstead Heath.

  “Left!” shouted Simon.

  Pop gave Lofty a kick. The little bus squealed round a corner. Gears shifted as we gathered speed again.

  “Right!” called Simon.

  A kick from the old guy, a turn of the wheel, and the pigeons settled into their squawks and songs. They were singing their old one as we hurtled south down Edgeware Road and onto Park Lane. The blacked-out city rushed by as Pop steered us past Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace, onto the Mall and through Admiralty Arch.

  And then we were there. Stone buildings were all around us, a swarm of cars and buses. In the middle, like the still beam of the night fighters’ guide, rose the towering column topped by Nelson’s statue.

  Lofty drove us over the curb with a great lurch and a clatter from the boxes. A thousand birds rose from the Square, scattering in front of us like a burst of flak. Then Lofty put the binders on, and we stopped below the column, below the huge lions with their bronze heads watching.

  Lofty stepped from the car and stretched his arms. He looked at the big buildings and the faintness of the skyline. “You know,” he said, “when the war’s over, I think I’ll set up a shoe store around here.”

  “I thought you were going to be a bush pilot,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I think I’ll have had my fill of flying, Kid. I’ll be happy to keep my ten-and-a-halfs on the ground.”

  We stacked the pigeon boxes in a perfect pile at the base of the nearest lion. They rose around it and made a wall that didn’t look out of place. It looked as though it had been there since the war began, just like any of the funny little walls that had been built to protect strange things from the bursts of bombs. Before we were finished, the boxes were coated with pigeons.

  Bert listened to his own birds singing inside them, and he looked like a happy, monstrous little boy. “This is wizard, sir,” he said. “This is a proper snorter.”

  Lofty put the last box in place. The cook opened the boot of the Morris and took out all the pie crusts. He flung one of them out over the Square, and it ricocheted off the paving stones. It went rumbling away like a wheel, and a flock of pigeons chased it. He threw another one, and it landed with a cracking thud.

  “Wheezy jeezy, you’ll bust the stones,” said Ratty.

  The cook stacked the rest of the pies between the lion’s paws and told Bert to feed them to the pigeons.

  “All right,” said Bert. “They need the roughage.” Down toward the river, Big Ben started tolling the hour. We counted the strokes of the bell, two and then three of them. “We’d better scramble,” said Lofty.

  Bert nodded. “Yes, you’d better go.”

  I looked up at him; I thought he’d be coming with us.

  “I’ll be up in a day or two, sir,” he told me. “I ’ave to find my mates and see the pigeons safe, then I’ll make my way back on the train.”

  “But Fletcher-Dodge—”

  “Oh, ’e won’t know I’m missing, sir,” said Bert.

  Old Pop was gazing around at the buildings that encircled us, a ring of spires and domes and walls of carved stone. “Bert, where do you live?” he asked.

  “Just over there, Sarge.” Bert pointed in the vaguest direction, just a twitch of his arm as his hand went up to scratch his hair. He shuffled his feet.

  They were such grand and beautiful buildings that I couldn’t imagine Bert living in any of them, and didn’t believe he ever had. But he smiled at me and said, “Come and I’ll show you my digs, sir.”

  He took me across the Square, past the empty fountains and down to the underground. I imagined we would have to take the tube to the next station, or the next, but I saw right away that the last train had left long before. The platform was crowded with people. Even the tracks were covered with sleeping bodies.

  Then one of them stirred and shouted, “Why, it’s Bert.” Another said, “Bert, is that you?”

  It seemed that half the people there knew him, and greeted him warmly. An old lady called him Bertie, and stood up so that he could bend way down and kiss her cheek.

  He told me, “This was my ’ome, sir, for many a month. I was bombed out in the blitz, sir,” he said.

  It made me happy to see all his friends crowd around him. They asked where he had been and why he was back, but he told them all that it would have to wait. “I’ve got to see my young one off,” he said. And didn’t that make me proud.

&nbs
p; We went back to the Square, to the pigeon boxes, so that I could say goodbye to Percy. I asked which box he was in.

  “Just whistle, sir.”

  I did. I whistled once more for Percy, as I had so many times. And he answered with a familiar little song. He chirped and cooed as I searched along the pile of boxes, and I found him standing at attention at the door of one near the bottom. I bent down and put my finger through the flap. “Hey, Percy,” I said.

  Lofty came up behind me. He told me in a quiet voice that it was time to go, and I looked up to nod at him, and saw Pop and Ratty and all the others standing there behind him.

  “One more minute?” I asked. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure, Kid,” said Lofty.

  CHAPTER 25

  I PATTED PERCY’S HEAD. I rubbed his cheeks, his throat, the little holes for his ears. He leaned against my hand with all his tiny weight.

  “Goodbye,” I told him. “So long, Percy.”

  “Take ’im out, sir,” said Bert. “Give ’im a proper goodbye.”

  I unfastened the door, and Percy hopped out. He rose straight to my shoulder; he nudged at my ear.

  Across the Square and down the street, Big Ben tolled another hour. I knew I had to go, but I wished I could have a few minutes more with Percy. I wanted to tell him how much he had helped me, and how scared I was to go on without him. But I was too embarrassed to tell him that with everyone standing around.

  I gave him one more tickle, one more squeeze. Then I slid my hand across my shoulder, and he jumped up to my knuckles. “You’d better hold on to him,” I told Bert.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  We put our hands together, and I felt the little prickles of Percy’s claws as he walked across my fingers onto Bert’s huge fist. I wanted to remember the feeling of that.

  “I’ll put ’im back in ’is box, sir. Soon as you leave,” said Bert. “ ’E’ll ’ave to live in there for a while, of course. Until ’e forgets that ’e can fly ’ome and see you, sir.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  “Oh, not too long, sir. A fortnight maybe.”

  I nearly sobbed. Percy had always been the bird with the greatest freedom, and it wasn’t right that he would have to live two weeks inside a box. Two weeks without flying, without walking around in the sun. Hundreds and hundreds of birds around him; it would be almost torture for my little friend.

  We all said so long to Percy. Simon told him, “Take care, Cobber.” Buzz petted the bird, and it was the first time he had ever touched a pigeon. He ran his fingers down the double stripes on Percy’s wing. “Look after yourself, little corporal,” he said.

  I couldn’t move away. I wanted to stroke Percy for the last time, and then again once more. I felt a thickness in my throat, and tears coming to my eyes.

  “Oh, this isn’t right, sir,” said Bert. “I think you’d better keep ’im.”

  “He’s your pet,” I said.

  “Yes, but ’e’s a flyer, sir. Percy doesn’t belong ’ere, begging bits of bread from people.”

  “What about Fletcher-Dodge?”

  “Blast him,” said Bert. “You’re right. Any stray pigeons will find themselves eaten.” He sighed again. “Oh, sir, ’e shouldn’t stay ’ere and ’e can’t go ’ome. I don’t know what to do.”

  I could see that on his face. It sort of pulsed and twitched as all his undecided thoughts went running through his mind. Little Percy peered up at him, head tilted, eye-sign gleaming.

  “We really have to go,” said Lofty.

  Buzz put his hand on my arm. “Come on, Kak. He’ll be all right, the little corporal.”

  “Too bad he’s not a sergeant, eh?” said Ratty. “’Cause then he could live in the sergeants’ mess.”

  A warmness came over me. I looked up to see that Bert was smiling. His eyes were almost as bright as Percy’s. He nodded his head, and I nodded mine. “We’ll promote him,” I said. “Hello, Sergeant Percy.”

  There was a bit of silence before everyone talked at once. They said it was a good idea, or at least one worth trying. Simon said it was “cunning as a dunny rat.” The sergeants’ mess was just about the only place where Fletcher-Dodge wasn’t allowed to go.

  Bert held out his hand, and Percy hopped from him to me. “Go now, sir. Please go, and ’urry ’ome.”

  I put Percy in my jacket, and we climbed aboard the Morris. Lofty ran his hands across the instrument panel. “Switch to ground,” he said. “Landing gear locked.” The motor coughed and started; it whined as Lofty ran it up.

  “See you soon, sir,” shouted Bert.

  I touched my cap. I saluted the pigeoneer. Then I pulled my goggles down, and Lofty went off with a squeal of tires.

  We drove across the Square, scattering pigeons left and right. We bounced down the curb and shot across the street. We looped the loop through Piccadilly Circus.

  It was light enough to see the buildings, the towers and domes, the bronze lions in the Square. Old Bert was standing up on one, waving both his arms. I waved back, and then he disappeared behind me.

  We took the same route home, out through Hampstead Heath and along the country roads. Then the city was behind us, and the sun was coming up.

  From Leicester up to Leeds, we stopped at every bakery we passed. The cook dashed in and bought a chicken pie—or two if he could get them—from the money that we pooled, and the boot filled up as we rattled north. Then we sped through Yorkshire, and it was like flying through clouds, and we arrived back at the airfield before anyone was stirring.

  Fletcher-Dodge held a big party for the officers, to celebrate the Lancs. He served his pigeon pies, and I would have given my lost ray gun to see how he gloated over the table that was covered with them all. But sergeants weren’t invited. We heard from Simon and Will how he had called it a “wizard show,” a “splendid scoff.” Will laughed as he told us what an adjutant had said.

  “He took a bite,” said Will, “this fellow did. He chewed it carefully. Then the CO asked him what he thought, and the adjutant said, ‘It tastes rather like chicken, sir.’”

  Buzz giggled. “What happened then?”

  “The CO was furious,” said Will. “He turned red as beets, and sent the fellow packing. He said pigeon pie was wasted on a guy like that.”

  Percy took up lodgings in the mess. He got his own little paybook and a place at the bar, a wooden swing that he loved to stand on as people pushed. The harder they pushed, the more he liked it, and he would soar in great arcs, singing his little song.

  CHAPTER 26

  BERT CAME SLOUCHING INTO the loft the next day as I was feeding the few remaining birds. His hangdog look barely brightened when he saw how few there were. “Nobody even missed me, sir,” he said.

  “I did,” I told him, and he smiled then. He put on his coveralls and went to work.

  Over the next few days the pigeons slowly disappeared. Bert went down to the train station every morning and every evening with another basket tagged for a breeder somewhere. He expected to be sent away at any moment, and each time I went up for a training trip in the Lancaster, I was afraid that he would be gone when I landed.

  By the time we made our first op in the Lancs, on the thirtieth of August, there was only one left. Or there was only one in the loft, while little Sergeant Percy was swinging in the mess.

  I carried him in my jacket, out to the Morris, into the kite. Simon had fixed him up with a tiny oxygen mask made from the rubber tip of a medicine dropper. Percy didn’t really need it, but I fastened it on at nine thousand feet, and Simon came back to have a look. He grinned at me, and I grinned at him, and Percy just looked foolish. The oxygen made him lively, and he hopped around as far as his little hose would reach.

  We flew to Happy Valley, to a city with a name as long as the Ruhr—München-Gladbach. Will said it sounded like a pretty place, full of castles and bridges and churches. “Yeah, well, not after tonight,” said Ratty. “It’ll just be full of rubble then.”

 
He was angry that we had missed out on Berlin. More than seven hundred bombers had raided the Holy City on the twenty-third of August as we were stooging around Yorkshire in an empty Lanc. It didn’t matter to him that it had been the worst night of the war for Bomber Command. Fifty-six of our kites had got the chop. But Ratty had seethed in the mess the next morning when we heard on the wireless how badly the place had been plastered. “I missed it,” he’d said. “I wanted to see Berlin.”

  Even now, as we flew on toward Germany, he asked if we could make a detour to look at the ruins.

  “I don’t feel much like sightseeing,” said Lofty.

  It was the night of the new moon, and the sky was clear. Stars shone down through the astrodome. I looked up at the Milky Way, imagining myself in outer space, glorying in the strength and speed of the Lancaster. All the way across the sea and on to Happy Valley, Percy explored the space around me. He stood staring through the astrodome, with his eye-sign gleaming in the starlight. Then he rose to my shoulder and pecked at my lips, and I knew that I had nothing to fear. I didn’t think that any of us worried with Percy to keep us safe. “He’ll always get us home,” we’d said.

  Fletcher-Dodge came along, so it was bound to be an easy show. We followed the markers that the Pathfinders dropped, along a ribbon of green on the ground, and the city was orange and red from the flames. Not one of our kites was lost; not one was even scratched. We came home laughing, and in the mess, someone marked Percy’s paybook so he would get his two dollars and twenty-five cents for the op.

  Ratty said it was silly for a pigeon to be saving money. “No lie,” he said. “We should take him down to the Merry Men and let him blow it on a binge.”

  “He doesn’t drink,” I said.

  “He can have a sandwich, can’t he?”

  “I say, that’s topping,” said Lofty in his whine. “We’ll take the Morris out tomorrow night. Kak, are you in for that?”

  I could hardly believe I was the first one he asked. I grinned and said, “Sure, I’ll go.” I was going to say “That’s wizard!”—but I was afraid of sounding silly.