Goshawk Squadron

by Derek Robinson

  “All men smell lovely,” Margery said. “But you smell magnificent.”

  Peacock, Callaghan and Blunt walked to the village after dinner. It was night; a brisk breeze drove chubby clouds to the east, effacing and revealing the stars as if polishing them for display. When the wind dropped an occasional rumble in the distance reminded them of their first taste of war’s excitements. The sharp night air made them step out. Stepping out made them feel bold and confident and strong.

  Peacock said: “I’ve been thinking about our commanding officer. You know, he can’t be more than twenty-three at the most.”

  “He’s twenty-three,” Callaghan said. “Rogers told me.”

  “How old is Rogers?”

  “Twenty-one and a good bit.”

  “The old man looks twice his age.”

  “He has that sort of face,” Blunt said. “You know, degenerate.”

  “He’s not my idea of a leader, I must say,” Peacock said. “Not the sort of chap you’d want to be captain of a team.”

  “That uniform!” Callaghan said. “He’d get shot if he turned up like that in England.”

  “You really trod on his pet corn before lunch, didn’t you?” Blunt said.

  “All I said was we were lucky to get a two-seater on a plate on our first flight,” Callaghan protested. “No cause for him to be so stuffy, no cause at all.”

  They walked in silence for a while, passing the first, blacked-out cottages.

  “Actually, Dickinson told me that it almost certainly wasn’t a matter of luck,” Peacock said. “He seems pretty sure that the old man saw them coming.”

  “Yes, but how did he know they would stay on that course?” Blunt asked. “That must have been luck.”

  “Dickinson thinks not,” Peacock said. “He said it was ten to one the Huns would fly over our field, since the two-seater was on reconnaissance and they’d want to take a picture or something.”

  “Oh,” said Callaghan. “Of course.”

  “You seem to have been pretty thick with Dickinson,” Blunt said. “Did he give you any other advice?” Blunt still felt hurt about the old Frenchwoman.

  “As a matter of fact, he did. He said if you fire long bursts, you risk jamming your gun, so you should get in close and fire short bursts. Apparently the old man has been hammering this into them for weeks.”

  “Apparently the old man is a bit of a Prussian,” Blunt said.

  “One tries to be open-minded,” Callaghan said, “but that sort of approach does put one off, rather. Frankly, I’d respond more if a chap came up to me and said, ‘Look here, we’ve been doing this for rather a long time now and we find that this way seems to bring the best results.’”

  “Exactly,” Blunt said.

  “Oh, well.” Peacock pointed to an inn. “I suppose we should be glad the fire-eater is on our side, and not the Germans’.”

  “From all I’ve heard,” Callaghan said, “some of the German pilots are jolly decent chaps.”

  “Of course they are. It’s absolute nonsense to say that chivalrous men can’t fight a chivalrous war,” Blunt said. “That’s why I put in for the RFC. We’re literally the only sportsmen left.”

  Killion saw the three men come in, and turned his back on them. He was sitting at a corner table with an English girl called Rose Franklin. She was a nurse at a hospital on the other side of the village, and Killion had met her the previous evening by simply walking into the hospital and asking the first girl he saw if she would come out with him. Because Killion was young and trembling with desperation, Rose Franklin had agreed. She had laughed very loudly, but she had agreed. Rose was a strikingly handsome girl, big-breasted, high-colored, dancing-eyed. It was Killion’s bad luck that she was boisterous, unromantic, insensitive and recently married. Nevertheless, her presence was potent, and he persevered.

  “F-funny,” he said, his sexual hunger overcoming his stutter, “I knew as soon as I saw you.”

  “Did you, now,” Rose said brightly. “And what did you know, may I ask?”

  Killion frowned with terrible sincerity. “Well, you know,” he said, clenching his fists on the table. “Y-you and me.”

  “I certainly don’t know. Are they friends of yours, over there? They seemed to recognize you.”

  “I bet you’re j-jolly good at s-s-swimming. Anyone can t-tell just by looking. Are you k-keen on swimming?”

  She laughed, more for the exercise than anything else. “Well, if you go to the seaside you have to bathe, don’t you?”

  “Not half!” Killion spread his hands on the table, in the hope that she would rest an arm within stroking range. “D’you like that? I think bathing is jolly good f-fun. Especially when you don’t have to w-wear anything.”

  She laughed again, but reproachfully. “I really couldn’t say about that.”

  “They have s-swimming pools where you can swim in the b-b-b-buff. It f-feels awfully g-good. You ought to t-try it.”

  Rose re-arranged her gloves and purse. “How stuffy it gets in here!” she said. “It quite affects my head.”

  “Have some m-more wine,” Killion urged. He tried to add to her full glass.

  “Golly! The very idea. If anyone from the hospital sees me I’ll never hear the last of it.” She stared unblinkingly over his shoulder.

  “No, honestly, I m-mean it,” Killion tried to smile, but felt foolish, so he went back to looking sincere. “You really are the m-most m-marvelous girl.”

  “There’s something written on the wall over there.” She tilted her head and frowned. “Do you read French?”

  “No,” said Killion. “Not a bloody word.” That made her jump.

  “Yes, it’s definitely him,” Callaghan said.

  “If you ask me, it’s a grave mistake for a chap in our position to get too involved with women,” Blunt said. He sipped his wine. “Not too dry for you, is it? I can always make them change it …” Blunt had ordered the wine. The others told him it was just right.

  “Actually, I prefer my wine on the dry side,” Peacock said. “I’ve never been one for a sweet wine. Never.”

  “I think you’ll like this one,” Blunt said. He picked up the bottle and studied the label. “You have to be awfully careful with some of them.”

  “Can it be his wife?” Callaghan asked. “She’s wearing a wedding ring.”

  “No, no. He’s not married,” Blunt said. “None of them is married, and a good thing too. Far too many young marriages these days.”

  “Take my elder brother,” said Peacock. “He got married during his last leave. Barely twenty-one at the time.”

  “Utterly ridiculous,” Blunt said.

  “If I don’t see another girl until I’m twenty, that’ll be all right by me,” Callaghan said. “Female company is vastly overrated.”

  “Passed nem con.,” Blunt said.

  “Freud,” Killion said. “S-Sigmund Freud. You ought to read about him, honestly.”

  “Oh, foreigners!” Rose laughed, exercising her healthy chest. Killion watched, fascinated. They moved. What ecstasy it would be to see them really move …

  “F-Freud says everything goes back to s-s-s-s—”

  “Golly! Is that the time?”

  “—ex. He s-says it’s the most important th-thing between p-people.” Killion sat with his legs tensed and looked earnestly, beseechingly at her.

  “I say! What long words we use, for such a little boy. If you were in my ward, the first thing you’d get would be a jolly good haircut. When did you last go to the barber’s, may I ask?”

  “Oh, Rose …” Killion groaned. “Can’t you be n-nice to me? Can’t we l-l-like each other, just a b-bit?” He looked down to hide his misery. “Damn it Rose, I might be killed tomorrow.”

  “Pooh! What about my Edward? He’s fighting in the trenches.” She made it sound as if her husband were in the employ of a superior company. “He could be killed at any time. He might be dying now.”

  “Then take m-me,” Killion urge
d. “Do, Rose, do.”

  Rose gathered her gloves and purse. “You can take me home,” she said. “The very idea!”

  “Can’t say I’m too awfully keen on this idea of going for the enemy pilot,” Blunt said. “I mean, deliberately going for him.”

  “Is that what they teach here?” Callaghan said.

  “Oh yes, it’s the old man’s creed. They say he expects people to shoot the other chap in the back, if they possibly can.”

  “Sticks in the craw, a bit, that,” Peacock said.

  “One can’t help sort of including the other chap in the general area of fire,” Blunt said, “but I don’t see the need to go out of one’s way to commit murder. Do you?”

  “No, no.”

  “Of course not.”

  “The way I look at it,” Blunt said, “the chap can’t stay up if his plane won’t fly. And it seems to me that everyone overlooks a very vulnerable spot. Next time we meet a Hun, I know what I shall have a pot at.”

  “What’s that?” Callaghan asked.

  “The propeller. One bullet in the right place, and down he goes.”

  “Yes,” said Peacock. “Of course. Odd that nobody’s thought of it before.”

  Rose Franklin stopped Killion at the gates of the hospital. They hadn’t spoken since they left the inn. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said.

  “Oh well,” Killion mumbled. “You know.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said. You must get terribly lonely. And I have Edward, you see.”

  “Oh well.” Killion twisted about and beat his gloved hands together, anxious to get away.

  “There’s a girl who works in the hospital who I think might … I mean I think you would … Well, I can’t promise anything, but I know she’s awfully keen on … men.”

  Killion stopped hopping about and gazed at her. Sex blazed in the night like a beacon guiding a traveler to a city of delight.

  “Well, d’you want me to or not?” she asked impatiently.

  “Oh, y-yes, yes!” Killion cried. “Yes, p-please!”

  “Come around tomorrow night. I can’t make any promises, mind.”

  Killion ran all the way back to camp. At last!

  “Suppose we had a child,” Margery said. “What should we call it?”

  Woolley stopped shaving and looked at her in the mirror. She was sitting on his bed with a blanket around her shoulders, trying on his flying-helmet. After a while she noticed his reflected look and looked back, chewing on the leather chinstrap. The drying lather got up his nose, and he sneezed. More dry lather flew off and drifted away. “I’m sick of that question,” he said. He brushed on fresh lather.

  “I never asked it before. Did I?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we might. In fact if we go on like this we’re almost bound to. I mean, I don’t especially want to, but …”

  “Oh, nonsense. Of course you want to. All women want to. Nobody yet in the whole history of mankind has had the strength to resist doing what lies in their power to do, just to prove that they can. Given a choice between doing something and not doing something people always do something, even if it’s the wrong thing.”

  “Good gracious. Philosophy,” she said, surprised. “I never heard any of that before.”

  “Well.” He twisted his face to shave the side of his mouth. “It’s true. It explains this war, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh God, not that again. I came here to get away from that.” She hunched up. “I am so sick of dead men … They all seem to get hit in the head nowadays. Ours do, anyway. It’s such a waste. We use up miles of bandages and gauze and lint and dressings, and then they die anyway … Can’t they tell them to keep their stupid heads down? I feel like …”

  Woolley finished shaving and toweled off the soap. “Goodness gracious,” he said. “Philosophy.” He sat down and shared her blanket.

  “Your feet are cold.” She dragged off another blanket and pushed it around his legs. “Anyway, I don’t see why God had to put men’s heads on top of their stupid bodies if it means they just get blown open with shells, that’s all.”

  “God has a very curious sense of humor. Hence fornication.”

  She thought about it. “Why hence?”

  He drew her to him. “All right then, don’t count fornication,” he said. He put his lips to her hair and blew softly.

  “But I want to count it. Tell me.”

  “No. You’ll just be insulted.”

  “I promise.”

  “Well, don’t blame me.”

  “Tell me, tell me!”

  Woolley considered. “All right. It’s obvious, once you look at it objectively and dispassionately. The whole business is grotesque. It’s like two bicycles fighting.”

  “Fighting what?”

  “Fighting each other, fathead.”

  “I don’t see that at all.”

  Woolley sighed gloomily. “I said you’d go all huffy.”

  “I’m not huffy. I just don’t agree. For a start, bicycles only go when they’re upright.”

  “So do human beings.”

  “That has nothing to do with it.” She wriggled away from him and stared him in the face. “Does it? Go on, admit it has absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  “Look, why don’t you let me demonstrate—”

  “No. Not until you admit you were wrong.”

  Woolley sniffed and looked around for something to blow his nose on. “All right. I admit I was wrong.”

  “You’re just saying that to shut me up. You can be so rotten damn patronizing.”

  “Do you have a handkerchief?”

  “No. And if I had I wouldn’t lend it to anyone as rotten damn patronizing, stupid and heartless as you.”

  Woolley was startled. “My dear Margery,” he said. “What—” He stood and blinked at her with his finger under his nose to stop the drips. “I apologize. I really do.”

  “How can you? You don’t know what for.” Her voice was thick with suppressed tears. Woolley said nothing. “If you knew how ridiculous you look, standing there with nothing on and your finger up your nose.” She threw a handkerchief against his chest, and he caught it.

  “I think we’d better have a drink,” Woolley said. He fished out a bottle of whisky from a kit-bag, and cleaned two glasses on his towel.

  “Anyway, suppose we do have a child,” Margery said damply.

  “Out of the question.” Woolley half-filled both glasses. “My family has been sterile for generations.”

  “Oh, shut up. You don’t care because you won’t be the one to have it. I shall be left here looking ten times as fat as I do already and the poor little bastard won’t even have a real name.”

  “Here’s to generations yet unborn.” Woolley clinked her glass. “Long may they stay that way.”

  Margery drank and took off the flying-helmet and lay facedown on the bed. Woolley sat beside her and wrote in whisky with his finger all along her back, starting from the neck.

  “What’s that?” she asked. She sounded empty, drained by her anger at the end of a day of traveling and love-making.

  “I’m christening the bloody baby,” he said. “Lie still.” He reached her bottom and let a couple of drops fall down the cleft. “There! Just drowned a flea. Little bugger made a run for it, but I swamped him.”

  “Liar … What did you christen it?”

  Woolley checked off the names all the way down her spine. “Hardy; Lyons, Weston; Barber, Harrop, Leach; Wallace, Halse, Hampton, Stephenson, Bache.”

  She tried to make sense of it, while he parted her hair neatly on either side of her neck. “Who are they?”

  “Aston Villa’s team in 1913, when they won the Cup.”

  “Oh.” She took a sudden, deep breath, and wriggled deeper into the bed. “I thought it might be the people in your squadron.”

  “Oh, God … them. The Children’s Crusade. I got three new ones yesterday. Dribbling infants. Not a day over twelve, any of th
em.”

  “It’s not their fault they’re young. You were young once.” She turned on her side and pulled the blanket around her neck. “I bet they’re all nice boys. Nicer than you, anyhow.” She was falling asleep. “Nicer than me, probably …”

  Woolley watched her eyes close and the lids stop flickering. He finished his drink and started on hers. She looked very tired: there were puffy smudges around her eyes, and bracketing her mouth were tiny lines like the first cracks in plaster. He wondered if he could do her dreadful job; or rather, how long he could stand it if he ever tried it. He turned down the lamp and wondered how he was going to get in without wakening her; when suddenly she started up, crying out with despair, fighting to be free of the blankets. Then she saw him. “Oh my God!” she said. “Oh my God. Nightmares. Already.”

  “You’re all right,” Woolley said. “Move over, now. I’ll be with you now.”

  Someone knocked on the door. “Shit,” Woolley said, one foot in the bed. “Who the hell is that?” he called.

  “It’s me, sir,” came the adjutant’s voice. “I saw your light was on and I thought you ought to know. Dispatch rider from Corps, sir.”

  “Whatever it is, don’t read it. Give him a mug of cocoa and a big kiss and send him on a month’s leave. Now bugger off.”

  “Too late, sir, I’m afraid. Squadron’s ordered to transfer to the field at Achiet with all speed at first light.”

  Woolley took his foot out of bed. “Achiet?”

  “Yes, sir. He needs your signature.”

  “Oh.” Woolley opened the door and took the dispatch and Woodruffe’s fountain pen. “Miss Brooke, Captain Woodruffe.”

  The adjutant saluted. Margery smiled weakly.

  “We have met, actually,” Woodruffe said. “You introduced us before, sir.”

  “Bull. I’ve never seen this woman before in my life. Your pen leaks.” He gave the dispatch back and wiped his fingers on his thighs. “Make reveille an hour earlier. Now piss off.”

  “Goodnight, miss,” Woodruffe said. He saluted.

  Woolley closed the door. “Achiet,” he said. “Fancy. I lost half a crown there, two years ago. And my virginity.”

  “In that order?” Margery asked sleepily.

  “Be fair. It was her living.” He climbed in and hugged her.