Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

“You mean you bastards boxed me in.”

  “On the contrary, Fanny,” Fitz said. “You and Flip began crowding the rest of us. You were really getting in our way. Not very nice, that.”

  “Reckless driving,” Cattermole said.

  “No consideration for others,” Cox added.

  “You callous, murdering sons of bitches,” Barton said.

  “Fanny’s upset about something,” Fitz remarked.

  “Perhaps Rex owed him some money,” Cox said.

  Barton turned on CH3. “You saw it happen,” he said. “Haven’t you got anything to say?”

  “My brother-in-law used to work for the telephone company,” CH3 told him.

  “God damn you all to hell,” Barton said.

  “He said it was a very interesting job,” CH3 said. “If you liked telephones.”

  A prolonged gust of wind kept smashing the loose sheets of metal until several of them blew down. They hit the concrete floor with a splendid crash. Barton used it as an excuse to get out. “Go to the mess,” he ordered. “Stay there. Don’t talk to anyone.”

  He found Baggy Bletchley in the station commander’s office, standing on the fringe of a high-powered but irritable meeting. As well as the station commander, who was a group captain, there were two wing commanders, an air commodore and a brigadier. When Barton went in they were all listening to an air vice-marshal who seemed especially annoyed with the brigadier. “Of course I can ask for more squadrons,” he was saying, “any bloody fool can do that, but where in God’s name are they going to operate from? Brittany? The Dordogne? The Cote de bloody Azur? Because any aerodrome nearer than that is liable to get the daylights bombed out of it, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You can’t expect my ack-ack to hit every German bomber they see. If the fighters don’t take out a good percentage—”

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying you expect my fighters to protect their own airfields?”

  “They’ve got to do their share.”

  “And then land in the bomb-craters, I suppose?”

  “Listen, my chaps have taken casualties too. It’s no fun—”

  “So you want my fighters to keep the Hun off your gunners. I see. That’s charming, I must say.”

  “Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” the air commodore said. “Whether or not we get more squadrons, the French want an answer fast.”

  “Frankly, sir, I don’t understand this French plan.” One of the wing commanders picked up a sheet of paper. “It contradicts itself.”

  “Good,” said the air vice-marshal. “Since the frogs were daft enough to send it by radio, Jerry quite certainly intercepted it, and if we can’t make head or tail of it, he must be thoroughly baffled.”

  “At last: an Allied triumph,” murmured the station commander.

  “Well, it’s radio or nothing,” said the air commodore. “All the land lines are cut. What about using a code?”

  “Who’s our liaison officer with the French?” the brigadier asked. “Meredith-Jones, isn’t it? Why not communicate in Welsh?”

  “Are we sure he speaks Welsh?” the air commodore asked.

  “I only heard him once, but it certainly sounded like Welsh,” the brigadier said.

  “Do you speak Welsh?” asked the air vice-marshal.

  “No, but surely we can find someone who does.”

  “Bloody good code, if it works,” said one of the wing commanders.

  “Absolute shambles if it doesn’t,” said the other.

  Barton touched Bletchley’s arm. “Excuse me, sir,” he whispered. They went into the corridor. “I need your help, sir,” he said. “I’m in a bit of a spot.”

  “I heard about Rex. Damn bad luck.”

  “Not really.”

  Barton described what had happened over Sedan. He did not repeat what had been said in the hangar. “They had it all worked out to get rid of him,” he said. “It was murder, plain and simple. The question is, what should I do?”

  Bletchley blew his nose, made a good clean job of his nostrils, and briefly examined the contents of his handkerchief. “He’s quite dead, is he? You’re absolutely convinced of that?”

  “Blown to bits, sir.”

  Bletchley nodded. “As long as there’s no risk that he might wander in here seeking vengeance … That makes you acting CO, I take it.”

  “Yes.”

  Bletchley nodded again, more firmly. “Well, my boy, whatever it was that Rex did wrong, you be sure and learn from it.” Barton had sensed what was coming but he was still taken aback. “And don’t look so damned virtuous,” Bletchley said. “Use your head. D’you think we’re going to courtmartial half-a-dozen fighter pilots now, of all times? Because their CO bought it? D’you know how many Battles and Blenheims went off to raid the Sedan bridgehead this afternoon? Seventy-one. And how many came back? Thirty-one. That’s forty crews blown to bits. We’ve just lost the best part of our whole Air Striking Force in an hour and a bit. You want my advice? Forget Rex. I have.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Meanwhile, be sure and keep your chaps away from that bloody woman Bellamy. If she gets wind of it, I’ll have you courtmartialled.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In fact the best thing you can do is get everyone back to Mailly-le-Camp lickety-split. Leave Rex to me. I’ll get him a posthumous gong and he’ll be forgotten in a month.” Bletchley saw Barton’s expression and grinned. “Nasty business, war, isn’t it? But damn good for promotion.” He went back into the station commander’s office. The ill-tempered argument briefly boomed into the corridor before the door shut it off.

  The farmer who gave Nicole a lift was surprised to see her walking away from Rheims up Route Nationale 51. Most civilians were going in the opposite direction. Only military convoys and locals like himself were heading northeast, toward the fighting, and he wasn’t going far, only to his farm which was miles up a side-track where he hoped neither side would want to go, God willing, including this plague of refugees, nothing was safe with them around, they’d steal the crops out of your fields and break down your fences for firewood. Thieves. All thieves.

  Nicole thought of the peasant who stole her bicycle and said nothing.

  The farmer asked where she was going. “I’m going to find my husband,” she said. “He’s a fighter pilot with a squadron near Belgium.” She deliberately didn’t say RAF.

  The farmer didn’t know whether to be pleased or alarmed. Wonderful that she was setting such a fine example to the nation, of course. But it was very dangerous ahead. They said the boche was across the Meuse. Sedan had fallen. The boche might be anywhere.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Anyway, they’re not going to waste their shells on me, are they? I’ll get to Belgium if I have to rollerskate there.”

  When he dropped her he took out a bottle of wine and they drank to each other’s health. Nicole looked around, at the empty countryside, the gloomy skies, the shuffling lines of refugees, and gave herself another long swig of wine. She needed some courage for the road ahead.

  For the third time that day, the Battle mechanics re-fueled and re-armed and patched up the Hurricanes, all five of them. The cloud had completely blown away; it was going to be a beautiful evening.

  Flash Gordon’s machine was lying on its side, in the middle of the field. CH3 remembered seeing a battered-looking fighter parked behind a hangar, and Barton asked a flight sergeant if it belonged to anyone. “You have it if you like, sir,” he said. “It’s a Yankee job, Curtiss P-36. A pair of them collided so we built this one out of what was left. The CO wanted it, for fun, but he won’t be needing it now, will he? Mind you, nobody’s actually flown it yet.”

  They pushed it out and Flash climbed into the cockpit.

  “The wheels won’t retract, sir,” the flight sergeant told him. “We must have put them in wrong. You want to watch the torque, she’s got twelve hundred horses. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. Have you flown one of these before,
sir?”

  Flash nodded. The pep pills were beginning to wear off, but he still felt extraordinarily positive. He still felt that anything was possible. He couldn’t say no to save his life. “You understand all the taps and dials and things, then?” the flight sergeant said. Flash nodded. The cockpit layout was a sweet mystery to him. “Start her up, chiefy,” he said cheerfully. He began tinkering with switches and levers. The Lord will provide, he thought.

  Meanwhile, Barton was briefing the others.

  “Straight back to Mailly. No scraps. If Jerry doesn’t bother us, we don’t bother him. Keep your eyes wide open. We’ll fly loose, about a hundred yards apart, and staggered so that everybody’s watching somebody’s tail. Let’s for the love of Christ see if we can get home without getting jumped. I’m sick of always coughing up half-a-crown for another wreath.”

  “Don’t worry, Fanny,” Cattermole said. “You’ll be all right with us. We understand one another, don’t we?”

  Barton stared suspiciously. Just then, Flash Gordon’s P-36 started with a colossal bang. Smoke and flame jetted from its exhaust stubs. Mechanics jumped clear and the plane began to roll. Gordon’s head could be seen bowed over the instrument panel. The engine was roaring with enormous appetite. Gordon looked up and waved. The P-36 went between two Hurricanes at fifty miles an hour. Flash bounced the machine six or seven times before he got it finally and completely unstuck. By then the Hurricane engines were beginning to fire.

  Fanny Barton took them up to fifteen thousand feet, above the French flak, and steered to the west of south, bending their route away from the fighting and the 109’s. They kept a wide formation, like a flat W, a quarter of a mile across. All the way, their heads were turning, ceaselessly, as regular as electric fans, left to right, up and down.

  Flash Gordon was not with them. His P-36 couldn’t get above five hundred feet. Either that, or he hadn’t treated it properly. Anyway, the thing refused to climb.

  “Please yourself,” he said. Who the hell cared? Five feet, five hundred, five thousand, it was all the same. As long as the kite was off the ground, it was flying. Right? Right.

  She was a very breezy little bird, this P-36. Smelled good, felt good, tasted good. Flash enjoyed them all. He’d never really noticed the taste of a fighter before but he had it now, his mouth was full of exciting flavors, especially a kind of silver-blue salty-metallic taste that was pure P-36. He inhaled a good lungful of hot, throbbing engine-aroma and made himself slightly drunk. The countryside went speeding past in a golden rush. Flash felt wonderfully happy and relaxed. He blessed the memory of that hot-shot RAMC doctor. Genius. Prince. Good egg.

  After twenty or thirty miles, Flash wondered where he was going. He knew where he wanted to go, of course, but where was this breezy little bird taking him? Only way to find out: pop down and take a dekko at a few road signs. He found a road and encouraged the P-36 to follow it. There were no road signs. What there was, down there, was a kind of miracle-thing going on. Lots of them. Or maybe one very very long one. Like in the Bible. Flash put his mind to work. Blue Danube, it suggested. Don’t be bloody silly, he said. Red Sea? it told him. Parting of the Red Sea? He put his head out and had a better look. Sort of, he said.

  What he was seeing was like the Parting of the Red Sea in reverse. Instead of the sea dividing to let people through, here was an endless sea of people who kept parting to let Flash through. The road ahead was packed with people, prams, wheelbarrows, soapbox carts, farm wagons, dogs, children, bicycles, everyone loaded with junk. Hundreds of people, thousands. But the road directly beneath him was always empty. A mile ahead: packed solid. Half a mile ahead they started to run to the sides. A quarter of a mile ahead they were diving over hedges. Two hundred yards ahead they were all falling flat in the fields. And underneath him, nothing. Empty road. Bloody miraculous!

  Flash charged on, taking a hugely childish pleasure in his godlike power. All he had to do was look at people and they ran like rabbits! He swung the fighter left and right through a series of bends and almost caught the rabbits before they had time to clear the road. See how they run! “Double up, there!” he roared. “Jump to it, granddad! Whoops, lady, get your finger out!” Then a village rushed at him and made him dodge and he lost the road.

  After that it was fields and woods and stuff, forever. Flash began to think they’d stopped making roads in France until he suddenly found a crossroads and there they were again, the rabbits, rushing out of his way by the hundreds. He swung right to circle and pick up the crossroads again, try and see a signpost, and he promptly got fired on by a French army convoy, string of trucks with machine-guns on top, he could see the flicker of flames. Then he found the crossroads and forgot to look for a signpost. The road was red.

  It ran east to west, more or less, so the setting sun was shining down it. The red was bright and fresh and it reached to the green verges. So many extraordinary and colorful things had happened to Flash recently that he was not astonished by this; merely intrigued. Then he noticed the black-clad bodies lying on the shining redness, and shock hit him like a kick in the stomach.

  He had had no idea that human beings contained so much blood. Nicole had told him, once. Six liters, she said. A gallon and a bit. Spill it on a road, that’s what it looks like. A bloody flood.

  He circled to look again and midway through the turn he saw a Messerschmitt 110 a mile away not much higher than he was, so he went after it instead, opening the throttle wide, and if the P-36 blew up he’d demand his money back, so help him God.

  It didn’t blow up. He caught the 110 from behind as it was machine-gunning a fresh column of refugees and he began shooting at it. At once the pilot jinked and went even lower to give his upper gunner a clear shot. Flash discovered that the P-36 had six guns. He was missing with them all. He got even closer and tried again, but the 110 was swinging and swaying too much. He dropped back a couple of lengths, waited until he was utterly certain of his shot, and fired exactly when the German pilot hauled back the stick and climbed at full power and Flash found himself blazing into a mob of refugees. His thumb was off the gun-button in a second but he clearly saw people knocked backward by his bullets as if swept by a great wind.

  Flash chased the 110 and eventually caught it and set an engine on fire and maybe shot it down; he didn’t know. He ran out of ammunition and watched it drag itself into the east, while he went south in search of an airfield. He couldn’t believe what had happened. It wasn’t possible. He forgot it for several minutes at a time. But always it came back. The redness, shining in the sun, and the great wind, bowling people over.

  The dog Reilly sat on its haunches and howled with misery. There was no escape from the wretched noise. Even a quarter of a mile away, inside the wooden hut, Fanny Barton was constantly aware of Reilly’s high-pitched grief. He added it to his list of worries. That made nine.

  First on the list was Flip Moran. They’d seen him get out but nobody could remember exactly where that was. Fanny worried about concussion, and exposure, and bloodyminded Frenchmen with scythes.

  Second was Pip Patterson. Those woods had stretched for miles. If his parachute got caught in the top of a tree he might starve to death. But again, no map reference. How could you start a search without a map reference?

  Third was Flash Gordon. He had landed his P-36 an hour after the Hurricanes reached Mailly, and God knows what he’d been up to because Flash hadn’t said a word about it. Just got out of the plane, left the engine running and walked away. Eyes like marbles, Cox said. Flash went straight to the nearest tent, lay down, fell asleep. Now he couldn’t be woken.

  Fourth was Rex’s death. All very well for Baggy Bletchley to say forget it; Baggy didn’t have to fly with the men who’d done it. Someone had been responsible. Which one? Rex, said a savage little voice inside him, Rex was guilty. Fanny pushed the thought away, and worried about it.

  Fifth was the Hurricanes. They needed complete overhauls.

  Sixth was the water supp
ly. There wasn’t any. A pipe had bust somewhere. Everyone was getting steadily dirtier.

  Seventh was the risk of bombing. What if the fuel dump got hit?

  Eighth was his ears. They were beginning to ache. How could he lead the squadron if he had ear-ache?

  And now, ninth was the dog Reilly.

  Reilly had raced from plane to plane when they landed. It took him ten minutes to realize that his master was missing. At first he whimpered, seeking out the pilots in turn and thrusting a beseeching muzzle into their hands. Then he began to whine, and finally as the day came to an end he sat on the grass and howled. It was astonishing that the animal could go on making such an appalling, exhausting noise so long. Reilly’s grief was endless. At that rate nobody would get any sleep. Except Gordon, of course.

  Fanny covered his ears and went back to worrying about Gordon.

  The adjutant came in. “Can’t get through to Rheims,” he said. “Something wrong with the line. I’ve sent a dispatch-rider, so that’s taken care of. You must be hungry.”

  “Starving.”

  “Well, the cooks have done their best and it’s stew.”

  “Stew? We had stew yesterday.”

  “Yes. Same stew.”

  “That’s no good.” Barton began to fret about food. Cox, Fitzgerald and Cattermole came in. “Christ, you look manky,” he said. It was a word the groundcrew used for anything made foul by neglect.

  “So do you,” Fitz said. “Come on, we’re going to get rotten drunk. CH3’s got his Bentley.”

  “I can’t, there’s too much—”

  “Oh, balls. Are you coming, uncle?”

  “Rotten drunk, you say?” Kellaway asked. “I think I deserve that. Come on, old boy.” He put a hand under Barton’s arm. “Duty calls. Time to get thoroughly bottled.”

  CH3 was waiting outside. They drove south, to a town called Arcis, and parked in the main square. The place was full of troops and refugees. “We’ll never get a meal here,” Barton said. He was the last out of the car, and he lagged behind the others as they walked around the square.

  Eventually, CH3 dropped back and walked beside him.