Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  “Oh dear,” Fitzgerald said. “I haven’t got one.”

  “I have. Add twopence to the amount.”

  Many RAF pilots had money troubles when they returned from France; Hornet squadron was simply unluckier than most. Problems began when all their records got lost.

  The order to abandon the airfield at Mailly-le-Camp came during something of a flap. The place had been bombed, twice, a German reconnaissance plane had circled it, and a Messerschmitt 109 had created ten seconds of terror with a raging low-level attack that killed a cook and blew the foot off a sergeant armorer before he even had time to drop his mug of tea. After that, everyone wanted to get out in a rush. The last remaining Hurricanes had long since left for Berry-au-Bac. The essentials—food, medical supplies, weapons—were slung into the backs of trucks. Flash Gordon’s P-36 was burned. Fitzgerald’s crippled Hurricane was burned. The fuel dump in the woods was most spectacularly burned. And in the haste and confusion, half the orderly office’s records were burned too.

  The other half had already been loaded into a truck. Between Rheims and Amiens it got separated from the convoy. Some said it broke down; some said it was commandeered at gunpoint by French military police. The truth was the driver lagged behind, took a wrong turning and became thoroughly lost. In the end he attached himself to a British infantry unit, who were glad of the help. He carried their mortars; they gave him food and protection. Together they retreated, slowly and painfully, up through northern France. The truck was abandoned on the dockside in Dunkirk. Next day a bomb blew it into the water.

  By then, of course, the Hornet pilots were home and dry. None had money (apart from a few tattered francs) and only Mother Cox had a checkbook. The others had lost their personal belongings during the continuous scrambling from Château St. Pierre to Mailly to Amifontaine back to Mailly to Berry to a whole string of depots and transit camps. Mother Cox always kept a spare, second checkbook for emergencies, but even that wasn’t much use to him in England because his bank account was empty. Like the rest of them, his pay was hugely in arrears.

  The situation was explained to him by a wing commander in charge of accounts at Tangmere, a very large and efficient flying station near Chichester. After a couple of weeks’ leave, Cox had been posted there on temporary attachment to a fighter squadron.

  “Look, I can give you a bit,” the wing commander said. “I can pay you for now. But France …” He sucked in his breath. “Different story. No authorization, you see.”

  “But sir,” Cox said, “there’s no doubt I’ve been over there all winter, is there? I mean, the squadron got sent—”

  “Ah, but you don’t understand the system, old boy.” The wing commander saw an error creeping into a sheet of figures on the desk before him. He took an eraser, eliminated a penciled entry, and blew the bits away. “It’s all done with documents. You’ve got to have your docs. I mean, without docs, Air Ministry wouldn’t know what to do, would it?”

  “Isn’t there some emergency procedure, sir?”

  “I’ll send a memo.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. Air Ministry’s got a lot on its mind at the moment.” He sharpened a pencil. “Where you went wrong, you see, was in losing your docs.”

  “Yes. Very careless of me. Next time I’m in France I must remember to look for them.”

  “No point in getting shirty, old boy. We’re all in this together, you know.”

  Much the same happened to the other Hornet pilots. After leave, they were sent to strengthen units all over the country. Barton went to Manston and was in time to help cover the last days of the Dunkirk evacuation. Fitzgerald went to Exeter and flew endless convoy patrols, then got shifted to Hornchurch, northeast of London, and flew twice as many convoy patrols. Cattermole had a spell at Middle Wallop on Salisbury Plain, got moved to Duxford, near Cambridge, and ended up in Scotland, at Dyce airfield.

  Toward the end of his leave, Flash Gordon was informed of Nicole’s death by the International Red Cross and he got another two weeks’ leave on compassionate grounds, most of which he spent blind drunk in London. As a result of some confusion at Air Ministry he was then posted to an operational conversion unit which trained pilots to fly Lysanders for Army Cooperation. The Lysander was a very slow, stable, gull-winged job with spats on its fixed wheels. Gordon crashed three and got sent back to Fighter Command.

  CH3 spent two boring weeks in a concrete bunker, supposedly advising on the training of fighter controllers, until he wangled a job as a ferry pilot. He had just delivered a new Hurricane to Manston when he met Fanny Barton in the mess. Barton was surprised to learn that CH3 was as broke as the rest of them. “What about the family millions?” he said. “Can’t you raid Fort Knox?”

  “I could but I won’t,” CH3 said. “Why the hell should I subsidize the British Government? They hired me, they can damn well pay me the rate for the job.” A barman put drinks in front of them. Barton watched CH3 sign the bar-chit E. J. P. Demaron. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “Guy I used to know. Ferry pilot. Stalled on takeoff and spunin, so I got his job.”

  They clinked glasses. “Here’s to Dameron,” Barton said.

  “Demaron.”

  “Both of them.” They drank. “Baggy Bletchley was here yesterday,” Barton said. “He says they’re going to re-form Hornet squadron and give it to me.”

  “Baggy Bletchley? Didn’t he forecast light flak over Maastricht?”

  “Suppose he’s right this time, would you agree to be ‘A’ flight commander?”

  “I might. Work on me a little.”

  Barton was puzzled. “How?” he asked.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Fanny … The usual methods. Flattery. Bribery. Threats.”

  “Oh.” Barton drank and thought. “Well, you’re the man for the job,” he said, “and you’ll get immediate promotion to flying-officer-acting-flight-lieutenant, and if you don’t agree, then, well, frankly, I shall be, you know, very disappointed.”

  CH3 turned his back on the bar and rested his elbows. Barton had always been spare, he thought, but he had lost five or six pounds since France. “That’s it, is it?” he said.

  “More or less. I suppose you’ll stand a chance of a gong. Eventually.”

  “I’ve already got a gong. Got it in China. Chinese gong.”

  “Well, you can have another.”

  “What would I do with two gongs?”

  “Play extremely simple tunes on them, I suppose.”

  “Don’t know any.”

  “Well, for God’s sake,” Barton said, suddenly losing patience, “buy a simple song-book and learn some of the bloody things.”

  “All right, Fanny.” CH3 raised a hand to pacify him. “I accept. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t getting swept away by your silver-tongued New Zealand sophistication.”

  Barton pushed the empty glasses across the bar, and grunted. The barman hurried forward.

  “There you go again,” CH3 said. “Irresistible.”

  Barton was driving to RAF Bodkin Hazel, together with CH3, the adjutant and Skull, when he saw the Buick parked outside a pub.

  The reunion was friendly without being hearty. They shook hands, Barton was congratulated on his promotion, Cattermole waited until Kellaway was reaching for his wallet before asking the newcomers what they wanted to drink and then skillfully deferred and let Kellaway buy the round. They all talked at and across each other for a while before Barton noticed the three pilot officers sitting at the other end of the room. He went over and introduced himself. “You’re for Bodkin Hazel? Good, I thought you must be. Haven’t you met these chaps?”

  Macfarlane and Steele-Stebbing glanced at each other. “No, sir,” Macfarlane said. It was easier than explaining. “Come on, then,” Barton said.

  They trooped across the room. “Now then, where shall we start?” Barton said. “Tell you what—”

  “Steele-Stebbing, isn’t it?” Flash Gordon came forward w
ith a big smile and an outstretched hand. “And MacGregor, no, wait a minute, don’t tell me, Macfarlane, of course, Macfarlane, and oh my goodness now I’m in trouble, begins with a zed, sounds like one of those longhaired musicians, not Paderewski, oh dear I wish I’d never started this …”

  “Zabarnowski,” said the Pole.

  “Right!” said Gordon, and shook his hand. “Zabarnowski. I got the zed right, anyway, didn’t I?”

  “So you have met?” Barton said.

  “Briefly,” Steele-Stebbing said, frowning hard.

  “Sort of bumped into … um … this chap,” Macfarlane added. Embarrassment made him gruff.

  “I say, play the game!” Cattermole exclaimed, and he flashed the friendliest grin that Skull had ever seen on him. “We showed you chaps all over the airfield, didn’t we, Mother?”

  “Of course we did. You remember the airfield, Mac?” Cox said to Macfarlane. “Big flat place, lots of grass?”

  “Yes, but …” A guilty blush was spreading rapidly over Macfarlane’s face.

  “Don’t blame you for being bored,” Gordon said, with a chuckle. “Boring places, airfields. They couldn’t wait to get back here and play darts,” he told Barton.

  “Is that right?” Barton asked.

  “Far from it, sir,” Steele-Stebbing said.

  “Dominoes, then. Or gin rummy,” Gordon said. “Whatever it was, we couldn’t get a look-in.”

  “Pity, really, because I wanted to practice my Polish,” Fitzgerald said. “Jag tycker om det?” he asked Zabarnowski, who merely stared.

  “Well, as long as you’ve met,” Barton said. “That leaves Skull and uncle and CH3, and you can get to know them on the way to the airfield, because that’s where we’re going now.”

  They drank up, found their caps, thanked the landlord, and shuffled out, the junior pilots last.

  “What was all that in aid of?” Macfarlane muttered.

  “They lied,” Steele-Stebbing said to him, “and now the CO thinks we’re stupid and dishonest. It’s intolerable.”

  “If I get that little bastard on his own I’ll wrap his deckchair round his head.” Macfarlane’s voice was flattened by anger. “What d’you reckon, Zab?”

  “Is cock-up,” Zabarnowski said calmly.

  Two more pilots were waiting at Bodkin Hazel: Renouf and Haducek. Barton greeted them, welcomed them to the squadron, and silently hoped they were better than they seemed. Renouf was English, slim, with small features crowded into a small face. He wore a mustache that looked too old for him and his handshake was soft and slack. Haducek, by contrast, had a grip like a wrestler and a strong, intelligent, bluntly honest face. The trouble was he looked restless and bored and didn’t bother to hide it. Barton already knew something about him: he was a Czech who had flown with the French Air Force and made his way to England via Spain and Portugal. “I hope you’ll be happy with us,” Barton said to them both. Renouf nodded a lot. Haducek said: “Happy?” and shrugged. “Happy is not here,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the barren airfield. “Happy is killing Germans.”

  “We’ll see what we can do.”

  “Easy. Give me plane. Spitfire.”

  “The planes are waiting, elsewhere. And they’re Hurricanes, not Spits.” Haducek made a scoffing snort that Barton chose to ignore.

  He called them all together. “No doubt you’re wondering what we’re doing here when you’ve actually been posted to RAF Brambledown. Well, Brambledown is the Sector station and that’s where we’ll be living, but this little strip is a satellite of Brambledown and I expect us to operate from here a lot of the time. I know it looks pretty dead but I’m told that everything we need is tucked away out of sight, and of course it’s got one tremendous advantage over Brambledown: we’re about forty miles nearer Jerry. So we should get first crack at any raids coming this way. Before that, however, we’re going to do a lot of training. I want to say a couple of words about that …”

  Haducek wasn’t listening. He had wandered away from the group and was staring into the sky. As Barton paused, Zabarnowski ambled over and joined him. Haducek pointed. “What’s up?” Barton asked sharply, but they ignored him. He glanced at the adjutant, who merely rolled his eyes. CH3 murmured: “Bandits.”

  That was when Barton heard the first, faint tremor of aeroengines. “We’ll talk about training later,” he said, and shaded his eyes with his hand.

  The formation was just visible. It was so high that each plane was no more than a tiny glint against the blue.

  “They can’t possibly bomb from that height,” Steele-Stebbing said. “Can they?”

  Cox asked: “How high d’you think they are?”

  “Ten or twelve thousand.”

  “Try again.”

  “Fifteen?”

  “More like twenty.”

  Gordon came over and put his hand on Macfarlane’s arm. “I know what you’d like,” he said. Macfarlane went rigid with dislike. “You’d like to jump into a Hurricane and take off and give those rotten Huns what-for, wouldn’t you?”

  Macfarlane picked the hand off his arm. “Obviously,” he said.

  “What a twat,” Gordon said. “It’d take you fifteen minutes to reach their height and by then they’ll be over London.” He wandered away. Macfarlane put his hands behind his back and gripped his right wrist hard, as if it couldn’t be trusted to behave itself.

  The little bundle of glints proceeded almost silently until it was well inland.

  “Come on, come on,” Barton muttered. “Finger out, somebody.”

  “Con-trails,” CH3 said, and pointed. White streamers had suddenly appeared and were reaching out toward the enemy formation. “Spits from Berrydown,” he said.

  “What Jacky Bellamy would call ‘aerial chess,’” Cattermole said drily.

  The con-trails continued to stretch, closing the gap. Then they checked, curled and angled away. A few seconds later they slowly split up and scattered in all directions, making a fuzzy tangle of white strands. Meanwhile the bombers cruised on.

  “Fool’s mate,” Cattermole said.

  “What happened, sir?” Renouf asked.

  “Well,” Barton said, “guessing, I’d say the controller didn’t send them high enough, and before they could hit the raid the Jerry cover came down and hit them.”

  “Hello, someone’s bought it,” Cattermole said.

  A dark streak had fallen out of the fuzzy tangle. The further it fell the darker it got. “Ours or theirs?” Kellaway wondered.

  Nobody responded. The falling plane was only a speck. Behind it the trail of smoke steadily widened, as if someone had drawn a thin pen across a wet sheet of paper.

  Skull said: “I can’t see any parachute.”

  “You wouldn’t,” CH3 told him. “Not at that height. If he jumped, it’ll be five minutes before we see him.”

  “The air’s very thin up there,” Cox told Steele-Stebbing. “If you ever have to jump, you want to take a few good puffs of oxygen first.”

  “What balls!” Fitzgerald said. “Anyone who’s got time for that sort of carry-on doesn’t need to bale out.”

  An argument began. They had lost interest in the battle, which in any case seemed to be over. “I’ll see each man in the clubhouse now, adj,” Barton said. “One at a time, starting with the new boys. Skull, I want you with me. CH3, take Flash and Fitz and check the field for potholes and ruts and things.”

  “No,” Gordon said. He thrust his hands in his pockets and glowered at the ground. “Shan’t.”

  “Come on, Flash, be a sport,” CH3 said.

  “Oh, all right then.” Gordon strode off. “Follow me, men!” he shouted. “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eggs!”

  Later that afternoon, driving north to Brambledown, Barton asked Skull what he made of them all.

  “Inevitably, as in all things British,” Skull said, “the class system dominates. When Rex was CO the relationship was almost feudal. Evidently that didn’t work terribly well
, which is no great surprise, because after all the feudal system itself was less than totally satisfactory. Sudden pressures—”

  “What about the blokes?”

  “Oh, the blokes are behaving exactly as one would expect. The old sweats have ganged up on the young bloods and both sides are deeply suspicious of the foreigners. All quite normal.”

  Barton sighed. “But what about the blokes as blokes?”

  “Ah.” Skull found his notes. “Macfarlane’s all right. He’s a young animal, shallow, easily bored, little imagination, full of self-confidence and aggression. Should do well.”

  “Don’t like him,” Kellaway said. “Too cocky. Never listens.”

  Barton glanced at CH3, who shrugged. “He’ll either go to hell in a hurry or he’ll make a killing,” he said. “Probably the first.”

  “Steele-Stebbing’s interesting,” Skull said. “I was an undergraduate with his father. Insufferable man, bloated by ambition. I rather think the son is trying to escape him, which of course is impossible.”

  “He got very good marks in training,” Barton said.

  “Of course he did,” CH3 said. “He’s been on his best behavior ever since he was toilet-trained, and I’ll bet that happened bloody early.”

  “Renouf?” Barton said.

  “Renouf is a mystery.” Skull put his notes away. “Or perhaps a paradox. He’s the only one of the three with a mind of his own, and yet he’s profoundly uneasy.”

  “The little bugger’s windy,” Kellaway said. “If you said ‘Boo!’ to him he’d turn into a goose.”

  Barton said: “Think I should chop him, CH3?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. You can’t always spot a good fighter pilot on the ground. Look at the last war aces: Mannock, McCudden, Bishop … They weren’t the life and soul of the party, were they, uncle?”

  “Bit stand-offish, some of them, but then they lived to kill, didn’t they? I don’t see this little lad living to kill. He looks like one of nature’s victims to me.”

  “Have we got any of nature’s murderers in this squadron?” Barton asked. “Besides Moggy, that is.”