Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  By now the land lines had been restored. Skull called Bramble-down and reported that only five aircraft were operational, not counting the Tiger Moth. “Is Baggy Bletchley still there?” the controller asked. Skull organized a search.

  “We can’t go on like this,” Fanny Barton said. “I mean, this is getting bloody silly. Just look at it.”

  Cox and CH3 looked at it: a scrapyard of smashed and smoking Hurricanes.

  Cattermole came over. “Phillips bought it,” he said. “I’m sure it was Phillips.”

  “There you are, you see,” Barton said emptily. “I tell you, it’s getting bloody silly. We obviously can’t go on like this.”

  Cattermole was squinting and blinking into the hazy distance where a tiny black figure shimmered beside a little black car. He began walking. Twenty minutes later he had found a gap in the perimeter wire and was in the lane.

  Mary beamed and waved when she saw him coming. “You shouldn’t have bothered, honestly,” she said. “I’m fine, I’ve got everything I need. Still, it’s lovely to see you again. And the baby says hello, of course, don’t you baby?” She was perched against the back of the car, with her hands touching under her belly.

  Cattermole stopped when he was ten feet away. The sweat trickling into his eyes made him blink but his face was untouched by expression. “We want you to go,” he said.

  She was puzzled. “Go? It’s too early. I can’t go yet. Would you like some tea? I could—”

  “Go away. Leave here, get out. Go, stay away forever.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t do that, love, not yet.” She glanced at the sky. “There’s nothing to worry about, you know. I’m fine. I suppose it’s natural for you to—”

  “Stupid bitch. I don’t give a damn about you. I don’t want to see you watching me every day. None of us does. You’re a jinx, you’re a menace. Fitz is dead, he’s not coming back.” She began to cry, and that made him move forward. “Get away from here,” he shouted, “or by Christ I’ll kill you!” She was still leaning on the car, shaken with sobs, when he hit her, a backhanded swipe across the face which knocked her away. She began pleading, incoherently, the words choking on her sobs. He seized her and dragged her and she screamed with pain. He forced her swollen, trembling body into the driver’s seat, shoving and kicking until she was in. “Go!” he bawled, but her fingers couldn’t turn the ignition key and he had to do it. The car lurched away. He ran alongside it, kicking and swearing, until at last it outpaced him and he was left gasping and stumbling in its dusty wake.

  SEPTEMBER

  1940

  “I can get up and down all right,” Fraser said. “It’s the bit in between I’m not so sure about.”

  He was sitting on a wooden box in a trench behind the remains of the crewroom. Bodkin Hazel had been strafed so often and so suddenly that during an alert nobody sat in deckchairs any more. The trenches had been enlarged and furnished with boxes. Steel helmets were compulsory wear.

  “The important thing is to keep looking behind you,” CH3 said. “Watch your tail …” Fraser and the other replacements, Donahue and Jolliff, listened carefully. They had been shunted through their Operational Conversion Unit very briskly indeed.

  “And watch the sun,” CH3 went on. His voice had an impatient, hard-driving edge to it. “Nine times out of ten, Jerry’s up there in the sun. Never climb away from the sun, that’s fatal.”

  “I’m going for a pee,” Gordon said. He got out of the trench and wandered away until he found Micky Marriott climbing over the carcass of a broken Hurricane, seeking bits to cannibalize. “New boys make me sick,” Gordon said. “They smell like a gents’ outfitters. They’re all thirteen years old.” He stretched out on a crumpled wing and closed his eyes. “I don’t like them and I shan’t speak to them.”

  “They’re not all thirteen. And some of them are brighter than you are.”

  “If I were any brighter I’d glow in the dark.” Gordon liked that idea: he smiled.

  “You’re not as bright as Sherriff, I can tell you that.” Marriott poked his head into a hole in the fuselage. “I saw Sherriff make a century for Derbyshire against Essex a year ago. On a very sticky wicket, too. Sherriff’s as bright as they come, believe you me.”

  “Sherriff bought it yesterday.”

  “Did he?” Marriott pulled his head out. “I haven’t had time to catch up with the squadron state, what with one thing and another … Shouldn’t you be in the dugout?”

  “CH3’s making his speech again. Hear him?” They listened for a moment to the insistent voice. “It’s all balls,” Gordon said. “They won’t remember any of it.”

  “Shift over, Flash. I want to get at that panel.”

  Gordon rolled off the wing and strolled back to the trench. “And for Christ’s sake never dive after a single 109,” CH3 was saying. “If you see one, there’s certainly another not far away, and he’ll have you.”

  “Hitler’s invaded,” Gordon said.

  “Always check your oxygen before takeoff,” CH3 told them.

  “It didn’t work,” Gordon said. “There are hundreds of thousands of German corpses washing about in the sea between Folkestone and Dover. I’ve just been over to have a look.”

  “Okay, now let’s consider gunnery,” CH3 said.

  “The Channel is red with blood as far as the eye can see,” Gordon said. “Our losses were three Home Guards with hernias from throwing handgrenades.”

  “Can it, Flash,” CH3 snapped.

  “It’s not a pretty sight. One of the hernias is huge.”

  Barton thought that CH3 was going to hit Gordon. He touched the American’s arm and said: “I want to show you something.” They got out of the trench and walked fifty yards. “What d’you think of this?” Barton asked.

  “It’s a steamroller. So what?”

  “Is it a good steamroller?” Barton kicked a wheel. “How much d’you reckon it’s worth?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Fanny. What the hell are we doing talking about machinery?”

  “Okay.” Barton sat in the driver’s seat. “What d’you want to talk about? Modern art? Skiing? Naked ladies?”

  CH3 went to the front roller and peeled pancakes of earth from it. They came off easily and left dark patches on the metal. “Look, all I’m trying to do is give them a better chance,” he said.

  “You’re giving them so much good advice they’re too stuffed to move.”

  “There’s a lot to learn.”

  “And they haven’t got time.”

  “But that’s crazy. When we get scrambled—”

  “Of course it’s crazy. That’s what you’ve got to accept. What we’re doing is crazy. We can’t change it so let’s relax and enjoy it. It may be a matter of life and death but is that any reason to be so damn grim?”

  “I can’t help the way I am. I’m responsible for half those guys.”

  “So what? I’m responsible for all of them. Do I go around looking miserable? If you can’t relax and enjoy being a flight commander I’ll chop you.”

  “Oh yeah? And who would you put in my place?”

  “Flash Gordon.”

  CH3 was staggered: he actually took a pace back. “Flash is nuts,” he said, and his voice was empty, airless. “You’d have to be crazy to do that.”

  “Being crazy certainly helps,” Barton said. “Think about it.”

  That afternoon, Haducek was killed.

  “A” flight had been scrambled. It was not an experienced unit: Donahue at Red Two, Flash Gordon and Jolliff in White Section, Haducek and Fraser in Yellow. CH3’s final advice to the new boys was: “Stick like glue to your leader and do what he does.”

  They intercepted about forty Heinkel 111’s as they crossed the coast near Dover. There was also a defensive screen of Me-110’s but Haducek cut through it with a brisk contempt for his or anybody else’s safety that made Fraser’s fingertips prickle. He concentrated on following Haducek and tried to ignore the streaks of tracer, the crisscros
sing aircraft, the rushing contrails that crowded his vision. Haducek jinked and Fraser jinked after him. Haducek fired. Fraser felt the clatter of metal on his Hurricane, he saw things bouncing off his windscreen, the threat of terror squeezed his throat and he nearly broke away before he got blown to bits; but then he glimpsed a trail of shining fragments ahead and realized he was flying into Haducek’s spent cartridge cases. He twitched the nose up. Haducek had closed on the Heinkel and Fraser saw him kill the upper gunner: eight Brownings briefly swamped the turret and the single machine-gun jerked to the vertical. Then the entire enemy formation shook and bounced as it ran over a sudden eruption of flak. One burst blew Haducek’s Hurricane out of the picture.

  Fraser was astonished. He had blinked when the shell burst and all he had seen of his leader was a flickering blur rising faster than he could move his eyes. The Heinkel swam toward him, wobbling in the turbulence, so he gave it a four-second burst that knocked down its undercarriage, which struck him as an odd reward, and he broke, hard and high.

  The sky was spattered with action: streaks of smoke, sparkling gun-muzzles, hanging snowballs of flak. The whole bloody-minded display of banditry was still thrusting north, except for one item. Falling behind the raid was an unhappy Hurricane, flopping and staggering as a 110 laced it with fire. Fraser guessed it was Haducek and he chased back with the tit pulled out and the Merlin screaming for revenge. The 110 quite wisely held its course and sped toward France, drawing away from Fraser all the time. In any case, Fraser’s attempt at rescue was wasted. A shell splinter had penetrated Haducek’s skull behind the left ear. He was stone dead long before his Hurricane buried him ten feet below a field of cabbages.

  “Come and see this” Skull said to Kellaway

  They went to Haducek’s room. “Everything was packed,” Skull said. “All his clothes, all his belongings.” He pointed to a big envelope. “Personal papers. He’s marked them ‘to be destroyed.’ There’s a check to pay his mess bill. Five pounds for his batman.”

  “Five?” Kellaway frowned. “That’s far too much. You don’t want to spoil them.”

  “Well …” Skull turned the banknote over as if there might be a message written on the other side. “It’s Haddy’s money. I mean, it was Haddy’s money.”

  “I suppose you’d better let the fellow have it. Five quid … In the last show a batman was lucky if he got ten bob.”

  “And there’s this.” Skull picked up a much-read copy of Das Kapital. “He’s left it to Moggy Cattermole.”

  “Oh dear.” Kellaway took the book and flipped through it. “Better not tell Moggy about the fiver. It’ll only make him jealous.”

  Next morning the steamroller was back at work, but not all the new craters had been filled in. An army truck stood in a distant corner of the field, with red flags fluttering around it to mark unexploded bombs.

  Most of the pilots were dozing by the trenches, caps pulled over their eyes to keep out the sunlight. The air held a faint tang of autumn. The portable gramophone was playing Thanks for the Memory. There were two or three new faces. CH3 wandered from one to another, asking questions but only half-listening to the answers. He was endlessly polishing his goggles.

  Barton came down from the tower and walked across to the squadron. Around his neck he wore the lavatory seat from the portable toilet. “Rise and shine,” he said. “We’re now on two-minute standby. Lots of lovely trade building up.”

  Quirk slowly woke up and blinked at Barton. “You look rather like a horse,” he said.

  “He always did,” Cattermole said.

  “Yes, but now he looks like the front end.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish,” Gordon said. “Whoever heard of a horse wearing a bog-seat round its neck?” They were putting on Mae Wests and zipping up flying-boots.

  “This is no bog-seat,” Barton told them. “This is the Baggy Bletchley Memorial Trophy.”

  Cattermole said: “I had an uncle who thought he was a Derby winner. He always wore a bog-seat around his neck.”

  “Sounds very unlikely to me,” Renouf said. “I don’t remember any Cattermole winning the Derby.”

  “No, he lied about that,” Cattermole said. “The best he ever did was second in the Oaks.”

  “This trophy,” Barton said, “will be awarded each day to the biggest piss-artist in the squadron, as decided by popular vote.”

  “Moggy,” Steele-Stebbing said.

  Cattermole nodded graciously.

  “I nominate Flash,” Renouf said.

  “I nominate Nim,” Gordon said. “I saw him wave his hanky at a Dornier the other day. What a ponce! What a piss-artist!”

  “I was waving goodbye,” Renouf said. “Some of us still have manners, you know.”

  “It had spots.”

  “Very rare, spotted Dorniers,” Quirk said.

  “Who gets your vote, CH3?” Barton asked.

  “Haducek,” he said bleakly. “Haducek, Todd, Phillips, Flip Moran, Fitz and Zab. Every one a prize piss-artist. Must have been. None of them lasted the course.”

  “I want to talk to you,” Barton said.

  They went to the crewroom. As soon as they were inside, Barton threw the lavatory seat at the wall. “I’ve had enough of you,” he said. “You’ve become a pain in the ass. You think you can solve everything by planning, and holding briefings, and organizing people. You think if you organize the kites, and the pilots, and the guns, and the tactics, and the controllers, and the bloody weather too I shouldn’t be surprised, then everything will be perfect and nobody need get hurt except Jerry. You think you can get it all scientifically worked out so that nothing, absolutely nothing, gets left to chance. You’re a typical fucking Yank. If there’s a scientific way to break wind you’ll get a patent on it. That’s what’s wrong with you, CH3. I used to think you were a brain. You’re just a bleeding ulcer.”

  “And what’s your alternative? Swanning about with a broken bog-seat round your neck?”

  “It bucked them up a bit, poor buggers. And with you around, they could do with a bit of bucking up.”

  “Fun and games,” CH3 said bitterly. “Half the squadron don’t know a 109 from fried chicken and you waste their time on dumb jokes.”

  “They’ll be scrambled in ten minutes. What they don’t know now they’ll never learn by then.”

  “You can try, for God’s sake. Tell the new boys which way to break when they get jumped. Tell ’em about blind spots. Deflection. Sun.”

  “There isn’t time,” Barton said. “It can’t be done.”

  “Wrong. Anything can be done.”

  “How? Are you going to buy an extra week for a million dollars?” Barton’s temper was about to snap, and he knew it; but he couldn’t slow down. “You don’t like this battle. You reckon it’s a cock-up. Let me tell you something: it is a cock-up! This whole war’s been a cock-up, ever since the Ram fell on his head a year ago. Every war’s a cock-up, because that’s what war is: organized cock-ups. And I’ll tell you something else: I don’t need you to help me cock it up. Flash Gordon can lead ‘A’ flight. I like Flash. His brains are in his guts. You’re grounded for twenty-four hours. Now get off this field and out of my sight.”

  CH3 went out and walked away, without a word, without a glance. Barton returned to the pilots. He felt a curious mixture of guilt and exhilaration. “Flash, you’re acting ‘A’ flight commander,” he said.

  “Excellent judgment,” Gordon told the replacements. “Fanny is a very brilliant CO. One day he will be queen of England, mark my words.”

  A couple of minutes dragged by. Everyone was restless, fidgety. Some of the replacements were sweating more than the heat required. They were all breathing rather quickly and shallowly.

  There was a field telephone on a box. It clicked softly. Nim Renouf turned away and was sick. Barton caught the phone as it rang, and listened.

  “Both flights scrambled,” he said. “I’ll lead ‘B’ flight. Flash takes ‘A.’” They were already hurryin
g toward their aircraft, Renouf spitting and swearing as he went. “Two big raids,” Barton called. “We’ve got one each. Lucky us.”

  Flash was trembling, not with fear but with excitement. Fear had touched him when he first saw the raid. It hung between two plump clouds like a swarm of bees, and he looked away, not wanting to know how many aircraft or what type. What did it matter, how many? Too many was always too many: there was no comfort in figures. All the same, one part of his mind insisted on proceeding with an estimate. Sixty plus.

  He looked at the flight, spread out like a search-party, and realized he didn’t know the names of half of them. He looked to the north and the east for signs of help. Nothing.

  When the first rank of bombers was about two miles away, Flash took his flight out of orbit and led it into a head-on attack. This was always the worst time. He was trembling so violently that he braced his head against the back-armor.

  Their closing speed ate up the gap in about fifteen seconds. “When I say ‘Bingo,’” Flash called, “everyone bloody-well fire!” He was in the middle, leading Red Section, with Yellow right and White left. “Bingo!” he cried. The Hurricanes raced into the raid like a suicide pact. Flash ignored the heavy black blurs and aimed at the holes between them. He was working the machine as furiously as a skier dodging rocks on an icy track. A pair of Heinkels wallowed together and he narrowed his shoulders as he skated between them. The last rank rushed at him. He made his exit with a flashy victory roll just to show them what he thought of them. He hadn’t fired a shot.

  His wingman, Nim Renouf, was gone, vanished. Flash climbed steeply, searched the sky and saw part of the German escort tip into a dive. He rolled out of a loop and checked the raid. It had split into three ragged streams. Below these, two bombers spiraled down, locked together like mating insects. Far below them, an instant avenue of bomb-bursts appeared: someone had jettisoned. At that moment, the controller called.

  “Popcorn Red Leader, this is Teacake, do you read me?”

  “Piss off, Teacake,” Flash Gordon said. A broken Dornier sideslipped out of his gunsight and he had to peel off before he overshot it. “Bugger!” he said. The sky was full of trouble: planes firing, swerving, falling. He noticed another Hurricane up-sun, also on its own, and he maneuvered alongside.