Damned Good Show

by Derek Robinson

  She almost said, But you’re broke. Instead she said, “How thoughtful, darling. Anything special in it for me?”

  “Um… the castle. And my lucky mascot. Never fly without it.”

  “Marvelous.” She snuggled against him. They linked arms and sipped each other’s gin. She didn’t point out that if she ever got his lucky mascot, it couldn’t have been very lucky. Nobody said being in love meant being honest.

  2

  Rafferty gave him permission to live out. Bardney Castle was only a fifteen-minute drive from Kindrick. He bought a lemon-yellow Frazer-Nash two-seater for ten pounds from an army officer who was being posted to Egypt. It seemed in style.

  Owning a big house was rather like getting his commission. It had been good for the ego to be saluted wherever he went; now it was gratifying to be lord of this manor. Gardeners stopped work and doffed their caps. The staff smiled at the dashing young pilot as he headed for the lawns, a pair of black Labradors at his heels. He’d borrowed the dogs from the gamekeeper, but who cared? He enjoyed chucking bits of branch for them to chase. It was a hoot. The whole thing was a hoot.

  Obviously he asked some of the boys to come over for a meal. No point in a splendid hoot unless you can share it. Tom Stuart came with Silko, Tubby Heckter and Jonty Brown. Langham planned to be outside to meet them when they arrived, but the blackout curtains in his suite got stuck. It took two servants and a stepladder to sort out the problem, and that was when the butler knocked on the door, entered, stepped aside and announced, “Squadron Leader Stuart.”

  “Bloody hell,” Langham muttered, and hurried forward with an unhappy grin, too late to stop the butler announcing the other three names. “Honestly, I don’t normally do this,” Langham said. Stuart gave a brief nod which made it obvious he was not impressed.

  They met Zoë, and in the flurry of getting drinks and making small talk, the atmosphere improved. She told some amusing stories about the castle’s alleged ghosts and eccentric owners. The butler announced that dinner was served. They trooped into the next room and in a gut-freezing instant Langham knew that this was all a terrible mistake. The table was too big, the plates were gilt-edged, there were battalions of crystal wineglasses and regiments of silver cutlery. The candelabra blazed. The napkins had been woven by virgins and monogrammed by the Royal School of Needlework. It was too rich for a bunch of bomber pilots.

  “Just dry toast for me,” Tubby Heckter said. “I’m on a diet.” Not a funny joke.

  Servants eased the chairs forward as the guests sat, in case someone pulled a muscle.

  Artichoke soup was served. Scallops in cream were served. Tournados Rossini were served. Banana soufflé with hot chocolate sauce was served. Tiny savories tasting of bacon were served. A large ripe Stilton was wheeled in. Many wines had come and gone. Port circulated. None of this made conversation easier.

  Zoë was the problem: she didn’t understand their shop, and they weren’t interested in her life in London. As the endless meal wore on, she grew bored, stopped trying, became remote. The butler’s presence didn’t help. He saw, and oversaw, everything. At one point Jonty Brown used the wrong knife, and realized it, and felt so guilty that, in his confusion, he drank half his finger-bowl. It was a silver finger-bowl, very handsome. Anyone might have done the same.

  They didn’t linger over coffee. Langham went down with them and saw them leave.

  Zoë was preparing for bed when he got back to their suite. “Dull bunch,” she said.

  “Well, they’ve just had a hard day.”

  “Poor creatures. I’ve just had a hard evening, so don’t expect me to feel sorry.”

  “You certainly found it hard just to look interested.”

  “Well, you looked ghastly. You kept grinning like a maniac.”

  “I was trying to distract attention from your breasts.” He threw his shoes into a corner. “Did you have to wear something so revealing?”

  She peeled off her slip, and squared her shoulders, all for his benefit. “Oh dear. And I thought you liked them. Silly me.”

  He flung his shirt into the same corner. “If you want to know the truth,” he said, and got rid of his trousers in the same direction, let the maids pick them up, that’s what maids were for. “I spent the whole bloody evening wondering why you and I were wasting our bloody time on that bloody silly food when we had better bloody things to do.”

  “Too much bloody,” she said, “and not enough fucking. Come here.”

  So that was all right. For a while.

  Next morning he arrived at the aerodrome to get a message to report to the Flight Office.

  “Poor show,” Tom Stuart told him. “Not our style.” His words were as flat as old pennies. “Don’t do it again.” He pointed to the door. Later, on the airfield, Langham met Jonty Brown and Tubby Heckter. “I apologize,” he said. “All a mistake.” They looked at each other. “Have we been introduced?” Jonty said. “Get the butler, Tubby. Throw this fellow out.” They walked on.

  That left Silk. Langham sat next to him at lunch. “It was a disaster, wasn’t it?” he said. Silk nodded. “Less fun than German measles,” he said. “And more expensive than the Battle of the Somme.”

  Langham stirred his soup. “Nothing I can do about it now,” he said.

  “Strangle the bloody butler,” Silk said. “That would be a start.”

  For the first time, Langham found himself reluctant to drive home at the end of the day, and when he neared Bardney Castle it loomed like a fortress. But that could just have been the blackout.

  Zoë was on the phone to friends, probably in London. After ten minutes he said, “Can’t that wait?” but she seemed not to hear him. He took a bath. While he soaked, he counted the towels. Twelve towels of various sizes. Absurd. Nobody needed twelve towels.

  He used one towel, and put on a dressing gown. She was still on the phone, and curled up in a way that suggested a long chat. He counted to twenty and took the receiver from her hand. “Military priority,” he told the caller. “This line is requisitioned.” He hung up.

  “Goodness! Enter the caveman.” She fluttered her eyelids. “Kind sir, if your passion is so strong, you need only ask.”

  “Forget sex.” Part of him felt a sudden, deep dismay at this folly, but he pressed on. “Last night was a big mistake.”

  “Your idea to entertain, darling.”

  “Yes, but not like that. Far too grand, too ambitious. They thought I was showing off. All that pomp and ceremony.”

  “Someone has to serve the food.”

  “Not the point. The boys want to relax when they go out, have a good time. Darts at the pub. Draft Bass, pickled eggs.”

  “Look around you, my sweet. This isn’t a pub. You really can’t expect chef to make pickled eggs. He was with the George Cinq in Paris, for heaven’s sake! And before that he trained at Claridges. Claridges, darling!”

  “Who’s boss here? Him or me?”

  “He’d leave, darling. And Mummy would never forgive us.”

  “Fine. You eat here with chef, and I hope you’re both very happy. I’m off to a chic little transport café where they do an exquisite sausage and mash with lashings of Daddies Sauce.”

  He got back late. She was asleep. He got up early, before she was awake. He accelerated down the drive, tires spitting gravel. He got a glimpse of the house in his wing mirror, small and getting smaller all the time.

  3

  Group HQ ended 409’s stint on standby. Now some other squadron would be bored rigid, waiting for shipping strikes that never came. The Wingco checked with the Met man and ordered night-flying training.

  Langham phoned Bardney Castle and left a message: Duty calls, shan’t be home tonight. As he hung up, he realized that he could do this any time he liked, whether he was flying or not. How would she know? Briefly, he felt free. No longer trapped. Yet that feeling was unsatisfactory too, and as the hours went by he couldn’t get her out of his thoughts: a mixture of lust and longing and sour re
sentment. In the end he phoned the Castle again. She was out. No message. Bugger.

  Night-flying was routine stuff. It annoyed the chicken farmers of Lincolnshire, but nobody got killed.

  Next day, half the Hampdens got serviced while the crews practiced escape drills in the other half; and Langham wondered why his wife hadn’t telephoned the Mess. He felt weary, went to bed early, slept poorly.

  At breakfast he sat with the “A” Flight boys. They were arguing about second sight. “I had an uncle,” Happy Hall said, “brilliant water-diviner he was, which proves nothing, but he could pick winners like shelling peas, provided he never backed the horse. If he backed it, then it lost.”

  “That’s nothing. I can back losers,” Tubby Heckter said. “I’m very gifted in that respect. Do it without thinking.”

  Langham asked Happy, “What would happen if your uncle backed the horse to lose?”

  “It would win, of course. But he never did. Too honest.”

  “I knew a flying instructor in Rhodesia who had second sight,” Jonty Brown said. “Uncanny, the things he knew. Trouble was, his first sight was rubbish and he flew into the Chimanimani Mountains.”

  “Which he didn’t foresee,” Silk pointed out, “so his second sight wasn’t all that hot, was it?”

  “Doesn’t follow,” Tom Stuart said. “Second sight doesn’t mean you can change the future.”

  “Happy’s uncle could, by backing the horse,” Silk argued. “And Jonty’s instructor could have changed his flight plan.”

  “Waste of time,” Jonty said. “He’d have flown into Mount Inyangani instead. He told me so.”

  “The future’s coming,” Happy said confidently. “You can’t stop it.”

  “Jane has lost her knickers again,” Pug Duff said. He was reading the strip cartoon in the Daily Mirror. “I predicted that yesterday.” Nobody responded. Jane’s clothes fell off very readily. “And for my next trick, I predict absolute mayhem on the rugger field this afternoon.” That got their attention. “Didn’t you know? Rafferty’s arranged a match with RAF Ossington. He thinks we need bucking up. Black Mac is our captain. The team’s on the noticeboard.”

  “Don’t tell me …” Langham began.

  “You and Silko are playing.” Duff jabbed at a length of bacon until he forked it and held it up like a trophy. “The blood wagon will be in attendance.”

  At noon, a greasy drizzle began to fall. Langham couldn’t eat lunch. He sat in the Mess and watched the team from RAF Ossington enjoy steak and kidney pie. They looked big and hard. Silk got on with his meal. “No point in dying hungry,” he said. “Anyway, Black Mac’s put you and me in the front row of the scrum. A chap can hide in the scrum. I played there for years at Clifton and never touched the ball.”

  Langham wasn’t listening. “Look at that hulking great giant,” he said. “What a bruiser.”

  “Don’t worry. Black Mac will take care of him.”

  Five minutes after the kick-off, Silk lost his lunch. Black Mac got the ball and charged head-down into a crowd of players. His shoulder walloped Silk in the stomach before Silk could dodge. He crawled to the touchline and threw up. He got to his feet, spitting the last foul-tasting fragments. “Good man,” Group Captain Rafferty called. “Better out than in.”

  “I think I’ve injured something, sir,” Silk wheezed.

  “Nonsense. If you quit we’ll be a man short and then we’ll never win. I say! Uncle!” The adjutant was refereeing. Rafferty waved his umbrella until Uncle stopped play and allowed Silk to return.

  “For Christ’s sake, man, keep out of my way!” McHarg told him. “Pull your finger out. We’ve got a scrum. Get in there and shove.” Silk joined the scrum alongside Langham, who had a split lip. “I hit his elbow with my face,” Langham said.

  Black Mac continued to collide with them whenever they were near the ball, and often when they were not. At half-time they left the rest of the team and limped over to the referee, who was standing alone, sucking a bit of lemon. “Look here, Uncle,” Silk said. He showed the cuts on his shins, the scrapes on his body, the purple bruise that had half-closed an eye. “Tony’s just as bad.”

  “I’m worth,” Langham lisped. His cut lip had swollen. Rain washed blood down his chin.

  “It’s a man’s game,” Uncle said brusquely. His boots were a size too small; he knew all about pain. “Ossington have always been a dirty lot. Don’t worry, I’ll watch out for foul play.”

  “It’s not them. It’s Black Mac,” Silk said.

  “Nonsense.” Uncle walked away. But after a minute he summoned McHarg. “You really mustn’t hit your own men, you know. That’s foul play.”

  “Not a bit of it. I read the rules last night. It’s only a foul if you hit an opponent.”

  “Really?” Uncle was startled. “But look here … I mean, what’s the point? It won’t help us win.”

  “It might. Those two are awful lazy. They need a wee tickle to make them run.”

  In the second half, Silk and Langham ran shamelessly away from their captain. They ran as far and as fast as possible. If by bad luck someone passed the ball to them, they immediately kicked it and ran the other way. This saved them from further serious damage. Ossington beat Kindrick by forty points.

  Black Mac had stamped on Langham’s right foot, so Langham used the accelerator cautiously as he drove to Bardney Castle. Zoë was shocked by the sight of his split lip. It had swollen enormously, forcing him to talk out of the side of his mouth.

  “Darling! You look dreadful. What happened? Have you been in a fight?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He winced as she helped him out of his greatcoat, and her face twisted in sympathy. He noticed this and realized he could do better than rugby injuries. “I wish I could tell you about it. Deadly secret, I’m afraid. Get shot at dawn if I say a word.” He tried to smile and his lip split again. The trickle of blood horrified her. She sent for ice.

  “Have you seen a doctor? Yes, of course you have. Silly question. I knew you must be flying when you didn’t phone me. You’ve been on operations, haven’t you? No, you mustn’t tell me. You’re so calm! It must have been awful.”

  “Well, getting in a panic never helps.”

  Ice arrived. She wrapped some in a towel and he held it against his lip. He thought she looked even lovelier when she was worried about him. “What can I do?” she asked.

  “Whisky. The MO gave me some magic ointment for my various bumps and bruises, but it can wait.”

  They held hands by the fire while he sipped whisky, awkwardly, through the corner of his mouth. Then she insisted that he show her all his injuries. “All right,” he said, “but it’s not a pretty sight.”

  He stood naked while she gently applied the MO’s healing balm to his knocks and scrapes. Her open admiration, and the warmth of her touch, actually made him feel heroic. He wondered it if it was like this in days of yore, when a noble warrior returned from battle to his grateful maiden. Then what? Did she express her appreciation in the usual way?

  She was thinking: I never expected war to be like this. I suppose they fly somewhere and get involved in violent dogfights, or something … What she said was: “One piece of equipment is still in good working order.”

  “So it is. That’s jolly lucky, isn’t it?” He held her by the shoulders and they kissed.

  “Are you quite sure, darling? You must be exhausted.”

  “Not a bit. Never felt better.”

  She put her arm around his waist and guided him to the bedroom. Because of his injuries, she made him lie on his back while she eased herself into position on top. He was impressed by her suppleness. Nobody mentioned pickled eggs.

  4

  Silk and Langham were young and healthy. Their injuries soon healed. Whenever he met them, McHarg asked if they were fit. “The Group Captain wants me to take a team to Ossington,” he said, grinning like a shark. “He wants revenge! He’s a devil for revenge, is Rafferty.”

  “I’d soone
r bomb Berlin in broad daylight,” Silk said.

  McHarg cackled in his odd, high-pitched fashion. “That’s what we like to see! Fighting spirit!” He walked away. A passing airman saluted him, and he returned the salute with such fervor that the man looked around for a cause.

  “One of us has got to shoot him,” Langham said. He spun a coin and lost. “I can’t. I’m a married man.”

  “How’s Zoë?”

  “Too much on her own. Gets bored.”

  “Not by one of the gardeners, I hope. That’s a joke, Tony.”

  “Christ, it had better be.”

  McHarg was in his office, reading an Air Ministry publication on the safe storage of tracer bullets, when he got an urgent summons to the operations room. A medium-sized flap was on. Two submarines, or perhaps the same submarine twice, had been spotted about fifty miles off the east coast. Group wanted six Hampdens in the air urgently, bombed up and fueled for a long patrol. “High explosive,” the Wingco said. “Six two-hundred-and-fifty-pounders per kite. How soon?”

  “Half an hour,” McHarg said, and ran from the room.

  He took the first vehicle with a key in the ignition, the MO’s Morris, and drove fast across half a mile of grass to the bomb dump. The huts where the armorers worked were empty except for three airmen playing brag. “Where’s everyone?” he roared, and saw the clock and knew: they were eating their bloody midday meal. He telephoned the Airmen’s Mess and the Sergeants’ Mess, ordered every armorer back on duty double-quick.

  The three airmen were starting up the tractors, hitching on the bomb-trolleys, shouting, running. McHarg headed for the dump and stopped. Outside the entrance lay row upon row of shiny olive-green two-fifties. The stenciled idents said HE. No need to winkle the damn things out of the depths of the dump, then. Stroke of luck. Should save ten, fifteen minutes.

  Armorers were turning up on bicycles and in trucks. He quickly got them loading the trolleys. The flight-sergeant armorer arrived on his motorbike. “Anti-sub patrol,” McHarg told him crisply. “Six kites, six two-fifty HEs per kite. Impact pistols. Get cracking. Wait! What were those stores doing outside the dump?”