“We haven’t got a jazz band,” Brazier said.
“We shall if he helps. I am no slouch on the banjo, of which, as you know, an E flat version doesn’t exist, but we’ll let Butcher worry about that.”
“Not we, Lacey. I never saw this. Incidentally, your contribution at the funeral was feeble. You cobbled it together in a very slapdash way. Rubbish.”
“That’s rich.” Lacey clapped his hands. “I didn’t have time to cobble anything. That wasn’t me, it was pure Rupert Brooke.”
“It was gibberish,” Brazier said. “If anyone wants me, I shall be in The Dregs.”
There was still an hour before sunset. The C.O. sent Dextry to look at the land beyond Kursk and find new landing fields, preferably this side of the Red lines. If they had any lines.
The squadron doctor watched him take off and climb away. She turned and saw Borodin looking at her. “My apologies,” he said. “Dreadful manners.”
“Doesn’t worry me. I’ll worry when men don’t look at me.” She gave a last glance at the disappearing Camel. “It must be wonderful to fly. That speed, that height. Just you and the birds.”
“The birds fly better. But one can’t help feeling a little godlike sometimes. Up there with the gods. And the view is spectacular.”
“I can climb a mountain for that, but mountains don’t fly.”
“It’s not all fun. It gets very cold, and very noisy, and on a long flight the aeroplane seems to hang in the air and go nowhere. Manoeuvres are fun. Bank and dive and roll and so on. Look: I’m going riding for half an hour. Do you ride?”
“Yes. Not sidesaddle. Will that scandalize the squadron?”
They rode across the airfield, followed a wandering track in a birch spinney, galloped across a meadow and walked into a stream. The ponies enjoyed that, so their riders let them splash up and down, making a great froth and soaking the riders’ legs until the water deepened and the ponies stood belly-deep and drank.
“This is yummy,” she said. “Good idea.”
“You looked a bit forlorn, so I took a risk.”
“Risk.” She stroked her pony’s ears. “Some of the pilots shy away. Don’t want to be alone with a widow. Get too close, I might infect them. Look what I did to poor James.”
“They think they’re giving you time to grieve.”
“No, they want me to look heartbroken. Losing a man is a cardinal sin in their club.”
The ponies drank their fill and turned and waded back to the shallows.
“What is man’s cardinal sin?” he said. “According to the women’s club.”
“Expecting praise. Men want sex, meals and praise, endless praise for being so wonderful.”
They looked at each other. “What if I were to say that I’ll forfeit the praise and do the cooking if you will marry me?”
“I’d say you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, and I need a long holiday from matrimony. But I’ll bear it in mind.”
They walked the ponies home.
“When I said flying makes us feel godlike, I wasn’t being completely truthful,” Borodin said. “It makes us feel remote and privileged. Earth is far below, sometimes a mile or even two miles, and therefore nothing to do with us. We can bomb it and strafe it and never feel the pain. We might kill the enemy, we might kill our own troops, it’s all the same to us. We live in a different world.”
“And nothing really matters because nichevo.”
“Ah. You know about that.”
“I hear it from the pilots. Nichevo suits their style. Another thing: they walk differently.”
“Really? How?”
“Never in step. Put two soldiers together, they always march in step. Pilots never do. Hands in pockets. Bit of slouch, bit of swagger.”
“Not me. I don’t walk like that.”
“Then you’re a freak.”
“And you’re a cruel and heartless woman. And I don’t want to marry you.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me one thing. What are the chances you’ll get shot down and killed?” He was silent. “Fifty-fifty?” she said. “Or worse? Quick death for you. Long gloomy life for me. Is that fair?” No answer.
Dextry returned, having seen no Bolos and found a suitable landing field, thirty miles to the north. The C.O. decided that was good enough. Tomorrow, the squadron would fly and the trains would move.
5
Maynard politely declined the offer of Edwardes’ toothbrush. The man had been with his field-gun unit for a long time, and Maynard suspected he had gone native. He hadn’t shaved today, and perhaps not yesterday, and to judge by his hands and arms, washing wasn’t a priority either. What Maynard, when he had ridden behind him, assumed was the smell of the horse, turned out to be the smell of Edwardes too. At Sherborne, Maynard had been taught to take a cold bath every morning; it kept a boy pure in body and in thought. Edwardes could do with a bath.
But he had undoubtedly saved Maynard from a spot of bother, and it would be fun to tell The Dregs about being rescued by a sort of robber baron and his gang. Maynard knew that rubbing his teeth with a finger dipped in salt was as good as a toothbrush. And the Camel wasn’t broken, so he wouldn’t be here for long.
He knew what was for supper. The cook made no secret of slaughtering a sheep, skinning it, and hacking it into chunks with a bayonet. They sizzled as they went onto an iron grid over the fire.
“Nice to know that the meat is fresh,” Maynard said.
“It always is, old boy. Russians don’t have the luxury of quartermasters. They live off the land.”
“I see.” Maynard had an image of the little village with its sole survivor in the ruins and dead cattle in the fields, and knew at once that Edwardes would not be interested. “There are advantages in travelling light,” he said. “My squadron can pack up and be off in half an hour.”
“These lads do it in five minutes.”
“I say! Good egg.” That had been the highest praise at Sherborne, but Edwardes merely raised an eyebrow. “Which reminds me,” Maynard said. “The question of moving. Really, all I need is a few gallons of petrol and I can be on my way.”
“Petrol, petrol. God knows where you’ll find that. It’s not a thing that Russian gunners have much use for. Horsepower gets us from A to B.”
“The squadron has plenty.”
“Then that’s your best bet. It’s too late today. Tomorrow I’ll send a man to the nearest railway station. Maybe they can send a wire. You’re not in a hurry, are you? Good. Relax. See how the poor live.”
The roast mutton turned out to be excellent. It would have been even better with a little redcurrant jelly, but to say so would be bad form. For the first time since he joined the R.F.C., he was not eating in an Officers’ Mess. They sat, men and officers alike, around the fire. There were no plates; either you ate with your fingers or you went hungry. There was black bread, and a bottle of vodka circulated. After his adventure in the Cossack camp long ago vodka did not frighten Maynard, and he was pleased to see that the men approved when he took a swig. He passed the bottle to Edwardes and said, “Not a drop is sold till it’s seven days old.” Edwardes grinned. “Seven-day vodka is vintage stuff. A bit like crusted port.”
There was only one course but there was plenty of it. Maynard ate his fill and was gazing into the glow of the fire when he felt the habits of a lifetime assert themselves. “Awfully sorry to be a damn nuisance,” he said, “but I’m afraid I need the latrines.”
Edwardes said something in Russian and a man got up and fetched a spade.
“Normally we don’t aspire to such luxury,” Edwardes said. “But as you’re a guest …”
Maynard took the spade. “Where?” he said.
Edwardes made a generous, sweeping gesture. “You have all of Russia,” he said.
Maynard walked deep into the dusk, and dug and squatted. “This isn’t why I came to Russia,” he whispered, “but no doubt about it, the roast mutton was utterly delicious.”
Edwardes
had his own tent but no bed. “Camp bed broke long ago,” he said. He gave Maynard some blankets. “Find a small hole that fits your hip. After that, it’s like a featherbed.” He was right.
Breakfast was a black-bread mutton sandwich and a glass of Russian tea, brought to him in the tent. Another treat for the guest. He sat in the sunshine and watched the gun crews doing chores. He had a nagging feeling that he should be busy, but there was nothing he could do. Edwardes wasn’t there. He folded his blankets. He got his hands wet with dew and washed his face. He walked to a tall tree and emptied his bladder against it. What now? He went back to his tent and sat in the sun.
About an hour later, Edwardes came back on the same big horse.
“Meeting with the Russian commander,” he said. “Denikin’s advance is still advancing, and we’ve got orders to go with it. Pockets of Red resistance to be snuffed out. It’s up to you, but I don’t recommend staying here. An unarmed Englishman on his own is asking for trouble.”
“You were going to send a message to my squadron.”
“I told a bloke on the staff about you. He promised to do something. Don’t bet on it. They’re big on promises.” Maynard turned away. He had heard a faint growl, no louder than the drone of bees but deeper. He searched the sky and found a distant speckle of dots, quite high. “That’s the squadron,” he said.
Edwardes gave him some binoculars. Nine aircraft, flying high in the east. He followed them until they were lost behind cloud.
“Forget about the message,” he said. “I think they’re on the move again.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Everyone’s chasing the Bolos now.”
Already the tents were down and dumped in a big farm cart. Everything went into the cart: cooking pots, a few rifles, some sacks of stuff, shells, a bundle of firewood, and Maynard. The horses were harnessed. The field guns rolled. Maynard’s cart followed. Some men rode. Most walked.
It was pleasant countryside, all woods and meadows, occasional valleys and hills. After an hour or two its pleasantness wore thin and Maynard would have swapped it for a good straight road. The cart had no springs. Farm tracks were tolerable but they were rare and mostly the cart bumped and jolted. He made himself as comfortable as possible on the tents and blankets and watched the sky go by. He’d give a year’s pay to be up there in a Camel.
They didn’t stop to eat. He found some stale bread in a sack and chewed on that. The sun was burning his face so he covered it with a handkerchief. He had no idea where he was going and he didn’t want to ask Edwardes for fear the man would tell him and it would be really remote. He might end up living with this gang for a week. Or more. He itched and scratched. There was something in this bloody cart that was biting him. He opened his shirt and smelled himself, and got a sour whiff of old, dried sweat. Horrid.
The sun was going down when the gun team plodded over a rise and the ground exploded in front. Several explosions: high fountains of brown earth and blast that ruffled Maynard’s hair. Everyone was shouting. Men were releasing the horses and dragging the guns into position to fire. Maynard stood and watched them load and was shaken by the savage crack of their detonations. He had never been near artillery before. He had no idea how loud it was. How harsh. Someone kicked his leg.
It was Edwardes. “Get down, you bloody fool! Get out of here! Run, run!” He went back to his guns. Maynard ran as fast and as far as his flying boots would let him. He stopped and looked back. The guns were doing very well without him. Edwardes was using the binoculars, shouting, pointing, and then in a blink they were all gone, swamped by pounding, furious shell bursts which swallowed the gun team and when the smoke drifted away, only a little tangled wreckage was left. Maynard could not believe it. The phrase ‘wiped out’ presented itself. Men said the enemy had been wiped out and that was just what had happened here. Guns and gunners, wiped out, vanished. As if they’d never been.
Maynard walked away. After a while he found a hollow in the grass, so he curled up in it. Nothing made sense to him and he stopped thinking. He fell asleep. That was where the Red soldiers found him.
He was a rarity, a curiosity. They knocked him about a bit, just enough to realize that he wasn’t Russian, and gave him to an officer who, mysteriously, was riding in an open horse-drawn coach, rather like the droshkys of Taganrog. More questioning. “Angliski,” he said through a split lip. He was blindfolded and seemed to spend several hours in a series of vehicles. The blindfold came off and he was in the boxcar of a railway train. A very young soldier with a very old rifle was guarding him. Outside it was night. The train started.
Maynard felt rotten. His head hurt, one eye was swollen shut, he could taste blood from his lip, and his tongue found gaps where teeth had been. His body ached from the impact of soldiers’ boots.
The guard looked to be about sixteen, and not very bright. Maynard pointed forward, the way they were going. “Na Moskvu?” he said. The guard thought about it. “Na Moskvu,” he said.
That decided Maynard. He was damned if he was going to Moscow. He was damned if he could see how to avoid it, but he sat still and behaved nicely. His chance came when the guard slid open the boxcar door and prepared to urinate into the night. Both hands were needed to brace himself. Maynard dived past him and hoped for a soft landing. Instead he dived into the stone wall of a cutting and broke his neck.
The guard fired his rifle three times and the train stopped. An officer and five men walked along the track and found Maynard. He looked very dead indeed, but the officer shot him to make sure. Then the men shot the guard. They threw the bodies in the boxcar.
TUMULT IN THE CLOUDS
1
“Chef says we’re out of mustard,” Tusker Oliphant said. “We’re one hell of a long way from Taganrog.” He was looking at a map. “Not much hope of getting supplies sent up here.”
“The further from England, the closer in to France,” Wragge said. “As my dear old dad used to say. We’ll be in Moscow soon, at this rate. Lots of mustard in Moscow. Famous for it.”
They were in the C.O.’s Pullman, with Rex Dextry, drinking coffee.
“I can live without mustard,” Dextry said. “As long as we don’t run out of cheese. That’s unthinkable.”
Oliphant was estimating distances on the map, using hand spans. “Supposing we’re halfway between Kursk and Orel … That makes another sixty, seventy miles to Orel. Then Orel to Tula, say a hundred, and Tula to Moscow, hundred and fifty. All told, three hundred miles or more.” He looked up. “Can Denikin do it?”
“Why not?” Wragge said. “He’s already captured half of Russia. Not Siberia, but who cares about Siberia, they’ve all got icicles on their testicles, while we’ve got the best airfield since Tsaritsyn, so well done, Rex.”
“We strive to please,” Dextry said.
He had found a short spur of railway that forked away from the main line and gave up after a mile. An engineer’s mistake, evidently. The rails were rusted and grass grew high between them. Everything was blessedly quiet. The loudest sound was the bleating of lambs in a meadow as big and smooth as Lord’s cricket ground.
“Down to business,” the C.O. said. “First point is, are the machines all operational? Yes? Good. Right, the Nines can get on with their knitting while the Camels go and find the Bolos.” A tap on the door. Lacey came in, handed him a paper, said: “From Mission H.Q.,” and went out. As Wragge read it, his eyebrows rose. “Goolie Chit,” he said. “Anyone heard of it?”
“Yes,” Oliphant said. “My brother’s with a squadron in India, on the North-West Frontier. He mentioned it in a letter.”
“Did he, by Jove? Well, according to H.Q., it’s a linen envelope attached to the fuselage. On the outside, it says in the local lingo that this is a British officer, help him and you shall be rewarded. Inside are twenty gold sovereigns.”
“That’s right. If it works, you get to keep your goolies. My brother says the natives are a bit ferocious and the women are even worse. Afghans and so on.”<
br />
“Bless my soul.”
“Famous last words, if you get engine failure over the Khyber Pass.”
“Mmm. It’s marked ‘For Information Only’. H.Q. thinks only of our welfare.” Wragge stuffed it in a pocket. “I’ll ask Borodin what he thinks.”
They went out and enjoyed the sunshine. Wragge breathed the sweet smell of lush countryside at the height of summer. “Reminds me of the Scottish Borders,” he said. “I wonder if there’s any trout fishing near here?”
“About Daddy Maynard,” Dextry said. “When should we count him as lost? Uncle was asking.”
“Give him a day or two,” the C.O. said. “You never know. Daddy’s no fool. Not like that clown who got lost at Butler’s Farm. Silly ass was only three miles from the field. Barnett? Burnett? No.” He clicked his fingers. “Bennett. Got it.”
“Never knew him,” Dextry said.
The four Camels followed the railway north. It was stocked with troop trains. Few were moving and the rest had emptied their troops into the fields beside them. They sat or lay in the sun, doing what all soldiers do well, which is wait. Cook fires were everywhere. Soldiers learn to eat whenever possible, in the certain knowledge that they’ll go hungry soon. Some waved at the aircraft. Others saved their energy.
A few miles further on, Wragge found the reason for all this nothing-doing. Lengths of track had been torn up and squads of engineers were restoring them. Presumably the Bolos did it. Some holes were big enough for shell craters. Or perhaps dynamite.
The Camels climbed to three thousand feet and spread out, four hundred yards between each, the better to search the land. They saw nothing to defend, no towns, no rivers except the one the railroad followed. It looked half-dried-up and no obstacle to anyone.
They cruised on for ten, twenty miles, looking down at empty countryside and up at empty sky, down again, up again. “Christ!” Dextry said aloud. “This is boring bloody country. Where’s the damn war?” Borodin was not bored. This was his Russia and he was proud of its enormous spaces, there was room to breathe in Russia, more than anywhere in the world. Except perhaps China, but China was full of Chinese who, let’s face it, can’t write War and Peace or paint anything except urns and vases and couldn’t spell Tchaikovsky let alone play him. Jessop was getting a sore neck and wondering what it would be like to be stripped naked for an examination by Flight Lieutenant Perry. Would she have warm fingers? Strong warm fingers? His stomach muscles tightened. Wragge worried what he would do if someone’s engine went on the fritz now. He kept looking for landmarks, something a search party could find. That was when he saw the tents. Brown bell tents, sixty, seventy, maybe more.
A Splendid Little War Page 30
