Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  “Comes from heaving barrels around, sir. My father owns the biggest brewery in New South Wales, sir.”

  Despite his menacing bulk, Maddegan had an innocent face and an eager smile. Only his crooked nose spoiled his looks. “You box?” Crabtree said. Maddegan nodded. “Dad taught me not to hurt the other fellow unnecessarily. I smack him hard in round one, sir.”

  Crabtree was impressed. “Goodness,” he said. “A philanthropic bruiser.”

  Count Andrei was glad to see the pilots arrive. Success and vodka had made Duke Nikolai very Russian. He had harangued Andrei about the divinely-appointed genius of the tsars, of Ivan the Terrible, of Boris Godounov, of Peter the Great, of the magnificent Catherine, of the bravest of the brave, Tsar Alexander, who had flung Napoleon out of Russia ... Andrei occasionally put in one or two words of support. But not three words, or four. Nikolai was not a good listener. On the other hand, he was not a great speaker, either, especially when the vodka led him to try to quote heroic Russian poetry and he mangled the words and crippled the lines and choked a little at the tragic beauty of it all. Andrei sat quietly and knocked his fists together under the table. He was relieved when Crabtree came over.

  “You fly tomorrow,” Crabtree told them. “Orders from Wing. In fact we all fly tomorrow.” The duke stood and embraced him. “I say, old chap,” Crabtree said. “Not in front of the children.”

  “Big killings tomorrow,” Nikolai said happily. “Big Hun massacre.”

  “Well . . . That’s as maybe.” Crabtree was uncomfortable: boasting and bragging wasn’t done in the R.F.C. “We’ve got a new boy. He’s from Australia. Maddegan, meet our Russian bigwigs.”

  They shook hands. Crabtree drifted away.

  “Magellan,” Duke Nikolai said. He turned to Count Andrei. “Discovered Pacific Ocean. Here is relative! We drink toast.”

  “It’s Maddegan,” the Australian said. “But most people call me Dingbat, because that’s the way I box.”

  “Dingbat.” Nikolai liked the sound. He turned it into a toast. “Dingbat!”

  “Sorry, but I never drink ...” Maddegan began. Count Andrei pressed a tiny glass into his hand. Its contents were clear as water. “Well, I reckon one little sip won’t harm,” he said.

  Nearby, Charles Dash and Harry Simms found a table and ordered a bottle of wine. “Pepriac’s a rotten dump, isn’t it?” Simms said. “I haven’t seen a girl in weeks. And just look at this mob.”

  Dash poured the wine. “On the subject of girls, I need some advice,” he said, “but only if you promise to keep it secret.”

  “You’re speaking to the tomb, old man.”

  “Thing is ... I seem to have struck it rich with a rather ... um ... generous girl.” Simms’ eyes opened wide. “Or girls,” Dash said.

  “You mean you can’t remember how many? You must have been well ginned that night.”

  “No gin. And it was more than one night. The circumstances were somewhat ... strange.”

  McWatters arrived with a glass and helped himself to wine.

  “Go away,” Dash said. “This is a personal matter.”

  “Women keep raping him,” Simms explained.

  “Shocking business,” McWatters said. “Eat lots of anchovies, that’s what I do. Anchovies put starch in your dicky.”

  “Anyway, where’s the problem?” Simms said. “Popsies falling over themselves to oblige, doesn’t sound like a problem. More like a solution.”

  “I’m not going to discuss it,” Dash muttered.

  “You’ve got the pox, is that it?” McWatters asked.

  “Don’t be disgusting.”

  “Doc Dando is your man. Sorted out my athlete’s foot in no time.” He signalled for more wine.

  “It’s not the pox. I just wonder if I’ve overdone it, that’s all.”

  “Ah ha!” Simms said. “Now I understand. It’s a question of quantity, not quality.”

  “At the time, it was a question of sheer bloody survival,” Dash said. “I mean to say, is there a limit?”

  “A chap can pump himself dry, I suppose,” McWatters said. “It’s just spinal fluid, after all. You can’t have much of a reserve tank in your spine, can you?”

  “I don’t want to rupture myself.”

  “My father has a stallion on stud,” Simms said. “Won the Cesarewitch. Earns his corn twice a day, seven days a week. Fifty guineas a poke.”

  Dash said curtly: “I wasn’t in a position to ask for payment.”

  “Maybe all you’re suffering from is cramp,” McWatters said. “Try anchovies. Very good for cramp.” He saw the Russians and their bottles and moved to their table.

  “It’s supposed to be perfectly natural,” Dash said, “so why did it give me such a headache?”

  Maddegan, sitting between the Russians, was explaining that his family was teetotal. “After working all day in a brewery the last thing you want is beer. I never touched the hard stuff because I was always in training.” He took another sip. “Hot, isn’t it?” This was his third glass. The first two had gone down easily.

  McWatters slid into a chair. “You’re a lucky chap, Dingbat. This stuff is like Holy Water in Russia. Turns your blood to fire. You’ll soar like an eagle tomorrow.”

  Nikolai gave everyone half an inch of vodka.

  “I suppose the pepper makes it so hot,” Maddegan said.

  “Dingbat is the heavyweight boxing champion of all Australia,” McWatters told them.

  “Hey, steady on. I won a few fights, but —”

  “A toast,” Nikolai announced. “Victory to Tsar and champion Dingbat!” Maddegan saw the others knock their vodka back, and he did the same. He sat quietly until his eyes stopped watering. The amazing thing was McWatters was right: the stuff did turn his blood to fire. With enough of it inside him, he could easily be heavyweight champion of anywhere.

  “Confusion to the Tsar’s enemies!” McWatters declared. “Let battle commence! The Hun is doomed.”

  “And we’re here to doom him,” Maddegan said.

  It seemed like an obvious toast, but Nikolai failed to pick up his glass.

  “Hun is not real enemy,” he said. Hunched shoulders made him look even smaller. He was staring into the smoky, noisy room as if it were a battlefield. “Real enemy is Socialists.”

  “Absolutely correct,” McWatters said. “D’you know, I can see one of the bastards from here. That ginger-haired chap over there. Notorious Socialist. See him, Dingbat?” Maddegan stood and stared. “Hates Australians too,” McWatters said. “Dingbat, why don’t you go and knock him into the middle of next week?” He gave Maddegan a shove, just enough to get him going.

  Maddegan vanished into the crowd. Quite soon, there was uproar at the other end of the room as a table crashed and glasses shattered. “Damned Etonians,” Simms said. “You can’t take them anywhere.”

  “I’m still not sure what to do next,” Dash said.

  “Reinforce success,” Simms said. “That’s the army’s motto, isn’t it?”

  Maddegan found people side-stepping out of his way. Or maybe he was side-stepping out of their way, it was hard to tell, because sometimes he saw two of everybody. But a path always opened up and he found the Russians’ table and dropped into his chair far more heavily than he intended. “Blocked his knock off,” he said. They drank to that.

  “I doomed the bastard,” Maddegan said. “Doomed him.”

  “Medal for Dingbat,” Nikolai told Andrei.

  “I say,” McWatters said. “I’ll be damned if there isn’t another bloody great Socialist!” He pointed at a sapper captain. “That bald fellow.”

  “Watch me doom the bastard,” Maddegan said.

  “Please,” Andrei said to McWatters. “Is this wise?” But he was too late. Maddegan was already up and weaving his way towards the sapper. “The duke should leave now,” Andrei said. “We must not risk a diplomatic incident.”

  “Sacré bleu,” McWatters said. “Your English got better very fast, didn’t
it?” Shouts of rage, and the sound of breaking furniture, reached them.

  Simms and Dash went over to the Russians’ table. “What’s all the racket about?” Simms asked.

  “Diplomatic incident,” McWatters said.

  Maddegan came back, jumping from table to table, leaving a trail of curses and spilled drinks. He was dirty and his face was bleeding and he was gasping for breath. “Doomed the bastard,” he said. “Doomed him!”

  “I had nothing to do with this,” McWatters said. He was speaking to several officers who had come barging through the crowd. They had been in a fight and were very ready for another. “Just arrived,” McWatters told them. “Just leaving.”

  “Fucking Flying fucking Corps!” roared a young gunner. Both his lips were split and, in his fury, he spat blood. “I say we chuck the fuckers out of the window! See how they fly!” That got a harsh cheer. Dash felt his guts shrivel as if trying to hide inside him. These lunatics were going to break his neck. It was a twenty-foot drop. He wasn’t going to die fighting the Hun. He was going to die on a filthy stretch of French cobblestones. Dead at nineteen, and now he’d never know her name. And then all the lights went out. The blackness was blinding. He held up his arms to guard his face and ran for his life, bouncing off men, cracking his shins on stools, ignoring the pain.

  * * *

  “We shall be like an umbrella,” Cleve-Cutler said. He wanted his breakfast. His voice had an edge like a rusty knife. The duke stood erect, his head tilted back so that he could look under the steep peak of his cap. His calf-length boots made a liquid gleam, and his buttons shone like gold. Maybe they are gold, the C.O. thought. Maybe his blood is blue. Maybe his nerves are steel and his balls are brass and his brains are pure cauliflower. “I suppose you have umbrellas where you come from,” he said.

  Duke Nikolai and Count Andrei spoke briefly in Russian. Nikolai cleared his throat but Cleve-Cutler got in first: “Not in Imperial Russian Air Force,” he said.

  Nikolai frowned until he was looking through slits. He seemed confused, as if the C.O. had suddenly barked like a dog.

  Andrei said, “His Highness is a little low this morning.”

  “Not in Royal Flying Corps, chum. Nobody in this Corps is allowed to be low. He wasn’t low last night, was he? High as a kite, so I’m told. And now His Highness is going to be high again. As soon as you’ve discovered how to fly these buses, tell me. Big offensive patrol today. You’ll be at ten thousand. The rest of the squadron will be at twelve and fifteen thousand. Like an umbrella. Because the sky is going to be raining Huns over there.”

  They were standing at the edge of the airfield. The sky was all bare blue, made lovely by a sun that promised warmth and wellbeing to all. It lied. Early spring was full of such lies. The wind would bring cloud and veils of rain and sudden, black squalls.

  “Why ten thousand?” Nikolai asked.

  “High enough to be above the worst Archie, low enough for you to find the enemy. Find some nice fat slow two-seaters doing reconnaissance. Good targets. Easy meat.”

  “Albatros is better.”

  “Not for you. Murdering bastards are Albatroses. You go and knock down some rabbits first and —”

  “Albatros is better.”

  “A kill is a kill. Learn your trade. Now – breakfast.”

  Already the fitters were testing the engines, the riggers were checking the tension of the control cables, the armourers were cleaning the guns, oiling the interrupter gear, fingering the belted ammunition in search of an irregular round that might jam the breech and leave the pilot defenceless.

  The Pups were not in the best condition. Most had spent the winter in the open, rocking and shuddering in the wind and the wet. They were made of wood and canvas, stressed by wires. Sometimes the weeks and months of rain and fog and snow made small but significant warps in the structure. A one-inch distortion in a wing was enough to alter the airflow and spoil the performance: lift was lost, speed was lost, perhaps – in a fight – everything was lost. Dope never made canvas totally waterproof. Moisture might gather inside the aeroplane. In time, it secretly rotted corners of the fabric. How could anyone tell, except by stripping off the canvas? There was another method of discovery, and that was the violent manoeuvre of combat. Sometimes a Pup fell out of battle with ragged flags flailing from its wings. Perhaps the canvas was unstitched by enemy bullets, perhaps by French mildew. There was rarely a chance to know.

  Cleve-Cutler was eating bacon when he heard a dull drum-roll of thunder. He stopped chewing. The thunder exhausted itself. “Nasty frog weather,” Crabtree said.

  “Come with me,” the C.O. said to Crabtree.

  Cloud was building up on the western horizon.

  “Doesn’t smell like thunder,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  Gerrish joined them. “Probably an ammo dump went up. I remember hearing one that was fifty miles away.”

  But there was more thunder, dotted with the gloomy thud of individual explosions. It came from the east. This was an artillery barrage. “Damn,” Crabtree said. “They’re at it again.” He sounded like a tired schoolmaster at the end of a long term.

  “Us or them?” Cleve-Cutler wondered.

  The adjutant had appeared and was lighting his pipe. “Not us,” he said. “No build-up. No reserves.”

  “Can’t be a Hun offensive,” Gerrish said. “No-man’s-land is still a bog.”

  “That leaves the French,” Crabtree said. “They’re probably shelling the Portuguese.” The others ignored him. “Not an easy target,” he said, “Small and elusive.”

  The C.O. telephoned Wing H.Q. “It’s the Boche,” Colonel Bliss told him. “God knows what they’re up to. Maybe it’s a decoy, maybe it’s a Teutonic blunder. Intelligence were taken completely by surprise. How are your Russians getting on?”

  “No complaints, sir.” Almost true, he thought.

  “Good. One thing about this barrage, there should be lots of trade for you upstairs. Huns directing guns and so on. You’ll be spoiled for choice.”

  By mid morning, every pilot had flight-tested his Pup and the mechanics were making final adjustments. The Russians were an exception. They taxied their Nieuports up and down the field, then got out and reread the manufacturer’s manual. Finally, Spud Ogilvy went over to them.

  “What is mitraillette?” Nikolai asked.

  “Machine gun.”

  Nikolai nodded. “Naturellement,” he said. He made it sound like a test of Ogilvy’s knowledge. He tossed the manual to Andrei and walked away.

  “What’s his problem?” Ogilvy said.

  “Pepper vodka. Afterwards he is depressed.”

  They looked at Nikolai, who was kicking a wheel of his Nieuport. “He’s not stupid,” Andrei said. “But when you grow up knowing that everyone will always do exactly what you say, there is no incentive to think.”

  “What about you? Can’t you get your machine off the ground?”

  “He must fly first. For me to fly before the duke would be bad manners.”

  “I don’t suppose we could forget manners and just concentrate on the war?”

  “Not in Imperial Russian Air Force,” Andrei said lightly.

  Cleve-Cutler briefed the flight commanders. He would lead the squadron a mile or two inside enemy territory and prowl up and down until the Russians found something slow and stupid to knock down. If any Hun scouts tried to interfere, then it was all hands to the pumps. Above all, the Russians must get home intact.

  “That’s assuming they can fly,” Ogilvy said. “The duke’s got a royal hangover.”

  “Everyone flies. Which reminds me: what the hell happened to the new boy? Maddegan? He looks as if he fell downstairs.”

  “He fell downstairs, sir,” Crabtree said. “The lights went out at Rosie’s and he fell downstairs.”

  Ogilvy said, “Didn’t he go slightly berserk, first?”

  “Not berserk,” Crabtree said. “Amok, perhaps. He was running amok, so the lights went out. I did it. I w
ent outside and smashed the generator.”

  “No more parties,” Cleve-Cutler ordered. “Rosie’s is now out of bounds. For God’s sake try and fight one war at a time. Can Maddegan fly?”

  “He flies like he fights,” Gerrish said. “He’s all over the place.”

  “Make sure he gets the worst Pup. Right, we’ll take an early lunch.”

  As they walked to the mess, a Nieuport flew low overhead, roaring lustily. The other soon followed. “Progress,” Cleve-Cutler said. “You’ll have to pay for that generator, you know.”

  “I don’t care,” Crabtree said placidly.

  “Is there anything you do care about?”

  The crevices in Crabtree’s face deepened as he made himself think. “Does Wiener schnitzel count? I used to be passionately fond of a good schnitzel.” He spoke without passion. “But we can’t get it now, can we?”

  “If it’s any consolation, neither can they. Or so the newspapers say.”

  “Dear me,” Crabtree said. “Everybody’s fighting for it and nobody’s got it. Someone’s made an awful jorrocks of this war.”

  They were halfway through their soup when a waiter told Ogilvy that a sergeant-fitter wanted to see him. It was about the Russian gentlemen. “Crashed,” Gerrish guessed.

  But Ogilvy came back with a different report. “They’ve gone. They refuelled the Nieuports and told the sergeant they were going to get an Albatros. Then ... cheerio.”

  The soup plates were cleared. Curried sausages and rice were served. The flight commanders waited for Cleve-Cutler to speak. He said nothing. He ate unhurriedly and enjoyed the illicit pleasure of allowing time to slip by when he might have been hurrying the squadron into the air. He thought: Sod ’em. Let ’em go. They’re so keen on getting killed, I can’t stop them. But the correct course of action was to abandon lunch and lead a search ... Search where? Nobody knows where the silly sods have gone. But inaction was a dereliction of duty. Too late. Never find ’em now. If it was too late, that was caused by delay ... Sod it, he thought. Let them play silly buggers, I’m having my lunch. And so more time slipped by; until steamed treacle duff was served and by then it really was far, far too late.