Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  The master had just come down from Oxford. He did not have the same steel as young McWatters. They made a silent truce: no writing, no slate-chucking. James had cracked the code. If you were bloody-minded enough, you never had to do what they wanted you to do.

  He changed schools quite often. He liked reading. Sometimes the headmaster was more interested in fees than in academic performance, and James did nothing but read and talk. And play footer or cricket. If something must be written, he paid another boy to write it.

  It worked until he was sixteen. Then he came to suspect that the rest of the school was treating him as a joke. He was the tallest boy in the school and he couldn’t write: what a hoot! He got nicknamed Invisible Ink. He went to his housemaster and announced that he was leaving. “Good idea,” the man said. “I’ll give you a lift to the station on my motorbike.”

  Next day, his father asked him to come into the study. “I’ve been wondering,” he said. “What plans have you made for the rest of your life?”

  The question caught James off-guard. “Motorcycling,” he said. It was all he could think of.

  “Ah. Forgive my ignorance – how is that likely to increase the sum of human happiness?”

  “Well, sir, last year a chap rode from Land’s End to John O’Groats in less than two days.”

  “And was there an ethical element to this journey?”

  “Um ... He didn’t cheat, if that’s what you mean. He used the pedals on the steep hills, but that’s allowed.”

  He bought a motorcycle, found a mechanic, and made a small reputation in local races, scrambles, sprints. Got bored. Bought a car, raced that, got bored. Took flying lessons, got his Royal Aero Club certificate, and might have become bored with flying if Europe had not stumbled into war.

  In the autumn of 1916 he was transferred to Hornet Squadron. When he arrived, the doctor examined him for venereal disease. “The old man’s very hot on this,” Dando explained. “He’d had to sack two pilots. You’re clean. Put your bags on.”

  McWatters dressed slowly. “Girls, and so on. They’re the very devil, aren’t they?”

  “Here’s my professional advice. If you can get a girl, she’s probably got the pox. If you can’t get her, she probably hasn’t. That’s Dando’s First Law of Motion.”

  “Thanks. I’ll stick to poker.”

  Dando recognised that tone of voice, brave yet brittle. It meant McWatters was a virgin and resented the fact. Dando had heard it before, often. Most pilots had left one all-male environment – school, sometimes university – for another: an R.F.C. camp, where women were never seen and seldom spoken of, never in the mess.

  This made Charles Dash’s erotic adventures at the nunnery of Sainte Croix all the more fascinating. Some officers refused to believe him. “He’s got a neck like celery,” Snow said. “He’s got more freckles than my kid sister. He thinks his dick is there to stir his tea with. That’s what they teach you at your famous public schools, isn’t it?”

  “If he made it all up,” McWatters said, “why isn’t he boasting about it?”

  “Because he knows it’s bullshit,” Maddegan said. “That’s a very, very old Australian word. You can borrow it provided you promise not to get it dirty.”

  “Something definitely happened,” McWatters said. “I mean, he went to see Dando. Something must have happened.”

  Charles Dash came back to his billet from the officers’ bathhouse and found McWatters lying on Dash’s bed, reading Dash’s mail. “Perhaps you should move in here,” he said, “and I’ll live in your hut and read your letters.”

  “The doctor’s wife died, pneumonia. And the daffodils look splendid. Otherwise, nothing special from home. However ...” McWatters waved a letter. “Chlöe Legge-Barrington has come up trumps.”

  “Give it here, or I’ll report you to my flight commander.”

  “She’s found where Jane Brackenden and Laura da Silva are. It’s nowhere near here. I have a car.”

  Dash’s hatred was great, but his lust was greater. “No poaching,” he said, “or I’ll kill you.”

  After an hour of taking wrong turnings and backing up muddy lanes, they found a F.A.N.Y. unit in a field of ambulances. McWatters reluctantly stayed in the car while Dash went looking. Laura da Silva was in a tent, unpacking medical supplies. “Hullo,” she said. “Come to help?”

  They chatted for a while. Dash had a mouth full of words he couldn’t find a way to use. Finally a thought blundered into his head. “Unusual name, da Silva. Are you Catholic, by any chance?”

  “Yes.”

  Oh well, that’s that, he thought. But he blundered on: “It’s just that, when I was staying at the nunnery, someone left ... um ... left an earring in my . . . um ... bed.”

  “Ah.” She linked her hands behind her head and looked him in the face. Treacherously, it turned red. “Well,” she said, “the priests would give me hell, so it wasn’t me. And no-one in F.A.N.Y. wears earrings, so maybe it was something else she left in your bed.”

  “Maybe,” Dash mumbled.

  “Poor you,” she said. “Men get no rest, do they?” She kissed him on the forehead. “That’s all you get! Goodbye.”

  He went back to the car. McWatters wanted a detailed report. “Go to hell,” Dash said. “I’m sick of this nonsense. I quit.”

  “Do you, indeed? Well, I don’t.”

  The address given for Jane Brackenden was only twenty minutes away. It turned out to be a primary school, requisitioned by the Medical Corps. In the playground a few walking wounded played walking football. “Be frank,” McWatters urged. “Be blunt. Women like that sort of thing.” But Dash had already slammed the car door.

  He met her coming down a corridor. “Charles! Good heavens . . . I was just thinking of you.” Optimism soared like a skylark. She was stunningly beautiful: red hair, delicate features, healthy chest. “Not half as much as I have,” he said. “You were awfully keen on women’s suffrage, weren’t you?”

  “Still am.”

  “Equality now, that’s what you said ...” The corridor was suddenly busy. She saw the strain in his eyes and took him into a classroom where empty stretchers were stacked head-high. “The thing is,” he said, “somebody at the nunnery really believed in equality between the sexes.” Already his ears were hot. “And that somebody practised it in my bed.” Her eyes widened and he heard her gasp. Fuck fuck fuck, he thought. Wrong again.

  “It’s a lovely idea,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’m not nearly brave enough to ... Dear oh dear. And you’ve come all this way.”

  “It was dark, you see. Pitch black.” Dash felt that he had been saying this to everyone he knew.

  “Such a shame. I wish we could go somewhere and talk, but I’m in charge here. Can’t leave, not for hours.”

  McWatters was not discouraged by his failure. “Now it’s better odds,” he said. “Only three to one.”

  * * *

  The six Pups destroyed by the strafing Albatros were quickly replaced: another squadron was getting Camels and its C.O. cheerfully donated his ageing Pups to Cleve-Cutler. Pilots were not so easily found. Dufee’s leg had been broken by the signal flare. One man was in Amiens having a wisdom tooth pulled. Another had double vision, the result of smacking his head on the gun butt in a heavy landing. Two had ’flu.

  Training must go on, and more intensively. The C.O. made himself leader of the Pups that were making mock attacks on the Biffs and he ordered Paxton and Woolley to fly with him.

  First, he briefed them. They came to his office and stood, while he sat at his desk and worried.

  “I know you of old,” he told Paxton. “Not a bad pilot, although God knows what cock-eyed ballyhoo you’ve picked up in England. As for you,” he told Woolley, “I could be unpleasant, but I won’t. You’re a fart, and I hope to see the back of you soon. Meanwhile, remember this, both of you. The air war has changed while you’ve been away. It’s not man-to-man any more. It’s formation against formation. We fly and figh
t as a formation. That’s what this training is all about. Clear?”

  “Admirably so, sir,” Paxton said.

  “Don’t talk like a butler. I don’t want your damned admiration. I want your obedience.”

  Six Biffs and six Pups flew to Braye. Whenever the weather allowed, they practised interceptions. Cleve-Cutler made these as difficult as possible. Some threats were real and the Pups pressed home their attacks, charging at the fighters until they were the focus of all six imaginary bulletstreams. Other threats were fake, meant to tug and twist the formation until it was ragged and slow to respond.

  Cleve-Cutler failed to fool them. His flight commanders were experienced air-fighters. They could read the sky at a glance; what’s more they could read the C.O.’s mind. Their crews were as welldrilled as Guardsmen. Whenever the Pups made a charge, the Biffs turned as if tied together and crossed their path. If the gunners had actually fired, the Pups would have flown into a cone of bullets and been hacked down. Repeatedly, the cine-films proved this.

  * * *

  The adjutant handed Count Andrei the leather-bound Bible. “Jolly kind of you,” he said. “Your people in Paris are a bit jumpy, so I’m told.”

  “Terrified of being ordered home to Petersburg, I expect. Who’s in charge there now?” Brazier gave him a piece of paper. Andrei read it. “Crumbs,” he said. “Whatever that means.”

  He found the duke in the officers’ bathhouse, sitting on a reversed chair, being shaved by Private Bugler. Snow was soaking in a hot tub. Maddegan sat on the edge, playing with the soap, making it squirt between his fingers. He saw the Bible and groaned.

  “Is big change in Petersburg,” Andrei announced. “Is time to swear new oath.”

  “I don’t swear,” Nikolai said quietly.

  “He’ll hit you,” Maddegan said.

  “I don’t swear.”

  Bugler was slow taking his hands away. The Bible clouted Nikolai’s head and rocked it like a balloon on a stick, and the razor nicked his ear. Flecks of lather drifted and fell. Bugler retreated and hid the razor behind his back. Blood created small red rosettes on the floor.

  Andrei hooked a foot around a leg of the chair and tipped Nikolai out. He trod on his stomach. He shoved the Bible into his hands. “You swear allegiance to Prince Lvov, leader of the Duma.”

  “I swear,” Nikolai wheezed. He dropped the Bible and got up and scrambled to the door. “Prince Lvov is lousy greedy no-brain piece of pox!” Blood ran off his chin. “Tsar will chop head off!” He left.

  “Bugler!” Snow roared. “Find the doctor.” Bugler hurried away, grumbling hard.

  “Look, I’m all for loyalty,” Maddegan said, “but must you keep walloping him? That’s the third time.”

  “Fourth,” Snow said.

  “The Romanovs are finished,” Andrei said. “Now he is the servant. Now I give orders.”

  “Seems kind of pointless,” Snow said. “He says no, you thump him, and he says yes. Still, I’m just a crude Canadian, what the hell do I know of your quaint old aristocratic ways.”

  * * *

  Nothing memorable happened to Adam Gillespie Keith Heeley for seventeen years. Then he spent the summer holidays with his aunt, in Sidmouth. She was only twenty-six and looked twenty-two. On the other hand, he was only seventeen and looked fifteen. She liked dancing with him, teaching him the waltz, and looking into his cool grey eyes. She knew enough about the rest of him. In his bathing costume he made a good shape, and when he came out of the sea, with the costume clinging pointedly, she felt tremors of a lust that made it hard for her to speak. One dull afternoon she seduced him in her bedroom.

  What surprised the boy most about his first sexual experience was the violence of it. He had not thought passion could be quite so passionate. When he got his breath back he said, “Crikey.” That made her laugh. He said, “Why me?” He was bewildered by the fact that a grown-up should choose to do such a grown-up thing with him. “I suppose,” she said, “I’ve nothing to be afraid of, with you.” It was a spontaneous, honest answer, but not very flattering.

  It explained Adam Heeley to himself. It explained the long-suffering glances that scores of schoolmasters had given him, and the brutal way that hundreds of schoolboys had ignored him. He was nothing special. The sober truth of that summer in Sidmouth was that his aunt craved his body but otherwise he bored her, as he bored most people. He went to an eminent school, wore its uniform, spoke the language of the English upper class, not because he was different but because his parents were rich. He had assumed he was special. Now he felt tricked. A long failure beckoned.

  When the war came along, he didn’t take much interest in it. He was only eighteen. War was a job for professional soldiers and hearty patriots, people who liked doing that sort of thing. Late in 1915 he was flicking through the latest Illustrated London News when he saw the face of a boy called Taverner, now a lieutenant in the uniform of the King’s Rifles, with a Military Cross, and dead.

  In a spell when he had been very lonely at school, Heeley had heroworshipped Taverner from afar. They had never spoken, but Taverner had grinned at him, once. Oh well, Heeley thought, if Taverner’s gone I might as well go too. The whole page was taken up with awards, most of them posthumous. He shut his eyes and stabbed with a finger. Royal Flying Corps.

  Everyone is good at something. The trick is finding it. When Heeley went up in an aeroplane, and looked down on people like insects in a world like Toytown, he felt special. This was why God had put him on Earth: to fly above it.

  He did six months as an observer, spotting for guns and photographing enemy trenches; crashed twice, nothing serious; re-trained as a pilot; joined Hornet Squadron and had never been so happy as when he was flying a Pup. After three months of D.O.P.s, he was still alive. It came as a surprise. His confidence grew. Three months ago, he wouldn’t have dared to go up to Captain Woolley and say there was a rumour that he knew how to get out of a bad spin; and if so, would he reveal the secret?

  Woolley was outside his hut, sitting on a log. He thought for a long time before he said, “D’you like this war?”

  “I like my bit of it. Damn good fun.”

  “Well, that’s got to stop, hasn’t it?” Woolley’s voice was hard and square, not contorted to the drawl of the Home Counties. “If it’s fun, it’ll go on for ever. That’s human nature. Right?”

  “Look ... if you don’t want to tell me . . .”

  “Got twenty-five francs? I’ll tell you, for twenty-five.”

  Heeley was amazed. “That’s very ... mercenary.”

  “Your life’s not worth twenty-five francs? Well, you know best.”

  Heeley gave him the money.

  “Stop fooling around with the rudder. You can’t turn out of a bad spin. Centre the rudder. Forget about using the ailerons. Centre the stick. You can’t control the machine unless it’s going forward, so make it go forward. Switch off the engine. Centre everything and push the stick hard forward. The elevators will start to bite. The tail goes up, the nose goes down. Now you’re diving, you’ve got wind over the wings and past the rudder, and you can correct what’s left of the spin.”

  “Thank you,” Heeley said.

  “And if it doesn’t work, don’t come running to me.”

  Heeley went away, feeling as if he had been hustled into buying a pair of rabbits from a poacher, except that he had nothing to show for his money. Was it possible that Woolley had sold him a lot of nonsense? He stopped and tried to remember exactly what the fellow had said, and he was gazing at a cloud when the great bombardment began.

  It beat the air like a punishment. Heeley’s documents said he was Church of England, but if he got caught in a storm, and the sky was split by thunder, all the hairs on his neck bristled like a dog’s and briefly he knew no god but fear. Now a hundred thunderstorms roared in the east. Heeley knew the guns were ten miles away, probably more, but still his neck bristled.

  Dando and Duke Nikolai came out of the doctor’s hut. Si
lk thread trailed from the Russian’s ear. “Bloody neighbours,” Dando said. “Can’t a man get a wink of sleep?”

  “Battle begins now,” Nikolai said.

  “Not yet,” Heeley said. “This is just spring cleaning. The P.B.I. are chucking out their old pots and pans.” He noticed the ear. “What happened to you?”

  “I stitched him up,” Dando said.

  “Why?” Heeley met the doctor’s glittering glance. “Never mind,” he muttered.

  The thunder brought everyone out. Experienced men compared it with other occasions. Spud Ogilvy remembered the bombardment before the Somme as having been louder. Crabtree offered to run a sweepstake concerning the duration of the barrage. “On the Somme, the gunners kept it up for ten days,” he said.

  Paxton sniffed. “Didn’t do much good, did it?”

  The adjutant cleared his throat so forcefully that he silenced them all. “Valuable lessons were learned at the Somme,” he announced.

  As if to endorse his view, the barrage intensified. He cocked his head and enjoyed it. The day was strangely flat and airless, under a drab, blank sky; a forgettable day, only fit for demolition. Brazier said, “The Hun Front Line won’t survive this shelling. I have friends in the infantry, and they tell me we have a little trick up our sleeves.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Try as he might, the Hun won’t shell our troops in Arras. He’ll do his worst, but his guns won’t harm a single British soldier.” He rocked on his heels and looked longingly to the noisy east.

  “The Boche machine guns will get them all?” Crabtree suggested.

  Brazier took his arm. “A word in your ear,” he said. They strolled away.

  “We can shell them,” Paxton said to Woolley, “but they can’t shell us. Is that what Uncle said?”