Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  He went to the mess and ate a quick lunch. Nobody avoided him, but nobody came over and chatted, either. He was aware, from bits of overheard conversation and bursts of laughter, that the squadron had enjoyed Mackenzie’s stunt. Go ahead, laugh, he thought. It’s not your flight. It’s not your responsibility. Wait till it happens to you. Wait till it all goes haywire. Not so funny then. Pulling bodies out of a wreck is no joke. He drank his coffee too fast and burned his mouth.

  For the rest of the day he busied himself. Talked to the sergeant-fitters and sergeant-riggers. Looked at all the Biffs. Did an air-test. Informed the adjutant of his recommendation to court-martial. (Brazier asked for a full report.) Watched his gunners fire at the range. Reprimanded a mechanic for not saluting. Decided to have a bath. Walked to his hut, went inside and found a horse jammed in the bedroom door. Its tail swished at the eternal flies. Its rump stuck out like a tethered balloon.

  As a flight commander, Paxton had two rooms. O’Neill sat in the other, smoking a corncob pipe.

  “What the blue blazes is going on here?” Paxton demanded.

  “It’s a horse’s arse,” O’Neill said. “That’s an expression the Americans use. London’s full of them now. They say ‘horse’s ass’. Terribly genteel.”

  “Get your demented arse out of my chair, before I kick it out.”

  O’Neill pointed his pipe at the horse. “Take a good look. That’s what you’ve become.”

  Paxton was tired, and tired of being lectured in his own rooms by a man who couldn’t even fly. A flush of rage created a rush of energy and he tried to kick O’Neill, but O’Neill dodged and Paxton hacked the chair instead. Pain flowered in his foot and he lurched away, cursing.

  “You’re a horse’s arse,” O’Neill said. “You gambled and lost more than you could afford, and to a junior officer. Horse’s arse! Then you took on a bloody stupid double-or-quits. Horse’s arse! Now you’ve lost again, as everyone saw, and sooner than pay up you’ll try to courtmartial the fellow. Horse’s arse!”

  Paxton was red with anger and guilt. “What they did was a gross breach of discipline. I won’t tolerate —”

  “Gross breach of horseshit! When you were my gunner we didn’t behave properly. We behaved like a couple of thugs. Air fighting is thuggery. Mackenzie looks like a china doll, but at heart he’s a bigger thug than you.”

  “I had respect for rank. He has no respect.”

  “Mackenzie’s a fart, but he’s a brave fart. Don’t expect a brave fart to salute a horse’s arse. Christ Almighty, what an unholy mix of metaphors.” O’Neill went out.

  Eventually Paxton climbed in through his bedroom window and persuaded the horse to back out of the hut. Once outside, it deposited an impressive amount of dung. A well-behaved horse. He told a passing airman to take it to the guardroom. He went inside and sat in his chair until dusk fell. Then he switched on the light and wrote his report. And all the time, the Wipers barrage rumbled and groaned, far to the north. It never stopped, day or night.

  * * *

  Out of the blue, Edith Reynolds wrote to McWatters. Somebody in F.A.N.Y. had told her that he was looking for her.

  He replied; they met for dinner at a restaurant in St Pol. She turned out to be stunningly beautiful, in a trim, athletic way. For months, the only women that McWatters had seen had been French, covered in shapeless black, bent double, doing something to sugar beet in a field. Faced with Edith Reynolds he smiled too readily and too much. He knew it, but he couldn’t stop. The meal was pleasant and easy. Once she glanced at the wings on his tunic, which was encouraging. By now he had got his smile under control. He ordered coffee and Benedictine.

  “I have an ulterior motive for meeting you,” she said.

  “I say! That sounds thrilling.”

  “No. Not thrilling.” She reached for her Benedictine, and then pushed it away. “A couple of months ago, after the Arras affair, I went to a dance with some other F.A.N.Y. girls. It was at a big R.F.C. aerodrome, in the officers’ mess, of course. Lots to eat and drink and a wonderful band to dance to.”

  McWatters had the unbroken pleasure of examining her face, because she was looking at her hands, palms up, fingers interlaced.

  “I fell for a handsome young pilot. Sounds silly, but that’s what happened. We danced the first dance and I was in love, deeply.”

  “Lucky chap.” Oh fuck, he thought.

  “Well... He liked me. I’m not un-pretty. We danced and danced. I’d never been so happy. I wanted to be alone with him because I hated sharing him with anyone, so we took a couple of bottles of champagne and slipped away.” That was when she looked up. There was no trace of happiness.

  “Slipped away,” McWatters said flatly. “I see.” He wanted to leave, now.

  “We sat under a tree. I should never drink, I love the taste but ... It’s like an anaesthetic. Anyway, that’s where I woke up, hours later.”

  “Under the tree.”

  “It was three in the morning. I found the guardroom and they got a car to drive me home. Now I’m pregnant.”

  McWatters was so shocked that he bit his tongue. He stared at her and swallowed warm blood. He was about to say Are you sure? but he stopped himself. She was a damned nurse. Of course she was sure. “What an utter rotter,” he said.

  “He’s on your squadron.”

  “Don’t tell me ... Jesus Christ Almighty ...” he sucked his damaged tongue. “It’s bloody Mackenzie, isn’t it?” She nodded. “I’ll boot his tiny backside from here to Gretna Green!” he said. Other diners looked at them. “Sorry,” he said.

  “I don’t want to be married to him,” she said. “That’s the last thing I want. Just. . .just make sure he knows what he’s done.”

  “Yes.” He rewarded himself with a long look at her delightful face. “Awfully bad luck.” She shrugged, and took a very small sip of Benedictine. He said, “In the circumstances, I expect you’ve gone off men altogether.”

  “In the circumstances, yes, I have. But it was kind of you to ask.”

  * * *

  Drinkwater had been captain of squash at school, unbeaten in his final term, so he supervised the erection of the portable squash court. Harrods had sent a dozen racquets and a box of balls. He picked out a racquet with a whippy cane shaft, and he was enjoying himself, playing some cracking drives mixed up with flicked boasts and cross-court lobs, when Mackenzie came in.

  “Fancy a knock?” Mackenzie said.

  Drinkwater was in whites and tennis shoes. Mackenzie wore red bathing trunks and he was barefoot. Drinkwater nearly said no. But he knew there were splinters in the floor and he saw Mackenzie holding his racquet like a frying pan. Revenge would be sweet. “Shall we warm up?”

  “No. I’m ready. You serve.”

  Drinkwater won the first three points easily. All he had to do was hit deep drives down a side wall and Mackenzie fluffed the return.

  “Bad luck.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll soon get the hang of it.”

  Drinkwater served. He forced Mackenzie to the back wall and he was occupying the dominant position in mid court, knees bent, poised for the kill, when he got hit on the backside by red-hot shrapnel.

  “Sorry,” Mackenzie said.

  Drinkwater got a hand inside his flannels and rubbed his suffering buttock. “You hit that like a rocket,” he said.

  “I did get a decent swing at it.” Mackenzie came over and pulled the flannels down and exposed a vivid red circle in the white flesh. “No bones broken.”

  “Didn’t you see me?”

  “You must have moved. Anyway, that shot would have been good, so it’s my service.”

  Mackenzie hit Drinkwater with the ball twice more in the next three points. Both were full-blooded, painful blows, one to the buttock, one to the back of the thigh. “Try not to obstruct me,” Mackenzie said. His next shot was a bullet. It whacked Drinkwater in the small of the back.

  “You’re doing it deliberately,” Drinkwater said. “You’re not play
ing by the rules.” He had tears of pain.

  “I’m playing by my rules,” Mackenzie said. “And now I’ve won.”

  “Won what? You haven’t won the game.”

  “Bugger the game. I want blood.” He threw his racquet at Drinkwater and went out, whistling.

  * * *

  All patrols were cancelled.

  “That means Wipers is coming to the boil,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Boom wants everyone at full strength for the big day.”

  Ten minutes later, Colonel Bliss telephoned and asked him to lunch at Wing H.Q. “And bring your flight commanders,” he said. “We keep a small mess, so I’m afraid you’ll have to take pot luck. Pork pies and lemonade, probably.”

  Wing was not important enough for a château, but the staff lived in a fortified manor house with a moat and arrowslits. “Thirteenth-century, so I’m told,” Bliss said. “Please make allowances for the plumbing. It’s not handy if you’ve got the runs, and it’s not comfortable if you haven’t, so you might say it falls between two stools.” He waited. They looked at him. “Between two stools,” he repeated. “It’s a joke. I’ve been working on it for weeks.”

  “Jolly clever, sir,” the C.O. said. “Jolly droll.”

  “Too late now, Hugh ... As it’s not actually raining, I thought we’d eat outside.”

  The house faced inward, onto a paved courtyard. One wall supported a sprawling wisteria. Opposite it there was a magnolia almost as tall as the house. Elsewhere honeysuckle and roses were trained to the walls. Sprigs of lavender grew in cracks between the pavingstones. The air was heavily patrolled by bees and butterflies.

  “Of course you’ve met our friends from Chicago,” Bliss said.

  “Boston, really,” Dabinett said.

  “New York,” Klagsburn said.

  “I wasn’t far out, then ... Major, you sit next to me.”

  Cream of cucumber soup was served. Sunlight gleamed on silver cutlery and fine-stemmed glasses and bone china.

  “Tell me, Mr Dabinett,” Bliss said. “What’s going on in the world?”

  “Good Lord, sir, I don’t know. I’m just a journalist.”

  “I know,” Woolley said confidently. They all looked. “God’s turned up in Portugal again. It was in the Daily Mirror.”

  “No religion in the mess, Woolley,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  “What’s religious about it?” Klagsburn asked. “The Virgin Mary appears in a tree in the wilds of Portugal and talks to three raggedyass shepherd-kids, every month on the thirteenth prompt, that’s not religion, that’s a publicity stunt.”

  “Do we know what was said?” Paxton asked.

  “It was all in Portuguese,” Woolley said.

  “Big mistake,” Klagsburn said. “You got a message, you send it Western Union.”

  After the soup came scallops in cream sauce. “I picked out a white Bordeaux,” Bliss said. “You need something to cleanse the palate ... Isn’t it strange to think they’re running the Derby tomorrow at Newmarket?”

  “It’s safer there, sir,” McWatters said. “The Hun’s no sportsman. He can bomb London, so he wouldn’t hesitate to bomb Ascot.”

  “He wouldn’t get in without a grey topper,” Woolley said. “I tried to bomb the Cheltenham Gold Cup in a brown bowler and they wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

  “What d’you fancy in the Derby, sir?” Cleve-Cutler asked.

  “I like Smuggler’s Boy,” Bliss said. “Intelligent ears. I go by the ears.”

  Kidneys in sherry sauce were served with duchesse potatoes and a rosé from Anjou. “We’ll stay with the rosé to the end,” Bliss said. “Very versatile stuff, rosé. Tell me, Mr Klagsburn, as an American, how do you feel about the idea of women getting the vote?”

  “Oh, give it to them, for God’s sake. Anything to shut them up. They’ll take it sooner or later, whether we like it or not.”

  “Mr Klagsburn has had two wives,” Dabinett said. The others looked at Klagsburn with sudden respect.

  Lemon syllabub appeared, and more rosé.

  “This is your first trip across the Atlantic?” the C.O. said. The Americans nodded. “And what has surprised you most?” he asked.

  “The soldiers’ height,” Dabinett said. “So many are so small.”

  “Lousy beer,” Klagsburn said, and shook his head when they laughed. “Come to New York. Taste some real beer.”

  A very sharp Cheddar was placed on the table, with pots of coffee and cream on either side. A bottle of brandy was added. The servants disappeared.

  “The subject for discussion is Lieutenant Mackenzie,” Bliss announced. “Your opinions, please.” Nobody was eager to be first. “Come, come, gentlemen,” Bliss urged. “Let’s hear the pros and cons.”

  Woolley raised a finger. “Mackenzie’s very free with his opinions, sir.”

  “Is that a pro or a con?”

  “Sometimes it is,” the C.O. said. “And sometimes it falls between two stools, sir.” Bliss enjoyed that.

  “Mackenzie’s rather too impetuous for my taste, sir,” McWatters said. “He goes looking for trouble.”

  Dabinett leaned forward. “Isn’t that desirable?”

  “We encourage the offensive spirit,” the C.O. said.

  “What about you, Mr Paxton?” Bliss said. “Aren’t you his flight commander?”

  Paxton cut a sliver of Cheddar and captured it on the point of his knife. “Lacks respect for authority, sir.”

  “So did Davy Crocket,” Klagsburn said. Bliss raised his eyebrows. Dabinett said, “Eminent American, sir. Highly regarded in Chicago.”

  “These peccadilloes,” Bliss said. “Speaking out. Taking risks. Ignoring rules. Properly seen, these are exactly what we want of a fighter pilot! Confident! Flying in the face of danger! Keen as mustard! Now who best fitted that description? Eh? Captain Ball, that’s who. Albert Ball, V. C, triple D.S.O. etcetera. Well, I believe we’ve found a new Captain Ball in Lieutenant Mackenzie. More to the point, so does Boom Trenchard. He’s given orders that Mr Dabinett and Mr Klagsburn are to be guests of the mess at Gazeran for as long as they wish, and be given every assistance in making a cinema film of Mackenzie’s achievements. I look to you, major, to do all you can to further their efforts.”

  There was silence while Cleve-Cutler tried to prepare a suitable reply, and failed, and fell back on the truth. “Hell’s teeth,” he said. “This is that bloody Russian nonsense all over again.”

  “On the contrary,” Bliss said. “Mackenzie is a competent pilot with kills to his name.”

  “So he says. They’re not on his record.”

  “Purely from lack of witnesses. I believe him.”

  “He’s too short for a Biff, sir,” Paxton said. “It’s too big for him.”

  “Then put him in a single-seater! Ye gods! Where’s your imagination? Haven’t you got a Nieuport left over from those Russkies? Well, get him up in it!”

  “Nieuport!” Klagsburn said. “Hey! That’s a jazzy little bus.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” Cleve-Cutler said. “It won’t be easy. He may look like an angel, but he behaves like a complete shit.”

  “You mean the man’s a cavalier. Every squadron should have one. Bad for discipline, but good for morale.”

  “Pure gold,” Klagsburn said. In his mind’s eye he could see Mackenzie in a dashing little Nieuport, smiling like a younger Douglas Fairbanks.

  Five minutes after they left Wing H.Q., Cleve-Cutler stopped the car. They got out and walked into a field, where the driver couldn’t hear them.

  “I suspected something as soon as I saw those scallops,” Cleve-Cutler said. “When the kidneys came out, I knew it. We’d been bought and sold.”

  “Our goose was cooked,” Woolley said.

  “I don’t believe he’s shot down three Huns,” Paxton said. “He’s a lying little prick.”

  “Talking of which,” McWatters said, “I’ve learned that he behaved abominably with a F.A.N.Y. nurse. Took advantage while she was int
oxicated. Now she’s in the club.”

  “Who else knows?” the C.O. demanded.

  “Nobody. Just the girl and me.”

  “Right! Now listen: that story ends here. It’s an official secret. Not to be spoken about.”

  Paxton cleared his throat. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, sir, but I’ve recommended that Mackenzie be court-martialled.”

  “What for? Rape? Robbing banks? Wearing ladies’ clothes? Come on, surprise me.”

  “Gross irresponsibility, sir.” When the C.O. grunted and looked unimpressed, Paxton said, “And since you’ve raised the point, sir, I might add that Mackenzie’s room-mate, Lieutenant Grant, has asked to be moved to a different hut.”

  “Mackenzie snores. Correct?”

  “No, sir. Grant’s complaint is that he is too often stark naked. And rather too friendly. Perhaps ‘affectionate’ is a better word.”

  “Grant’s a miserable piece of piss,” Woolley said. “Shake hands with Grant and he counts his fingers. I’ve seen him do it.”

  “Get Grant out of that hut,” the C.O. ordered. “No scandal. And no court martial. God Almighty, Pax, you were as much to blame for that cockpit-hopping madness as he was. Anything else?” They had nothing to add. “Mackenzie likes hitting people,” the C.O. said. “I’m not completely deaf or blind, I hear things, I see things. He picks on Drinkwater, heaven knows why. And he steals money. Goes into people’s rooms and pinches their change.”

  “Not much of a hero, is he?” McWatters said.

  “Don’t tell Boom Trenchard,” Woolley said.

  “I doubt very much that Boom had much to do with this,” the C.O. said. “It’s Wing’s idea. Bliss thinks Mackenzie looks like a hero, and it’s up to us to complete the illusion.”

  They drove back to Gazeran. Cleve-Cutler had nothing more to say until the car pulled up outside the mess. “Mackenzie’s buggered-up B-Flight quite enough,” he said. “I’m switching him to A-Flight. I don’t expect miracles,” he told Woolley, “but for Christ’s sake don’t damage his pretty face.”

  “Yes, sir. If I find his hands in my trouser pockets, am I allowed to boot him in the balls?”