War Story

by Derek Robinson

  Paxton was asleep when they reached Pepriac. Kellaway poked him in the ribs and then helped him out of the car. It was late afternoon, cloudy, and a gusty wind was making a bloody nuisance of itself with dust and scraps of paper. The place was very active. FEs kept coming and going. Paxton watched one land, its wings wobbling in the gusts. It bounced twice. He felt at home. Doing a bunk from that hospital was absolutely right.

  “You look like a second-class cricket umpire,” Kellaway said.

  Paxton looked down at the stained whites and felt foolish. “I’ll get changed. Then I’ll go and see the old man.”

  The billet was empty. Paxton sat on his bed. He felt as if he had just walked a thousand miles but it was worth it. Kellaway said he would go and get Fidler. Paxton nodded. “I’ll get changed,” he said,”then I’ll go and see the old man.”

  Aero engines roared and throbbed, subsided, settled down to a steady growl. Paxton looked at the wooden hut, the three beds, the stove, table, chairs, and he liked what he saw. A stranger came in and nodded to him. He was about Paxton’s age but slim. His hair was black and sleeked-down until it looked polished. He had a long straight nose and a very small mouth. He was in his shirt sleeves and he carried a towel and sponge-bag. He dropped them on O’Neill’s bed and said as he put on his tunic: “Have you come to give the place a coat of paint?”

  “Who the shit are you?” Paxton asked. Fidler and Kellaway came in. “Shame about Mr. O’Neill, sir, isn’t it?” Fidler said. “This is Mr. Lucas, sir.”

  Paxton stopped breathing, and for a moment all sound drained away. When his lungs went into action they swelled and stretched his ribcage; and the sounds of the world flooded back. Lucas was apologising, saying that he mistook Paxton for a workman, awfully sorry. Paxton could only look at O’Neill’s bed. He felt frozen inside. O’Neill hadn’t gone, not O’Neill, Fidler had got it wrong. It was all impossible, it was a blunder, it made him angry, very angry, furious. He got up fast and ripped the towel off O’Neill’s bed, picked up the sponge-bag and hurled it at Lucas. He heard himself shouting disgusting things at Lucas and they were all true. The bed got overturned, blankets and pillows torn off. He must have done that too. He must have used his damaged arm because pain rushed into it like a wild animal. O’Neill wasn’t in his bed. It was all a filthy swindle and Paxton told them so as loudly as he could. Lucas was to blame, so he hit Lucas. Fidler tried to stop him and grabbed his damaged arm. Fidler wasn’t to know. The light went out.

  Paxton woke up for a few seconds. He was in bed, his own bed, and Dando was poking a needle in his other arm. “I want O’Neill,” he told Dando. Dando simply shook his head. Paxton tried to explain but the words wouldn’t fit together. Soon, that day ended.

  Chapter 22

  Dando knew that he couldn’t keep Paxton in bed, not while machines were taking off and landing all day. Dando let him get up after lunch on the following afternoon, provided he didn’t go berserk and chuck beds at people. Paxton promised to behave himself. He was restless but he was also tired.

  He let Fidler shave him and then went and sat in a deckchair. The dog Brutus found him and made a great fuss, before settling down on the grass. Private Collins brought a glass of lemonade. There was always an FE warming up, or coming back, or circling.

  From time to time pilots or observers waved to him, or paused to chat. Paxton hadn’t much to say and they didn’t stay long. He watched an FE hurry over the grass, raise its tail and come unstuck. It droned away. He dozed, and woke up when Cleve-Cutler sat beside him and said, “Nobody told you to come back here. You’re guilty of indiscipline, dereliction of duty, gross neglect and deserting your post in the face of the medical profession, just because they wanted to saw your arm off at the shoulder. I should have you court-martialled.”

  “I wasn’t doing any good in that hospital, sir,” Paxton said. It was a struggle to wake up.

  “They don’t like losing patients. Not like that, anyway. It spoils their record-keeping. You’ve no idea how badtempered they’ve been, and Christ knows I’ve got enough complaints descending on me from a great height already.”

  “Sorry to hear that, sir.” There was a rough edge to the CO’s voice that worried Paxton.

  “You’re a pretty bloody depressing sight to have lying about the place, aren’t you? Just what the new boys like to see, I don’t think.”

  “Dando says it’s healing up nicely,” Paxton lied.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t give you a boot up the backside and send you back to the quacks toot sweet.”

  Paxton thought desperately hard and could offer only one bad reason, so bad it was worse than nothing. But he had to say something. “If you send me back I’ll do another bunk tomorrow,” he said. “What?” Cleve-Cutler shouted. “This is mutiny!” He got up laughing, and walked away laughing. It was as if he had heard the first real joke for a week. He picked up one deckchair and threw it over another. “Go and see the adj,” he said. “Tell him to find you something to do.” He headed for his office.

  Brazier was dictating summaries of combat reports to Corporal Lacey. Paxton sat in a corner and chewed his lip. Leaning against the wall was a blackboard with the flight commanders and their crews chalked on it. He studied the names. When Lacey went out, he said: “No Piggott.”

  “Tim got a bit burnt. He’s in Blighty, at some special hospital. I must say you don’t look too wonderful. I’ve seen plates of porridge that had more colour than you.”

  “I’m fine. The CO says you’re to find me a job, until I can fly.”

  “Oh. That’s what you’re here for, is it? I thought it was this.” Brazier opened a desk drawer and took out an envelope. Paxton took it and tore it open and then stopped. “It’s not from O’Neill, is it?” If it was from O’Neill he didn’t want to see it. Not yet; perhaps not ever. Brazier shook his head. Paxton pulled out a pair of photographs.

  “Colonel Bliss said you might as well have them. He said they’re a bit grisly for his taste.”

  Paxton grunted, and shoved the pictures into a tunic pocket.

  For a long moment they sat and looked at each other.

  “So you’ve had a taste of war,” Brazier said. “Does it suit your palate?”

  “It’s a bit salty,” Paxton said. “Actually I don’t mind the taste so much as the noise. Don’t those bloody guns ever stop?”

  Brazier found an empty pipe and used the stem to scratch an eyebrow. “I can remember a time when you were quite proud of our guns,” he said. “You quite enjoyed them, in fact.”

  “I can remember a time when the poor bloody infantry were going to walk across No-Man’s-Land and capture the Boche front line. Nice quiet stroll after breakfast, so everyone said.”

  “We’ve just captured their front line, so the papers say. Not all of it, but quite a lot. Took rather longer than we thought.”

  “Because of the machine-guns.”

  “Because of the dugouts. Fritz is a wily bird. He’d dug a great number of very deep dugouts, twenty feet down in the chalk. Thirty feet, some of them. Very, very strong.”

  “And that’s where he kept his machine-guns.”

  “So I’m told.” Brazier stuffed tobacco into his pipe. “You live and learn, you live and learn.”

  Paxton shifted his arm in its sling. The damage was beginning to throb and burn. “But why on earth are we going on with the battle? The stupid plan failed, so why …”

  “Because,” Brazier said. “Because Tweedledum, said Tweedledee, had broke his nice new rattle. It was time to have a battle, therefore a battle we must have.” He gazed at Paxton, who was looking disgruntled. “Not good enough,” Brazier said.

  “It’s a load of fucking bollocks, adj.”

  “I don’t know, Pax. Nothing seems to please you today. You don’t like being shot, you don’t approve of cock-ups in battle, you didn’t even seem to enjoy looking at your own souvenir snapshots.”

  Paxton sniffed, and looked away. “That was
just a kill,” he said. “Two poor sods in a flamer, that’s all.” He stood up. “Have you got anything for me to do?”

  “I don’t suppose you feel like inspecting the men’s latrines.”

  “No.”

  “No. Well then, get your strength back and see me tomorrow.”

  Paxton went out and closed the door. Lacey looked up from his work. “How was the hospital?” he asked.

  “Full of blokes with bits missing from them.”

  Lacey nodded. “I understand that since the war began the artificial limb industry has made great strides.”

  Paxton rubbed his left eye with this left hand and stared bleakly at Lacey.

  “Sorry,” Lacey said. “It wasn’t meant to be a joke.”

  “Joke?” Paxton said. “What’s a joke? I wouldn’t recognise a joke if it bit me in the backside.” He walked to the door and leaned against its frame.

  “Is there anything I can provide?” Lacey asked.

  “No.” Paxton looked up and watched an FE climbing in a wide, easy spiral until it bored him. “Yes. Yes, there is. Can you get me a car? I can’t ride a motorbike, you see. Car and driver.”

  Lacey said it might take a little while, an hour or so. Paxton told him there was no hurry, he would probably be in the mess.

  He walked to the mess, slowly because the afternoon was hot and still, and ordered lemonade. Plug Gerrish was reading a newspaper. “Same old tosh,” he said.

  “Same old tosh,” Paxton agreed.

  After a while Spud Ogilvy came in, his flying boots folded below the knee, and carrying his sheepskin coat. “Stinking hot,” he said. “D’you mind?” He took a long drink of Paxton’s lemonade.

  “Kellaway said you’d gone west.”

  “Kellaway’s a bloody idiot, isn’t he?” Ogilvy threw his coat onto a chair and flopped down on a sofa. “God, I’d give a fiver for a nice cool swim.”

  Paxton waited for someone to say the obvious thing but nobody did, so he said it himself. “What’s wrong with the pool?”

  “Out of order,” Gerrish grunted, and took his cap and went out. Paxton looked at Ogilvy, but Ogilvy seemed to be asleep; at least there was a newspaper over his face. Paxton decided to go and see for himself.

  Flies followed him across the aerodrome, and through the gate into the next field. It was a nuisance having only one hand to flap at them. They were obstinate, constantly touching his ears and eyebrows and lips, until he tied two corners of a handkerchief together and wore it like a mask.

  There was a Casualty Clearing Station in the field: a cluster of khaki tents, some the size of marquees. From time to time they quivered in the heat-haze. Ambulances came over a distant rise, rolled down to the CCS, unloaded and went away by a different route. From the back of the CCS a tender drove along a chalk-white track to where the swimming pool had been. Paxton stood in the shade of a tree and watched all this for perhaps ten minutes. He didn’t want to go and see what had happened to the pool. He knew what had happened to the pool. On the other hand he didn’t like to think he wasn’t brave enough to go and look. And so he went, and the flies went with him. They knew the way. All their friends were there already.

  The existence of the pool had saved the CCS a lot of time and effort. All they had to do was divert the little stream back to its original course and the pool drained dry in no time. When Paxton reached it, the hole was about half-full and four soldiers wearing rubber gloves and sterilised face-masks were carefully stacking bodies on top of the neat rows of bodies already in place. They were working carefully, not out of any sense of respect for the dead, but because it made best use of the space and the last thing they wanted was to have to dig another fucking great hole like this one.

  Paxton watched them work. The stench of decay was just tolerable as long as he breathed through his mouth. The soldiers ignored him. The flies had a gala day.

  He strolled around the hole and went across and took a look inside the tender. There was one body that he recognised at once, even though it was lying face-down. It was young and small, and the cords of the neck were undeveloped, like a boy’s. That body was unmistakable. He climbed inside and turned it over.

  Wrong face. Wrong body.

  He walked back to camp, trailing a few diehard flies behind him.

  *

  When the old man shuffled out of the lodge to open the gates, Paxton got out and told the driver he would walk up to the house. The day was cooler, and trees cast long shadows over the grass. The car drove on. Now that the old man was closer he could see that Paxton’s right sleeve was empty. He ducked his head and gave a shaky salute. “Merci, m’sieur,” Paxton said, seriously. They shook hands, Paxton using his left hand. The old man’s skin was as smooth and hard as a Sam Browne.

  He had dozed in the car and now he felt fresh if not strong. The grounds were empty and very quiet. A heron took off from the lake and steered away from him, wings beating slow, and lost itself behind the island.

  Someone had seen him: a maid was waiting at the door. She led him upstairs and along a corridor he hadn’t been along before. A door opened onto a balcony. The balcony overlooked the little ballroom. Ballet music was playing and down below Judy Kent Haffner, in a black leotard, was putting her elastic body through the same old astonishing routine.

  “To drink?” the maid asked.

  “Whisky-soda.”

  Judy danced, a different maid changed the record, she danced again. The light had faded; she was a pattering shadow, a picture in a fairy story. Paxton drank his whiskysoda and gave himself up to the show. He had the odd and very pleasant sensation he always got when he came to this house: that everything was arranged, that there was no need to think or to decide about anything, and certainly no need to worry. Just relax and make the most of life. Everything would work out fine.

  When the music and the dancing finally ended she stood in the middle of the floor, hands on hips. It was too dim to see her face; he could hear faint gasps for breath. She pointed up at him, so he pointed down at her. She walked to the door.

  The same maid led him through unfamiliar parts of the house and indicated that he should wait in a long, handsome room. He guessed he must be on the top floor. There was a view of the last of the sunset that made the British bombardment look like children’s fireworks. He relaxed and made the most of it.

  “I could murder that composer,” she said. “He makes you do things God never meant you to do … Hell’s bells, David, where’ve you been? Oh!” She saw the empty sleeve. “What a stupid question.” They kissed, awkwardly because of his sling.

  “Hospital. I stopped a bullet.”

  “But that’s terrible.” She didn’t look as if it was terrible. Her forehead creased and her voice stretched the word thin, but her mouth and eyes smiled happily. They might have been talking about a black eye from playing rugby. Paxton didn’t mind; he didn’t think it was so very terrible; in fact he didn’t give it much thought at all. What he thought was she looked lovelier than ever. She was wearing Turkish-style pyjamas, deep red and silky. They didn’t button at the front, they just hung loosely. Whenever she moved they swung apart slightly and then came together again. He noticed, and she noticed that he noticed, so she deliberately swayed to tease him. “I like to be cool,” she said. “Don’t you?” He got a glimpse of something pink that might perhaps have been a nipple, and turned to look at the dying sunset. His heart was pounding at a rate that couldn’t possibly be doing it any good, and his arm had started to throb. “I shouldn’t be here, really,” he said. “If the MO knew about it he’d raise the roof.”

  “I won’t tell him, if you won’t.” She linked their little fingers and took him into the next room. It was the biggest bedroom he had ever seen, with the biggest bed. “Tell me about your great big beautiful war.” They sat on the bed. “Mr. Kent Haffner is in Paris, polishing his little apples.” She kissed his ear, gently, and tickled it with her tongue. He stretched his neck and grinned at the sheer luxury of it al
l. “Are you an ace yet?” she asked.

  “Nearly.”

  “Tell me. I want to know all about your kills.”

  “Well… there was the Aviatik we scrapped with … It was a lovely sunny morning, I remember, and the Hun looked so pretty, all purple and green, and we were miles high, so everything was blue sky…” Judy Kent Haffner was taking his tunic off, easing it away from the arm in a sling. “He dived on us and I waited until I couldn’t miss and he simply blew up. Nothing left but a wisp of smoke.”

  “That must have been such a thrill.” She was undoing his tie, and he saw a flicker of envy in her smile. It made him feel stronger, more confident. He knew how to please her.

  “The Halberstadt wasn’t so easy. Two-seater, with a hell of a good gunner …” His tie was off and she kissed his forehead. “There were twenty-three bullet-holes in the bus when we landed, not counting the wings.” She was untying his shoes, “Twenty-three!” she said. “That’s incredible.”

  Paxton leaned back and rested on one elbow. He wasn’t sure about the Halberstadt. Maybe that had been the Fokker. The kills got all mixed up in his mind. Who cared? It didn’t matter. She unbuttoned his shirt and said, “Tell me again about the flamer. The one like a flower.”

  “Oh, that…” The right side of the shirt had been slit so that it came away easily. “I think I got a fuel tank with an incendiary bullet. It was so sudden. One second the Hun was all there, the latest style in aeroplanes, the next second he’d turned into an enormous ball of flame, all red and yellow. Rather like a dahlia.”

  “Dahlia.” She pushed him back on the bed and propped herself above him. Now the pyjamas swung open and stayed open. She kissed him generously on the mouth and his chest tensed at the startling touch of her breasts. “Dahlia,” she murmured.

  “Yes, dahlia.” Paxton frowned. He realised he wasn’t at all sure what a dahlia looked like.

  “It must be so beautiful. So wonderful.” They stood up. She undid the top of his trousers but he said:”I can do this better.” His voice was flat and empty. He turned his back on her as he stepped out of his trousers. “To tell the truth,” he said,”it might have looked more like a geranium.” He turned. “What does a geranium look like?”