Piece of Cake (81 page)

“Let me see.” Quirk pointed at his plane. “The sharp end goes first, doesn't it, sir?”

“I looked up ‘quirk' in the dictionary,” Gordon said. “It says it means strange and fantastic behavior.”

“What were you flying in the Fleet Air Arm?” Barton asked.

“Stringbags, sir. That is, Swordfish.”

“You don't mean that funny old biplane, with all the wires? Looks like something left over from the RFC? What does it do, flat-out?”

“The book says a hundred and thirty-odd knots, but frankly that's rather optimistic. Say a hundred and twenty. Maybe a bit less with the torpedo underneath.”

Barton wasn't listening. “Fifteen hours … Look, as soon as she's refueled get back up there and stooge about, put in some practice. Use your guns. Try and shoot down some seagulls. Don't worry about the bullets. If you see a Jerry, run away. No risks, understand? No heroics. Just … survive.”

“The Jerries are the ones with the crosses on, aren't they?” Quirk said.

“They are if you see them in time,” Barton said. “If you don't, then the cross is on you, chum. Incidentally,” he told Gordon, “Nim's down in the drink. Somewhere off the North Foreland.”

“Oh dear. Poor Nim. You sailors know all about the sea,” Gordon said to Quirk. “Is that bit nice or nasty?”

Quirk shrugged. “What matters is your friend's build. The fatter you are, the longer you survive.”

“Nim's not fat. If anything, he's thin.”

Quirk carefully avoided their eyes. “I'd better check my kite,” he said.

Nim Renouf woke when the cannonshells hit his engine. The crash
of explosions made his eyes open and he got jolted further awake as the Hurricane bucked and bounced. Then an acrid stench reached his nose and he coughed himself fully conscious.

The first thing he saw was the altimeter. The hands shot past nine thousand and went spinning toward eight. He looked out of the cockpit and saw nothing but smoke; looked the other side and saw the horizon, also spinning but not so fast. The stink got suddenly worse, choking him, so he heaved on the canopy and amazingly it slid back as smooth as a sled. The air improved. Bullet-strikes pranced along the port wing, then sparkled on the engine, and a plane streaked beneath him, a blur that vanished.

Renouf felt awful. His ears ached, his head ached, his stomach was queasy, and this bloody lunatic airplane wouldn't stop chucking him about. He got his feet on the pedals but there was no strength in his legs. He grabbed the stick. It slopped about like a spoon in a bowl, broken, useless. Dazzling cloud rushed up and drowned him in its murk.

It was easier to think when there was nothing to see. By the time he fell out of the cloud he knew he had to get out. The sight of the sea was discouraging, but when everything was going horribly wrong another disaster made little difference. Baling out was easy. He unplugged everything in sight and slid over the side.

Hanging under his parachute was wonderfully refreshing and restful. Everything was clean and quiet and comfortable. The sea was only a few hundred feet away when he fully realized what was about to happen to him and he began blowing up his Mae West. It was only half-inflated when he hit the water, awkwardly, and got a mouthful as he went under, a long way under, so far under that his lungs were hurting for air before his head bobbed up. No sky. Just clammy silk everywhere.

He swam clear of the parachute. That took a long time because he was still attached to the harness, but eventually he worked the release and escaped altogether. He trod water while he dragged off his gloves. Then he half-swam while he unzipped his boots and kicked them off. After all that, he had no breath left to finish blowing up his Mae West, but he had to keep swimming or the sodden weight of his Irvine jacket pulled him down.

The sea was much choppier than it looked from above, and the chop had a savage knack of finding his mouth. Ten minutes after
the Hurricanes had gone, Nim Renouf was almost exhausted. Without actually deciding to do it, he floated on his back, kicking weakly. That was less tiring. He got some breath back. Once or twice a minute he managed to blow a good puff into his Mae West, until he risked letting his legs fall. The life jacket held his chin clear of the water. He relaxed.

There was nothing to do. He had a whistle, and he blew it once; it sounded puny and pointless. The water was cold. Not stinging-cold, as a bathe in the outdoor pool at his school had been, but numbing-cold: it drained the warmth from his body and left his limbs feeling bloodless. After a while he couldn't move his legs, but that was all right: why move them anyway? Then, later, his arms hung like a dummy's, and finally the wet cold reached deep into his body and sucked all the warmth from that. Renouf never saw the fishing boat that saw him. Another five minutes and it wouldn't have mattered if the skipper had missed him, too. When they laid him on a bunk and stripped off his clothes, his body was colder than the fish in the ship's hold.

By noon the cloud had rolled away eastward and the sun shone on Bodkin Hazel. Squads of airmen, stripped to the waist, sweated to dig trenches. Other squads filled sandbags and built aircraft bays near the perimeter. Several Fighter Command airfields had been shot-up, planes destroyed. During the morning there were two airraid warnings but nobody stopped work. The sky was rarely empty of aircraft, and once a Junkers 88 flew slap over the aerodrome at two hundred feet, so fast the ack-ack never even fired. Everyone was supposed to carry his gas-mask with him, and the pilots were told to keep their Colt revolvers handy at all times. Skull gave them a short lecture on anti-invasion precautions. “The enemy may try to land troops by glider,” he said, “which is why obstacles are being set up on all open land. If you have to put down on a field or at a strange airfield for any reason, watch out for poles or heaps of rocks or the like. If you make a forced landing anywhere, do not argue with the Home Guard. I have met some of them. They tend to be elderly and short-tempered. Often their aim is poor. Annoy them and they may fire a warning shot that hits you. Are there any questions?”

Steele-Stebbing raised his hand. “Sir, what's the best approach to take in that situation,
vis-à-vis
the Home Guard?”

“Identify yourself clearly,” Skull said.

“Show them your hyphen,” Cattermole advised. “They wouldn't dare shoot a man with a hyphen.”

“Yes they would,” Patterson said. “That's what double-barreled shotguns are for.”

Some laughed, some groaned, some were too tired to do either. Cattermole said: “Actually, I've seen Iron Filings' hyphen. He showed it to me in the showers the other night. It's not very impressive, I'm afraid, but then nobody in his family—”

“Lunch,” Barton said. “Thank you, Skull. Jolly useful.”

There was another air-raid warning during lunch (cold roast chicken, boiled potatoes, gooseberry tart, cream) and gunfire thudded and rumbled from the direction of Dover. Aircraft were always wandering about the sky but they were far too high to be identified. Rumors circulated of heavy raids on Portsmouth and Norwich, of huge destruction and raging fires, of colossal scores by Spitfire squadrons. A Heinkel, it was said, had bombed an infants' school in Canterbury, massacred seventy-nine toddlers, then been hit by ack-ack; the pilot baled out and was lynched by mothers before the police could reach him. Flash Gordon had that story. “Who says?” CH3 asked. “I heard it on the radio,” Gordon said, “So there.”

Skull got up and made a telephone call. When he came back he said: “As it happens, my cousin is assistant chief constable of Canterbury. He says that no school in Canterbury has been bombed.”

“Did I say Canterbury?” Gordon said. “I meant Winchester.”

“Know anybody in Winchester, Skull?” CH3 asked.

Skull thought. “Only the bishop,” he said.

“Or it might have been Salisbury,” Gordon said. He helped himself to more gooseberry tart. “They hung him from a lamppost. With a clothesline.”

“Seventy-nine toddlers, you said.” CH3 balanced his spoon on his outstretched finger. “That's a very precise figure.”

“Yes, it is, isn't it?” Gordon was generous with the cream.

“Mind you, it was a good school. That's why they got so upset. Education is very important in Salisbury.”

“Or Winchester,” Cox said.

“Tell me, Flash,” CH3 said, “did they count the dead toddlers before or after they lynched the Jerry pilot?”

“Yes, definitely,” Gordon said, his mouth full. “Before or after. No mistake.” When they laughed he looked mildly surprised. “Please yourself,” he said. “I've seen it before.”

“Eat up,” CH3 said. “I want to take a squadron photograph.”

He arranged them in a line in front of the control tower. There was the usual horseplay and clowning until he told them that his first shot was useless because they had all moved. “Now look at me this time,” he said. For a moment they stood still and smiled at the camera. “Hold it!” he said, and behind them a revolver went off with a startling
crack-boom
. Inevitably they all looked around. “What the hell are you doing?” Barton shouted at a police corporal. The man was pointing his gun at the ground.

“It's all right, Fanny,” CH3 said. “I told him to do that. Thank you, corporal. Now, can you all see the naked lady standing behind me?” The camera clicked. “Beautiful.”

“I take it that was some kind of joke,” Barton said, as they strolled to the deckchairs near dispersal.

“Practical joke. Very practical.”

“I see.” Barton glanced, warily. “Glad to see you're having fun again.”

The revolver shot had not helped Steele-Stebbing's nerves. He had awoken with a hangover, his first ever, and loud noises still made him flinch. He avoided conversation, sat in the shade with his
Daily Telegraph
and waited for his brain to stop throbbing.

“What d'you think of that, then, Skull?” Fitzgerald pointed to the headline on the front page. “Sixty-three Huns knocked down yesterday. And we only lost a dozen.”

“Fifteen, actually.”

“All right, fifteen, if you're going to be bloody sniffy about it. Fifteen to sixty-three, it's still a damn good score, isn't it?”

“Quite. Mind you, in addition to the fifteen of ours shot down, one must add fighters lost through bad landings and taxiing accidents and so on. At least half a dozen a day.”

“Skull,” Barton said, “has anybody worked out how long the
Luftwaffe
can last if they lose sixty-odd kites every time they come over here?”

“I don't think so.”

“Well, have a go at it. How many kites did they have to start with?”

“It's not as simple as that. You see …”

“I'll do it for you, Fanny.” Cattermole got up and, as he walked behind Steele-Stebbing, plucked the
Telegraph
from his fingers. “You divide Hitler's birthday by the starting price of the favorite in the 3.30 at Ascot,” he said as he made for the portable lavatory, “and take away the number you first thought of. The answer's next Tuesday.”

Steele-Stebbing's fingers squeezed the struts of his deckchair. His face was a dull red and his eyelids were heavy. He looked as if he might cry. Nobody spoke. He got up and walked away. “What a drip,” Macfarlane said.

“If you ask me, they'll run out of pilots before they run out of planes,” Fitzgerald said lazily. “Stands to reason. If they don't get any proper training they're not going to last the pace, are they?”

“I read in the paper the other day …” Patterson began, when he saw Skull shaking his head. “What's up?”

“The popular belief that
Luftwaffe
training is of poor quality is a myth, and in my opinion a dangerous myth.” Heads turned: Skull was not usually as crisp as this. “You would be well-advised to ignore any propaganda about German pilots being rushed through inadequate flying schools. My information is that enemy aircrew have been very well trained indeed. Perhaps better trained than some of you.”

“What bosh!” Fitzgerald said.

“Squareheads can't fly,” Macfarlane said. “They're not streamlined, are they?”

Sergeant Brook felt confident enough to offer a remark. “Germans do everything by orders, don't they? No what-d'you-call-it. Initiative.”

“Chap I bumped into this morning knew how to fly,” Cox said thoughtfully. “
And
he had plenty of what-d'you-call-it. Damn sight too much of it for my comfort.”

“Still, you got the better of him in the end, didn't you, Mother?” Barton said. “I mean, he quit first.”

“He could have been low on fuel,” CH3 said. “Those 109's haven't got much range.”

“Tin-pot kites,” Fitzgerald said. “Cack-handed pilots in tin-pot kites. Isn't that right, Skull?”

“By all reports the
Luftwaffe's
physical standards are extremely high, possibly higher than Fighter Command's, and since German pilot training lasts nearly two years and requires—”

“Hello, hello!” Patterson pointed to a truck passing in front of them. “That's Iron Filings driving that thing.”

The truck stopped behind the mobile lavatory. Steele-Stebbing got out. There was a wire rope tied to the rear of the truck. He carried the rope around the lavatory, secured the hooked end, got into the cab and gently drove away.

The wheels on the lavatory were small and iron. They rattled and bounced over ruts and bumps. When Steele-Stebbing eased the speed up from a walk to a trot, the wheels crashed and squealed and the whole structure swung like a metronome. Occasional shouts could be heard, and fists pounding on wood. Steele-Stebbing made a wide turn and towed the lavatory past the pilots. A dark liquid was leaking under the door, spraying the grass. He slowed, circled a group of watching groundcrew, and took the lavatory back past the pilots at a very brisk clip indeed. It swayed wildly. Once or twice, all the wheels were off the ground. The shouting had stopped but there was one strangled howl that earned a cheer from the spectators.