The Gates of Rutherford (36 page)

“Advice!” The man looked at him. His face bore every evidence of trying to add up the sum parts of Harry's case, and finding that none of it came to a satisfactory total.

“I am following orders to Le Havre,” Harry added. “If you do not want me here, so be it.”

“You are a bloody fool,” the officer remarked.

“And you are impertinent,” Harry exclaimed suddenly. “You don't outrank me any more than I outrank you, so I shall be obliged if you keep your fatuous remarks to yourself.”

“I am making a report to HQ.”

“Make it in triplicate,” Harry said. “You bloody pen pusher.” He struggled out of the chair, and went out of the room, ignoring the calls for him to come back.

•   •   •

O
nce outside, he walked over to the planes.

The man was right, of course. Harry didn't like to admit it, but it was true. If everyone did as he had done, the war would be lost. A fighting force had to keep track of its men, and the men themselves had to keep together and act as a unit. He supposed that the word was that he was ill, and for that he had been given some leeway; leeway which meant that, for all the bluff and bluster, he might be allowed to remain in the RFC.

If the truth were known, that was what worried him most. That—either due to illness or subordination—he would be forced to leave. He reasoned with himself they wouldn't lose an experienced man—for after all, how many were left?—but all the same the tirade just now convinced him that he ought to toe the line.

He looked longingly at the line of Bristol fighters, the BF.2s. New
babies brought in at Arras and most of the first ones downed in what they now called “bloody April.” They'd learned lessons from that; learned how to use them properly. Harry didn't know how many men had died in learning those lessons. He guessed that the lifespan of a pilot in that month—judging by his own unit's losses—at something like twenty hours. Twenty hours, for God's sake. It wasn't right. But then nothing was quite right anymore. He sighed to himself.

He ran his eye up the line of machines and spotted the new Sopwith biplanes at the far end. He had never been in one. It was rumored that it took three months to get used to them; they were touchy machines with a strong right-hand list. He wondered now what it would be like to soar to the nineteen thousand feet and 110 miles an hour that they were reputed to achieve. Nineteen thousand feet! Close to heaven. Unshackled. Faster than the birds, cracking the sky in two.

Looking at them now, he recalled the rakish innocence of the early days. In the summer of 1914, no one had guessed that these glorious toys would be used in war. The early pilots—before 1912—had flown over a million miles and only 140 had been killed. And usually that was from what the boffins called “preventable causes”—putting a plane into too deep a dive, or fuel exploding, or poor maintenance. Or simple devilry—showboating for the gaping crowds below.

But, by God, it had been enormous fun. Even when he had flown across the Channel for the first time, the hair-raising nature of it had merely been an excess of adrenaline, not fear for one's very life. He had always had an absolute confidence in his own ability and—his father would be surprised to hear it—he was capable of being stone-cold calm once he was airborne. In the early days of the war it had got him out of many a scrape. Now, he merely watched from the ground, having told the pilots to employ the same care. “Sit tight and
don't sleep,” he told them, meaning to keep aware, keep an even temper. No triumphalism. No coarse language to the observer, or contempt of the enemy. No stunts. Not now. Not anymore.

He approached the nearest plane, and put his hand on the fuselage. He could see that it had been repaired. The circles were freshly painted on the underside of the wings.

“Help you, sir?”

He looked around. One of the ground crew had come alongside him and was staring at him inquiringly. He introduced himself. “She been up today?”

“Yesterday, sir.”

“Over Nieuwpoort?”

“That's right, sir. You've been out here long, sir?”

Harry wondered if he would be believed if he told the man he had been one of the first three years ago. He and Harvey-Kelly. Hubert Harvey-Kelly, who was now the commanding officer at Vert Galant. Harry put a hand to his head. No, that was not right, he thought. Hubert was no longer there. He had gone up in battle over Douai in April—“bloody April.” The top man, Trenchard, had arrived to speak to him—he shouldn't have been up, and a meeting was scheduled—and Trenchard had waited for Hubert to return. But Harvey-Kelly never came back. He'd been shot down by that well-named harbinger of doom, the Albatross.

Harvey-Kelly dead. Leefe Robinson VC, captured. Albert Ball—that pinup boy—had died on the seventh of May. Gone the way of so many. Harry glanced again at the man alongside him. “Been here a lifetime or two. But you mustn't mind me,” he said brightly. “Off home shortly. Fix me up.”

“Fix you, sir?”

“Knee injury.”

“Ah. Then good luck, sir.” They both paused, listening to a sudden artillery bombardment somewhere to the east. It started up like growling thunder, the sound rolling in their direction. “Shore batteries and naval guns,” the mechanic said. “Australians are up on the Yser line.”

“Sounds bloody fierce.”

The mechanic nodded. “Catching a ship out of where, sir?”

“Le Havre.”

“I came in that way,” the man said. “Port is mined now. Tricky business since the
Salta
.”

Harry was just in the act of turning back for the farmhouse. He stopped and stared, frowning. “The
Salta
?” he echoed. “The hospital ship?”

“That's right. Got to be right careful. She's sunk in the shipping lane. April. Struck a mine. She went down in ten minutes and the boat that came alongside struck another, and that was lost, too. Can you credit it? Bastard Krauts.”

“She went down?” Harry repeated.

“About a mile and a half outside, in the Channel.”

“What happened to those on board?”

“Lot of crew gone. Eighty, they said. People on the dock were still talking about the row it made. All gone up in a second. It weren't full, though. It were coming back loaded with medicals.”

“Nurses?”

“And RAMC.”

“Nurses . . .”

“A lot got off. Nine drowned. There's a memorial to the RAMC and nurses in the field station near the port. I saw it when I visited a mate. Stuck in my memory, like. Nurses and doctors and supplies. Not even fighting men. Turns your stomach. It properly does.”

Harry was looking at him silently. He couldn't frame a single word. Eventually, the man pulled on his cap by way of salute. “You'll excuse me, sir,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, of course. . . .”

He watched him walk away.

He closed his eyes, and listened to the thunder in the east.

•   •   •

I
n London, Charlotte and Christine had been awake for several hours.

There was a bag packed by the door; a leather doctor's bag that they had found in a market stall, much creased and battered, but with a good strong lock. Just before dawn, Charlotte had got up and walked to the door and stood over the luggage—the bag, and Christine's sketchpads and portfolio tied together with a webbing strap. She had stood with her hands pressed to her face, until she had heard Christine padding across the room behind her, barefooted. In a moment, the other woman's arms had encircled her.

“I shan't be gone long.”

“But how long is ‘not long'?”

“Darling, I don't know. It's a job of work.”

“I shall miss you.” She had turned to Christine, and held her hand. “I'm sorry,” she murmured. “I sound so utterly maudlin.”

“You
are
maudlin. It's very boring,” Christine replied, smiling. “Such a disappointment to me. I had you down as being much more interesting.”

They had gone back to bed, but neither of them had slept. They'd lain and watched the sun rise over London. There were no curtains at all now at the window, and the bed was nothing more than a mattress laid on the floor. But it didn't matter to them. Nothing did. Nothing and no one.

“I'll write to you,” Christine told her. “I'll send you sketches, too.”

“Have they told you where you're going?”

“Not a word. But you shall know, if I'm allowed to say.”

“You won't go to the front, though.”

Christine had kissed her gently. “Do you think
Paths of Glory
or
La Mitrailleuse
were painted after taking afternoon tea?”

There was no answer to that.

Eventually, Christine got up and held out her hand. “Come with me,” she said.

Together, they walked over to the easel. It still stood at the far end of the table, and was draped with a cloth. Standing in front of it, Christine eased the cloth away and let it fall to the floor. They looked at the portrait that had been finished yesterday.

Charlotte sat half in shadow and half in light. The division struck diagonally across the painting; in the bottom half, the purple and emerald of the material glowed with supernatural brilliance. In the upper half, Charlotte's bare shoulders were chalk-white. She looked away from the viewer, out past the window, where the rooftops of London were depicted in shades of steel grey and blue under a blazing sky. In the top left-hand corner, a mirror reflection showed her back, arched to one side, as if she were about to spring from her sitting position.

The face on the canvas was brilliantly alive, the mouth parted, the hair cut short and straight, dark with shades of copper. The one visible hand that lay in the lap was not relaxed, but had the fingers defined and spread, the material rippled between them. It was as if Charlotte were clutching at color and life. There was more than a hint of a smile in the eyes, in the tilt of the head, in the energy of that hand and those fingers.

They did not discuss it, even now. There was no need. It was perfect.

In years to come, it would be called
La Fille Vert
on gallery catalogues. But the real title was more personal.

Christine would always call it
L'Evasion.
The escape.

•   •   •

W
ithout thinking, without looking back, without listening to any sound, Harry walked down the line and climbed up into the Sopwith Camel. He sat for a few seconds acclimating himself to the controls, the layout inside. It might have been minutes, it might have been half an hour, it might have been a day for all he knew or cared. Until the mechanic came running back.

“I'm taking her up,” he said. “Tell them it's Commander Cavendish.”

The mechanic looked doubtful, but he was outranked. Together they started her; the mechanic got down and watched Harry take her out of the line.

If anyone then wanted to stop him, he knew that they couldn't. He was airborne in a few seconds, and wheeling over the airfield, and the world became a grainy map underneath him, and he was alone.

Harry wondered absently how the distance would feel, to go back all the way to England and Rutherford. And he wondered about his father; if William might be able to teach him to live alone for the rest of his life.

He knew that Caitlin was no longer living. She was either lying in a grave in Le Havre, in one of those cement lines that they tried so much to keep orderly, or she was lying in cold water a mile out from France, or something much worse had happened. She was deaf and dumb and dead in her soul. He'd seen it. He'd seen the face of the poor bloody infantry in train sidings and in field stations. He'd listened to them, but watching them was much harder. And he'd seen it a thousand times in his own crews.

A man came out to serve. Young man, hardly able to grow a moustache, so young was he, so baby-faced, so eager. Little children in men's clothes. They came out and he'd meet them, give them the pep talk, see the enthusiasm, and watch the vibrancy in them. And he'd say,
Don't take the buggers for granted. Watch your sky. Question the observer if you have a moment's doubt. Don't be a hero; just get the job don
e.

And they would listen. They really would. For the first half dozen times. And then the light would go in their faces. That fresh and eager light. It would be replaced with something harder. A grim determination. And then fatigue. They were brave men, but they knew nothing. Getting in a plane was the steepest climb out of consciousness; it was a dreamlike state; it was like nothing else. When they came back to earth they were silent, or they snapped replies stuttering like trails of bullets. Grey washed their faces, and puzzlement. A perplexity of the shattering of ideals, and a sense of the utter strangeness of flight.

It was another world at fifteen thousand feet. Among the gods and elements, with no boundary markers but the scribbled lines in the ground underneath them. Puffs of smoke below might mean a hundred men slaughtered; traces of dark air the only evidence that a team of men below were trying to end one's own life. Air currents plucked at the wings, and thermal currents buoyed one up or tore one down.

The days would wear on, punctuated by triumphs, scarred by losses. And then the faces would change again. Sometimes a man would come down and appear quite unscathed, and then—it might be an hour later, it might be days—he would begin to shake. One couldn't control those nervous reactions. Shame and embarrassment clouded the eyes. What had been a smiling recruit only a month ago became withdrawn.

And then the worst of all. The broken psyche. What was the saying?
The butterfly broken on the wheel
. It was not done to remark on it of course: if a commanding officer saw such an expression, he might wisely advise a month in Blighty, a spell in hospital. Craiglockhart or somewhere of the sort. The place for mending men. Sometimes those who had been sent away came back, apparently healed. But Harry doubted that healing was possible. It was a plastering-over of invisible wounds, and once back in service that man would reveal his anguish. He would—sooner or later—be Icarus flying too close to the sun. He would come back to earth with wings burning.