The Rainbow and the Rose (11 page)

I went through into his bedroom, for I was very sleepy by that time. Unknown to me, Mrs Lawrence had been in the house, for someone had removed the bedspread and turned down the bed; there was a pair of clean pyjamas, Johnnie Pascoe’s, laid out on the folded sheet. I had brought with me only a haversack filled with warm clothing and a few essentials and my flying helmet; there had been no room for pyjamas and I could get on without them for a night or two. Now Johnnie Pascoe was providing them for me, as he was providing everything else in this room.

His razor, his hairbrushes, his washing things, his towel, were there for me to use if I wanted them. His pictures were there for me to look at and to savour his early life, even in this room. There was a very large framed photograph of the earliest Handley Page bomber, the 0.400, with a Camel flying beside it, perhaps to show the scale of the big aircraft; the Camel had the same chequered markings that I had seen
on the photo in the other room. There were two pictures of biplane fighters that I could not identify at all, and one of an S.E.5. His bed was there for me to sleep in, his pyjamas for me to wear.

I threw off my clothes and got into his pyjamas, washed my teeth at his washbasin, and got into his bed. I put out his bedside light and settled down to sleep, tired after thirty-six hours on the go. Outside the wind was high and the rain still beat against the side of the small, exposed house, and drummed on the corrugated iron roof. Later on I would ring Sheila, when I woke again. She wouldn’t be worrying yet because it was only about five o’clock, though it was now quite dark.

We must get help to Johnnie Pascoe the instant there was a break in the weather. I didn’t know how long a man with a fractured skull could live without attention, but no more than a day or two. I should have asked the doctor, I thought, how much time we had, and yet it would not have made any difference to events. I had failed in my first mission, failed because I had forgotten about the door. I knew that Johnnie would not hold that one against me, for we all have finger trouble now and then, but the onus was on me to get help to him and repair the error. I would do so even if I had to tie that doctor hand and foot and shove him in the aeroplane, for Johnnie Pascoe was dying.

I was very near to sleep now, in his bed and on his pillow. If he were to die, at any rate he would know that we were doing everything we could to help him, for he would come back to this small house beside this minor aerodrome, if a man goes anywhere beyond his death. This was his home, the only home he had, the shrine that held the treasured relics of his life. Somewhere in this bedroom with me would be … would be the Military Cross, in one of the drawers of his chest, perhaps. Somewhere there might be souvenirs of Judy … a silk stocking
he had worn around his neck when flying, forty years ago.

Those rotary engines … the Le Rhones, the Monos, and the Clergets! They made a sort of crackling hiss, and always the same smell of castor oil spraying backwards down the fuselage in a fine mist over your leather helmet and your coat. They were delightful to fly, the controls so light, the engines so smooth-running. Up among the sunlit cumulus under the blue sky I could loop and roll and spin my Camel with the pressure of two fingers on the stick beside the button switch which I used as little as possible. Looping, turn off the petrol by the big plug cock upon the panel just before the bottom of the dive, ease the stick gently back and over you go. The engine dies at the top of the loop; ease the stick fully back and turn the petrol on again as the ground appears so that the engine comes to life five or six seconds later.

She would climb at nearly a thousand feet a minute, my new Clerget Camel; she would do a hundred and ten miles an hour. She would be faster, I thought, than anything upon the Western Front. There was the aerodrome, turn off the cock and put her into a volplane. Turn it on again to try the engine at a thousand feet, and turn it off. Volplane turns downwind from the hedge, S turns keeping the aerodrome in view. Try the engine once more with the cock. A turn to the left in the bright sun, keeping the hedge in sight through the hole in the top plane. A turn to the right. Now turn in, a little high, stick over and top rudder, the air squirting in upon you sideways round the windscreen. Straighten out, over the hedge, and down on to the grass. Remember that the Clerget lands very fast, at over forty miles an hour, and with that great engine in the nose the tail was light. Watch it … Lovely.

I came to rest upon the grass in the bright sunshine; for an April day it was terrific, right out of the box. I turned the petrol half on, set the mixture, and pulled my goggles down
again to taxi in to the tarmac. She was throwing a light mist of castor oil over the fuselage, the windscreen, and me, just the right amount, not too much and not too little, but you don’t want to get it in your eyes or you know it for the rest of the day. I glanced over my shoulder and took off again, and flew her over to the hangar in little blips of engine on the switch, my foot working hard. I put her down right on the edge and rolled forward on to the gravel and stopped just outside the Bessoneau. Cochran was doing that at London Colney in a Spad but he was going too fast and ran into a support of the hangar and brought the canvas roof down on top of him, and then the gas tank burst behind his back and the whole lot went up in flames. There wasn’t much left for the funeral. Was the C.O. mad!

I let the motor die and pushed up my goggles and wiped the oil off my face with my silk scarf. Donk was on the tarmac with a lot of other people, girls, some of them. I jumped out of the cockpit and the oil was just right, even all the way round the cowling. It made her glisten, so that she looked wonderful. I told the mechanics to wipe her down before the dust got on it, and then to drench out each cylinder with paraffin.

Donk and Bose and Jerry came up with the girls. Bose said, ‘Meet the Hounslow Wonder. Flies upside down a darn sight better than right side up. Flies backwards, too, so the breeze can cool – ’

Donk said, ‘Don’t listen to him. He’s not got over last night.’

‘I wasn’t,’ said one of the girls. ‘I know it.’ She turned to me. ‘You were just wonderful.’

‘Don’t tell him that,’ said Jerry. ‘Now he’ll go and drop it. Remember Butch?’

‘He didn’t drop it,’ I said. ‘One wing came off. Introduce me.’

Donk said, ‘This is Daisy, and this is Lily, and this is
Judy. This is Johnnie Pascoe. He’s as mad as – well, as mad as holes.’

The others were in ordinary clothes, but Judy was in uniform, a W.A.A.C., and she was lovely. Even in the two-tone drab buttoned up to the neck she made the others look like two pennyworth of muck. My face was oily, so were my hands, and my old maternity just reeked of it. I turned straight to her. ‘I’d like to shake hands, but I’ll make you in a mess,’ I said. ‘You doing anything tonight?’

She laughed up at me, and it was perfect. ‘Yes.’

‘Any of these hoodlums here?’

‘No.’

‘Then put him off and come and have dinner with me at the Savoy.’

She laughed again, and shook her head.

Donk said, ‘She’s in
Picardy Princess
. You remember the little French girl at the
estaminet?
’

I turned to her again. ‘You’re not Judy Lester?’

She nodded, laughing.

I touched the sleeve of her uniform, and started walking on air. ‘But what’s this in aid of?’

‘Part time,’ she said. ‘I drive General Cadell in the mornings.’

‘Nevertheless,’ I said, ‘will you have dinner with me?’

She laughed. ‘I can’t. I’m on in the First Act.’

‘Will you have supper with me after the show? I’ll make a party.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

She laughed again, adorably. ‘All right. But I go home at midnight.’

‘You won’t tonight,’ I said. ‘What do you like to eat best?’

‘Smoked salmon and ice cream.’

‘Tournedos in between?’

She nodded. And then, on the tarmac by the Sopwith Camel, she clasped her hands together, bent a knee, put on a woebegone air, and said, ‘Oh sir – I am but a simple village maid. I know not what you intend by these fine gifts, so far above my station in life.’

I blinked at her, and then the others burst into a roar of laughter. Donk; said, ‘You’ll know before the evening’s out.’

She drew herself up now with regal dignity, and said icily, ‘Sir, though my father earns his living underground at the corner of the Edgware and the Harrow Roads, I still have that which a maid values more than anything on earth.’

Donk said, ‘You won’t have it long.’

I was getting the hang of this now. ‘Lady,’ I said, ‘I thought of asking this lot to my party, but I’m not so sure now. What about you and me just dining alone?’

She laughed at me. ‘Not much. I go with the party.’

‘In words of one syllable,’ said Bose, ‘if you feed her you’ve got to feed us all.’

‘It’s worth it,’ I said. I turned to her. ‘Can I pick you up at the stage door?’

She nodded, and when she smiled at me my heart turned over.

‘What time?’

‘Ten past eleven.’ And then she asked, ‘Is this your new aeroplane?’

I nodded. ‘I only got it yesterday.’

‘Are you pleased with it?’

‘It’s a beauty,’ I said proudly. ‘It’s as fast as an S.E.5 and much handier. It’s a hundred and thirty horsepower.’

‘That’s terrific.’ She came apart from the others with me and I showed her the engine, dripping a little clear yellow oil and making little sizzling noises. ‘Are you taking it out to the Front?’

I nodded. ‘We’re forming up a new Squadron now. I’m to lead one of the Flights.’

‘Captain Boswell was saying that you shot down seven Germans.’

‘The eighth shot me down. I was lucky and got down behind our lines.’

She glanced at the one gold stripe upon my sleeve. ‘Is that how you got your wound stripe?’

‘I’m going to cut it in half,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t worth a whole stripe.’

‘Have you ever crashed?’

‘Six times,’ I said. ‘The seventh is the lucky one. Do you drink champagne?’

She laughed. ‘Kind sir, I know not what to say!’

‘You don’t have to talk to it,’ I said. ‘Just drink it.’

She said, ‘Jiminny! Here’s the General coming. I’ll have to go.’

I looked, and saw all the high brass coming, but they were the length of the hangar away. By side-stepping a couple of paces we could get behind the fuselage. ‘Come this way,’ I said. ‘I want to give you a kiss.’

She laughed. ‘Not much.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re all oily. You’ll mess up my uniform. I wear this in the Third Act, for the Grand Finale. Besides, I don’t know you.’

‘First part makes sense,’ I said. ‘Last part – that’s damn nonsense.’

‘I must go. They’re coming.’

I let her go, reluctantly. ‘Ten past eleven?’

She nodded, and ran quickly to the dark green Crossley tourer parked by the hangar and swung the starting handle. When the General came up she was standing stiffly to attention. She saluted him just as she saluted in the Grand Finale in the footlights with the orchestra crashing and
banging away before her feet, and opened the back door for him to get in, while we stood laughing. Then she went round to the driver’s seat and got in, let the clutch in too hard, and stalled the engine. The others were all laughing fit to burst, but I ran over and grabbed the starting handle and swung it for her. She gave me a lovely smile and got away with a jerk and a crash of gears.

That afternoon I got my Flight together for a dog-fight. For the first ten minutes Donk and Jerry and Tim Collins, a New Zealander, were to set on me and try and get me in their sights, and then I’d pull out while Jerry and Tim set on Donk and I watched. I wanted Tim to have a good work out because he’d only just come down to us from the School of Aerial Fighting at Ayr. The first ten minutes went all right and then I pulled out at about ten thousand and Donk started in. Donk was a good pilot on a Camel and he had them all tied up; over and over again they got behind him but when they went to line up on him he just wasn’t there. I sat around a little way away watching their mistakes to tell them on the ground, and so I saw it happen. I suppose they got mad or something because they both came in at the same moment, Tim only looking ahead and Jerry with Tim in the blind spot underneath the engine as he dove in on the same line. Jerry’s wheels took Tim’s top plane clean away and the rest of the wings collapsed, and there was just a heap of wreckage in the air, and Tim going down in the bare fuselage without any wings, Jerry flying round without any wheels, and Donk and me fluttering about like a couple of wet hens. Tim went into some greenhouses near Hanworth and made a hole four feet deep, and Donk and I shepherded Jerry back to Hounslow where he made a belly landing in the middle of the field and stepped out of it unhurt; his Camel was repairable. All we wanted was one new Camel and one new pilot. Jerry was all cut up and talking a lot of nonsense, so I put him into my machine and sent him up to practise
aerobatics, telling him I’d have his hide if he bent it, while I went off to see the C.O. We fixed the funeral for Friday at Feltham and I said I’d write to his folks in New Zealand and see about a wreath from the Squadron. I waited till Jerry got down in my Camel, with a bottle of egg-nog in each pocket of my overcoat, and when I’d satisfied myself he hadn’t done my Camel any harm we had an egg-nog in the hangar. Then Donk came along and we had another, and then Bose came so we had another, and by that time things didn’t look so bad. We all went into Town by tube and got out at Piccadilly.

We got a beautiful wreath for Timmy at the florists’, from the Squadron, ten guineas, and I told them where to send it. And then there were so many lovely flowers in the shop I got a bright idea, and I told the Duchess who was serving us I wanted a bouquet. A really nice one, carnations and things. She said in her funeral voice, ‘To go with the wreath, sir?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘This is another thing again. This is for a lady on the stage. In
Picardy Princess
. I want it to hand up across the footlights, so let’s make it good.’