The Rainbow and the Rose (12 page)

She gave me a dirty look as if she was the Second Gravedigger, but she’d had ten guineas off us and she could see another five coming so she got busy with the carnations and the fern. We got behind a stand of pot-plants where I thought she couldn’t see us and had another egg-nog. When I got my bouquet it was gorgeous, all pink and white and green and done up with silver paper round the bottom. Donk and I had a service flat in High Street Kensington and we took Jerry home with us for the night. Bose went off to book a table at the Savoy and dig up a red-head that he knew for Jerry to take his mind off things, which she did, and arranged to meet for dinner at Murray’s. I had a bath and changed into my best uniform and sat looking at my bouquet.

They hadn’t got any seats for
Picardy Princess
that night,
not one in the whole house, but they’d got a box so I took that. I might have filled it up with the others but I didn’t; I wanted to look at her alone. So I didn’t tell them anything about it but just said I’d join up with them at the Savoy, and went and dined at the R.A.C. and sneaked out to the theatre alone. I felt awfully conspicuous alone in the box and wished I’d brought the others with me, and I think she knew that, because she spotted me almost immediately and sang her two songs straight at me, so that the audience began to turn and look at me in the box, and laugh about us, because they could see I was in the Flying Corps and that I’d got the M.C. and the Croix de Guerre. To top it off, after the Grand Finale when the attendant took my bouquet up and handed it to her across the footlights she buried her face in it, and then looked up laughing, and blew a kiss at me. I stood up in the box and blew one back at her, and that brought the house down of course. Then I was round at the stage door in the alley at the back, waiting for her, in my new trench coat.

She came hurrying out and dragged me back into the dressing room she shared with two other girls, to show me the bouquet as her dresser had put it out in a great vase. I had never been back-stage before, and it was all new to me, the shabby walls, the brilliant lights, the half-dressed girls. She insisted on giving me a buttonhole from the bouquet to wear at the Savoy, but my maternity hadn’t got a buttonhole to put it in, so she tucked the carnation into the strap of my Sam Browne and secured it with a safety pin just underneath the strap. Then I waited while she did up her face, and helped her into her fur coat, and then we were off chattering and chi-hiking together to the taxi I had waiting, walking on air.

The crowd were all at the Savoy when we got there and the party was in full swing, and they chipped us about having tarried on the way, which we hadn’t – much. The red-head
was there with Jerry, but my grandmother told me always to steer clear of a red-headed woman in black underwear, so I did. I took Judy in my arms for the first time as we danced together, and we liked it, and did it again, and again, with only a pause now and then to nibble a bit of smoked salmon or take a gulp of champagne as we rubbed knees under the table. Then, before we’d hardly got started to get to know each other, the band was playing ‘God Save the King’, because it was two o’clock.

Jerry must have been a bit lit up by that time, I suppose. I forget what made him do it, but in the foyer of the Savoy the red-head stooped to pick up something and he gave her a resounding smack on her black behind. She was a much bigger girl than Judy, but Judy went into one of her acts. She faced up to Jerry, eyes aflame. ‘You contemptible cur!’ she said. ‘How dare you strike an innocent child like that! Poor little Evie, only six years old, and her mother still in the home for delinquent girls! Oh, how I despise you! Why don’t you hit somebody your own size? Why don’t you hit me? O – oh … Ow!’ And she flung herself on the floor of the foyer of the Savoy just as if she had been knocked down, her hand to the side of her face, the other pointing dramatically at Jerry, who was all at sea. A crowd gathered round, of course, and we were all laughing fit to burst, and then the manager came out and wasn’t sure if it was going to make a legal case or not, and we picked up Judy who was moaning and saying that the brute had broken her jaw, and the hall porter with a couple of bell-hops pushed us all out into the Savoy Court where the taxis were. I got Judy into a taxi and took her to the flat in St John’s Wood that she shared with another girl, and she lay in my arms all the way while we kissed each other, and it wasn’t nearly long enough.

I was writing to Timmy’s mother in Palmerston North, wherever that may be, next morning, and saying what a terrible loss he was to the Squadron and how he’d died
fighting the Germans just as if he’d been at the Front, and all the other things – the standard sort of letter – when Donk came in with the news that Chuck Patterson was killed, up at Waddington. Chuck was flying in a Bristol Fighter in the gunner’s cockpit and they had a forced landing. The pilot, an English boy called Jenkins, tried to get into a field and hit the fence and turned it on its back. Chuck was thrown out, and when he came to, the machine was burning and the pilot in it, trapped. So Chuck went in to try and get him out, and then the petrol tank exploded. Chuck died in hospital next day. He and I were in the same year at McGill together doing first year Engineering, and we joined up on the same day. This sure was a rough sort of war.

Judy.

Flowers, lots and lots of them. The Duchess smiling when I went into the shop.

Funerals, and firing parties. ‘Rest on your arms reversed …’

The bright sunlight in the chasms of the cumulus, the brilliance of the white clouds, the blueness of the sky. The blipping engines and the smell of castor oil and cordite from the guns.

Dancing with Judy, and the softness of her breasts against my uniform. The whispers in her ear as we danced, that never seemed to get finished.

The fun of that early summer, and the laughter, and the deaths.

Judy.

The day we had together down at Henley in the punt, when we changed into bathing things among the bushes and went swimming in the river, and I took one of her stockings so she had to take the other off and go back to London without any stockings on at all, Judy Lester, in
Picardy Princess
. The footlights, and the songs …

Dancing with Judy. ‘If you were the only girl in the world …’ The Bing Boys, and George Robey.

Sandy McPhail diving on the target in Staines Reservoir just ahead of me when the C.C. gear failed and shot off one blade of his propeller. The engine falling out of the machine, the Camel fluttering down in weaves and spins into the water with the two machine guns running wild and spraying the whole countryside with bullets, the white plume of gas that showed its track. Sandy swimming ashore fit as a flea with nothing to show for it but a cut lip and a bruised eyebrow, and the colossal binge we had at Murray’s to present him with a medal for saving life – his own. The laughter, and the kisses, and the drinks.

Judy.

The investiture at Buckingham Palace, with Judy watching from the gallery. The King in naval uniform, the Sailor King, the little pointed brown beard close to my face as he pinned on the silver cross, the firm handshake. The party we had afterwards on that fine summer day when we should all have been flying and weren’t because of the investiture, the lunch at Gattis, the drinks, the kisses, and the dinghy race on the lake in Regent’s Park. Taking Judy back to the flat in High Street, Kensington, to give her a cold bath so that she’d be sober enough to go on in the evening.

Judy.

The day we got our orders for going to France in ten days’ time, the day I didn’t have a drink all day but picked up Judy at ten past eleven at the stage door and walked her out under the trees of Leicester Square amongst all the tarts, and took her in my arms and told her, and asked her to marry me.

Judy.

The exhibition of formation flying and stunt flying that we put on for a bunch of brass hats from the War Office, nineteen of us at full squadron strength. The pilot from South Africa with ginger hair who got his fin and rudder taken off by Ben’s propeller and went spinning slowly down doing everything he knew to get control again, although he must
have known that you can never hope to fly a Camel without rudder because of the gyroscopic torque. The explosion when the tank burst as he hit the ground and the great column of black smoke that acted as a windsock for us all to land by, all eighteen of us. The Australian from Bendigo, Tom Foreman, who ‘went crook’ in front of all the generals because we don’t have parachutes and the Germans do …

The special licence. Judy.

The military funeral at Feltham in the morning, the Union Jack over the coffin on the gun carriage, the Dead March, the muffled drums, the firing squad, the prayers. The frantic rush back to the flat for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks before getting married to Judy in the afternoon, the flowers, the old slipper, the confetti at the railway carriage. Skindle’s at Maidenhead, the calm summer evening, and Judy.

Judy.

The relief and the release from tensions in the morning, the little secret smiles, the breakfast tray in bed with the sun streaming in on us. The familiar hiss and crackle of a flock of Clerget Camels that brought us hopping out of bed and out on the verandah in our night things as the Squadron peeled off one by one and started in to beat up Skindle’s. Jerry doing a full roll below the level of our window, Donk running his wheels along the river so that they made two light furrows on the water for a hundred yards and set the moored punts rocking. Bose going through the telephone line and taking away a length of it streaming from his undercarriage. The blipping engines, the waving pilots, the startled onlookers, and Judy waving at them in her nightie in the sun …

Judy.

Judy back in the show that evening, and the whole Squadron in the stalls chi-hiking at us and Judy ad-libbing back at them across the footlights, the laughter, and the fun. The four of them that set on me during the Grand Finale and dragged me out and through the little door and shoved me on
the stage beside her, the glare of the footlights, the welcome from Daisy Holmes, the leading lady, as she gave us the centre of the stage, the orchestra switching from the Grand Finale to the ‘Wedding March’, the shouts and the laughter and the cheers from the audience, the many curtains. The impromptu supper on the stage with all the cast and all the Squadron, the champagne, the toasts.

The quiet of the night drive through the moonlit streets of London in an open taxi to the flat in Kensington that I had for the next four days alone, with Judy.

Judy.

The hectic rush to get the Squadron fit for operations in the next three days, the lining up of sights upon the new machines, the swinging of the compasses. The new pilot who was posted down to us from Ayr to replace the South African, a pink and white boy called Phil Thomas with only twenty-six hours’ solo flying up in all, only twelve on Camels. The row I had with the C.O. when he was posted to my Flight, because it would be just like murder out in France, the efforts that I made to find something wrong with his flying, the failure to do so. The CO. pointing out that I had gone to France with less experience than that. Trying to make him see that that was different, that was 1916 and on Pups while this was 1918 and on Clerget Camels. The cheerful face I had to put on it to give Phil confidence, the secret worry and the strain, even with Judy.

Judy.

The early breakfast on the last morning, the serious last kisses, the little gifts, the promises to write. The parade upon the tarmac with all the machines lined up, the speech from the General, the girls and the relations in the background. Taking off for Lympne to refuel before the Channel crossing, the major in front and the three Flights behind him, each in a V formation. Curtis in A Flight getting in Donk’s backwash on the take-off and sticking in a wing and cartwheeling upon
the aerodrome. The dive upon the hangars and the crowd and the zoom up in farewell, the turn on course beneath the low grey clouds, the excitement and the pain of leaving. The sense of stripping off the non-essentials before battle.

The sea-crossing from Lympne, with Calvert turning back when we were five miles out because his motor quit, and going down into the sea with no boat near, a couple of miles off shore. We couldn’t do a thing to help him, but Bose and Roger circling round for ten minutes, hoping somebody would see. Calvert all right, but the Camel slowly sinking when they had to leave. Hodson cracking up in landing at Gravelines. The new hut for a mess, the search for furniture for it, the air raid the first night, the letter to Judy.

Judy, who now seemed so far away.

The first patrol across the lines, leading my new Flight. The three Fokkers two thousand feet below, the dive in to attack with our six: Camels, the hideous surprise when they just put their noses up and climbed away from us till they were on top and in the sun and diving down on us. These new D.7S can certainly outfly our Clerget Camels. The dog-fight and the turning, turning, covering Phil Thomas and trying to work our way back to our own side of the lines before another lot of Fokkers came along and made the numbers even. The one that I got in my sights and fired ten rounds at till the gun jammed, the sight of Jerry firing straight into a Fokker while another one was on his tail, with Phil on his. The infinite relief when they climbed away from us and made for home, probably short of fuel. Jerry cracking up on landing with his plane shot all to hell, and mine the worse for wear with two bullets in the lower port front spar.

The working out new tactics with the Major to exploit our better manoeuvrability in a dog-fight. Bose bringing back his first patrol with Roger missing, shot down by a Fokker somewhere to the east of Kemmel Hill. Bose telling us the Fokkers were at twenty thousand feet, a good five thousand
feet higher than we can get. The Dolphins and the S.E.5S can get as high as that, but not our Camels. The knowledge that we’ve got to make up with our better piloting and fighting the advantage that they’ve got upon us in performance.

Writing to Judy, telling her about the piano we got for the mess to play her songs on.