On the other hand the Aviatik was slow and probably damaged. It couldn’t get away. It should be an easy kill.
He flew the FE parallel to the Aviatik, just outside the range of its gun, and tried to squint up into the semi-glare around the blinding disc of the sun. Splinters of light danced in his eyes until they were lost in the wash of tears.
“I got the gunner,” Duncan bawled. He was kneeling on his seat and facing O’Neill. “Gunner’s dead.”
“Says you,” O’Neill shouted.
“Let’s go, let’s get the bugger.” Duncan tried to reach into O’Neill’s cockpit and grab the joystick. “He’s mine, I want him.”
O’Neill batted his hand away. “Okay!” he shouted. “Sit down, for Christ’s sake!” If Duncan had knocked the joystick he might have been thrown out. It was a measure of Duncan’s hunger for a kill after dozens of barren patrols.
Duncan sat. O’Neill nudged the throttle forward and eased the joystick across. The horizon swung like a seesaw. A touch of rudder brought the nose around until the Aviatik was dead ahead, chugging along, pouring smoke from its upright exhaust, its pilot praying for rescue, or a cloud, or a miracle. When it was obvious that none of those was going to appear he despaired and stuck his nose down.
To dive was the only thing left to do and also the worst thing to do. The FE could outdive an Aviatik, which meant that O’Neill would catch him, and when he did the German pilot would no longer be so free to jink and dodge and swerve. On the other hand it could be dangerous down there. German ground fire was notoriously lethal. All these thoughts chased each other through O’Neill’s mind when it was already too late. The FE was howling and vibrating as its dive steepened.
He caught the Aviatik after they had fallen about a thousand feet, and the strain on the German plane’s wings was such that O’Neill could see them fluttering and distorting. If his FE was doing the same he didn’t want to know, so he didn’t look behind him. He manoeuvred so as to give Duncan a slightly upward shot. When the Aviatik exploded or fell to pieces he wanted to be out of the way. They were four lengths apart. France lay in front like a map. Duncan fired. Every third shot was a tracer. His bullets went skimming over the Aviatik’s top wing. He adjusted his aim and fired again. The Lewis gun jammed.
Duncan had never before cleared a jam when he was hanging in a dive with a hurricane battering at his arms. The Lewis often jammed; he knew just what to do; but it demanded strength and skill to force the gun to reject the faulty round wedged in its breech, and then to accept a fresh round, properly cocked, while the FE rocked and shuddered. This jam was a bad one. Duncan heaved and thumped until in the end he had to fumble under his seat for the leather mallet and give the gun an almighty wallop, and then another. The third bash did the trick. He gasped for breath and relaxed. The FE lurched, and the mallet swung and knocked the ammunition drum off the top of the gun. He grabbed and missed. The drum bounced off his chest and vanished. Fear made him shout: that drum could have smashed their propeller! Maybe it sailed wide. Maybe it went clean through the disc. What difference? By the time he had unclipped a spare drum and banged it into place the dive was over. Duncan looked up and saw trees higher than his head. O’Neill was chasing the Aviatik up a valley.
The German was dipping and rising, working hard at making himself a poor target, but the valley was narrowing and O’Neill was steadily gaining. Duncan fired a couple of short bursts. The Aviatik seemed to stagger. It dropped until its wheels were parting the tall grass. O’Neill held the FE steady to give Duncan a good, final, downward shot. Both men were looking at the Aviatik. Neither of them saw the telegraph wire strung across the valley. It took Duncan’s head off as cleanly as a grocer cutting cheese and then it snapped. O’Neill felt the FE shudder. At first he thought a cylinder had blown, but the engine note sounded true. Duncan wasn’t firing. Why the hell wasn’t Duncan firing? Another jam? O’Neill half stood and looked down into the front cockpit. Duncan’s body was flopping about and blood was jetting out. The body flopped again and O’Neill got a hot squirt in the face. He sat down and hauled the joystick into his stomach and spat. As the FE climbed away, below it and behind, the Aviatik came to rest with its tail in the air.
They all drank coffee and cognac on the terrace of the honeycoloured house. Servants brought the coffee but Judith Kent Haffner served it, strolling amongst the men with a silver coffee pot that had a neck like a swan’s, while two maids followed carrying cups and sugar and cream. Paxton stood at the edge of the party and pretended to be examining the house but really he was watching her. There was a rose garden nearby; sometimes the breeze carried its scent. She reached him and now he could look without pretending. “I want to know something,” she said as she filled his cup. “I want to know how big your machine-gun is. Now be honest, David.”
“I’m not allowed… I mean, I’m pretty sure that sort of thing is, you know, secret.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “Holy smoke.”
Later the men played tennis. Paxton had no tennis shoes, of course, so he played barefoot and beat Henry, who didn’t try terribly hard. The breeze had dropped; the afternoon was baking hot. “Fancy a swim?” Henry said. “There’s an hour till tea.”
They undressed in a boathouse that overhung the lake and smelt of tar. Several costumes hung on hooks; all were too big or too small. “Oh, forget them,” Henry said, and ran and dived in. Paxton followed him before he had time to think about it. The water was superbly cool and smooth; when he looked up he could see the surface, glowing greenly. He swam underwater as far as he could and burst up into the sunlight, gasping for breath.
They fooled about for a minute or two and then swam to a small island, little more than a huge boulder with a couple of trees growing out of it. The rock was smooth and hot. Paxton stretched out on his back and felt the heat soak into him. “D’you do this sort of thing often?” he asked.
“Now and then. Judy keeps more or less open house. Once you’ve been invited you’re free to pop in whenever you like.”
“Very generous.”
“Damn good billiards room, too.”
Paxton waved at what could be seen of the house. “She’s awfully young for such a whacking great place, don’t you think?”
“Awfully young and awfully beautiful.”
“What I mean is, how does Mr Kent Haffner fit into the picture?”
“Ah. Well, we don’t see much of him. He’s American, she’s Anglo-Irish. I don’t know all the facts, but I think she’s his second wife and he wants to be the next American ambassador to Paris, so he’s got himself appointed special consul or something, to prove how good he is. Apparently he spends all his time travelling around France and buttering-up people. Getting Yankee war material sent over. That sort of thing. Stinking rich, obviously.” Henry closed his eyes.
“I see. So Judy has to find her own friends.”
“She likes goodlooking young men. She’s probably up in her bedroom right now, watching us through a telescope.”
Paxton laughed. “Don’t be absurd.” But he sat up and raised his knees.
“Don’t worry, old man. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.” Henry got to his feet and waved in the direction of the house. “Her husband’s a hundred years old,” he said. “Fifty, at least. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”