Paxton went to his billet. He was looking at his haircut in a mirror, and thinking how desirable it would be to go back and get a trim in a week or so, when Fidler arrived. “Mr. Cleve-Cutler’s compliments, sir,” he said,”and could you report to his office immediately.”
Paxton forgot haircuts, forgot Mrs. Kent Haffner, forgot O’Neill and Kellaway and all. This was the call. He was going to fly again.
The CO and Captain Piggott were looking at a short length of telegraph wire. Paxton saluted and waited. “Where exactly did they find this?” Cleve-Cutler asked Piggott.
“Outer strut, left-hand side. Sawed the strut nearly in half.”
Cleve-Cutler tested the strength of the wire until he hurt his fingers and grinned with pain. “Cheap and nasty… Where have you been all day?”
“Amiens, sir,” Paxton said. “Haircut.”
“Didn’t O’Neill tell you I wanted to see you?”
“Yes, but… I’m afraid I don’t trust him, sir.”
“Really! You don’t trust O’Neill.” Cleve-Cutler blew his nose: one short foghorn blast. “And how does O’Neill feel about you?”
“Well… he’s not friendly, sir.”
“Not friendly. How odd. Everyone else finds him friendly.”
Paxton turned his head and looked out of the window. This wasn’t what he’d expected but he was quite willing to reveal the truth. “From the start, sir, O’Neill has had his knife into me.”
“And how do you feel about him?”
“I detest him.”
“That should be interesting. Starting now, you’re O’Neill’s observer.”
For a few seconds Paxton’s brain refused to accept these words. They made no sense; they didn’t fit. Yet the squadron commander and the flight commander kept looking at him as if they made sense. “I’m a pilot, sir,” he said. “I’m not an observer.”
“Then you’ll just have to do your best, won’t you? I’ve got too many pilots and the Pool’s run out of observers.”
“But O’Neill… I mean isn’t there anybody else—”
“No, there’s nobody else,” Cleve-Cutler said jauntily,”and I know you’re the worst air-gunner in the Corps and you couldn’t hit Immelmann himself if he came up and sniffed the end of your gun, and it’s certainly rough luck on Frank O’Neill, whose life-expectancy with you guarding him is now a minus figure because you’ll probably shoot him the very first chance you get, thus causing the plane to crash and kill you both, which will be an enormous relief to me. Now go away.”
Paxton went away, looking dazed.
“I thought he might learn something if he kicked around the squadron for a few days,” Piggott said. “He hasn’t learnt a damn thing, he’s just as stupid as ever. I wonder what he did to get on O’Neill’s tit?”
“Doesn’t matter any more. Once they start fighting, they create more reasons to fight.”
“Childish, isn’t it?”
“I hope not,” Cleve-Cutler said. “It’s what we’ve all been doing for the last two years.” He made a coil of the wire and released it, so that it bounced across his desk. “He didn’t ask what had happened to Duncan.”
“No. Self-centred and selfish. Doesn’t give a damn for anyone else.”
“So all he needs,” Cleve-Cutler said,”is brains, guts and a ton of luck and he might make a good fighter pilot one day.” Piggott stared. “Just a little joke,” Cleve-Cutler said.
Paxton searched the camp until he found O’Neill. He was strolling around his FE, whistling in his peculiar tuneless fashion.
“Shut up that racket and listen,” Paxton said. O’Neill went on whistling. He took a close look at an oil stain. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this,” Paxton said, “but it seems that I am your observer.”
O’Neill stopped whistling. For the first time, Paxton saw emotion show through that usually wooden expression. Surprise, certainly. Perhaps even alarm. It lasted only a few seconds.
“Or perhaps it would be truer to say that you are my pilot,” Paxton said.
“You’ll like flying with me. It’s better than prunes.” O’Neill was back to normal.
Cleve-Cutler mixed up a batch of Hornet’s Sting in memory of Jimmy Duncan but there was no squadron party. It seemed wrong to smash up the new old furniture as soon as Lacey had had it unloaded, and in any case tomorrow’s orders had come through and ‘A’ and ‘B’ Flights were on dawn patrol. All the keys worked on the replacement piano, so Stubbs played and everyone sang. Even Paxton stood at the edge of the crowd and sang. He had something to celebrate: he’d moved one more place up the table. Tough luck on Duncan. Pity it hadn’t happened to O’Neill, he thought, then it would have been two places… Kellaway nudged him. “Heard the new diet joke?” he asked.
“No.”
“How to lose ten ugly pounds at a stroke: volunteer to be O’Neill’s observer.” Kellaway giggled. “Get it?”
Paxton turned and went out. He took his binoculars from O’Neill’s bedside and walked to the far end of the aerodrome where there was an oak tree he could climb. It was dusk, and he watched the starshells and flares and coloured rockets to the east. Sometimes, when he was lucky, he saw the actual flash of guns. It was magical and beautiful, thrilling and manly. It made him feel cleaner and stronger.
Chapter 14
Breakfast before a dawn patrol was always hard-boiled eggs and tea. Nobody liked the eggs but they were better than nothing. After an hour of O’Neill’s aerobatics Paxton’s stomach held nothing and his mind was full of murder.
Tim Piggott’s briefing had needed very few words; it was obvious to Paxton that everyone knew the drill. Dawn patrols were freelance affairs: the British artillery was still in bed, so there were no shoots to cover, and the light wasn’t good enough for photo-reconnaissance. Hornet squadron was going over to show the flag, to remind fritz how inferior he was. O’Neill’s words to Paxton were even briefer. “Puke on your boots,” he said,”not on me.”
They were a mile up and two miles over when he began throwing the FE about. At first he swung in and out of a series of tight bends as if swerving past obstacles, wings tipped almost to the vertical. Paxton quite enjoyed that. O’Neill levelled out. Paxton turned to look at him and as he did, O’Neill stuffed the nose down hard and Paxton whacked his face against the back of the cockpit. He was still struggling to get back in his seat when the dive abruptly bottomed out and became a climb. His breakfast began to come loose. O’Neill stalled at the top and Paxton braced himself as the FE toppled sideways and threatened to fall on its back. A frighteningly long sideslip grew into another dive. The rush of air tore at Paxton’s bloody face. His goggles had been knocked upwards and the gale made him weep. He never saw how the dive ended; all he saw was a small cloud dead ahead that was rotating rapidly, clockwise. Then the machine smashed into the cloud and bounced like a rubber ball and came out into sunshine with the Earth hanging sideways from the sky and Paxton hanging desperately in his straps while boiled eggs and tea fought to get out of his mouth. After that O’Neill began attempting some quite ambitious stunts.
The adjutant doubled as intelligence officer. When they landed he took their report. “Nothing much,” O’Neill said. “One stroppy little Fokker tried to jump us. He wasn’t very good. Soon got fed up.”
Brazier looked at Paxton. “Did you damage him?”
“No.” He peeled a bit of dried vomit off his chin. “No, he was always behind us, wasn’t he?”
“Not always.”
“And it wasn’t a Fokker, it was an Albatros. Two Albatroses.”
Brazier crossed out what he’d written.