“Silly woman! I’d love to be a deer.”
“Would you? Can you jump?”
She picked a lemon-yellow rose and twirled it. “I jumped for my living,” she said. “You can get a free show, if you like.”
She took him into the house, to a small ballroom, empty of furniture. “Be a sweety and put something on the gramophone.”
He wound the machine and was startled to see her kick off her shoes and pull her dress over her head. She was wearing the tightest bathing-costume he had ever seen. He had never known that girls’ legs were so long and so beautiful. “Golly!” he said. “You look absolutely…” He took a huge breath.
“Yes, well, ballet dancers are supposed to look absolutely and that’s what I was before I got married. You never saw one of these before? Leotard.” She was bending and stretching. “I like to practise every day. Come on: music, music!”
He put on a record: Bizet’s Carmen. She was right, she could jump. And she flexed like rubber. He kept changing records and learning things he had never suspected about the way women were shaped, until suddenly she stopped dancing and sat in the middle of the room, gasping for breath. “Why does everything beautiful,” she asked,”hurt so much? Don’t try to answer. Come and talk while I bathe.”
He followed her to yet another bathroom, where she went behind a screen of smoked glass. Paxton sat in a cane chair and watched her blurred shape while he talked about life at Pepriac. He had never before been in the same room with an utterly, totally naked woman, and when he thought about it he got peculiar aches just behind his ears, so he tried not to think. That was impossible. Why does everything beautiful hurt so much? At last she came out, wearing a towelling robe. “Want a bath?” she said.
“Um… Not at the moment, thanks.”
“I’ll scrub your back.”
Now he knew he was being teased. “I have a batman who does that for me,” he said.
Dinner was excellent. Baked stuffed mushrooms, buttered whitebait, tournedos Rossini, strawberries with kirsch. Lots of wine. They talked about trivialities until she ate her last strawberry and said “Tell me about the war.”
He drank more wine while he thought what he ought to say. “Don’t think,” she said,”just say what you feel.”
It was a challenge. “All right. I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, especially not the other chaps, because they’d—”
“Stop explaining, David. Just tell me.”
“Yes. Very well. Um… Well, I think it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. Exciting, and colourful, and and… beautiful. That’s the only word, beautiful.”
“How can it be colourful? Everyone’s in khaki.”
“Yes, but there are dozens of different regiments. D’you know the most wonderful sight of all, for me? A battalion of infantry on the march. There’s something about the drums, and the crunch of the boots. I get quite a lump in the throat. And when it gets dark the Front is lit up like a firework display! Flares of all colours, and starshells… We can see them from the aerodrome. And hear the guns.”
He was so happy that he made her smile. “I wish I could see it,” she said. “I’ve got a little cine-camera… Is there really going to be a battle? People keep talking about a Big Push.”
He nodded. “There’s going to be the most glorious scrap, and we’re going to hit Master Fritz for six, you watch.”
“And you’re going to be in it?”
“I must be the luckiest man alive. I’m in the right place, at the right time, on the right side! Can you beat it?”
Coffee came, and brandy. “You haven’t said anything about flying,” she said. “But I can see you’ve been in action.” She meant his split lip.
“That? Oh, that’s nothing.” Now that he had to tell her about his kill he felt awkward, although it was the main reason for his visit. “We were up on patrol this afternoon,” he said, taking a deep look into his coffee-cup, “and I had a spot of luck. Shot down a Halberstadt.” He glanced up, shyly.
She stood and came over and put a finger under his chin to tip it up and kissed him on the lips. “Bully for you,” she said, and stroked his cheek.
“Actually…” Paxton took her hand. “You said you’d teach me to dance if I got another kill.”
They went to the ballroom. She put a slow waltz on the gramophone. “Don’t try to think,” she said as they held each other. “Just let your body follow mine.” Paxton had taken a couple of dancing lessons during the school holidays so he knew a bit about the waltz, but dancing with Judy was a far more exciting experience. For one thing she held him much closer than his partners had, and she would often rest her cheek against his chin.
When the fourth record spun to an end they stopped and she said: “You’re perfect. Get another kill and I’ll teach you something else.”
“Try and stop me,” he said. It wasn’t a very clever remark, so he kissed her. It was meant to be a quick, thank-you sort of kiss but she let it grow into much more than that. Unprecedented ideas drifted into his head, until she pushed him away. “Mr. Haffner is due home any time,” she said. “But come again, won’t you?”
The old man at the lodge had the gates open for him. Paxton gave him some money and chugged into the night. A rich, full day, he thought.
A week passed, a bad week for Hornet Squadron.
A man called Macarthur, a new boy, a replacement pilot, stalled on take-off. He got to a hundred feet, over-revved the engine and lost it. Then he did what he had repeatedly been told not to do: he tried to turn and land on the ‘drome, instead of gliding forward and crash-landing wherever he could. So the FE fell on its back like a load of old furniture pushed over a cliff. More work for the padre.
Then a quite experienced crew – two months and one kill was lost over the German Lines. Their names were Surridge and Nash, so they were called Sausage and Mash. They were at eight thousand feet, setting out on a Deep Offensive Patrol, when the first shell of the first pattern of German archie struck the engine and exploded with enough violence to destroy a house. Surridge knew nothing of it: before any message could reach his brain his body had been shattered, wrecked, blown to bits. Nash was somewhat protected from the blast by Surridge’s body. He got flung through the plywood nacelle and broke most of his bones. For a few seconds his eyes did their job and recorded the whirling nightmare. Then his body twisted one way and his head jerked the other, and he broke his neck. Thirty-five seconds later his body landed in a patch of nettles and buried itself three feet deep. Nobody saw it. Nobody found it. A month later the nettles had covered the scar in the earth.
Macarthur was a newcomer but Sausage and Mash were regular fixtures in the squadron. Or so everyone had thought. Their loss – reported by several infantry units in the trenches – hit Pepriac hard. Nobody took archie terribly seriously; it was easy to dodge when you saw where it was. The frightening thing was that first shot. You couldn’t dodge that, because you didn’t know where it would be. Of course what happened to Sausage and Mash was sheer luck. Some bloody Hun battery commander had aimed at a fast-moving target a mile and a half up and hit it first shot. It was appalling, lousy luck. It might never happen again. But it showed it could happen. That was what was frightening.
Cleve-Cutler smelled doom and despair and mixed up an especially stimulating batch of Hornet’s Sting. When everyone had a pint of the stuff bubbling in his gut Cleve-Cutler organised a knock-out battle with soda-syphons, each Flight attacking the other two. The anteroom was awash and the squadron was soaked when they went into the mess for dinner. Dinner was sausage and mash. Everyone thought that was hilariously funny. Most of it got thrown. Afterwards there was another battle with soda-syphons to wash the food off. You could hear the racket from Pepriac churchyard. Surridge and Nash had been seen off in style. They were rarely mentioned after that. Which is not to say that everyone forgot them, or their way of going.