Dando was awoken at three in the morning by the howling of an animal. It rose and fell with a regularity that would have been musical but for the desperation behind it.
Rain was drifting, making a soft, fine mist. Dando put on his boots and tunic and took an umbrella and a flashlight. He traced the sound to Captain Foster’s tent where the dog Brutus was making an unhappy noise. But the howling was coming from Foster, who was having a nightmare. His face glistened like wet marble, and his eyelids flickered non-stop.
Dando shook him awake and the howling died in a gasp of terror. Foster’s eyes were as clear and empty as a child’s. Dando kept talking, repeating their names, making reassuring noises while he lit a hurricane lamp. Foster’s head was drenched and his pyjamas were soaked. “I’m coming back,” Dando said. “Don’t get up.”
He roused Foster’s batman. They got Foster out of bed, stripped off the drenched pyjamas and towelled him dry. All the time he stood, shoulders slumped and knees wavering, with his mouth open and his eyes half-shut, and said nothing. Dando got fresh pyjamas on him while the batman changed his bedding. He was asleep before they got him into bed. Dando checked his pulse: it was bumping along like a cart on a stony lane. The batman had found half a bottle of rum. They each had a tot, and Dando gave Brutus a mouthful in a saucer for good luck.
At breakfast it was obvious to Dando that Foster remembered nothing of the night; he was good-humoured and seemed refreshed. Dando found an opportunity to tell Cleve-Cutler. “So what, old boy?” the CO said. “Half the squadron has nightmares. I have nightmares. Don’t you have nightmares?”
“No, sir.”
“Something wrong with you, then. Sometimes I wake up in the small hours and this camp sounds like Christians versus Lions. All quite normal.”
However, at lunchtime Foster bought Dando a drink and took him aside. “Was it you made Brutus squiffy?” he asked.
“Guilty.”
“Don’t do it again, old boy. You probably don’t know this, but there have been attempts to poison the poor hound.” Foster looked squarely into Dando’s eyes.
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I’m surprised you find it necessary to ask.”
“Well, I’m a newcomer here, remember.”
Foster took a long look around the room. It was noisy and cheerful as it filled up for lunch. “You can tell them this from me. If they want to kill Brutus they’ll have to kill me first.”
Dando signalled for more drinks. “Do you have any particular person in mind?” he asked.
“Second-lieutenant Paxton,” Foster said.“I’ve been watching him. He enjoys killing. Well, I’ll enjoy killing him. I say, Paxton!” he called, and beckoned.
“I honestly don’t believe he means you any harm,” Dando said.
“Look here, Paxton,” Foster said, amiably,“you’ve got a reputation as something of a ladykiller. What?”
“Oh, not half. Why?”
“Somebody killed my girl in London. She cut her throat. Wondered if it was you.”
“Not me, old chap.”
“On your honour?” Now that it was obvious that Foster was mocking him, Paxton’s only reply was an uncomfortable smile. “No honour, you see. Paxton doesn’t really belong in this squadron,” Foster told Dando. “He’s a common tradesman. A merchant of death to home and industry.” And he winked. Dando noted the brittle glitter in his eyes, and wondered how much of it was drink.
In another part of the room, Gerrish was telling Tim Piggott: “I worked out where Jumbo’s idea went wrong. He was going to use the balloon crew as his shield while they parachuted down. But he was more or less directly above the balloon when he was shooting at it, so I reckon his bullets went straight through it and killed the crew in the basket, so they never had a chance to parachute. See?”
“Maybe there never was a crew,” Piggott said. “Maybe the basket was empty.”
“A decoy? Bit expensive, isn’t it?”
“Dunno. Look what they got: one FE, Jumbo, his observer. Or maybe it was just a test flight. Testing the balloon.”
Gerrish kicked a chair. “The old man said it was a lousy idea.”
“Got your replacements yet?”
“Arrived this morning. Pilot’s thirteen, observer’s twelve. Shout loudly and they burst into tears.”
Chapter 17
Somewhere a dam had burst. It was a huge dam, stuffed with thunder, and in its rush to escape, the thunder rolled over itself and made a double thunder, and then the double thunder exploded with a roar, and the roar swelled until the air was swamped with noise. Fifteen miles away, lying on O’Neill’s bed, Paxton thought the hut would collapse under the weight of noise. A pane of glass fell from a trembling window and shattered. He rolled off the bed just as O’Neill came in. “You’ve been signing my name on your mess chits, you prick,” O’Neill said, pitching his voice to penetrate the roar.
“Well, you’ve been signing mine on yours, you turd. What the hell is that?”
“Guns. They go bang. Didn’t you know?” He began rummaging in Paxton’s trunk. “I wish you wouldn’t have so much starch put in your shirts… Is this my bottle of rum?”
“I expect so.” Paxton was in the doorway, looking to the east. He expected to see a distant sign of such a colossal roar, but there was nothing. A few panicking pigeons clattered overhead. “Is this the Big Push?”
“Christ knows. Is this my toothbrush?”
“I expect so.”
“Jesus… Can’t you get your own?”
“I did. You took it. How long will this last?”
O’Neill removed a bunch of coloured photographs from Paxton’s hand. “I wish to buggery you wouldn’t breathe on my naked ladies,” he grumbled. “And go and stink in your own pit.”
“It’s wonderful,” Paxton said. “Just listen. It’s superb. Isn’t it superb?”
“Get your bonnet on,” O’Neill said. “Let’s go and get some breakfast.”
They took off half an hour later, to cover a Quirk on a photographic patrol. All the squadron was in the air. Paxton was eager to see what the bombardment looked like but when they crossed the Front it was obscured by a drifting fog of smoke from the guns, and the enemy trenches were completely lost under a cloud of grey-brown dust, which occasionally gave birth to shapely puffballs when the heavy howitzers caused an unusual amount of damage. The barrage drowned out the FE’s engine. There was so much din that Paxton heard nothing. He thought he might have gone deaf, so he undid his flying helmet and peeled back a flap. His ears hurt. It was like being in the middle of a mob of angry blacksmiths He did up his helmet, fast. Behind the British Lines, gunflashes made a flickering stream of red and yellow that wandered to the north and faded into their own smoke. Paxton turned his head. Another stream wandered south, as bright as fireflies. Those guns have fired a thousand shells while I watched them, he thought. How magnificent! How stunning!
They rendezvoused with their Quirk and took care of it while it paraded up and down, infuriating the archie. If O’Neill held his course and height for thirty seconds the archie had a go at him, too. But this was not their day. The Quirk got its pictures and went home. O’Neill still had fuel. He climbed and searched further to the east.
There was nothing much to see: the odd speck, hopelessly remote and going away; the odd line of cloud, and not much of that. O’Neill decided to make a certain cloud his turning-point. It turned out to be big and sprawling, with a massive overhang that almost formed a cave. The shadow of the FE got there first by half a second and went flitting across the face of the cloud until he caught up with it and they charged into the near-cave and came out the other side as an Albatros came flying in. For an instant O’Neill’s stomach clenched as hard as stone because he knew their wings must hit. They flicked past each other. He slumped, forgot how to breathe, and recovered to find his arms and legs automatically stuffing the controls into a corner so as to drag the FE into a tight turn before the Albatros came back and cut it to pieces.