“Bloody long way up,” Boy Binns said. “Do they supply a piece of string to tie to the trigger?”
“You have to stand on your seat,” the ferry pilot explained. There was a moment’s silence. It was such an absurd idea; everyone was waiting for the rest of the joke. But he was serious. They all laughed. “Get me a couple of guns and I’ll show you,” he said. “Why two?” Piggott asked. “You’ll see,” he said.
Two Lewis guns were brought. One was fixed to the pillar mounting, the other to the nose. As usual the balance of the guns left them pointing upwards. The ferry pilot heaved himself into the front cockpit. “Actually the seat’s too low,” he said,”but if you stand on the arms…” He climbed onto them and swung the Lewis on the pillar so that he was aiming past the tail. “As you can see, I’ve got to lean back or I can’t work the gun,” he said,”which is why my backside is perched on the drum of the other Lewis. What it comes down to is you’ve got to sit on the front Lewis in order to use the top one.” He swayed from side to side, pretending to fire.
Mayo said: “What it comes down to is you’ve only got your boots inside the cockpit.”
“Has anybody ever actually done this?” Gerrish asked. “I mean, in action?”
“Doubt it.” The ferry pilot climbed down.
“You’ll never get me up there,” Stubbs said. “I’ve got no head for heights.”
“You’d have to be a real athlete to do all that,” Mayo said.“I mean, it’s not easy with the bus on the ground, let alone whizzing along at eighty or ninety.”
“Make that a hundred,” the ferry pilot said.
Cleve-Cutler had kept in the background. Now he said: “Well, you don’t have to do it if you’d rather get shot-up by a Hun on your tail.”
“Personally I think it’s a spiffing idea,” Paxton said. “Of course the driver will have to keep the bus straight and level, won’t he? But then, that’s what bus drivers are paid to do.” He wrinkled his nose.
“What d’you say, Bunny?” Piggott asked.
“I say the pillar’s not long enough,” O’Neill said. “I say make it twenty feet long and give the silly bugger a rope ladder and a packet of sandwiches and he can stay up there all day.”
The pattern of the previous day’s bombardment was repeated: stupendously heavy pounding for about an hour and then a steady thunder, so constant that people forgot it. The ground crews had work to do, checking and adapting the new machines, testing the engines, painting numbers on the rudders. The officers went swimming.
Boy Binns chucked a bucket of water at Paxton, so he dived into the pool and cruised underwater until his outstretched fingers touched the other side. He came up to see Corporal Lacey looking down at him.
“Circumcision is clearly a hallmark of the British middle class,” Lacey said. “I make the vote fourteen to three in favour of the amendment, with one member indecisive.”
Paxton climbed out. “What about you?”
“Oh, quite, quite conventional. As an infant I shut my eyes and thought of England, or at least the Home Counties, while the surgeon’s knife made the supreme sacrifice. So I suppose you could say I did my bit for my country. Not a very big bit, but—”
“Look here,” Paxton said,”I really don’t care, so if that’s all you came to tell me…”
“I wondered if you’d mind witnessing Rufus Milne’s will.”
Paxton dried his hands on a towel, took the document, and glanced through it before he fully understood what Lacey had said. “How on earth can I witness his will? The man’s dead. There’s no signature here. He hasn’t signed it.”
“A detail. To be added later.”
Paxton turned a page. “One thousand pounds to the Golden Sunset Donkey Sanctuary, Taunton, Somerset,” he said.
“Milne was very fond of donkeys.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“A generous gesture. It will be much appreciated.”
“You’ve faked this, haven’t you? It’s all a cheat.”
“Nothing of the sort. It’s all perfectly valid. I spent two years in the family law office, you know.” He took the will back. “My mother’s sister, Maud, set up the Golden Sunset Donkey Sanctuary. She does splendid work, but funding is an endless headache… Oh well, if you won’t witness it I shall have to find someone else.”
“You’ll never get away with this.”
“I always have. Toby Chivers, for instance, left five thousand to the Leeds and District Society for Unmarried Mothers. That’s my cousin Harriet’s main interest in life.”
“I think I’ll turn you over to the police.”
“In that case I shan’t tell you about the equipment for the tennis courts that I’ve just got hold of.”
“Ah.” Paxton was quite good at tennis. It would be nice to be squadron tennis champion. “Nets and stuff, eh? We ought to find a nice level bit of grass. “
“I’ve found one. Perfectly level, no slope, but it’s got a few bumps.”
“We need a roller, then.”
“We need a company of infantry. There’s a battalion in camp behind the church who seem very keen on drill. Why don’t you ask some of them to come and march up and down on our tennis court? Take a box of cigars with you.”
“All right.” Paxton looked at Lacey and shared in the warm glow of the Public School Spirit. “Hell’s bells, what the devil, give me your pen,” he said, and witnessed the will. “It can’t be illegal,” he said,”because I’m not actually witnessing anything, am I?”
“You know, it’s time you put your own affairs in order,” Lacey said. “I’ll draft something for you to look at.”
Chapter 18
Before the day was out, all the new aeroplanes were in the air. Everyone liked them. The German air force was up in strength and there was much skirmishing. Cleve-Cutler, three miles over the Lines, came across an elderly Rumpler two-seater that seemed to have lost something, it was wandering about so vaguely. He searched above, and eventually saw a tiny scuff in the sky, so small it could have been wiped away with a flick of a cloth. He left the Rumpler and spiralled up, climbing steeper and faster than the old FE could have managed, until the scuff grew wings, pale-blue and translucent. It was an Albatros. Just above it was another.
They came down to meet him and then seemed to change their minds and parted, one to the left and one to the right. Cleve-Cutler admired these simple tactics. Whichever plane he challenged, he would expose his tail to the other. He turned his back on them both and flew away. They chased for a mile and gave up. He circled, and climbed a little, and watched them watching him. He had plenty of fuel. Far below, through gaps in the cloud, he saw the Allied barrage, a wandering trail of brilliant sparks. It looked quite pretty. Like an expensive Christmas decoration.
At about the same time, ten miles to the north, Ogilvy and Essex found a splendid target.
The two FEs had been patrolling separately when each saw a blob coming out of the east. It grew to be three Aviatiks in arrowhead formation over a fourth machine, which Ogilvy identified through binoculars as a Roland CII. It was on reconnaissance duty. He could see the black box of the camera clamped to the outside of the observer’s cockpit.