B for Buster (10 page)

Bert sighed. “You
could,
sir. Yes, you could. But you might be sorry, sir.” He tossed his pigeon. “You might find everything changed if you did. All your 'opes and all your dreams. You might be sorry all your life.”

“As if you would know,” I said.

“You're quite right, sir.”

The last pigeon to fly was Percy. Bert took the little bird from his shoulder and held it like a treasure, as though somehow he could hurt a pigeon by letting it fall. He turned a full circle, looking all around. It was such a clear and perfect night that we could see the hills for miles around. “Any 'awks about?” he asked.

“Awks?” I said.

“No, sir. 'Awks, not awks.”

Hawks,
he meant, poor Bert. “Not that I should worry, sir,” he said. “Percy would give them a run for their money. Fastest pigeon I've ever seen, sir. Seventy miles an hour, maybe more, and nothing ever stops 'im, sir.”

He lifted Percy to his lips. They kissed each other, and old Bert grinned. He held out his hands, ready to fling the bird up. Then he stopped. “Would you like to toss 'im yourself, sir?”

I didn't see how one pigeon could be any different than the others, but Percy clearly meant a lot to Bert. So I took the bird, closed it in my hands, and felt its tiny heart thumping against my palm.

“Give 'im a good, clean toss, sir.”

I bent forward, holding Percy at my waist. Then I straightened, lifting my arms, and opened my hands above my head. “Fly home!” I shouted.

Out came Percy. His tail spread wide, and his wings stretched open. They
whirred,
so quickly and so strongly that I felt his propwash as he leapt from my fingers. He shot straight up, then banked to the right. He turned only half a circle, and off he went toward the loft, into that white sea of stars. In a moment he was gone.

“Look at 'im go,” said Bert in a whisper. He moaned to himself, then dabbed at his cheek with his big sausage-sized fingers. He took hold of the trolley and turned it around. Then he looked up the hill. “'Ome,” he said. “'E's already 'ome, sir.”

We took a longer route back, climbing slowly up a flatter hill. At its top, silhouetted against the sky, stood the wreck of a Halifax. I gawked at the ragged bits of metal, the double tail rising up like a strange, twisted cross. I said, “Let's go and look inside.”

“No, sir,” said Bert.

He kept walking, but I dashed ahead to see the wreck. I went right to the nose, over a pile of shattered Perspex. I squinted in the faint light to see what was painted there, on the fuselage. It was a white knight, warped by the twisted metal. In his armor, with his lance, he was riding a bomb instead of a horse; his visor was open, and his face was a skull.

“When did this old crate go down?” I shouted.

Bert didn't answer, if he even heard me. He trudged past with his trolley, and I ran to catch up. I said, “When—”

“Months ago now, sir.”

I could imagine the horror in that aircraft, in the split second after the ground came into view. I imagined the bomb aimer holding up his arms to protect himself. I imagined the glass shattering, the metal crushing as everything folded up toward him in a fraction of a second.

“Did you know the fellows?” I asked.

“I did, sir.” Bert's trolley wheels rumbled on the path; I wasn't even pretending to pull. “The Captain's still inside.”

“The pilot?”

“The pigeon, sir. Captain Flint. Solid gray from end to end.”

The wreck unnerved me, but fascinated me, so I kept looking back at the grim silhouette. It didn't seem fair that a crew could die just a couple of miles from home, smashing into the ground in safe little Yorkshire. Were they laughing when they hit? Were they celebrating another op that was minutes from being over?

“Damn you!” shouted Bert.

I tried to force myself to turn away from the ruined kite; I really didn't want to see it anymore. I didn't want to know that a fellow could die at any time, not only over Germany. But I kept glancing at the twisted metal, and I wondered how long that thing would stay there. Would it stand forever on that Yorkshire hill?

We towed the trolley back to the loft. Bert dropped the handle to race inside, anxious to count his birds. He lit a lantern and shone it around. Out of the shadows, Percy came fluttering to meet us, landing first on Bert's shoulder, and then rising again to settle on mine.

“Well, well,” said Bert, laughing. “Look at that. 'E likes you, sir.”

To me the pigeons on the floor were just a swarming mass of gray and green. But Bert watched them—his finger pecking as he counted—and then announced, “Yes, sir. They've all come 'ome.”

From the highest perch, the lonely pigeon was watching. She had pulled out some of her tail feathers; they lay now on the floor beneath her. The rest were huddled close together, the way the sergeants filled the mess. They were making sounds I hadn't heard before, a doleful sort of crooning.

“Do you 'ear them, sir? They're singing, sir,” said Bert.

“Pigeons don't sing,” I said.

“Oh, they do, sir. When they come 'ome, they sing. It always sounds sad like this. I think they're singing, in their own sort of way, ‘ 'Ere's to the next to die.'”

I was sure he was pulling my leg, and I grinned at him foolishly.

“No, it's true, sir,” he said with a solemn nod. “They always know when their number's up.”

CHAPTER 11

I MISSED THE OP to the Merry Men by only a few minutes. I dithered for a while, wondering if I should go or not, then took a bicycle from the tangle beside the Nissen hut. It was bent and broken, like all the others, with twisted handlebars and warped wheels. But I climbed aboard and went flat out down the lonely roads.

At the edge of the village I heard the others up ahead. Their bicycles squeaked like a swarm of rats, and they laughed and shouted as they pedaled along. In the starlight I could see that Lofty had his helmet on, the goggles over his eyes. His long legs were splayed sideways to keep his knees from hitting the handlebars, and he had to sit bolt upright, like a squire on a horse. The old guy rode behind him, and a little bit to the side, in the same position he would take in
Buster.
But Ratty and Buzz and the rest zoomed and circled like Spitfires, and now and then there was a shouted “Corkscrew!” followed by a clattery collision.

I gathered speed and bounced them from behind. I hurtled between Simon and Buzz, and just as I came up to Lofty, I spat out sounds like machine guns. He lifted from his seat, veered wildly to the right, and pranged into a thornbush. Pop, the good wingman, nearly followed him in. Then I was past, cackling away, and they were shouting behind me, “Who was that? What moron was that?”

They were angry at first, until they saw it was me. Then they said they weren't surprised at all, and we all untangled Lofty and carried on together.

We didn't park our crates at the Merry Men; we
piled
them. We tossed them down at the door and headed into what I thought would be a place full of girls and jitterbugging crowds. But the pub was dank and dreary, with a low ceiling and a clag of pipe smoke that lowered visibility to half the length of the room. The only people there, apart from the publican, were a few old farmers and sheepherders, all bundled into one dark corner. They moved only to lift their pints or to mutter at each other through shaggy mustaches sodden with beer. The way they glowered, they must have thought of us as a murder of crows, squawking and unwelcome. After an hour I had had enough, and I went outside to wait for the others.

The sky was clouding over, the village dark and quiet. I stood for another hour or so, and then one lamp came on, in a window high in the vicarage. It was a round window and a yellow light, and I was so used to the blackouts that I was amazed just to see it.

A second hour passed. Only Will emerged, bleary-eyed, disheveled, and drunk. He stood on tottering legs and relieved himself against the wall. Then he turned around and looked up. “Gosh, look at the moon,” he said. “It's full; it's beautiful, isn't it?”

I didn't tell him it was only the vicar's window.

“Hail, Master,” he said, and held up his hands like a pagan praying. He staggered sideways. “Hail, Master,” he said again. Then, “Come on, Kak.”

I felt silly, but I raised my hands, and looked up toward the window.

“We are your servants, O Master Moon,” said Will in his poetical Shakespeare voice. “We do your bidding; we set our lives by you. We are your minions.”

I liked that. Even if it was only a window, I liked it. I was a minion of the moon.

“O, Master,” said Will. “In your shadow we take to the air; in your brightness we keep the ground.” He stretched his hands even higher, as though he hoped to touch it. “Watch over us on this and every night. For you decide if we live or die.”

Then he laughed. He dropped his hands and staggered again, as though he had knocked himself over. “What are you doing out here, Kak?” he asked.

“I don't like beer,” I said. “I don't like smoke.”

“I thought you didn't like
us,
” he said. “You're always by yourself, Kakky. You don't join in enough.”

Well, he was only drunk, and you couldn't believe anything a drunk might say. A drunk could tell you, “Son, I'm proud of you,” then turn around and belt you one across the chops.

“Come back inside,” said Will.

“I can't,” I said. “I have to feed the baby birds.”

He coughed and belched. “Well, hang on a sec. We'll all be leaving soon.”

He went back inside, and I waited again. But the only person who came out through the door was one of the farmers. I heard the airmen laughing, a crash of glass; then the door swung shut and the farmer shook his head. “Bloody Canadians,” he said to me. “Why don't you just go home?”

“I sort of wish I could,” I said.

But he didn't care. He went plodding down the narrow street, muttering to himself. I didn't wait any longer at the Merry Men. I took a bicycle from the heap and pedaled down the dark road, squeaking through the night.

Halfway to the airfield, a car's headlights flashed around a corner and came racing toward me. They were faint and yellowish, narrowed to slits by their wartime hoods—like a pair of tin cans stuck to the car. But the car came on at breakneck speed. I moved over to the ditch and watched the Morris hurtle along, Donny's black bus with its new crew aboard. The driver—the burly navigator from
J for Jam
—drove it madly, with the gears screaming and the passengers screaming, too, as they clung to the windshield and the boot and the running boards. It shot past, and I saw the glimmer of the little white animals that Donny had painted on the port-side door. I didn't feel sad for him then. I actually smiled to think that he'd be happy to see his car being driven like that, just as he had driven it himself.

I pulled my bike onto the road, and didn't stop again. I went through the gate and along the runway, down to the pigeon loft. Then I lit the lantern and huddled by myself, squeezing drops of milk into the throats of little birds that couldn't even stand by themselves.

The mother still sat on the high perch by the trap. She had shorn her tail of almost all its feathers, but hadn't moved from her waiting place. All around me the other pigeons slept, and cooed, and I felt calmed by the sound, by the warmth. Only Percy was awake. He'd come bounding from the darkness in such a frightening rush that I had almost beaten him away before I'd realized who it was. Now he lounged on my shoulder, nuzzling at my ear, and I gave him a drink from the dropper.

I talked to him, in the darkness. I told him that I was terrified of flying, but that I still hoped to get used to it. I told him, “I do love to fly. It's great, you know.” Then I laughed. “Of course you do; you're a bird. Isn't it swell to go flying?” He rubbed his head against my neck and made a musical little murmur. “I just wish I wasn't so frightened,” I said. “But I don't know how not to be.”

Percy had no answer. How could he? He was just a bird, and I suddenly felt ridiculous telling my worries to a pigeon. I put the dropper back in its place and found a spot among the feed bags where it wasn't too dirty to sit. Percy came down from my shoulder and nestled in my hands. I lay back to hold him for a moment, to think everything out in the bird-mutter sound of the loft. But I fell asleep, and dreamed again of falling.

It was just as real and as frightening as the last time. I plummeted through the sky, spinning end over end. Then I started to run in the air, and tumbled instead. I saw the stars go by, blurring with the fiery ground. When Bert shook me awake and I opened my eyes, I was looking up through the trap, and I
saw
the sky and the stars and thought my dream was real. I was sure that I was falling, that any moment I would smash into the ground.

“Sir!” shouted Bert. But I struggled and kicked; I started to scream.

“Sir, it's all right!” shouted Bert.

He pressed me down into the feed bags. He held me still and said, “Shush, shush, now,” and the dream faded away. I looked around the loft, at all the birds with their eyes shining in the light of Bert's lantern. He put his hand on my forehead.

“What were you dreaming?” he asked.

I shook my head; I didn't want to tell him.

“Well, you're safe, sir,” he said. “You're on solid ground now, sir.” He stamped at the floor to show me how solid it was, though he sent the pigeons scrambling. “You see, sir? It's over now.”

He knew that I'd dreamed myself above the ground. I didn't know how, but he did.

“You did a fine job with the babies, sir,” he said. “They'll be fit as fiddles soon enough.”

He bustled around in his filthy coveralls, shoving bunches of straw into nesting boxes. Percy was gone from my hands, and I couldn't see him. But the lonely pigeon hadn't moved.

“You've got a friend now, sir,” said Bert. “You've got a little guardian angel, like.”

He pointed above my head, and I twisted round to look. Percy stood there, balanced on a bucket rim.

“It was Percy that woke me up,” said Bert. “All 'is flapping and 'is squawking; it gave me a turn, sir. I thought there was a—F-O-X, sir,” he said, spelling the word. “Then I came running, and I saw you in a blue fit. It was like you wasn't breathing, sir.”

“But where were you?” I asked.

“In my room, sir.” He pointed backward with his thumb. “Just behind the loft 'ere.”

“Well, thank you,” I said.

“Thank Percy, sir.”

I held my hand up, and Percy hopped onto my knuckles. He seemed to weigh nothing at all, as though he was just a balloon covered in feathers. I brought him down to my chest, and he tickled my lips with his beak.

“You'll never have a finer friend than Percy,” said Bert. “You know 'e 'as the eye-sign, sir?”

“Does he?” I said. I didn't know what the eye-sign was, but I thought I should sound impressed.

Bert brought the lantern and crouched beside us. “Just look at 'is eyes there, sir. See 'ow they shine? See 'ow 'e's got a 'alo inside 'im, sir?”

The light from the lantern flashed across Percy's face. “Look close, sir.”

I had never peered into a pigeon's eyes, or into the eyes of any bird. But Percy turned his head aside, as though to give me a better look, and I saw a beautiful walnut-colored ball with a black pupil gaping in the middle. And all around the black was a pinwheel of gold, bright as sparks. It
was
just like a halo.

“That's the eye-sign, sir,” whispered Bert.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“Oh, 'ardly, sir. That's the mark of a great pigeon. A truly great pigeon, sir.” He raised the lantern higher, and it lit his own face as well, in a glow that made him look saintly. “A bird with the eye-sign will find its way 'ome no matter what. Nothing can ever stop it.”

The light glistened on Percy's feathers; it filled his eye with liquid gold.

“Percy's father was bred for racing. His grandpa, too, and don't he take after them both?” said Bert. “A thousand miles would be
nothing
to 'im. Rain or snow, 'e wouldn't mind. There's not a single thing in 'eaven or earth that would ever keep Percy from coming 'ome.”

“Does he ever fly in the kites?” I asked.

“No, sir.” Bert pulled the lantern back and put it down, and the shadows drew around him. “I can't risk losing 'im, sir. Not on ops. Percy's a breeder, sir.”

“But he's got no mate,” I said.

“I'm waiting for the proper girl to come along,” said Bert. “For a girl with the eye-sign, see?” His voice fell to a whisper. “I'm thinking maybe it's going to be one of those babies, sir.”

“Really?”

He nodded. Then he touched his nose. “But mum's the word, sir.”

I got up from the feed bags and brushed at my clothes. There were pigeon droppings round my ankles and my heels, and I felt disgusted at first to see them. But then I smiled at the thought that I was perhaps becoming a little bit like Bert. It made me think of someone stripping off Batman's cape and finding underneath not Bruce Wayne, the millionaire, but just a lowly servant.

The sky grew light as I worked with Bert. He told me stories of the pigeons, and of their parents and their grandparents, tales the breeders had passed along. He made me look at Gilbert, and told me how an ancestor of that chubby little bird had saved the lives of a regiment in the Great War. “The men were pinned down,” he said. “The Germans were shelling them 'ard. They sent a pigeon, but it got shot down. They sent another, and lost that one, too. Then they 'ad just one left, and it was '
is
granddad, sir. It was Gibby's grandpa.”

I listened, leaning forward.

“They tossed 'im, sir. And up 'e went, spiraling over the trenches. There were shells exploding, bullets flying. One of them winged the bird, and 'e fell and splattered in the mud. But up 'e got, and off 'e went again, dodging through the bullets, sir. 'E'omed in seventeen minutes, and the British aimed their guns and knocked out the German artillery. It saved them all, sir. It saved the regiment.”

“Jeepers,” I said.

Bert rambled on about other birds in other lofts. He knew dozens of stories that sounded like wild adventures but were absolutely true. Pigeons had brought help to airmen forced down in Europe, to kites ditched in the Channel, and to others lost on the moors. He told me of one bird who had flown fifty ops when his bomber was forced down nearly four hundred miles from the airfield. The bird went for help. “And 'e 'omed in eight and a 'alf 'ours,” said Bert with awe in his voice. “Percy now: 'e would 'ave done it in five and a bit.” And he winked.

I could have listened all day. The pigeons, to me and everyone, had been a bit of a joke all along. It had seemed ridiculous that we went flying in great machines jammed with men and tools, only to rely—in the end— on a bunch of feathers and a bird's brain, on a grown-up egg. I had imagined the scientists, those brainy boffins, laughing at the idea of us carting pigeons everywhere we went. But now I saw the birds differently, and I thought I had found a sort of home in the pungent loft, a sort of eccentric uncle in the mocked-at pigeoneer.