B for Buster (23 page)

“One more minute?” I asked. “Is that okay?”

“Sure, Kid,” said Lofty.

CHAPTER 25

I PATTED PERCY'S HEAD. I rubbed his cheeks, his throat, the little holes for his ears. He leaned against my hand with all his tiny weight.

“Goodbye,” I told him. “So long, Percy.”

“Take 'im out, sir,” said Bert. “Give 'im a proper goodbye.”

I unfastened the door, and Percy hopped out. He rose straight to my shoulder; he nudged at my ear.

Across the Square and down the street, Big Ben tolled another hour. I knew I had to go, but I wished I could have a few minutes more with Percy. I wanted to tell him how much he had helped me, and how scared I was to go on without him. But I was too embarrassed to tell him that with everyone standing around.

I gave him one more tickle, one more squeeze. Then I slid my hand across my shoulder, and he jumped up to my knuckles. “You'd better hold on to him,” I told Bert.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

We put our hands together, and I felt the little prickles of Percy's claws as he walked across my fingers onto Bert's huge fist. I wanted to remember the feeling of that.

“I'll put 'im back in 'is box, sir. Soon as you leave,” said Bert. “ 'E'll 'ave to live in there for a while, of course. Until 'e forgets that 'e can fly 'ome and see you, sir.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Oh, not too long, sir. A fortnight maybe.”

I nearly sobbed. Percy had always been the bird with the greatest freedom, and it wasn't right that he would have to live two weeks inside a box. Two weeks without flying, without walking around in the sun. Hundreds and hundreds of birds around him; it would be almost torture for my little friend.

We all said so long to Percy. Simon told him, “Take care, Cobber.” Buzz petted the bird, and it was the first time he had ever touched a pigeon. He ran his fingers down the double stripes on Percy's wing. “Look after yourself, little corporal,” he said.

I couldn't move away. I wanted to stroke Percy for the last time, and then again once more. I felt a thickness in my throat, and tears coming to my eyes.

“Oh, this isn't right, sir,” said Bert. “I think you'd better keep 'im.”

“He's your pet,” I said.

“Yes, but 'e's a flyer, sir. Percy doesn't belong 'ere, begging bits of bread from people.”

“What about Fletcher-Dodge?”

“Blast him,” said Bert. “You're right. Any stray pigeons will find themselves eaten.” He sighed again. “Oh, sir, 'e shouldn't stay 'ere and 'e can't go 'ome. I don't know what to do.”

I could see that on his face. It sort of pulsed and twitched as all his undecided thoughts went running through his mind. Little Percy peered up at him, head tilted, eye-sign gleaming.

“We really have to go,” said Lofty.

Buzz put his hand on my arm. “Come on, Kak. He'll be all right, the little corporal.”

“Too bad he's not a sergeant, eh?” said Ratty. “'Cause then he could live in the sergeants' mess.”

A warmness came over me. I looked up to see that Bert was smiling. His eyes were almost as bright as Percy's. He nodded his head, and I nodded mine. “We'll promote him,” I said. “Hello, Sergeant Percy.”

There was a bit of silence before everyone talked at once. They said it was a good idea, or at least one worth trying. Simon said it was “cunning as a dunny rat.” The sergeants' mess was just about the only place where Fletcher-Dodge wasn't
allowed
to go.

Bert held out his hand, and Percy hopped from him to me. “Go now, sir. Please go, and 'urry 'ome.”

I put Percy in my jacket, and we climbed aboard the Morris. Lofty ran his hands across the instrument panel. “Switch to ground,” he said. “Landing gear locked.” The motor coughed and started; it whined as Lofty ran it up.

“See you soon, sir,” shouted Bert.

I touched my cap. I saluted the pigeoneer. Then I pulled my goggles down, and Lofty went off with a squeal of tires.

We drove across the Square, scattering pigeons left and right. We bounced down the curb and shot across the street. We looped the loop through Piccadilly Circus.

It was light enough to see the buildings, the towers and domes, the bronze lions in the Square. Old Bert was standing up on one, waving both his arms. I waved back, and then he disappeared behind me.

We took the same route home, out through Hampstead Heath and along the country roads. Then the city was behind us, and the sun was coming up.

From Leicester up to Leeds, we stopped at every bakery we passed. The cook dashed in and bought a chicken pie—or two if he could get them—from the money that we pooled, and the boot filled up as we rattled north. Then we sped through Yorkshire, and it was like flying through clouds, and we arrived back at the airfield before anyone was stirring.

Fletcher-Dodge held a big party for the officers, to celebrate the Lancs. He served his pigeon pies, and I would have given my lost ray gun to see how he gloated over the table that was covered with them all. But sergeants weren't invited. We heard from Simon and Will how he had called it a “wizard show,” a “splendid scoff.” Will laughed as he told us what an adjutant had said.

“He took a bite,” said Will, “this fellow did. He chewed it carefully. Then the CO asked him what he thought, and the adjutant said, ‘It tastes rather like chicken, sir.'”

Buzz giggled. “What happened then?”

“The CO was furious,” said Will. “He turned red as beets, and sent the fellow packing. He said pigeon pie was wasted on a guy like that.”

Percy took up lodgings in the mess. He got his own little paybook and a place at the bar, a wooden swing that he loved to stand on as people pushed. The harder they pushed, the more he liked it, and he would soar in great arcs, singing his little song.

CHAPTER 26

BERT CAME SLOUCHING INTO the loft the next day as I was feeding the few remaining birds. His hangdog look barely brightened when he saw how few there were. “Nobody even missed me, sir,” he said.

“I did,” I told him, and he smiled then. He put on his coveralls and went to work.

Over the next few days the pigeons slowly disappeared. Bert went down to the train station every morning and every evening with another basket tagged for a breeder somewhere. He expected to be sent away at any moment, and each time I went up for a training trip in the Lancaster, I was afraid that he would be gone when I landed.

By the time we made our first op in the Lancs, on the thirtieth of August, there was only one left. Or there was only one in the loft, while little Sergeant Percy was swinging in the mess.

I carried him in my jacket, out to the Morris, into the kite. Simon had fixed him up with a tiny oxygen mask made from the rubber tip of a medicine dropper. Percy didn't really need it, but I fastened it on at nine thousand feet, and Simon came back to have a look. He grinned at me, and I grinned at him, and Percy just looked foolish. The oxygen made him lively, and he hopped around as far as his little hose would reach.

We flew to Happy Valley, to a city with a name as long as the Ruhr—München-Gladbach. Will said it sounded like a pretty place, full of castles and bridges and churches. “Yeah, well, not after tonight,” said Ratty. “It'll just be full of rubble then.”

He was angry that we had missed out on Berlin. More than seven hundred bombers had raided the Holy City on the twenty-third of August as we were stooging around Yorkshire in an empty Lanc. It didn't matter to him that it had been the worst night of the war for Bomber Command. Fifty-six of our kites had got the chop. But Ratty had seethed in the mess the next morning when we heard on the wireless how badly the place had been plastered. “I missed it,” he'd said. “I wanted to see Berlin.”

Even now, as we flew on toward Germany, he asked if we could make a detour to look at the ruins.

“I don't feel much like sightseeing,” said Lofty.

It was the night of the new moon, and the sky was clear. Stars shone down through the astrodome. I looked up at the Milky Way, imagining myself in outer space, glorying in the strength and speed of the Lancaster. All the way across the sea and on to Happy Valley, Percy explored the space around me. He stood staring through the astrodome, with his eye-sign gleaming in the starlight. Then he rose to my shoulder and pecked at my lips, and I knew that I had nothing to fear. I didn't think that any of us worried with Percy to keep us safe. “He'll always get us home,” we'd said.

Fletcher-Dodge came along, so it was bound to be an easy show. We followed the markers that the Pathfinders dropped, along a ribbon of green on the ground, and the city was orange and red from the flames. Not one of our kites was lost; not one was even scratched. We came home laughing, and in the mess, someone marked Percy's paybook so he would get his two dollars and twenty-five cents for the op.

Ratty said it was silly for a pigeon to be saving money. “No lie,” he said. “We should take him down to the Merry Men and let him blow it on a binge.”

“He doesn't drink,” I said.

“He can have a sandwich, can't he?”

“I say, that's topping,” said Lofty in his whine. “We'll take the Morris out tomorrow night. Kak, are you in for that?”

I could hardly believe I was the first one he asked. I grinned and said, “Sure, I'll go.” I was going to say “That's wizard!”—but I was afraid of sounding silly.

I went to bed as dawn was breaking, and I felt happy—safe and happy. The last thing I expected was to have my spinning dream again, but I saw the burning land below and felt the coldness of the sky, and I woke kicking at my blankets.

I lay there, staring up, waiting for the dream to fade. Then I rolled on my side and looked at all the sleeping sergeants in their mounds of sheets, and suddenly saw the beds again as rows of graves, the wrapped bodies only waiting for their burials. Nearly every bed already slept a dead man as well as the still-living fellow. I shared mine with one, and the thought of that chilled me more than the air in my spinning dream. What if he came back, I wondered, on one chill, gray dawn, and reclaimed his bed, crawling in beside me?

Once the idea was in my mind, I couldn't get it out. I lay with my eyes wide open, certain that a ghostly hand would fling back my sheets, that an icy body would slide in next to mine. I thought I saw a shadow passing through the door, an airman still in boots and leather jacket; I thought I heard his buckles jangle.

You'll see a lot of them, sir.
Bert had told me that, one of the first times I had talked to him.
There, but not really
there.

I knew I couldn't sleep anymore. I got up and got dressed, and went down to the pigeon loft. I still wasn't used to going near it without setting off a rush of birds, and the silence that night seemed particularly lonely. The door creaked when I pushed it. In the darkness I found the lantern, and I hurried to fill the loft with its light.

I looked in every nesting box, along every roost, in every corner. But the last pigeon was gone.

“Bert!” I shouted.

I ran around the back, into the pigeoneer's little room. It was as empty as the loft. Bert's cot was set up on the floor, his blankets folded at its foot. In the middle of the canvas was a penciled note. “I couldn't bear to say goodbye.”

I slumped to the floor, my elbows on the cot, my head in my hands. For a long time I sat there, thinking and remembering. Then I went back to the mess—I was the only one there—and stood at the bar, pushing Percy on his swing. I looked in his eyes, at the little twinkling stars round the black of his pupils. As always, it comforted me to be with him. The fear that my dream had brought back, the jitters that were gathering in my stomach, left me then as I talked to Percy.

I stayed with him until breakfast. I even slept for a couple of hours in a chair beside the bar. When I joined Lofty and the others they were already at the table, already planning Percy's night on the town. But the trip to the Merry Men had been scrubbed, and a different op was in the works. Lofty wanted to take the whole day and drive north into Scotland. “I hear they wear great clunking shoes up there,” he said. “Sounds interesting.”

It was the sort of plan that everyone fell in with right away. But the speaker clicked, and the WAAF said, “Good morning, gentlemen.” She said, “You are on for tonight.”

“Well, that's that,” said Lofty. His smile disappeared; his wrinkles deepened. He took out his pipe and started whistling through it.

“Hey, we might not be on,” said Ratty.

“We're always on,” said Lofty.

I looked at my breakfast and didn't feel like eating. I said, “I'm sorry, I—”

“Forget it, Kid,” said Lofty.

“But it's my fault,” I said. “And I—”

“Forget it!” he snapped.

Ratty was looking at me. “What do you mean, it's your fault?”

“You know,” I said.

He frowned. Then he shook his head, and I was amazed that Lofty hadn't told them everything. I wondered what he
had
told them to explain why we were always on. If I had been him, I would have made sure they all knew. I would have told them, “It's because of Kakabeka. It's because the Kid was afraid to fly.”

Pop understood; I could tell from the way he looked at me that the old guy figured everything out right then. But poor stupid Buzz would never catch on. “I thought it was because we were so good at it,” he said. “I thought we were one of the crackerjack crews.”

“Wheezy jeezy,” said Ratty.

I looked around at them all. I said, “I was afraid to fly.” “Who isn't?” asked Buzz.

“But I tried to get out,” I said. “I went to the CO. I begged him, nearly. That's why we're always on.”

“No lie?” asked Ratty.

“No,” I said.

They didn't laugh at me. Nobody mocked my fears. Maybe they thought it had all worked out for the best, that we got Percy because I was afraid, and now— because we had Percy—we were safe. But nobody talked about it. We just stared at our plates for a while, then got up to leave.

I followed the others around the tables, out toward the door. I heard the sprogs talking loudly, and I saw the worried looks on the faces of the others. And then I heard a familiar voice, and turned my head toward the last table.

There, at his old place, with his old crew, sat Donny Lee.

“Hey, Kid!” he said. His face was as white as the china plates. His hand, too, was white—and thin—and he held it up and rolled it slowly through the air, waving me toward him. “Come join us,” he said.

I didn't look twice, afraid that he was really there, that I wasn't only seeing things. I hurried from the hut, but I could still hear the laughter of his dead friends, and his voice shouting after me, “Come join us, Kak.”