Goshawk Squadron (10 page)

It lasted for ten minutes, until he ran out of thunder-flashes. “Keep going with the empty kegs,” he told the gasping mechanics. “Those buggers won't know the difference, anyway.”

He walked around the end of the butts and watched the performance. The kill-rate was high: three kegs out of five were blasted in midair. The guns had divided themselves into two batteries, left and right. They took alternate kegs, and this extra time allowed them to aim better. One gun was not firing. A man lay stretched out behind it; as Woolley watched, a keg bounced right over him. Woolley made no move until the last keg soared over the butts and was destroyed.

The casualty turned out to be Gabriel. A keg had clipped the side of his head. “As long as it didn't hit anything important,” Woolley said. They all stood around and watched. Gabriel groaned. “Why don't you do something for him?” Woolley asked.

“Why don't you?” Kimberley demanded.

The armorers were unloading the guns and taking them away. “I thought we might all go for a five-mile run after tea,” Woolley said. “That would only leave arms-drill and community hymn singing before bed-time.” Gabriel rolled on to his side and felt his head.

“Here comes the ambulance, sir,” called an armorer.

Woolley turned. It was indeed an ambulance: a field ambulance, boldly red-crossed, lumbering down the track.
A couple of men put their arms around Gabriel and helped him up. Woolley stared at the ambulance, took a couple of paces, stopped and stared again. The ambulance blipped its klaxon. He broke into a run. As it slowed and turned, the woman driver leaned out and waved. She revved the ambulance into a U-turn, and Woolley jumped on to the running-board. She changed up and accelerated away. The men holding Gabriel put him down again.

“In bloody credible,” Lambert said.

“How long for?” Woolley shouted.

“Two days.”

“Bring any Guinness?”

“Case in the back.”

“I love you.” He leaned inside and kissed her. “Do you love me?”

“No.”

“That's right. Killed anyone lately?”

“Three last night. Are you all right?”

“I'm all right.”

“You sounded bad, on the phone that night.”

“Nothing you can't cure.”

Her name was Margery, and she was a nurse. Woolley met her in a Belgian hospital, in the summer of 1916, after he had broken both ankles in a forced landing. Since then she had followed Goshawk Squadron up and down the Line, moving from hospital to hospital. An uncle in the War Office managed the transfers for her. At first she told him that she wanted to be near her cousin Freddy, in the Engineers. Then Freddy got blown up and drowned in a shell crater, and all the time Margery was in a hotel two hundred miles away, putting Woolley to bed, dead drunk after a promotion. That was the first time she heard him mention Mackenzie. He seemed to wake with a cry that was half a snort. “Hah!” he said, and stared at her. “Where's Mackenzie?”

“Go back to sleep.”

He blinked. “I want Mackenzie,” he ordered. “I must have Mackenzie.”

“All right,” she said.

He stared for a few more seconds and let his head fall back. Soon he was asleep. Next day he remembered nothing of it. She asked if there was a Mackenzie in his squadron, but he refused to talk about the war, which suited her.

Conversation between them had been a problem in the hospital where they first met, right up to the night when she pushed his cot into an empty room, locked the door, took off her uniform and climbed in beside him. “I realize we have nothing in common,” she told him then.

“Not true,” he said. “We have our lust for each other and our disgust for everyone else.” They made love, clumsily because of the plaster casts on his legs, while somewhere a patient shouted in delirium. Afterward she walked her fingers up his ribs. “Why is your body so dirty?” she asked.

“I was a miner,” he said. “It got forced in.”

“That's not true. Tell me the truth.”

“Listen, I'll make you a bargain. I'll never tell the truth, if you'll never tell lies.” He was serious.

“All right. Only what good will that do?”

“It'll show us the best side of each other.”

Margery usually talked about her family, which was like Margery herself: ample and affectionate, in a critical sort of way. They expected everyone to do something, and then expected to tell them how it could be done better. They approved of her becoming a nurse and going to France, but they told her she should have done it sooner. “You've left it awfully late,” her father told her in January 1916. Even then, at twenty, she was beginning to look matronly, and of course she had always been good with animals. Everybody else was in France, and she was afraid that if she stayed at home she might fall in love with some disabled veteran and marry him.

The first few months horrified her. Her experience of suffering had been limited to rabbits in traps. Now she spent her days amongst men with holes blown through them, and
every night some died. By the time Woolley arrived in her ward she was turning into a slaughterhouse attendant: she no longer saw them as men but as damaged stock; if they screamed it was not a sign of pain but a signal to fetch a doctor. Blood was part of the job, like spilled paint to a house-painter. She could not help them, so she began to hate them for the waste they brought into the hospital. Everything was waste. Her life was waste. Normally you tried to make things better; here you tried to stop them getting worse. The waste-factory that produced these defective goods roared day and night. It was making a scrap-merchant of her.

Woolley stopped all that.

He came into the hospital with six cases of Guinness, and a shepherd's crook. He had the bottles placed under his bed, and when the ward sister tried to interfere he fended her off with the crook while he produced medical certificates, all signed by Army doctors, stating his need for regular supplies of the stuff. She rejected them. He appealed to her in several languages, including German. She ignored his appeals and began to move the cases. He placed her under arrest. She turned white and rang for a doctor. Woolley placed her under
close
arrest for mutiny. When the doctor arrived Woolley was lying on the floor, apparently semi-conscious. “She hit me with my own stick, Doctor,” he whispered, displaying the scrapes and cuts received in his flying accident. “I was trying to save some of the Guinness for you, but she hit me with my own stick. I—I must have passed out.”

The doctor felt his pulse, then took a bottle from the nearest case and examined it.

“He was ranting and raving at me,” the ward sister said,
“in German.”

Woolley cringed. “Don't let her hit me,” he pleaded. The doctor opened the bottle and sniffed it. “All right, Sister,” he said. When she had gone he helped Woolley to his feet. “You have a bloody nerve,” he said.

“I paid two quid for those certificates,” Woolley said.

“They're all valid, you know. You might as well drink that now you've opened it. You don't want it to go flat.”

“It's the real thing, all right,” the doctor said. He sighed. “All right. Keep the stuff out of sight. And I want a dozen bottles for myself.”

“Leeches,” Woolley said. “Bleeding leeches.”

He was soon the center of scandal and unrest. Anybody with anything juicy to report went to Woolley for an audience and a bottle of stout. He ran a sweepstake, supposedly based on the intake and discharge of patients; actually the winning number was the daily total of deaths in the hospital. He got a key to the blanket store and rented it out to randy nurses and hungry walking-wounded, many of whom he had introduced in the first place. For a sensational week he published a news-sheet which libeled everyone from the governor's wife to the assistant chaplain, including both together. He won a piano accordion at cards and taught himself to play sea-shanties. He circulated two new rumors a day: cholera was sweeping Paris; the Kaiser was in Rome looking for a divorce; the kitchen was putting aphrodisiacs in the gravy; Lloyd George had been charged with rape; Switzerland had invaded Germany. Nurse Jenkins was pregnant. The hospital was about to be moved underground. The Czar was going to visit the wards at 10
AM
next day and everyone would get a medal.

At first Margery hated him for always showing off, and for mocking others who were suffering; above all, for attacking the harsh and humorless atmosphere of her scrap-body factory. But his outrageous irreverence was a relief; eventually she had to admit to herself that she looked forward to hearing what Lieutenant Woolley had done
now.
He lifted some of the curse from that place of death. She went out of her way to pass near him, and he went out of his way to insult her. He disturbed her, because he was not handsome, he was ugly; he was not gallant, he was cynical; he was not worth-while at all, and yet inescapably she was in love with him.

Woolley's tent was hot. He had spread a tarpaulin over the duckboards, and on top of it they dumped blankets from the ambulance. The door was tightly laced and a pressure lamp burned whitely. They sat, naked, and ate the food she had brought. Margery sweated slightly.

“We always do the same thing, don't we?” she said.

“Practice makes perfect,” Woolley said. “Never change a winning team. When in doubt, remove all clothing.”

“It's not really the same thing, I suppose. Every time it's different. But it's always … like this.”

“Why chop and change?” Woolley said. “Look at the dinosaurs. They were happy.”

“Happy,” Margery said. She put down her food and carefully brushed her fingers, staring at the floor. Woolley belched, and stretched. Margery sucked at the inside of her lip. “You know that I want you,” she said steadily, still not looking at him. “And I know that you … need me. What I don't understand is why …” But here she ran dry. Her voice had no more words. She turned to face him and he saw how her skin was shivering, the self-control leaking out of the corners of her eyes, her face breaking up. He put down the bottle and sat on his hands and waited.

“I'll never be any use to anyone else,” she wept. “You're the only one I want to help and you won't let me get near you except … except …” Now the hair was over her eyes, the drops were splashing wetly down her breasts.

He wriggled his toes and saw a flight of aircraft peeling off, beautifully, one by one. “Well, I haven't changed,” he said gently; only it came out curtly.

“I know.” She couldn't find a handkerchief. “Oh
blast blast blast.”
She found it and mopped up. “It's all right for you. You're not fat and you don't spend all day washing bloody bodies.”

“Everybody knows you're the best in the business.” He took her hand.

“I could have married cousin Freddy's best friend Gerald,” she said.

“Tell me about him.” He pulled her on top of him.

“Tell me about yours, first.”

“My cousin Freddy's best friend was Norman,” he said. “He was deported to Liverpool for strangling Lady Mayoresses. Three, he done, in one afternoon.”

“Liar,” she said. “Lovely liar.” They kissed.

That night, in the damp gloom of the mess tent, Goshawk Squadron got good and drunk.

“Pneumonia,” Lambert said, pouring gin. “I ask you: what a way to go.” He sneezed.

“You noticed that he didn't bloody condescend to pull a bloody trigger himself,” Finlayson said. He was wearing red flannel around his neck to ease the pain. “I'd like to see
him
hit one of those bloody kites. Arrogant bastard.”

“Hear, hear,” agreed Church. He was wandering around, standing in front of people and smiling. Occasionally he sneaked off to one side and had a good long suck at a silver flask.

“P-p-p-ower c-c-c-corrupts,” Killion managed.

“I wonder if we have grounds to complain to Corps?” Dangerfield said suddenly.

“Oh, definitely,” Church said. He came over and smiled at Dangerfield.

“Tell you what,” Dickinson said, “I bet you he does it again tomorrow. I'll give five-to-one on.”

“Oh Christ,” said Lambert. He reached for his glass and knocked it over. “Double Christ.” He found the bottle and drank from that.

“It's not impossible,” Gabriel said. “After all—”

“For God's sake take a drink and shut up,” Finlayson told him.

“I second that,” Church said cordially. He went over to Gabriel and smiled.

“You can't dismiss the possibility that the old man might have a plan,” Gabriel said stiffly.

“Major Woolley to you,” Rogers said.

“If you ask me, I think the fellow is certifiably loony,” Dangerfield said. “I think he's finally cracked a cylinder.”

“Bound to happen,” Kimberley said.

“Bound to happen,” Church agreed, nodding.