Pastoral (35 page)

Marshall flushed. “Yes, sir.”

“What’s it doing here?”

The pilot said: “I’ve been to Oxford on a Service trip, sir. I’m on my way back to the station.” It was no good, he thought; it was a fair cop, if ever there was one.

“Where are you stationed?”

“At Hartley Magna.”

The Air Commodore said: “This isn’t the road from Oxford to Hartley.”

Marshall was silent. He knew that he was six or seven miles
out of his course, and it was clear the Air Commodore knew too.

“Who is that young woman? Is she stationed at Hartley?”

“Yes, sir. She’s my fiancée.”

Air Commodore Baxter fixed him with a cold, grey eye. “If you think you can use Service transport for this sort of thing you’re very much mistaken.” He looked the pilot up and down. “Button up your jacket.”

Marshall began to fumble with the buttons impotently. In the background Gervase scrambled to her feet, straightening out her skirt.

“Do you know who I am?” the Air Commodore demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“Report to me at Group Headquarters, Charwick, tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. What’s your name?”

“Flight Lieutenant Marshall, sir.”

There was a momentary pause.

“Nightingale Marshall?” the Air Commodore demanded.

The pilot hesitated. “Yes, sir.” Gervase slipped up behind him, reached round, and did his buttons up one by one from the top. Marshall said: “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t button things yet.”

“I see.” The Air Commodore thought for a moment, and then turned to Gervase. “What’s your name?”

She said in a small voice: “Section Officer Robertson, sir.”

Baxter stood looking out over the millpool at the chestnut trees in bloom, at the thermos and the paper bags upon the grass. They had picked a pleasant place, he thought. He turned to them again. “Finish your tea and then take that truck back to Hartley,” he said. “You ought to know better. I think you’re a couple of damn fools. If you’d run it in behind those bushes there I’d never have seen it.”

The pilot grinned faintly.

“Come and see me at Group, ten o’clock to-morrow morning, Marshall.”

“Very good, sir.”

The Air Commodore turned and walked back to his car, and got in, and drove off. Gervase and Peter stood and watched it go, the pilot white and shaken. “First time I’ve ever had a thing like that happen to me,” he said.

Gervase said, “He won’t do anything, Peter. It made a difference when you told him who you were.”

“I’m not so sure,” the pilot said gloomily. They turned and
walked back over the short grass to their tea. “Conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman, and conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentlewoman,” he said.

“It was pretty unbecoming,” said Gervase. “I had to stop behind and do my tie, or I’d have come with you. I never knew that people did such silly things when they were in love.”

He laughed and took her arm. She glanced up at him. “Anyway, Peter,” she said, “your hands are much better …”

They sat on for an hour beside the stream and finished all their food, and then, still hungry, they took the truck and Gervase drove it back on to the road. They were only three miles from the station by the lanes, but the direct road from Oxford to the aerodrome passed by the “Black Horse” in Hartley Magna, so a halt at the “Black Horse” was clearly permissible upon a Service journey from Oxford to the station. It only made a detour of ten miles or so to get back on the Oxford Road, and they drew up in the market-place at about half-past seven.

At the bar Marshall asked Nellie to ask Mrs. Simpson if he could have a word with her, and when the fat landlady came he asked her to take a glass of sherry with them, because they had got engaged. And while all that was going on he asked if she could do them bacon and eggs because Gervase was feeling a little faint, and presently they were sitting down to quite a comprehensive supper in the back parlour.

On their way out they looked into the lounge bar, and Proctor was there, and Pat Johnson, and Davy. They went in to thank the surgeon for his truck. “It was terribly nice of you to let us have it,” said Gervase. “It got us into a most frightful row, but that’s not your fault.”

“Another row?”

They nodded and told him. “That makes two in two days,” said Marshall.

Davy said: “And if you stay here to-morrow it’ll be three in three days, old boy.”

Proctor said: “I told you what happens when you get engaged. It’s just row after row.”

Gervase said thoughtfully: “Ma Stevens told me the same thing. But it’s all right—we’re going off on leave to-morrow.”

Marshall said. “I’d like to use the truck again to-morrow morning, if I may. I’ve got to go to Group to get my raspberry before going off on leave.”

They drove back to the station in the truck and parked it in
the transport yard. In the close privacy of the little cab they said good night in suitable manner; then they got out and went each to their own quarters.

Next morning Gervase drove Marshall over to Group Headquarters at Charwick. She parked the truck outside the Headquarters office; Marshall got out and went into the offices simultaneously with a civilian who arrived in a car labelled Ministry of Aircraft Production. Both deferred to each other at the door of the Secretary’s office; the civilian went in first.

“Air Commodore Baxter?” he enquired.

The W.A.A.F. Flight Officer evidently knew him. “He’s expecting you, sir.” She turned to Marshall. “Who is it you want to see?”

The pilot said: “The Air Commodore told me to report to him at ten o’clock. Flight Lieutenant Marshall.”

She said: “Just one minute.” She went through into the inner office, closing the door quietly behind her. In a minute she came out again and said to the civilian: “Would you mind waiting for a few minutes, sir? The Air Commodore will see this officer; then he’s free for the rest of the morning.”

Marshall went forward into the inner office; the door closed behind him. Air Commodore Baxter was writing at his desk. He laid down his pen and looked up at the young man standing on the carpet in the middle of the room.

“Morning,” he said. “First, about that truck. I’m not going to have Service transport used for personal excursions, and you chaps may as well understand that right away. There’s been a good deal of slackness about that recently, and it’s got to stop. The Battle of the Atlantic isn’t fought to bring oil to this country so that you can use it to go courting. I’m sending a reminder out to all commanding officers to-day. I hope I shan’t have to make an example. Understand?”

Marshall said: “Yes, sir.”

“All right. Now about yourself. Wing Commander Dobbie tells me that you’ve done twenty-eight operations of your second tour of duty, and that you’re going off on sick leave. I understand you’ll have to go before a Board before you fly again.”

“That’s what the medical officer told me, sir.”

“That may take some time. Do you want to do a third tour in bombers?”

“Not very much. I’d like to be transferred to Coastal if I could. I was in Coastal before.”

“All right. Any particular preference in Coastal? I don’t promise that you’ll get what you want, you know.”

“I’d like to be on Liberators, sir. And I’d like to be in Scotland or the north somewhere. I don’t want to go overseas much.” He hesitated. “I’m just getting married.”

“So I observed.” The Air Commodore made a pencilled note upon his pad. “Do you want to finish off your tour in bombers—two more operations?”

Marshall looked up in surprise. “Not specially. I’ve done fifty-eight.”

“Wing Commander Dobbie tells me that your crew will have to be re-formed. It’s hardly worth coming back to form up a new crew for only two operations, and then break it up again. You can go to Coastal right away, as soon as you are through your Board, if you like. You’ll have three months ground duty before operations, of course, after this tour.”

“I’d like to do that, sir.”

“All right, Marshall. Anything you want to see me about?”

“I don’t think so.”

Air Commodore Baxter got up from his desk. “How are your hands now?”

“Oh, they’re getting better. I can move them a bit more each day.”

“I’m sorry we’re going to lose you. That was a good show you put up the other night. I’m having it marked up on your record.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The Air Commodore moved forward and held out his hand. “Good-bye, Marshall. Best of luck in Coastal. We shall miss you here.”

The pilot came out through the door. I got up from the chair where I had been sitting with my brief-case on my knee, subconsciously uneasy that I might lose the beastly thing. The secretary said: “The Air Commodore will see you now, sir.”

I went through into the inner office. Air Commodore Baxter was standing by the window looking out; he turned as I came in.

“Very good of you to come down,” he said. “You’ve brought the drawings with you?”

“I’ve brought the installation drawings,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d want the manufacturing details, and they’re rather
a responsibility to have about the place. The first three equipments should be here to-morrow.”

I put my brief-case down upon the table, and unlocked it, and unfolded my white prints and sheets of typescript. When I looked up again he had moved back to the window, presenting his back to me as he studied something outside.

I hesitated, then moved up the room to see what he was looking at. All I saw was a little Service truck, and the young pilot who had come out of the room before me standing by it, talking eagerly to a W.A.A.F. Section Officer in the sunlight. There was nothing else but that.

Baxter turned from the window. “The very stuff of England,” he said quietly.

I smiled. “Those two?”

He nodded.

I was intrigued. “Is there anything particular about them?” I enquired.

“Nothing particular,” he said. “Just an average good pilot, marrying one of the girls from his station. He did quite well the other night. I’m putting him in for a D.F.C.”

I glanced back at the couple by the truck. “I’d like to hear about that,” I said.

The Air Commodore picked up one of my white prints. “Is this the bit that sticks down under the rear fuselage?” And then he glanced back at the window. “Remind me, and I’ll tell you about that chap some time,” he said.

We turned to the drawings.