She got another letter from him on Thursday, and on Thursday night the Wing went to Essen. Twenty-six machines took off, one of which hit a tree a mile away and crashed in a great sheet of flame that lit up the whole aerodrome. Twenty-one landed back at Hartley, one put down in Kent, and three failed to return. In the short space of two days the Wing had lost eight machines.
At Group Headquarters the next day Wing Commander Dobbie had a long talk with the Air Commodore. Dobbie was looking drawn and tired; he had flown all night in L for London with Sergeant Pilot Hogg, but instead of sleeping he had come to Group to talk about his casualties. “There’s no reason to make any change,” he said. “It’s just the luck of the game—two months ago we did six ops right off and never lost a machine. We’ve just had bad luck on these two. There was nothing in last night’s show that was at all unusual.”
The Air Commodore nodded. “I think that’s right. Charwick lost nobody at all last night. Wittington lost one. How are your crews taking it?”
The Wing Commander made a slight grimace. “Not quite so good,” he said. “They’re all so young.… I was going to ask if you could rest us for a week, and let me get them up on the top line before the next one.”
“I’ll try.”
“Another thing, sir. I’ve got very few old stagers with me now. Johnson and Davy, Marshall and Lines, Nutter … really, you can count them on one hand. I wish you’d remember that in the drafting. It makes a big difference.”
“I know it does. I’ll see what I can do.” There was a pause. “You’ve got an E.N.S.A. concert to-morrow night, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir. That’ll help—if it’s a good one.”
“It’s quite a good show,” said Air Commodore Baxter. “I saw it the night before last at Wittington. I laughed a lot.”
Dobbie thought for a moment. “I shan’t do anything tonight,” he said. “It’s too soon. They’ll have the E.N.S.A. show to-morrow, and then on Sunday I’ll give them a surprise and we’ll have a dance. Can you square the Padre to let us have a dance on Sunday, sir.”
“I’ll fix him.”
“A surprise dance always goes down well,” said Dobbie. He paused for a minute, thoughtful. “It makes a lot of difference having all these W.A.A.F.s upon the station, when the crews are a bit down,” he said. “They recover much quicker.”
“I know. They talk it over with the girls and get it off their minds.”
Dobbie went back to Hartley, worked in his office for an hour, and then went back to his house for lunch, and to spend the afternoon in sleep. He was on the telephone at tea time mustering all his ground officers with a summons to dine in the mess that night, and to Flight Officer Stevens inviting the W.A.A.F. officers. He made similar arrangements for the sergeants’ mess; by six o’clock he was playing billiards in the lounge himself with Flight Lieutenant Davy and a couple of moody pilot officers.
Section Officer Robertson came in while he was playing, and stood watching the game for a minute. Dobbie ordered her a gin and Italian. “I wanted to see you,” he said. “This concert to-morrow night. What was the name of that tractor chap that we said we’d invite?”
“Ellison, sir.”
“I remember. And there was the farmer, too—Jack Barton. I want to ask them both to come and dine in the mess tomorrow night before the concert. Can you get hold of them?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Pity Marshall isn’t here,” said Dobbie. “He knows them both.”
Gervase said: “Flight Lieutenant Marshall will be back to-morrow night.” Immediately she wished she hadn’t said that.
“His leave isn’t up till Monday,” said the Wing Commander. He glanced at her, and a slow smile spread over his face. “Okay,” he said. “If he’s going to be here he can help entertain them.”
Everybody dined together in the mess that night, brightly cheerful, and afterwards they played snooker and darts and shove-halfpenny and poker and bridge. They made a great deal of noise and everybody very nearly had a marvellous time, and only two or three young men went creeping quietly to their rooms because they couldn’t bear it any longer.
Marshall arrived back in time for tea next day, to find the Wing Commander taking tea in the ante-room; at times like that Mrs. Dobbie saw little of her husband. Dobbie noticed him with satisfaction; he wanted all the old stagers on the station for the next few days to steady the young men. He said: “You’re back early.”
“The trains aren’t very good on Sunday,” said the pilot lamely. He had not expected to meet Dobbie before Monday. “Besides, I wanted to be here for the E.N.S.A. concert.”
There was a brazen quality about that statement that won Dobbie’s respect; a man who could say that he had come back early from his leave to listen to an E.N.S.A. concert was a man to be reckoned with. “Look,” he said quietly, “do what you can to make the party go to-night. I dare say you’ve heard about our luck.”
Marshall nodded. “I heard. You’re having the W.A.A.F.s in for dinner again?”
The Wing Commander nodded. “I asked your pal Ellison and Jack Barton. I’ll have Barton at the end table with me. You take Ellison down among the boys and get one or two of the W.A.A.F.s to help you whoop it up a bit.”
“Okay,” said Marshall.
“We’ll see if we can get Jack Barton to stage a rabbit hunt, or something, one afternoon next week,” said Dobbie. He went off to meet the E.N.S.A. party, who were fixing up their stage in the canteen, and to prime them with local jokes.
Marshall met Gervase in the lounge before dinner. He reintroduced her to Mr. Ellison, and they collected Section Officer Ford, and Pat Johnson, and a dry little man in civilian clothes who was something to do with the E.N.S.A. party and whom they discovered later in the evening, to their cost, to be the chief comedian. They dined at the far end of the room from Winco and managed to drag into their party most of the table, driving back the shadows for a while. Three pilot officers, newly arrived that afternoon from operational training, quietly enquired about the two flight lieutenants, and were impressed to hear that one of them had fifty-four operations to his credit and the other fifty-five. Their first impression was that Hartley was a place where pilots lived long and had fun.
They moved on to the concert, Gervase sitting close by Marshall, with Ellison on her other side. There was a trick cyclist, and a lady with a piano-accordian, and a burlesque or two. And then their dinner guest came on and in long, rambling monologue told them about a flight lieutenant at a station he was visiting last week who went out fishing—“very fond of fishing, he was, and all his crew”—and caught an awful, ugly fish—“fair give you the cold shivers to look at that fish”—and brought it back upon his handle-bars. He spun it out for a good ten minutes and had the hall in fits of laughter all the time, which seemed to Marshall to be in poor taste. But after that a middle-aged young woman came on and sang about a nightingale in Berkeley Square, a song that both Gervase and Marshall admired very much. They contrived to rub knees while she was singing it without anybody noticing.
As they were leaving the hall in the crowd after the show they managed to exchange a few words in the privacy of the unheeding crowd. “All right for to-morrow?” Marshall said.
She nodded. “What time?”
“Shall we meet out there?”
“No, let’s ride out together. It doesn’t matter.” His heart warmed to her. “Half-past ten, outside Headquarters.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get Mollie to cut some sandwiches.”
Marshall lay awake in bed for some time that night, reading The Fisherman’s Vade Mecum, and thinking about Gervase. He had achieved a good deal of purely theoretical knowledge of wet fly fishing by intensive study during the week, though not so much as might have been the case if his mind had not been occupied with his young woman.
It was sunny and bright next morning; they met outside Headquarters with their bicycles and rode out of the camp together. They reached Kingslake an hour
later, rode up to the front door and rang the bell. Gervase said: “Is Mrs. Carter-Hayes at home. We’ve come about the fishing.”
The maid said: “Mrs. Carter-Hayes is in her room, madam. But that will be quite all right.” She took them through the hall and opened the gun-room and left them to it.
Gervase and Marshall spent the next half-hour poking about among the fishing tackle. They found one cast already made up with three flies, and made up another with March Brown, Peter Ross, and Butcher. They found lines and wound them on the reels; presently they left the house and went down to the lake carrying rods, tackle, and a landing-net.
They fished for an hour; occasionally their flies were in the water, more often in a tree or bush. Even the unsophisticated trout in the little private lake shrank back from the resounding splash that their lines made in falling on the water; by lunch-time they were looking at each other ruefully. “Let’s have a sandwich and look at the book,” said Marshall.
“It’s difficult,” said Gervase. “It was like this when I used to try before.”
The pilot said: “It must be good fun when you can do it, though.”
They began to eat their sandwiches, sitting very close together by the lake and reading the same part of the book. “Well, that’s just what I’ve been doing,” said Gervase. Sitting as she was, sandwich in her left hand, she picked up the rod with her right, with a rod length of line hanging down. “It says you come back smartly, pause to let the line straighten out behind, and then cast forward.”
She suited the action to her words idly, sitting as she was. The line, carried by a puff of wind from behind, went forward and fell lightly on the water; they watched it ruefully. “Why can’t it do that when I’m trying properly?” she said.
There was a sudden boil at the tail fly, a pluck, and a little scream from the reel. She dropped her sandwich and grasped the butt of the rod with both hands; the little rod was bent like a bow and the taut line was still running from the reel. She said: “Oh, Peter!”
He scrambled to his feet urgently. “You’ve got a fish,” he said. “Keep the butt upright—that’s what it says in the book.”
She laughed, excited and triumphant. “You and your book! I know what to do now—I’ve seen my uncle doing it.”
She let the fish run, reeled him in a little, and let him run again. The rod that she was using was very light; it took her ten minutes to wear him out. Finally she drew him to the bank exhausted; he made one more run when he saw the net, then Marshall slipped the net under him and they got him on shore. He was a nice big trout, about a pound and a quarter.
They killed him with a smart blow, and knelt down together to examine what they had got. The full lines of the fish, the red spots, and the golden belly pleased them tremendously; it was the first fish Gervase had ever caught, and she was very excited about it. They left their sandwiches and began fishing in earnest.
In the course of the afternoon Gervase caught another and Marshall caught three; they discovered the benefit of wind in carrying the line out gently. Even so, they would not have done so well but for the fact that the little lake had not been fished for two years; the trout were unsophisticated and took anything that came their way. Instead of catching five they might well have gone home with fifteen, but that their interest in the trout was short-lived in comparison with their interest in each other. They sat together for a long time on the grass at the head of the lake, talking, and eating their sandwiches, and holding hands, and admiring their little row of fish laid out neatly in the shade.
In the evening, their sandwiches long finished, hunger drove them back to camp. “We’ll bring out some more food next time,” said Gervase. They walked up to the house and put their rods and tackle carefully away in the gun-room. They left a message of thanks with the old maid, put their fish into their bicycle-baskets, and rode back to camp.
Exultation over their catch quite swamped their ordinary discretion. They rode in past the guard together, and went together into the mess, carrying a bicycle-basket full of fish. They went to Mollie in the kitchen and got a dish and laid the fish out on it. The W.A.A.F. kitchen-maids came crowding around Gervase. “My, ma’am, aren’t they lovely! Did Mr. Marshall catch them?”
“Miss Robertson caught two,” said Marshall.
“You caught them, ma’am?” said Mollie. “Fancy that!”
They had a little discussion over when they should have them and how they should be cooked, then, bursting with pride, they carried them into the dining-room and put them on the table to admire. For the first time, in the kitchen, they heard that there was to be a dance that night.
They found Pat Johnson and Lines in the lounge. Marshall said: “Come and see our fish.”
“Not another like the last one, laddie?”
Lines said: “What do you mean, our fish?”
“I caught two,” said Gervase. “He got three.”
The two flight lieutenants followed them into the dining-room, and two or three young pilot officers followed. “They’re quite nice-looking fish,” said Mr. Johnson in surprise. “You’re coming on, laddie.” He turned and bowed to Gervase. “And lassie.”
One of the pilot officers said: “Where did you get them, sir?”
Marshall grinned. “I’m not letting that one out.”
“Last time he went fishing he brought back something that he caught in the main sewer,” said Mr. Johnson. He turned to Gervase. “I suppose he didn’t like to take you fishing there.”
The girl wrinkled up her nose. “I think you’re a pig. If you mean that pike, it was a very nice fish.”
“Nice fish my foot,” said Mr. Johnson. “It made a lot of trouble, that pike did. I’m not sure that we’ve heard the last of it, either.”
A young man behind them, seeing trout for the first time in his life, asked: “What are they?” They became thronged with interested young men; Dobbie, entering the vestibule, saw them pressing into the dining-room, and went in behind to see what was going on. He saw three of his best pilots and one of the W.A.A.F. officers laughing and talking over a plate of fish, surrounded by a crowd of unsure, pimply young men. He pressed forward through the crowd, thankful for the new diversion. “Who got these?” he asked.
Lines said: “Those two got them, sir. They won’t say where.”
Dobbie laughed and said to Marshall: “Be a sport.”
“I’m not a sport,” said Marshall, “and I’m not telling anybody. I’m keeping this fishing for my crew.” He grinned. “Of course if you like to come with us next Op, sir, you might qualify.”
Dobbie said: “Well, damn it, I will.” He scrutinised the fish. “Have you weighed them?”
“Five and a half pounds,” said Marshall. “Miss Robertson got two of them.”
“What did you get them on?”
“Butcher and Peter Ross.”
They talked fishing for a while with the young men round them; then Dobbie went off to the billiard-table to play snooker with whomever he could find. He was pleased, although he knew that he would get no fishing in the way he had suggested. On the next operation he would fly to Germany with some diffident, enthusiastic, and unsafe young man, who would be impressed and honoured at having the Wing Commander in the aircraft with him, and who would be steadied by the experience. He saw no point in flying with a good pilot.
Later that evening he stood with Chesterton in the canteen watching the dance. The atmosphere was noticeably lighter than it had been a few days before; the crews were more spontaneous, there was more healthy noise, more laughter. Chesterton said presently: “See Marshall?”
Dobbie nodded. “They were out all day together, fishing.”
The Squadron Leader said: “And now they’re dancing all night.” He laughed. “More trouble. You’ll have to find another signals officer.”
The Wing Commander said: “I don’t mind about that. He can get every section officer in camp in trouble for all I care. The camp’s a different place with that chap in
it.”
Chapter Eight
Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security.
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’
We have found safety with ail things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour;
Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
RUPERT BROOKE, 1915
Gunnar Franck did not get many letters, and the ones he got were seldom from old ladies. He had great difficulty in deciphering the words of the letter that he found waiting for him when he returned from leave, and more difficulty still with the meaning. It read:
Kingslake Hall,
Oxon.
Mrs. Carter-Hayes presents her compliments to Sergeant Pilot Franck and would be pleased if he would care to use her lake for fishing. Miss Robertson can make the arrangements.
He turned it over and over, his big red face wrinkled in perplexity. He understood that it was about fishing, and that was all he did understand. He took it to Sergeant Phillips to interpret, only to find that the rear-gunner had received one just like it.
“I dunno,” said Phillips. He scratched his head. “The only Miss Robertson I know of is that Section Officer of the Cap’s. Do you know any other?”