‘Right,’ he said, rising. But the adjutant came on into the mess, shutting the door behind him; his voice was really kind now:
‘Why dont you let it alone?’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I dont know how to do anything else because I dont know how it can be over if it’s not over nor how it can be not over if it’s over——’
‘Go to your hut,’ the adjutant said. He went out into the darkness, the silence, walking on in the direction of the huts as long as anyone from the mess might still see him, then giving himself another twenty steps for good measure before he turned away toward the hangars, thinking how his trouble was probably very simple, really: he simply had never heard silence before; he had been thirteen, almost fourteen, when the guns began, but perhaps even at fourteen you still could not bear silence: you denied it at once and immediately began to try to do something about it as children of six or ten do: as a last resort, when even noise failed, fleeing into closets, cupboards, corners under beds or pianos, lacking any other closeness and darkness in which to escape it; walking around the corner of the hangar as the challenge came, and saw the crack of light under the hangar doors which were not only closed but pad-locked—a thing never before seen by him or anyone else in this or any squadron, himself standing quite still now with the point of the bayonet about six inches from his stomach.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do I do now?’
But the man didn’t even answer. ‘Corporal of the guard!’ he shouted. ‘Post Number Four!’ Then the corporal appeared.
‘Second Lieutenant Levine,’ he said. ‘My aeroplane’s in this hangar——’
‘Not if you’re General Haig and your sword’s in there,’ the corporal said.
‘Right,’ he said, and turned. And for a moment he even thought of Conventicle, the Flight Sergeant; he had been a soldier long enough by now to have learned that there were few, if any, military situations which the simple cry of ‘Sergeant!’ would not resolve. It was mainly this of course, yet there was a little of something else too: the rapport, not between himself and Conventicle perhaps, but between their two races—the middle-aged bog-complected man out of that race, all of whom he had ever known were named Evans or Morgan except the two or three named Deuteronomy or Tabernacle or Conventicle out of the Old Testament—that morose and musical people who knew dark things by simply breathing, who seemed to be born without dread or concern into knowledge of and rapport with man’s sunless and subterrene origins which had better never have seen light at all, whose own misty and music-ed names no other men could pronounce even, so that when they emerged from their fens and fastnesses into the rational world where men still tried to forget their sombre beginnings, they permitted themselves to be designated by the jealous and awesome nouns out of the old fierce Hebraic annals in which they as no other people seemed at home, as Napoleon in Austria had had his (the child’s) people with their unpronounceable names fetched before him and said ‘Your name is Wolf’ or ‘Hoff’ or ‘Fox’ or ‘Berg’ or ‘Schneider’, according to what they looked like or where they lived or what they did. But he considered this only a moment. There was only one sure source, knowing now that even this one would not be too certain. But nothing else remained: Bridesman’s and Cowrie’s hut (That was one of the dangled prerequisites for being brave enough to get to be a captain: half a hut to yourself. The major had a whole one.), Cowrie looking at him from the pillow as Bridesman sat up in the other cot and lit the candle and told him.
‘Certainly it’s not over. It’s so far from over that you’re going on jobs tomorrow. Does that satisfy you?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But what happened? What is it? An armed sentry stopped me at the hangars thirty minutes ago and turned out the guard and the hangar doors were locked and a light inside and I could hear people doing something, only I couldn’t pass the bayonet and when they drove me away I heard a lorry and saw a torch moving about down at that archie battery this side the village and of course that’s fresh ammo being hurried up since archie quit at noon today too and naturally they’ll need a lot of ammo to quit with too——’
‘If I tell you, will you let be and go to your hut and go to bed?’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s all I ever wanted: just to know. If they’ve beat us, I want to stand my share too——’
‘Beat us be blowed. There’s nobody in this war any longer capable of beating anyone, unless the Americans might in time——’
‘And welcome,’ Cowrie said. But Bridesman was still talking:
‘A French regiment mutinied this morning—refused to go over. When they—the French—began to poke about to learn why, it seems that——But it’s all right.’
‘How all right?’
‘It was only their infantry disaffected. Only troops holding the line. But the other regiments didn’t do anything. The others all seemed to know in advance that the one was going to refuse, but all the others did seem to be just waiting about to see what was going to happen to it. But they—the French—took no chances. They pulled the regiment out and replaced it and moved up guns and put down a heavy barrage all along their front, just like we did this afternoon. To give ourselves time to see what was what. That’s all.’
‘How that’s all?’ he said. Cowrie had put a cigarette into his mouth and, raised onto one elbow, was reaching for the candle when the hand stopped, less than a fraction of a second before it moved on. ‘What was the hun doing all this time?’ He said quietly: ‘So it’s over.’
‘It’s not over,’ Bridesman said harshly. ‘Didn’t you just hear what the major said at noon today?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said serenely. ‘It’s over. All the poor bloody stinking infantry everywhere, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, us … So that’s what they’re hiding.’
‘Hiding?’ Bridesman said. ‘Hiding what? There’s nothing to hide. It’s not over, I tell you. Didn’t you just hear me say we have a job tomorrow?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s not over. How can it be not over then?’
‘Because it isn’t. What do you think we put down that barrage for today—we and the French and the Americans too—the whole front from the Channel in—blasting away a half year’s supply of ammo for except to keep the hun off until we can know what to do?’
‘Know to do what? What are they doing in our hangar tonight?’
‘Nothing!’ Bridesman said.
‘What are they doing in B Flight’s hangar, Bridesman?’ he said. The cigarette pack lay on the packing case which served for a table between the two cots. Bridesman half turned and reached his hand but before he had touched the pack Cowrie, lying back on one arm beneath his head, without looking around extended the cigarette already burning in his own hand. Bridesman took it.
‘Thanks,’ he said. He said: ‘I dont know.’ He said harsh and strong: ‘I dont want to know. All I know is, we have a job tomorrow and you’re on it. If you’ve a good reason for not going, say it and I’ll take someone else.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ someone said.
But it wasn’t tomorrow. There was nothing tomorrow: only dawn and then daylight and then morning. No dawn patrol went out because he would have heard it, being already and long since awake. Nor were there any aeroplanes on the tarmac when he crossed to the mess for breakfast, and nothing on the blackboard where Collyer occasionally saw fit to scrawl things in chalk which no one really ever read, himself sitting long at the cleared table where Bridesman would more or less have to see him sooner or later, provided he wanted to. From here he could see across the aerodrome to the blank and lifeless hangars and watch the two-hourly relief of the pacing guards through the long coma-ed forenoon, the morning reft of all progress beneath the bland sky and the silence.
Then it was noon; he watched the Harry Tate land and taxi up to the office and switch off, and the trench coat get down from the observer’s seat and remove the helmet and goggles and toss them into the cockp
it and draw out the stick and the red and brazen hat. Then all of them at lunch: the general and his pilot and the infantry officer and the whole squadron, the first lunch he could remember from which at least one flight and sometimes two were not absent, the general saying it not quite as well as the major because it took him longer, but saying the same thing:
‘It’s not over. Not that we needed the French. We should simply have drawn back to the Channel ports and let the hun have Paris. It wouldn’t be the first time. ’Change would have got windy, but it wouldn’t have been their first time either. But that’s all past now. We have not only kept the hun fooled, the French have got their backs into it again. Call this a holiday, since like all holidays it will be over soon. And there are some of you I think wont be sorry either’—naming them off because he did keep up with records, knew them all ‘—Thorpe, Osgood, De Marchi, Monaghan—who are doing damned well and will do better because the French have had their lesson now and so next time it will be the long vac. proper because when the guns stop next, it will be on the other side of the Rhine. Plenty of revs, and carry on.’ And no sound, though maybe no one expected any, everyone following outside to where the Harry Tate’s engine was already ticking over and the major helped put the stick and the red hat back into the cockpit and get the helmet out and get it on the general and the general back into the Harry Tate and the major said ‘Shun!’ saluting and the general jerked his thumbed fist upward and the Harry Tate trundled away.
Then afternoon, and nothing either. He still sat in the mess where Bridesman could see or find him if he liked, not waiting now any less than he had been waiting during the forenoon, because he knew now that he had not been waiting then, had not believed it then, not to mention that Bridesman had had to look at him at lunch because he had sat right across the table from him. The whole squadron did in fact: sat or idled about the mess—that is, the new ones, the tyros, the huns like himself—Villeneuve Blanche, even Villeneuve which Collyer called that sink, still out of bounds (which fact—the out of bounds—was probably the first time in all its history that anyone not born there had specifically wanted to go there). He could have gone to his hut too; there was a letter to his mother in it that he had not finished yet, except that now he could not finish it because the cessation of the guns yesterday had not only deleted all meaning from the words but effaced the very foundation of their purpose and aim.
But he went to the hut and got a book out and lay down on his cot with it. Perhaps it was simply to show, prove to, the old flesh, the bones and the meat, that he was not waiting for anything. Or perhaps to teach them to relinquish, abnegate. Or perhaps it was not the bones and meat so much as the nerves, muscles, which had been trained by a government in a serious even though temporary crisis to follow one highly specialised trade, then the government passed the crisis, solved the dilemma needing it, before he had had the chance to repay the cost of the training. Not glory: just to repay the cost. The laurel of glory, provided it was even moderately leafed, had human blood on; that was permissible only when motherland itself was at stake. Peace abolished it, and that man who would choose between glory and peace had best let his voice be small indeed——
But this was not reading; Gaston de la Tour at least deserved to be read by whoever held it open looking at it, even lying down. So he read, peaceful, resigned, no longer thirsting now. Now he even had a future, it would last forever now; all he needed was to find something to do with it, now that the only trade he had been taught—flying armed aircraft in order to shoot down (or try to) other armed aircraft—was now obsolete. It would be dinner time soon, and eating would exhaust, get rid of, a little of it, four, perhaps, counting tea, even five hours out of each twenty-four, if one only remembered to eat slowly enough, then eight off for sleeping or even nine if you remembered to go slowly enough about that too, would leave less than half to have to cope with. Except that he would not go to tea or dinner either today; he had yet almost a quarter-pound of the chocolate his mother had sent last week and whether he preferred chocolate to tea and dinner would not matter. Because they—the new ones, the tyros, the huns—would probably be sent back home tomorrow, and he would return to London if he must without ribbons on his coat, but at least he would not go back with a quarter-pound of chocolate melting in his hand like a boy returning half asleep from a market fair. And anyone capable of spreading eating and sleeping over fourteen hours out of twenty-four, should be able to stretch Gaston de la Tour over what remained of this coma-ed and widowed day, until it met the night: the dark: and the sleep.
Then tomorrow, it had just gone three Pip Emma, he was not only not waiting for anything, it had been twenty-four hours now since he had had to remind himself that he was not waiting for anything, when the orderly room corporal stood suddenly in the door of the hut.
‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’
‘Yes sir,’ the corporal said. ‘A patrol sir. Going up in thirty minutes.’
‘The whole squadron?’
‘Captain Bridesman just said you, sir.’
‘In only thirty minutes?’ he said. ‘Damn it, why couldn’t——Right,’ he said. ‘Thirty minutes. Thanks.’ Because he would have to finish the letter now, and it was not that thirty minutes was not long enough to finish it in, but that they were not long enough to get back into the mood, belief in which the letter had been necessary. Except for signing it and folding it into the envelope, he would not even have needed to get the letter out. Because he remembered it:
… not dangerous at all, really. I knew I could fly before I came out, and I have got to be pretty good on the range and even Captain Bridesman admits now that I’m not a complete menace to life in formation, so maybe when I settle down I might be of some value in the squadron after all
and what else could one add? what else say to a woman who was not only a mother, but an only and half-orphan mother too? which was backward, of course, but anybody would know what he meant; who knew? perhaps one of the anybody could even suggest a postscript: like this say:
P.S. A delightful joke on you: they declared a recess at noon two days ago and if you had only known it, you would not have needed to worry at all from then until three oclock this afternoon; you could have gone out to tea two afternoons with a clear conscience, which I hope you did, and even stayed for dinner too though I do hope you remembered what sherry always does to your complexion
Except that there was not even time for that. He heard engines; looking out, he saw three busses outside now in front of the hangar, the engines running and mechanics about them and the sentry standing again in front of the closed hangar doors. Then he saw a strange staff-car on the grass plot beside the office and he wrote ‘love, David’ at the foot of the letter and folded and licked it into the envelope and in the mess again now he saw the major’s batman cross toward the office carrying an armful of flying kit; apparently Bridesman hadn’t left the office at all, except that a moment later he saw Bridesman coming up from the hangars already dressed for the patrol, so the gear was not his. Then the office door opened and Bridesman came out, saying, ‘All right, get your——’ and stopped, because he already had it: maps, gloves, helmet, scarf, his pistol inside the knee pocket of the sidcott. Then they were outside, walking toward the three aeroplanes in front of B hangar.
‘Just three,’ he said. ‘Who else is going?’
‘The major,’ Bridesman said.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Why did he pick me?’
‘I dont know. Out of a hat, I think. I can wash you out if you dont like it. It wont matter. I think he really picked you out of a hat.’
‘Why should I not like it?’ he said. Then he said, ‘I just thought——’ and then stopped.
‘Thought what?’ Bridesman said.
‘Nothing,’ he said. Then he was telling it, he didn’t know why: ‘I thought that maybe the major found out about it somehow, and when he wanted one of the new blokes on this job, he remembered about me—’ telling it: that morning when he
had been supposed simply to be out practicing, contour chasing probably, and instead had spent that forty or fifty seconds right down on the carpet with the unarmed aeroplane over the hun trenches or at least what he thought was the hun front line: ‘You dont get frightened then; it’s not until later, afterward. And then——It’s like the dentist’s drill, already buzzing before you have even opened your mouth. You’ve got to open your mouth and you know you’re going to all right, only you know at the same time that neither knowing you are going to nor opening it either, is going to help because even after you have closed it again, the thing will buzz at you again and you’ll have to open it again the next moment or tomorrow or maybe it wont be until six months from now, but it will buzz again and you will have to open again because there’s nowhere else you can go …’ He said: ‘Maybe that’s all of it. Maybe when it’s too late and you cant help yourself anymore, you dont really mind getting killed——’
‘I dont know,’ Bridesman said. ‘You didn’t get even one bullet hole?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Maybe I shall this time.’ And this time Bridesman did stop.