LITMIR.BIZ

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was sixty, and sixty trips over Germany, with the average five-per-cent casualty rate, was mathematically three times impossible to survive. Lambert and Sweet had already completed one tour and this was their second. Actuarily they were long since dead.

      Sweet was telling a story when Flight Sergeant Digby came into the room. Digby was a thirty-two-year-old Australian bomb aimer. He was elderly by combat aircrew standards and his balding head and weathered face singled him out from the others. As did his readiness to puncture the dignity of any officer. He listened to Flight Lieutenant Sweet. Sweet was the only officer among the guests.

      ‘A fellow drives into a service station,’ said Sweet. His eyes crinkled into a smile and the others paid attention, for he was good at telling funny stories. Sweet knocked an edge of ash into the remains of his breakfast. ‘The driver had only got coupons for half a gallon. He says, “A good show Monty’s boys are putting on, eh?” “Who?” says the bloke in the service station, very puzzled. “General Montgomery and the Eighth Army.” “What army?” “The Eighth Army. It’s given old Rommel’s Panzers a nasty shock.” “Rommel? Who’s Rommel?” “OK,” says the bloke in the car, putting away his coupons. “Never mind all that crap. Fill her up with petrol and give me two hundred Player’s cigarettes and two bottles of whisky.”’

      It was unfortunate that Sweet had cast the driver as an Australian for Digby was rather sensitive about his accent. Appreciative of the smiles, Sweet repeated the punch line in his normal voice, ‘Fill her up with petrol and give me two hundred cigarettes.’ He laughed and blew a perfect smoke ring.

      ‘That’s a funny accent you’re using now,’ said Digby.

      ‘The King’s English,’ acknowledged Sweet.

      ‘I hope he is,’ said Digby. ‘With a ripe pommy accent like his he’d have a terrible time back where I come from.’

      Sweet smiled. Under the special circumstances of being fellow guests in Cohen’s father’s house he had to put up with a familiarity that he would never tolerate on the Squadron.

      ‘It’s just a matter of education,’ said Sweet, referring as much to Digby’s behaviour as to his accent.

      ‘That’s right,’ agreed Digby, sitting down opposite him. Digby’s tie had trapped one point of his collar so that it stood up under his jawline. ‘Seriously, though, I really admire the way you fellows speak. You can all make Daily Routine Orders sound like Shakespeare. Now, you must have been to a good school, Flight Lieutenant Sweet. Is that an Eton tie you’re wearing?’

      Sweet smiled and fingered his black Air Force tie. ‘Harrods actually.’

      ‘Jesus,’ said Digby in mock amazement. ‘I didn’t know you’d studied at Harrods, sport. What did you take, modern lingerie?’

      Sweet saw Digby’s attitude as a challenge to his charm. He gave him a very warm smile, he was confident that he could make the man like him. Everyone knew that Digby’s record as bomb aimer was second to none.

      Young Sergeant Cohen played the anxious host, constantly going to the sideboard for more coffee and pressing all his guests to second helpings of pancakes and honey.

      Sergeant Battersby was the last down to breakfast. He was a tall boy of eighteen with frizzy yellow hair, thin arms and legs and a very pale complexion. His eyes scanned the room apologetically and his soft full mouth quivered as he decided not to say how sorry he was to be late. He had less reason than anyone to be delayed. His chin seldom needed shaving and most mornings he merely surveyed it to be sure that the pimples of adolescence had finally gone. They had. His frizzy hair paid little heed to combing and his boots and buttons were always done the night before.

      Batters was the only member of Lambert’s crew who was younger and less experienced than Cohen. And Batters was the only member of Lambert’s crew who would have contemplated flying under another captain. Not that he believed that there was any other captain anywhere in the RAF who could compare with Lambert, but Battersby was his flight engineer. An engineer was a pilot’s technical adviser and assistant. He helped operate the controls on take-offs and landings; he had to keep a constant watch on the fuel, oil, and coolant systems, especially the fuel changeovers. As well as this he was expected to know every nut and bolt of the aeroplane and be prepared ‘to carry out practicable emergency repairs during flight’ of anything from a hydraulic gun turret to a camera and from the bombsight to the oxygen system. It was a terrifying responsibility for a shy eighteen-year-old.

      Until recently Lambert had flown fifteen bombing raids with an engineer named Micky Murphy, who now flew as part of Flight Lieutenant Sweet’s crew. Some people said that Sweet should never have taken the ox-like Irishman away from Lambert after so many trips together. One of the ground-crew sergeants said it was unlucky, some of Sweet’s fellow officers said it was bad manners, and Digby said it was part of Sweet’s plan to arse-crawl his way to become Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

      Each day Batters hung round the ground crew of his aeroplane watching and asking endless questions in his thin high voice. While this added to his knowledge, it did nothing for his popularity. He watched Lambert all the time and hoped for nothing more than the curt word of praise that came after each flight. Batters was an untypical flight engineer. Most of them were more like Micky Murphy, practical men with calloused hands and an instinct for mechanical malfunction. They came from factories and garages, they were apprentices or lathe operators or young clerks with their own motorcycle that they could reassemble blindfold. Battersby would never have their instinct. He’d been a secondary-school boy with one afternoon a week in the metalwork class. Of course Batters could run rings round most of the Squadron’s engineers at written exams and luckily the RAF set high store by paperwork. His father taught physics and chemistry at a school in Lancashire.

      I marked your last physics paper while on fire-watching. The headmaster was on duty with me. He’d given the sixth form the same sample paper but he told me that yours was undoubtedly the best. This, I need hardly say, made your father rather proud of you. I am confident however that this will not tempt you to slacken your efforts. Always remember that after the war you will be competing for your place at university with fellows who have been wise enough to contribute to the war in a manner that furthers their academic qualifications.

      This week’s sample entrance paper should prove a simple matter. Perhaps I should warn you that the second part of question four does not refer solely to sodium. It requires an answer in depth and its apparent simplicity is intended solely to trap the unwary.

      Mrs Cohen came into the breakfast room from the kitchen just as Battersby was helping himself to one pancake and a drip of honey. She was a thin white-haired woman who smiled easily. She pushed half a dozen more upon his plate. Battersby had that sort of effect upon mothers. She asked in quiet careful English if anyone else would like more pancakes. In her hand there was a tall pile of fresh ones.

      ‘They’re delicious, Mrs Cohen,’ said Ruth Lambert. ‘Did you make them?’

      ‘It’s a Viennese recipe, Ruth. I shall write it for you.’ They all looked towards Mrs Cohen and she cast her eyes down nervously. They reminded her of the clear-eyed young storm-troopers she had seen smashing the shopfronts in Munich. She had always thought of the British as a pale, pimply, stunted race, with bad teeth and ugly faces, but these airmen too were British. Her Simon was indistinguishable from them. They laughed nervously at the same jokes no matter how often repeated. They spoke too quickly for her, and had their own vocabulary. Emmy Cohen was a little afraid of these handsome boys who set fire to the towns she’d known when a girl. She wondered what went on in their cold hearts, and wondered if her son belonged to them now, more than he did to her.

      Mrs Cohen looked at Lambert’s wife. Her WAAF corporal’s uniform was too severe to suit her but she looked trim and businesslike. At Warley Fen she was in charge of the inflatable rafts that bombers carried in case they were forced down into the sea. Nineteen, twenty at the most. Her wrists and ankles still with a trace of schoolgirl plumpness. She was clever, thought Mrs Cohen, for without saying much she was a part of their banter and games. They all envied Lambert his beautiful, childlike wife, and yet to conceal their envy

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