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‘Be a good chap, Eric,’ said Sweet. ‘Tell Lambert that I want a word with him. And on second thoughts I think the Bedford had better go back to the MT section straightaway. Can’t be too careful.’
‘I’ll tell the driver,’ said Eric.
‘And apologize to Mrs Lambert. She’ll have to walk. I really am sorry, tell her.’ When the airman left, Sweet closely examined his face in a wall mirror. He wondered why his skin went red and mottled in the sun instead of bronzed and handsome.
‘Take my bike, Ruth,’ said Lambert.
‘I can’t ride a bicycle, Sam. Not in this uniform skirt. I’ll walk.’
‘You’ll be all right?’
‘It’s only a mile. It will do me good.’
‘Mr Sweet would like a word with you, Chiefie,’ said the clerk.
Lambert kissed his wife goodbye. ‘You’ll know where we are going tonight before I shall.’
‘Look after yourself, Sam.’
‘I love you, Ruth. I’ll pop in and see you before we go.’ As he walked back to the Flight office, airmen were forming a line to await the arrival of the NAAFI van with morning tea and cakes. Lambert looked at his watch; it was ten to eleven.
Inside the Flight office, Flight Lieutenant Sweet was finishing a story as Lambert entered. ‘“… stop doing that, Sergeant,” she says, “I hold the King’s commission.”’ The two clerks and Sweet laughed.
He was still smiling as he turned to Lambert. ‘Well, the flap’s on, Sambo. Looks like everyone else around here has stolen a march on us. You’d better get your crew together and get your NFT done as early as possible. Captains and navigators at 3.30 this afternoon, main briefing at 5.0 pm.’
‘Can I change out of best blue into working uniform?’
‘That would mean you all going back to the Sergeants’ Mess, and by the time you shower, shave, shampoo and scrounge some coffee it’ll be lunchtime.’ Sweet smiled knowingly. ‘No, get cracking right away. Borrow parachutes and helmets from Tommy Carter’s bods or Mr Fleming’s crew.’
‘Any buzz on the target?’
‘Even if I did have, I’d not be able to tell the chaps.’ He moved some papers on his desk. ‘Oh, and by the by there’s a bit of a crew reshuffle. From tomorrow, young Cohen will be navigator S Sweet. Digby will be with me too. My chaps – Teddy and Speke – will be coming to you. You’re damned lucky to get them, Sambo, they’re damned good blokes.’
‘Transfer?’ said Lambert in amazement.
‘I know it’s damned rotten for you, Sambo. It’s just the sort of thing we all hate happening when chaps are crewed-up and happy, but Cohen is a raw kid, I’m going to have to nurse him a little.’ Sweet found a packet of cigarettes locked in a desk drawer. He rarely smoked but now was an exception. He offered them; Lambert declined. Sweet exhaled the smoke urgently. ‘Look, I know what you are thinking, Sambo, but this is the last thing I wanted, I can tell you.’ He found a packet of peppermints in the drawer and offered one of those to Lambert but he shook his head.
‘Your navigator stinks, and that bomb aimer Speke is what’s keeping you at the bottom of the photo ladder,’ said Lambert. ‘I don’t want to fly with them. You took Micky Murphy, my engineer, last month, after we’d had fifteen trips together. Isn’t that enough for you?’
‘Ah! So that’s it,’ said Sweet. ‘It’s just because you think it’s a bad swop. Had it been Grimm, that duff wireless operator of yours, you wouldn’t have minded. Well, I don’t run my fights like that, my friend.’
‘Of course I would have minded. Jimmy Grimm is one of my crew. I don’t want any of them shuffled around like nuts and bolts. They rely on me to look after them. All of them.’
Sweet put his cigarette down and came round his desk. He put a consolatory arm around Lambert’s shoulder. ‘Now, now, Sambo, you’re upset. Don’t say something you might regret. I hate unpleasantness, any sort of unpleasantness. You know that.’
Yes, thought Lambert, providing you can get your own way without it.
‘Look, old chap,’ said Sweet. ‘The new arrangement won’t take effect until tomorrow. It’s not my idea, you have my word on that. Some bloody chairborne wonder in the Ops Block. Take it easy. We may all have gone for a Burton by tomorrow, eh?’ Sweet smiled in an effort to cheer Lambert up, but failed to do so.
‘If that’s all, sir, I’ll get started.’
‘Good show, Sambo.’ He squeezed Lambert’s arm affectionately. ‘Look, about this damned business, tomorrow I’ll get the CO in a corner of the Officers’ Mess and threaten that you and me will do a low-level attack on Air Ministry if he doesn’t let you keep your crew intact.’
‘I want to speak to him myself,’ said Lambert.
‘You’ve no idea what a blimp he is. Old buffers like him are a menace to all of us. It’s no good you even asking for an interview, you’ll just have to trust me. If I can’t squeeze it out of the old man when he’s got a couple of nips inside him after dinner, there’s no chance of you doing it in the cold light of dawn in the Squadron office.’ Sweet laughed reflectively, then he asked, ‘You’ve not reconsidered the cricket team? We’re playing Besteridge at the weekend. They’ve got a strong side.’
‘I’m committed next weekend, sir,’ said Lambert.
‘Pity. It might have made all the difference to the old man’s attitude.’
Lambert said nothing. Sweet said, ‘Think it over, Sambo; a couple of cricket victories – especially inter-Command victories – could put you well in with the old man. And with me.’ He smiled to show he was joking. ‘Not that I won’t do all I can for you anyway, you know that.’
There was a knock at the door. It was Flight Sergeant Micky Murphy, the engineer who had recently been transferred from Lambert’s to Sweet’s crew. He was a huge Irishman with a white complexion, a square protruding jaw and a gap-toothed smile that he used between sentences as regularly as he breathed. He glanced at Lambert and smiled.
‘Well,’ said Sweet. ‘Did you find the trouble with the under-carriage?’
‘That we didn’t find,’ said Murphy. ‘We’ve bled her out and she’s as nice as ninepence, but we found no fault unless it was the microswitch playing false.’
‘It wasn’t the switch,’ said Sweet.
‘Did you try the lever a few times?’ asked Murphy.
But Sweet threw the questioning back at his engineer. ‘Are you sure you switched the indicators over to their reserve, Paddy?’
‘First thing I did, sir.’
‘Call me Skipper, for God’s sake, Paddy,’ Sweet insisted. ‘It’s that hydraulic fluid; I told you I wanted only Intava 675.’
‘At this time of year it can make no difference,’ said Murphy. ‘I still think there was nothing wrong. All the undercarts stick sometimes. Lowering the lever a couple of times will often do the trick. No need for the emergency compressed air. It’s a big job once the compressed air is in the system.’
‘I’ll decide when there’s a need to use the compressed air, thank you, Chiefie. How soon will she be ready?’
‘She’s still on the jacks and the boys will be wanting to work the undercarriage a few more times to be on the safe side; it’s a fine test for the whole system. After that we reinflate the emergency air bottle, top up the reservoir, sign the 700 and off we go.’ Flight Sergeant Murphy smiled nervously.
‘For God’s sake stop grinning, Paddy,’ said Sweet. ‘S Sweet has got a date