‘What’s wrong with your bus? You got down all right.’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I left it there because there’s an empty petrol tin in the weeds we can set the tail up on.’ The tin was there: a faint and rusting gleam in the dying end of day. ‘Because it’s over, isn’t it? That’s what they want with that hun general of course. Though why they had to do it this way, when all somebody needed was just to hold out a white sheet or tablecloth; they must have a tablecloth at Pop and surely jerry’s got one at his headquarters that he took away from a Frenchwoman; and somebody owes something for that poor bloodstained taxi-driver he——Which was not like the book either: he did it backward; first he should have unpinned the iron cross from his own coat and hung it on the other one and then shot him——’
‘You fool,’ Bridesman said. ‘You bloody fool.’
‘All right. This will only take a moment.’
‘Let it be,’ Bridesman said. ‘Just let it be.’
‘I just want to see,’ he said. ‘Then I shall. It wont take but a moment.’
‘Will you let it be then? Will you promise?’
‘Of course. What else can I do? I just want to see’—and set the empty petrol tin in position and lifted the S.E.’s tail and swung it around onto the tin and it was just right: in a little better than flying angle: almost in a flat shallow glide, the nose coming down just right; and Bridesman really saying No now.
‘I’ll be damned if I will.’
‘Then I’ll have to get …’ he hesitated: a second: then rapidly, cunningly: ‘… Monaghan. He’ll do it. Especially if I can overtake the van or the staff-car or whichever it is, and borrow the jerry general’s hat. Or maybe just the monocle will be enough——no: just the pistol to hold in my hand.’
‘Take your own word for it,’ Bridesman said. ‘You were there. You saw what they shot at us, and what we were shooting at that two-seater. You were right on him for five or six seconds once. I watched your tracer rake him from the engine right on back through the monocle.’
‘So were you,’ he said. ‘Get in.’
‘Why dont you just let it be?’
‘I have. Long ago. Get in.’
‘Do you call this letting be?’
‘It’s like a cracked record on the gramophone, isn’t it?’
‘Chock the wheels,’ Bridesman said. He found two chocks for the wheels and steadied the fuselage while Bridesman got into the cockpit. Then he went around to face the nose and it was all right; he could see the slant of the cowl and the Aldis slanting a little since he was taller than most, a little high still. But then he could raise himself on his toes and he intended to put his arms over his face anyway in case there was something left of whatever it was they had loaded the cartridges with last night by the time it had travelled twenty feet, though he never had actually seen any of them strike, bounce off the two-seater, and he had been right on top of it for the five or six seconds Bridesman had talked about. And the airscrew was already in open position so the constantinesco would be working or not working or whatever it was doing when it let bullets pass. So all he had to do was line up the tube of the Aldis on Bridesman’s head behind the wind screen, except that Bridesman was leaning out around the screen, talking again: ‘You promised.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘It will be all right then.’
‘You’re too close,’ Bridesman said. ‘It’s still tracer. It can still burn you.’
‘Yes,’ he said, backing away, still facing the little black port out of which the gun shot, ‘I wondered how they did that. I thought tracer was the bullet itself burning up. However did they make tracer without a bullet in it? do you know? I mean, what are they? bread pellets maybe? No, bread would have burned up in the breech. Maybe they are wood pellets dipped in phosphorus. Which is a little amusing, isn’t it? our hangar last night locked tight as .… with an armed guard walking back and forth in the dark and the cold outside and inside somebody, maybe Collyer; a chess player ought to be good with a knife, whittling sounds philosophical too and they say chess is a philosopher’s game, or maybe it was a mechanic who will be a corporal tomorrow or a corporal who will be a sergeant tomorrow even if it is over because they can give a corporal another stripe even on the way home or at least before he is demobbed. Or maybe they’ll even still keep the Air Force since a lot of people came into it out of the cradle before they had time to learn to do anything else but fly, and even in peace these ones will still have to eat at least now and then——’ still backing away because Bridesman was still waving him back, still keeping the Aldis aligned; ‘—out here three years, and nothing, then one night he sits in a locked hangar with a pen knife and a lap-full of wooden blocks and does what Ball nor McCudden nor Mannock nor Bishop nor none of them ever did: brought down a whole German general: and get the barnacle at Buckingham palace his next leave—except that there wont be any, there’s nothing now to be on leave from, and even if there was, what decoration will they give for that, Bridesman?—All right,’ he said, ‘all right, I’ll cover my face too——’
Except that he wouldn’t really need to now; the line of fire was already slanting into the ground, and this much further away it would cross well down his chest. And so he took one last sight on the Aldis for alignment and bowed his head a little and crossed both arms before his face and said, ‘All right.’ Then the chattering rattle, the dusky rose winking in miniature in the watch-crystal on his lifted wrist and the hard light stinging (They were pellets of some sort; if he had been three feet from the muzzle instead of about thirty, they would have killed him as quickly as actual bullets would have. And even as it was, he had leaned into the burst, not to keep from being beaten back but to keep from being knocked down: during which—the falling backward—the angle, pattern, would have walked up his chest and he would probably have taken the last of the burst in his face before Bridesman could have stopped it.) bitter
‘Get it off!’ Bridesman was shouting. ‘You cant put it out! Get the sidcott off, damn it!’ Then Bridesman was wrenching at the overall too, ripping it down as he kicked out of the flying boots and then out of the overall and the slow invisible smoldering stink. ‘Are you satisfied now?’ Bridesman said. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ he said. ‘It’s all right now.—Why did he have to shoot his pilot?’
‘Here,’ Bridesman said, ‘get it away from the bus——’ catching up the overall by one leg as though to fling it away until he caught hold of it.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get my pistol out. If I dont, they’ll charge me with it!’ He took the pistol from the sidcott’s knee pocket and dropped it into his tunic pocket.
