‘Now then,’ Bridesman said. But he held on.
‘Incinerator,’ he said. ‘We cant leave it lying about here.’
‘All right,’ Bridesman said. ‘Come along.’
‘I’ll put it in the incinerator and meet you at the hut.’
‘Bring it on to the hut and let the batman put it in the incinerator.’
‘It’s like the cracked record again isn’t it?’ he said. Then Bridesman released his leg of the sidcott though he didn’t move yet.
‘Then you’ll come along to the hut.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’ll have to stop at the hangars and tell them to roll me in.—But why did he have to shoot his pilot, Bridesman?’
‘Because he is a German,’ Bridesman said with a sort of calm and raging patience. ‘Germans fight wars by the rule-books. By the book, a German pilot who lands an undamaged German aeroplane containing a German lieutenant general on an enemy aerodrome, is either a traitor or a coward, and he must die for it. That poor bloody bugger probably knew while he was eating his breakfast sausage and beer this morning what was going to happen to him. If the general hadn’t done it here, they would probably shoot the general himself as soon as they got their hands on him again. Now get rid of that thing and come on to the hut.’
‘Right,’ he said. Then Bridesman went on and at first he didn’t dare roll up the overall to carry it. Then he thought what difference could it possibly make now. So he rolled up the overall and picked up his flying boots and went back to the hangars. B’s was open now and they were just rolling in the major’s and Bridesman’s busses; the rule-book wouldn’t let them put the German two-seater under a British shed probably, but on the contrary it would doubtless compel at least six Britons (who, since the infantry were probably all gone now, would be air mechanics unaccustomed both to rifles and having to stop up all night) to pass the night in relays walking with guns around it. ‘I had a stoppage,’ he told the first mechanic. ‘There was a live shell in. Captain Bridesman helped me clear it. You can roll me in now.’
‘Yes sir,’ the mechanic said. He went on, carrying the rolled overall gingerly, around the hangars and on in the dusk toward the incinerator behind the men’s mess, then suddenly he turned sharply again and went to the latrines; it would be pitch dark inside, unless someone was already there with a torch (Collyer had a tin candle-stick; passed going or coming from the latrines, cloistral indeed he would look, tonsured and with his braces knotted about his waist under his open warm). It was dark and the smell of the sidcott was stronger than ever inside. He put the flying boots down and unrolled it but even in the pitch dark there was nothing to see: only the slow thick invisible burning; and he had heard that too: a man in B Flight last year who had got a tracer between the bones of his lower leg and they were still whittling the bone away as the phosphorus rotted it; Thorpe told him that next time they were going to take off the whole leg at the knee to see if that would stop it. Of course the bloke’s mistake was in not putting off until day after tomorrow say, going on that patrol (Or tomorrow, for that matter. Or today, except that Collyer wouldn’t have let him.) only how could he have known that a year ago, when he himself knew one in the squadron who hadn’t discovered it until people shot blank archie at him and couldn’t seem to believe it even then? rolling up the sidcott again and fumbling for a moment in the pitch dark (It wasn’t quite dark after you got used to it. The canvas walls had gathered a little luminousness, as if delayed day would even begin inside them after it was done outdoors.) until he found the boots. Outside, it was not at all night yet; night wouldn’t even begin for two or three hours yet and this time he went straight to Bridesman’s hut, pausing only long enough to lay the rolled sidcott against the wall beside the door. Bridesman was in his shirt sleeves, washing; on the box between his and Cowrie’s beds a bottle of whisky sat between his and Cowrie’s toothmugs. Bridesman dried his hands and without stopping to roll down his sleeves, dumped the two toothbrushes from the mugs and poured whisky into them and passed Cowrie’s mug to him.
‘Down with it,’ Bridesman said. ‘If the whisky’s any good at all, it will burn up whatever germs Cowrie put in it or that you’ll leave.’ They drank. ‘More?’ Bridesman said.
‘No thanks. What will they do with the aeroplanes?’
‘What will what?’ Bridesman said.
‘The aeroplanes. Our busses. I didn’t have time to do anything with mine. But I might have, if I had had time. You know: wash it out. Taxi it into something—another aeroplane standing on the tarmac, yours maybe. Finish it, do for two of them at once, before they can sell them to South America or the Levantine. So nobody in a comic opera general’s suit can lead the squadron’s aeroplanes in some air force that wasn’t even in this at all. Maybe Collyer’ll let me fly mine once more. Then I shall crash it——’
Bridesman was walking steadily toward him with the bottle. ‘Up the mug,’ Bridesman said.
‘No thanks. I suppose you dont know just when we’ll go home.’
‘Will you drink, or wont you?’ Bridesman said. ‘No thanks.’
‘All right,’ Bridesman said. ‘I’ll give you a choice: drink, or shut up—let be—napoo. Which will you have?’
‘Why do you keep on saying let be? Let be what? Of course I know the infantry must go home first—the p.b.i. in the mud for four years, out after two weeks and no reason to be glad or even amazed that you are still alive, because all you came out for is to get your rifle clean and count your iron rations so you can go back in for two weeks, and so no reason to be amazed until it’s over. Of course they must go home first, throw the bloody rifle away forever and maybe after two weeks even get rid of the lice. Then nothing to do forever more but work all day and sit in pubs in the evenings and then go home and sleep in a clean bed with your wife——’
Bridesman held the bottle almost like he was going to strike him with it. ‘Your word’s worth damn all. Up the mug.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. He put the mug back on the box.—‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ve let be.’
‘Then cut along and wash and come to the mess. We’ll get one or two others and go to Madame Milhaud’s to eat.’
‘Collyer told us again this morning none of us were to leave the aerodrome. He probably knows. It’s probably as hard to stop a war as it is to start one. Thanks for the whisky.’ He went out. He could already smell it even before he was outside the hut and he stooped and took up the overall and went to his hut. It was empty of course; there would probably be a celebration, perhaps even a binge in the mess tonight. Nor did he light the lamp: dropping the flying boots and shoving them under his bed with his foot, then he put the rolled sidcott carefully on the floor beside the bed and lay down on it, lying quietly on his back in that spurious semblance of darkness and the time for sleeping which walls held, smelling the slow burning, and still there when he heard Burk cursing something or someone and the door banged back and Burk said,
