time during the rest of that day for Michael to dwell on Andrew's death. He flew both sorties with the depleted squadron, and although the knowledge that the German circus was in the sector worked on all their nerves, the patrols were completely uneventful. They saw not a single enemy machine.
When they landed for the last time in the dusk, Michael took a bottle of rum down to where Mac and his team of mechanics were working by lantern light on the damaged SE5 as and spent an hour with them, giving them encouragement, for they were all anxious and depressed by the day's losses, particularly the death of Andrew, whom they had all adored and hero-worshipped.
He was a good un. Mac, with black grease to the elbows, looked up from the engine he was working on, and accepted the tin mug of rum that Michael handed him. He was a real good un, the major was. He said it for all of them. Don't often find one like him, you don't. Michael trudged back through the orchard; looking up at the sky through the trees, he could see the stars. It would be flying weather again tomorrow, and he was deadly afraid.
I've lost it, he whispered. My nerve has gone. I am a coward, and my cowardice killed Andrew. That knowledge had been at the back of his mind all that day, but he had suppressed it. Now, when he faced it squarely, it was like a hunter following a wounded leopard into cover.
He knew it was there, but the actual sight of it as they came face to face turned a man's belly to water.
A coward, he said aloud, lashing himself with the word, and he remembered Andrew's smile and the tam o shanter set jauntily on his head.
What cheer, my boy? He could almost hear Andrew's voice, and then he saw him falling down the sky with the burning green scarf around his throat, and Michael's hands began to shake again.
A coward, he repeated, and the pain was too much to bear alone and he hurried to the mess, blinded by his guilt so that he missed his footing and stumbled more than once.
The adjutant and the other pilots, some of them still in flying rig, were waiting for Michael. It was the senior officers duty to begin the wake, that was squadron ritual.
On a table in the centre of the mess were seven bottles of Black Label Johnny Walker whisky, one for each of the missing airmen.
When Michael entered the room, everybody stood, not for him, but as a last respect to the missing men.
All right, gentlemen, Michael said. Let us send them on their way. The most junior officer, briefed by the others in his duties, opened a bottle of whisky. The black labels gave the correct funereal touch. He came to Michael and filled his glass, then moved on to the others, in order of seniority. They held the brimming glasses and waited while the adjutant, his briar still clamped in his teeth, seated himself at the ancient piano in the corner of the mess and began to bang out the opening chords of Chopin's Funeral March. The officers of No.21 Squadron stood to attention and tapped their glasses on table-tops and the bar counter, keeping time with the piano, and one or two of them hummed quietly.
On the bar counter were laid out the personal possessions of the missing pilots. After dinner these would be auctioned off, and the squadron pilots would pay extravagant prices so that a few guineas could be sent to a new widow or a bereaved mother. There were Andrew's golf clubs, which Michael had never seen him use, and the Hardy trout rod, and his grief came back fresh and strong so that he thumped his glass on the counter with such force that whisky slopped over the rim, and the fumes prickled his eyes. Michael wiped them on his sleeve.
The adjutant crashed through the last bar and then stood up and took his glass. Nobody said a word, but they all lifted their own glasses, thought their own thoughts for a second, and then drained them. Immediately the junior officer refilled each tumbler. All seven bottles must be finished, that was part of the tradition. Michael ate no supper, but stood by the bar and helped consume the seven bottles. He was still sober, the liquor seemed to have no effect on him.
I must be an alcoholic at last, he thought. Andrew always said I had great potential. And the liquor did not even deaden the pain that Andrew's name inflicted.
He bid five guineas each for Andrew's golf clubs and the Hardy split-cane rod. By that time the seven bottles were all empty. He ordered another bottle for himself and went alone to his tent. He sat on the cot with the rod in his lap. Andrew had boasted that he had landed a fiftypound salmon with that stick, and Michael had called him a liar.
Oh ye of little faith, Andrew had chided him sorrowfully.
I believed you all along Michael caressed the old rod and drank straight from the bottle.
A little later, Biggs looked in. Congratulations on your victory, sir. Three other pilots had confirmed Michael's shooting down of the pink Albatros.
Biggs, will you do me a favour? Of course, sit Bugger off, there's a good fellow.
There was three-quarters of the bottle of whisky left when Michael, still in his flying clothes, stumbled out to where Andrew's motor-cycle was parked. The ride in the cold night air cleared his head, but left him feeling brittle and fragile as old glass. He parked the motor-cycle behind the barn, and went to wait among the bales of straw.
The hours, marked by the church clock, passed slowly, and with each of them his need for Centaine grew until it was almost too intense to bear. Every half hour he would go to the door of the barn and peer up the dark lane, before returning to the bottle and the nest of blankets.
He sipped the whisky, and in his head those few seconds of battle in which Andrew had died played over and over, like a gramophone record that had been scratched. He tried to shut out the images, but he could not. He was forced to relive, time and again, Andrew's last agony.
Where are you, Centaine? I need you so much now. He longed forher, but she did not come, and again he saw the skyblue Albatros with the black and white chequered wings bank steeply on to the killing line behind Andrew's green aircraft, and yet again he glimpsed Andrew's pale face as he looked back over his shoulder and saw the Spandaus open fire.
Michael covered his eyes and pressed his fingers into the sockets until the pain drove out the images. Centaine, he whispered. Please come to me. The church clock struck three o'clock and the whisky bottle was empty.
She isn't coming. He faced it at last, and as he staggered to the door of the barn and looked up at the night sky, he knew what he had to do to expiate his guilt and grief and shame.
