I thought the engine sounded a bit clattery, and maybe we were leaving a visible blue exhaust trail in the sky. Pickles sighed. ‘I think our ride’s a mite weary. Let’s fuck off, shall we?’
We did a slow circuit low around Kermia, and a man with a trailing mic, outside the control tent, examined us through binoculars. It wasn’t because he didn’t know who we were; it was to examine the airframe to see if he could spot any damage we hadn’t logged yet. I heard his considered reply to the pilot: it was, ‘OK to land, Luna One, but my, haven’t we a dirty arse!’
There had only been one jangly moment on the return, and that was when the engine pop-popped, threw out a trail of black smoke, and cut completely. Pickles had managed to restart it after we had lost a thou, and before he did reassured me.
‘Don’t worry, Charlie. I can glide her in from here.’
In the event I was glad he didn’t have to.
A Land Rover crash tender followed us down the runway. When I stepped down on to the good earth again I thought its crew looked disappointed that their skills hadn’t been called for. When we walked around our little mechanical insect it was impossible to miss the fact that most of her engine oil was spread along the bottom of the nose, and the fuselage. In the army the technical description of that was a dirty arse.
‘What kind of engine did you say it was?’ I asked Pickles.
‘From a Chipmunk. Why?’
‘Apparently it runs without oil. It’s wearing it all on the outside.’
He grinned back.
‘She doesn’t know when she’s beaten.’
I could feel the heat coming from the engine bay from a couple of feet away, and hoped that my firefighting training wasn’t about to come into question. Even so, Wilf stretched out his right hand, and gave her an affectionate pat.
‘Shall we go and find a beer?’ he asked. I wonder what my life would have been like without alcohol.
In their mess tent we swallowed a couple of quick Keos before Wilf’s major, Brede, found us. He signalled up another round, and sat at a long table with us.
‘What did you get, Wilf ?’
‘About ten decent signatures, sir. Charlie will give you the details.’ I’d already been introduced to the guy at briefing, of course. I think he didn’t quite know how to relate to a civvy working for the military: I was neither fish nor fowl.
‘I’ll write my report up later, if that’s OK,’ I said.
Then Wilf said, ‘Suddenly I don’t feel very well,’ in a distant voice, and surprised both of us by collapsing, sprawled across the table.
I think I’d noticed that since we’d climbed down from the crate he’d kept a handkerchief balled up in his left hand. He let go of it as he passed out, and we saw that it was heavily stained with blood . . . and his hand, open and slack on the table, told its own story. There was a bloodstained hole through the palm. It began to bleed again as we watched. Brede called the mess servant back with, ‘Run for the MO, there’s a good chap. Tell him to jildi: Mr Pickles has a bit of bullet trouble.’
A nice khaki-green Austin ambulance came for Wilf a little later. It had MBH Famagusta stencilled on the door, big red crosses and a pretty nurse from Queen Alex’s: a fully paid-up member of the Grey Mafia. Before Wilf was whisked away the mechanic who’d seen us off came in with a buggered-up bullet wrapped in a piece of muslin. He’d found it on the cockpit floor, and now he put it in Pickles’s good hand for luck.
‘I knew a fitter who lost a finger in ’44,’ I told him. ‘A pig bit it off. We buried the finger with full military honours, and ate the pig.’
The engineer looked at me for a few seconds before he replied. He was trying to work out if I was pulling his plonker. Then he said, ‘Changed times, sir. They’d try to sew it back on again today. Ain’t science wonderful?’
I walked out to the ambulance with Wilf. He was on a stretcher because the MO had banged him full of morphine, and if we’d left him on his feet he would have walked in circles.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been hit?’ I asked him as they lifted him into the back of the meat wagon. He gave me back that ghastly drugged grin.
‘Didn’t want to worry you, squire.’ Then his brain kicked in again, and he asked, ‘Was my flying up to scratch? RAF piloting standards?’
‘Better than that. Much,’ I told him. ‘Look, I run a small civvy airline in my spare time. Why don’t you come and ask me for a job when you demob?’
I could see from his eyes that I was losing him to the drug, and the nurse looked impatient anyway. I had to bend to hear what he said next.
‘Knew it . . .’
‘Knew what, Wilf ?’
‘Knew I hadn’t seen the last of you.’ Then he closed his eyes.
The next voice I heard was from slightly above me, and behind my right shoulder.
‘Have I missed something?’ Fiona: she hadn’t forgotten me.
I had Pickles’s bloody handkerchief in my hand. She nodded at it. I dropped it in a waste bucket, where it lay among the beer-bottle caps.
‘Not all that much.’ I probably grimaced. ‘I’ll need to wash before we can get going. Thanks for coming.’ Coming back for me, I meant, but I didn’t get to finish the sentence.
I already told you that after all of the wars we fought around the Middle East the British Army became rather good at finding things to do in olive
