Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ brought one back,’ replied Digby loudly. ‘Says it didn’t bloody work.’

      Everyone smiled at the joke they had heard so many times. The line moved forward again and the two girls pushed the harnesses and packs across the counter with a mechanical indifference interrupted only when they saw some crewman they knew. Then there would be an exchange of smiles and a hurried ‘Good luck’.

      From the other room Ruth came and stood in the doorway watching her husband as he took his parachute.

      At the door there was another holdup: two of the lorries were late. Some of the boys went outside and watched the last glimmer of daylight. It was cold and some of them took a drink from their vacuum flasks or bit into the chocolate ration. Almost every crew had a mascot of some sort and teddy bears and rag dolls were cradled in their arms or stuffed into their webbing harness and silk stockings were worn as scarfs.

      A muffled cheer went up as the missing lorries arrived. ‘B Flight here,’ called the WAAF driver. There was a sudden flurry of activity as some of the flyers punched each other playfully and vaulted up into the lorry. Lambert looked back and gave Ruth a brief thumbs-up sign. She nodded. He only just had time to climb aboard as the lorry lurched forward. The tailboard rattled loudly. The girl driver followed the blue lights that marked the peri track while twenty-eight crew in the back complained loudly about the slow journey and whistled. They bumped over the runway’s edge and went across the black smears of rubber where the bombers’ wheels first touched the runway on landing. The lights of Warley village were visible to the left. ‘Blackout,’ screamed the crews, ‘pull a finger.’ ‘Put that light out.’ There was little chance of their voices carrying all that way to the village even on a still summer’s night but this was their chance to let off steam that had been building up since they had first read their names on the Battle Order that morning.

      The lorry turned off the peri track on to the double pan where two aeroplanes were silhouetted against the dark sky.

      ‘O for Orange and L for Love,’ she shouted.

      ‘Good luck, Skip,’ whispered Micky Murphy.

      ‘Good luck, Micky,’ said Lambert. Lambert’s crew and Carter’s crew tumbled out of the back of the lorry, swearing and complaining as helmets were dropped and harness snagged on the tailboard. They waddled away to the two aircraft, the harness constricting their movements.

      The eighteen-year-old WAAF driver had been a flutter of nerves since she had arrived late at the crewroom and faced a chorus of whistles and complaints. Now she leaned out of the cab and peered into the darkness. ‘Is that Z Zebra?’ she asked Digby.

      ‘Sorry, luv,’ said the uncaring Digby. ‘I’m a stranger here myself.’

      ‘What’s up, miss?’ said Battersby in his squeaky voice.

      ‘It’s the first time I’ve done this job. Is the next aeroplane Z Zebra?’

      ‘After you are back on the peri track again, Zebra – The Volkswagen we call it – is on the left-hand pan. Sugar is on the right-hand one, near the hangar and B Flight office.’

      ‘Thanks a lot,’ said the girl. She hesitated for a moment. ‘And good luck, Sergeant.’

      ‘Ted Battersby; Batters they call me.’

      There was a thunder of stamping from the impatient crews inside the lorry followed by loud whistles.

      ‘Good luck, Batters,’ said the WAAF, blowing him a kiss. She let in the clutch and the lorry jerked forward, throwing its passengers off balance. The girl shouted her name back at Battersby but there was so much noise from the crews that he couldn’t hear it.

      The ground staff of each aeroplane were standing quietly under the wing. One or two of them had special friends among the aircrews and sometimes a conversation would be taken up right from the point at which it had been interrupted.

      ‘Do you ever have trouble with the ears?’ asked Binty as he checked the mid-upper turret.

      ‘No, mine have all been very good so far. But I never let them mix with the other dogs in the kennels. That’s where all the troubles start.’ The Corporal armourer and Binty went on discussing their whippets. Binty didn’t have his own dogs but he had a financial stake in his uncle’s and on the basis of his conversations with Corporal Hughes he was now able to return home with many suggestions and criticisms. ‘You tell your bloody Air Force mate to stick his advice,’ Binty’s uncle had told him on his last leave, ‘or I’ll come down there and help him with his bleeding aeroplanes.’

      ‘Sternberg did The Blue Angel,’ said Cohen, ‘but The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was directed by someone I’ve never heard of named Wiene.’

      ‘I could have sworn it was Sternberg. Funny how the memory can play tricks. The Last Command was Sternberg?’

      ‘Oh sure. You don’t make many mistakes, Mike. I remember seeing that. It was almost a remake of The Last Laugh with Jannings.’

      ‘A lot of those films were remakes of earlier European ones.’

      ‘Ever see The Salvation Hunters?’ asked Cohen.

      ‘That was early Sternberg. They thought it was a masterpiece at the time. At my last station the Film Society got hold of a sixteen-millimetre print.’

      ‘Pretty terrible, I thought,’ said Cohen.

      ‘It’s a long time ago,’ said the fitter. ‘A lot has happened since then.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Cohen, who had seen the film in Vienna when he was a child. ‘You’re right.’

      Flight Sergeant Worthington started another conversation without preamble. ‘Two fuses and four wiring faults. We’ll have to strip the wiring right out of it and renew every inch of it.’

      ‘So Carter’s taking a reserve kite?’

      ‘It only arrived this afternoon, it’s been a struggle to get it ready. Carter’s furious and so is Gallacher. It’s not my fault, Sam.’ He kicked one of the tyres.

      ‘Everyone knows that, Worthy.’

      ‘Carter was bloody rude. There’s no need to be rude.’

      ‘Nerves, Worthy.’

      ‘I suppose so. But we all worked our guts out on Joe for King. No one could have got it ready in time.’

      ‘Forget it, Worthy. He’ll be apologizing and buying you pints lunchtime tomorrow. You know old Tommy Carter; he flares up but he doesn’t mean it.’ Worthington slapped Lambert’s arm gently with the canvas pitot-head cover. He always did that to show it was removed. Lambert scribbled his signature on the RAF Form No 700. Creaking Door was now Lambert’s.

      ‘Your new kid knows his way around a wiring diagram, I must say,’ said Worthington.

      ‘Battersby?’

      ‘Yes, he’s a demon on theory. He worked out the position of the short circuit on paper, but it was enough to make a strong man weep, watching him trying to fix it: gentleman’s fingers.’

      ‘As СКАЧАТЬ