A Fable

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But what happened? What is it? An armed sentry stopped me at the hangars thirty minutes ago and turned out the guard and the hangar doors were locked and a light inside and I could hear people doing something, only I couldn’t pass the bayonet and when they drove me away I heard a lorry and saw a torch moving about down at that archie battery this side the village and of course that’s fresh ammo being hurried up since archie quit at noon today too and naturally they’ll need a lot of ammo to quit with too——’

‘If I tell you, will you let be and go to your hut and go to bed?’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s all I ever wanted: just to know. If they’ve beat us, I want to stand my share too——’

‘Beat us be blowed. There’s nobody in this war any longer capable of beating anyone, unless the Americans might in time——’

‘And welcome,’ Cowrie said. But Bridesman was still talking:

‘A French regiment mutinied this morning—refused to go over. When they—the French—began to poke about to learn why, it seems that——But it’s all right.’

‘How all right?’

‘It was only their infantry disaffected. Only troops holding the line. But the other regiments didn’t do anything. The others all seemed to know in advance that the one was going to refuse, but all the others did seem to be just waiting about to see what was going to happen to it. But they—the French—took no chances. They pulled the regiment out and replaced it and moved up guns and put down a heavy barrage all along their front, just like we did this afternoon. To give ourselves time to see what was what. That’s all.’

‘How that’s all?’ he said. Cowrie had put a cigarette into his mouth and, raised onto one elbow, was reaching for the candle when the hand stopped, less than a fraction of a second before it moved on. ‘What was the hun doing all this time?’ He said quietly: ‘So it’s over.’

‘It’s not over,’ Bridesman said harshly. ‘Didn’t you just hear what the major said at noon today?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said serenely. ‘It’s over. All the poor bloody stinking infantry everywhere, Frenchmen, Americans, Germans, us … So that’s what they’re hiding.’

‘Hiding?’ Bridesman said. ‘Hiding what? There’s nothing to hide. It’s not over, I tell you. Didn’t you just hear me say we have a job tomorrow?’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s not over. How can it be not over then?’

‘Because it isn’t. What do you think we put down that barrage for today—we and the French and the Americans too—the whole front from the Channel in—blasting away a half year’s supply of ammo for except to keep the hun off until we can know what to do?’

‘Know to do what? What are they doing in our hangar tonight?’

‘Nothing!’ Bridesman said.

‘What are they doing in B Flight’s hangar, Bridesman?’ he said. The cigarette pack lay on the packing case which served for a table between the two cots. Bridesman half turned and reached his hand but before he had touched the pack Cowrie, lying back on one arm beneath his head, without looking around extended the cigarette already burning in his own hand. Bridesman took it.

‘Thanks,’ he said. He said: ‘I dont know.’ He said harsh and strong: ‘I dont want to know. All I know is, we have a job tomorrow and you’re on it. If you’ve a good reason for not going, say it and I’ll take someone else.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ someone said.

But it wasn’t tomorrow. There was nothing tomorrow: only dawn and then daylight and then morning. No dawn patrol went out because he would have heard it, being already and long since awake. Nor were there any aeroplanes on the tarmac when he crossed to the mess for breakfast, and nothing on the blackboard where Collyer occasionally saw fit to scrawl things in chalk which no one really ever read, himself sitting long at the cleared table where Bridesman would more or less have to see him sooner or later, provided he wanted to. From here he could see across the aerodrome to the blank and lifeless hangars and watch the two-hourly relief of the pacing guards through the long coma-ed forenoon, the morning reft of all progress beneath the bland sky and the silence.

Then it was noon; he watched the Harry Tate land and taxi up to the office and switch off, and the trench coat get down from the observer’s seat and remove the helmet and goggles and toss them into the cockpit and draw out the stick and the red and brazen hat. Then all of them at lunch: the general and his pilot and the infantry officer and the whole squadron, the first lunch he could remember from which at least one flight and sometimes two were not absent, the general saying it not quite as well as the major because it took him longer, but saying the same thing: