A Fable

‘Bridesman,’ he said but at that moment the major said ‘’Shun!’ and the infantry officer shouted ‘Present——harms!’ and at salute now he watched the German pilot jump down and jerk to attention beside the wing while the man in the observer’s seat removed the helmet and goggles and dropped them somewhere and from somewhere inside the cockpit drew out a cap and put it on and did something rapidly with his empty hand like a magician producing a card and set the monocle into his eye and got down from the aeroplane and faced the pilot and said something rapid in German and the pilot stood himself back at ease and then snapped something else at the pilot and the pilot jerked back to attention and then with no more haste than when he had removed the helmet but still a little quicker than anyone could have stopped it drew a pistol from somewhere and even aimed it for a second while the rigid pilot (he looked about eighteen himself) stared not even at the pistol’s muzzle but at the monocle and shot the pilot through the center of the face and turned almost before the body jerked and began to fall and swapped the pistol to the other gloved hand and had started to return the salute when Monaghan jumped across the pilot’s body and flung the other German back into the aeroplane before Bridesman and Thorpe caught and held him.

‘Fool,’ Bridesman said. ‘Dont you know hun generals dont fight strangers?’

‘Strangers?’ Monaghan said. ‘I’m no stranger. I’m trying to kill the son of a bitch. That’s why I came two thousand miles over here: to kill them all so I can get to hell back home!’

‘Bridesman,’ he said again but again the major said ‘’Shun there! Shun!’ and at salute again he watched the German straighten up (he hadn’t even lost the monocle) and flip the pistol over until he held it by the barrel and extend it butt first to the major who took it, and then draw a handkerchief from his cuff and brush off the breast and sleeve of his tunic where Monaghan had touched him and look at Monaghan for just a second with nothing behind the monocle at all as he put the handkerchief back into the cuff and clicked and jerked as he returned the salute and walked forward straight at the group as though it were not there and he didn’t even need to see it part and even scramble a little to get out of the way for him to stride through, the three Guards officers falling in behind, between the two open infantry files, toward the mess; the major said to Collyer:

‘Move this. I dont know whether they want it or not, but neither do we, here.’

‘Bridesman,’ he said again.

‘Pah,’ Bridesman said, spitting, hard. ‘We shant need to go to the mess. I’ve a bottle in the hut.’ Then Bridesman overtook him. ‘Where are you going?’

‘It will only take a moment,’ he said. Then apparently Bridesman saw, noticed the aeroplane too.

‘What’s wrong with your bus? You got down all right.’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I left it there because there’s an empty petrol tin in the weeds we can set the tail up on.’ The tin was there: a faint and rusting gleam in the dying end of day. ‘Because it’s over, isn’t it? That’s what they want with that hun general of course. Though why they had to do it this way, when all somebody needed was just to hold out a white sheet or tablecloth; they must have a tablecloth at Pop and surely jerry’s got one at his headquarters that he took away from a Frenchwoman; and somebody owes something for that poor bloodstained taxi-driver he——Which was not like the book either: he did it backward; first he should have unpinned the iron cross from his own coat and hung it on the other one and then shot him——’

‘You fool,’ Bridesman said. ‘You bloody fool.’

‘All right. This will only take a moment.’

‘Let it be,’ Bridesman said. ‘Just let it be.’

‘I just want to see,’ he said. ‘Then I shall. It wont take but a moment.’

‘Will you let it be then? Will you promise?’

‘Of course. What else can I do? I just want to see’—and set the empty petrol tin in position and lifted the S.E.’s tail and swung it around onto the tin and it was just right: in a little better than flying angle: almost in a flat shallow glide, the nose coming down just right; and Bridesman really saying No now.

‘I’ll be damned if I will.’

‘Then I’ll have to get …’ he hesitated: a second: then rapidly, cunningly: ‘… Monaghan. He’ll do it. Especially if I can overtake the van or the staff-car or whichever it is, and borrow the jerry general’s hat. Or maybe just the monocle will be enough——no: just the pistol to hold in my hand.’

‘Take your own word for it,’ Bridesman said. ‘You were there. You saw what they shot at us, and what we were shooting at that two-seater. You were right on him for five or six seconds once. I watched your tracer rake him from the engine right on back through the monocle.’

‘So were you,’ he said. ‘Get in.’

‘Why dont you just let it be?’

‘I have. Long ago. Get in.’

‘Do you call this letting be?’

‘It’s like a cracked record on the gramophone, isn’t it?’