produced an oily job sheet, and told the inquiring officer that he had serviced both engine and air-frame, the latter being necessary because of the illness of A/c Strong. The Lysander had been fully airworthy, though a week before the loss he had discussed with Flight Lieutenant Allison the possibility of cannibalising one machine to ensure the safety of the other, and they had agreed that there might be a need for that if spares did not arrive, but not for a couple of months or more. Meanwhile having two aircraft available when only one was needed for regular use allowed proper maintenance to be carried out on the other one, with the additional safety that that implied.
There was one brief diversion from matters mechanical.
âI understand that on the morning after the loss the mess waiter returned to you a note you had left for Major Quintain,â said the enquiring officer. âPerhaps we had better hear whether that had my hearing on the state of the Lysander.â
âNo, sir.â
âNevertheless would you mind telling us what was in the note.â
âWell, sir, it was like this. Iâd run across Major Quintain before the war. He had a little Jowett what he used to have a lot of trouble with the carburettor ofâheâd get it into his head it was running too thin and heâd try and adjust it himself and make a balls of it, mid then heâd think it was the timing and foul that up too, messing round, and only when the Jowett was hardly going heâd bring it along to me to put right. Happened time and again, almost like it was it game between us. Well, you see, bumping into each other there, he thought heâd like a chat about old times. There wasnât time before the flight if I was going to get the plane set up, so he said what about after. He told me heâd a bottle of Scotch in his baggage and he left it to me to fix some place we could meet and have a nip or two. Thatâs what the note was about.â
The social difficulty, even under desert conditions, involved in an officer from another unit sharing so rare a commodity with an Other Rank while failing to do so with his hosts in the messâthough it was for that that he had originally brought the bottle, no doubtâwas clear to the inquiry. Some kind of semi-secret rendezvous among the dunes would certainly have been necessary. So the inquiry moved on, reaching the obvious verdict that no blame attached to anyone for the failure of the Lysander to return, but that the actual cause of that failureâenemy action, breakdown, pilot errorâcould not be known until the wreckage, now several hundred miles away after the abrupt retreat, was found.
It never was.
IV
1
W aiting for the train on Saturday morning, Sir Charles Archer leaned both hands on his black cane and stared along the railway line. Though still as an image, his pose expressed inward restlessness, or hunger; he might have been waiting for the train to bring him his bride. That mysterious smoky and oily breeze, which even on still days railway stations seem to conjure up, more like an outdoor draught than any natural wind, breathed gently past him; but he leaned into it as if it had been a gale and he on some cliff-top look-out, peering seaward. In front of him, but invisible from the platform, the long and dreary township of High Wycombe wound through its valley to the west.
âHowâs the army treating you, my boy?â he said suddenly.
âVery decently, sir,â said Vincent. âIâm enjoying it.â
âThey teaching you to kill effectively?â
âIâm teaching other chaps now. Iâve been posted to our new TA battalion in Hackney.â
âSo you will march to battle at the head of costermongers and clerks. Charming. Who are they planning to let you slaughter first?â
âThe c-current assumption is that itâll be the Germans.â
âYouâll enjoy that
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