The Burning Shore

When Michael entered the room, everybody stood, not for him, but as a last respect to the missing men.
All right, gentlemen, Michael said. Let us send them on their way. The most junior officer, briefed by the others in his duties, opened a bottle of whisky. The black labels gave the correct funereal touch. He came to Michael and filled his glass, then moved on to the others, in order of seniority. They held the brimming glasses and waited while the adjutant, his briar still clamped in his teeth, seated himself at the ancient piano in the corner of the mess and began to bang out the opening chords of Chopin's Funeral March. The officers of No.21 Squadron stood to attention and tapped their glasses on table-tops and the bar counter, keeping time with the piano, and one or two of them hummed quietly.
On the bar counter were laid out the personal possessions of the missing pilots. After dinner these would be auctioned off, and the squadron pilots would pay extravagant prices so that a few guineas could be sent to a new widow or a bereaved mother. There were Andrew's golf clubs, which Michael had never seen him use, and the Hardy trout rod, and his grief came back fresh and strong so that he thumped his glass on the counter with such force that whisky slopped over the rim, and the fumes prickled his eyes. Michael wiped them on his sleeve.
The adjutant crashed through the last bar and then stood up and took his glass. Nobody said a word, but they all lifted their own glasses, thought their own thoughts for a second, and then drained them. Immediately the junior officer refilled each tumbler. All seven bottles must be finished, that was part of the tradition. Michael ate no supper, but stood by the bar and helped consume the seven bottles. He was still sober, the liquor seemed to have no effect on him.
I must be an alcoholic at last, he thought. Andrew always said I had great potential. And the liquor did not even deaden the pain that Andrew's name inflicted.
He bid five guineas each for Andrew's golf clubs and the Hardy split-cane rod. By that time the seven bottles were all empty. He ordered another bottle for himself and went alone to his tent. He sat on the cot with the rod in his lap. Andrew had boasted that he had landed a fiftypound salmon with that stick, and Michael had called him a liar.
Oh ye of little faith, Andrew had chided him sorrowfully.
I believed you all along Michael caressed the old rod and drank straight from the bottle.
A little later, Biggs looked in. Congratulations on your victory, sir. Three other pilots had confirmed Michael's shooting down of the pink Albatros.
Biggs, will you do me a favour? Of course, sit Bugger off, there's a good fellow.
There was three-quarters of the bottle of whisky left when Michael, still in his flying clothes, stumbled out to where Andrew's motor-cycle was parked. The ride in the cold night air cleared his head, but left him feeling brittle and fragile as old glass. He parked the motor-cycle behind the barn, and went to wait among the bales of straw.
The hours, marked by the church clock, passed slowly, and with each of them his need for Centaine grew until it was almost too intense to bear. Every half hour he would go to the door of the barn and peer up the dark lane, before returning to the bottle and the nest of blankets.
He sipped the whisky, and in his head those few seconds of battle in which Andrew had died played over and over, like a gramophone record that had been scratched. He tried to shut out the images, but he could not. He was forced to relive, time and again, Andrew's last agony.
Where are you, Centaine? I need you so much now. He longed forher, but she did not come, and again he saw the skyblue Albatros with the black and white chequered wings bank steeply on to the killing line behind Andrew's green aircraft, and yet again he glimpsed Andrew's pale face as he looked back over his shoulder and saw the Spandaus open fire.
Michael covered his eyes and pressed his fingers into the sockets until the pain drove out the images. Centaine, he whispered. Please come to me. The church clock struck three o'clock and the whisky bottle was empty.
She isn't coming. He faced it at last, and as he staggered to the door of the barn and looked up at the night sky, he knew what he had to do to expiate his guilt and grief and shame.
The depleted squadron took off for the dawn patrol in the grey half-light. Hank Johnson was now second-incommand, and he flew on the other wing.
Michael turned out slightly, as soon as they were above the trees, and headed for the knoll beyond the chateau.
Somehow he knew that she would not be there this morning, yet he pushed up his goggles and searched for her.
The hill top was deserted, and he did not even look back.
It's my wedding day, he thought, searching the sky above the ridges, and my best man is dead, and my bride- He did not finish the thought.
The cloud had built up again during the night. There was a solid ceiling at I2,000 feet, dark and forbidding, stretching unbroken to every reach of the horizon. Below that it was clear to 5,000 feet where straggly grey cloud formed a layer that varied in thickness between 500 and
1,000 feet.
Michael led the squadron up through one of the holes in this intermittent layer, and then levelled out just below the top bank of cloud. The sky below them was empty of aircraft. To a novice it would seem impossible that two large formations of fighter planes could patrol the same area, each searching for the other, and still fail to make contact. However, the sky was so deep and wide that the chances were much against a meeting, unless the one knew precisely where the other would be at a given time.
While his eyes raked back and forth, Michael reached with his free hand into the pocket of his greatcoat and assured himself that the package he had prepared just before take-off was still there.
God, I could use a drink, he thought. His mouth was parched and there was a dull ache in his skull. His eyes burned but his vision was still clear. He licked his dry lips.
Andrew always used to say that only a confirmed drunkard can drink on top of a hangover. I just wish I'd had the courage and common sense to bring a bottle. Through the holes in the cloud beneath him he kept a running check on the squadron's position. He knew every inch of the squadron's designated area the way a farmer knows his lands.
They reached the outward limit and Michael made the turn, with the squadron coming round behind him, and he checked his watch. Eleven minutes later he picked out the bend in the river, and a peculiarly shaped copse of beech trees that gave him an exact positional fix.
He eased the throttle a fraction and his yellow machine drifted back a few yards until he was flying on Hank Johnson's wingtip. He glanced across at the Texan and nodded. He had discussed his intentions with Hank before take-off and Hank had tried to dissuade him. Across the gap Hank screwed up his mouth as though he had sucked a green persimmon, to show his disapproval, then raised a war-weary eyebrow and waved Michael away.
Michael backed the throttle a little further and dropped below the squadron. Hank kept leading them eastwards, but Michael made an easy turn into the north and began to descend.
Within a few minutes the squadron had disappeared into the limitless sky, and Michael was alone. He went down until he reached the lower layer of broken cloud and then used it as cover. Dodging in and out of the cold damp banks and the intervening open patches, he crossed the front lines a few miles south of Douai, and then picked out the new German gun emplacements at the edge of the woods.
The old airstrip was marked on his field map. He was able to pick it out from a distance of four miles or more, for the wheels of the German Albatroses on landing and take-off had traced muddy ruts in the turf. Two miles out, he could see the German machines parked along the edge of the forest, and in the trees beyond he made out the rows of tents and portable sheds which housed the German crews.