wings and a flight-lieutenant’s rings, was thin and grey as paper.
‘Look at that uniform,’ said Matt, not bothering to lower his voice. ‘He’s got some time in.’
‘Probably in the pay office,’ said Kit.
‘You can make blues look like that over a weekend,’ said Billy. ‘Bit of bleach in the water, and a razor-blade to scrape the fluff off . . .’
The apparition kicked the starboard tyre violently, stalked on and began doing a Tarzan-act on the starboard flaps. The Wimpey is a pretty whippy, flexible sort of plane. Some pilots compare flying one to lying in a hammock, others to making love to a woman. The steering-column keeps nudging your chest, the engines nod up and down in a regular rhythm and the wing tips actually flap in flight. This guy had the whole plane rocking in motion, the way he was thumping hell out of her.
‘Shall I go and tell him it’s government property?’ asked Matt. We all got those stupid giggles again. The apparition ignored us, until he had given the tail-wheel a final kick. Then he walked over to us.
He knew we’d been taking the mickey. He found us amusing.
‘Let’s get you into your bunny-suits,’ he said, ‘and see if this thing flies.’ We bundled into the back of his thirty-hundredweight, all except Matt, who he kept with him in the front. All I will say about the way he drove is that I was sick halfway back to the billet. Of course, I was sitting over the exhaust.
‘If he flies like he drives,’ said Kit, ‘we won’t make the coast.’
‘The German coast?’ I gasped, pulling my head back in over the tailboard.
‘The English coast,’ said Kit.
New flying-kit has a life of its own. It makes you feel like a giant panda, trussed up for its journey to the zoo. It trails things that wrap around any knob or lever available; it makes you a yard wide so you knock things off shelves that you think are miles away. Passing anybody else in the confines of a Wimpey is like dancing with a stuffed bear. You feel sweaty and cut off from everything.
Dadda’s gear wasn’t like that. He had battered all the life out of it; it fitted him like a second skin. In places it was creased and wrinkled like rhinoceros hide; in other places it was worn smooth and shiny. There were great dirty patches near the most-used pockets. He looked more like a decrepit heron than ever.
We took off smoothly and easily. Piece of cake, I thought. Then he told me I had too much volume on the intercom, though I don’t know how the hell he knew. Then he told Kit he talked too much. I was still laughing silently about that when the WT set hurled itself violently into my side; lots of painful knobs too. Next second, I was dangling, helpless, in the middle of the fuselage on the end of my safety-harness. Next second, I got the distinct impression I was hanging upside down. Certainly three pencils and a map shot up in front of my face.
I was sick again, and now there was no tailboard to lean out over. Further forward, the Elsan toilet broke loose with a terrific clatter and came sailing past my head. Thank God it was empty. First I thought my last moment had come, then I hoped it had. When I got myself together a bit, Dadda told me to turn the intercom up. I was just reaching for the knob when the world turned upside down again. I heard Kit say, in a dreamy voice,
‘He can’t fly upside-down at zero feet.’ Kit had somehow strapped and braced himself so he could look out of the astrodome. ‘I can see ducks sitting in mud over my head.’ His face was lit up like a child’s at a funfair. After that, all I did was to keep my eyes shut, play with the intercom knob, and try to keep my guts inside me. And listen to Kit’s running commentary.
‘I think we’re strafing Spalding . . .
‘Two cars have just crashed . . .
‘He’s knocked three bricks off a factory chimney . . .
‘We’re flying down a canal – below the level of the banks . . .’
Mind you, I wouldn’t swear to the truth of any of it. Kit always shot a line, given the least chance. But it felt like it. And there was a lump of bracken caught in our closed bomb-doors afterwards;