Part 7 (1/2)

Then one afternoon he was lounging in a hatchway a few feet from the Crusader's arming bay. Pfitz was talking to Lee Otis as the mechanic checked a faulty shackle on a napalm canister. Lydecker strained to catch his words.

”... Yeah, there just ain't nothing to beat this jelly, man. It's gonna win us the woah. s.h.i.+t, I can remember the original stuff. It wasn't so hot. If the d.i.n.ks were quick enough they could sc.r.a.pe it off. So the scientists come up with a good idea. They started adding polystyrene-yeah, polystyrene. h.e.l.l, man, now it sticks better 'n s.h.i.+t to a blanket.” He chortled. Lee Otis's eyes were glazed with boredom but Pfitz carried on, unaware in his enthusiasm. ”Trouble was, if the d.i.n.ks were fast enough and jumped underwater, it stopped burning. So some wise guy adds white phosphorus to the mix, and-get this, boy-now it can burn underwater underwater.” He reached down and patted the nose cone of the canister. ”That thing on okay, now?”

Crouched in his hatchway, Lydecker waited and watched until Pfitz hauled his bulky body into the narrow c.o.c.kpit of the Crusader. He tasted acid bile in his throat, his fretting hands picked unconsciously at his olive green jacket and a slight s.h.i.+vering ran through his wasted body. It was clear now. Beyond doubt. He couldn't understand why he had waited so long. Pfitz was the guilty one. For that girl's sake, Pfitz had to suffer too.

It didn't take Lydecker long to work out the technicalities of his revenge. The next day he was back on the catapult crew, silent and withdrawn, waiting for his time. In the evenings, with a rubber-based glue bought from the PX, and with sand from the fire buckets, and spare bolts and shards of metal from the machine rooms, he packed the beer can Pfitz had thrown at him with this glutinous hard-setting amalgam until it weighed heavy in his hand, a bright solid cylinder. To his fixated mind it had seemed only right that the beer can should be the agent of Pfitz's destruction. There was a kind of macabre symmetry in the way events were turning out that he found deeply satisfying.

Patiently, Lydecker studied the mission rotas and the catapult launch schedules, waiting for the day when Pfitz was to be first in line.

It was a bright, windy afternoon that day on the Yankee Station. The mission was close support on some hostile ville on the Cambodian border. Pfitz was in a good mood. He had just heard that he was getting a new Phantom the day after tomorrow. First in the flight, he was towed into position on the catapult and waited with his canopy up for the Chester B Chester B. to get up steam and turn into the wind. He saw the rescue helicopters take off and a.s.sume their positions a hundred yards out from the sides of the carrier. Pfitz looked at the catapult crew hunched against the rush of wind with their thick goggles and macrocephalic helmets. He saw the thin figure of that s.h.i.+thead Lydecker staring up at him, the wire launch bridle dangling from his hand. Little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He began to feel uncomfortable at the insistent way Lydecker was looking at him. He seemed to remember seeing too much of the little creep around lately. He'd have to kick his b.u.t.t in when he got back, get the s...o...b.. to keep his distance. He hauled down his canopy as he heard the crackle of instructions in his earphones preparing him for takeoff and the Rose Train's thirty-fifth mission. As he ran through the final c.o.c.kpit checks he noticed the hunched, beetling figure of Lydecker scuttling up to the nose wheel to secure the catapult bridle. As he moved out of his vision, Pfitz reflected that he'd never really taught the little s.h.i.+t a proper lesson; he should have had him transferred right away.

Lydecker paused for a moment at the nose of the Crusader, out of Pfitz's line of sight, buffeted by the rush of wind. For an instant he rested his gloved hand on the side of the plane and felt it shuddering from the power of its engine. His ear-m.u.f.fles dampened all noise to a muted seash.e.l.l roar. Then he crouched down and fitted both ends of the cables to the shackles on the nose wheel, looping the middle over the protruding shark's fin of the towing block. He knelt at the front of the plane for a second as if in supplication. And then, making sure his body obscured the view of the catapult officer, he swiftly withdrew the heavy beer can from his jacket and slotted it neatly into the recessed track, like a stubby bolt in a crossbow, just in front of the towing block.

Pfitz should have an unimpeded, normal takeoff until the towing block reached the end of the catapult track. Then there would be a slight but vital check to the momentum imparted by the tons of steam pressure driving the block, as it obliterated the solid can, jamming its clear run to the end of the track. It would be a slight, almost unnoticeable impediment but, Lydecker had calculated, a crucial one.

Lydecker ran back to his station and waved okay to the catapult officer, who barely acknowledged Lydecker's signal. It was just one launch among hundreds he had supervised, another routine mission. Nothing would happen. You were remote on the Yankee Station, the battles were elsewhere, over the horizon. n.o.body attacked you and you never saw the people you atomized, shattered and burned.

Lydecker saw Pfitz lock into full afterburn. The catapult officer swept his arm forward. The seaman across the deck punched the black rubber b.u.t.ton on the console and the catapult's release sent the Crusader blasting down the track.

Only Lydecker observed the tiny explosion as the towing block ploughed through the can, grinding it into the end of the track. A minute, inconsequential impact. But the effect on Pfitz's Crusader was dramatic. Instead of being thrown up at an angle into the skies, the plane was flung down a shallow slope into the sea some two hundred yards in front and to the left of the carrier. It was over in a couple of seconds. With a huge gout of spray, the Crusader was flipped into the sea, salt water flooding into the gaping intake, the screaming jets plunging the fully loaded aircraft deep under the surface.

There were shouts of alarm from the deck, but everything happened too quickly. Within moments they pa.s.sed the spot where Pfitz had gone down; bubbling crazy water, a slick of oil, and men claimed to see the pale shape of the Crusader slipping ever deeper beneath the green surface of the sea.

Pfitz never came up and there was no further trace of the plane. The end of the catapult was found to be slightly warped and scarred, and the accident was put down to yet another malfunction. The day's mission was aborted while the mechanism was taken apart.

Lydecker stood on the edge of the deck and looked out to where the rescue helicopters futilely hovered above the oil slick. Groups of men stood about and talked of the accident. Lydecker's heart was racing and his eyes were bright. Pfitz and his napalm somewhere at the bottom of the South China Sea. He felt good. No, he felt magnificent. He wanted to bite the stars.

Histoire Vache

”So you are still a virgin,” Pierre-Etienne said triumphantly, stubbing out his cigarette.

It had to come out, Eric thought. They had been talking earnestly about s.e.x all afternoon. Under cross-examination Eric had mentioned an older girl-cousin called Jean and suggestively introduced the notion of a seaside holiday and a sand dune picnic a deux a deux. He had tried to keep the details vague, but conversations of this sort remorselessly turned towards the specific and Pierre-Etienne and Momo (Maurice) had been unsparing in their search for the truth. They had really pinned him down this time. Yes or no, they demanded; did you or didn't you?

”I don't believe it,” Momo said. ”You never?”

Eric shook his head, trying to smile away his blush. They were sitting at a cafe in the main square of Villers-Bocage. It was market day and the place was full of livestock and people. Momentarily Eric's attention was distracted by the sight of a red-faced farmer in the typical knee-length Normandy blouson, energetically tugging on the tail of a cow as if he were trying to wrench it out by the roots. Eric winced.

He looked back at his two companions. Pierre-Etienne was the same age as he; last Easter he'd spent two weeks in England at Eric's home. Momo was Pierre-Etienne's brother, a little older-nearly seventeen-plump and trying to grow a moustache. Eric didn't like him that much; his air of amused tolerance towards the two younger boys was extremely irritating. Momo had a girlfriend of sorts, Eric knew, but he'd never seen Pierre-Etienne with one.

Eric sipped his Diabolo-menthe Diabolo-menthe. He adored the chill green drink, clear and clinking with ice cubes. It was the best thing about France, he decided. He'd never learn the language, he was sure, and as far as he was concerned it wasn't worth the last two weeks of his summer holiday. Pierre-Etienne's father was the director of the Villers-Bocage abattoir, and as a result of his job the family ate meat for every meal; every sort and cut imaginable: pork, veal, beef, kidneys, heart, brains, revolting spongy tripe, lamb, oxtails, trotters, fatty purple sausages, all of it pink and undercooked and oozing with blood. Eric was returning directly to school in three days and he sometimes found himself longing for shepherd's pie or a thick Bisto stew.

”But surely you're one-a virgin-too?” he said to Pierre-Etienne in half-hearted counter-attack.

”Of course not.” Pierre-Etienne looked offended.

”But you don't have a girl-friend,” Eric said. ”How could you?”

”No,” Momo said, ”he don't have a girl-friend, but he has Marguerite.”

”And who's she?”

Marguerite Grosjean shouted goodbye to her mother and eased her bulk into her tiny 2-CV. As usual her mother didn't reply. Marguerite lit her fifth Gauloise of the day. She sat for a moment in her car. It was only half past five and Villers-Bocage was just ten minutes away through early morning mist. She puffed on her cigarette and scratched her thigh. Her mother leaned out of the upstairs window and shouted at her. It was just a noise. Her mother ran out to the car screaming abuse. Marguerite flipped down the window. Arcs of spittle from her mother's mouth spattered on the gla.s.s. Marguerite let it go on a few seconds. It was like this every morning. Then she started the engine and drove off, leaving the small dishevelled figure, still shaking with rage, alone in the yard.

She arrived at the abattoir a little early so she went to the nearby bar and ordered a cafe-calva cafe-calva. The waiter brought her the drink. He was new to the cafe. He smiled and said good morning but Marguerite appeared not to notice him. He found this somewhat unusual, as he had taken her against the wall at the back of the cafe only three nights ago when she came off night s.h.i.+ft. He said good morning again but she didn't reply. He shrugged his shoulders and walked off, but he kept the tab. It wasn't much but it was something. One of the butchers who worked in the abattoir had told him about Marguerite and all the butchers, farm-hands, meat packers and lorry drivers. You just need to ask, the man had said, that's all, a simple request, and he had tapped his temple with a forefinger. The waiter had met her on her way back from the toilet. The butcher had been right.

He thought of asking her again, just now, to see if it was really true, but the clear morning light was unkind to the fat woman so he went on wiping the tables.

Eric, Pierre-Etienne and Momo stood at the back of the abattoir looking over a wall at the stream of departing workers from the morning s.h.i.+ft.

”Which one is she?” Eric asked.

”That one there, the big one, going in the car.”

Eric saw lots of cars and quite a few large women.

”Which car?” he asked.

”That one,” Momo said, pointing to an old 2-CV being driven away. Eric couldn't really see the driver, just a white face and black hair.

He felt a thump of excited pressure in his chest. ”What do I have to do?” he asked.

”You just go and tell her what you want,” Pierre-Etienne said.

”Is that all all? Just ask?”

”Yes, it's all.”

”But why does she do it? Do...do I have to pay her or anything?”

The two French boys laughed delightedly. ”No, no,” Momo said. ”She do it for nothing. She likes it.”

”Oh,” said Eric knowledgeably, ”a nympho. But are you sure? You're not lying? She does it just like that?”

”Everybody is going to Marguerite,” Momo said with emphasis. ”We ”We have gone.” have gone.”

”b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Did you?” you?” Eric asked Pierre-Etienne. Eric asked Pierre-Etienne.

”Of course,” he replied. ”I have been three times. It is easy.”

”G.o.d,” said Eric quietly. The ease of the whole venture astonished him. It really was going to happen. ”But I still don't understand why why. What for? Why does she do it?”

Marguerite parked her car at the back of the abattoir near the packed cattle pens full of grunting and s.h.i.+fting beasts. As she walked into the room where she worked the familiar pungent ammoniacal smell of guts and excrement tickled her nostrils. She took her plastic overall off the peg and b.u.t.toned it tightly across her ma.s.sive chest. She stepped into her gumboots and pulled the white cap over her wiry black hair, just beginning to be streaked with grey.

She heard the men arrive, the jokes and the early morning banter. A few stepped in for a moment and said h.e.l.lo. She stood looking at the huge stainless-steel basins. She leant back against the mangle. She wasn't thinking about anything, just waiting for Marcel to wheel in the first tub of s.h.i.+vering, gelid, brown and purple guts.

Then she heard the familiar sound of the slaughter begin. The compressed-air phut phut of the humane killer as the retractable six-inch spike was driven into the animal's skull. The clang as the side of the pen fell away to let the beast tumble down the concrete incline, the rattle of its hooves on the cement. Then there was the whirr of the hoist as the carca.s.s was lifted up by a rear leg and almost simultaneously the splash as the blood poured from twin slits made in the throat. It took barely a minute for the skin to be removed before the buzzing circular saw carved down the length of the suspended body, opening it wide. The first today was a cow; she recognised the second splash-this time of milk-as the udder was halved by the whining blade. Then there was the slithering, slopping waterfall as the insides fell out. The moan of the overhead rails-as the carca.s.s was swung down the line to the butchers and the cavernous refrigerating plant-was punctuated by the thumps and splas.h.i.+ngs of the second animal being killed. of the humane killer as the retractable six-inch spike was driven into the animal's skull. The clang as the side of the pen fell away to let the beast tumble down the concrete incline, the rattle of its hooves on the cement. Then there was the whirr of the hoist as the carca.s.s was lifted up by a rear leg and almost simultaneously the splash as the blood poured from twin slits made in the throat. It took barely a minute for the skin to be removed before the buzzing circular saw carved down the length of the suspended body, opening it wide. The first today was a cow; she recognised the second splash-this time of milk-as the udder was halved by the whining blade. Then there was the slithering, slopping waterfall as the insides fell out. The moan of the overhead rails-as the carca.s.s was swung down the line to the butchers and the cavernous refrigerating plant-was punctuated by the thumps and splas.h.i.+ngs of the second animal being killed.

Eight cows later, Marcel wheeled in the first of the buckets. He was simple and had a harelip. He never spoke much. He turned on the hoses and water sprays and plunged his bare hands into the gelatinous ma.s.s of entrails and heaved great piles into the br.i.m.m.i.n.g sinks. There were arm-length rubber gloves for this purpose but Marcel maintained that they only made his job harder.