Chapter 3: Without Official Leave
Hutch lay in the sidecar, looking up at the impressionist heavens, its swirling blues and pinks and golds in streaky clouds ... a single bright star. He was fascinated in a tipsy way with the stillness of the sky while the fuzzy dark tops of poplars whizzed by on either side, leaning in and then away, and the intermittent bulks of lorries whipped past and stole the very air around them. "Whoo!" cried Starsky, "Whoa!" as Flaherty swerved and speeded. Hutch was surprised at his friend�s reaction— they were both used to being in fast-moving, swooping vehicles—but perhaps it had something to do with not piloting, or driving, himself.
At one point, Starsky gave a kind of squeak and all his muscles seemed to tighten, so Hutch raised his head in time to see a lorry completely blocking the road as it crossed and Flaherty buzzing closer and closer to the solid end of it. Hutch just had time to hold on to Starsky and get about halfway through the thought that at least they were both in it, and then the bulky load lurched forward—the motorcycle tipped wildly as they went nearly into the ditch—and they were past before Hutch really absorbed how close they'd been to the tail-lights. Very close. Very extremely close, so that he could see not just the red warning glare but the little point of intensity where the filament burned and the darker swirls where colouring or glass was thicker. He let his head fall back again as Starsky shouted, "Road Hog!" and sat more heavily on Hutch, leaning against him.
Hutch ruminated, earnestly, but he was finding it hard to get from one idea to another. It was easier just to watch the sky hanging over him and feel Starsky's weight and the cradle-like rocking of the sidecar.
Eventually the motorcycle twisted round and stopped. Starsky clambered out and Hutch sat up, looking at the now-battered bouquet and the obviously shaken bottle, and then at the quiet farmyard where they were.
"Doesn't look like the Inns and Taverns Cook's Tour," he said.
"No," said Flaherty, pulling off his goggles and then his helmet, "that little extravaganza hasn't yet begun, m'boyo. Your pal here wanted to clean himself up, so I've brought the pair of you to the place I lay m'weary head on leave."
The door of the farmhouse opened, and a French matron emerged, paused to look at them, and put her hands on her hips.
"Are you sure about this?" asked Starsky in the moment's silence.
"Sure and I'm sure," Flaherty said, and then to the woman, "'Soir, Mama Marthe," and something else in French. Hutch decided that French sounded even stranger through an Irish brogue. Flaherty walked up to the woman, still talking, and then put his free hand on her shoulder and kissed her cheek. She kept her hands on her hips until the kiss, and then sighed and smiled and patted the motorcyclist's cheek. Began to chatter to him, swift and half-scolding. Flaherty answered with an indulgent smile of his own. After a bit he turned back, grinning, and said, "Come on, boys, she won't bite."
The two fliers approached the farmhouse, which was stone and yellow brick like the one they were living in, but quiet, the yard untrampled and the little garden neatly kept. A pot of geraniums on the windowsill reminded Hutch suddenly and sharply of an English cottage, and he caught his breath and looked at Starsky, whose grimy face reminded Hutch of too much, whose distance at this moment comforted him not enough.
Flaherty reached out and took the bouquet to hand to Marthe with a little bow. Hutch had thought—well, it was foolish, he supposed—but he glanced over and found that Starsky was taken aback too. Marthe eyed them with a dry and knowing look, and Hutch swallowed. He felt caught out, suddenly fifteen years younger. She reached out and patted his face as she had Flaherty's, and told him something soothing which unfortunately he had no idea of; then she led the way inside.
The main room here was smaller than the officers' mess, and dim. Marthe bustled over to the kitchen door, still talking, and vanished through it. The men looked at each other.
"I take it you'll not be speaking French at all," Flaherty said.
"I took it in school," said Starsky, rueful.
"So did I," blurted Hutch, "but I can't understand the way these foreigners speak it."
Flaherty laughed, the sound brief but real and unshadowed. "Well, she's gone to heat water, for she's as adamant as the Lieutenant that he must wash. I'm to take you upstairs and show you where everything is, and then leave you. When you're cleaned up, come down and she'll have food ready, and you'd best be ready to eat it."
Starsky asked, "It won't be eggs, will it?"
"I don't suppose so," Flaherty answered. "At this hour? Probably some sort of stew." And after a brief pause, "Come on, then." He picked up a candle, already burning in a rough cream-coloured pottery stand, and they went up the staircase and down a narrow corridor, past two other doors. Flaherty moved confidently and opened the third door as if he were their host, which it seemed he was, in a way. Hutch wondered in what way.
Starsky evidently did too: "Are you ... a relation?" he asked as they all went in to the room, a little low-ceilinged one with a bed, small table, washstand and wardrobe in light-painted wood.
"Not really. Oh," with a broad grin, "you're not thinking she's me mistress! Mother Mary, I'd love to see her face if she found out you thought she was a kept woman! No, I met Mama Marthe when," and he sobered, "when I brought her some things. From the front. Belonged to a French boy I knew, working the ambulance, and he'd told me where to bring them if he ... couldn't. To his mother. And then Marthe and me got to talking, and I visited her the next time I'd a moment's leave, and, well, I kept coming here. She's just about adopted me. I've a spare uniform in the wardrobe ..." he looked at Starsky. "The arms will be a bit short, and the trouser-legs maybe long, but you'll be glad to get out of those things, I should just think."
"You would just be right," Starsky said fervently.
"I'll leave you to it, then, and go help Marthe with the water." He looked at Hutch, paused, and then left, putting the candle on the table.
Hutch watched the door closing and then went to Starsky. He cupped the oval face in hands that were suddenly unsteady, and looked down at it.
"Can't I wash first?" asked Starsky.
"No, I don't care," Hutch said, and kissed him. Fingers moving on the dirty skin and hair, lips pressing hard, then drawing back to pluck tenderly at the warm, dry mouth that stretched in a half-smile. Then it was Starsky who pulled close, holding on tightly, opening his lips and moving into Hutch's mouth, tongue lapping, teasing, stroking. And Starsky who tucked his head into Hutch's neck afterward. Hutch wrapped his arms around his lover, rocked him a little, rubbed his back. "Starsk," he murmured. "Starsky. David."
Starsky sighed, a catch in the middle of the long breath, and rubbed his head a little back and forth against Hutch's jaw.
"I don't know, don't know," Hutch said, "if I can see that again. When you waved, going down ...."
"I love you too," Starsky told him, in a voice that was neither desperate nor casual. As if loving Hutch was too important to take for granted but too basic to make a great fuss over.
Hutch kissed the little strip of forehead just under the hairline, where it was almost clean. "Next time would you just take me with you? Just shoot, take out the fuel tank."
And Starsky stepped back, hands grabbing Hutch's arms, his expression fierce. He shook Hutch a little with each word he spoke: "Not. One. Chance. Absolutely not!" His eyes blazed so in the dim candlelight that Hutch just stared. Starsky's angry grip loosened. "Don't you know? I couldn't have made it alone, couldn't have landed if you weren't up there. And if I had and you'd gone ...." His face softened; one hand came up to Hutch's cheek and cupped it gently. "Ah, no. We can't do that. Don't ever want to see this golden angel fall."
Hutch had to kiss him, then. And once more after that. But then Starsky pulled back slowly, and said, "I need that wash."
Reaching for the buttons of the piebald pyjama-top, Hutch said, "I'll wash you, young Master Starsky," wiggling his fingers.
But Starsky caught his hands and held them. "No, Hutch, really, no. You undress me, touch me that way, and I'll go off like a shell. We can't, not here."
"I have to touch you," Hutch said, seriously. "That way. Every way."
"Yes, tonight, later, I promise. When we can both get undressed and nobody's to come in."
"We're AWOL," said Hutch, a discovery.
"You just thought of that now?" Starsky grinned at him. "You are drunk, angel."
"A little pissed," Hutch admitted.
"You could lie down," and Starsky nodded at the bed.
Hutch shook his head. "And watch you get undressed? And not touch you? Better not. I'll go help with the water." And he realised something else he'd been too taken up with his lover to understand. "Flaherty expects it."
"At first, yes, but I think ... well, you should go," Starsky decided. "I think he won't dare bring it while we're in here alone."
"Just how well did you get to know him?"
But Starsky only shrugged. Hutch leaned in and just touched his lips to the grimy skin.
"I do believe you can find anything at all, or anyone," he said, on his way out.
"Do believe it," Starsky said.
Marthe handed Hutch a battered tin bath, which he carried up the stairs pretty steadily, because he was careful. After the relaxation of the ride and the moments alone with his lover, he had to get hold of himself again, get the liquor in his system under control. He thought he could.
Starsky had started washing already, bare to the waist and bent over the wash-basin, splashing at his face. Hearing the door creak open, he rubbed his eyes and looked around, then grimaced.
Disappointment was not what Hutch had expected to see. "What?"
"I want to shave," said Starsky, "but I need hot water and I don't know where the things are. Where's Flaherty?"
Hutch put the tub down in the middle of the floor and went over to the wardrobe. The first door he opened had the hanging clothes behind it, but the second had shelves, and the shaving cup and soap and razor were there. "You're a big baby," he said as he put them in Starsky's hands. But he had to smile. "Flaherty's coming," he murmured.
"All right," said Starsky, ducking his head a little.
Hutch understood the gesture and stepped back. "You should see the pot Marthe is heating water in," he said. "Looks like the cauldron in Macbeth. But she had a kettle on, too, so that water's on its way."
Starsky repeated, "All right," and then met Hutch's eyes with more of a spark in his own. "You could use a shave too."
"After you," Hutch said. "Maybe while you're in the bath." But he couldn't dwell on that if he were going to keep his hands off Starsky now, so he stepped back and said, "I'll go see about that water."
He met Flaherty on the stairs with water and towels, which was good for Starsky but meant that he was left with Madame Marthe in the kitchen, and his fragments of schoolboy French. She smiled at him and gestured toward the teapot on the table. So she'd kept back a little of the hot water; Hutch found himself grateful. It was French tea, of course, which was to say that it was too weak, but pouring the cup and drinking it gave him something to do. Marthe sat across the table from him and looked curious, but after speaking a few phrases that Hutch only shrugged at, she gave up on speech and just nodded companionably at him from time to time. Then Flaherty was back, and she chatted with him a little.
"She wants to know if you're in the ambulance, or in the trenches," Flaherty said after a bit.
"Tell her, if you like," Hutch said, knowing it sounded a little short; still, it was better than his first impulse, which was that he'd rather be dead than do either. He sipped his tea and said more gently, "Her son was in the ambulance, you said?"
"Yes," said Flaherty, pulling in his chin and sitting back in the high wooden settle so that his face was in shadow. "Robert—" he gave it the French pronunciation, and Marthe turned her head toward him—"was a volunteer." He sighed, and Marthe reached over and patted his hand.
"You were friends," said Hutch, feeling his way.
Flaherty looked up, met his eye, said nothing. Then he looked over at the fire. "'Bert," he said, voice falling. For a moment Hutch thought he'd said "bear," and had to work out that it was a nickname. "He was all right. We hit it off right away, to be sure." He poured himself a cup of tea and drank. Then smiled, sadly. "Everybody called him 'Bert, excepting me—I called him Teddy, and I think he never really understood. Provincial kid, he was." He sipped again and put the cup down, wrapping both hands around it. "Had those little eyeglasses, you know, not pince-nez but the other kind, hooked over his ears." He looked down at the cup and then up at Hutch. "It was a box-shell. I've never told—her—much about it."
"Don't," said Hutch, who could guess.
Flaherty swallowed. "Well, and isn't the water hot, then?" He turned to Marthe and obviously asked the same thing in French. She got up, patting his shoulder as she crossed behind the chair, and dipped her finger in the pot, then shook it and spoke. Now Hutch was looking, he could see the faint curl of steam off the surface of the water.
After that, they were occupied carrying pails up the stairs. Starsky had put the pyjama top back on, so he carried pails too. Marthe poured cold water into the hot, tested the temperature with her elbow as if for a baby, and then poured a little more in before she would let Starsky at the tub. Hutch handed one of his empty pails to Flaherty and kept the other. "I've to wash up myself," he said; "I'll use the basin." The other man nodded and followed Madame Marthe out.
Starsky eyed him sceptically. Hutch raised his hands in the air, the empty one high, the one with the pail about halfway. "You told me to shave," he said. "Honestly."
Starsky's mouth curved up on one side, and he turned toward the bed and took off his pyjama-top again. Hutch took off his own coat, uniform tunic, tie, shirt and undershirt, facing the washstand. The mirror had a tall spindle on either side, and he hung his clothes on the right-hand one. He could hear the rustle of Starsky's clothes and then a dull plashing sound as he got into the tub. And then a sigh. Hutch smiled at the mirror, too small to show the rest of the room past his shoulders. Starsky had lit two more candles, which were on either side of the mirror; Hutch moved the edge of his coat farther away from the flame and then picked up the shaving cup and brush. There was still soap inside, so he used it. Opened the razor and leaned close to the mirror. "Suppose this is Flaherty's cutthroat?"
"His or the boy's," Starsky said.
"He tell you about him?"
"Only that he was dead."
Hutch didn't respond, the edge of the blade warming dangerously on his skin. He scraped along his jaw, thoughtfully. After a few passes, he felt his hand a little unsteady and held it away, standing up to loosen his shoulders and back. "You knew I was half-pissed and you told me to shave with this thing," he complained.
Splashing, Starsky answered, "Go ahead, live dangerously."
"Who, me?"
Actually, Hutch took the shaving slowly, and except for a little nick under the chin that hardly bled, he was all right. And quite proud of himself. He washed off the extra soap and then scrubbed around his ears, the back of his neck, under his arms.
"Hutch," Starsky said, and the slightly pathetic tone of his voice made Hutch grin—Starsky wanted something, he knew.
"Mmm?" He used the towel, rubbing briskly.
"Hutch, will you pour some water for me? Over my head?"
Though Hutch knew his lover was just rinsing his hair, it was still funny—they'd done this sort of thing as a joke so often in school, and occasionally since. "My pleasure," he said, picking up the ewer.
But he paused for a moment to look at Starsky sitting in the tub, knees sticking out and elbows held up as he soaped his head. And then walked forward, watching the working shoulders, the way soapy water slid over his clenched-up face and down the wet hair of his chest. Knelt beside the tub and wiped at Starsky's forehead, then thumbed across his eyelids. Wet his hand with a little of the ewer water and did it again before he said, "Tilt your head back," and put his hand back against Starsky's forehead to keep the water off. Poured it slowly, and Starsky rubbed his hair, his mouth working soundlessly too. When the water was gone, Hutch put the ewer down without looking and reached into the drenched hair, between Starsky's hands, squeezing the wet mass of it, cupping his chin with the other hand, and then was too drawn to that mouth to keep from kissing it.
"Mmpfh," Starsky said, but he kissed back while they milked most of the water from his hair. Hutch leaned over the tub and drew Starsky's head to his shoulder, rubbing the wet neck from jaw to collarbone.
"You'll be soaked," Starsky murmured. "And I'm ready to get out." So Hutch reluctantly drew back.
They dressed; while Starsky was finishing, Hutch used the pail to empty the bath water by throwing it out the window. There was nothing below but a little scraggly grass.
The legs of Flaherty's trousers were too long, and Starsky turned up the cuffs. "Gay blade," Hutch said, making Starsky grin.
When they went down, carrying the bath and the pail, they found that Marthe had set up a whole meal, bread and stew and a bottle of wine. "Merci," Starsky began, stumbled through a few more words, and then just smiled and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. She beamed.
"D'you think she'd like to adopt any more British soldiers?" he asked as he dropped into a chair.
"Not if I can help it," Flaherty said.
Marthe ladled stew onto their plates; as she served Starsky, she patted his shoulder and spoke. Flaherty translated with a grin. "She says you clean up nicely."
"This is too much," Hutch said, overtaken by compunction as he looked at his food. "She's too kind. Isn't there," he thought of money but couldn't quite bring himself to suggest it, "isn't there something we can do for her?"
"Save the world from the Kaiser," said Flaherty, flippantly. "Isn't that what we're all doing here, then?"
Hutch wondered whether Marthe believed it; whether anybody could, who knew the cost.
Just as they were leaving Marthe's, Flaherty laughed at something she'd said, and then translated, "She says she can find you nice French sweethearts. She's always saying that to me, too—she means good girls, to be sure, girls to marry you."
"Good grief," said Hutch.
"Thank her," said Starsky, "but no thanks."
They waved and called "Goodbye" and were off. The road was deserted just here and the motorcycle seemed quieter. Hutch sat up, his legs tucked round Starsky, and if they shouted, they could hear each other.
"Like me own mother," Flaherty said, his brogue more noticeable, for some reason. "Old ... Cat'olic ... not like she'd understand, to be sure."
Hutch wasn't at all sure he understood, himself, and rarely dwelt on it anyway. What did reasons and words matter? Starsky mattered. He held tighter.
"Where are we going?" Starsky asked.
"Amiens."
On the way, they stopped at two local taverns, but didn't linger in either place. Farmers with mugs and pottery cups frowned or stared at them; the beer was flat, and the vin too ordinaire.
Still, it had some alcohol in it, and the second time they got back into the sidecar, Hutch rested his forehead against Starsky's neck, with the fur collar of the flight-jacket against his temple, and let himself drift ... drowsed, the buzz of the motor and occasional jolt of the sidecar less and less conscious as sensations ... he slept.
Starsky moved and woke him. The motorcycle was still, in a dark cobbled street that was unremarkable but for the bicycles against the wall and three autos straddling the walkway further down. "Come on, do, Hutch." Hutch sat up and Starsky clambered out, straightening his jacket while Hutch followed. Flaherty hung his helmet on one of the driving handles, and led the way across the street at an angle, to an unmarked wooden door. He knocked, paused, knocked twice and paused, then knocked three times. The door was cracked open and a man looked out, his face attentively blank. Voices and the quick notes of a ragtime piano came to Hutch faintly.
Flaherty said something and the man at the door replied, then opened it fully and grinned at them. Looked Hutch and Starsky up and down, but said something that sounded like "désastre" or perhaps "des asses"—Hutch was trying to decide whether to be offended and if so, what to do about it, when Flaherty laughed and said, "He says you're flying aces."
"Well," said Hutch self-deprecatingly.
"Mais oui," said Starsky jauntily, using up nearly all the French Hutch thought he knew.
Flaherty laughed again and they came all the way in, down a half-flight of stairs into what had probably once been a cellar. Flagstones on the floor, brick walls, electric light looking garish and naked as it glared on a dark-wood bar. The piano was at the far end of the room under another light, and there were small cafe-style tables scattered around. Hutch looked harder at the slim suited figure at a nearby table, hat tilted forward and seeming to ride too high on the small head, and realised it was a woman he was looking at. They were at an inverts' club.
The piano paused and voices called out, presumably song titles, as the musician talked back and then launched into another tune. Starsky grinned over his shoulder as they both recognised it: "You Made Me Love You."
Flaherty led them over to the bar. "The real treat here, for you monoglots," he said, "is the bartender."
The trousered form bent over behind the bar rose up, a dusty bottle in one long-fingered hand, and farther up than Hutch had expected. He also hadn't expected the dark face, the hooked nose, the bright and knowing eyes. "Bon soir, messieurs," said the black man.
"Now don't make me look the fool, 'Braceur," Flaherty said.
"Oh, sorry," the bartender said, blinking. "English, is you?"
"Yes," said Hutch. "RAC."
"Bien súr," 'Braceur answered, looking back and forth between them. "Yessir, nobody could doubt it."
The accent was odd; perhaps they looked puzzled, for Flaherty explained. "'Braceur is from the States—New Orleans."
"Long time gone now," 'Braceur said dismissively. "What'll you gentlemen have?"
He served them and moved to the other end of the bar in response to a patron's call; then wiped his way back with a pale cloth between his dark hand and the bar's dark wood. Hutch kept staring, though he knew it was rude. 'Braceur stared back, brows lifted.
"I'm sorry," Hutch said, "I ...." but nothing came to him.
"You," Starsky said, nudging him, "need to remember who brought you to this club."
He knew Starsk wasn't really jealous, and apparently the bartender could tell as easily, because his face relaxed and the wide mouth lifted into a smile. "You are a caution," he said. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the bar. "Should be good and used to it by now," he said. "Anyway this is a club for ... folks out of place. Like that child," he pointed with his chin to the crossdressed girl Hutch had seen on their way in. "Don't even have a girlfriend far as I know. Just the clothes for her, I guess. And she smokes here—sure she can't at home." He shook his head.
"How'd you end up here?" Starsky asked. "In Amiens?"
"I tell you all that, we'll both be here tomorrow's a week."
But they did go on talking, about Amiens and the countryside and other peaceful topics. Perhaps 'Braceur was as glad as they were to speak English for a while. The pianist played a rag, then "Dark Eyes," which made Starsky shake his head and grimace. He didn't like Russian music, Hutch knew.
Hutch looked around at the piano, half-turning, and Starsky moved to keep the body contact they'd slipped into, almost unconsciously. He was standing with his back to the bar and elbows on it, Hutch's arm loosely across his waist and the hand just tucked into his belt. Their shoulders had been touching; now the angle of Starsky's bent arm zigzagged across Hutch's chest, and his foot was between Hutch's. The warm hip was just at crotch-level, and Hutch tightened the grip of his arm involuntarily.
Starsky tilted his head back a little to meet Hutch's eyes, smiling. "Maybe we should ask for a dance tune," he said.
"A mazurka?" Hutch asked, really meaning, how long are you going to play with me tonight?
By Starsky's widening smile, he heard both questions. "A tango," he said, answering both.
Hutch bent his head, smelling Starsky's hair, nearly touching it. "There's not enough room here to tango," he murmured. "Besides, you always insist on leading."
"You can't dance, Hutch." The voice breathy and beautiful. If Hutch didn't pull back now, he didn't know what he might not do under the interested eyes of a bar-full of French inverts.
But he just couldn't move away. It was Starsky who took the hand from his waist and turned to face the bar, placing Hutch's hand on the wood and covering it with his own. "Flaherty," he said, still sounding winded, "um, should know somewhere we can put up for the night."
"Flaherty," said 'Braceur's voice, "ain't just available." They both looked up, and the bartender was looking back with amusement. "He and, hmm, I think Guillaume, slip out a while back. But if it's 'commodations y'all are after, I can help. Got a couple rooms above this, rent 'em by the night."
"Do you," said Hutch, but he was glad to hear it. And glad to see how quickly Starsky pulled out a handful of francs. Too impatient to haggle. Well, so was Hutch.
The room was small and not very furnished, but it had a high enough ceiling that Hutch didn't feel like ducking, and a bed with clean sheets, a tin of Vaseline on the washstand, water in the ewer, and towels. A single curtain across the dark square of window. A gas fixture at the door that gave a warm yellow light. Good enough.
Starsky hung his coat on a hook and took Hutch's to drape it over the top, and then he began to unfasten his collar button. Hutch took a step forward and covered Starsky's hands with his own. "Let me."
"I think we'd better strip you first," said Starsky.
So they both attacked Hutch's buttons, buckle and hooks, fingers tangling and fumbling, impatient. Starsky worked efficiently, without detours for stroking and kissing, and Hutch knew he wouldn't be able to do the same. They also folded Hutch's clothes neatly on the seat of a little wooden chair.
Then Hutch sat on his folded trousers, hands on either side of Starsky's waist, and looked up at the dark downturned eyes. "Let me," he said again, and meant more than just permission to undress his lover.
"Yes."
It was slow, slowly frantic, for every inch Hutch uncovered he wanted to touch. He opened the buttons of Starsky's shirt and rested his forehead on the pale lisle of the undershirt. Starsky's chest rose and fell and, before getting the belt unbuckled, Hutch pulled the hips into himself and pressed his ear against Starsky just where his ribs ended, below the undershirt buttons, listening to him breathe, to his beating heart and the tiny noises of his stomach. Eyes closed, Hutch turned his face completely into Starsky and took a long, sighing breath. Starsky petted his hair, and then bent forward, hips levering back, to kiss Hutch's forehead. Hutch reached for the waistband of his lover's trousers, undid belt and fly.
As he drew them down, Starsky pulled the undershirt over his head, inside out, and simply dropped it to the floor. It passed Hutch's peripheral vision as the piebald pyjamas had, and now he could smile at the memory.
He rubbed Starsky's knees, up a little into the legs of his underpants, then down again to the garters holding up his khaki socks. Undid the little clips, unbuckled the garters, took the right-hand one off and then the left. Hutch cupped a slender foot in his hand and thought of kissing it. But the logistics defeated him, and he decided to save that gesture for later. In bed.
He rubbed up the outsides of both legs at once, bunching the pants' legs and watching the fly as it bulged and gaped. Starsky was breathing hard now, and quickly, his mouth open, and Hutch reached farther up and inward until his fingers found the taut hot length, just brushed his fingertips back and forth while Starsky was swaying with the sensation, leaned forward and fastened his mouth on the hairy skin somewhere near Starsky's navel.
"Agh," said Starsky, holding his lover's head, pressing, "Damn."
For a moment Hutch resisted, then let Starsky guide him, rubbed his cheek against lisle and Starsky, let the cock poke and thrust at him, mouthing along its length.
"Hutch," Starsky said, untangling his fingers from Hutch's hair and pushing at his own pants, "... forgodssake ...."
Hutch sucked the cloth and Starsky grabbed his head and pulled him furiously to his feet, shoved him in the direction of the bed and tugged off the offending underwear so fast that Hutch was sure he must have hurt himself. "Did you even unbutton them?"
"Get in bed," Starsky growled, and crawled in after him, bumping arm and leg and hip.
"No," said Hutch as his lover clambered over him, "let me, let me," and scooped the squirming body into his arms, covered it with his own body, rubbed skin against skin luxuriously. They seldom were able to be naked together, especially where both of them could lie relaxed and comfortable, and though they were hardly relaxed now the bed was level (unlike their haystack) and large enough for all their limbs. Hutch kissed collarbone and shoulder, rib and stomach, hipbone and thigh; he stroked everywhere his hands could reach; Starsky swore and called his name and groaned, rocking his hips from side to side, thrashing his head. His hands struck at Hutch, grabbed at him, pounded the mattress. Hutch spread the legs below him farther apart, farther still, ducked his head until his face was in the bedclothes, nudged back to the testicles, and when he licked them they shrank and wrinkled and Starsky shouted louder, then ejaculated, pumping and gasping and pumping again. Hutch raised his head and watched, blinking only as he was sprayed, feeling warm drops on his eyelids and cheeks and forehead.
"Oh," Starsky said. "Oh Hutch."
Hutch knelt up and wiped his face with both hands, then looked at his smeared palms and licked the right one. It wasn't as erotic that way. He rubbed the rest off into the sheets.
"Your own fault." The voice was still weak. "Get up here ... I can't come there."
"You come very well here, thank you," Hutch said, and rolled the limp body over.
"Can't get on my knees," Starsky said, muffled in the pillow though he'd turned his face to one side.
"Fine." He straddled the lush hips, not caring particularly that his own cock was throbbing, aching, dripping from time to time. He cupped Starsky's shoulders in his hands, bent forward and kissed the damp nape of the neck, as sweetly fragrant as a baby's; licked the shell and lobe of the ear. Starsky murmured, not really words, and Hutch went on making love to the shoulders, the spine, the muscles of his lover's arms and the curve of his back. The swell of the buttocks. The dimples above them, below the spine.
"You're not," said Starsky, spreading his legs.
Hutch didn't bother to answer. He knew it was mad: the need he felt to possess every inch of his lover, feel every part of him alive and warm, make pleasure for him with every touch. But madness felt all right, just now. Unless Starsky didn't want it, Hutch would taste him everywhere.
Starsky didn't resist. His muscles tightened and relaxed, bunching and softening under Hutch's teasing mouth. Hutch sucked and licked, rubbed his teeth against the skin, and Starsky groaned again, thrusting into the sheets.
Grabbing the round cheeks, Hutch stroked both at once with his thumbs. Soft, velvety, compact, so good in his hands that he repeated the motion, then did it a third time before shifting his hold and slipping his thumbs along the crevasse between. Starsky's knees slid in the sheets, even farther apart.
Then Hutch licked the top of the crack. Starsky jolted in the bed. "Hu-utch," he said, and repeated it as Hutch lapped farther. The vowel lengthened, the consonants were less distinct, and it felt as if time were slowing, like a motion picture but with sound as well, as Hutch went deeper and Starsky keened and whispered his name.
Only once had Hutch even read a description of this act, and it was in an old book, so full of euphemism that he and Starsky had only laughed over it. Imagining it had been repellent. Hutch had been sure that one would smell faeces.
And now he could, slightly, clean as Starsky was; and now even that did not matter. Starsky seemed unable to keep still or silent; the skin was fascinatingly soft and wrinkled to the tip of Hutch's tongue, and nothing that belonged to his lover could ever repel him. His mouth was watering, insanely hungry for the loss of Starsky's control, the way he began to shout and shake. Hutch believed neither of them had ever been so alive.
Starsky somehow got his arms and legs under him and raised himself, almost dislodging Hutch, and then Starsky had twisted around and manhandled him onto his back.
"Let—" Hutch began again, but Starsky shook his head.
"No," he said, eyes wild, hair every which way in elf-locks, and even when he was not speaking his mouth was ajar, lips wet. "No." He took Hutch's mouth in a kiss so fierce that their teeth butted each other, squeaked as they moved. Their lips were pinched, and they tasted a faint tang of blood. Hutch rediscovered his cock's urgency, and groaned, trying to rub more effectively against whatever part of Starsky was so warmly and tightly pressed there. Starsky raised himself and Hutch groaned again before he felt the grip of Starsky's hand on his cock and the weight back on him.
Now he would have said yes if he could speak, but he couldn't. Starsky eased off, went on kissing but not in that take-no-prisoners way, got softer and shorter and wetter and sweet, so sweet, sucking at Hutch's lips as if they were flowers and Starsky a bee. Nectar in Starsky's mouth too. Hutch shut his eyes, let his neck relax, tasted Starsky, felt the strong hand stroking, squeezing, milking him, and wanted never to come if that meant this would go on forever.
But of course it would not, and with a strange mixture of satisfaction and grief Hutch felt his balls tighten and his erection swell, the rush of orgasm sweeping up his body until he cried out into Starsky's mouth and seemed to fill the narrow space between them with semen.
"Good, good, good," Starsky told him, all but crooning, kissing now with a touch as light as the brush of a feather, all around and down to the neck, burrowing his head in and holding tight with legs as well as arms. Something felt wet there, in the wrong place for Starsky's mouth, and Hutch pulled his lover's head up to look. The dark lashes were matted and drenched, and Hutch felt his own eyes sting. Cupped the dear long face in his hands.
They just looked. They didn't need vows. Anyway all they could have promised was this raw closeness that they were already sharing.
Chapter 4: Give Me What I Cry for
In that drifting sensation just before the end of sleep, Hutch heard five clear notes from the piano downstairs, and woke matching melody with words in his mind: "You made me love you...."
He opened his eyes, registering where they were. And when: the window curtain now flushed with a dim, pinkish light. Starsky's arm curved over him, and as he stirred a little, the arm tightened and Starsky's face nestled closer into the nape of Hutch's neck.
Hutch lay remembering the first time they'd heard the song, before the war. A garden party; sun and still air scented with flowers; the gramophone on a rickety little table under a tree, and a girl—one of the guests he didn't know—in a pale lacy dress singing along: "You made me love you. I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to do it. You made me want you. And all the time you knew it, I guess you always knew it."
Starsky had been leaning back against a tree trunk, jacket open and hands in his pockets. He'd worn a boater that day, with a ribbon that matched his yellow waistcoat. Hutch remembered what an effort it had been to move his hand from Starsky's shoulder to the rough bark, to lean there facing the girl and the gramophone rather than swinging round and trapping Starsky against the tree, lifting his chin and gazing into his eyes.
"Give me, give me what I cry for," the girl sang. "You know you've got the brand of kisses that I die for!" Starsky moved his head; the trunk pushed at the hat so he reached up and took it off before it fell, and he looked round with his uneven half-smile just as the girl sang again, "You know you made me love you!"
Hutch ruffled his friend's hair, then took the hat from Starsky's hands and pushed it down on his head, sliding it forward over his eyes. People around them laughed, and Hutch's mother took the opportunity to lead them both away, taking their arms and telling them which guests would help them get good places—she had decided Starsky should work in the City and Hutch as a political secretary.
Later, they stole a few moments alone in the library as the guests came inside at twilight, and Starsky took off his hat and leaned against the wall, daring Hutch with his eyes.
So Hutch put one hand on each side of Starsky's shoulders, palms flat against the flocked wallpaper, and leaned in until their faces nearly touched. "You made me love you," he murmured, and Starsky grinned again just before their lips met.
Now, in France, Hutch sighed and rubbed the hair on Starsky's forearm the wrong way, then smoothed it. He felt a kiss on the back of his neck and then heard Starsky's sleepy voice: "What're you thinkin' 'bout?"
"Vaseline," Hutch said, which was true enough as it was in his line of sight, the tin gleaming dimly on the side nearest the window, and he had been wondering how often it had been used. By men here ... together ... but only temporarily so.
Starsky was chuckling, and shifted around to kiss the side of Hutch's neck and then his jaw and cheek. "Want to use some?" His lips tickled Hutch's ear; his breath puffed hot and loud there.
Hutch shifted onto his back, and Starsky hung above him looking down, his hand now flat on Hutch's chest. "I want to be at home, and have our own tin and our own bed to use it in."
Starsky ran his hand up Hutch's neck to his face, petted it, looking intently as if to memorise what he saw. "We will."
"Would you go back to work in the City?"
"Depends." The answer wasn't flippant; Starsky looked thoughtful, though his hand went on stroking Hutch's forehead, his eyebrows, his hair. "It wasn't a bad job, at the bank. Boring, a bit, but you know most of them are. Yours was hardly a gay old time."
"No." Hutch had been writing most of the speeches and letters credited to the MP he'd worked for. "I don't think I want to do it any more."
"It shouldn't be hard to find jobs, after the war," Starsky said. "Should be a lot of openings."
God knew there were fewer young men to take civilian jobs than there had been a few short years ago. Hutch reached up around Starsky and pulled him down so they were chest to chest. "I don't want to go back," he said, meaning to the farmhouse and the biplanes and all the death.
"Now you're lying," Starsky said tenderly. "You won't let those boys go up without you."
"Any more than you would," Hutch admitted after a moment.
Starsky lowered his head, and they kissed slowly, mouths closed.
"B-flight must be going up today," Hutch said when they separated.
"Won't hurt them this once." Starsky kissed Hutch's chin, one corner of his mouth, and then the other. "Should I—" a few more small kisses, and purposeful squirming below the waist—"get that Vaseline?"
"Get it," Hutch said.
It was quite a while later that they went back down to the bar. Ahead on the stairs, Hutch stopped, one hand stretching out to keep Starsky back. He could hear someone weeping, breathless sobs, and another voice murmuring comfort.
They waited what seemed like a long time, but the crying didn't stop. Finally Starsky grew impatient and slipped around Hutch to thump down the last few stairs. Then, of course, Hutch had to follow.
They found 'Braceur bent over a slim figure crumpled in on itself at one of the tables. At the sound of their arrival the black man stood, one hand still on the weeper's shoulder, and then the other sat up and pushed back a tangled mess of honey-brown hair. It was the girl they'd seen in the bar before. She now had a black eye and a split lip. The hat was gone, but the rest of her men's clothing, though dishevelled, was recognisable from the previous night.
The girl was red-faced and the two Englishmen embarrassed, but 'Braceur said with poise, "You all didn't get introduced properly last night. This here's Marie-Denise. I know one of you boys is Hutchinson but I disremember which."
"I am," said Hutch, stepping forward. By sheer reflex, he held out his hand to the girl, then didn't know whether to complete the gesture or take it back. She reached out her left hand and laid it in his right, and he held it awkwardly. "My friend's name is Starsky."
"Bonjour," she said in a shaky voice.
Hutch looked at 'Braceur, who said, "Come on now, honey, speak English."
"Good mor-ning," she said carefully.
"Marie-Denise here needs help," 'Braceur began as if they had come downstairs especially to hear this story. "Her fiancé done found out where she spend her free time. And look how he show what a big man he is." The long-fingered hand took the girl's chin and turned it so the bruise and the wound were toward them.
The bartender looked at the airmen. "Now if she can get to her grandmother, the old lady can protect her. She's the one done got the money, and that man want the dowry. He will behave then. But it's a ways and Marie-Denise scared to go."
"We'll take her," Starsky offered.
Hutch opened his mouth and then shut it. It wasn't that he didn't want to do what he could, it was that ... well, now there was no help for it. He sighed just a little and turned back to Marie-Denise, holding her hand more firmly. He smiled down at her. "Tell us where we're going," he said.
Blaine was on the field telephone, and Phipps was an highly interested—and amused—audience. Blaine turned away from the round face with its twitching moustache and concentrated on the tinny voice that was saying such ridiculous things that he found himself echoing them.
"Of course," he said impatiently, "you must keep discipline. I'm not disputing that. Military police are for that purpose." Buzzing question. "What? No, I do not think it's a good idea to put them under arrest! Why? Well, because I need them here, that's why!" A more prolonged, more annoying buzz, like a blowfly in a window. "They did? She did ... a Frenchman ... his sweetheart ... down a well?"
Phipps was openly snickering now, his arms bent in front of him to hold in the sound, and Blaine, a little giddy himself, covered the receiver and waved the other hand in a swatting motion. Then back to the telephone. "Oh they did. Oh, they are, well why didn't you say so before? Of course I'll discipline them! All right ... thank you ... yes, goodbye." He put the receiver back into the telephone pouch. Got up from where he'd been sitting on the edge of the desk, and Phipps rose from the chair and came around to meet him in the centre of the room. Blaine shook his finger at the other man. "Drunk as lords—raising Cain—and you laugh, you old fool."
"Well, really now," Phipps said, beaming. "Confidentially, Blaine, I envy them, don't you? Now tell the truth."
He'd envied them more than he did now, but he wasn't going to tell Phipps so. "Apparently," he said, wondering what the true story could possibly be, "they put some French girl's sweetheart down a well or something." Phipps smirked again. "If I didn't need them so badly, I'd leave them to the military police." The threat was entirely empty, and Phipps' eyes said he knew it. Blaine would have to think of something much better to say to Starsky and Hutchinson, when they got back. He had actually opened his mouth to try again, when he caught the first faint sound of an oncoming motor. "Wait a minute, there's B-flight." He counted the circling motor sounds on his fingers: thumb, index, middle—he looked at Phipps. "More trouble. Come along." They went out to the field.
And it was a good thing Blaine had begun to do this, because Squires couldn't get out of his plane: he was pulled down the tail and lowered to the ground by the crew. Blaine began to run, and kept going even when he saw that Squires could walk—he seemed woozy and weak, and—yes, that was blood running down his left arm and hand.
"Come along, sir," one of the ground crew was saying. Blaine shouldered the man on the right out of the way and took Squires' elbow himself. Phipps did the same on the other side, supporting the wounded arm.
"Hullo, Squires, what happened?" Blaine asked as the flier's dilated, shocked stare turned to him.
"Von Richter's moved in," Squires said, as if amazed, "across the land."
But the news, not the tone, was what bowled Blaine over. "Von Richter!"
Phipps echoed, "Von Richter!" and so did various others in what was now a crowd of men, moving along awkwardly as they all pushed close.
"Yes," Squires said to Blaine, "we ran into one flight and then another. There was nothing we could do about it. Suddenly the air was ... full of them."
Phipps was talking and gesturing, sending one man back to the farmhouse and another few ahead to a heap of repair supplies, as yet unpacked, to move a couple of bundles off a good-sized crate.
"It's lucky any of us got back," said Squires. "They can really fly."
"Many of them?" asked Phipps.
"We were outnumbered four to one."
"Good grief," said Blaine.
"We didn't have a chance," Squires insisted, as if he really thought that Blaine would reprimand him. Blaine patted his arm, and spared a thought for how strangely easy it was to be this companionable with Squires when he could never have taken Hutchinson's arm this way. Much less patted him.
They sat the flier down on the crate. "Here," said Blaine, "now take it easy, give me that arm—" but it was Phipps who took it and spoke to the youngster—what was his name again? Smythe?—who had run back for supplies.
"There, that's right, now, get your tourniquet on that, right," Phipps murmured.
Blaine had to know, and the crowd was too closely packed for him to see for himself. "Who'd you lose, Squires?"
"Thornley and Murrow ... Esmond and ... Hollister." Squires was looking down at the blood running over his palm, the white knotted cloth of the tourniquet above his elbow.
"Hollister?" Blaine frowned; by rights Hollister shouldn't have been up with B-flight at all. "Four out of seven."
"How did Hollister go?" blurted Graham, who evidently hadn't seen.
"He was trying to help Thornley as a matter of fact," Squires said.
Irony again. Blaine shook himself mentally and said to Phipps, "You'd better get Captain Squires to the Medical Officer."
And then they heard an aeroplane motor. Frozen for an instant, they all sprang back to life when they heard the anti-aircraft guns and realised it was a German plane. Everyone was shouting: "Down! Jerry! God, a Hun!" Some men ran for the buildings, others ducked behind the supplies; Squires tried to get up but Phipps and one of the mechanics held him down. "Stay where you are, sir!" Blaine crouched low beside Squires' knee and waited. The red-painted plane passed low, then circled back even lower—something dropped from it—the grin on the pilot's face was plainly visible. If it wasn't Von Richter, it was someone doing quite an admirable imitation. The plane swooped upward and whirled away, ignoring the anti-aircraft fire as if it were simply not in good taste.
Everyone who could, leapt up and ran across the field to where the object had dropped. One of the mechanics got there first. "Look, sir, boots!" He bent to pick them up.
"Wait!" Blaine shouted. "Don't touch those!" He got there. They certainly looked ordinary enough, though he didn't much like to think where the Germans were getting pairs of British ammo boots. Blaine nudged them with one foot, and they fell meekly over as empty boots should do. "Well, they're all right. Let's look at them."
He picked them up. They were connected by black waxed twine and there was a paper tag, carefully lettered in exceedingly straight lines. Blaine read aloud before he'd thought: "'One pair of trench boots for the use of British flying officers. You'll be safer on the ground—Von Richter.'"
Then Blaine was rocked on his feet as all the men around him grabbed and pulled the boots and his arms and hands, even the cloth of his uniform. "Gi'me those boots—damn Heinies—give—I'll take those—take care of—"
"All right!" Blaine shouted, and they backed off. He turned all the way around, scowling. "I ... will ... keep ... these ... boots. Now pay attention. There are going to be no volunteer patrols. Don't you realise these boots are just a trick to get you up in the air? None of you is going to commit suicide by going up alone!" They weren't happy, but they were silent. Blaine permitted himself a tight smile. "Don't worry, you'll die soon enough. But not a man leaves the ground without my orders! Understand?"
There was a general murmur: "Yes, sir."
"All right. Come along, Phipps." And the two of them went back to the office, Blaine still clutching the boots and now not only wondering how to chew out Hutchinson and Starsky really properly, but how to head them off doing anything foolish about the boots as well.
The MO had a new load of casualties and the ambulance-drivers were all out, but Flaherty had to go back to the hospital anyway, and could take Squires. So the B-flight Captain was still at the farmhouse when Hutch and Starsky got back. They packed him securely into the sidecar while he talked about the flight that morning, and then Starsky put their new bouquet in the bend of Squires' right arm.
"I'm not that crocked," said Squires. "Anyway I'd rather have grapes."
"Then hand them on to a nurse," Starsky insisted.
"A French girl give them to you?" Squires seemed interested.
Starsky just winked. In fact, it had been Marthe, when they went back for Starsky's clothes. The chrysanthemums were from her own garden.
Hutch put one hand on Starsky's shoulder and shook it as they walked in. "Wait 'til we get home," Starsky said under his breath.
Hutch grinned. He actually didn't understand why Starsky kept trying to give him flowers. "I prefer roses," he said, joking.
Blaine tore strips off them, or clearly meant to, but it was hard not to see Phipps smirking to one side, and Blaine was obviously distracted by the advent of Von Richter. After the chewing-out, Hutch was told to stay, and the two of them looked at maps and tried to figure out the location of the nearest German aerodrome. Blaine had been keeping track of what the flight-captains had been saying about how long it took for them to run into German patrols after flying over anti-aircraft and what direction the planes seemed to come from; also he had some information grudgingly wrung out of someone on the other end of the field-telephone. It didn't look impossible to find. Blaine didn't say he had a plan, though.
"Don't I get a look at those famous boots?" Hutch asked when Blaine dismissed him.
The CO narrowed his eyes, and Hutch remembered that he was not in good odour at the moment. "I'm sure someone in the mess can tell you about them. Now run along, and don't slip off anywhere before tomorrow."
Hutch went out to the bar, and Starsky was waiting for him—had a glass of whiskey all set up, too. Hutch picked it up and sipped gratefully. "Oh, yes," he said fervently. "Thanks, old man."
Starsky half-smiled and took a drink, then said quietly, "About those boots, Hutch."
Hutch had begun to smile too. They hardly needed to say another word to each other. "I was just thinking the same thing."
"I believe I'll have a word with Evans." Starsky set his glass down.
"Good idea—I should talk to Richardson too." Nothing could be more normal. Hutch inspected with the head mechanic every couple of days, and it was an unusual day when Starsky didn't check whatever plane he was using and chat with his mechanic.
"Mm-hmm."
They went out to the barn.
In fact, it was very, very early in the morning when they eased out of bed and got into their flight gear, so Hutch had even kept the promise he'd not actually made to Blaine. Starsky, digging in his coat pocket to find a glove, made a soft exclamation of surprise and pulled out a little paper cachet.
"What's that?" whispered Hutch.
"Flaherty gave it to me, in case we ever run into another Jack Johnson of a Frenchman trying to rearrange your pretty face," Starsky answered. "Says it's called a Mickey Finn."
Lowry, in the next bed, turned over and murmured, and the conspirators froze until it was clear he was still asleep. "Later," said Hutch, taking the cachet from Starsky's hand and tucking it into the breast pocket of the polka-dot pyjamas.
It was Starsky who was going to sneak into Blaine's room and retrieve the boots while Hutch helped wheel out the planes. Hutch hoped his friend's ability to find almost anything was working at full strength now. Apparently it was, as Starsky bounced out to the planes, waving the boots and their tag in the air above his head. "Got 'em," he crowed softly and unnecessarily.
Very shortly their unauthorised mission would be no secret. Nobody could start two biplanes at 4.30 ack emma without everyone for a mile around knowing it had happened. But by the time anybody got out to the field, they'd be gone. The men they'd persuaded to help would make themselves scarce, and could anyway claim they'd been unable to disobey Hutch. Rank did have its privileges.
The dew was heavy on the grass, soaking Hutch's pants above his boots and weighing down the skirts of his coat. The air was wet and misty—chill—he shivered as he pushed the plane, in between two of the younger mechanics. The sky was clear from ten to two o'clock, a dark but luminous blue like the inside of a sapphire. Nearer the horizon, what clouds there were showed misty and broken. The moon had gone down a long time ago, but the stars were still out, and birds were singing, loudly enough that Hutch thought crazily of shushing them.
The motors sounded absolutely obscene, roaring, echoing against the flat sides of the buildings. Surely they must always do that? But Hutch had never listened during the day. Two planes didn't sound like seven, anyway. He distinctly heard the cough of Starsky's motor, and then the way it smoothed out as they taxied.
Once they were up, Hutch ignored the cold wind and the noise, exhilarated as always by the soar and drop of the plane through the air and how it answered to his touch on the controls. It was grand being so far up, above it all, where a drainage ditch and a deep-edged brook and a trench all looked much alike, and the brush cover of anti-aircraft looked like landscaping, bushes carefully spaced on some vast lawn. The roads drew themselves in pale lines across the ground. Occasionally the small dark blot of a person moved in a farmyard or village street.
Flying east, they were travelling into the dawn, and getting up father made the day seem to gain on them. The sun was still not visible but it was now definitely morning, grey-blue above, red and purple below. Hutch swooped closer to Starsky, waved at him, then veered. Gained altitude but bore south, getting the map from the previous evening fixed in his head and matching it to the contours of the living earth below.
He glimpsed the bustle of the German aerodrome, with its ordered ranks of planes ready to go up, and dumped altitude, dropping swiftly enough to almost buzz the tops of the tallest trees beneath him. Starsky followed suit. Still, it didn't take long before the anti-aircraft boys were shooting at them, and undoubtedly calling ahead to the 'drome. The German equivalent of Blaine was having his brekker interrupted by the ringing phone. That was some satisfaction as Hutch tilted and turned, wheeling, rolling and swooping unpredictably. Then he was past, looked around and saw Starsky, waved. Starsk waved back.
Now they were really coming close, and there were more gunshots—this time Hutch found the right hump of brush and returned fire. Not too much: he'd need his guns in a moment—now, in fact—for the airmen. Below he could distinctly see the expressions and hear the shouts of the Germans they were beginning to strafe. They buzzed low, firing up one side of the airfield, riddling every plane they could with their machine guns. One lucky shot burst a petrol tank and sprayed everyone nearby.
They wheeled, rolled out in perfect synchronisation, and strafed back down the other side of the row. By this time, most of the Germans had stopped gaping, shouting, shaking their fists, or running aimlessly about and had started climbing into their planes. Hutch shot a mechanic starting a propeller and the man dropped to the ground. He shot at the pilot too but didn't hit him. Dropped a bomb, and then another, from the set hanging under his wings. They made satisfying fireworks, and one of them could take out as many as three planes at once when he placed it just right.
He took out one of the hangars, a small one, and shot two or three men who were wrestling with a gun on a tripod. Then he shot a pilot as the plane taxied and caught the petrol tank of a plane just lifting off—it burst into flame and fell the twenty feet or so to the ground. The dead pilot's plane flipped itself over and blocked the way for another plane, which tried to turn but could not do it fast enough. They crashed together. Hutch went up as he reached the end of the field and rolled away from the gunfire.
Starsky was shouting—Hutch could just hear it, but not the words. He looked over, saw his friend giving a thumbs-up gesture and then ducking down and retrieving the boots. Hutch nodded and returned the thumbs-up. They took one last run at the airfield, and Hutch dropped another couple of bombs while Starsky held the boots over the side of the plane to drop them not ten feet away from the gleaming red plane that Hutch agreed was probably Von Richter's. Hutch leaned over as far as was safe and called out, "Ha ha ha! You can keep the boots—they don't fit!" That was satisfying too, though probably nobody on the ground heard or could understand him if they did.
The two planes soared up like kites, owning the sky. Only flight and victory together felt like this. Hutch couldn't stop smiling, and could see the gleam of Starsky's teeth too. Wished he could touch him, grab an arm or a leg.
Then, below them, the stutter of guns—one useless volley, and then a better-aimed one. Hutch felt the jittering impact but no pain. Heard the motor rasp, belch, hiccup, and then stop with shocking abruptness.
He was almost a hundred feet above the ground.
Everything seemed very silent. The air rang in his ears as it passed. The wings and tail were undamaged, he discovered, and that high hillside that was pressing so close as he glided lower was also bouncing wind at him. He veered away from it; looked down. The vineyard below him was flat but full of trellises or something. Starsky was shouting and gesturing; Hutch patted the air, palm downward, to calm his friend and indicate he was landing.
Hutch angled the tail downward and dropped more slowly as the wind pressed up on the surfaces of both sets of wings. He turned and glided away from vineyard and hill, across a field with too much brush and too many intermittent trees for his liking, and then swerved to parallel the narrow dirt road. No poplars on either side, which was strange, but Hutch was not looking a gift road in the mouth just now.
Carefully ... carefully ... fighting the steering to keep the plane level and straight with the road. A hard bounce—there went the landing wheels. Another one, and two shorter ones. Hutch felt like a skipping stone. Dust rose in clouds. The metal of the undercarriage screeched horribly as it scraped against the ground. Hutch clenched his teeth and then was sorry as they jolted together over and over.
And then the plane was still, and Hutch was in one piece. He took a deep breath.
Starsky had been circling and making a more controlled landing, his own motor sputtering, but only from bringing the throttle down. Beyond its coughing beat, Hutch could hear remote shouting and realised they were still behind enemy lines.
He scrambled out of the cockpit and pulled out the grenade he hadn't thought to throw during their raid, pulled the pin and tossed it into the seat, ran like hell to Starsky's plane and grabbed the side and the wing support, swung himself onto the lower wing and sat with his legs dangling. "Let her rip, Starsk!"
The plane groaned with the new weight on one side, rumbled across the uneven turf, but though it was excruciatingly slow and Hutch could see the long coats and coal-scuttle helmets and bayonets nearing, they did go up, wobbling a little. Starsky was working hard with the steering wheel and the throttle. Hutch wished he could help but it was all he could do to hold on and anyway, good as they were at working together at some things, a biplane was not a two-handed game.
Hutch smiled, thinking of two-handed games. The empty air beneath his feet and under his rear gave him a little constant zing of fear, the exploding grenade and aeroplane made him jump even though he'd expected it, and the jump made him clutch hard at where he was holding on, and Starsky was so near him and so busy ... Hutch was hard as a rock. Aching with it.
Starsky's mouth was moving—Hutch concentrated, watching it, until he identified the words and realised the madman was singing: "Come Josephine in my flying machine! Going up she goes, up she goes!"
Hutch joined in and got a sideways, grinning glance from Starsky: "Balance yourself like a bird on a beam, in the air she goes, there she goes!"
They were being shot at again, but it just seemed like percussion for a moment. Almost. The plane spun, veered back on a new angle. "Uh-oh-oh!" Now Hutch could understand better what had made Starsky so vocal in the sidecar. Singing seemed preferable to howling in Starsky's ear while he was fighting the controls so hard. "Oh, my," Hutch sang, a bit shrilly, "the moon is on fire!" And then the rattle of gunfire passing much too close shut them both up.
What exactly happened next, Hutch never really knew, but there was an explosion in the air in front of them, a kind of pop and jump in the plane, and oil began to squirt out through the instrument panel and all over Starsky's face and goggles. Hutch saw him swipe frantically at the black liquid and heard the engine miss and sputter.
"Starsk!"
Starsky, insanely, pulled his goggles off and got oil in his eyes. "I can't see!" He was shaking his head and rubbing at his eyes—the oil went on fountaining everywhere, into his mouth, all over his face. The plane's nose tilted down and the whine of their falling was louder and louder.
"Starsky!" Hutch couldn't hear the name himself, and couldn't hear Starsky but knew he was repeating that he'd been blinded. They lurched and spun and Hutch was sliding off the wing—his arm around the wing-supports and one hand clamped on the edge of the cockpit and wet with oil across the back were his only two solid contacts with the plane. He gulped and actually looked down, saw how they were tumbling, and called out as loudly as he could, "We're in a right-hand spin—pull her out!"
"But I can't see!" Still, the blackened hands reached for the controls and clutched harder when they slid away, performed actions both of them had memorised by now. The plane straightened, her nose lifted, and they settled into a glide as the engine coughed its last.
"That's it," said Hutch, "right forward."
One last burst of gunfire, and then that ended, too.
Starsky, eyes staring and watering over the oil, turned blindly to Hutch and asked, "We're over our own lines now, aren't we?"
"Yes, but the ground's just as hard here."
Waveringly, they came down—"Look out, here it comes!" Hutch warned—bounced on their wheels, rolled and jounced and then flopped completely over into a trench. Hutch fell right to the bottom, with a few bits of the plane, into mud the texture of oatmeal and onto a number of blunt, hard, rounded, edged, and jagged objects that he declined to think about. Looked up the walls of the trench, and past what looked like the dome of a skull but could, after all, be a helmet, at Starsky hanging upside-down from his seatbelt. Petrol was dripping over him and straight down from the front of the plane.
"Are you all right?" Hutch asked.
"I'm pointing the wrong way!" Starsky was indignant, and Hutch snorted as he was scrambling up.
"All right," he said unsteadily as he wrapped his arms around the soggy torso and lifted. "Watch out for the petrol...." and suddenly Starsky came loose, slid out, and when Hutch tried to break his fall they both went straight down into the mud, rolling out of the way of the petrol and yelling wildly as their clothes and limbs tangled.
Starsky looked like nothing on earth. "Can't see," he was still complaining, so Hutch handed him the tattered and soiled end of the streamer on his helmet as a joke, then had to take it away again when Starsky tried to really use it to rub his eyes with. Opening the buttons of his friend's flight coat, Hutch reached in, felt around—Starsky began to laugh and squirm—and pulled out the man's handkerchief, which was much less the worse for wear than anything else they had. Starsky swabbed at his eyes. "Well, we made it! We made it," and somehow that was so funny that they collapsed into laughter again, and were all but hysterical when the soldiers from the next manned trench finally found them.
Blaine was so angry he literally could not stand still, jittering around the office so much that his orderly was having a terrible time helping him dress. He always shaved here: the light was better, and he could keep an ear out for early flights. Phipps sat quietly and spoke words meant to be calming, but nothing helped. Blaine thrust along the sides of his head with his hairbrush, bent over the mirror, positively ranting and conscious all the time of a chunk of ice in his stomach that neither this morning's coffee nor the sizeable tot of whiskey he'd put in could melt.
"This command is a farce!" He dropped the brush and stood up. "They command themselves—orders don't mean anything any more—it's a circus."
Phipps said, "But you must remember that—"
Blaine took a step to the door and looked out the upper half. Nothing. "I remember giving orders!" Then, to the orderly, "Give me my tunic." While he was turning and putting his arms into the jacket sleeves, he said, "Those orders have been disobeyed. In the infantry or any other branch of the service—" he was doing up buttons with such abrupt motions that he felt a thread give in one of them, and looked down at it—"an officer in command can keep discipline. What can I do?" The orderly had brushed his shoulders over and over now—what was the man thinking of? "That's all right, thank you." And then the man almost jumped back. Blaine pulled down on his cuffs, the front of the tunic, the cuffs again. Turned to Phipps. "They're laughing up their sleeves!"
"Or dead," Phipps reminded him.
As if he needed it. "Yes, or dead." There was a motor noise, and he strode to the door to look out. A troop car stopped in the yard, and two bedraggled but familiar figures climbed out of it. Blaine ground his teeth, the ice gone in a rush of flame that lit him up like a lamp. "No, they're not dead!" he growled, then shouted, "Hutchinson! Starsky!" The orderly handed Blaine his Sam Browne belt, which he put on with fumbling hands while his two strays came in at a jaunty march step. It was a wonder they didn't salute. But bright morning faces they did not have—they looked as if they'd been pulled through a dusty hedge backward and then, perhaps, dipped in tar.
They looked happy. Blaine wanted to kill them. He couldn't seem to get the shoulder strap buckled properly, but he wasn't letting the orderly get between him and these two—these two—"All right, you can go," he told the enlisted man.
"Thank you, sir," and the man fled into the yard.
"Good morning, gentlemen," Phipps said evenly as Blaine slammed the door so hard it quivered afterward in the frame.
"Good morning, Phipps," each man said sweetly, their voices overlapping.
Yes, Blaine decided, he would kill them. Slowly. The smugness of their little smiles alone was enough reason.
"What do you fellows imagine I'm here for, to watch you turn the army into a circus?" They faced the wall and stared at it, not a flicker on their faces to show he was even present. "I've played fair with you for months. But this is organised warfare, not your own private feud. You went out against Von Richter—we're outnumbered four to one!" Now he was close enough to Hutch's face to see the tracks of sweat and spatters of oil and mud. He smelled like he'd been fighting all night long. His jaw was set now. "You fools!" Blaine roared, and Hutch jerked just a tiny bit. "When we need every man and every plane." Yes, and just where were the planes they'd left in? "Well," drawing back to see Starsky's face as well, "I'm not going to stand for it any longer. I made out a report on this situation for Headquarters—" and he'd almost sent it, too. "There'll be a court-martial in this." The phone rang.
"Fifty-ninth," Phipps said, and listened.
Blaine stood for a few seconds waiting for the phone, and the corner of Hutch's mouth quirked slightly. The feel of his hair, his skin and muscle, and the bone underneath was suddenly so real to Blaine that he had to move back, and anger rang in his ears and filled his throat.
And what was the matter with Phipps? "Come on, give it to me!" He took the receiver and turned half away from Hutch; Starsky was still in his field of vision, but that wasn't nearly as bad.
"Hello! Yes, it's Blaine." Buzzing, but not as pointless as usual. "What? The 'drome was bombed? What 'drome, where?" Von Richter's. Blaine's head went back and the pale glow of Hutch's hair moved slightly. He glanced at Starsky's face and found him openly smiling. Still, they did seem to have—"Destroyed it? Really?" Blaine whistled, unable to stop himself. "Yes, sir, yes, yes! From here, yes they did! No, sir, no, only two of them. What?" The words were a dream. Blaine was sure of it. He had dreamed them, over and over when he wasn't dreaming of even more impossible things, like discharge ... or Hutch .... "Oh," he said weakly. "Excu—excuse me, sir, would, would you mind repeating that again?"
They were the same words this time. New rank, new post. Away. From the front. Appoint a successor. Away from the front. "With pleasure, sir! Right away, sir, thank you!" And he'd been threatening these boys with court martial. He wasn't even off the phone and he couldn't help laughing. "Goodbye—thank you-hoo-ho-ho ..." The phone shook in his grasp as he gave it back to Phipps, stepped between the two fliers, turned and took them both by the unwashed napes of their necks. Boys, that's all they were. He shook them and they looked sheepishly at him, sideways. He laughed some more. They'd have to grow up now. No more pre-dawn raids or wild AWOLs or dalliance in the hay.
He went behind his desk and opened the lower drawer where he kept his bottle. There were only two glasses there, and he took them out and set them on the far edge of the desktop, then found an old one for himself under a paper. "Oh, get me another glass, would you, Phipps?" The man grabbed it up out of nowhere, like magic, just as he always seemed able to do. That made Blaine chuckle too.
He didn't need any other intoxicant but his news, but he poured a good inch of Old Sporran into the bottom of each of the glasses and handed them out. "Here you are, Phipps ... Hutchinson ... Starsky ... myself." He raised his own like a toast. "Ah, now I've got you, Hutchinson. Now you will have to grow up." He drank. None of the others did, clustered warily around the desk and looking at Blaine as if he had lost his mind at last. Well, it had been a near thing. He hitched up one trouser leg and sat on the edge of his desk. Took a deep free breath. "Headquarters liked your raid this morning. They liked it so well that—" he savoured it again for a moment—"they've appointed me up to Wing!" In fact, he suddenly remembered, he'd been told to take the very same car that had delivered Hutchinson and Starsky, and he needed to get outside and tell the driver so.
He bounced up from the desk and moved Phipps out of the way. "Excuse me, Phipps." He threw on his coat and hat, picked up his cane, and then realised he hadn't finished, so he went back to where the two fliers were staring blankly at each other. They still hadn't drunk anything. Well, Blaine decided, he'd leave the bottle. "Before I go, I'm ordered to appoint someone in my place." He looked at the two stunned boys and felt a stab of compunction. But really, who else? There wasn't any other choice. "Here," he said more gently, "at my place at this little desk."
"What do you mean?" asked Hutch, by which Blaine understood that the flier thought he knew. Didn't want to know. It was too bad.
"I mean that someone is going to be you. Good luck, Squadron Leader Hutchinson." He saluted, without irony, though Hutch's eyes flashed resentment. That was a good thing: he was beginning to grasp what was happening to him. "Right," said Blaine and turned away, beauty and love and death and irony all collapsing together in the shadows of the office as he left it. He heard the phone ring behind him but didn't look back—it was always for the commanding officer, and he wasn't that any more.