Hornet’s Sting by Derek Robinson Page B

moved fast, he could catch an express and be in Cornwall by tea-time. Grey seas, grey granite, soggy moorland. His parents would ask a lot of questions. Then their friends would visit and ask the same bloody silly questions: what’s it really like? When are we going to win? And, no doubt: how many Fritzes have you shot down? Resentment gripped like indigestion. If he told them what France was really like, they’d never believe him. Bugger Cornwall.
    So he stayed at Taggart’s and went to a different show every night; often two shows, with supper in-between or after or both. The West End of London was bustling with young officers. He quickly fell in with a bunch hellbent on squeezing the most out of their leave. They called him the Mad Major – to the infantry, any R.F.C. major was mad – and when they ended up at Taggart’s, he made jugs of Hornet’s Sting for them. They thought he was a hell of a fellow. He relaxed in the luxury of not being a commanding officer. For the first time in a year, he did what he damn well pleased. It was a strange experience, like taking his clothes off in a crowded room, and he soon grew sick of it, but for a few galvanic days he thought he was happy.
    He went to a dance. It was a tea-dance, held at Malplacket House. The young Lord Malplacket had gone to France with his regiment in 1914 and soon was Mentioned in Despatches for conspicuous gallantry, too conspicuous for his own good: a German sharp-shooter picked him out and picked him off. Nobody in the British Army wore a steel helmet in those dashing, innocent days. Eventually the remains got shipped home and placed in the family vaults while a cannon left over from the Civil War boomed out the dead man’s years. His widow wondered what to do with herself. Belgian refugees needed help. She found them dull. The Red Cross wanted people to roll bandages: not a thrilling prospect. She decided that her war-work was to give tea-dances at Malplacket house for officers on leave. Every afternoon, the ballroom was brisk with the foxtrotting of subalterns and widows. Cleve-Cutler went, and found it the most enormous fun.
    The second time he went, he saw a girl sitting in the gallery that overlooked the ballroom. Emerald dress, dark red hair. Quite alone.He danced a waltz and got some lemonade for his partner and looked up. Still there. Still alone. He excused himself and found the stairs to the gallery.
    â€œHullo,” she said, as if they had known each other for years. “You’re wasting your time with me.”
    â€œWell, I’ve got plenty of time, and I can’t think of a better way to waste it... May I sit and talk?” He really wanted to sit and look.
    She was unfashionably slim and her face had a delicacy that made him feel powerful and protective, until she looked him in the eyes. Fear did strange, apparently useless things to a man, as he knew; it dried the mouth, it tightened the lungs, it made the heart hammer and the palate detect strange metallic tastes. Now he discovered what sudden love could do. It knocked the stuffing out of a chap. Fear multiplied; love subtracted. This was all new to him. Cleve-Cutler had confronted fear and overcome it. He wasn’t going to submit tamely to love. “You know, you remind me of someone,” he lied.
    â€œOh, come on,” she said. “You can do better than that.”
    â€œUm,” he said. He looked away, but looking away was pain. “What I meant was ...” He looked back, and was ruined again. “Look here, you’re being jolly unfair.”
    â€œAm I? Well, do something about it.” She was infuriatingly calm. He was in a fever; what right had she to be so calm? “For a start,” she said, “you can tell me who you are.”
    You crass ass, he told himself. “Hugh Cleve-Cutler,” he said.
    â€œAh.” She was looking down at the dancers, which he resented. “I used to know a Stanley