thing.â
âTheyâre not going to like swatting up all that Polish stuff, are they?â Fanny said gloomily. âWhat am I going to do if they get everything wrong?â There was no answer to that. âOh well,â he said. âBetter get on with it.â
His first problem was finding the Polish stuff so that they could swot it up. Nobody knew where the Air Ministry papers were. Mother Cox thought that Flip Moran had collected them and putthem somewhere. The rest of âAâ flight stood or sat around and tried to look concerned. Fanny heard âBâ flight taking off, and briefly contemplated going over to the control tower, calling up Moran on the R/T, and getting the information from him. He remembered what Moran had looked and sounded like when last seen: unhelpful. Moran would fiddle with his radio to create a lot of howls and crackles and would then report,
Sorry, your transmission garbled.
Fanny turned away and organized a search.
âAâ flight hunted enthusiastically in all the most unlikely places: under the carpets, inside the lavatory cisterns, down the backs of the sofas (Pip Patterson found sixpence and half a bar of chocolate), behind the pictures on the walls. Sticky Stickwell accidentally burst a cushion, and got severely blamed by the others: too severely, Fanny decided, after they had worked it up into a kind of contest in condemnation, and he made them shut up. Mother Cox found a mouse in a broom cupboard, and at once they were all in full chase. The mouse escaped, but not before Moggy had broken a lampstand; which prompted another barrage of blame, until again Fanny had to step in and use his authority.
It was galling. He knew they were playing the fool, he knew he was being mocked. He could feel his temper slipping, and yet he didnât know what else to do. For one thing, it was worrying to have lost all those secret papers, for which the Air Ministry had his signature. He stood in the middle of the mess, clenching his fingers around his thumbs, and saw something sticking out behind a row of bottles on the top shelf above the bar.
âAâ flight showed loud astonishment and pleasure at the discovery of the papers. âNever mind all that,â Fanny snapped. âWho searched the bar?â
âMoggy did,â said Sticky.
âOooh, what a whopper!â Moggy said. âIt was you. You know it was you.â
âNever. It must have been Dicky, then.â
âMe? Iâm too small, I canât see up there, Iââ
âWho was it got the stepladder?â Pip asked. âSomeone did. Wasnât it you, Mother?â
âThatâs right, put the blame on me,â Mother said huffily. âEvery time something goes wrong itâs alwaysââ
Fanny hammered a glass ashtray on the bar. âForget it!â heshouted. âWeâve found the bloody things. Now letâs get to work. Written test at twelve oâclock.â
The rest of the morning was silent except for yawns, sighs, the shuffling of feet and the rustling of paper. At noon, Fanny distributed sheets of foolscap and read out his questions, one by one. Half of them called for the translation of Polish phrases into English; the other half, of English into Polish. There were forty questions in all. He was relieved to see that everyone took the test seriously; indeed they looked quite weary by the time it was finished.
As he was collecting their answers, Kellaway and Skull came in with the members of the panel of inquiry. Fanny stuffed the papers inside his tunic and went over to play host.
During lunch the talk was not of the Ramâs accident but of Bomber Commandâs attacks on German warships in their North Sea bases. This, it seemed, was the only form of air offensive approved by the Cabinet, and the bomber crews had been ordered to take the greatest care to avoid injuring German civilians. Twenty-nine Blenheims and Wellingtons
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