Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson

thing.”
    â€œThey’re not going to like swatting up all that Polish stuff, are they?” Fanny said gloomily. “What am I going to do if they get everything wrong?” There was no answer to that. “Oh well,” he said. “Better get on with it.”
    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 “A” flight stood or sat around and tried to look concerned. Fanny heard “B” 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.
    â€œA” 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 didn’t 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.
    â€œA” flight showed loud astonishment and pleasure at the discovery of the papers. “Never mind all that,” Fanny snapped. “Who searched the bar?”
    â€œMoggy did,” said Sticky.
    â€œOooh, what a whopper!” Moggy said. “It was you. You know it was you.”
    â€œNever. It must have been Dicky, then.”
    â€œMe? I’m too small, I can’t see up there, I—”
    â€œWho was it got the stepladder?” Pip asked. “Someone did. Wasn’t it you, Mother?”
    â€œThat’s right, put the blame on me,” Mother said huffily. “Every time something goes wrong it’s always—”
    Fanny hammered a glass ashtray on the bar. “Forget it!” heshouted. “We’ve found the bloody things. Now let’s get to work. Written test at twelve o’clock.”
    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 Ram’s accident but of Bomber Command’s 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