“‘S——’s’ is a bit more ‘merry and bright’ than this old tomb of a Club,” he said, “and a few of the Flying Corps chaps who are in the habit of rendezvousing there while in London on leave you’ll find well worth knowing.”
The gathering was even more informal than I had anticipated. One of the long tables, it appeared, was set aside for “R.F.C.” officers and their friends, and these dropped in by twos and threes, as suited their convenience, all the way from seven to ten o’clock.
There were half-a-dozen men at the table when Horne and I entered, and all of these—they had stalls for a new “revue”—presently took their leave. One of the group was a South African, one a New Zealander, and two Australians. The latter we found bent over the racing page of the Sydney Bulletin, while the New Zealander was evidently trying to persuade the Africander that a dairy herd near Wellington offered better prospects than a general farm in Rhodesia. One of the Australians, whose family was interested in an importing house, lingered behind a moment to ask me if I thought the war was going to force up the price of American agricultural machinery in foreign markets. None of them said a word about flying, and Horne volunteered no more than that they were all “good men—that little chap from New Zealand really ‘topping.’”
Horne, with the fleshpots of Argentina in his mind, ordered solidly and lengthily, and three or four more officers had “wolfed” hasty meals of roast beef and whisky-and-soda before our Chateaubriand (which represents the nearest Anglo-French equivalent to the carne asado of the Pampas) had been done to its proper turn over the coals. These, like the others, rattled on about the music-halls, the homeland, the “rotten London weather”—anything and everything, in fact, save the war in general and the war in the air in particular.
One, it is true,—he had come from France only that afternoon,—in accounting for a bandaged hand, did mention something about getting a finger jammed under the belt of his machine-gun; but it seemed to occur to no one to inquire what he had been shooting at, or whether or not he had hit it, or any of a dozen or so other things concerning which I, for one, was at once consumed with interest.
By nine all of those with theatre or other engagements had come and gone, and the eight or ten still seated at the table were leisurely diners with the evening on their hands. Yet not even among these unhurried ones was there evident any inclination to talk of their work. On the contrary, I fancied I discerned an inclination to avoid, to “side-step” it. When they were reminiscent, it was the friends and events of their old life—“trekking,” “caravanning,” “hiking,” “mushing”; Arctic midnights and tropic dawns; strange odds and ends of adventure by land and sea—that they called up. And when they spoke of the present, it was in connection with little happenings incident to their leaves—with the comparative merits of “kit” shops, Turkish baths, “revue” favourites, the pros and cons of drink restriction, and the extortionate charges of dentists.
Yet every man of them appeared true to what I have since come to recognise as a rapidly-developing type—the “Flying Type.” The army aviator of to-day is picked for his quickness of mind and body, and the first thing that strikes you about him is a sort of feline, wound-up-spring alertness. Then you note his reticence, the cool reserve of a man whose lot it is to express himself in deeds rather than words. And lastly there is the quiet seriousness, verging almost on sadness, of the man who must hold himself ready to look Death between the eyes at any moment, and yet keep his mind detached for other things.
It was the youngest, and therefore the least “formed,” officer of the lot—a lad who had left his cacao plantation in Trinidad to come home and fight—who was responsible for the only “shop” discussion of the evening. Noting that he was eating but little, and constantly passing his hand over his temples, some one asked him banteringly if he was “homesick or only lovesick.”
“Neither,” he answered, relaxing his set lips in a forced smile. “Had a bit of an accident yesterday, and have had a deuce of a headache ever since. Can’t for the life of me make out whether it comes from going up too high or coming down too quick. I went up higher and came down faster than ever before in my experience. Landed all right, but ever since I’ve felt as though I were being blown up by a tire-pump that was driving air into every capillary and nerve-tip. My head feels as though some one was opening up a jack-screw inside of it. Suppose I should have gone to the hospital and found out what was wrong, but I didn’t want to spoil my leave. Maybe some of you chaps can tell me why I feel as though I had to keep holding my head together to stop its flying to pieces,” he concluded, pressing the heels of his hands to his temples to offset the seeming pressure from within.