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Fitz usually stuck together; and those forthright Lowland curses must be coming from Pip Patterson, who didn’t usually put himself out to protect Mother, so he was probably just trying to get past the others without being flicked with a wet towel. The bathroom door shook as bodies crashed against it. Barton breathed deeply and easily. He knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. There was a powerful rumor going about that the Ram intended to weed out several pilots, so this would be a very bad moment to annoy a flight commander; what’s more, Fanny had always made it clear that he didn’t enjoy horseplay. If the others wanted to wrestle and chase and chuck things at each other, that was okay as long as it didn’t involve him. He wasn’t being stuffy; it just wasn’t his style, that’s all.
    Fanny’s real name was Keith. He’d been christened Keith Donald Hugh because his father was intensely keen on cricket; one day, he hoped, his son would play cricket for New Zealand, in which case he would need three good initials to distinguish him from all the other Bartons. The boy was hopeless at cricket. He was good at athletics, but that meant less than nothing to his father: running round in circles, waste of time, where does it get you? After cricket, only two things mattered to Mr. Barton: sheep, and the royal family.His house had very few pictures, but what there were showed either prize Merino rams or King George in his robes. Both subjects had a heavy-lidded, overdressed look, and Keith grew up associating the one with the other. He came to hate life on the farm. It was dreary, exhausting, repetitive work with a lot of greasy, clumsy, bloody-minded animals. The first chance he had, he got out: out of the farm, out of New Zealand, right across the world to Britain, into the Royal Air Force.
    That was a very long time ago. Now he was twenty-four and a flight lieutenant. He couldn’t even remember how he’d got the nickname Fanny. Everyone had a nickname in the squadron, it was part of Fighter Command’s undergraduate quality: an implacably bright, slangy, superficial attitude, the kind of outlook that took nothing seriously except the supreme importance of being in Fighter Command; and that went without saying.
    He pressed his feet against the bath, rested his neck on the other end, and slowly tightened his muscles until his body began to emerge from the water. He pushed harder until his buttocks were clear and he was arched, dripping and steaming, in the cool air. After a few seconds the strain made his muscles quiver. Outside, the horseplay had ended; the corridor was quiet. Fanny Barton held his breath and idly wondered what would happen to a well-trained and beautifully coordinated body when it received a burst of machine-gun fire at a height of three or four miles. The idea did not disturb him. He had thought about it too often for that; and in any case it would be somebody else’s body taking the bullets, not his. He lowered himself, welcoming the warmth, and reached for the soap.
    â€œYou’re bleeding all over my leg,” said Cattermole. He was carrying Stickwell on his back.
    â€œI know,” Stickwell said. “Don’t worry, it’s only my toe. Mind you,” he added, “it hurts like hell.”
    The fog had continued to lift, and now it was only a tawny haze. The lane stretched in front of them, dead straight for at least half a mile.
    â€œYou wouldn’t have cut your stupid foot if you hadn’t lost your stupid shoe,” Cattermole grumbled. He stopped, heaved hispassenger to a more comfortable position, and plodded on. “I didn’t lose my shoe, did I?”
    â€œThink yourself lucky, Moggy. Very, very lucky.”
    Cattermole thought, and glanced down at the fresh blood streaking his leg. “I hope you haven’t got anything, that’s all,” he said.
    â€œWhat d’you mean, ‘got