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flames went up. They made a solid-sounding
whump
, like a giantbeating a giant carpet. Paxton felt the heat on the back of his neck. Milne kept walking and did not look behind him, so Paxton did the same. “You could do with a bath, couldn’t you?” Milne said. “Your kit’s in your room, I expect.”

Chapter 2
    The tender took them to the huts. On the way, Milne smoked his pipe and watched the clouds as if waiting for a particularly interesting one to go by. Paxton sat hunched and silent. He felt like a victim, and that bewildered him. He felt tricked, and that angered him. He’d strained and struggled and pushed himself to the limit, and now all his effort was wasted. The tender bumped over some ruts, and Paxton’s bruised backside took more punishment. Milne, he noticed, was sitting on his cockpit cushion. For a moment, anger flared into hate.
    The tender stopped. He got down. Milne tossed him the cushion and pointed his pipe at a wooden hut. “Dexter, isn’t it?” he called.
    â€œNo, sir. Paxton.”
    â€œAh, yes, of course. Too bad about Dexter.”
    The tender drove on. Paxton went inside. There was a table and chairs, a stove, and three beds. At the foot of one bed was his trunk, sent by boat from England. He sat on that bed and stared at the dust swirling in the sunbeams. He found himself looking through the dust at a drawing pinned to the wall. It was a poster for a Paris revue, and it showed a pretty girl, peeking coyly over her shoulder. Someone had added a black eye. That single smudge made her smile seem lewd and knowing.
    After a while his batman hurried in, introduced himself as Private Fidler, and declared that there was hot water in the officers’ bathhouse, next door. Paxton took his clothes off andput on a dressing gown. He gave Fidler his trousers. “These need something doing to them,” he said, too defeated to explain. Fidler seemed to understand. “They’ll be as good as new, sir,” he said. “Don’t you worry, sir.” On impulse Paxton gave him half-a-crown. That was accepted with the same ease. Paxton sensed that he had found an ally at last. “Terrible bad luck, your bus catching fire like that, sir,” Fidler said. “Shocking bad luck, if you ask me.” Paxton was briefly tempted to give him another half-a-crown, but thought better of it and gave him a bitter smile instead. Two hundred yards away the wreck of the Quirk smoked like a garden bonfire.
    When he came out of the bathhouse he felt better. There had been abundant hot water; and with some Pears soap, and a new loofah, and a shampoo bought by his mother at Harrods, it was impossible not to feel better. Fidler had laid out fresh clothes and a clean uniform. After days in flying boots it was wonderful to be able to slip on a pair of shoes. Fidler offered him the monogrammed silverbacked hairbrushes he’d been given on his fifteenth birthday, and held up a mirror. “Thank you, Fidler,” Paxton said, and surprised himself by catching exactly the same casual, assured, yet slightly distant tone his housemaster had used at dinner when a servant offered a dish of vegetables. He disciplined his hair, returned the brushes, picked up his cap. “Handkerchief,” he murmured absently, and patted a couple of pockets. Fidler found a handkerchief in no time. “If anyone wants me,” Paxton said, “I shall be with the adjutant.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Fidler waited until he had left, and then used Paxton’s swagger-stick to pick up a soiled sock. He sniffed from a distance and grimaced. “Bleedin’ officers,” he said. “Stink worse than pigs.”
    When Corporal Lacey showed Paxton in, Captain Appleyard was sitting upright and trying to fasten his shirt collar. “Hullo, old chap,” he said. “Come in, take a pew. These damn buttons … Always letting you down … Settled in, have you?