Chapter Text
It was a quiet place: which was only to be expected, of course. He knew it was only a small village, one of those places buried deep in the countryside that had been shedding population since the Industrial Revolution. But if he'd ever thought about it - which he hadn't - he'd have thought that the service wouldn't be here: it would be at one of the big London churches, somewhere in Westminster, and it would be packed full of men in impeccably tailored suits with tightly furled umbrellas who would drift away at the end of the service without speaking a word to the rest of them. He didn't know much of what Gimlet King had spent his life doing, but he knew it had mattered enough for that.
He wouldn't have expected this: this quiet, green place, with its quiet grey church that seemed to have come adrift from its hamlet some time centuries back, and now lay lapped in woodland; a small, overlooked place, and still only half full. But then, there’d been nothing expected about any of it.
He had sat in the old oak box pew with Ginger to his left and Algy his right, his fingers methodically crimping the edge of the flimsy leaf of the hymn book, and had not been able to see anything very much over the sides except the priest in his pulpit and a stained glass window of a bearded man with one hand on the shoulder of a stag and the other on the head of the wolf which sat at his feet. When they had stood for the hymns he had casually glanced around the church; found Bertie in one of the chairs at the back of the nave, still seated, his head tipped forward so Biggles couldn’t see much more than the crown; and then turned his eyes back to the book, though he’d sung this particular hymn so many times over the years that he hardly needed the words. O thou who changest not, abide with me.
Afterwards - when the service was over - Algy had squeezed his arm, and nodded, and Biggles had gone to exchange a few words with those of Captain King’s men that he knew: Cub Peters, Corporal Colson, Private Troublay, a couple of others he half recalled from the times the Kittens had co-ordinated with 666 squadron years before. There weren’t many of them there. Hard to be sure whether they hadn’t known to come, or hadn’t wished to come, or hadn’t lived to come. With King’s Kittens, it could have been any of the three. He wouldn’t have known to come himself - probably wouldn’t have wished to come - if it hadn’t been for Bertie.
When he had done his duty by the rest of the congregation, he went and found his friends again: Ginger, perched on the edge of a rather rickety-looking table tomb, Algy leaning against a great spreading oak tree, five hundred years old at least, trying to keep out of the worst of the drizzle, with a cigarette dangling negligently from his lips.
“It’s all right, I’ve got eyes on him,” he said quietly as Biggles came up, taking the cigarette from his mouth and nodding down towards the end of the churchyard, past the dripping yew trees, to where the ground fell away beyond the low encircling wall down to the stream below. There, leaning against the grey of the wall, he could see a shred of darker grey, like a swirl of rain solidified. Bertie hadn’t worn mourning: just one of his beautifully tailored dark suits, the ones he wore to Scotland Yard and got him mistaken for anything but a police officer. “Seems to be bearing up all right. Just wanted some peace and quiet, I think.”
“At least he’s come to the right place for that,” said Biggles.
“It doesn’t seem right, does it,” said Ginger morosely. “So few people here.”
“I’m not sure what else you’d expect, under the circumstances,” said Biggles.
“He was doing his job, wasn’t he? I’d have thought they’d have acknowledged that, at least.”
Biggles shook his head. “It wasn’t that sort of job. No one goes into that line of work for the applause.”
“And he muffed it, didn’t he,” put in Algy bluntly. “You don’t get Westminster Abbey if you make a muck of it. You get Westminster Abbey if you survive long enough to die at your desk.”
“I don’t imagine he’d have wanted the Abbey anyway,” said Biggles. “He didn’t seem the type.” He sighed. He desperately wanted to stand with Algy and Ginger for a few more minutes; smoke a cigarette, feel the comfortable solidity of their presence, wait for the right words to come. But there were no right words for this sort of situation, he’d known that since he was seventeen, and standing about waiting for them never solved anything. “I’ll go and put in a word or two,” he said. “See what he wants to do next.”
The cigarette, at least, he could have; and he extracted his case from his breast pocket as he walked, his footsteps changing from the crunch of gravel to the almost silent swish of long wet grass. His boots would be soaked through, but there wasn’t any help for it.
“Would you like one?” he asked, settling his back against the wall and holding the case out. “I know you don’t normally, but if there was ever a day for it - “
“Thanks, old boy,” said Bertie, slowly straightening himself and reaching for a cigarette. “Amazed you can get them to light in this atmosphere. Positively saturated.”
“Thank God for petrol lighters,” said Biggles, producing his from his pocket.
Bertie leaned forward just enough to light the cigarette, nodded his thanks, and retreated to his former position, slouched forward with one elbow on the rough stone which topped the boundary wall, looking down into the stream. The other arm was still strapped up close to his chest. Biggles wondered if the position helped with the pain he must be feeling by now in his side: whether leaning forward was easier than standing straight. There was water beading in Bertie’s fair hair, a faint silver netting.
“Sorry for making a break for it,” Bertie said, abruptly. “Hope I didn’t leave you in the lurch too much, representing the old firm and all that sort of thing.”
“Of course not,” said Biggles. “It’s my job, after all. That’s what earns me the extra shilling an hour.”
“Couldn’t quite face it - the hand-shakes and all that,” Bertie went on. “Beastly cowardly of me, I know. Think I used up my little stock of courage sitting through the service.”
“They’re always rotten, aren’t they,” said Biggles quietly. “Memorials. Funerals. Perhaps you’ve got to be brought up to it. I never found much comfort in them myself.”
“I suppose I was rather brought up to it, but I didn’t care for it much either.” Bertie drew on his cigarette, carefully. “He was a Catholic, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well - not a practising one. But Christened, confirmed, all the rest of it. Came from one of those families who were too bloody-minded to give it up just because good King Henry told them they ought to, and kept it up ever since. They’ve got a little chapel up in the Hall - used to get in some old dodderer for Latin Mass once or twice a year. A couple of priest holes dotted about the place too.” He shook his head slightly. “Don’t suppose it would have made much difference to the service though, not these days. And he wouldn’t have cared either way.”
He had that grey, pinched look about him still. It had been a long run down in Biggles’ car, and the roads once you got out much beyond Salisbury weren’t the best. He’d wondered, before they started out, whether it wouldn’t have been best to travel by train, get the first train out and the night train back and have their own beds at Mount Street to return to; but he was glad now that they hadn’t. A quiet bed in the hotel in Okehampton, that was the answer, and the sooner the better.
He took a deep draw of smoke; let it out into the damp of the air, and watched it disperse, grey against grey. “I remember when we helped his team pick up that group of P.O.W.s from France, back in - what was it, ‘43? ‘44? He got into the plane, fairly reeking of cordite and with his uniform half in rags, and started chatting about your blessed foxhounds.” He smiled a little. “I’ve never forgotten it. The sort of man you’d want at your back when the shooting started. You’d known him for a fair while even then, I suppose?”
“Lord, yes,” said Bertie; and from the corner of his eye Biggles could see the answering smile that he produced, still looking down into the dripping greenery. “Known him forever. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Well - no, perhaps that’s not quite it. More like there was a time Before Gimlet King, and then there was a time After Gimlet King, and really when you’re standing in the second one it’s jolly difficult to remember much about the first. Rather like Before Flying. Or Before 666. Once you’ve got ‘em, everything’s different. You know how it is, first time you make a real pal at school - it really does change everything. Because before then it was usually just me, you see, and afterwards - “ He broke off, rather suddenly; and it seemed all the more sudden because he had sounded so fluent before: Bertie Lissie, chatting cheerfully, running on like the soft purling of the unseen stream below in its green tunnel of ferns, just as he always did.
The silence stretched for a handful of seconds before Bertie carried on, almost as if there hadn’t been a break. “I suppose I was sixteen - I must have been, it was that autumn before I went into the Upper Fifth. He was a year or two younger, of course, and we sort of - fell in with one another, if you see what I mean. We always mucked along well enough together - which not everyone did, with either of us, I don’t mind telling you. We saw an awful lot of each other for a few years, one way and another. Less so since the war, of course - both had other things to fill up our time with - but then I suppose one doesn’t really need to live in someone’s pocket when one’s known them long enough. I mean to say - Algy can scoot off to India for six months or a year, and it’s rather a wrench for you - and for us, for that matter - but it doesn’t really make any difference to the two of you, does it? Not as far as the important things go.”
He sounded perfectly quiet, and calm, and reasonable. Far more reasonable than he usually sounded, in many ways.
“No,” said Biggles, quietly. “Things like that really don’t matter much, with certain people.”
“Lorry was always awfully good at keeping things interesting,” said Bertie, a little more emphatically, stubbing out the cigarette with a faint hiss from the rain-damp stone. “I always liked that about him. One of life’s natural ringleaders, I suppose. Seems ridiculous really, knowing what a rackety sort of life he led, and all the scrapes he got himself into over the years - but I really didn’t ever imagine anything would ever happen to him. He isn’t - he wasn’t that sort of person, if you see what I mean. He was more the sort of person that happened to other people. And now he’s gone and I can’t quite imagine what I’m going to do.”
And then he turned; and Biggles turned too, and only then did he realise that the dampness on Bertie’s cheeks wasn’t raindrops, but tears.
Bertie seemed to realise it at the same moment, and Biggles caught one glimpse of his expression of utter mortification before he swung away, dashing his sleeve over his eyes, turning a dark and perfectly-tailored back to him.
“Awfully sorry,” he said, in that perfectly reasonable voice. “I’ll be fine in two ticks. Just leave me to it old lad.”
As if he would just cough politely and wander off for ten minutes. As if this wasn’t what any of them would have done. Biggles put out his hand, and touched Bertie’s back: the right side, a little below the shoulder. He felt him flinch; but he didn’t move his hand.
“There have been a couple of times in my life when I thought Algy had gone west,” he said. “Crying was the least of it. There’s no shame in it, and there’s no help for it, and I imagine it won’t get better any time soon. I can’t claim Gimlet King was a particular friend of mine - I don’t imagine many people can, he wasn’t that sort of fellow - but I knew him well enough to know he was a remarkable man.”
“He was a wretched nuisance,” said Bertie roughly, not turning round. “He always was. Never could just let anything lie. Never could let another fellow take the lead. Always had to go his own way.”
“Sounds extremely aggravating,” said Biggles, evenly.
A sound that might have been a breath of rather watery laughter. “Extremely. Wouldn’t have changed it for worlds.”
Then silence, except for the birdsong in the dripping trees: blackbird, robin, thrush.
“If it would be helpful to take some more leave, I can push it through,” said Biggles, after a minute or so. “There’s not much more than routine business on hand at the moment. We can easily spare you longer, if you need it.”
“Thanks, old boy,” said Bertie: squaring his shoulders, drawing himself in. “But I'd much rather get back into things, and sooner rather than later, if you can find something for me to do. You've had me half on and half off the books for quite long enough. Time for me to start pulling my weight again.”
“Whatever you like. Just let us know how we can help.”
“I don’t really think there’s much anyone can do,” said Bertie. “Much better just to keep myself occupied and wait for time’s ever-rolling stream to do its party trick and bear it all away.” He cleared his throat, and turned to nod down the slope, towards the hidden watercourse. “We walked along that stream, you know. One summer vac. All the way from the spring, down past the church here, down to where it joined the river and further, as far as we could get. Waded most of the way, until the current got too strong. Lorry was all for getting a dinghy and following it all the way to the sea, but saner heads prevailed.”
“We can stay here longer, you know,” Biggles offered. “The hotel didn’t seem to be exactly bursting at the seams, and we don’t need to be back in the office until Monday. For that matter, you can stay here for as long - “
“No thanks, old thing,” said Bertie, turning towards him again. His eyes were dry now, if slightly over-bright over the bruise-coloured smudges. “No point changing plans now. In any case, I don’t want to poke about here any more than I have to.”
He picked up his stick from where it leaned against the wall, and began to walk slowly back towards the church. Through the trees, Biggles could see Ginger hop lightly down from his seat, Algy straighten up, both of them watching for their return. “Did he say anything?” asked Bertie, two paces ahead.
“Who?”
“Cub. Young Peters. He tends to be deputised spokesman. I suppose you spoke to him.”
“Oh - yes, I had a few words,” said Biggles. “Only generalities though. Banalities, really. There wasn’t really much to be said, beyond the obvious.”
“No,” said Bertie. “No, I suppose there wasn’t.”