Eleven Eleven - By Paul Dowswell Page 0,6

at the pilots’ mess. She’d also been posted forward, close to Eddie’s new base. He was sure fate was working in his favour. They talked about a bullet with your name on it. Céline had his name on her. He liked her a lot.

That night Eddie had told her the pilots all thought a scarf from a pretty girl was a sure-fire good-luck charm to keep them safe in the sky. How could she refuse? It was expensive too. Pure silk. She must like him, to give him that.

Now, as Eddie drifted on the edge of sleep, the room was suddenly illuminated by a great flash of light. Then the roar of a terrible explosion tore through the night.

He sat bolt upright, muttering, ‘What the hell was that?’

He rushed to the window, but outside was total darkness. He wondered if the Germans were mounting an attack, but dismissed the idea. If Fritz really was going on the offensive, there’d be more explosions. Eddie thought the Germans were a busted flush. There were hardly any Boche planes up these days. They were done. The war was almost over.

Eddie said ‘Boche’ when he was around Céline, like she said it, to entertain her. That was what the Frenchies called the Germans. But then he would feel like a creep. His family was German. He was only first-generation American himself. He even spoke the language.

He wondered whether or not to get dressed and report to the briefing hut. He pulled on his trousers, then decided not to bother. No one was sounding the alarm, and his bed was more inviting than the cold air of this autumn night. He cursed himself for dithering. His old girlfriend in New York, Janie Holland, she was always changing her mind. This hat or that, this dress or that skirt. It drove him mad. It was a relief when her letter arrived at his airbase telling him she had met a US Navy captain and that was the end of Eddie and Janie. His parents adored her though – and their wealthy families were friends. ‘It’s good to marry money, Eddie,’ said his mother. ‘That way you know they’re not just marrying you for yours.’

The Hertz fortune was founded on electrical domestic appliances – toasters, kettles, hotplates, ovens – and had netted the Hertzes an apartment overlooking Central Park and the best education for Eddie, and his younger brother, Bobby, that money could buy.

It was only over the last few weeks he’d really fallen for Céline. She never asked him about his family or his money. Maybe he’d ask her to go to Paris with him. He’d been last month. It was beautiful, but unsettling. Full of old men. The only young ones he’d seen had missing limbs or other nasty wounds. And all those women in their widow’s black.

He tried to sleep, but it was impossible.

Last night a group of British flyers had joined them in the mess – a return visit from the airbase down in Monchaux-sur-Écaillon, where the American pilots had been invited the week before. It had been a great evening, until the British started singing their macabre songs. One of them went:

Take the cylinder out of my kidneys

The connecting rod out of my brain

From the small of my back take the camshaft

And assemble the engine again.

The other guys in the squadron roared with laughter, but Eddie could only muster a polite smile. Céline didn’t find it funny either and didn’t even pretend to be amused. They both agreed the British had a strange sense of humour. Actually the song made Eddie feel a bit queasy. He told himself it was the wine, but he’d sobered up a bit and the song still kept going round and round in his head.

He’d been in France nine months now, and he’d seen enough gruesome accidents to know exactly what happened to a flyer when fate deserted him. Three days ago, at around ten in the morning, he had landed his plane on a flat field behind the Allied lines where he had downed a Fokker triplane – his fourth kill.

As he ran towards the wreckage, he saw a crowd of soldiers, who he took to be British Tommies. They stood in a semicircle by the downed plane, which was still burning around its mangled engine.

The pilot had been thrown clear and the crowd was keeping a respectable distance from his lifeless body. He lay on his back, arms and legs flat on the ground, eyes