Free War Story by Derek Robinson Page A

squatting on his haunches, chewing a stem of grass. “Forty-nine,” Piggott said, gasping. “Now for the love of Mike, shut up and stand back. I’m going to sock this one into the middle of next week.”
    Paxton had heard the whizz of the ball; he knew how hard it was, how painful it could be. He circled around behind Piggott and approached O’Neill. “I believe this is yours,” he said.
    â€œFor God’s sake!” Piggott complained. The bowler bowled and Piggott played a dreadful shot, a cross-batted lumberjack’s swipe, his head up, his feet all wrong. The ball squirted high off an inside edge. Piggott swore, several people shouted, somebody ran to catch the ball and collided violently with Paxton. Both men fell to the ground. “Now look what you made me do,” Piggott said crossly. “You made me break the squadron bat.”
    â€œGrenade!” Paxton shouted hoarsely. He had stopped an elbow with his nose and his eyes were watering from the pain. “I dropped a grenade!”
    â€œPractice grenade,” O’Neill said. “Not real. Don’t bust your truss about it.” He was tossing it from hand to hand.
    â€œWhat a swizz,” Piggott said, examining the bat. It was thoroughly broken: the handle had come loose and the blade was split from end to end.
    â€œYou swine,” Paxton tried to say, but his nose had begun to bleed and his speech was clogged.
    â€œEnd of game,” said Goss, the man who had collided with Paxton. “End of cricket as we know it in our time. And incidentally I seem to have cracked my elbow.”
    â€œReally?” Foster, the bowler, had joined them. “You’ve scarcely recovered from yesterday’s dislocated shoulder, Douglas. And what was it last week? A double rupture?”
    â€œTorn muscles, actually.”
    â€œYou do keep up a giddy pace. How you manage it on those poor clubbed feet of yours I just don’t know.”
    â€œIt’s broken, I tell you,” Goss insisted, flexing his arm carefully. “I shall never play the violin again.”
    â€œForty-nine,” Piggott said. “Forty bloody nine. It’s tragic.”
    â€œAnyway, you were out. I would have caught that ball easily if Dexter hadn’t run into me. Wouldn’t I, Frank?”
    Paxton glared. He blew his nose and made it bleed. “Paxton,” he mumbled.
    â€œDon’t mention it,” Foster said.
    â€œI think that chap’s decided to land after all,” said Goss. “He’s been hovering about up there for ages, waiting for Tim to get his half-century.”
    It was a BE2c. The plane came drifting down, the pilot giving the engine brief drumrolls of power to keep the nose up, and landed nearby. They walked over to meet him.
    â€œSorry I’m late,” he said. He was short, and when he shrugged off his flying coat he looked even shorter. He had the kind of face that only a mother could love: decent, cleancut, obedient, trusting and honest. “I wasn’t altogether sure where I was,” he said. “You were here,” Goss told him. “You’ve been here ever since you arrived.” The pilot’s face was spattered with oil except where he had worn goggles, and there the skin was milk-white and freckled. He took off his helmet. His hair was a deep rich red. “Hullo, Paxton,” he said.
    Paxton recognised the voice before the face. “Hullo, Kellaway,” he said. He had dismissed Kellaway from his mind six days ago. Kellaway had gone down in the Channel. “I thought we’d lost you.”
    â€œI thought I’d lost you.”
    â€œThey thought they had lost each other,” Foster explained to Piggott and Goss. Kellaway slapped his gloves against his thigh and shook his head at the wonder of it all.
    â€œI expect you’d like a nice cup of tea,” said Piggott.
    â€œGosh, yes!” Kellaway said.
    They all trailed