"Robertson-WendyDarling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

complimented the band, he laughed briskly. "Thankee. The Major scouts the
depots. Aims to have the best squadron band in the bloody RFC. Whenever a new
horn player or violinist shows up, he swaps them for some fellow who's lost his
nerve."

She mentioned the raid. Ryan replied, "Capital bit of work. God bless Old Jerry.
God bless the Gotha." He sounded like Peter giving a cheer for the pirates.
"Hope the Kaiser gives them all medals."

"You can't really be glad it happened?" She thought of children dead at their
desks.

"Lord yes. A week ago I was doing dawn contact patrols against really nasty
Huns, brutes who were having us for breakfast. Damned active and dangerous. Now
I'm sailing about on a head full of bubbly, with a smashing girl in my arms. Not
above time, if you ask me."

She was surprised, and pleased, being called a girl again, even by a smiling
madman in RFC khaki. "Smashing" was mere icing on the cake. Was this Peter grown
up ? Wendy no longer waited by the nursery window, but still had Peter in her
heart-- the wild terrible boy who had taken her beyond the sky, vowing never to
give her up, then forgetting to come back. Ryan had the wildness, the cool
cutting disdain, but he was more cynical and clearsighted than Peter could ever
hope to be. He spun her around the dance floor, then led her out onto the long
grass, buoyed by the band music. A single SE5 scout stood parked at the near end
of the field, gaunt and angular, its upper wing topped by a Lewis gun, reminding
everyone what Fifty-sixth Squadron's business was. What the party was about.

"Kiss me now," he suggested, holding tight to her waist, hair tousled, tunic
open. This was what war demanded--lightning dalliance. Instant love making. No
time for tedious romance. Posters on every street comer proclaimed the only man
worth having was in uniform-- but you had to kiss him quick. Death was in the
wings. "Ten days and I'll be gone."

"Ten days?" She was aghast.

"Back to France."

"What about London?"

"Come, do you think a government that wastes two-thousand a day in the trenches
frets over babies and shopkeepers? Only more bombing will bring us back."

She insisted that was barbaric.

He gave a snort. "A flier fresh up from school lasts barely a fortnight at the
front -- that's barbaric. Ten days is a lifetime. Two months and you're an
arrant coward, or a stone cold assassin. Maybe both." Ryan did not need to add
that he had been at it two years. "Do you know what we'd do if we got our hands
on one of your baby-killing Gotha pilots?"