There was usually a pleasing smattering of adolescent daughters in colorful home-stitched frocks, still coming to terms with their new breasts, which they wore with a kind of awkward pride. Circling them, inevitably, would be the younger pilots, barely more than boys but their speech already peppered with RAF slang. They were always taking a view on things—a good view, a dim view, an outside view, a ropy view—or accusing one another of “shooting a line.” Enemy bombers were “big jobs,” enemy fighters “little jobs.” The cockpit was their “office,” and they never landed, they “pancaked.” The thing they feared most in a flap was being bounced by a gaggle of little jobs from up-sun.

Sure enough, the pilots were there, a bevy of slender young things with flushed complexions hanging on their every word. Others hovered nearby, one ear on the tales of doughty deeds. The airmen were the only ones in the garrison capable of carrying the battle to the enemy, and their stories offered a tonic against the daily round of passive resistance.

Freddie and Elliott were at the far end of the roof terrace. Freddie was making good use of a large pink gin, his face a picture of evident distaste at whatever it was that the tall American was telling him. Max pushed his way through the throng toward his friends.

“Gentlemen.”

“Ah, Maximillian,” said Elliott. “Just in time.”

“For what?”

“A little conundrum I was posing to Freddie here.”

“Is that what you call it?” Freddie grimaced.

“Well, it sure as hell is for their commanding officers.”

“Sounds intriguing,” said Max.

“It rapidly becomes disgusting,” Freddie replied.

Elliott laughed. “I hadn’t figured you for an old prude.”

“It’s got nothing to do with prudishness,” Freddie said, bristling. “It’s a question of … well, morality.”