Permissible Limits (32 page)

‘
You’ve got a
photo?’

‘
Yes, my dear. I thought I’d told you. It arrived a couple of days ago. Didn’t Jamie mention it?’

I shook my head. Since our afternoon at the pub, Jamie and I had seen very little of each other, partly - I think - because he was embarrassed. Across the table, Ralph was folding his own napkin. I could see the excitement in his eyes.

‘
Just pop home with me before you go back,’ he said. ‘I’ll show it to you.’

After dessert and coffee we drove back in convoy to Ralph’s bungalow. It was another glorious day and I opened his
french
windows and breathed in the scents from the garden while he rummaged through his growing pile of research material. The photo, when he finally laid hands on it, was a slight disappointment, a small black-and-white shot, badly out of focus.

In the upper half of the frame was the familiar silhouette of a Messerschmidt 109. Smoke was feathering back across the half-open cockpit canopy and part of the tailplane had been shot away. Beneath the aircraft was a small black blob. On close inspection I suppose it might have been the pilot but I wasn’t sure that giving him a name would make that much difference.

Ralph was waiting for a reaction. The last thing I wanted to do was let him down.

‘
It’s great,’ I said. ‘The real thing.’

‘
Exactly.’ He reached for the photo. ‘So maybe we ought to wait just a little bit longer. The woman at Berlin thought it was only a matter of time. Mind you, that’s what she said before.’

He studied the photo again. He seemed to treat it with extraordinary respect and I wondered just how much difference his own war experience made. To me, it was a blur. To Ralph, without question, it was flesh and blood.

He looked up at me, struck by another thought.

‘
Good Lord,’ he said. ‘We haven’t talked about young Jamie. All this time, I’ve been meaning to bring it up. See what you do to me?’

I grinned at him. I had his cheque for £5,000 in my pocket. I gave it to him.

‘
This is yours. Jamie mentioned the flying. I’d be delighted to teach him what I can. But only on one condition.’

‘
What’s that?’

‘
I pay for it. You’ve been more than kind. It’s the least Old Glory owes you, all that research you’ve done.’

‘
Nonsense.’ He thrust the cheque back at me. ‘Flying costs a fortune, even in that old Moth of yours. Here. Take it.’

We tussled over the cheque for a minute or so. I told him we were paying Jamie a pittance and that the flying lessons would help make up. At length, I suggested that he give the money to Jamie and - to my slight surprise - he agreed.

‘
He’s had a tough time,’ he sighed. ‘I gather he may have told you.’

‘
He did.’ I nodded. ‘It must have been ghastly.’

‘
Yes, well…’ Ralph looked away, ‘… it certainly wasn’t a picnic’ He walked stiffly to the open french windows and gazed out, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Jamie thinks the world of you,’ he said quietly. ‘As you’ve probably realised.’

‘
We get on fine,’ I said lightly. ‘He’s a terrific lad. God knows what we’d do without him.’

‘
Yes.’ Ralph’s back was still turned to me. ‘But as I say, he’s certainly been through it. Be gentle with him, eh? I’d hate to see him hurt again.’

I stared at him for a moment, not knowing quite how to take what he’d said, then he turned round, a bright smile on his face. The time had come to change the subject. He’d said what he wanted to say and it was obviously up to me to make what I would of it.

He went across to the desk and began to scribble on a pad. Then he tore off the sheet of paper and gave it to me.

‘
Karel Brokenka’s address,’ he explained. ‘He lives near Chicago.’ I looked at the address. Shoreview, 2312 Lakeside Drive. The bewilderment must have shown on my face. I heard Ralph chuckling. ‘Your friend Harald asked for it.’ He began to shepherd me towards the door. ‘I told him you’d take it over.’

A couple of days later, a Sunday, I gave Jamie his first lesson. I suspect I should have started with a big fat wedge of
theory
, classroom stuff about centres of gravity, and angles of attack, and the theory of lift, but Adam hadn’t tackled it that way and neither did I. In any case, the weather was still perfect - a huge high-pressure zone anchored over the south of England - and it seemed a shame to waste it.

I met Jamie at the airfield. He was already there when I arrived, sitting outside the Touchdown Cafe, sipping from a can of Seven-Up. He’d brought a pullover and a quilted, heavy-duty anorak for the Moth’s open cockpit, and as we walked across to the hangar where I stabled our three planes, he quizzed me about what, exactly, we’d be doing. In my mind, I’d drawn up the simplest of plans - a walk-round the aircraft, a pretty thorough session with the controls, a couple of take-offs and landings, followed by a full lap of the island, flying just off the coast. In all, I guessed it would fill the best part of two hours, and if my own experience was any guide it would certainly tell us both whether Jamie was in any serious danger of becoming a pilot.

He helped me get the Moth out of the hangar, surprised - as everyone is - by how easy it is to push. I talked him around the aircraft, explaining the way that the elevators and the ailerons controlled pitch and bank and how you could kick the aircraft sideways with the rudder. Beyond that, to be frank, the Moth doesn’t ask too many questions. At the sharp end, there’s an engine. In the middle, a couple of seats. Do the right things in the right order, and the bird should fly.

‘
That easy?’ He was grinning at me, plainly excited.

‘
Absolutely.’ I grinned back. ‘Piece of cake.’

After I’d fuelled up, we bumped to the far end of the runway and paused at the holding point while I did my engine checks. I was in the rear cockpit and I could see Jamie’s head in front of me. I’d lent him Adam’s leather helmet with the built-in earphones and he was wearing Adam’s yellow silk scarf as well because he’d forgotten to bring one of his own, and as I pushed the throttle forward I saw Adam’s scarf twitching in the backwash from the prop. Jamie, as it happens, has the same build as Adam and I stared at the back of his head for several seconds, half-convinced I was flying with a ghost.

I got clearance for take-off and turned on to the grass strip. This was the first time I’d flown from Sandown since my outing with Harald in the Mustang and the feeling couldn’t have been more different. Being in the Moth was second nature to me. It was so familiar, it was almost part of the family. We had no secrets from each other. Whatever happened, we’d cope. In the Mustang, on the other hand, I’d been apprehensive to the point of real fear. Anything could have gone wrong. And without Harald in the back I’d have been helpless.

I shared the thought with Jamie while we waited for a car to clear the road at the far end of the strip. I’d shown him the Mustang in the hangar and I’d seen the impression it had made on him. At the time, I hadn’t mentioned Sunday’s little outing. Now it dawned on him that I’d actually flown the thing.

‘
Hands-on?’ he queried. ‘You did the take-off?’

‘
Take-off, climb-out, straight and level, one practice landing, the whole caboodle.’ I didn’t mention the fact that I’d landed on a cloud. It sounded far too ladylike.

‘
And what was it like?’

‘
The Mustang?’ I grinned. ‘Terrifying. And brilliant.’

I heard him
laughing
in the front. Like Adam, and I suppose like
me, he obviously loved the way the two words sat so naturally together. Without fear, as Adam used to say, there’s no fulfilment. Without really crapping yourself, you’ll never make it to the stars.

The car had gone now and I started the take-off run. In this kind of wind - barely a couple of knots -I
could gauge the lift-off practically to the metre, and we were airborne halfway down the strip. The Moth yawed for a second or two before I kicked it straight, then we were climbing over the road and the rows of shimmering polytunnels in the field beyond as I banked gently to the right. At 1,500 feet, I levelled off, easing the throttle back to 1,950 r.p.m. In the cruise, the Moth will clatter along at eighty m.p.h. Already, we could see St Lawrence, tucked between the undercliff and the sea.

Jamie was peering over the edge of the cockpit combing.

‘
I thought we were doing circuits?’

‘
Change of plan.’ ‘Is that allowed?’

‘
Of course it is. Why fly otherwise?’

In fact, the tower had already alerted me to conflicting traffic and it seemed saner to get away from the airfield. All the same, I’d meant what I’d said. Flying, for me, had always been a release and there was absolutely no reason, I told myself, why it shouldn’t work the same magic on Jamie.

Beyond St Catherine’s, the southernmost point of the island, I brought the Moth on to a north-westerly course, parallel to the coast. Below us, two thousand feet of clear airspace. Ahead, the long, low stretch of beach adjoining the Military Road, and then the soaring chalk cliffs of Tennyson Down and the bared white teeth of the Needles beyond.

‘
You have control,’ I said. ‘Fly north-west. That’s three one five on the compass.’

Jamie grunted an acknowledgement. I felt the tiniest lurch as his hand found the control stick, then we were flying as before, straight and level, the drumming of the engine muffling the rush of the wind past the open cockpit. For a while I kept checking the instruments, monitoring Jamie’s progress, making sure he kept to the heading, then - muscle by muscle - I began to relax.

Ralph’s boy - I’d begun to think of him as Ralph’s boy - flew beautifully. From time to time I’d give him a change of course - twenty degrees here, thirty degrees there - and he’d ease the aircraft around while I watched the needle on the compass settle on the new heading. Very rarely did he lose any altitude, and when he did he’d win it back again without any prompting from me. He had lovely hands, perfect manners. There was no drama, no fuss, just the lightest of touches on the control stick, the deftest of inputs on the rudder pedals. By the time we’d completed our first lap of the island, I was practically asleep.

‘
This is novel,’ I told him.

‘
What?’

‘
Being a passenger in my own plane.’

Later, after a brief excursion over the Solent and into Portsmouth Harbour, I took control again. We were heading towards the island. I could see the long wooden finger of Ryde Pier on the starboard quarter. I began to climb.

‘
You fancy some aerobatics?’

There was a chuckle in my earphones. Ralph again.

‘
Is that a serious question?’

We played for the best part of half an hour. Loops. Stall turns. Barrel rolls. Half-rolls off the top of a loop. And finally a long inverted glide that sent the blood pounding through my head. Rolling level again I checked to see that Jamie was in one piece. Not once had he protested, or yelped, or given any indication that life was anything but normal, and deep in my heart I think I was just a little bit disappointed. I wanted to impress him. I wanted to show him what I could do.

‘
You OK?’

‘
No problem.’

‘
Enjoy it?’

‘
Loved it.’

Back at the airfield, we did a couple of touch-and-goes, one final circuit, and then a landing. On the landing, I gave Jamie control until we were slipping over the perimeter fence with less than fifty feet to go. At this point, for the first time, he got into a muddle with the rudder and we began to yaw away from the landing line. Hearing me on the intercom, he surrendered control with a regretful sigh and we were down in one piece seconds later.

Neither of us spoke as we taxied back to the hangar. After I’d turned the aircraft into the wind and cut the engine, I helped Jamie out of the front cockpit. He looked like a child again, full tummy, soft eyes.

‘
That thing we did on one of the touch-and-goes…’ ‘Sideslipping?’

‘
Yes.’ He shook his head in wonderment. ‘Incredible.’

Sideslipping is one of the tricks you use to lose height in the final turn before landing. First time round it can be an alarming feeling, the aircraft slipping sideways out of the sky.

‘
You liked that?’