Permissible Limits (48 page)

At the end of each of these extraordinary days, with my knee pad full of despairing notes, Harald would debrief me, unpicking each situation, untangling each crisis, explaining the theory behind my ever-increasing repertoire of responses. At the start, to be fair, he’d warned me about the way it would be, how he’d push me as hard as he pushed any other fighter pilot, stretching the flight envelope wider and wider, but I’d never imagined for a moment how physically and mentally draining this process would be. Most nights, I’d been in bed and asleep by half past nine. My world, quite literally, had shrunk to the cockpit of the Mustang. I ate, slept, dreamed flying. Nothing else mattered. Not Adam. Not Mapledurcombe. Not even Jamie.

Now, alone in the Mustang for the first time, I thought about it with a sense of wonderment. By being so ruthless, by making life so bloody difficult, Harald had given me immense confidence, and it was only now that I realised just how important that confidence would be. There were a million ways this aeroplane could still take me by surprise, but Harald had stretched me to the point where the basics - staying airborne, staying in one piece - had become second nature.

This was my very first Mustang solo. I wasn’t required to bomb anything, or race around the sky after some lunatic from El Salvador or Honduras, or even climb up to 13,000 feet and induce a spin or two. But that, of course, was exactly the point. What should have been an ordeal was in fact turning out to be a pleasure. After an eternity of heart-stopping challenges and split-second decisions, I’d earned my just rewards. Thanks to Harald, I could take off, bimble
around and then land again.
All by myself.

He was waiting for me on the apron back at Standfast. He was sitting in Chuck’s Jeep, his flying boots up on the dashboard, his peaked cap pulled low over his eyes. He watched me close down the engine, and when I hauled myself out of the cockpit he got out of the Jeep and helped me down off the wing. He didn’t ask me how it had gone. That wasn’t Harald’s way. He just looked up at the open cockpit, and patted the warm panels behind the engine exhausts, and told me we were off for a picnic.

We drove down to the very edge of the airfield. A track I’d never seen before led through an open gate in the perimeter fence, and we bumped along for about a mile before stopping beside a tiny lake. I’d noticed the lake from the air. In the late afternoon, approaching from the north-east, the sun lanced off the water, and the lake became a puddle of molten gold that told me I was on track for a landing.

Harald, bless him, had taken me at my word. He spread a blanket in the shade of a big old cypress and produced a bottle of ice-cold Krug from a battered cool box.

‘
Real glasses?’

‘
Special occasion. They once belonged to my dad.’

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Harald laid the two fine-stemmed crystal glasses side by side, giving them a wipe as he did so. The champagne cork made a splash as it hit the water. I watched the Krug bubbling in the first glass.

‘
And you?’

Harald smiled at me and shook his head. ‘Orange juice,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid.’

We toasted my solo. When I told him how brilliant he’d been, he turned his head away, not saying anything. We’d become really good friends by now, a simple straightforward relationship tempered and burnished by something I can only describe as a deep mutual respect. I think he knew how much I admired his patience and his airmanship and in return I like to think he’d put aside the little scene I’d made in the restaurant. Since that evening, neither of us had mentioned either Adam or Jamie and for that I was profoundly grateful. Coming to terms with something as potentially lethal as the Mustang lends a certain sense of perspective. A lot of things matter in this world and one of them is survival. Going solo was a much bigger phrase than I’d ever imagined.

Harald was unwrapping the tuna sandwiches. I could see the mayonnaise oozing over the thick slices of rye bread.

‘
What next?’ I enquired.

‘
Depends.’

‘
On what?’

‘
You.’

He handed me a sandwich. Service, I was glad to note, didn’t extend to anything as un-Harald as plates. I took a bite of tuna, realising how famished I was. Harald was still waiting for an answer.

‘
I’m happy,’ I wiped my mouth, ‘to do whatever.’

‘
OK.’ He nodded and looked away again. ‘Then how about this.’

He outlined a flying programme. We had just under three weeks left. If the weather held and there were no serviceability problems, we’d be looking at another forty hours or so in the air. He’d like to put me in one of the Cavalier Mustangs, a single-seater with the full armament fit. He’d be flying alongside in another Cavalier and we’d be sticking to the brief-sortie-debrief pattern he applied to all the formal conversion courses. Forty hours wasn’t a lifetime’s flying but it should give me, in his phrase, ‘a familiarity with the relevant SOPs’.

SOP means Standard Operating Procedure. Ten days at Standfast had given me a pretty good idea of what they might involve but I had to be sure.

‘
What exactly do you mean, Harald?’

‘
I mean putting all this to some use. Sure, it’s nice to fly around once in a while and take a look at the view, but the plane was built for a purpose.’ He began to doodle in the dust beside the blanket, using a bent old twig. ‘The Cavalier’s a workhorse. We hang stuff off it. Once you can fly the thing, you become the mailman.’

‘
Mailman?

‘
Yeah, the guys who come here are in the delivery business. Bombs, Willy Pete, Hell Jelly. You name it, we teach them how to make the drop.’

A crude aeroplane was taking shape in the dust and I gazed down at it, realising just how easy it was to slip into this world of Harald’s. Willy Pete was white phosphorus. Hell Jelly was napalm. Harald must have dropped tons of the stuff over Vietnam, and the combat skills he’d brought home doubtless formed part of the Standfast package.

I sipped at the champagne, thinking of the men I saw every morning, young pilots up from Central and South America, testing themselves against 12,000 pounds of vintage aeroplane.

‘
You want me to do the full course?’

‘
Bits of it.’

‘
Including dive-bombing?’

‘
Sure, and air-to-air, and tactical appreciations, and a little close-formation work.’ He looked down at the shape of the aeroplane in the dust and then tossed the twig away. ‘You’ll get a taste, maybe a little
more
than that. It’s just training really, dressed up as combat.’

Combat. He’d said it.

‘
You want me to fight in the Mustang? Become a man?’

‘
I want you to fly to your limits. This is one way of doing it.’

‘
The only way?’

‘
The best way.’

He reached lazily for the bottle and poured me more champagne. I’d had very little breakfast and the first glass had already begun to blur the edges of the day. I was made for this, I thought, stretching full-length on the blanket and trying to imagine what the dive-bombing course might entail. Away to the south, Standfast had a practice range, and when the wind was in the right direction you could hear the crump-crump of the little iron eggs I watched being loaded every morning.

I closed my eyes, waving away the insects.

‘
Why do you have to fight to fly well?’

‘
You don’t. Not if you have good hands.’

‘
Do I have good hands?’

‘
You have wonderful hands. You fly very well. You’re a natural.’

Good hands. Adam had used exactly the same phrase. Harald’s compliments made me tingle inside. That, and the champagne.

‘
So why all this military stuff? The toys for the boys?’

I opened one eye, feeling Harald’s shadow across my face. He was sitting with his back to me, his knees drawn up, and he began to muse aloud about fighter pilots, how competitive they were, how they were always keeping the score.

‘
Is that important?’

The question seemed to surprise him. He glanced round, his face shadowed by the peak of his cap.

‘
Of course it’s important.’

‘
Why? Because it’s all about winning?’

‘
Sure, but it’s more than that.’

‘
You mean there’s something more important than winning?’

‘
Of course.’ Harald ignored the mockery in my voice. ‘There’s control, too. Planning the thing out, leaving nothing to chance, making sure that bit of sky stays yours. You know what they say about combat?’

I looked up at him, thinking suddenly of my glorious solo flight, the feeling of just hanging there, bathed in sunshine, weightless, immortal. Was this what Harald meant by control? Or was there a darker secret?

‘
Tell me…’ I murmured, closing my eyes again. ‘Tell me what they say about combat.’

‘
It’s easy. You never fight a fair fight.’

‘
You don’t?’

‘
Never. You stack the odds. You choose the time and the place. You make sure you’re higher, tighter, smarter, faster. When I’m ready and you’re about to die…’ he laughed softly,’… that’s what a fighter pilot dreams about.’

Something in his voice penetrated the Krug. I sat up, swatting away the mosquitoes.

‘
That sounds horrible,’ I told him. ‘That’s not my kind of flying.’

‘
It isn’t,’ he nodded, ‘and that makes you very lucky.’

‘
Lucky?
Why? Don’t people have a choice? Do you have to be a fighter pilot? Think about the odds all the time? Dream about killing people? Is that compulsory? Or am I missing something here?’

‘
You’re missing nothing. Like I say, you’re lucky.’

‘
And you?’

‘
I’m a fighter pilot.’

There was a long silence. Far away, I thought I heard the cough of a Merlin misfiring. I rolled over, still thinking about what he’d said.

‘
You make it sound like a life sentence. What have you done to deserve this, Harald? Is it some kind of punishment?’

I’d asked the question partly in jest, but the moment I saw him flinch I knew I’d touched a nerve. I wanted to apologise, to tell him that I hadn’t meant to intrude, but when I tried to do just that he shook his head, telling me there was no need. He’d liked being a fighter pilot. It was one of the things he was good at. Never in a million years would he think of it as a punishment.

‘
And hey, I still get to do it, still get to fool around, thanks to that place.’

He nodded in the direction of the airfield and plucked at a stalk of grass. He was trying to lighten the conversation, turn it away from himself, but I wouldn’t let him. I remembered something Chuck had said. Harald’s strung out tighter than a bow, he’d told me. He seems buttoned-down real good but underneath he’s pretty emotional and one day it just might all spill out.

‘
What happened, Harald?’ I asked softly. ‘What made you this way?’

‘
What way?’

‘
So competitive all the time? So much needing to win?’

He shook his head, brooding on the questions, refusing to answer, and I reached out and touched him gently on the shoulder, the way true friends do. We had a kinship. We were close. I wanted him to know that.

He looked up and for a second I thought he was going to tell me something important, something that might help explain this obsession of his with scores and kills and staying on top. Then, from the Jeep, came the trill of his mobile. The moment had gone. He was on his feet, checking his watch. Away to the east, the growl of the Merlin had grown louder. I swallowed the remains of my champagne and helped myself to another glassful. By the time Harald came back, I was practically asleep.

‘
What’s the matter?’

Harald was standing beside me, staring out towards the east. He muttered something about an in-flight problem, and I got to my feet in time to watch one of the Cavalier Mustangs limping in towards the airfield. Smoke was feathering back from the exhausts, and as it flew low over us I could see that part of the rudder was hanging off. I watched it wallowing down the glidepath and I tried to imagine how tricky it must be for the pilot, fighting against the tug of the damaged tail.