An Old Captivity (2 page)

Donald Ross went forward on this tide. With his gratuity he crossed the Atlantic economically, and had no difficulty, the day that he stepped off the ship, in securing a position as one of seven pilots of the Quebec and Hudson Bay Air Services Incorporated. He was business-like and efficient as a pilot, and well liked by the management. He stayed with them for four years until the Company, having lost the whole of its capital and a good deal more, was finally wound up.

In those four years Ross learnt a lot about his job. He learnt to fly an aeroplane on skis in winter, and on floats in the summer; in the awkward intermediate seasons of the break-up and the autumn he learnt to dodge the floating ice when putting down his seaplane on the water, and to match his floats when he had failed to dodge it. He learned to operate an aeroplane in the incredibly severe conditions of the Canadian winter. With temperatures of thirty below and more, he learned that if the oil was not drained from the engine and the oil tank within five minutes of landing the machine would probably stay where it was till spring, because no power on earth would make the solid oil move in the passages and ducts. He learned to get his engine started up each morning in the short time of an hour and a half, with a firepot in a tent over the nose of the machine,
a pint of ether, and oil steaming in a can upon the stove ready to pour into the tank when the engine fired.

He learned to deal with drunken French-Canadian and Slovak labourers, usually making their first flight, usually sick. He learned to deal with stretcher cases going out, with tourists coming in, and with imminently pregnant women rushing to the hospital at Churchill. He learned how to take live goats and pigs and calves in his frail aeroplane without mishap. He learned to speak a little Indian and a little Eskimo, mostly by signs, and he learned to repair the structure of his aeroplane when it had been damaged by some awkward piece of cargo in a spot remote from all repair facilities.

He learned all these things and a good deal more, but he did not learn how to save money. His flying background militated against his Scotch descent. Being a pilot he drove a very large two-seater Packard round about Quebec; apart from that he had an ice yacht and a sailing boat. In the four years that he was in Canada he had two love affairs, neither of which touched him very deeply, both of which cost him a good deal of money. As he put it, it was a good time while it lasted, but it didn’t last long enough.

It came to an end in 1933. The Air Line had been declining for some time as Canada grew poorer in the slump. As it became more difficult to make ends meet the pilots were laid off one by one till only two of them were left, Ross and the managing director. Then the end came; the machines were seized by the creditors in partial payment of their claims, and the Company became a memory of a good effort stultified by world conditions.

With many other pilots, Ross decided to go home. Internal air lines were beginning to spring up in England; the depression did not seem to be so violent over there. He put his affairs in Canada in order. The Packard went back to the overstocked, disgruntled dealer who had given it to him upon hire purchase, the sailing boat paid off his debts, and the ice yacht bought his passage back to Liverpool upon a cargo boat. He landed in England with a good outfit of
clothes, a slight American turn of speech, a vast experience of flying in the frozen north, and seventeen pounds, six shillings, and fourpence in his pocket.

He went straight to Aunt Janet at Guildford, glad to be back with her again. She greeted him unemotionally but made him genuinely welcome. He told her his situation on the first evening and counted his money in her presence; it was a trifle under sixteen pounds. She reached across the table and took eight of them.

“Ye’ll not be needing these,” she said; “I’ll keep the money by me. Eight pounds will pay your food and washing for the next three months, Donald—maybe four. If ye get another job before that time I’ll gie ye back the change.”

“All right,” he said. “But can you do it on that money?”

“Oh aye.” She sighed. “I’d like fine to have you free, Donald, but things are deeficult. The lassies dinna take the mathematics as they used to. I have but the twa afternoons a week to work, this term.”

He saw that she was looking tired and frail. He was very sorry that he had not run a Chevrolet in Canada.

It was late in March. He made several journeys up to London on a workman’s ticket; within a fortnight he succeeded in getting a job as pilot to an air circus. It was not a good job, and it was poorly paid. The circus was a very small one, a thin imitation of the highly successful National Aviation Day run by Sir Alan Cobham. It was financed by an East End clothier, and managed by an unsuccessful theatrical producer. It was badly advertised, badly equipped, and badly managed. It started operations in the Midlands at the end of April; within the first week two children had been killed, wantonly and unnecessarily, at Leamington. At the end of the second week Ross left the show, without his money.

He went to see his friend Clarke at the Guild of Air Pilots.

“The thing’s a regular menace,” he declared indignantly. “There’s no discipline, and no maintenance, and no money
in the show. The ships aren’t even airworthy, let alone the rest. They’re trying to run on motor gasoline.”

“‘Petrol’ in this country, old boy.”

“‘Petrol,’ then. And there isn’t an air-speed indicator working in the whole outfit.”

“Why did you leave them? What reason did you give?”

“I told them I was afraid of being killed. And that’s the truth.”

The other smiled. “They still owe you fifteen pounds, do they?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll ring up Morrison and see if he can help you. What are you going to do now?”

“Anything that I can get.”

The other nodded slowly, tapping his pencil on the table. “You’re a bit late for this season, you know. Most operators have booked up the pilots they want this year.”

“I know that. But I couldn’t stay on in that show. Better to be a live coward than a dead hero.”

“Of course new things are always coming up. I’ll let you know if I hear of anything.”

“Good enough. Let it be soon.”

The other glanced at him keenly. “It’s like that, is it?”

“A bit.”

“All right. I’ll let you know the minute that I hear of anything that would suit you.”

Ross went back to Guildford, and began writing letters in answer to the advertisements for pilots in the flying papers. For want of other occupation he took to the domestic life. He got up early in the morning and cooked breakfast for Aunt Janet before she went to work at the school; he swept and dusted for an hour after breakfast, and washed the kitchen floor. Later in the morning he went marketing with her shopping basket, and returned in time to lay the lunch. The work amused him, and kept him from worrying too much about the future. She had sense enough to realise this and acquiesced in this disturbance of her household, grumbling and finding fault with all he did.

“I doubt ye’ll never make a housewife, Donald,” she would say, “buying butter at elevenpence the pound.”

“What ought I to have got, Aunt Janet?”

“Why, Sunray Margarine of course. Threepence three-farthings for the half-pound. There’s no reason to go buying a whole pound at once.”

A fortnight later, when he was worrying about his future a good deal, a telegram arrived from Clarke. It read:

CONTACT LOCKWOOD PAUL’S COLLEGE OXFORD FOR JOB PILOT GREENLAND EXPEDITION
.

He sat down in the kitchen on a chair and stared at the message. A great feeling of relief swept over him, succeeded by a pleasurable anticipation. His first reaction was that a Greenland expedition would suit exactly the experience that he had. He knew all the hazards of flying aeroplanes and seaplanes in the north, the difficulties of maintenance. Very few pilots in England had the knowledge of such things that he had. He could hold a job like that if anybody could, and do well in it. Perhaps the pay might not be very good, but then the cost of living would be practically nil. It would be difficult to spend much money in Greenland.

In his later reflections there was solid genuine pleasure. That was the time just after the successful British Arctic Air Route Expedition, and very soon after the tragic death of its leader in Greenland in the following year. Greenland was in the news; Ross, and the world with him, knew all about these Greenland expeditions. They were recruited from young men, very young; at the age of twenty-nine, Ross might well be older than any other member of the party. It would be a light-hearted affair of youth, a brave business nonchalantly carried out. It would probably be a year of freedom from anxiety and of good fellowship; a time that he would look back upon with pleasure for the remainder of his life.

The name Lockwood meant nothing to him. At that time he had very little knowledge of the universities. From
the first he was prepared to find that this man Lockwood was much younger than he was himself; he would have to adjust himself to that. He did not think he would have any difficulty in doing so.

In any case he must get on with this at once. There was no time to be lost. He mustn’t let a chance like this one slip away.

His aunt’s house had no telephone, of course. He went and changed into a dark lounge suit, packed a dinner jacket and a few things for the night into a suitcase, and caught the next train up to London. He telephoned to Clarke from Waterloo.

“I don’t know any more about it than I said in the telegram,” Clarke told him. “We got the letter in the post this morning, and I thought of you at once. The letter just asks if we can recommend a pilot for an air expedition to Greenland. It’s a funny sort of phrase to use—an air expedition.”

Ross frowned. “Who is this chap Lockwood—do you know?”

“I’ve no idea. I’ve never heard of him before.”

“Well, anyway, I’m going after it. It’s just the sort of thing I want.”

“I thought you’d feel like that. Would you like me to send him a telegram?”

“If you would. I’m speaking from Waterloo; I thought of going down to Oxford right away.”

“That’s the stuff. Nothing like getting after these things right away. I’ll send him a wire to say you’re coming.”

Ross went by underground to Paddington, and took the next train down to Oxford. He got there about five o’clock. He did not know the city and he had no money to spare for a taxi; he enquired the way to St. Paul’s College, and walked up from the station carrying his suitcase.

It was the middle of May and a warm, sunny afternoon. The streets seemed to be full of young men and young women dashing about on bicycles. It struck Ross as a very pleasant town. The grey stone walls of the colleges stood
cheek by jowl with very large shops and enormous cinemas; before them the streets were packed with cars. On that sunny evening there was an atmosphere of wealth, virility, and youth about the place. It seemed to Ross to be a busy, cheerful town; he wished that he knew more about it.

He was amused to see a hansom cab, the first that he had seen since he was ten years old. He stood and watched it as it ambled down the street.

He found St. Paul’s College and asked at the lodge for Mr. Lockwood.

“I don’t think Mr. Lockwood’s in his rooms, sir. You might find him at his house.”

“Where is that?”

“In Norham Gardens.”

“And where’s that?”

The porter told him. “I’ll ring up the house, sir, if you like, and find out if he’s at home.”

“Thanks a lot.”

There was an interval while the porter telephoned. Ross stood by the lodge and looked around him. He had never seen a college before. He saw a grey stone, cloistered quad with a carpet of very smooth green turf in the middle; in the centre of this there was a little round pond with goldfish in it, and a fountain of weathered stone. Above the cloister there were rooms with open windows; on the window-sill a young man was carefully painting golf-balls white, and arranging them in a row to dry. At another window a young man was talking earnestly to a girl, a very young girl with a queer black cap upon her head. Somewhere there was a gramophone playing dance music.

The porter came to him. “Mr. Lockwood said, would you go down to his house, sir?”

“All right.”

He turned and walked down through the pleasant streets still carrying his bag. He found Norham Gardens after walking for a quarter of an hour, and stopped for a moment before the house. A puzzled little frown appeared between his eyes; this was not at all the sort of house he had expected.
It was a very large, brick house half covered in ivy; the brickwork was ornamented at the corners with stone insets. It had a Gothic stone porch over the front door, giving it a half-hearted mediæval effect; before the house there were a few clipped laurels. The path up to the door had been newly laid with gravel; the steps were very white, and the brass upon the door was very clean. It looked a solid, prosperous, substantial house, built in the more spacious Victorian age, and kept up in the manner that its style demanded. It was not quite the house that he had expected to find as the home of the young leader of a Greenland expedition. Unless, of course, there was a son.

His immediate reception did nothing to encourage him. A grey-haired old servant, infinitely prim and neat in a black dress and a white cap and apron, opened the door to him.

Ross said: “Can I see Mr. Lockwood?”

She eyed him severely. “Mr. Lockwood is giving a tutorial,” she said. “You can’t see him now.”

Ross said mildly: “I think he’s expecting me. They rang him up from the college a quarter of an hour ago. He asked me to come down here.”

She looked very doubtful, but motioned him to enter. “Wait here,” she said, indicating the exact position on the hall carpet. “I’ll see how long it will be before he will be free.”

She went up to a door opening off the large hall, and knocked reverently. A murmur of voices inside ceased, with a clearer invitation to come in. The old parlourmaid slipped inside the door, and closed it behind her.

Ross was left standing in the hall alone. He was bewildered. This was like his headmaster’s house at the Guildford school. He must have come to the wrong place.