Permissible Limits (64 page)

Every couple of hours we’d retreat to the cafeteria. Jamie had just spent the afternoon telling Ralph about Gitta. How much she’d meant to him. How she’d become the very centre of his life.

I’d treated us both to cream doughnuts. Jamie had eaten barely half of his. I pushed his plate to one side, the way you do with picky kids.

‘
She still matters to you, doesn’t she?’

Jamie didn’t bother denying it. I’d just got the itemised bill for the calls he’d been making when he still had my mobile, so I knew it was true.

‘
Yes,’ he said, ‘she matters hugely.’

‘
And you’ve been talking to her. About Ralph.’

‘
Of course.’

‘
But you’re frightened to tell me. So you tell him.’ He had the grace to look shamefaced. I took his hand and told him it didn’t matter.

‘
It’s horrible, what’s happening to Ralph. That’s the important thing. The rest of it…’ I shrugged,’… it’ll all work out.’

‘
But nothing’s happening to Ralph,’ he said hotly. ‘That’s just it. He just lies there. It could go on for months. Years.’

He sounded petulant and bitter, as if he’d been the one who’d had the stroke, and I looked away, surprised. This wasn’t Jamie at all. The man I’d tumbled into bed with had been young and strong and beyond intimidation. Not this hunched figure, picking at the loose skin around a blister, raging at the unfairness of it all.

I took his hand in mine, rubbing softly at the blister.

‘
Why don’t you get her down here?’

‘
Who?’

‘
Gitta.’

Jamie looked startled, not at the suggestion but at the fact that I was the one who’d made it. He stared at me for a long time.

‘
Could you handle that?’ he asked at last.

‘
Of course,’ I said lightly. ‘Could you?’

She came down
the
next day and I met her at the hospital. She was tall - much taller than me - and there was a little bit of Andrea in the way she talked, punctuating her conversation with delicate little actressy gestures with her hands. She was undeniably beautiful - long legs, creamy skin, and soft auburn hair tied at the back with a simple twist of black velvet - but what was immediately evident was the closeness between them. To this day, I still don’t know how truthful Jamie had been about their relationship. Had it really ended? Had she really thrown him out for another man? Or had the crisis between them been triggered by something else? Like the realisation that she was pregnant?

Jamie, of course, had wanted me to believe that this was a late development but looking at Gitta, I wasn’t at all sure. I’m no expert on pregnancy but to me she seemed infinitely more advanced than Jamie had suggested. Regardless of all the talk of abortion, I’d say that my carefree young aviator was very close to becoming a father.

Once Gitta had arrived, it was pretty obvious that she’d be around for a while. Neither of them explained how she could simply abandon her precious job - another mystery - but when I tactfully offered a spare bed at Mapledurcombe, Jamie didn’t appear to hear. There were three bedrooms at Ralph’s bungalow. After Gitta’s exhausting journey down from London, the least he owed her was a decent night’s sleep.

Was I hurt? Of course I was. The early weeks of our relationship had been so simple, so straightforward. Jamie had been a puppy, full of sunshine and laughter and irrepressible energy. In some ways, as I was now beginning to realise, it had been like meeting Adam again, those first months down in the Falklands, except that Jamie had none of the steel that had made Adam - in the end - irreplaceable.

Jamie was sweet and good-natured and lovely company but it seemed to me now that he was still bogged down in a rather delayed adolescence. Confusion was too small a word to describe what must have been going on in his young head and I knew that I’d have to do what he’d never been able to put into words. Our affair - glorious and headstrong and wilful though it had been - was over. Whether or not she’d ever really left him, this beautiful woman was back in Jamie’s life and I only had to register the look on her face to know what it was she wanted. The baby was for keeps. And so was Jamie.

That should have got me off the hook with Ralph but oddly enough it didn’t. Ralph had been a very good friend of mine. When I’d needed someone to hold my hand, he’d been there, and the last thing I intended to do now was abandon him. One day, I was quite certain, he’d surface again and when that happened I wanted to be at his bedside.

The week after Gitta’s arrival took us into August. It was the height of the season for Old Glory and I was doing what I could around the house to take the pressure off Andrea. This made me very much the unpaid helper - slave would have been a better word - and it felt odd to be in the chorus line at a show that was, after all, my own, but Andrea had made it plain that the price of her involvement in Old Glory was sole control, and for the time being - for me - that was an undeniable blessing. For one thing, I was getting more and more anxious about events in Jersey. And for another, I had to do some serious thinking about the Goodwood air show.

I was over at Sandown airfield, oddly enough, when Dennis Wetherall got hold of me on the mobile. A pilot we used, Simon Pettifer, had just returned from a cross-Channel flight in the Mustang with one of our guests. It was a glorious day, hot and sunny, and the three of us were sitting on the grass beside the aircraft, reliving the old boy’s war.

I retrieved the mobile from my bag. I’d rarely heard Dennis so excited.

‘
They’ve arrested him,’ he yelled. ‘This morning.’ ‘Arrested who?’

‘
Liddell. Roper phoned me a couple of minutes ago. I thought you’d like to know.’

I thanked him for thinking of me but I wanted to know more. Did this mean that Steve Liddell had played some part in Adam’s death? Was that why they’d arrested him?

‘
Roper won’t say, not yet anyway. He needs a result first.’

‘
What kind of result?’

‘
A confession, I guess. Liddell’s a heap of shit. A couple of nights without sleep and he’ll cough to anything.’

I thought about it for a moment or two. Dennis was probably right about Steve’s state of mind - he’d looked like a zombie for months - but there was part of me that felt almost sorry for the lad. The more I’d thought about it, the more I was convinced that he was the least likely person in the world to have sent Adam to his death. To do that, you had to be clever as well as ruthless, and on both counts I suspected that Steve was less than qualified. No, something else had happened, something that Steve probably knew about but - so far - hadn’t chosen to admit.

‘
What about Harald?’ I asked.

‘
Not a peep. Gone to ground. No one’s seen him for months. Not round here, anyway.’

‘
Isn’t that unusual?’

‘
Very. It’s not illegal, though. He doesn’t
have
to come to Jersey.’

‘
So where is he?’

‘
You tell me. Tony Sant’Ana thinks Florida but he might be bullshitting. How about you? Heard anything?’

I’d stepped away from the Mustang. The old boy was describing some long-ago episode, his Flying Fortress harried by dozens of Me 109s, and as I watched his bony hands weaving and looping I couldn’t help thinking of Harald. Was this why they’d pulled Steve in? Do you pressure the monkey to get to the organ-grinder?

Dennis didn’t know but thought it was only too likely. Before he rang off, he promised to keep me in touch. Roper had just twenty-four hours before he had to apply to his superintendent to keep Steve Liddell in custody. After another couple of days, the remand would have to go before a magistrate unless Roper had the evidence to formally charge him. The latter, according to Dennis, was now a foregone conclusion. Maybe I’d like to pop over? Join the party? Be ready for the mediafest?

‘
What mediafest?’

‘
The papers, TV, radio, all that horseshit. This is one big story, Ellie. There’s talk already of a movie. Some kind of documentary. If we play it right, it could mean serious money. You and that lovely aeroplane? Just think about it.’

My heart sank. I’d had quite enough media attention when Adam speared in. I hated the way that total strangers suddenly assumed they’d become my best friend. I loathed the hands on my arm, the cloying sympathies, the murmured requests for just one more shot. These people were every bit as ruthless as Harald, except they went to extraordinary lengths to disguise it.

I said goodbye to Dennis and settled on the grass again. Our guest was nearly in tears over the memory of a dead buddy, a waist-gunner called Mervyn who’d taken a cannon shell in the chest. He looked across at me, trying to apologise, trying to explain.

‘
You never get over it, Ellie,’ he said. ‘Even fifty years later, it’s still with you.’

I glanced up at our newly painted Mustang, thinking yet again of Adam.

‘
Thanks,’ I said.

That night, back at Mapledurcombe, I got another call from Jersey. I’d taken Simon out for a meal and delivered him back to the hovercraft at Ryde and I was feeling - for the first time since Gitta’s arrival - moderately cheerful. Simon was in on the planning for the Goodwood air show and had talked me through the flying programme. The organisers had settled on the eightieth anniversary of the RAF as the show’s theme and I was to appear after a quartet of Spitfires as part of the American tribute. Mustangs hadn’t been around for the Battle of Britain but over the last two years of the war they’d shared the skies over Europe with the later marks of Spitfire, and it was altogether appropriate that
Ellie B
should do her bit in front of the Goodwood crowd.

Just thinking about tens of thousands of upturned faces made my pulse quicken, and I was trying to share a little of this excitement
with Andrea when the phone went.
It
was a woman’s voice, and
for
a
moment I couldn’t quite place it. Then I remembered the pub in the little village up from the beach on Jersey, and the tumble of black ringlets, still wet from the shower.

‘
Michelle,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

She said she was OK. She’d got my number from Steve Liddell’s address book. She hoped I didn’t mind her phoning.

‘
Not at all. How can I help you?’

‘
It’s difficult. You know he’s been arrested?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Well, it’s about that. I’ve got something for you, something you ought to take a look at.’

‘
What is it?’

She wouldn’t tell me but I knew from the tone of her voice that it must be important. This was a different Michelle - subdued, apologetic, almost respectful - and
I
wondered what on earth had happened.

‘
Do you want me to come over?’

‘
Yes please. I can’t send it. And I can’t get away, not in August.’

I looked at my watch. Tomorrow’s forecast was good. If I got up early, I could be on Jersey by - say - half past eight.

‘
How would that be?’

‘
Fine. I’ll meet you at the airport. You know the Aero Club?’

‘
Of course.’ I paused. ‘Then what?’

I heard her quiet laugh.

‘
Then it’s up to you. What I’ve got to say won’t take five minutes. After that, you’re on your own.’

She was more right
than
she could ever have imagined. I lay awake that night, sweltering in the heat, trying not to imagine what Jamie and Gitta might be up to down in Ralph’s bungalow. I’d seen them only yesterday, over at the hospital. They’d been sitting in the coffee shop together, holding hands, and it spoke volumes that Jamie had beamed up at me, absurdly proud of this relationship he’d rescued from the dump bin. No longer his lover, I think he’d assigned me a new role, not unlike the one that Ralph must have played. I was older, and wiser, and doubtless had his best interests at heart. Next thing, he’d be asking me for advice.

In the end, at God knows what hour, I drifted off to sleep. Dawn woke me and by six o’clock I was over at the airfield, priming the Moth’s engine. Flying in the early morning was outrageously beautiful and I tucked in a little detour over the middle of the island before picking up the heading for Jersey. There were little pockets of shadow amongst the maze of lanes and fields south of Brighstone Forest, and I winged the Moth over, feeling new-born. Real flying, this kind of flying, had nothing to do with combat manoeuvres and four-g turns and getting in the other guy’s six o’clock. On the contrary, it was a glorious affirmation of all the best things in life and I swooped low over the little slate-roofed bungalow at St Lawrence before turning south. It was good to be free again. Good to be out on my own.