The Lost Flying Boat (16 page)

Plywood walls made his compartment seem solid and soundproof. A plantpot adorned a metal shelf under the porthole, and a small plan chest against a partition had the bottom two drawers half open. He told me to sit down. ‘The time to glue yourself to the radio is when we're five or six hundred miles away. In the meantime, take a rest if you feel like it. I want you as sharp as a needle for the few hours before landfall.'

The bunk opposite had its bedding neatly stacked, and above was a framed photograph of a Lancaster bomber, Bennett prominent among the crew lined up on the ground. ‘What exactly should I listen for?'

Appleyard put down a dish of pineapple and went out. ‘The faintest bleat or crackle.'

‘I hear all sorts of noises. None make sense.'

‘When they do, tell me.'

A chart on the plan chest was held down by a sliderule, which suggested he kept a constant check on Rose's navigation. ‘If two ships are in contact they might use duplex, so I'd hear only one.'

He picked at the fruit. ‘The boats I'm thinking about have simple rigs.'

‘I'll keep tabs on the calling frequency, log everything, and let you see it by the half hour.'

‘Be sure to miss nothing. And I want to say this, Sparks: piloting the plane is a normal job. I've got the controls in my hands, and can see the engines going full spin out of the windows. As for navigation, Rose is second to none. And Wilcox has the panel to tell how the engines are functioning, and what fuel's still floating around. But you've not only to listen: you must also hear. Everything. I can't tell you what to listen for. You have to decide that for yourself. You'll know what to tell me when you hear it. The least thing will make the difference between us getting home dry, or ending up in the drink.'

Appleyard came in for his plate and dish. ‘Bring a cup of coffee for the radio officer.' Bennett looked at me: ‘I suppose you've seen the measures we're taking for self-defence?'

‘As if we're going to war.'

‘The last of a tour of ops.'

‘I can't get a straight answer from anybody.'

He rolled several white papers around a cigar. ‘Straight answers stop you thinking. Another thing to remember, Adcock, is that busy people don't like to talk much. You've got eyes, and you're supposed to use them. But look not too long in the face of fire. I'm in command of this ship, and I'll bring her through. That's what I'm here for.'

My guts went cold, no embers apparent. He was testing my fitness for some devastating encounter which he clearly expected. I wanted to be trusted. He could rely on me, in spite of my aversion, not from loyalty but because I felt a stronger urge than his to get into the unknown. I was afraid and exhilarated, and wouldn't have traded such mixed feelings for anything. I was more willing than he was because, not sharing his obsession, I felt the kind of gung-ho keenness that he had probably forgotten about.

He was alone, and lonely, but instead of being sorry I knew I had to be on my guard. He lit his cigar. ‘This ship will be my last. No more flying. My life's been a long chase after freedom. I don't suppose that means much to you, Sparks. But I've noticed that the longer you go chasing freedom, the more it dodges you. You can't find it. Can't grip it. The pursuit of freedom has always led me into captivity. Funny, eh? Into a profession, into the Air Force, into a marriage that never happened. Yet I thought each one would give me the freedom to know myself. It never did. The end of freedom is always the beginning of it. I got out of those institutions, and even then didn't find what I wanted. Do you know what freedom is, Adcock?'

His question surprised me. Though hardly listening, I took everything in while not caring to. I supposed freedom is not to worry about what the hell happens to you. I drank the coffee. He let his go cold, and smoked the cigar as if it were suckling him. ‘In this flying boat I'm as close to freedom as I'll ever get. It's my natural state. But when the gold's been disposed of, I'll be free for the rest of my life. I won't live on Vortex Street anymore.'

He paused, his grey eyes staring at the photograph of the Lancaster. ‘There's no more beautiful sight than that of an aircraft going across the sky. It's got engines, and fuel, and a crew on board. It's my reality.'

I wanted to sleep, or eat, or be at my wireless – anything but listen to a rambling I didn't understand.

‘We are all inside that aircraft,' he said.

He's not well, I thought, determined to say nothing while he was talking to me. As long as he doesn't get stricken, and forget the drill when at the controls.

‘I had an uncle who lived to be ninety. When I was on leave, the last time I saw him, he went for a walk. He seemed to have all his faculties, but he got lost, and the family had to search the streets for him.'

I knew younger people who would get lost if they went out alone. He only wanted me to listen, and I didn't think much of my luck in having been chosen.

‘I'll never want to be taken away from myself, either by not being my own master, or by a senile old age. You understand?'

I said I did. And I did, though I wondered why he felt the matter important when he was so far from such a state. Everything happened for a purpose. He was sounding me out, to set us apart from the rest.

He thought I understood: ‘I like my crew to function as one unit. Therein lies our survival. How do you get on with the others?'

‘I've known them a fortnight.'

‘You and I, Sparks, could get this aircraft from Point A to Point B on our own, if we had to.'

‘I suppose we could.'

‘I fly, and you navigate – by radio. Why do you think I picked an expert in direction-finding? Because you can get us home on wireless bearings, or at least make landfall, with me at the controls.'

He refilled his water glass. I was also thirsty. His words made me bone dry. Thoughts were rushing into my head that I didn't want. ‘It wouldn't be impossible.'

‘One has to anticipate all eventualities, that's what I'm saying. I want someone who is loyal, simple and clever.'

‘Can anyone be simple and yet clever?'

He seemed out of touch. We were in the same aircraft, but of a different world.

‘They can be, if they're loyal.'

‘Loyal to what?' The question seemed important to my chances of getting out alive.

‘To me.'

Self-preservation was paramount. ‘You have all the loyalty I've got,' I heard myself saying.

He imagined it to be more than he needed. ‘I expected no less. Getting to Kerguelen is easy enough, but knowing what we might find before we arrive – that's where you come in. I know you'll do it.'

The trunk of ash fell from his cigar.

‘I'll try,' I said, having no idea what he meant.

9

Bull sat at the galley table and ordered slum-gullion. ‘Every hour I'm in the air without eating seems as long as a day.'

I unwrapped my knife-fork-and-spoon. ‘That's because you're cut off from mother earth.'

‘I'd stay with her longer if she liked me.'

‘You offend her with those obscene tattoos,' said Nash.

‘I thought she was my friend, all the same.'

Rose dipped a biscuit into his scalding tomato soup. ‘Friends are the easiest to offend. Enemies know where they stand.'

‘Heads down,' said Appleyard cheerfully, ‘or your steak and spuds'll get cold.'

‘If it is' – Nash moved the peas and carrots around his plate – ‘you'll go overboard, and no messing. You've got worse since the war. One thing I hate, and it's cold grub, especially in a flying boat.'

‘Vegetables should be fresh, not out of a tin,' said Rose.

‘Appleyard doesn't care,' Nash went on. ‘His guts are like concrete, and we know why. He's never farted in his life. Oh yes, he did once, one frosty morning at Sullom Voe. He thought the bottom was dropping out of his world. The CO had him on the carpet because he sniffed lack of moral fibre. Took another ten trips to get him back on course – but it was a close-run thing.'

‘You think this is the YMCA?' Appleyard felt genuinely insulted at complaints about his cooking. ‘I can't imagine why I came on this bloody trip. After leaving the mob I was so fed up with the Brylcreem Boys, I worked two years down a coalmine to get it out of my system. The money was good, the blokes were marvellous, and I was glad to be doing some proper work for a change. Now I'm back on this stunt.'

‘Why are you, then?'

He looked contrite. ‘Well, you need a change, don't you?'

Bull was unable to cut his steak. ‘It makes the grub at the Driftwood seem like Mrs Beeton's best.'

‘The past always looks good,' Rose drawled. ‘The old Driftwood reminded me of the Jetsome Inn, a hostelry near Guildford where they even ruin black market food.'

Bull's eyes watered with nostalgia. ‘I wish I was there, all the same.'

‘I'm fed up with being duty cook,' Appleyard said, though no one took any notice.

‘I think you-know-who's been boozing,' said Nash. ‘I can smell it.'

Armatage ate the steak with his side teeth. ‘When we get to Kerguelen, maybe a polar bear will make a meal out of you – though I expect the poor bugger'd sick its guts up if it did.'

‘Your eyes look like piss-holes in the snow already,' said Nash. A scarf of cloud brushed by the porthole and turned the galley dim, with a grating sound under the hull, as if ropes that held us fast were being pulled loose. ‘Can you cook seal meat?'

Appleyard levered a tin of Players from his jacket. ‘We ate whale meat during the war.'

‘You wouldn't cock a snook at anything,' said Rose.

‘Or look a seahorse in the mouth.' Wilcox fought off another bout of coughing. The joke that he should get an X-ray, or that the Kerguelen air would be as good a tonic as the best in Switzerland, had long been worn out, and we could only wonder how he managed to go on doing his job.

‘Better get a move on, or your dessert will get hot,' said Appleyard as he dispensed bananas. Mine was too green, so I put it in my jacket pocket. He took each plate for washing up. ‘I'll cook what you like, as long as I don't have to kill it.'

Armatage joked that for half a bottle of grog he'd kill anything.

‘He'd cook his bloody firstborn for a swig of gut-rot,' said Bull. A fist flashed, as if powered by the jet of an obscene word, in an arc towards Bull's face, but collided with the palm of Nash's open hand, which stopped it dead. ‘Wrap it up, the pair of you.'

A bump underfoot reminded us that we were moving on course to a place where none of us had been. Bull spat – nothing from a dry mouth, and reached for his mug of coffee. Wilcox coughed, his face pale and shining, a reddish spot in the middle of each cheek: ‘We'll go hedge-hopping after seals, tally-bloody-hunting, like we did across Cambridgeshire when we chased a string of racehorses over the hill and down again. The skipper nearly lost his wings for that.'

Nash could hardly speak from laughter. ‘And then there was that time when the old Sparks let go his trailing aerial and cut a cow in half. They couldn't decide which plane had done it, but the Air Ministry had to pay up – which was more than the cow could do!'

‘We were bloody hell-bent in those days,' said Bull.

‘If we mow down a few seals from the rear turret we'll live off the fat of the land, eh Nashie?' Armatage chipped in.

‘There's even coal to cook on,' I said. ‘And you don't have to get it from underground in a bucket. We'll find a whaler's hut for shelter. Stranded or not, we'll be snug.'

‘I prefer civilization,' said Rose, ‘on the whole.'

‘Why not speculate on all possibilities?'

‘Speculate, my arse,' said Bull.

Rose rinsed his irons in the bowl, dried them on the teatowel hanging from its hook, and put them into the top pocket of his jacket. ‘I'll say no to that one, if you don't mind.'

I went back to the wireless with my mug of coffee, and wondered how we would survive if the flying boat couldn't take off. I was not so appalled at the idea as I should have been.

10

The plane was a workshop. Shottermill had obviously left a few packs of gaudy banknotes in the right places, otherwise how could we have set off with such lethal goods? I turned to see people lifting and carrying, serpentine belts of ammo around their necks. Curses were frequently shaped on their lips because the interior frame of the flying boat was lined with sharp corners.

Nash levered an assembled gun towards the rear turret. The
Aldebaran
was being set for defence, and it did not matter against whom or what. ‘Something'll turn up, you can be sure. And if it don't, we ought to make it. Otherwise, what's life for?' But he was sweating and breathless, and put the gun down after a few feet. ‘We had armourers to do this in the war, and I'm not as young as I was.'

Bennett need not have left the flight deck to see that work was up to scratch, because Armatage was sufficiently competent as an armourer to forget toothache, overcome his disability from drink, and rig twin guns in the mid-upper. The crew had been chosen well, and in our pre-lunch talk the skipper had made sure of me. Bull went to assist Nash, and they managed the labour between them.

I could make no sense out of the distant twittering on eight megacycles but, thinking that contact might come from that quarter, scoured to either side of the band. There was nothing for us. The plane was losing height. Cloud melted away except for what seemed like a line of grey bushes to the south. Hard to think of the Pole as being a point from where any straight line away from it went north. The cobalt sea glowed in the sun. My ears popped, playing a tune. Taking off the headset, a deep breath brought engine noise roaring back.