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He slumped back, his head thudding. He remembered where he was now. Pomeroy’s house. Oh God, with Dolores … As if reading his mind, she muttered, ‘Relax, we didn’t do anything.’
But, oh, why hadn’t he gone home? Why did he ever drink brandy? … Then he remembered: chocolate mousse. …
It came back, fragmented. The lunch was clear enough. Dolores was not there then. Wine flowing like water, dropping on to the gins and tonics. Why did he ever drink gin? Then the brandies. They all knew each other very well, except for Mahoney. Mahoney only knew Danish Erika and Pomeroy well, and he knew how his parties turned out. Then the whiskies, getting dark now. Sitting around Pomeroy’s fake mahogany bar with all its gear, its erotic curios, all the suggestive talk and laughter and double meanings. Memory began to blur. He remembered starting to feel very drunk. Remembered seeing it was nine o’clock. He remembered Vulgar Olga taking off her clothes for the sauna. Then Pomeroy, then the other women, then Fullbright and Mason. And all this was fine, the naked women were fine, but no way was he going to get undressed and sit in a hot sauna. He didn’t give a damn what they did. Once upon a time he’d have filled his boots and maybe one day he would again, but right now no way was he going to get involved, he just wanted to go home. He remembered them calling him a spoil sport, and too drunk to drive, and Erika stealing his car keys. He remembered bumping upstairs to look for a bed; then blank.
The rest was very confused. He remembered waking up, finding himself on the sofa in Pomeroy’s bedroom, clothes on. Olga shaking him, telling him to get his gear off and join the action. The next thing, Danish Erika shaking him saying it was four o’clock, time to go home, did he want any chocolate mousse? He sat up, holding his head and feeling like death, and there were the six of them – evidently Fullbright had gone – sitting on the floor stark naked and drunk and disorderly around this big bowl of chocolate mousse and bottles of champagne.
He did not remember how it started because he was too busy feeling terrible; maybe Pomeroy did it because Vulgar Olga squirted champagne at him, or maybe Pomeroy slopped a spoonful of chocolate mousse on Vulgar Olga, but suddenly there were these squeals and there is Pomeroy with champagne all over his face and Olga with chocolate mousse on hers – then Janet Mason splatting chocolate mousse on Pomeroy midst screams of laughter, and then Erika letting Mason have it, and the real shambles began. Sitting pole-axed on the sofa, Mahoney stared in bludgeoned astonishment at the spectacle exploding before him, everybody fighting with chocolate mousse midst screaming and squealing – then champagne squirting everywhere; then Pomeroy screaming and clutching his chocolate-face and the door bursting open and there stood Fullbright, fully dressed and unchocolated, seething with righteous indignation. The battle stopped as suddenly as it had begun, everybody staring at Fullbright, except Pomeroy who was whimpering, clutching his chocolate face.
‘You!’ Fullbright jabbed his pristine finger at Mason – ‘And you!’ – at the dark, wailing Pomeroy – ‘And you!’ – at an astonished Mahoney – ‘stay away from my wife!’
‘I’ve got chocolate mousse in my eye—’ Pomeroy wailed, and Vulgar Olga wailed, ‘Oh darling!’
‘You all stay away from my wife!’ Fullbright was yelling.
‘Somebody stuck their finger in my eye—’ Pomeroy was wailing.
‘A doctor,’ Vulgar Olga was wailing. ‘Call Dolores—’ ‘Nine-nine-nine,’ Pomeroy was wailing at everybody – ‘tell ’em I got chocolate mousse in my eye—’ Then Fullbright bounding at his wife as Pomeroy was blindly scrambling for the door with Olga lumbering chocolate-arsed after him, and all four of them colliding in the doorway in a big chocolatey bottleneck. Fullbright was now getting pretty chocolatey himself, and Lavinia Fullbright was screaming at him, ‘You bastard—’ And Olga was screaming, ‘Get out of the bloody way,’ and then Fullbright went flying through the doorway with Pomeroy exploding after him in a sudden unbottlenecking. He crashed on top of Fullbright, and the whole chocolatey lot of them went crashing down the stairs, crash bang wallop to the bottom in a mad tangled bellowing mess, then Olga was scrambling for the telephone and Pomeroy was blundering around yelling, ‘Tell the Eye Bank I’ve got chocolate mousse in my eye—’
Something like that. All very confused. Mahoney remembered the front door slamming, Fullbright’s car roaring away with Lavinia: then the ambulance wailing, Pomeroy reeling out into the night with a blanket around him, wailing to everybody that he had chocolate mousse in his eye.
Then Dolores arriving, to sort this lot out.
Mahoney got out of bed carefully. He staggered into the bathroom, found a toothbrush, brushed his teeth, turned on the shower. He stood under it, suffering, then scrubbed himself and washed his hair. Then let cold water hammer on his head, trying to knock out the stunned feeling. Cold showers are like flying aeroplanes: they’re so nice when they stop.
He dressed, tiptoed down the stairs, feeling a little better. The stair walls were smeared with mousse, and it smelled as if Olga had tried to clean the stuff up with benzene. The living room looked like a battlefield, clothes everywhere. You expected to find bodies. He found his jacket.
He went to the kitchen, got a beer. He took a long swig, then sat at the table, suffering, waiting for it to steady him. But why should he feel remorse? It was their business. Their wives. He hadn’t even stuck his finger in Pomeroy’s eye. So why should he feel remorse?
It was sick. Marriage, the biggest club in the world … None of the desperate wining and dining of bachelorhood, the heavy-duty charm-treatment, impressing her with what a big wheel you are, the hopeful dancing cheek-to-cheek, the worrying, and finally the acid test when you get her home, the protests. But with adultery? All you’ve got to do is look for the signs. Why do married people talk about sex so much? Oh God, he just longed for his lovely wholesome wife and child …
He went to the fridge for another beer. He heard footsteps. Pomeroy tottered in, all hairy and horrible, a bandage around his head.
‘Are you in the Black and White Minstrel Show?’ Mahoney said.
‘Oh boy,’ Pomeroy said. He tottered to the fridge, got a beer blindly, slumped at the table.
‘Can you work tomorrow?’
‘If you don’t mind one-eyed engineers.’ He lifted the bandage. His eyelid was black and swollen and stitched, his slit of eyeball murderously bloodshot.
‘Who was it?’
‘I couldn’t see because somebody stuck their finger in my eye.’
Mahoney was grinning. ‘What did they sat at the hospital?’
‘Caused a bit of bovver at the hospital,’ Pomeroy admitted. ‘Old Olga, you know, you should have been there.’
‘What did Olga do?’
‘Naked as the day she was born under that blanket,’ Pomeroy said, ‘and chocolate mousse. Raised a bit of a bovver. She didn’t know the black doctor was a doctor, you should have been there. He said, “Medem, is this a case of the pot-i calling the kettle black?”’
Mahoney laughed and it hurt his head. Pomeroy sighed, ‘Isn’t that Fullbright a prick?’
‘You better leave the Fullbrights out of your chocolate mousse parties.’
I’m going to leave you out, an’ all,’ Pomeroy said. ‘Here I go to this enormous expense and pain to cheer you up …’ He glared with his good eye. ‘But no, you’re still brooding about her.’ He got up. ‘I’m goin’ to the loo,’ he said.
The rest is legend. Pomeroy goes to the lavatory, sits down, lights a cigarette, and drops the match into the lavatory bowl. And in that bowl unbeknown to him is the wad of cotton wool with which Vulgar Olga cleaned up the chocolate mousse, all soaked in benzene. And, sitting in the kitchen, all Mahoney heard was a mighty whooshing bang and then Pomeroy howls and comes bursting out of the toilet with his arse on fire. There’s Pomeroy running around hollering, ‘My arse is blown off,’ and Olga coming running stark naked screaming, ‘Oh darling, I forgot to flush it!’ – and Dolores yelling,’ What’s wrong now?’ – and Pomeroy hollering, ‘Call the ambulance – my arse is burnt off!’ And the women chasing him, yelling, cornering him, trying to inspect his arse while he hopped around hollering.
Then the wailing of the ambulance above Pomeroy’s wailing, and in burst the stretcher-bearers, and they’re the same guys who came for him earlier. And they load him on to the stretcher, and out the front door Pomeroy goes, red raw arse up and his bandage round his eye, still covered in dried chocolate mousse. And the ambulance boys were laughing so much that one trips down the front steps. All Mahoney saw was a sudden mass of crashing arms and legs and Pomeroy’s arse. Then Pomeroy was wailing ‘My shoulder!’, and his collar bone was broken.
Mahoney helped Dolores tidy up the house while Olga and Pomeroy were back at the hospital getting his arse and collar bone fixed; then he left. He drove slowly home, trying not to think about bloody Sunday. He was flying at midnight so he had to sleep off his hangover this afternoon. He could have a nice pub-lunch at The Rabbit, then get Danish Erika or Val or Beatrice to sleep it off with him, so what did he have to complain about? What’s so tough about being a bachelor? And tomorrow he’d be in Uganda, would you rather be in court tomorrow, worrying about all that Law you never learned? He took a deep breath, trying to stop thinking about Sunday and Cathy, and stopped to buy a newspaper.
He looked at the front page for news of Rhodesia.
SMITH ANNOUNCES ‘INTERNAL SETTLEMENT’
The Rhodesian Prime Minister announced in Salisbury today that his government was setting out to seek an ‘internal settlement’ with the country’s moderate African leaders, in terms of which a ‘Transitional Co-alition Government would be formed with them, pending a new one-man-one-vote constitution …
Mahoney read the piece with stumbling speed: and for a minute he felt confused elation. Then he slumped. He thought: Big Deal …
Big deal, Mr Smith … You should have done this years ago when I told you to! … You think a coalition government now will get you international recognition so economic sanctions and the war will end? Well you’re too bloody late, Mr Smith …
Mahoney took a deep, bitter breath. Because it was too bloody late for such a compromise, because now the Rhodesians were fighting with their backs to the wall, and no way were Moscow and Peking going to rejoice in a nice moderate settlement and let their boys in the bush lay down their arms – Moscow and Peking didn’t want a nice moderate black government in Rhodesia, they wanted a communist one. You did not have to be a clairvoyant to see that the war would go on.
And the news of the war was shocking. The next headline made his guts turn over:
TERRORISTS SHOOT DOWN RHODESIAN TOURIST PLANE
A Rhodesian Airways plane carrying over fifty civilian holiday-makers, mostly women and children, from the Zambesi Valley to Salisbury, was shot down yesterday by terrorists using a heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile of Russian manufacture …
He felt sick in his guts. He could almost hear the screams as the plane came tearing down out of the sky, the smashing and crashing. Miraculously, ten survivors had crawled out of the terrible wreckage, hysterical, astonished to be alive, and four of them had gone off to find help: then the terrorists had arrived, raped the women, then shot them all. The Selous Scouts were now tracking the terrorists. Meanwhile, another mission station was attacked yesterday, all the missionaries butchered, two of them women, two babies bayoneted …
Jesus! He started the car furiously. What do you say about a war like that? You want to bellow to the world, ‘What the hell areyou supporting communist murderers like that for?’ And he wanted to grab Ian Smith by the scruff of neck and shake him.
He drove angrily home. Through the cow-meadow, through the woods, to the empty house. He thought, And what are you doing about it, coming home hungover from a drunken orgy while the communists close in on your country – with your daughter in it?
He got out of his car, slammed the door. No, he did not believe that Catherine was in danger: the terrorists would never get the towns; they would only ravage the countryside like roving packs of wild dogs. But that would be enough to win the war.
He went inside, put the radio on loud to stop himself thinking about it. He went upstairs, changed into fresh clothes, to go to work at Malcolm Todd’s cottage.
CHAPTER 12 (#ulink_842b0b34-7757-56a7-b083-638ed17059b4)
By law he was only allowed to work ninety hours a month, to be in good condition to fly aeroplanes; but he could not stay in the empty cottage, so usually he went to Redcoat House and did his paperwork, then worked on drafting the new Civil Aviation Authority’s Airship Regulations. The best place for that was the Todds’ cottage, so that Malcolm could explain everything, the technicalities, the importance of each part, and Mahoney tried to put it into the legal language that civil servants like to hear.
‘Those heaters won’t go wrong,’ Malcolm said.
‘What minimum dimensions must they be to heat all that helium? And snow and ice?’
‘Snow and ice will not collect during flight,’ Malcolm said, ‘because of the slipstream of air around the hull. Snow collects while the ship is stationary, but the heating system will warm the hull and melt it.’
‘But if the heater broke down, how do we get rid of the ice?’
‘It won’t break down. It is simply the heat from the exhaust, piped through the hull and out the other side. That hot pipe is surrounded by a jacket with a built-in fan. The fan sucks cold helium in one end of the jacket, it is heated by the pipe, and blows warm helium out the end of the jacket. Can’t fail.’
‘But if that fan breaks down?’
‘You’d have to send a man inside to fix the damn thing, that’s all. With a breathing apparatus because helium contains no oxygen. What scuba-divers use.’ He added: ‘Helium’s not poisonous.’
‘Let’s make a note … And if he couldn’t fix the fan? He’d have to go out on top to shovel the snow off? Maybe during flight. What kind of life-lines must we have?’
Malcolm sighed irritably. ‘Any fool can fix that fan! And those German boys on the Zeppelins never wore life-lines when they went topside to stitch up canvas. But what you must impress on the C.A. A. is we can send a man up there to shovel snow off. But if the heating fails on the leading edge of a jetliner’s wings you can’t send a man out – you get iced-up and crash! … Bloody cats!’ he shouted. ‘Get out!’
A cat fled.
‘I heard you shouting at Napoleon,’ Anne shouted from the kitchen. ‘Poor Napoleon, was the general being nasty?’ Malcolm snorted wearily to himself.
‘I heard you snorting wearily to yourself in there, Field Marshal. Isn’t it time you boys knocked off, your dinner’s getting cold.’
‘It’s only eleven! We’re making history in here, woman!’
Anne recited in the kitchen:
‘I always thought it rather odd
That there should be two Ds in “Todd”
When after all there’s only one in “God”.’
She came into the room. She was a good-looking, weary woman. She slipped her arm around Malcolm’s shoulder. ‘Come on, old gas-bag, reveille, this man’s got to fly aeroplanes tomorrow.’
‘Less of the old,’ Malcolm muttered. ‘He’s got to bang the C.A.A.’s head together next month.’
‘Our attitude’, the very precise, hard-to-charm civil servant said, ‘is that we’ll believe it when we see it. Until then …’ Mahoney waited. ‘Until then, I’m afraid you can’t expect us to do any work on this. People have been talking about bringing back the airship for fifty years – ever since the Hindenburg. Nothing has ever come of it. Because the airship proved itself a thoroughly unreliable, dangerous machine. Oh, I’m aware that hydrogen caused those disasters and you want to use helium.’
‘The Graf Zeppelin’, Mahoney said, ‘flew between Germany, South America and New York for years without a single accident – even though she was filled with hydrogen.’
The neat man nodded. ‘Mr Mahoney, the C.A.A. is a very busy government body which acts as watchdog on aircraft safety, and we’re very expensive. If you design a new aeroplane, our experts would check minutely whether it conformed to these safety regulations.’ He tapped a thick book. ‘Now, we’ve got no regulations on airships. And we’ve got no aeronautical experts on airships, because airships simply don’t exist. And I don’t know where such people are to be found.’
‘I do.’
‘I mean expert by our standards. And we’d have to put a lawyer exclusively on to drafting the legislation – and you’d have to pay for all this. We don’t give free legal advice, you know.’
‘I know,’ Mahoney said, ‘I’m a lawyer.’
The man was surprised. ‘I thought you were a commercial pilot?’
‘I’m both. I went to Aviation flying school a few years ago.’
‘I see. How very odd. Then how is it you’re a captain already?’
‘I own the airline. The major partner. In fact, I only fly as co-pilot, not as captain.’ The civil servant looked at Redcoat with new suspicion. ‘But, as a lawyer, I’ve started drafting the legislation to shortcut …’
‘I need a proper lawyer, Mr Mahoney – the C.A.A. doesn’t take shortcuts.’
‘I am a proper lawyer, Mr White. And I do understand airships, which your lawyer won’t. All I’m asking for is cooperation, so we know what you’re worried about.’
‘We’ll be worried stiff about everything! Good Lord, a monster twice as long as a football field, flying over London in a gale … Mr Mahoney, before you ask us for guidance, you’ll have to convince us our effort is not going to be wasted.’
Mahoney smacked the pile of files. ‘There are the plans, prepared by an expert. And there’s my effort so far at drafting the legislation. Now, are you going to read them or not, Mr White?’
Mr White sat back and looked at the ceiling. ‘Mr Mahoney, how much is one airship going to cost?’
‘Between ten and fifteen million pounds, once we’ve got a production line.’
‘And’, Mr White said politely, ‘has Redcoat got that kind of money?’
‘Not yet.’
‘No,’ Mr White said, lowering his eyes. ‘And the banks won’t lend it to you. And where do you propose building such a huge thing? No building I know of is big enough.’
‘At Cardington,’ Mahoney said grimly. ‘There are two old airship hangars.’
‘Cardington?’ Mr White mused. ‘Where the ill-fated R 101 was built? Charming connotations. And will the government lease them to you, do you think?’
‘They’re a white elephant, and government will be delighted that we’re providing employment.’
‘If the Civil Aviation Authority endorses your plans. And what about airports, Mr Mahoney? You can’t land these things at Heathrow. You’ll want government to build airports? Where? At what tremendous cost? That’s the sort of thing—’
‘That’, Mahoney said, ‘is exactly the sort of thing I want to talk about. I have here provisional plans for airports, plus full-scale ones for the future, all diligently prepared by Major—’
‘Indeed? And who’s going to pilot these things? You have been awfully busy, Mr Mahoney, but who is going to instruct the instructors who’re going to instruct the trainee pilots? It’s a whole new ball-game.’
Mahoney took a breath. ‘We are, Mr White,’ he said. ‘Redcoat.’
Mr White stared. ‘But what’, he said, ‘are your qualifications?’
Mahoney leant forward. ‘Mr White, I’ll soon know more about airships than almost any man alive. Now, the C.A.A. is going to have to allow somebody to test-fly the first airships. And you’ll have to grant concessionary licences to those test-pilots for that purpose.’
Mr White looked at him. ‘I see …’ Then he scratched his cheek. ‘What about the banks? What do they say?’
‘We haven’t been to the banks yet. They’ll want to see that the C.A.A. are taking it seriously.’
Mr White glared at the formidable pile of files. ‘The chicken or the egg?’
‘Yes,’ Mahoney smiled.
