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‘There’s more adultery here than there are passengers. Pomeroy loves it.’ She held up her hands, and got up. ‘O.K., I’ll go now.’ She looked at him sullenly. ‘Can’t I buy you a beer at The Rabbit? Come on, they’ll be singing Christmas carols.’
Christmas! ‘I’m fine, thank you for coming.’
‘I wish I had,’ she said. ‘More important, I wish you had …’
She left, jogging through the forest, and blew him a truculent kiss. But an hour later she was back, in her car, and a little tipsy. ‘I want to put my case again.’ And she unzipped her tracksuit purposefully; but just then there was a knock on the door. He went to it, with relief, while Dolores hastily zipped up; and in walked Val Meredith, whose husband sometimes flew for Redcoat. In fact he was flying one of the Redcoat planes right that moment. ‘Hullo, I’ve come to invite you to Sunday lunch.’ Then she saw Dolores smiling at her icily. ‘Woops, sorry!’
After she left Dolores said, ‘Not Val Meredith, is it?’
‘No,’ he sighed. He wondered how the hell Val Meredith knew Shelagh was away.
‘O.K.,’ Dolores said, ‘the Florence Nightingale in me is cooled.’ She got up to go, fed up. ‘But do you see? What fun life could be?’
He took a deep breath. ‘Dolores? …’ Then he shook his head. ‘Forget it. I don’t want to know.’
She looked at him. ‘You mean has Shelagh? …’ She put her hands on her hips, wearily. ‘No,’ she said. I haven’t heard even a whisper about her playing around. And believe me, I’d tell you if I had.’
He was a bit better on Monday, but Dolores had arranged a relief pilot. He did not work on Tuesday and Wednesday, so he could be with Cathy. He did not want to let her out of his sight. He played with her in her room. He had to go into the village so he took her to a tea-room and bought her icecream, as much as she wanted, so he could have her to himself, listen to her. He did not want to take her home; she would no longer be alone with him. He bathed her and sat with her while she had her supper. Then he had to let her go to bed. He sat with her until she was asleep, just looking at her. Finally, he had to leave her alone, and then he did not know what to do with himself. He sat in the kitchen and drank beer and tried to read the newspapers, while Shelagh cooked dinner between going upstairs to do the last of her packing. They were polite to each other, even kind. Sometimes she just touched him in passing, though she did not want to start anything. She showed genuine interest in the airline.
‘We’re having a record month,’ he said.
‘Great. That’s three in a row.’ She sighed. ‘Well, you all deserve it. But, truly, don’t buy a third Canadair. Get rid of the Britannia, but don’t replace her.’
‘We’re talking about doing passenger charters with the Britannia.’
‘But she’s such a mess inside.’
‘Tart her up a bit. Quick Change seating, and so forth.’
‘But you need wide-bodies for passenger work. Like Freddie Laker.’
‘It’s easier to fill up a small plane than a big one.’
‘Don’t you think Freddie knows what he’s doing?’
‘He’s a genius. But he’ll come unstuck with all these wide-bodies he’s buying. Small is beautiful.’
‘Remember’ that if you’re thinking of building a bloody great airship, darling.’
It touched him when she used the endearment. Another time she said: ‘I really do think airships are a wonderful idea. So romantic. It’s just …’ She waved her hand. ‘I just don’t believe in them. For all the obvious reasons. And I think you’re …’ She decided not to finish.
‘Wasting my time?’
‘Oh, you’re wasting yourself. You’re a brilliant barrister – everybody says so. But you’re an incurable romantic, darling – your head literally in the clouds.’ She sighed. ‘You’re going to lose every penny you make, and end up a broken man, like Malcolm Todd.’
He smiled. ‘I think he’s a genius.’
She smiled wearily. ‘Of course you do. Birds of a feather.’
They slept in the same bed, but did not touch each other. He lay in the darkness, pretending to sleep, and with all his heart he yearned to reach out and take her in his arms and tell her he loved her, and beg her not to leave. But he could not. Maybe she was also pretending to be asleep, feeling the same. But no. You can feel these things. Maybe she was waiting for him to break, tell her she could come back after she had done her thing, and God knows there were times when he nearly did. On that last Friday morning he awoke before dawn, found himself lying against her, his hand holding her breast; and for a moment, in his half-sleep, he was completely happy. Then he came back to reality, and his heart cracked. He got up, straight away, racked, slammed on the shower, the water beating away his tears. He got dressed, and left the dark cottage. He did not know where he was going; he only knew he could not stay there, waiting for them to wake up and leave. He walked through the woods, down the road, towards Redcoat House. He unlocked the door, and stood there. He could not work. He started walking again. It was getting light when he got back to the cottage. He opened the front door, and her suitcases were lined up. Shelagh was standing there, and he looked at them, and he broke. He leant in the doorway, and the tears rolled down his face, and he reached out and took her in his arms, and whispered, ‘Please come back …’
She stood in his arms a long moment. Then she said gently: ‘Breakfast is ready.’
After that he composed himself. They drove to Heathrow airport, with Cathy sitting between them. They were silent all the way. He checked them in. They had ample time for coffee, but he could not bear it.
He picked up Cathy. He held her tight, and his throat was thick as he said: ‘Look after Mommy, won’t you, darling?’
Then he turned to Shelagh. Her eyes were clear and steady. He held her tight once, then kissed her cheek.
‘Goodbye,’ he whispered. ‘Good luck.’
She smiled. ‘Good luck.’
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Go now.’
She took Cathy by the hand and turned, without looking at him. He watched them walk away, Cathy toddling along. At the door Shelagh stopped, and looked back, smiled, then waved; then she bent and waved Cathy’s hand at her daddy.
Then they went through the door.
He walked out of the concourse, the tears running down his face. He got into his car, began to start it: then he dropped his face into his hands and wept.
For five minutes he sat there. Then he dragged his wrist across his eyes. He did not want to leave the place he had last seen his wife and child, but he made himself. He drove slowly out of the parking block, then into the tunnel. He drove through the tunnel, out at the other end; he drove slowly round the traffic island, and back into the tunnel, back to the airport again.
He went up to the observation lounge. He could see the plane, but not the passengers boarding. He just stood there and watched the plane.
Finally the Boeing reversed out of the bay. He imagined Shelagh and Cathy inside. He watched it taxi, disappear from sight: then it reappeared, roaring down the runway, fast and faster; it took off, and his heart finally broke, and he sobbed out loud.
He watched it go, getting smaller and smaller. Then it was gone, into the clouds.
But he did not want to leave the airport, the last place he had seen his wife and child.
PART 3 (#ulink_29bcd1af-0e6d-5383-ac49-e8ce722ecfde)
CHAPTER 10 (#ulink_652a3679-1378-5d5d-ab0b-0c521fa8b263)
Now, this is how you fly a bloody great aeroplane. It’s simple really: a simple matter of life and death.
First, you’ve tanked up with twenty-five tons of fuel, which is the combined weight of five adult elephants, to blast your twenty-five tons of cargo (another five elephants) plus fifty tons of aeroplane (ten elephants) through thin air in defiance of gravity. You’ve filed your Flight Plan, telling the guys in control the route you’d like to fly. Now you’re waiting on the runway, engines whining, brakes on, waiting for them to tell you it’s safe to go, waiting for a gap in that black sky midst all those dozens of other aeroplanes screaming around on top of each other all wanting to come in, all of you blindly relying on that same little guy in his control room who’s looking at his radar set. And then he says Go, and, boy, off you go.
Blindly trusting in the blind faith everybody has in everybody else, galloping down the black runway, the lights flashing past, eighty miles an hour, ninety, a hundred, just praying you don’t burst a tyre. Then you reach V1, the speed at which you become committed to taking off, you cannot stop now without killing yourself and making everybody very cross. You reach VR, ease back the stick, up comes the nose, and, bingo, you’ve done it, you’re airborne! Lifting up into thin air, you and your twenty-odd elephants. Up up up you go into the blackness where the little guy told you to, aiming for that nice gap he’s found for you between all those friendly aeroplanes screaming around in circles up there; but it’s O.K. because he’s watching you all on his radar screen. Sometimes he screams over the radio, ‘Romeo Yankee, left, turn left’ and you holler, ‘O.K., left!’ – and some fucking great machine comes screaming out of the blackness, just missing you. But not often, hell no, those guys are good; anybody can make a mistake. And you’re on your way to sunny Africa or wherever, and he hands you over to the next control sector. You twiddle that up on your radio and in Paris some dolly-bird says, ‘Oui – oui, Romeo Yankee, I have you …’ And you tell her your compass heading and the slab of air the little guy allocated you and she says, ‘O.K., bon soir.’ Or she says something like, ‘Descend a thousand feet, somebody’s coming!’ And, boy, you do as you’re told. As simple as that. It gave Mahoney the screaming heebie-jeebies.
‘Hell, England’s easy,’ said Ed. ‘You should see some of the balls-up airports I’ve flown into, especially in Africa. Sometimes you have to fly low over the control tower to wake them up.’
‘Give me Africa every time,’ Mahoney said, ‘at least you’re the only plane in the sky there. It’s going for the gap between all the other guys that gives me the willies.’
‘You’ve got to learn to relax, or you don’t do this job.’
‘I’m only doing the job, Ed, until we can afford to keep me on the ground, believe me.’
‘Well, that may be some time, boss, so you better learn to quit passing me the buck everytime something tricky happens.’
‘You’re the fleet-captain. Of course I pass the buck; that’s what I pay you for.’
‘Not very much. You should fly more with the other guys, stop being so dependent on me. Fly as captain for a change.’
‘Fly as captain? Never,’ Mahoney said. ‘Never.’
‘Take responsibility. You’re quite a good pilot, really.’
‘I’m a lousy pilot, I’m only here to make up the numbers. You want to take over some of my responsibilities? You’re quite a good co-director, really.’
‘Hell, no. Never,’ Ed said. ‘O.K. – go and work, boss.’
And Mahoney got out of his seat and sat at the fold-away table that Pomeroy had made for him, and he worked on Redcoat business that Dolores had packed for him. She prepared the same lists of SDDs (Suggested Dos and Don’ts) as she had done with his legal briefs in the old days. Nowadays it was: ‘O.K., sign encls.’ ‘Study carefully.’ ‘Have arranged appt with Bank Mgr for …’ ‘F. says pineapple glut, bananas O.K. this week …’ ‘This is prick who gave us so much trouble over …’
And there was the telephone. It went ‘bing-bong’ on the flight-deck, and that meant trouble because Dolores did not waste money. Engine trouble, or cargo trouble, or crew trouble. ‘That engine on the Britannia has gone on the blink again, Pomeroy says he’s got to take the whole thing out, at least five days, do you want me to charter an aircraft or do a handwringing exercise?’ Oh, God, engines! ‘Meredith has just lost the number two engine on the Canadair and turned back to Naples, which means tomorrow’s Khartoum cargo …’ ‘Pomeroy has just heard of an excellent second-hand engine going cheap in Cyprus; he must go there immediately to inspect it and this means that …’ And goddamn cargoes. Tour homeward-bound cargo has fallen through, but Abdullah in Uganda has got one. Is it worth flying empty from Ghana to fetch it? …’
The other big trouble was crew. Hard-luck crews, that’s what Redcoat tended to get. Ed Hazeltine and Mahoney were the only pilots in Redcoat’s full-time employment. For the rest, Redcoat hired pilots, flight by flight. There were usually plenty, with so many airlines retrenching. The trouble with pilots is they tend to drink, to relax from the unnatural business of defying gravity for a living. Bing-bong. ‘That cargo of bulls for Johannesburg? Well, Captain Meredith’s gone on a bender, he caught a tailwind and got home early and found his wife in the bathtub with you-know-who …’
‘Then get Mason!’
‘Unfortunately, that’s who she was in the bathtub with. He’s suddenly got two very black eyes and no front teeth.’
‘Oh Jesus! Then get Cooper!’
‘Cooper’s flying for Starlux, Benny’s flying for Tradewinds, Renner’s flying the Canadair right now, Morley’s goofing-off on the Costa del Sol. I assure you there’s nobody …’
‘Johnson?’
‘Mother’s dying.’
‘Fullbright?’
‘Just got a full-time job with Ethiopia Air.’
‘Well, find somebody, Dolores! Even if you’ve got to drop your knickers and run bare-assed round Gatwick Airport! What are we going to do with thirty bulls around Redcoat House?’
‘That’s why I phoned, dammit! Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me …’
When he got to the hangar the next evening, there was his new captain awaiting him. ‘Good evening, name’s Sydney Benson.’
Mahoney was taken aback. ‘Are you Jamaican?’
‘As the ace of spades.’
Mahoney grinned. As he was signing on duty he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, ‘You sure he can fly aeroplanes?’
Dolores slapped the desk and burst into smothered giggles. ‘Your face – it’s a scream.’
As they walked together through the grey drizzle to the Canadair, Mahoney said: ‘Dolores tells me your last job was with Air Jamaica, Sydney. What brings you to England?’
Sydney broke into a little shuffle:
‘This is my island, in the sun
Built for me, by the English-mun
All my days, I will sing in praise
Of the National Assistance and the Labour Exchange …’
Mahoney threw back his head and laughed.
After they had settled down on the flight-deck, Mahoney said: ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to do take-off.’
Sydney looked at him.
‘You don’t like spades taking off? Well, I’m not too wild about honkies, either.’
‘Not that,’ Mahoney smiled. ‘You see, I’m managing director and I’ve a lot of work—’
‘And I’m captain of this aircraft, sah, and what I say is law. You got that?’
Mahoney sighed. ‘Got it.’
‘And I also just got fired, right?’
‘No. Go on, take off, you’re the boss.’
Sydney sat back, with a brilliant smile. ‘O.K., you take off, then go’n work, I’ll hold the fort, pal.’
After that Sydney often flew for Redcoat, and Mahoney liked to fly with him. The man was an excellent pilot, and bloody funny. It was an asset, too, having a black captain to argue with black officials about dash and blackmail and blackmarket rates. ‘How you’ve stood these mothers,’ Sydney complained, ‘it makes me embarrassed about my pigmentation, and I’ve always thought nothing was worse than pinko-grey like you unfortunates.’ Sydney’s wife was a buxom American black lass with flashing eyes, called Muriel, who came to work for Redcoat. ‘Don’t think I’m going to shoulder the whole white man’s burden, I refuse to work more than eighteen hours a day for this pittance!’ Mahoney was rather intimidated by her, Pomeroy was terrified of her, Dolores was delighted with her. ‘Works like a black,’ Dolores enthused, ‘and so funny …’
Mahoney hardly ever saw Pomeroy or Vulgar Olga these days. Vulgar Olga worked as a barmaid across town and Pomeroy was always inside some engine, covered in grease, going cuss cuss cuss. Sometimes they met at The Rabbit, to talk some business, but Pomeroy was no good at anything except engines, and booze and women, he wanted to leave all that mindblowing management crap to Mahoney. And Mahoney didn’t know anything about engines, he wanted to leave all that mindblowing crap to Pomeroy, anything Pomeroy decided to do with Redcoat Engineering Ltd was O.K. with Mahoney as long as it made money. He was very pleased with Pomeroy, and wished he saw more of him. Sometimes Pomeroy took a break and went on a flight as engineer. He amused Mahoney. Pomeroy was a cockney barrow-boy at heart, but now that he had made good he was getting awfully toffy. Pomeroy and Vulgar Olga lived in a chintzy mortgaged house, and when he wasn’t inside engines he was socializing with the gentry and he didn’t assault policemen anymore now he was respectable. ‘Cor-er, marvellous crumpet in the suburbs,’ Pomeroy confided. ‘Worth all the effort, even thinking of taking elocution lessons, like.’
‘And what does Olga think about all the crumpet?’
‘Loves it! Old Olga, y’know, she’s only here for the beer. I’m even thinkin’ of marrying her, we get along so famous. Wot I mean is, you really should come along to some of these toffy parties and get some of this marvellous married crumpet. Biggest club in the world!’
‘I’ve got to work,’ Mahoney smiled.
And when he was through with office work, there were the piles of Malcolm Todd’s airship material. The principles of lighter-than-air flight, the esoteric formulae he had to grasp, the significance of comparative graphs, Malcolm’s screeds of essays and promotional material, all the draftsman’s drawings, all the books. Mahoney had the gift of the gab rather than a mathematical turn of mind, so the science did not come easily to him, but being of above-average intelligence he could, with effort, understand it. It also helped to keep his mind off the empty cottage that was waiting for him. And he was fascinated. It simply did not make sense to be hurtling twenty elephants through the night sky in defiance of the laws of gravity when you could float them, riding the air like a ship rides on the sea.
CHAPTER 11 (#ulink_00398591-e246-5706-9a80-cfc81a174c9e)
Work, booze, and adultery. And guilt.
Mahoney half-woke feeling terrible, thinking he was late for work, and he started scrambling up when Dolores mumbled: ‘Relax, it’s Sunday …’
