for the next fifteen minutes. I ate two thick ham sandwiches while he got it off his chest[63], and finished the whisky. You couldn’t really blame him, I thought, listening with half an ear: if you liked it, your first flight took you by the throat and you were hooked good and proper[64]. It had happened to him. It had happened to me, one idle day when I passed the gates of the airfield and then turned back and went in, mildly interested in going up for a spin in a baby aircraft just to see what it was like.
I’d been to visit a dying great-aunt, and was depressed.
Certainly Mr…? ‘Grey,’ I said. Certainly Mr Grey could go up with an instructor, the air people said: and the instructor, who hadn’t been told I only wanted a sight-seeing flip, began as a matter of course to teach me to fly. I stayed all day and spent a week’s salary in fees; and the next Sunday I went back. Most of my Sundays and most of my money had gone the same way since.
The red-head was brought to a full stop by a burly tweed-suited man who said ‘Excuse me,’ pleasantly but very firmly, and planted himself between us.
‘Harry, I’ve been waiting for you to come back.’
‘Have a drink?’
‘Yes, all right, in a minute.’
His name was Tom Wells. He owned and ran a small charter firm which was based on the airfield, and on Sundays, if they weren’t out on jobs, he allowed the flying club to hire his planes. It was one of his that I had flown to Islay.
‘Have I done something wrong?’ I asked.
‘Wrong? Why should you, for God’s sake? No, I’m in a spot[65] and I thought you might be able to help me out’.
‘If I can, of course.’
‘I’ve overbooked next week-end and I’m going to be a pilot short[66]. Will you do a flight for me next Sunday?’
‘Yes,’ I said: I’d done it before, several times.
He laughed. ‘You never waste words, Harry boy. Well, thanks. When can I ring you to give you a briefing?’
I hesitated. ‘I’d better ring you, as usual.’
‘Saturday morning, then.’
‘Right.’
We had a drink together, he talking discontentedly about the growing shortage of pilots and how it was now too expensive for a young man to take it up on his own account, it cost at least three thousand pounds to train a multi-engine pilot, and only the air lines could afford it. They trained their own men and kept them, naturally. When the generation who had learned flying in the R.A.F.[67] during the war got too old, the smaller charter firms were going to find themselves in very sticky straits[68].
‘You now,’ he said, and it was obviously what he’d been working round to all along[69]. ‘You’re an oddity. You’ve got a commercial licence and all the rest, and you hardly use it. Why not? Why don’t you give up that boring old desk job and come and work for me?’
I looked at him for a long, long moment. It was almost too tempting, but apart from everything else, it would mean giving up steeplechasing, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. I shook my head slowly, and said not for a few years yet.
Driving home I enjoyed the irony of the situation. Tom Wells didn’t know what my desk job was, only that I worked in an office. I hadn’t got around to telling him that I no longer did, and I wasn’t going to. He didn’t know where I came from or anything about my life away from the airfield. No one there did, and I liked it that way[70]. I was just Harry who turned up on Sundays and flew if he had any money and worked on the engines in the hangars if he hadn’t.
Tom Wells had offered me a job on my own account, not, like Yardman, because of my father, and that pleased me very much. It was rare for me to be sure of the motive behind things which were offered to me. But if I took the job my anonymity on the airfield would vanish pretty soon, and all the old problems would crowd in, and Tom Wells might very well retract, and I would be left with nowhere to escape to on one day a week to be myself.
My family did not know I was a pilot. I hadn’t told them I had been flying that first day because by the time I got home my great-aunt had died and I was ashamed of having enjoyed myself while she did it. I hadn’t told them afterwards because I was afraid that they would make a fuss and stop me[71]. Soon after that I realised what a release it was to lead two lives and I deliberately kept them separate. It was quite easy, as I had always been untalkative: I just didn’t answer when asked where I went on Sundays, and I kept my books and charts, slide rules and computers, securely locked up in my bedroom. And that was that.
Chapter Three
It was on the day after I went to Islay that I first met Billy. With Conker and Timmie, once they had bitten down their resentment at my pinching their promotion, I had arrived at a truce[72]. On trips they chatted exclusively to each other, not to me, but that was as usual my fault: and we had got as far as sharing things like sandwiches and chocolate – and the work – on a taken-for-granted level basis.
Billy at once indicated that with him it would be quite quite different. For Billy the class war existed as a bloody battlefield upon which he was the most active and tireless warrior alive. Within five seconds of our first meeting he was sharpening his claws.
It was at Cambridge Airport at five in the morning. We were to take two consignments of recently sold racehorses from Newmarket to Chantilly near Paris, and with all the loading and unloading at each end it would be a long day. Locking my car in the car park I was just thinking how quickly Conker and Timmie and I were getting to be able to do things when Yardman himself drove up alongside in a dark Jaguar Mark 10. There were two other men in the car, a large indistinct shape in the back, and in front, Billy.
Yardman stepped out of his car, yawned, stretched, looked up at the sky, and finally turned to me.
‘Good-morning my dear boy,’ he said with great affability. ‘A nice day for flying.’
‘Very,’ I agreed. I was surprised to see him: he was not given to early rising or to waving us bon voyage[73]. Simon Searle occasionally came if there were some difficulty with papers but not Yardman himself. Yet here he was with his black suit hanging loosely on his too thin frame and the cold early morning light making uncomplimentary shadows on his stretched coarsely pitted skin. The black-framed spectacles as always hid the expression in his deep-set eyes. After a month in his employ, seeing him at the wharf building two or three times a week on my visits for instructions, reports, and pay, I knew him no better than on that first afternoon. In their own way his defence barriers were as good as mine.
He told me between small shut-mouthed yawns that Timmie and Conker weren’t coming, they were due for a few days leave. He had brought two men who obligingly substituted on such occasions and he was sure I would do a good job with them instead. He had brought them, he explained, because public transport wasn’t geared to five o’clock rendezvous[74]
got it off his chest – (
you were hooked good and proper – (
I’m in a spot – (
I’m going to be a pilot short – (
the R.A.F.
in very sticky straits – (
what he’d been working round to all along – (
I liked it that way – (
that they would make a fuss and stop me – (
I had arrived at a truce – (
he was not given to early rising or to waving us
