she turned around, a grin of anticipation on her face. ‘Sammy. You came. How are you?’
‘All the better for seeing your lovely face, Ramona,’ he replied. ‘Can I have a pint?’
‘Have it on me,’ she said and immediately pulled him a pint of mild. ‘When you’ve drunk it we’ll go out if you like. Clover here will cover for me, won’t you Clover?’
‘I said I would. So this is Sammy.’ She smiled politely.
‘Clover. My new stepsister,’ Ramona explained.
Sammy shook her hand and smiled broadly. ‘I bet you fetch the ducks off the water,’ he commented.
The two girls broke into a fit of giggling.
Dorcas Downing and Elijah Tandy appeared in all their finery at the Jolly Collier on the Saturday night. They drank in the snug with Jacob, Mary Ann and Ramona by turns, when customers in the taproom would allow them a few minutes from serving.
Elijah Tandy was celebrating his thirty-second birthday that very day and he bought everybody in the pub a drink. He oozed confidence and had a way with women. He was not excessively handsome, but he was fit and solid and his pleasant and polite manner, his easy way with a compliment, won him the admiration of many a girl.
Dorcas Downing, his woman, was twenty-five, dark and strikingly beautiful with enormous brown eyes. Her father, who owned a hollow-ware factory at Eve Hill in the parish of St James, was also a magistrate and highly respected. His affluence ensured Dorcas could indulge herself in expensive clothes. They lived in a fine house in Ednam Road on the rural north-west side of the town. Whether Mr Downing approved of his prospective son-in-law, nobody knew.
‘Can I interest anybody in a cheese sandwich?’ Clover was carrying a tray into the snug. She looked a picture of fresh-faced femininity with her dark hair shining, done up in loose curls on top of her head. She wore a crisp white blouse with a high neck and a long black skirt that emphasised the youthfulness of her hips and gave her bottom some attractive contours. ‘There’s some Spanish onion as well, look, if anybody wants some.’
‘Yes please, Clover, my babby,’ Elijah said amiably. He put down his pint and took a couple of sandwiches.
‘Dorcas?’
Dorcas sighed heavily as if the world and all its problems had suddenly come to roost on her shoulders. ‘Well if Elijah’s having cheese and onion, I suppose I’d better.’
‘I should,’ Clover urged with a friendly wink.
‘You’d better,’ Elijah agreed and there was a twinkle in his eye, ‘else you won’t want to kiss me after.’
‘Who would not want to kiss you, Elijah?’ Clover said flippantly. ‘Onion or no onion.’ At once she realised she had been tactless. She was not that familiar with Elijah, yet his easy-going nature had allowed her to believe she could get away with such innocent innuendo.
Elijah chuckled but Dorcas’s face was like cold marble. She was evidently not so easy-going. ‘Does that mean that when my back’s turned others will be trying to usurp me?’ she asked Clover, her eyebrows raised in pique.
‘Not at all,’ Clover apologised earnestly. ‘I was just being frivolous, Dorcas. I didn’t mean anything by it. You shouldn’t read anything into it.’
‘It’s all right, Clover,’ Elijah said, and others had cottoned on to the chill atmosphere that was suddenly pervasive. ‘Dorcas can be a bit touchy, can’t you Dorcas? Time of the month, I reckon.’
Dorcas looked at him with scorn. ‘Don’t be so coarse, Elijah. But how do you expect me to feel now you’re coming to live in the same house as two frivolous young fillies who can’t keep their eyes off you?’
‘I think that might be a bit of an exaggeration, Dorcas,’ Clover said and left to fetch another tray of sandwiches for the taproom.
Ned and Amos had already loaded the flying machine onto the borrowed cart by the time Clover arrived at Springfield House. Mr Mantle appeared in his dressing-gown and night-cap and wished Ned the very best of luck, to which Ned replied that he was getting nervous about the whole thing. But at least the weather remained warm and sunny.
‘I hope there’s a bit more wind up on Rough Hill,’ Ned commented apprehensively as they walked alongside the cart down Tansley Hill Road. ‘I’ll need a bit o’ wind to keep me aloft.’
‘The wind’s kept me aloft all sodding night,’ Amos said sombrely and Clover giggled. ‘That Millard’s bloody mild up at the Gypsy’s Tent serves me barbarous. And what with having to run up the yard when I was took short…’
‘It’s all right for you to mock, Amos,’ Ned complained, ‘but what about if I fail today? I’ve asked the Dudley Herald to come and report on this attempt.’
‘Well I don’t suppose he’ll mind, the Dudley herald, specially if you crash, our Ned. It’ll give him summat to shout about…Who is he, anyroad, this Dudley herald?’ Amos winked conspiratorially at Clover.
‘Who is he!’ Ned scoffed. ‘The Dudley Herald is the newspaper, you fool…’ Then it dawned on him that Amos was pulling his leg. He laughed, embarrassed. ‘Swine!’
All three laughed and it relieved some of the tension they all felt. This was going to be a day of great significance. If Ned and his machine covered any distance and it responded to his new control mechanisms, he could be on his way to more important things. Powered flight would inevitably be next, and the search for a suitable engine. If he failed…No. Failing was not to be contemplated. Even though he had to scrimp and save so he could afford to buy the materials to build his machines, it really was a labour of love.
Folk on their way to church stopped and gawped at the strange contraption that was strapped in sections onto the cart. One or two of the more enlightened men guessed that it might have been a flying machine but, for all some of them knew, it could have been a giant bedstead.
Eventually they trundled past Oakham Farm and, on a lane known as Turner’s Hill, they arrived at the broken gate that led into the high field that crowned Rough Hill. To Ned’s relief the wind was blowing significantly harder up here than it had been in Tansley Hill Road, which lay in the lee of Cawney Hill. They off-loaded the flying machine and Ned began by bolting the undercarriage – a pair of bicycle wheels attached to a wooden frame – to the fuselage. While Clover held the assembly steady, Ned bolted the wings to the fuselage and began the complicated routine of fastening the bracing and the rigging between the top and bottom wings that afforded some stability and tension to the structure. By this time, the reporter from the Dudley Herald had shown up and began asking Ned all sorts of questions. Ned answered them patiently while he worked, but he would not stop what he was doing. He fastened the stiff wires that joined the wing flaps to the levers by his seat and within an hour, the Gull was ready to fly.
‘Steady as you go,’ Ned urged as they trundled it towards the launch point, holding it back so that it shouldn’t run on its own down the hill and fly off unmanned; that would be the ultimate embarrassment with a reporter there to witness it. Amos was chocking the wheels with a large piece of wood when they heard a man’s voice calling from behind them, its sound almost carried away from them by the stiff breeze.
‘Clover! Clover!’
She
