Inherit the Skies (24 page)

As Sarah made her way across the park she smiled to herself. All the world, it seemed, flocked to Alexandra Palace – or ‘Ally Pally' as it was popularly known. Some came for the entertainments and the concerts, some came to see the horse racing on the magnificent race course, some simply to sit and watch the world go by. But all were set on pleasure, determined to enjoy every moment to the full, and although after almost two years Sarah was familiar with every corner of the place it never failed to give a lift to her spirits to see the smiling faces and feel the air of excitement that prevailed, just as it had been when she had first come seeking employment as a waitress.

How long ago it seemed now, she thought as she skirted the tables where once she had served pots of tea and long cool glasses of lemonade, ice cream in shallow silver dishes, plates of pastries and sticky buns. Sometimes it was difficult to believe she had been that young girl, overawed by the enormity of the world into which she had launched herself, alone and a little frightened, but determined to stand on her own two feet and make something of herself. Now she had a circle of friends, a life style which took her to the best suites in the best hotels, a wardrobe of fashionable clothes and a degree of fame. She was no longer little Sarah, orphan, scullery maid and waitress. She was Sarah Thomas, Sweetheart of the Skies.

Sometimes as she mingled with the crowds wearing her natty ballooning costume of red and gold braid-trimmed knickerbocker suit and cap and knee-high laced boots of softest black leather someone would recognise her and point her out. The knowledge that she was a personality never failed to please her; she walked jauntily now, her head held high, a small smile ready on her lips, for although it was three hours yet until the ballooning display of the day and she had not yet changed into her costume, that air of readiness to be recognised had become a part of her everyday demeanour, contributing to her natural grace and drawing attention to her striking good looks – her figure, as slender now at seventeen as it had been three years earlier and curved in all the right places, her eyes, sparkling blue and fringed with long lashes, her nut brown hair swept up into a loose pompadour from which ends escaped to frame her neat featured face. Sarah had always had the promise of beauty – now she possessed an aura too. In her own way, in the world of aero-acrobatics, Sarah was a star.

Sarah skirted the bandstand, moving with that easy grace between the crowds who had gathered to listen to the stirring music and made for the banqueting hall which housed the aeronaut's workshop.

To her it was and always had been a magic place where a potent alchemy turned canvas, hemp and wicker into gondolas which could float and soar on the wind and mere mortals into demi-gods of the skies. From the first day she had come here and learned of the work which went on in the vast and mysterious hall she had been drawn to it like a moth to a flame for ballooning had always seemed to her a most romantic activity. As a child she had listened eagerly when Richard Hartley had talked of it, lapping up the stories of the first-ever passengers in a balloon – a cockerel, a sheep and a duck who had been sent two miles high by the Moltgolfier brothers over a hundred years earlier, watched by a crowd of some 30,000 including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette – and Vincent Lunardi, secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador in London, who had made the first manned balloon voyage in Britain with a pigeon, a cat and a dog to keep him company. The names of the pioneers had become as familiar to her as any of the great figures of history and she had been enthralled to learn that some of the modern giants of the air were based here – Henry Spencer, a third generation balloonist of the famous Spencer family, his brother-in-law, Captain Gaudron, who headed a full team of stunt parachutists, and most outrageous of all, Samuel Franklin Cody, who had used his sharp shooting act
The Klondike Nugget
to finance his serious business of building a kite strong enough to carry a man into the air until he had been lured away by the challenge of building and flying aeroplanes. Sometimes the balloon men came into the restaurant where she worked, drinking gallons of tea and absentmindedly tucking into pastries as they discussed the latest innovations, and when she could be spared from her duties Sarah slipped away to watch the parachutists giving their daring displays of aerial acrobatics. The balloons gave joyrides too to those who could afford to pay for the pleasure; watching them float away over the tree tops Sarah had made up her mind to save her pennies until she could afford to make a trip herself.

That day seemed very distant however. Her wages, though better than the meagre three shillings she had earned as a kitchen maid at Deedham Green, were swallowed up each week by the day to day expenses of living. There was food to buy, for she was too sensible to try to exist on the buns and pastries she served at the restaurant, shoe leather to be replaced, for the constant traipsing back and forth meant it wore thin at an alarming rate, and the rent to pay for the room she had taken over a teashop in a suburban high street. Sarah considered herself fortunate to have found the room – Molly Norkett who owned the teashop was a widow and a motherly soul and soon she had suggested that Sarah should share her meals with her and keep her company in the evenings. But Sarah felt obliged to contribute towards the good wholesome stews and roasts, cooked in the same oven that Molly used to bake buns and teacakes for her shop so that the little apartment was always redolent of delicious mouth-watering smells, and though she helped Molly in the teashop on her days off from her regular work at Alexandra Palace in order to increase her income money still seemed to flow out of her purse every bit as fast as it went in and her savings for her balloon ride grew so slowly that she began to doubt she would ever have enough.

It was when Dolly Shepherd, star parachutist of the Gaudron team, had come into the restaurant one day that Sarah had realised there was ‘more than one way of skinning a cat' as Bertha Pugh might have put it. Dolly was a pretty girl with bubbling curls and a warm smile. In her ballooning costume of royal blue she drew glances of admiration from the men and frank envy from the women and she was brave and resourceful as well as pretty. But fame had done nothing to spoil her. Dolly had a smile and a friendly word for everyone and as Sarah watched her chatting unaffectedly to the autograph hunters who sought her out Becky, one of the other waitresses, nudged her arm.

‘She used to work here, you know,' she confided.

‘Dolly Shepherd did?' Sarah asked, surprised.

‘Yes. She was a waitress just like us. One night Sam Cody had a mishap in his sharp shooting act. He used to shoot a plaster egg off his wife's head blindfolded and this particular time something went wrong and the bullet grazed her scalp. Dolly had the nerve to offer to act as stand in. Of course that got her in with Cody and his cronies and the next thing any of us knew was that she was making parachute descents with the Gaudron team.'

‘Really?' Sarah's eyes widened and she looked at the pretty girl in the blue knickerbocker suit with new interest.

‘That's how it all began – and look at her now! A celebrity in her own right. Not that I'd want to do it, mind you. Imagine launching yourself out of a balloon with nothing but a bit of silk between you and the ground! The very thought of it makes my hair stand on end. But Dolly seems to enjoy it – and look where it's taken her!'

A customer had signalled for Sarah's attention and the conversation had come to an abrupt end. But as she hurried to take the order a small pulse of excitement was beating deep inside her. The thought of parachuting certainly did not frighten her as it frightened Becky – she could think of nothing more exciting. And knowing that Dolly had once been a waitress just as she was made her feel for a moment as if some of the glamour of Dolly's exciting life had somehow rubbed off onto her. Her feet flew as she hurried between the tables, glancing over her shoulder from time to time to catch another glimpse of Dolly, and feeling that first prickle of excitement hardening into resolve.

What was to stop her from trying to become one of the Gaudron team? She was young, she was fit, and, without so much as a trace of false modesty, she knew she too would look good in a ballooning costume – something audiences expected whether the performer was an actress, a singer on the halls or a parachutist. Why it had not occurred to her before she did not know – perhaps because the starry aura of the display team had made them seem different somehow from mere mortals. But now Sarah's mind was made up. If Dolly Shepherd could do it – so could she!

During the next few days Sarah had watched for Captain Gaudron to come into the restaurant. He did not and when she enquired she learned he was away performing at a gala somewhere in the north. The delay annoyed her for she was impatient to put her plan into action. A week later she caught a glimpse of his dapper figure in the crowds but he was with several other men and there was no opportunity to speak to him. As she scurried between the tables with her tray Sarah's sense of frustration deepened. If she waited for him to come into the restaurant and sit at one of her tables she might wait for ever. There was only one way to be sure of gaining an audience with him and that was to visit him at his workshop.

The boldness of the idea set Sarah's veins tingling for the workshop seemed to her to be cloaked in an air of mystery and importance. She was very much afraid Captain Gaudron might be annoyed at the intrusion and would show her the door without even listening to what she had to say, much less offering to give her the chance she was seeking. But at least she could try. Sarah was a firm believer in taking her fate into her own hands. To sit back and wait for something to happen was, in her opinion, the next best thing to making sure nothing happened at all.

By the time she had served the last customers and cleared the last table it was too late to visit the aeronauts' workshop and in any case after a long day waiting at tables Sarah knew she did not look her best. Much better to come in early tomorrow and make the visit before starting work for the day. Next morning she took extra care over her toilet, brushing her hair until it shone, pinching colour into her cheeks and lips and dressing in a pretty yellow gingham which seemed to echo the early sunshine.

‘My goodness, you look a picture today and no mistake!' Molly said when she came down to the shop. ‘And you're early this morning, too. What's it in aid of, I'd like to know? A young man?'

Sarah had smiled at the sharp knowing look in the bright button eyes which always reminded her of the currants in one of Molly's homemade buns. Molly made no secret of the fact that she thought it was high time that a pretty girl like Sarah had a sweetheart and was puzzled by her disinterest in the opposite sex.

‘No, Molly, it's not a young man,' Sarah said but she did not elaborate. She knew instinctively that Molly would disapprove of her plans.

When she reached Alexandra Palace Sarah made straight for the banqueting hall which accommodated the aeronauts' workshop. Her pulses were racing and there was a tightness in her chest but she walked briskly into the banqueting hall with head held high.

Although it was early the aeronauts' workshop was already a hive of activity. As Sarah's eyes grew accustomed to the dimmer light after the bright sunshine outside she became aware of the wicker baskets which seemed to fill every corner of the hall, the yards of coiled rope and cord and the acres of netting strung from the high ceilings. There was a busy hum of sewing machines, sounding for all the world like a swarm of angry bees, and the dust in the air tickled Sarah's nose, making her want to sneeze. There was a smell about the place unlike anything she had ever encountered before – a pungent pot pourri of canvas, hemp and glue. Carefully Sarah picked her way over the coils of rope which littered the floor and spoke to a girl who was seated at a sewing machine stitching a canvas envelope.

‘I'm looking for Captain Gaudron. Do you know where I can find him?'

The girl hardly paused in her task.

‘Over there,' she shouted above the hum of the treddle and jerked her head to indicate the far end of the hall.

Following her glance Sarah saw him, a neat dapper man in shirt sleeves, deep in conversation with a fellow aeronaut. Her mouth took on a determined set and although her heart had begun hammering uncomfortably against her ribs she made her way directly across the hall and positioned herself in front of him.

‘Excuse me, Captain Gaudron, but could I have a word with you?'

He broke off his conversation and she felt the full force of his gaze sweeping over her. His eyes were piercing in his lively intelligent face and his moustache so expertly waxed it seemed positively to gleam in the light of the overhead carbide lamps.

‘Yes?' he asked briskly.

Sarah's courage almost deserted her and she drew a deep steadying breath.

‘I know this may seem a frightful nerve but I would like to become a parachutist and I wondered if you would take me into your team.'

She thought she caught a gleam of amusement in those sharp eyes.

‘Did you now. And what makes you think you could be a parachutist?'

‘Why shouldn't I be?' Sarah countered boldly. ‘What special attributes do I need that I couldn't learn?'

Again she was aware of that gleam of amusement.

‘Courage for one thing – though it seems you do not lack that. Strength, for another.' He glanced down at her hands, took one and examined it, circling her slim wrist with his fingers. ‘Your bones look like a bird's, Miss …?'

‘Thomas,' Sarah said. ‘And there is certainly nothing wrong with my bones. I've never broken one in my life.'

‘Hmm.' A faint smile lifted one corner of his mouth beneath that neatly waxed moustache and he indicated a bar contraption which swung from the ceiling. ‘See if you can swing on that.'