My Heart Has Wings (7 page)

A film of embarrassment clouded her candid gaze. “Oh, you mustn’t feel that way, Mike. I know he must have seemed to you a bit tedious over it. It was just a new idea that struck him all of a heap; the way ideas do sometimes hit writers, I suppose. He was excited ... anxious to spit it all out to the first likely listener
...”

“Trying it on the dog,” Mike suggested.

Jan laughed and nodded. “It wouldn’t occur to him that all that heroic stuff about flying and flyers would sound to you like a most ghastly piece of line-shooting.”

“And how!” Mike shuddered.

“And yet I don’t suppose it would work out in the least like that,” Jan defended her father. “He has a light and subtle touch in his writing, Mike; at least that is what the drama critics have said
to
him. And he’s no senti
m
entalist. Journalists seldom are. They learn their craft in too hard a school. If he wrote this play there would be depth
in
it, and dignity, it wouldn’t be ... shaming the way you imagine.”

“I don’t imagine anything really. I don’t know the first thing about plays. Do you think this is a good idea for a play?”

“It could be,” Jan said. “It could be wonderful.” Mike looked at her keenly. “And you feel your father ought to go ahead with it?”

“I think he ought to go ahead with something!” Jan said, unaware of the sudden urgency in her voice. “He hasn’t had a success since
Hungry Harvest
.”

“That must make things ... a little difficult for him,” Mike offered diffidently.

“Well, naturally,” Jan began, and broke off abruptly. The conversation, she felt, was getting dangerously out of hand. Mike Carliss was the last person to whom she wanted to moan about the Ferrabys’ financial plight! With an air of dismissal she began to type. Maybe it wasn
’
t exactly polite, but she
did
have to get these letters done for the early collection, and Mike knew the office routine well enough not to expect her to stand on ceremony with him.

For a while he watched her flying fingers
in
silence. Then abandoning his perch on Helen’s desk, he said, “Look, Jan, if there’s any way I can help with that play of your father’s I’ll be only too pleased. Tell him I’ll come along any evening he likes and talk it over with him.”

Jan’s fingers went slack on the keys and she looked up sharply. “You’re just saying that because you’re sorry for him! You loathe the idea of the play really. You don’t have to help us.” It was out before she could stop it; a raw ungracious protest, born of her wounded pride.

Mike, turning an inscrutable back on this outburst, strolled over to the window. Jan saw Erica appear on the steps of the main executive building, glancing up and down the perimeter road, as if searching for somebody. Mike o
pe
ned the window and called to her, “Hi, Erica! I’ll be right over.”

Slamming, the window, he came back to Jan’s desk. “I’m not sorry for your father,” he said. “I’m just interested, that’s all. I’ve never before had the chance to see a writer of plays at work, and I’m curious to see how it’s done. Besides
...”
he was making for the door now, and on the threshold turned back to her with a grin, “I’ve got a duty to the fraternity. As long as your father is set on a test pilot hero someone has got to keep him on the straight and narrow path. Facts and figures, rather than starry-eyed flim-flam. I don’t see how anyone can make
poetry
out of a hero who spends most of his time worrying over things like Mach numbers and drag factors
...
but if your father thinks it can be done
...”

“Shakespeare made poetry out of greasy Joan keeling the pot, and a man called Bottom,” Jan said.

Mike roared with laughter, and went out. Watching through the window, she saw him cross the perimeter road to Erica. He took her arm and falling into step companionably they made for the canteen.

Jan returned to her letters, pounding them out at a furious rate. It was marvellous that Mike was going to help her father with the new play; later she would be able to be glad about it, but now her heart was full of bitterness at her own idiocy. How
could
she have been silly enough to imagine, even for a moment, that Mike had come into the office with the purpose of inviting her to lunch
?

CHAPTER
F
I
VE

The next
f
ew
days were uneventfully bus
y.
The
E.106a was almost ready for taxiing tr
ac
k and initial flights, and Mike and Daker spent most of their time in the great hangar where the prototype was having its , last vital check-ups before being moved to Merecombe, the remote airfield in the West Country where most “secret-list” machines were tested. Mike would be in Merecombe on and off for weeks, for test flights of this magnitude could not be hurried. He said no more about the new play, and Jan wondered if
he
had forgotten all about it. It would not be surprising if he had. The culmination of months of close experimental work was very near, and with it one of the most critical flights he had ever undertaken. When he took the E.106a into the air, aviation history would be made ... or marred. Though every possible contingency had been considered, every innovation subjected to the most stringent ground tests, the ultimate test remained. It was not possible to be a hundred per cent certain how the E.106a would behave when airborne. It was Mike’s job to find
o
ut. If there was an element of risk, nobody dreamed of mentioning it, but there was a growing tension in the atmosphere at the office those warm July days. Increasingly, Jan was aware of it.

And at home things weren’t much easier. Limp from the long hours of work and travel, she would return to Regency Terrace to find Gerda rested and relaxed, exquisitely soignee to the last golden hair, waiting to be entertained
...
and
en
tertaining. For she was always in for the evening meal—which meant that it had to be served with a little more ceremony than they would have bothered with if they had been alone.

“How much longer is she going to stay here battening on us
?
” Jan burst out in exasperation to Carole one thundery evening, when in the basement kitchen she concocted a fish salad out of the cheapest ingredients she could find. Chilled cod that had been cleverly steamed with lemon juice and herbs, lettuce from the small neglected back garden, tomatoes picked up from a huckster’s barrow she had encountered on the way home. There was a huge dish of boiled potatoes to go with it—to fill Peter up, and a substantial dessert of brown bread and raspberries (also from the garden) in the shape of a summer pudding.

Carole, washing the inevitable evening brushes at the scullery sink, offered a sympathetic groan. “If you ask me, she’s staying on from sheer meanness,” she said, coming into the kitchen, the dripping brushes in her hand. “I bet she’s charging her office with the most terrific hotel expenses all the time—and quietly pocketing the money to spend on more clothes. You know how she’s always moaning about not being able to make ends meet. With her extravagant tastes, it’s no wonder! All those gold-stoppered beauty aids on her dressing table and that fabulous neglige she floats round in in the morning
...
”

“Maybe she gets her clothes at a discount because she’s a fashion writer,” Jan suggested.

“Even so they still cost her a heck of a lot. That toreador hat set her back twenty-five guineas; she told me so. And living in Paris, she says, costs the earth. She’s paying the equivalent of ten pounds a week for her two-
r
oom apartment.”

“
Gosh! Jan gasped. “She must have a terrific salary!”

“
She hasn
’
t. She ekes out, it seems, by doing an odd spot of free-lancing! And there’s no sign
of her doing anything like that here, in fact she seems to be having a jolly good rest-cure ... at our expense! I think it’s disgusting the way she lolls about the place. She’s always home before I am in the afternoons, pretending to be domesticated, making tea for Pa, taking it into him in his study. She was shut up there with him for ages today. It’s all most odd; he doesn’t usually put up with people barging in and interrupting him when he’s working. And just now when he’s so keen on this new play you’d think he’d be furious...
”

They looked at one another bleakly, hardly daring to put into words, even in their private minds, the disturbing implications of Hart’s unusual patience.

“Have you told him Mike is going to help
him
after all?” Carole asked.

Jan nodded. “He was very pleased, and said I was to bring Mike home any evening; the sooner the better. But the awkward thing is Mike seems to have forgotten all about it, and I don’t like to remind him just now. He’s frightfully tied up with something rather big.” She broke off abruptly. Not even to Carole could she mention the forthcoming test flights at Merecombe. She shook the salad basket over the sink, with a suddenly goaded air. “The truth is, I suppose, I hate to mention it, in case it sounds as if I’m asking a favour. Why on earth should we badger Mike Carliss
?
I can’t imagine him being really interested in us or our problems.”

Carole gave her a sardonic little glance. “Can’t you?” she asked mockingly.

Jan coloured. “Really, Carole!” she exploded,
“
if you
’
re hinting that Mike Carliss is nursing a secret passion for me you’re crazy! He regards me as little more than a useful adjunct to the office equipment, in fact half the time he hardly sees me even when I’m there right under his nose.
You’ve no idea of the rate at which he lives; all
those terrific tests, and hush-hush projects, and being S.M.’s white-headed boy—for ever at Sheldrake Manor, as good as engaged to Erica
...
”

“Okay, okay!” Carole waved a silencing hand. “Sorry I spoke. But I still think Mike likes you quite a lot. And even if he is the air-ace of all time, and Erica Scott-Manly’s boy friend into the bargain, that doesn’t stop him from having odd neighbourly impulse. If he’s willing to help Pa with his play, I think he ought to be encouraged. In fact I don’t see where Pa is going to get all the technical gen without someone like Mike.”

She was perfectly right, of course. “Well, I’ll do what I can,” Jan promised, inwardly resolving to speak to Mike about the play the very next day.

But it turned out to be one of those days when everything went wrong in the office. For one thing the sultry weather had intensified and it was almost unbearably hot. The wind-sock hung limp as a rag; not a breath of air stirred across the tawny plains beyond the airfield. Everyone was edgy, the tension in the E.106a team more noticeable than ever, and Daker was in one of his most difficult moods. Helen, who was making heavy weather of the new security filing system, had mislaid a batch of charts he urgently needed. Though she was not due at' the office until after lunch Daker decreed she must be sent for at once to find them.

Jan phoned her at her home, softening down the peremptory command, though she was still smarting from the way Daker had snubbed her when she had suggested that she herself could probably find the charts and save Helen a journey. “You stick to your work and don’t interfere with hers!” he had snapped. As if he didn’t want her to go near the security files on any pretext, which was ridiculous. She’d always been trusted with them—ever since she joined the firm, Jan thought indignantly. But now they had been turned over to the newcomer Helen, who had no experience in complex filing. It was all most puzzling.

With a shrug Jan settled down to transcribe a long boring report on axial turbine design. Pale and flurried, Helen arrived presently, having driven post haste from the Thames-side village where she lived with her parents. “I remember having those charts yesterday, but I haven’t the faintest idea under which heading I filed them!” she moaned, rushing off to the strong room to search for them.

Jan stifled an impulse to go and help her, but Daker’s remark about “interfering” still rankled. She went back to her axial turbines, a difficult bit of transcription, that needed all her concentration, but before she had got very far Erica came in.

It’s going to be one of those awful mornings, full of interruptions, Jan thought, and looked up to find that Erica was not alone. Casually elegant in an expensively tailored silk summer suit, she breezed into the office, a dapper-looking young man in her wake

“Is Mike anywhere about?” she demanded; adding in a hurried aside: “Oh, Ladislaus, Miss Ferraby. Jan: Mr. Ladislaus, Paleski,” she completed the introduction.

Jan murmured her acknowledgement of the deep Continental bow Paleski made to her. “Enchante, Mam’selle!” he crooned.

So this was the wonderful Paleski! Did he always speak in French, Jan wondered. He sounded intolerably affected. With a swiftly appraising glance, she summed him up. Not much over middle height, slim, well-built, almost as blond as Erica, his hair close-curled on his small shapely head. He was very good-looking and fully aware of it. Vain as a peacock, Jan decided. His curiously pale blue eyes watched her avidly as if for some sign of reaction to his all-conquering charm.

She said to Erica, “Mike and Daker are over in the experimental hangar.”

“Oh, damn!” Erica muttered impatiently. She turned to Paleski. “That’s a holy of holies I mustn’t take you into. But there can be no harm in our going to have a look at the new Sky-Speed air liners.” She added impressively, to Jan, Mr. Paleski is a potential customer.”

Paleski laughed. “Very potential! If it is a word that means no money, but many ambitious plans.”

“A far better combination than lots of money and no ambition,” Erica said defensively. “Tell Mike when you see him, Jan, that we’ll be somewhere around the main hangars and if he doesn’t find us there, we hope he’ll join us before lunch in Pa’s sanctum for a drink.”

S.M.’s sanctum
...
that library-cum-committee-room with its deep chairs, Turkey carpet and exhaustively stocked cocktail cabinet where the old man’s most distinguished guests were entertained. But today’s guest, more disturbing than distinguished, Jan suspected, would be left to Erica. S.M. was away at an Air Ministry conference. She wondered if Erica had counted on this
...
and dismissed the thought as unworthy
.

Mike, when he
appeared, was less tactful. “Paleski!
”
he echoed when Jan had relayed Erica’s message.
“
What did she want to bring that popinjay out to the works for
...
and on a day S.M. happens to be off the beat? Don’t tell me it’s altogether coincidence! But it’s not like her to be so devious.”

“She said you’d find them in Sir Mark’s room,” Jan interrupted.

Mike loo
ked so angry at this information that Jan added hastily, hoping to smooth things over:
“
Mr. Paleski has come to the works to see the
s
ky-
s
peed air liner. It seems he is
thinking
o
f buying one.”

“
With what
?
” Mike demanded rudely. “A twopenny-halfpenny overdraft? The fellow’s nothing
more than a darned company promoter
...
with the nerve of the devil.”

He turned on Helen, who had just come into the office with a distracted air. “We’re still waiting for those charts,” he said impatiently.

“I’m awfully sorry, Mike ... I just can’t seem to lay my hands on them,” Helen said helplessly.

Mike groaned. “Look here, Helen,” he said testily, “if you can’t cope with this filing routine, why not hand it back to Jan? We can’t afford to wait while you fiddle around learning the job. Whose idea was it that you should take it on, anyway?”

“Mr. Daker’s,” Jan said quickly, for Helen looked as though she were on the point of bursting into tears. “He specially wants Mrs. Stanford to handle the security filing.” (I can’t think why! she longed to add, but didn’t).

“What Mr. Daker wants right now is those Arrow speed charts,” Mike shouted impatiently. “You’d better go and find them, Jan, and make it snappy!” He turned to Helen, with a half goaded, half apologetic air. “Sorry if I’m being a bit tetchy about all this, old girl,” he offered more gently “but the absence of those charts has been balking us maddeningly all morning.”

He flung out of the office, banging the door behind him.

Helen and Jan went into the strong room to continue the search for the elusive charts. “I might have put them under Arrow,” Helen murmured distractedly.

“Didn’t you enter them on the index card?” Jan asked.

Helen said, “Yes, but I don’t know which index.”

She opened the index cabinet and began to hunt through the drawers of cards. “It’s not like Mike to be so bad-tempered,” she said presently. “I expect he’s worried stiff about Erica and Paleski, and I don’t wonder! I can’t think what Erica can see in the chap. He’s so obviously a light-weight;
shallow, vain, and a sponger into the bargain.”

“He does seem rather a twerp,” Jan agreed morosely, trying to feel sorry for Mike, and merely succeeding in feeling annoyed. Even if he was jealous of Erica’s interest in Paleski it hadn’t been necessary to speak to Helen so sharply.

“I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him,” Helen went on, warming to her denunciation of the troublesome Pole. “But Erica has decided he is heroic and, wonderful, a tragic exile fighting against insuperable odds. She is over at the flying club with him every evening now. I can’t understand her. She’s usually so sensible. Maybe it’s just the silliness she was too busy studying to work out of her system when she was in her teens. Like having measles after you’re grown up. You get that sort of thing with these brainy university types.”

“I guess she’ll snap out of it,” Jan offered dully.

“Oh, I’m sure she
will ...
if her father doesn’t goad her into doing something horribly irrevocable first. He’s being most frightfully Victorian about Paleski, acting the heavy parent, watching poor Erica like a lynx. It’s enough to make her elope.”

With a tug, Jan heaved the missing file out of the back of the long drawer through which she had been systematically working. “Here are the charts!” she announced triumphantly. “You’d put them under ‘Light Alloys’; I wonder why?”

Helen leaned limply against the cabinet in which she had been aimlessly groping. “Because I’m no good at this job, Jan,” she said despairingly. “And I don't think I
ever shall be!”

“Of course you will!” Jan began reassuringly.

But Helen interrupted with a fierce, “I won’t
...
because I don’t want to be. I hate office work; I’m just not cut out for it.” With a visible effort she fought back her rising hysteria. “I’m sorry, Jan, don’t take any notice of me. I’m in an odd mood this morning. Give me that wretched file
and I’ll take it across to Daker with my most abject apologies.”

Jan went back to her axial turbines, and the day continued its crooked way. In the middle of the afternoon Helen, who had obviously been fighting a losing battle with her nervous distress, collapsed with a violent sick headache and had to be sent home.

A four o’clock, when Jan was busy with the outgoing mail, Daker decided to dictate pages of argumentative memoranda for an Air Ministry official with whom he
was having a difference of opinion. Jan typed till she was dizzy, and, taking the memo into the inner office, found Mike there obviously in the midst of a heated discussion with Daker. They broke off abruptly as she entered. But as soon as she retired she could hear their voices rising again,
going at it hammer and tongs
.

What a day to have picked for a cosy little chat with Mike about her father’s play, she thought grimly, and went back to the interrupted letters.

On the other side of the double doors Mike and Daker glared at one another across an expanse of blueprint-littered desk.

“This nonsense about delegating all the confidential filing to Helen Stanford—how long was it to continue? Mike was demanding. And how much longer did they have to go on pretending that Jan Ferraby was “Olga the Beautiful Spy”
?
“If we’ve got to have a suspect,” he went on angrily, “why don’t we pick on somebody really fruity, like this cloak and dagger type Erica has been trotting round the works all day? Paleski, the expatriate Pole with a chip on his shoulder
...
what more do you want? Loaded with secret cameras, for all we know, making micro-films of everything in S.M.’s private office when Erica’s back is turned.”