My Heart Has Wings (9 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

At
last the
date was fixed for the removal of the E.106a to Merecombe. Mike and Daker lived in the experimental hangar, absorbed in a fever of last-minute, adjustments. There would be at least three weeks of preliminary ground work at Merecombe before the prototype was ready for taxi trials—and, ultimately, its maiden flight. Mike and the rest of the team who would supervise this work would fly to and from Kingsfold during this period.

On the Saturday before Mike’s first disappearance to Merecombe was due he sought Jan out in the canteen where she was having her midmorning coffee and asked her if she were free that evening.

“I’m feeling like a bit of a beano before the balloon goes up,” he said, “and it’s my turn to stand treat. You’re always giving me these magnificent meals at Regency Terrace!”

“Two very humble suppers,” Jan laughed.

“Including a birthday party,” Mike reminded her. “That was the evening I first plucked up courage to ask you to do a flick with me. Would you like to go to a cinema tonight, or shall we find a quiet spot in Soho and have a long, leisurely meal?”

“The long, leisurely meal sounds wonderful!” Jan said, suppressing the little thrill of importance that had come to her with Mike’s remark about having had to pluck up his courage that first night he had asked her out. It was just a figure of speech, of course, and tonight he was inviting her to dinner from a sense of duty. A return for hospitality received.

They were standing by the neon-lit counter with the mirrored panelling behind it, and suddenly Erica was there in the mirrors coming towards them.

“What are you two cooking up? You look very pleased with yourselves,” she said.

“We’re just trying to work out where we’ll have dinner tonight,” Mike said. “Les Trois Soeurs, I think, they do the most wonderful things with filet steak.”

Erica’s face went rigid. For a moment she seemed too taken aback to speak, then she said in a low, hurt voice; “Mike, how
could
you have forgotten! It’s the end of the month dance at the Flying Club
...
something we always go to together.”

Mike gave a cool little shrug. “Sorry, Rikky,” he apologized, “it did slip my mind. I suppose, subconsciously, I’d decided you wouldn’t be needing me.”

Erica’s face cleared and her spurt of laughter held a note of mockery. “Oh, Mike
...
you really are too sweet when you’re being jealous! Paleski will be at the dance, of course, but that’s no reason why you should keep away. I want you to know him better
...
and like him.” She looked up at him entreatingly, her blue eyes dark as sapphires and brilliantly ablaze. “He’s such a fine person really.” He voice dropped confidentially. “‘Don’t join in the family disapproval of him! It would be such a help if I could feel you were on my side in this thing.”

Jan hurriedly finished her coffee, feeling uncomfortably superfluous. Putting a coin down on the counter, she beckoned to the busy counterhand. She said with a jauntiness she was far from feeling, “It d
o
esn’t matter in the least about Our date this evening, Mike ... don’t give it another thought.”

He turned to her quickly, but before he could speak Erica burst out: “It’s all right, Jan, don’t be so self-effacing; we can all go to the Flying Club do; the more the merrier, and it will even the party out to have you along. Do come!” Meaning, thought Jan grimly, that I can take Mike off her hands during the dances she wants to give to Paleski.

The same idea seemed to occur to Mike. He said with an edge of impatience, “Look. Rikky, you can’t bludgeon us around like this
...
making a convenience of me. I’ve asked Jan to dine with me ... and it isn’t as if you had no escort.”

“
You
’
re
my escort tonight, Mike darling,” Erica said sweetly. “It’s a standing arrangement, and you ought not to have forgotten. I’m very cross with you. But I’ll forgive you if you call for me at Sheldrake as you always do for these Saturday hops. It’s going to look frightfully significant if you don’t. S.M. will think we’ve quarrelled
...
and he’ll guess it’s about Pal, and then the fat
will
be in the fire.”

“I don’t mind in the least if we can’t have dinner, Mike,” Jan murmured again. But he took no notice of her. His glance, fixed on Erica, was stony. He said, “So you’re asking me to break my date with Jan in order to throw me as a sop to S.M.! It’s just not good enough, my dear, and I’m not playing! Why don’t you stand up to your father over this Paleski affair? If it means all that to you, you’ve got to have it out with your people sooner or later. It’s not like you to be such a coward!”

Erica went rather red.
“I’ll
stand up to Pa when I’m ready. Meanwhile I’ll handle this business in my own way. I know S.M. better than you do, Mike. There’s no point in antagonizing him at this stage, and I’m not going to. Please help me!” Her smile was all sweetness again. “It’s such a little thing to ask you to bring Jan to the club tonight and let’s all have fun together.” She turned to Jan.
“Do
say you’ll come, Jan. Im sure you’ll enjoy it.”

Jan glanced hesitantly at Mike, who made a small comical gesture of resignation and defeat. How about it? his lifted eyebrows seemed to inquire.

“I’d love to come,” Jan lied—for Mike’s sake. Her acquiescence, it was clear, was the easiest way out for him. It wasn’t all that important to him whether she dined with him, or not, this evening. But it was very important that he shouldn’t quarrel with Erica. There was a bond between them that not even the intrusion of a Paleski seemed able to disrupt. The bond of their long years of affection for one another. Since childhood they had taken one another for granted. Too tamely, perhaps, too safely secure. Now a new element had entered into it; the
stimulating
excitement of the eternal triangle. How would it all end?

“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind, Jan,” Mike was saying.

“We could pick you up at your house round about seven,” Erica clinched it firmly. “You don’t have to bother to dress up. It’s all very informal, specially in summer when lots of people come straight in from flying.”

A
ll through the afternoon Jan tried to think of some way in which she could get out of going to the
dance.
But no inspiration came to her. It was her half holiday from the office, and she worked about the house seeing to the usual weekend chores. Peter had gone to a riverside camp with some of his school friends, Carole was out sketching and Hart had rushed off after tea, saying he had to go up to town to see some Fleet Street friends and wouldn’t be back till late. Jan hoped it meant he was tracking down a spot of remunerative work at last, but she was too engrossed with her own affairs to give the matter much thought. What exactly had Erica meant about not dressing up? Would her old blue silk afternoon frock be all right?

In the end she was ready half an hour too early and hung about the empty house nervously waiting. When Mike’s long scarlet car appeared at the gate she ran down the path, her much-cleaned and rather shrunken beige tennis coat flung over her shoulders. Erica, in a cream pleated sports frock and short coral pink jacket, made her feel instantly that her semi-evening silk dress was all wrong. It was obviously to be a flannel dance. Mike was wearing grey slacks and a navy blazer.

The club house, an octagonal building that had once been the administrative block of a small commercial aerodrome, was already loud with dance music, relayed from an amplifier, when they arrived. The large central hall with its smooth inlaid floor made an excellent ballroom. A few festive flags had been strung overhead, palms, potted plants and deep couches for sitting out lined the walls, and there was a bar serving drinks and cold snacks. Couples in an odd assortment of garments, from flying jackets to backless sun-cottons, revolved to the tune of
Stranger In Paradise.

Erica, making no bones about it, melted straight into the waiting Paleski’s arms. Jan found herself dancing with Mike, who looked grim and remote; doing his duty by her, Jan thought. It was mean of Erica not to have given Mike the first dance, having dragged him here in the role of unwilling gooseberry.

The music changed to an old-fashioned, nostalgic waltz. With a little sigh, Jan gave herself up to the gentle rhythm, aware in every nerve of her body of Mike’s nearness, Mike’s arm about her waist. They moved easily, smoothly together.

She looked up and found that he was watching her. There was an expression she couldn’t quite interpret in his deep-set eyes, but they weren’t
remote any more. He said, “You dance nicely, Jan. Competently—the way you do most things.”

She made a little grimace. “That sounds pretty dull!”

“I don’t find it dull—not your kind of competence; it gives me a feeling of assurance. When I walk into the office and see you there at your desk, I know everything is going to be all right. Like that day the charts were lost. I knew you’d find them. Sometimes when I’m miles up in the blue throwing one of the kites around I get a sudden vision of you sitting at your typewriter with your calm unruffled air, and you’ve no idea how it steadies me.” He laughed softly. “You’re becoming a sort of mascot of mine, young Jan.
I hope you don’t mind? I wish I could take you down to Merecombe with me!”

“I wish I could come, Mike!” she said, ignoring the idiotic leap of joy in her heart. He was just being whimsical. All airmen, like sailors, were superstitious. If he made her into a kind of talisman in his mind, it didn’t mean a thing.

The waltz tune was slowing down, signing itself off in a final crash of harmonies. Mike suddenly drew her very close—holding her against his heart. “You’re a sweet kid, Jan,” he said. “Don’t let anything change you
!
”

An odd remark. She would ponder it later, perhaps, wondering just what it meant. But at the moment there was no time for private maunderings of a fruitless and sentimental nature. Mike, with a firm hand under her elbow, was leading her toward the bar, where he bought her a fruit cup and a ham sandwich. “A poor substitute for that filet steak at Les Trois Soeurs,” he apologized, one mobile eyebrow shooting up ruefully. His gray eyes looked down at her, and there was a sudden brilliant light in their depths. “We’ll keep our dinner date yet, young Jan. I’m not going to be done out of it,” he said fiercely. An acquaintance was hailing him then, a tough-looking man with a long lean face—a flyer’s face. Mike greeted him enthusiastically, introducing him vaguely to Jan as “Lionel”. “Old Lionel,” he said, “is the chief swindler in this outfit, honorary treasurer and secretary, he calls himself.”

Dance music poured out of the loud-speakers again. A red-headed girl in tapered tartan slacks called out from the other end of the bar, “Oh, Mike! A samba!” Calmly annexing him, she gave Jan a freckled grin. “I’ve been trying to teach Mike to samba for
weeks;
you don’t mind, do you?”

“Look after my girl for me, Lionel,” Mike called over his shoulder as he was led away—willingly enough, it seemed to Jan. Lionel offered her a whisky, and seemed surprised when she said she would prefer an ice-cream. He was easy to talk to, knew everybody within sight, and she soon found herself the centre of a little knot of contentedly gossiping club members—exclusively male. They didn’t leave Jan out of the conversation and in her quiet way she was, she felt, having a small success, though her glance kept straying to Mike and his red-head. Erica, she noticed, was still dancing with Paleski.

The door that led to the airfield opened and
a
man and a girl, both in flying kit, came in, approaching the far end of the bar. The girl was small, dainty, almost aggressively feminine—even in a flying jacket. Endowed with the sort of curves, Jan thought, that would make even a bulky fur coat took like a bikini! She had a small, pale, heart-shaped face, enormous sulky black eyes, and her mouth was painted in
a
vivid cupid’s bow.

“Who’s the sultry little number
with Corny?”
a
man with a monocle inquired.

“A friend of Paleski’s,” Lionel said, and laughed as though at some private joke. “A hangover from his life in Paris, I imagine! Anyway he seemed a bit knocked over when she suddenly turned up here last week, demanding membership and lessons. Corny has just had her up for her first flip. There was quite a temperamental little scene, in voluble Parisian argot, when she found Paleski wasn’t going to do the instructing. But he had begged me to fix it that way. If you ask me, he’s scared stiff of the girl. Anne-Marie Dupres, straight from the Butte de Montmartre—with an apache knife tucked in her stocking!”

“Good Lord!” murmured the man with the monocle, screwing the glass more firmly in his eye to have a better look at the phenomenon.

Jan too, a little shocked at Lionel’s flippancy, glanced again at the French girl. Her great black eyes were raking the room as if in search for somebody. Paleski, no doubt. But the samba was over and Mike and the red-head came back to the bar. Almost at once Erica was beside them.

“Look, Mike,” she said urgently, “Ladislaus and I are thinking of pushing off. This amplified panatrope row is ghastly.” She lowered her voice tactfully to save Lionel’s feelings, though, busy ordering a fresh round of drinks, he wasn’t listening to her. “It’s simply lack of organization. We always have a dance band and it’s a false economy trying to do without one. I’m going to complain to the committee about it at the next meeting. Meanwhile Ladislaus, who is very musical, simply refuses to dance to this hideous noise any longer. He knows an amusing night-club we can go on to ... he’s a member, it seems, and can get us in. Do come, it will
be lots of fun!”

Mike gave a casual shrug. “How about it, Jan? Do you mind if we sample this sinister joint of Paleski’s?”

Jan laughed. “Not a bit,” she agreed good
-
naturedly, though secretly she was rather sorry to leave the Flying Club, which she had been enjoying. But Mike, she guessed, wouldn’t care where he went as long as it was with Erica.

As they went out to the car she wondered if It were really the mechanical dance music Paleski was fleeing from
..
. or was it Anne-Marie?

The night-club turned out to be a small establishment in a basement behind the Tottenham Court Road. Shut away from the long summer twilight, it was dimly lit and felt airless, but the dance floor was beautifully sprung and the banquettes that flanked the walls luxuriously comfortable upholstered in soft white leather. A display of original oil paintings, mostly French, caught Jan’s eye. She recognized a Bonnard and saved it up as an item of interest for Carole. Violin cases and music stands stood about on a minute dais which somehow contrived to accommodate an ebony grand piano. An expensive joint, Jan decided, and hoped Mike wouldn’t mind. If she knew anything about him he would do most of the paying, disdaining the hospitality of Paleski, to whom his manner was so frigid as to be barely polite.

But the Pole seemed unconcerned, swaggering as he led the way in, greeting the head waiter familiarly and insisting on one of the
best tables. It was too early for the dancing to have begun, so they ordered a meal to pass the time. Mike, still yearning for filet steak, had entrecote with mushrooms, Paleski a goulash and the girls chicken. In spite of the ham sandwich at the Flying Club Jan discovered she was hungry. The food was delicious and it was bliss to eat a meal she hadn’t had to cook herself. A feeling of unwonted luxury stole over her, and Mike at her side was being very attentive—harrying the wine waiter, who clearly disapproved of soft drinks, until he produced the fruit juice she preferred to Burgundy. Fussing over her a little too obviously
...
perhaps to punish Erica who was concentrating on Paleski, trying to draw him out. Like a mother making the best of a spoiled, difficult child. She was, it was clear, so anxious for Mike
to like him. There was something pathetic and extraordinarily innocent about the intellectually brilliant Erica, Jan thought. Didn’t she realize that what Mike thought of Paleski really mattered to her far more than Paleski himself could ever matter?

The orchestra was playing now, softly, seductively. People began to drift in, women in evening frocks escorted by men in dinner jackets, but many of the new arrivals were as informally dressed as themselves.

Erica and Mike got up to dance—at Erica’s suggestion. Paleski, left alone with Jan, instantly dropped the stilted, enigmatic manner he had been affecting, no doubt for Mike’s benefit, and became more human. Leaning across the table, his cold blue eyes surveyed her boldly, unblinkingly. “You like this little club?” he asked in a low tone, as though the question were charged with some deep personal import.

“I like the Flying Club better,” Jan told him briskly.

“You should join it,” he asserted. “You should fly. I will teach you. It is all wrong that you who spend your life among aeroplanes should never have known the thrill of piloting a machine
...
”
He was the type who couldn’t find himself alone with any woman even for half
a minute without trying to flirt with her, Jan thought on a wave of boredom.

“I like flying, of course, but I’m quite content to be a passenger,” she said. “Erica sometimes takes me up in her two-seater, and I’ve often had to go on trips with Mr. Daker
...
”

“When he dashes off to Merecombe,” Paleski suggested with a significant smile. “You have seen so many of these so wonderful test-flights?” he demanded.

Jan began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. “What do you know about Merecombe?” she asked.

Paleski shrugged. “Nothing—really only that it is discreetly situated, hidden away in the wilds of Dorset, and that soon Mike Carliss goes there. I happened to overhear Erica say something to him about it just now. Sorry, if I ought not to have mentioned it! It is all very hush-hush, yes?”

“Merecombe is an aerodrome you’ll find marked on any Ordnance Survey map,” Jan said. “In that sense it’s not in the least hush-hush. But Mike’s purpose in going there is neither your business nor mine, Mr. Paleski.” Hurriedly she began to talk about the Bonnard painting. Paleski, bored with the topic and making no pains to hide the fact, stood up and gave his elaborate bow. “Would you care to dance?” he asked. But to Jan’s relief the number was just ending.

“We’re a little late I think,” she said, and saw that Mike and Erica were returning to the table.

The club had filled up now and was crowded almost to suffocation. It was very hot; cigarette smoke drifted in blue veils across the dance floor, intensifying the suggestion of dimly-lit intimacy. A spotlight on the dais picked out a West Indian girl in a bright red frock, crooning a calypso into a megaphone, the members of the orchestra shaking gourds and rattling castanets in accompaniment.

Suddenly in the smoky gloom Jan saw her father and Gerda. For a moment she could hardly believe her eyes, her heart recoiling. They had apparently just come in and were being shown to a table in a
corner
beside the dais. Gerda, in a floating cloak of pale lilac, looked theatrically lovely. As they sat down she slid along the white leather banquette, putting her hand on Hart’s arm, smiling up at him, radiant, assured. He leaned over her, listening to what she was saying, seeming entranced. As she watched them, Jan felt a cold tide of panic rising within her. So this was her father’s Fleet Street rendezvous! Why hadn’t he said he was meeting Gerda? And how could he possibly afford to bring her to this expensive club? A waiter was setting champagne before them—in a silver pail of ice. Champagne! While at home the unpaid bills accumulated. It was crazy
...
horrible!—Jan’s brain seethed with the implications. Her father furtively taking Gerda out, spending the earth on her. Had he been seeing her ever since she left Regency Terrace? Her father and Gerda
...
looking like lovers; oh, it was unbelievable, revolting!

With a start Jan realized Mike was asking her to dance. He had had to repeat the question twice. “A penny for your thoughts,” he said.
“
You were miles away!”

Evidently he hadn’t caught sight of Hart and Gerda. He mustn’t, Jan decided frenziedly. It would be too ghastly if he did. She could imagine him in all innocence greeting them, inviting them perhaps to join forces. Her father’s embarrassment when he saw her would be unbearable, Jan thought. He would hate being caught out on this stolen evening with Gerda. Luckily, he hadn’t spotted her when he came in, and if she went at once he would never realize she had been there. Never suspect he had been discovered.

She said in a low desperate aside to Mike, “I’ve got to get out of here, Mike. I’m not feeling too good. It’s the heat, I think
..
.”