Permissible Limits (55 page)

‘
Not then, not for a couple of seconds, no.’

‘
But he could have done?’

‘
Maybe, I don’t know. That kind of speed? It ain’t so easy…’ He squinted at Harald, trying to keep up with this volley of questions, but Harald had his back to the window and his face was masked by shadow. ‘Anyways, I was firing pretty good, bam bam, and the stuff was socking into him. You could see it in the movie shots, the combat footage…’ he nodded, smiling,’… bam, bam.’

‘
You’ve got this film?’

‘
Hell, no. It belongs to the Air Force.’

I glanced across at Harald.

‘
Ralph’s got some stills. They must come from the film. I’ve seen them.’

‘
What do they show?’

I frowned, trying to remember the exact sequence.

‘
The plane’s falling apart,’ I said. ‘It’s disintegrating. You can see fire, flames. In one of them, the pilot’s just baled out.’

Harald went back to the old man. ‘He definitely baled out? You saw him?’

‘
Sure. Just like the lady says. It’s all in the movie.’

‘
And you think he survived?’

‘
I don’t know.’

‘
Any parachute?’

The old man stared at him, mystified. The expression on his face suggested he was having second thoughts about our little interview. He’d been expecting an hour or so of gentle reminiscence. Not the third degree.

‘
I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘I was diving. Everything happens very fast. You say you fly Mustangs?’ His hand was shielding his eyes as he looked across at Harald.

Harald nodded.

‘
Yeah.’

‘
Then you sure as hell know how it is. Four hundred knots? Ground coming up to meet you? This guy’s buddies out there somewhere? No, sir.’ He shook his head. ‘I saw no parachute open.’

In the sudden silence I could hear the clatter of a trolley in the corridor outside. Finally, Harald stirred.

‘
But he flew well,’ he said quietly. ‘This guy?’

‘
Sure, they were good, these boys, all of them. I never met a guy who didn’t fly the shit out of those 109s.’

The sudden violence of Karel’s language gave me a jolt. Something had angered him and it showed.

Harald got to his feet. He stood over the old man for a long time. Then he extended a hand.

‘
It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir. I want to say thank you.’

Brokenka peered up. The anger had gone. In its place, fresh confusion.

‘
I didn’t catch your name,’ he muttered. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘
Harald. Harald Meyler.’ He bent towards me and helped me to my feet. ‘We should be going, Ellie. I don’t want you to be late for that plane.’

Chapter sixteen

Jamie met me at Heathrow next morning. He told me he’d been camping all night in case the plane got in early but I didn’t believe him. The weather back home had obviously been fabulous. He
looked
incredibly fit - tanned, lean, clear-eyed - and I was really surprised, because this wasn’t at all the face I’d begun to associate with the lost little voice behind the letters.

We retrieved Ralph’s car from the multistorey and made our way through the muddle of signs towards the exit tunnel. On the link road to the
M4
I was still trying to explain the principles of dive-bombing when Jamie swung the Peugeot left, into the car park that served the huge Post House hotel.

I’d got to the roll-in point where you slap the stick sideways and stand the Mustang on one wing. The last thing on my mind was breakfast.

‘
I had something on the plane,’ I told him. ‘I’m not at all hungry.’

Jamie was laughing.

‘
I’ve been saving up,’ he explained. ‘I thought we could say hallo properly.’

He’d reserved a room on the top floor. We pulled the curtains shut and took a long shower together before tumbling into bed. He felt like a stranger at first - even his smell was slightly exotic - but the way he touched me was wholly familiar and afterwards I clung to him, stilled by the flooding warmth inside me. I slept until midday. My dreams were horribly vivid, lit by wild flashes of lightning, and seconds before I awoke the Mustang was upside-down, irrecoverable, plunging earthwards through an eternity of grey while I reached out, fighting certain death.

I had one arm round Jamie’s neck. He was bent over me, telling me that everything was going to be OK.

‘
The radio,’ I muttered. ‘I should have called earlier. I should have known.’

‘
Known what?’

I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The feeling of relief was indescribable. Jamie had been up already. The tea he’d made tasted wonderful.

‘
I’ve really missed you,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Did you know that?’

We drove south, to
Mapledurcombe
. By the time we arrived it was nearly seven o’clock, a beautiful June evening, the garden transformed by early summer. My sister met us at the front door. She’d hung strings of little American flags around the entrance hall and I was really touched by the gesture until it dawned on me that they were really for the benefit of our guests.

We split a bottle of
Côtes
-du-Rh
ô
ne in the kitchen while she busied around with the evening meal. She’d put on a bit of weight since I’d last seen her and - like Jamie - she looked wonderfully well. Not only that but she’d very obviously got the business completely taped. The latest bunch of guests, she said, had taken to Mapledurcombe like ducks to water. They loved the feel of the place, the things she’d done to it, the little bits and pieces of antique furniture she’d managed to pick up through various local contacts. They were so appreciative, these Americans, so discriminating, so bloody
nice.
One wife from Milwaukee, herself some kind of society hostess, had been practically on her knees, demanding the recipe for Andrea’s special
osso buco.

I sat beside the window, listening to this flood of other people’s compliments, the presents I’d brought back still unopened on the kitchen table. I was enormously grateful to Andrea for letting me go off like that but by the time Jamie and I had finished the
Côtes
-du-Rh
ô
ne it occurred to me that I was virtually a stranger in my own house. Andrea, true to form, had grabbed Old Glory for herself. Without her very special touch, the business would plainly be in deep, deep trouble.

Tonight’s menu featured
blanquette de veau
and Andrea was nearly ready to dish up. The girl she’d hired to help out - a nineteen-year-old called Katie from the village up the road - was draining the courgettes and tipping them into a hideous silver bain-marie.

‘
How about the flying?’ I enquired.

Andrea was making cooing noises over her hollandaise sauce.

‘
The what?’

‘
The flying. The Mustang. The Harvard.’

‘
Ah, that’s Jamie’s department. Boys’ toys.’

I looked across at Jamie. I’d asked him already, of course, on the way down but he’d seemed oddly vague about the details. In my absence, Dave Jeffries - our engineer - had been in charge of arranging flights for our guests, calling in one or other of the handful of pilots we trusted when their own work schedules permitted. Dave’s link to our eager American veterans was evidently Jamie.

‘
Well?’

Jamie said the Harvard had been up a couple of times a week. The longest sortie had been over to Munster, and so far - touch wood - there’d been no maintenance problems.

‘
But what about the Mustang?’

Jamie and Andrea exchanged glances. Whatever little secret they shared was beginning to irritate me.

‘
It’s been out for a bit,’ Jamie muttered. ‘Just recently.’

‘
Out? What do you mean, out? Has something happened? Has someone bent it?’

‘
God, no.’

‘
What’s wrong then?’

There was another silence. I looked at my watch. It was half past eight, still plenty of daylight left.

‘
Well?’ I was angry now. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’

Underneath his tan, Jamie began to colour.

‘
It’s a bit awkward. Why don’t you give it a couple of days?’

I stared at him. The Mustang was the very middle of Old Glory, the jewel in Adam’s crown. He’d built the business around it. I’d just spent six extraordinary weeks learning to fly the thing.
Give it a couple
of
days?

‘
Are you going to tell me? Either of you?’

Jamie was looking at his empty glass. Andrea was issuing instructions about her
pommes duchesse.
I left the room. The phone was still in Adam’s study. I found the number of the local taxi firm and I was still waiting for them to answer when I became aware of Jamie standing behind me.

‘
What are you doing?’

‘
I’m going across to the airfield. What do you think I’m doing?’

‘
I’ll drive you.’

‘
You can’t. You’ve been drinking.’

It was my tone of voice that sealed it for Jamie. He looked at me for a moment, the surprise in his face giving way to a kind of wariness, then he shrugged and left me to it. Still waiting for the taxi people to answer the phone, I could hear him back in the kitchen, laughing at something Andrea must have said.

When I got to the airfield, the hangar was locked. Dave Jeffries lived in Shanklin, a couple of miles down the road, and I gave the taxi-driver his address. When I rapped on the door and demanded the key, all he wanted to talk about was Florida.

‘
Tomorrow, Dave. Just give me the key.’

‘
But was it good?’

‘
Brilliant. The key, Dave.’

He began to babble about Standfast again, how amazing it must have been for me, but I cut him short.

‘
What’s going on?’

‘
Nothing, Ellie.’

‘
Give me the key then.’

With the greatest reluctance, he finally complied. When he offered to drive me back to the airfield himself, I said no. I could find my own way around. I even knew where the master switch was for the hangar lights. He’d have the key back in the morning.

The taxi dropped me at the airfield. It was getting dark now and I stood in the twilight behind the control tower, watching the gulls wheeling over a pile of scraps from the Touchdown Cafe. It seemed years since I’d last been here. So much had happened to me. To my flying. Even to the way I thought about my poor dead husband.

I walked slowly over to the hut Adam had used beside the hangar. I had the key on my own ring and the temptation was to go in and have a bit of a wallow, but I didn’t need to open the door to remind myself what it looked like, what it smelled like. All those things were there, imprinted on my memory, along with the wretched photo I’d found in his drawer. Thinking of the latter still hurt, but the weeks away had somehow diminished its importance. It was part of an episode I wanted to put to rest. My life had moved on. I’d gone solo.

Access to the hangar is through a door on the side. The cold, oily smell of the place hit me at once. There are clear plastic panels let into the roof and what daylight there was left shed a pale ghostliness over the three planes inside. My old Tiger Moth was closest. I stepped across, running my fingers along the leather trim on the side of the open cockpit. I felt like a child who’d gone away to boarding school and returned to find a favourite old toy in the nursery. It looked so small, so primitive. Had I once been intimidated by this lovely old biplane? Had 135 knots once seemed the speed of light?