The Aerodrome: A Love Story (13 page)

with women. There are many men who having incompletely escaped from the traditions of the home seek in a woman's arms, not pleasure and the increased awareness of themselves, but merely oblivion and a delusive sort of comfort. This attitude in its simplest forms of expression is easily recognizable and can be treated with a proper contempt. For however much a man may wish that he had never been born, it is impossible for him to repeat the experience or to enjoy a second time what he imagines or remembers to have been the luxury of being wholly incorporated in a woman's body. None of you, I feel sure, is capable of making so elementary a mistake. Yet the complete self-mastery and independence at which we aim can be endangered in more subtle ways than this. In the process of falling in love you will often find that one of the two persons concerned will, as it is usually expressed, 'give' himself or herself to the other. He or she will find a perverse pleasure in resigning force of impulse, will, and judgment to the caprice, the passion or the deliberate calculation of the partner. This is, in fact, the normal thing; and you must be certain that you are never the 'giver' but always the receiver, though you may often pretend to 'give yourself' and will derive an additional pleasure very often from the pretence. "What you have to do is in reality quite simple. You must see women as they are and envisage clearly what it is that you want from them. You must distinguish carefully between a woman as a personality like yourself, and a woman who may be a source of pleasure to you. In so far as a woman is an individual she is bound, as you are, to the future and the past. Indeed the construction of her body must inevitably make her much more of a prisoner of time than you are yourselves. And yet there have been many women whose personalities have deserved both the friendship and the admiration of men, at least in many respects. Such women, rare as they are, may be and indeed should be treated as you would treat your own comrades amongst whom you will of course find, as a rule, much truer and more valuable friendship than you can look for in the opposite sex. "But if love, not friendship, is your aim, your conduct must be entirely different. In this matter all women, even the best, are irrational and must be treated as such. If you attempt to secure love as you would secure friendship, by honesty, sincerity, openness, you are courting disaster. Believe me, the rules are wholly different and are perfectly well known. Indeed they were summarized by the Roman poet Ovid in the first century of our era, and his prescriptions, with certain modifications, are true today. It is necessary to remember that women's vanity, timidity, and capacity for self-deception are almost illimitable. You must recognize these qualities, try to overcome your disgust for them, and make of them the best use that you can. Flattery, so long as it is used with a certain air of independence, can be carried to almost any length of absurdity. "If a woman were to inform any of you that you were in almost all respects the most wonderful person in the world, you would be justly incredulous of such a statement; but you may use the same words to any woman you like and be certain that they will be welcomed with gratitude and even with belief. It is advisable also to pretend that you can observe a great difference between the woman you love and all other women. Assure her of this and you will increase both her selfesteem and her reliance on you; for most women have, when they care to use their minds, a fairly shrewd idea of the defects of their own sex and are inexpressibly delighted if you can persuade them (as it is very easy to do) that they are for some reason entirely immune from the vices which they notice every day in others. A solicitude for her health, a claim for her sympathy, particularly in cases where you can pretend that you have been treated harshly by another woman, a care to arrange cushions in a certain way, a willingness to listen with respect to any kind of stupidity that masquerades either as independent thought or as deep feeling--all this will have the effect of adding to her selfesteem and of making her ready to fall in love with you who have succeeded in convincing her that she is right in looking upon herself as more exceptional than in reality she is. Indeed you now become more and more necessary; for if you were to drop from your hand the mirror which you hold up to her, she would have nowhere to look. By this time she will be speaking of 'giving' herself or her love to you. The expression is not unjustified, for, by providing her with a wholly false sense of her own importance both to yourself and others, you have made her dependent on you for the satisfaction of her own vanity, and vanity, with women, is the key to desire. She will like to believe that she exercises over you an exceptional power, and will not realize immediately that the situation is exactly the reverse of this. Nor need you press the point or allow yourself or her to see too clearly the extent of her dependence; for in these matters the knowledge of complete power is the beginning of the end of love. For some time you can enjoy a delicious period of uncertainty during which she will become more and more fanatically and unreasonably devoted to you. You will find her, so long as you keep your head, extraordinarily easy to deal with. You may drop many of your pretences and, so long as she is normally efficient in body and mind, you will enjoy a very agreeable companionship. "Soon, however, whether in order to test her power, or to secure herself for the future, she will begin to make unreasonable claims on you. Then you would do well to withdraw yourself from her very gradually and almost insensibly, and you will be pleased to find, as you do so, her passion for you increase, her reticence and modesty entirely disappear; a great part even of her vanity will go and, as she sheds the affectations and incrustations of her sex and of its history, she will even attain to a certain nobility in the process, although when the process ends, nothing very remarkable will be left behind, and the very abjectness of her self-surrender will, I think, disgust you. Remember, however, that this is the course of love and that if you had put into her hands the power which you hold yourself you would be now almost as abject as she is. Think of yourself as now perhaps you think of her, lying abandoned and unconstrained, in spite of her efforts uninteresting, in spite of her desires unwanted. You may be certain that if you were in such a position you would receive no mercy from the woman into whose power you had allowed yourself to come. For, in these affairs, though the gradual acquisition of power is pleasurable, exciting, and instructive, when once the power is fully attained, it will be observed that a domination of this sort is not worth preserving. No one loves or is greatly stimulated by the attentions of a slave. And so be as kind as you can, although it is difficult to be altogether kind to a creature whom, when at last you see her as she is, you will find to be wholly lacking in honour, generosity, or self-respect. These, however, are qualities which you should never have looked for in a sex that is emotionally so fettered to the functions of the body and to the automatic processes of time. Pity, certainly, you may feel for her. I should not care to have it thought that I spoke cynically of any human being. But let your pity be of that general and philosophical kind with which you might watch the inevitable sufferings of an animal or a child. Do not let pity or any other feeling drag you away from the certainty of your own integrity and the knowledge that in the last resort we love only ourselves. "Your business as members of the Air Force is first and foremost to obtain freedom through the recognition of necessity; and necessity is no soft and feeble thing. It is not your business to attach yourself in any permanent sense to a woman. The thing is neither possible nor desirable. And I have spoken at some length on this subject because experience has taught me that many a promising airman is in danger of losing his confidence, his self-control, and his purposefulness simply through a failure to understand the facts of sex. Yet, like everything else, when once understood they can be dealt with easily, naturally, and satisfactorily. "Remember that we expect from you conduct of a quite different order from that of the mass of mankind. Your actions, when off duty, may appear and indeed should appear wholly irresponsible. Your purpose--to escape the bondage of time, to obtain mastery over yourselves, and thus over your environment--must never waver. You will discover, if you do not know already, from the courses which have been arranged for you, the necessity for what we in this Force are in process of becoming, a new and a more adequate race of men. "Please do not imagine, gentlemen, that I am speaking wildly. I mean precisely what I say and in course of time you will come to understand me more clearly than perhaps you do at present. Let me remind you finally of the pseudo-suchians, reptiles of an exceedingly remote period whose clumsy efforts resulted in the course of ages in that incredibly finely organized and adjusted thing, the first flyers, the race of birds. Science will show you that in our species the period of physical evolution is over. There remains the evolution, or rather the transformation, of consciousness and will, the escape from time, the mastery of the self, a task which has in fact been attempted with some success by individuals at various periods, but which is now to be attempted by us all. Your preliminary training has been exhausting, your discipline will continue to be exact, though the period of your hardships is over. But this discipline has one aim, the acquisition of power, and by power--freedom." With these words the Air Vice-Marshal concluded his speech. The lights in the roof were re-illumined and, by a single impulse, we rose to our feet. The Air Vice-Marshal stood still on the stage watching us gravely as we filed out of the chapel.

CHAPTER XIII

Alterations

THIS WAS BUT one of many lectures which we heard on a variety of subjects; for in additition to instruction in flying, engineering, and aerodynamics we were given classes in natural history, mathematics, economics, history, and philosophy. We studied the whole theory of flight in very great detail, spending, I remember, more than a month in an examination of the wing of an albatross, and many days in learning about bats, flying squirrels, and other animals whose destiny it had been to attempt, however feebly, some mastery over the air. And this part of our training was to me at least as interesting and exciting as was the actual flying, although I was myself a better pilot than a philosopher, and became indeed for some time rather ridiculously proud of my ability in this respect. I had done my first solo some days before anyone else in my class, and I remember now the thrill of it as being no anticipation of danger but rather a delicious sense of confidence. At the moments of taking off and of landing I had felt much the same feeling as a footballer has from time to time, when he sees instantaneously a gap in the defence and his own ability to break through it. Indeed the footballer's confidence and exhilaration is, I believe, more intense, for in an open field where thirty players are competing there are more possible permutations, and much more of the surprising and the accidental than there is about the controls of an aircraft. Yet at the time when I was learning to fly there was still a certain romance attached to the handling of these machines, a relic perhaps from the past when the ground staffs of aerodromes were less perfectly organized, and when many of the instruments which we now use had not even been thought of. I used to listen with a kind of regret to the stories told to us by our instructor, a one-eyed sergeant-pilot, who was old enough to be the father of any of us, and who had been flying since he was sixteen. He would tell us of crashes caused by faulty construction that today would be impossible; of fights with storm and snow of which the pilot had not been forewarned; of how it had even been necessary to employ strength in handling the controls. He would look at us somewhat sadly from his one eye and say: "A kite used to take some flying in those days", and then appear the slightest bit embarrassed by what he had said, as though his remark might be misconstrued into a criticism of modern flying. And indeed, although no one voluntarily rushes into danger, we would still envy him for the hazards through which he had successfully come and of which we would have little or no experience. For whatever we attempted in the air we could be certain at all times that our machines would respond with absolute accuracy to the controls, and there was consequently no danger whatever except for those who were either physically or mentally in any case unfit for flying. I personally was at the right age and had the right habits of nerve to be rather exceptionally proficient, and before long was enrolled along with two others of my class in a special formation whose work it was to give, from time to time, displays of aerobatics in various parts of the country. I was proud of this job and unduly proud of my ability to perform it satisfactorily; what gave me, most unreasonably, a special pleasure was that in this work I was already very much the superior of the Flight-Lieutenant whom for so long I had imagined to be as an airman in a class very much higher than any to which I could aspire; and I remember the feeling of consternation which I had when our instructor laughed at the mention of his name. It appeared that he had shown very little aptitude for flying and indeed for some time had never been in the air at all, but, previously to his appointment to the Rectory, had merely been in charge of some of the stores. No one, certainly, questioned his loyalty and devotion to the Air Force; neither was he regarded by anyone as in any way remarkable, but rather as a useful and painstaking officer with no very special qualifications for any one branch of the service. It was some time before I could get used to the fact that I was regarded as a much more promising airman than he, and that while I was admired and envied, he was on the whole disregarded. I began to see now that his frequent visits to the village had been rather the result of incomplete satisfaction with the aerodrome, than of exuberance, and I began to feel pity for him where previously I had feft only admiration. Not that I thought of him very much; for when I thought of him I was reminded of Bess, and could still feel the pain of the wounds which I had received that evening in the hut, though, when busied with my work or in the company of other airmen, I scarcely remembered her, for I fancied that there was something final in my breakaway down the fields and in the alteration of my life. I found now for the first time since my early boyhood that I was eager to do something outside myself and not obviously connected with my emotions, something that won for me respect from others and something which I was naturally proficient in doing. For a long time my ambition was simply to excel, and in this I was successful so far as the piloting of an aircraft for trick flying is concerned. I won special commendation from the Air Vice-Marshal himself and remember how, just after he had congratulated me personally for my performance at one of the displays in which I took part, he contrived to show me and my friends how unimportant we really were in comparison with other branches of our personnel. It was at the end of the display and the crowd which had attended had dispersed. We had changed into our uniforms and been introduced to the Air Vice-Marshal who, together with a few senior officers, remained on the flying field. I remember noticing in particular a tall elderly man with a small straggling beard who had previously been pointed out to me as one of the mathematicians engaged on research. He had a wife, I knew, called Eustasia, in whom the Flight-Lieutenant was believed to be interested, but I had forgotten his name. I remember wondering from the first what sort of a woman his wife was. The Air Vice-Marshal was talking earnestly to him as we approached, but smiled when he saw us, and congratulated us on our work. He spoke gravely and, though he said little, showed by what he said that he was perfectly acquainted not only with our machines but with the difficulties which we had surmounted and with each trifling irregularity in the display which had occurred, as such small irregularities must occur, from minute errors in timing or from mechanical reasons. Finally he turned to me, looking at me, I remember, very hard as though I were someone whom he found difficulty in recognizing. "You have done particularly well," he said. "We are pleased with your work." Then he turned with a laugh to the mathematician at his side. "Could you do it as well?" he asked, and to our surprise the mathematician nodded his head and mumbled indistinctly the words, "I think so, don't you?", a remark which to most of us seemed to have been made in somewhat bad taste, though the Air Vice-Marshal smiled first at the speaker and then at us, as though enjoying the dubious expressions on our faces. "Just let's watch these two fellows," he said, and pointed to two aircraft of the latest type which were taxiing towards us across the flying field. We watched, not at first with much interest, for we knew the performances of these machines which were not unlike those which we had flown ourselves that afternoon. But as the aircraft took off and turned to climb, we began to look more closely, for it was clear that the machines were being flown either very skilfully or very recklessly. The ailerons of the two planes were almost interlocked as they climbed together to a great height. Then they separated, turned, and proceeded to give a display of aerobatics which held us spellbound, for we could hardly believe in the reality of what we saw. Not that the machines accomplished anything in the air which most of us could not have done singly, but the co-ordinance between the pilots and their confidence in each other were things which seemed to us incredible. For they would climb together, loop, go into a spin, and all the time the undercarriage of one aircraft would appear to be only a few inches from the cockpit of another. In short, it was something impossible that we saw, so that we rubbed our eyes as we watched, and when the display was over could hardly have described what it was that we had seen. In all of our minds must have been the thoughts, "Who are these pilots? What sort of pilots are we?" I remember noticing how pale were the faces of my friends, and have no doubt that my own face was equally pale. The Air Vice-Marshal appeared delighted with the display and amused by our evident feelings. "Pretty good," he said, as he looked quizzically from one to another of us. "I think you will agree, gentlemen." I was watching the two aircraft which had landed together and had come to a standstill some fifty yard away. Most of my friends were watching, too, since we wished to see and perhaps recognize the pilots. The Air Vice-Marshal spoke again. "What would you think," he said, "if I told you that we can now put two thousand of those aircraft into the sky at once and see them fly as we have seen those two fly?" We looked at him with a kind of consternation, for it seemed that he was speaking seriously. "It is no use waiting to see the pilots," he added, "because there are none." There was a long pause while he stood looking across the airfield, a slight smile as it were carved upon his face. Then he looked at his wristwatch and turned to go. "You had better explain," he said to the mathematician, "it is time for me to be off. You fellows gave a good display." We saluted and watched him walk slowly towards his car; then we turned to the mathematician who at once began to speak, as though for a long time he had been repressing his longing to instruct us. As a dog wags his tail, so his beard seemed to wag with the enthusiasm that he felt for his invention. "You know, of course," he was saying, spluttering as he spoke, "of the ordinary methods of remote control by wireless. This is a bit different, isn't it? Oh yes, this is another thing", and he launched into an explanation of the exact mechanism which had been used and the means by which it had been discovered. We listened attentively, but with more interest than understanding, for he seemed to be giving us credit for a much greater knowledge of mathematics and electrical engineering than any of us, in fact, possessed, so that almost the whole of his speech was unintelligible to us. He concluded with the words: "Two thousand! Yes, or three or four! The chief was right. We soon shan't be wanting any of you boys." And he put back his head, staring up to the sky with his beard jutting out from his lean face, quivering as he laughed. We laughed, too, for we were proud of his achievement, however conscious we might be of our inability to understand it and of the fact that metal and electricity and one directing brain could so easily surpass the performances of our own eyes and nerves and muscles. Indeed, we felt somewhat foolish for, while we had never imagined ourselves to be people of the utmost importance, we had still been convinced that we could do things that others could not do. That night we talked much of what we had seen, realizing more than previously our ignorance of all but a very small part of the organization to which we belonged. It was not only that we, as pilots, were ignorant of everything except the rudiments in such subjects as mathematics, electricity, magnetism, and aerodynamics, so that we were hardly able to understand the work of the research departments. There were other departments of the aerodrome also of which we had little or no knowledge. The political propaganda department, for example, employing as it did almost a third of the entire personnel and amongst them some of the best brains, was an institution of extraordinary complexity with branches covering religion, literature, morals, education, journalism, psychology, and medicine. Like everything else at the aerodrome it was under the constant supervision of the Air Vice-Marshal himself, and we saw, whenever we went to the village, evidences of its work; for it was thought desirable for the Air Force not only to occupy but also to transform any part of the country that fell within its sphere of interest. Of the grandiose extent of the transformation at which we aimed I was to be informed later. At this time I merely watched with admiration, with amusement, or with pity what was happening in the village which I used to know. Indeed, had I by some chance gone away on the night of the dinner party and now returned, I should have been unable to believe my eyes, so rapidly and extensively had the place altered. In the white street that I remembered as empty except for a dog, some straying children, or a milk cart, and all these either stationary or slowly moving, were now always to be seen large or small bodies of men in uniform or overalls, marching in order or going rapidly from one business to another. And by the Manor, near the huge cedar just inside the wall, were parked large numbers of gaily painted sports cars belonging to those of us who used the place as our club house. The building itself and its grounds were almost unrecognizable. The exterior had been camouflaged, and alterations had been made to the roof so as to make room on top of it for an extensive ballroom and restaurant with glass walls and a sliding glass roof where dances were held every week-end. Most of the cypresses in the sunken garden had been cut down, for here a swimming bath was in process of construction. The rock garden had been levelled, beech hedges, herbaceous borders, and many rare shrubs removed to make way for squash courts, tennis lawns, and rifle ranges. Changes of the same character had been made in the interior of the house. The walls were now bare of those interesting objects, each with its own history, which in the Squire's day had adorned the hall. In their place were gilt mirrors with ash-trays beneath them and heavy leather armchairs. What used to be a sitting-room had now been connected with the hall by a narrow archway in the Arab style, and inside this room was a bar over which the Squire's butler presided, a heavy and somewhat mournful figure, whose slowness of hand with a cocktail shaker made him really quite unsuited to this post. Sometimes when I was in the bar he would smile sadly at me, as though we shared in some secret, and I could see from his expression that he regretted the old days when he had had less work to do and had been a person of much greater consequence than he