The Challenging Heights (20 page)

By the time they left the hangar the airfield was warming up for the main events. The excitement was obvious and the thump-thump of the band came over the din of motor horns, the shouts of hot dog vendors and the crying of lost children.

An American pilot flew a few solo stunts, then Udet appeared flying a red machine marked D-ERNI. He had been bet he couldn’t pick a handkerchief off the hood of a motor car with his wingtip and he had accepted the challenge.

‘An aeroplane for an automobile,’ he said. ‘It is easy.’

He performed ten minutes of breathtaking stunts then the car was driven to the centre of the airfield and a handkerchief arranged in a pyramid on the hood. Flying over the crowd, Udet let them all see the small rod he had fixed to the wingtip, then he hurtled down towards the car in a shallow dive. As the crowd held its breath, half-hoping he’d hit the car, he trailed his wingtip along the ground, then, at the last moment, pulled up over the car. As he roared upwards, the engine screaming, there was a tremendous cheer as the handkerchief was seen fluttering on the end of the rod.

Doolittle watched critically. ‘One day he’ll kill himself,’ he said flatly. ‘The crowd want a show and showmanship’s the keynote of these affairs. Watching fast planes zip round pylons isn’t enough. They want thrills, and thrills for the crowds mean risks for the men providing ’em. Last time I put on a show I flew out of my wings. They folded back five miles from the airfield and I had to walk back with the chute under my arm and ask for another ship.’

Udet was cock-a-hoop as he climbed from the cockpit. ‘It vas easy,’ he crowed. ‘Und now I am richer by an automobile.’

The owner of the car seemed as delighted as Udet. ‘That’s goddam dangerous,’ he said.

‘No, no.’ Udet smiled. ‘I just shut the eyes and pull any handle vithin reach.’

The stunting was followed by a massed parachute jump from a flight of elderly Jennies, then a Cierva autogyro was put through its paces. One had already flown the Bristol Channel and several had appeared in England looking like Avro 504s without wings. It had rudimentary planes, a propeller on the nose and four huge blades revolving by air pressure above the pilot’s head. Its chief asset was that it could take off in half the space needed for an orthodox aeroplane and return to earth almost vertically, and the crowd cheered as it settled down like an elderly hen returning to its nest.

As it vanished, Udet tapped his programme. ‘Und now, the dive bombing. This, my friend, is what we must watch.’

As he spoke, a flight of stubby-winged single-seaters appeared over the grandstand and began to peel off one after the other. Coming down like swooping eagles, their dives as rigid as if on rails, they dropped their flour-bag bombs inside a target circle painted on the grass. As the missiles burst in splashes of white, they lifted into the air again, their engines howling, in a tremendous zoom that carried them back to their original height in seconds.

Udet grinned. ‘Wunderbar! Wunderbar!’

Dicken was staring into the sky at the climbing machines with narrowed eyes. ‘Perhaps good enough for those friends of yours who’re building up your air force to be interested?’ he said.

Udet acknowledged the fact. ‘An airplane mit special air brakes and flaps to hold it steady could be magnificent,’ he crowed. ‘Und vhen I show it off at the Templehof in Germany I shall be better than these men because I am a better pilot. They tell me Curtiss are thinking of developing a special airplane, and that, my friend, will be a
weapon.
Mobile artillery. When you can drop bombs as accurately as that, you can bomb a hundred yards in front of moving infantry. I hope one day to fly one.’

‘In battle?’

‘Mein Gott, no! I’ve had enough of war. But that
is
something new and the Americans don’t seem to know what to do with it.
I
do. An airplane mit strong vings you can’t lose will be excellent for my stunt flying.’

With the entertainment out of the way, the excitement began to warm up for the races.

The main event was a free-for-all military race in which the Army Air Force had entered a standard Curtiss Hawk.

‘They haven’t the funds to build a new one,’ Doolittle said. ‘Laird are building a biplane with single interplane struts and streamlined spats. She looks like a bumble bee and she’s the fastest racing plane ever. I’m told they can whip round a pylon like a cat down an alley. Next year I’ll have one and I’ll take the Nationals. Then I’ll quit. I’ve got two growing sons and it’s time I took better care of my health.’

The five-mile course was triangular and laid out in such a way that the race could be watched throughout from the grandstand. At each corner was a fifty-foot steel tower at the top of which sat a judge whose function was to report any cheating on the turns.

‘They pass within feet of him at over a hundred,’ Udet pointed out. ‘He bite his nails a lot.’

There were different schools of thought on how to go round a pylon. Some liked to climb between them and swoop down on them for the turn. Others preferred to skim the grass and take the pylon on the climb.

‘Benny Howard makes vertical banks,’ Doolittle explained. ‘They call him the pylon polisher. Me, I prefer to start a slow bank well ahead of the turn.’

The races followed one after another then, in the main race, to increase the excitement, instead of being flagged off separately and clocked as usual, all seven aircraft were to set off in what was called a racehorse start, all lined up to take off together for a twenty-lap circuit. One of them, classed as a mystery aircraft, was wheeled out of its hangar at the last minute. The machine had a huge radial engine with the pilot’s seat not far forward of the rudder. There was also a Page, two Travel Airs, a Lockheed and a Cessna. The mystery machine was a parasol type with a single high wing.

‘They didn’t get the vings bolted on until three hours ago,’ Udet said. ‘It vas hopped here from the factory field after only a ten-minute test flight and arrived mit ten minutes to spare.’

The Parasol made a faster take-off than any of the other starters and gained visibly at the turns until it had actually lapped some of the other competitors. Watching the machines whip round the pylons, Dicken found himself agreeing wholeheartedly with Doolittle. This was nerve-flying, not scientific flying. Hurling aircraft through narrow spaces, wrenching them round with strut-straining violence was the sort of flying they’d done during the war when there’d been no option, and he couldn’t see it adding much to aviation.

One of the Travel Airs was giving the Parasol a close race when its engine started to cough. Its speed dropped rapidly and the pilot had to set it down. The Cessna also dropped out, which left the Parasol and the second Travel Air as the only planes still with any chance. They were squinting into the sun watching the Parasol keenly as it took the home pylon wide and high.

‘Something iss wrong!’ Udet said shrewdly. ‘He iss not as he should be. Hey–’ his voice rose ‘– he iss out of control!’

For a hideous moment, it seemed that the machine was aimed straight at the grandstand, then that the pilot was making a supreme effort to avoid smashing into the crowd. As the machine wobbled, the screams rose but the Parasol swung sharply, wrenched aside, it seemed, by a pilot fighting for consciousness, as if carbon monoxide from the exhaust had got into the cockpit. People started to run and for a moment the air was filled with shouting, then the aeroplane hit the ground at a shallow angle, throwing up a cloud of dust as it ploughed along, shedding pieces as it went. A wheel flew into the air to land and bounce towards the crowd as if it had a life of its own, a wing flapped wildly, like a chicken taking a dust bath, became detached and leapt into the air in a shower of pieces, then the machine begun to somersault, flinging fragments of wreckage about as if a bomb had gone off inside it, before finally coming to a stop in a cloud of smoke and steam at the far side of the field. An ambulance and a fire tender screamed from their positions near the stand and hurtled across the grass, their sirens howling.

For a while nothing could be heard but shouts and screams with, over the din, the iron voice of the announcer on the loudspeaker appealing for calm. Dicken stood gazing at the shattered machine with cold eyes, his mouth a tight line. Udet quickly lit a cigarette then pushed his hands deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched, almost as though, despite his incredible confidence in his skill as a pilot, the disaster were something he had foreseen a hundred and one times for himself. Doolittle sighed and shrugged. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is why I’m quitting.’

Gradually the hysteria died down and the cries and the sobbing of women faded. To Dicken’s surprise the races were not abandoned, and after a while the announcer, his voice shaking a little, informed them of the beginning of the women’s race. This had also been intended to be a racehorse start but it had been abruptly changed to a separate-start race, with the machines taking off one after the other and, pushing to the front, Dicken struggled to get a clear view of his wife. He was half-hoping to persuade her to abandon the race but he was too late and the machines were already taxiing into position. The machine she was flying, a small red and yellow two-seater with the word ‘Harmer’ emblazoned on the fuselage, was an open-cockpit machine, but it was hard to recognise Zoë with her goggles and flying helmet, and Dicken watched her with narrowed eyes, caught by a strange longing overlaid by sadness.

The race was flown cautiously. The disaster in the main race had had its effect and Zoë handled the Harmer warily, skimming the pylons closely but without taking chances. But her machine had nothing like the speed of the other aeroplanes and as the race finished and the machines landed, zigzagging up the field to the roped-off enclosure, their engines burping and coughing, Dicken broke away from the crowd and begun to follow it.

The steward at the entrance to the enclosure, a young man in white overalls and a boater, leaning on a post holding a copy of the pulp magazine,
Wings
,
was prepared to dispute Dicken’s right of entry when Udet’s voice came over his shoulder.

‘Listen, my friend,’ he said. ‘You are a great reader of that magazine you’ve got there.’

‘Sure am, Mr Udet.’

‘You read in there about Dicken Quinney?’

‘Dick Quinney? Sure have, Mr Udet. There’s an article in this here very one.’ He started turning the thick pulpy pages. ‘Why?’

Udet grinned. ‘You haf just refused him permission to enter your enclosure. That iss why.’

Zoë was just wrenching off her helmet and running her fingers through her hair. To Dicken she looked strained, thin and pale and he suspected that the sort of flying she was doing was taking more out of her than she realised.

As she turned away, he studied the machine she had been flying. There was a saying that if an aeroplane was good to look at it was good to fly and the Harmer had a clumsy appearance with stubby wings and an undercarriage that seemed too tall. It had been built for racing but it looked unstable and Dicken was still studying it when he heard his name called and saw Zoë staring at him with wide eyes from the hangar entrance.

‘Dicky Boy!’

To his surprise there was genuine delight in her cry. Running towards him she flung herself into his arms and kissed him enthusiastically.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you.’

‘Pity you didn’t come yesterday. Casey was here. He had to head back to St Louis. His machine’s there.’

Dicken gestured at the Harmer Racer. ‘This is a hell of a life for a woman,’ he said.

A stubborn, defiant look appeared in her eyes. ‘It isn’t the sort of thing Air Force wives go in for,’ she agreed.

He gestured again at the Harmer. ‘And is this what you’re doing with your time?’

She gave him a sidelong glance. ‘I’ve got more in the pipeline than chasing other women round pylons,’ she admitted. ‘This isn’t flying. Any more than that.’ She gestured at the display area and the band still pounding out ‘Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here’
in their flagged enclosure.

‘You used to think it was.’

‘Times change. I change with them.’

Dicken frowned. ‘I heard from Annys that Peasegood, the man you’ve got running your garages, was swindling you right, left and centre. I had a look. He is.’

Zoë gestured. ‘Aw, pfui,’ she said. ‘He still makes me a small fortune, so he’s entitled to fiddle a bit if he can. Annys is jealous, that’s all. She gave up her share of the garage in exchange for the house. The house was worth two thousand and she thought she’d got the best of the bargain, because the garage was only worth a hundred or two. But it’s now nine garages and, with all the other odds and ends, it’s worth getting on for sixty thousand. George Peasegood might be a bit sharp but he knows what’s good for business. We decided there was a difference between repairing cars and selling gas. Most people can’t sell gas for repairing cars, and can’t repair cars for selling gas. We decided to separate them. My gas stations only sell gas and you can operate them with a man and a boy. But they sell twice as much gas because they’re not doing anything else. And the mechanics in my repair depots are good because they don’t get distracted by having to stop to sell gas. People come to us.’

Dicken eyed her warmly. As long as he lived, he knew he’d never be able to regard her as an enemy. As adolescents they’d clutched each other on hot summer nights and shared the same fears and the same ambitions. Whatever she did to him, he knew he could never totally reject her. No matter how much she hurt him, he could never forget the past.

‘Why not,’ he suggested, ‘come home and make yourself a millionaire?’

They ate at Dicken’s hotel. There was a room off the restaurant where they were able to drink cocktails made of bootleg gin and Zoë led him to it like a homing pigeon to its loft.

‘Prohibition doesn’t prohibit much,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the fact that it’s illegal gives it an extra zip.’

She was wary and elusive and he knew she was avoiding telling him her plans for the Dufee race. In the end he tackled her about it.