The Lost Flying Boat (19 page)

I moved to get at my cigarette case. ‘Bit late to talk about our sins.'

He spat, though nothing came, then struck a match for our smoke. ‘There's no time better than now when it comes to atonement.' The light which united us showed him to be smiling. ‘But what I can't understand is why a young chap like you volunteered for this sort of job. What the heck have you got to atone for?'

‘If I knew I wouldn't be here, though if you ask me where I would be if I weren't here I don't think I could tell you.' His jungle of atonement had no attraction for me, as he surmised, but I told him I was here because of money, adventure, work and a broken marriage. If he reversed the order he might well get it right.

‘I thought there was more to you than met the eye.' We smoked, and listened to the test-bed grind of the engines rather than to our own thoughts. Darkness brought more ease, screened us from peril, and generated a denser element of companionship. ‘Aren't you going to ask why I'm here?' he said at last.

‘I thought religion and politics were out on this trip?'

‘Well, we're not in the French Foreign Legion, either,' he said. ‘But
nothing
will be out before it's ended. Bennett's on a treasure-hunt, and there'll be no let-up till it's over. The gold's got to be lifted quick, because we aren't the only people after it. Someone knew enough to set another combine working against us, but we're on our way there first, as far as we know. If they should see our fuel ship and board it, they'll find nothing, because the stuff will already be away – by flying boat. Bloody neat, eh?'

We sat through the space of two cigarettes. ‘The trouble is,' he went on, ‘that Bennett lives in a world of his own. Nobody can get at him. But it's important to the rest of us that we know everything, so you've got to listen for any ship close enough to bash out morse so strong it parts your hair: it's bound to be on the same game as us, because no others get to where we're going – except maybe the odd whaler. Tell me as well as Bennett all you hear. You'll earn your keep, and our gratitude.'

It was wise not to show emotion or surprise at being plainly asked to divide my loyalty between him and Bennett. The reason did not seem clear, and if it had maybe I would have liked his advice even less. I was jolted as if, sitting in a room with a clock on the shelf, I began to hear its ticking again, when in fact it had never stopped. The noise of four engines rushed back into my ears as the war-surplus flying boat churned its airscrews through black sky, leaving a wake of exhaust fumes, the only roar for thousands of miles, and undetectable because no other vehicle was within range. We had the air to ourselves.

‘There'll be hardly a pint of juice left in each engine by the time we get there,' he said. ‘If these tail winds weren't pushing us along we'd have a ditching to look forward to. I'll certainly be glad when we're bobbing about on that fjord like a cork in the sink at Christmas!'

‘I can't understand why we're so well-armed,' I said: ‘Browning machine guns seem a bit excessive.'

He reached out and patted their grips. ‘They aren't for shelling peas. Nor are we going to make a wartime shit-picture. It might be all show, but it would be a shame if we got everything on board and somebody tried to pull it away from us.'

‘But who?'

He stood up, about to push by me. ‘I can't see into the future. But if anybody tries to get that gold from us, I'll blast 'em out of sky or water, let me tell you.'

I was aware of Bennett, immovable at the controls, mindless in his set purpose. Our lives were in his hands. But they had been in our own individual hands before we had delivered them into his. ‘Are you glad to be on this trip, Nash?'

He turned, still stooping. ‘I'd rather be here than in jail, which is where I was three months ago. I'll never go there again. It's paradise being here, compared to that.'

‘Paradise can sink,' I said.

He grunted, and went on his way before me, saying: ‘I'd rather go down from paradise than from any other place.'

13

When an aircraft on 6440 kilocycles informed Cape Town – ZSC – of his time of arrival from Durban – ZSD – his morse had a hollow tone, like someone clapping hands in the distance. I passed their messages to Bennett, but he stuffed the paper in his chart bag. ‘No action.'

Caught by the hiss of ether, thermionic valves worked overtime trying to interpret the emptiness. The headset was my balaclava comforter, supplying atmospherics that sounded like a load of gravel shooting from the back of a tip-up lorry.

Another shadow dissolved mine under the angle-lamp. Bennett's eyes were surrounded by grey flesh. ‘Tell me as soon as anything happens. You're the only one who can.'

Why me? There was no answer. He left Wilcox at the controls and went down the ladder. What plain talk entered the earphones would be pounded out myself, sending me through a black hole and searching along the space lanes, away from a world whose morse no longer made sense. Now that Bennett had gone to rest I could transmit. Wilcox was too concerned with keeping the artificial horizon and his splintering coughs in synchronization to notice, though what messages I would send, and to whom, I did not know. I could hear from further away than my signals would reach, but even with a more powerful transmitter my text would be distorted beyond readability.

Even so, I was tempted to put my hand on the key and try to contact another soul beyond the flying boat's periphery. Perhaps a ship was close, though few kept continual watch, while those that did were unlikely to come this way, and the frequency they listened on had little range. What would I say? I did not know, but maybe: Who are you? Where are you? Can you hear me? QRA? QTH? QRK? If he replied, I might enquire: Why am I here? But there was no ‘Q' Signal for that. Never ask questions that cannot be answered, otherwise there will be no end to what you want to know. Yet an end was needed, was vital, though you may never get it. Emptiness is a desert, whether sky or water, and being in the wilderness tells you that there is no limit to sense or consciousness. Send that on your morse key and see how far it gets you! Mad bastard! Give us the proper griff, the pukka gen. Whatever there is to seek, you will not find it there. Your dots-and-dashes go into space, and vanish from weakness. The same with thoughts, unless there is a God to count the ricochets back into your heart and explain why you are alive.

Circular reflections induce fatigue. What grip is to be got on space? Nash asked why I had come, and I could have replied that if you have to there's no alternative. No one can tell why, though if a reason has indeed triggered off your impulse then you are faced with the fact that no reason can prevail against an impulse. It is useless to argue, or otherwise repine at the fundamental vagaries of fate. But do not come out the same as you went in.

‘Some char, Sparks. It's the Relief of Mafeking. Everybody's nodding off. If it wasn't for Wilcox, the kite would have pranged by now.'

‘Don't get that biscuit tin near the tapper,' I said, ‘or a short circuit'll send a howl of pain through the sky.' Appleyard laid a stack of biscuits like a gambler's winnings on my log book. ‘It'd sound as if somebody's stepped on a mongrel's leg, and Sirius would jump a mile. He wouldn't like it.'

‘He'd have to lump it, then. One sugar, or four?'

‘Is it strong?'

‘Enough to rot a wedding ring. No bromide, though, like in the old days.'

‘Put in a couple, then take your bucket to Rose. He can do with a drop before his next star sight. Tell him that the bright pointer of the Southern Cross is coming up abeam, if I'm not mistaken.'

The tea separated nerve wires at the back of my eyes. I heard them pinging, and was awake, thoughts once more in a Ben Hur race. Chasing gold was not for me, unless of another sort, but of what quality I hardly knew. My place was with Anne, though not in the state I had left her. She would never want what I craved. We couldn't exist together, so there was no point in hankering. I was as alone as everyone else in that airborne assembly of walking wounded.

Rose must have given Wilcox notice before getting star sights, because it felt as if we were cruising over black velvet. Every man froze at his station. If the engines went fatally and we were forced to ditch, we would know our position to within five miles or so, which was some comfort, providing Bennett allowed me to send an SOS before smacking the chop.

I pressed my finger to emit one dot – breaking radio silence by the single letter ‘E'. What information would anyone get from that tick of electricity in their earphones? Only the fact, according to Bennett – who did not hear that shortest letter of the morse alphabet while he slept – that another transmitter was close by.

One part of me had surely known of my intention, but the other did not. That which knew had got the upper hand, while the other was aware of nothing. To accept responsibility for the error that had been committed, I needed to believe that the side which knew of my intentions had been to blame, but I could only feel guilty if that part of me which did not know had initiated the action.

I had been unconscious of outside phenomena for five minutes, proved by the last entry in my log. The crackle of atmospherics had been so deafening that no ear could have intercepted that single absconding dot – which vanished like a fish in muddy water. The only noise I can tolerate is static, out of which I gather information, or into which my thoughts melt. I prefer to be controlled by chaos rather than order. Whatever comes from order is written down and forgotten, whereas chaos rules by patience and subterfuge. When I was twelve I was walking home from school and hearing Handel's Largo still in my ears from the classroom. Wanting to sing the words on the street, I was unable to. I'd had to wait to make my own rhythms, and send them out in morse from a stricken flying boat plunging along the wind lanes of the Roaring Forties, Antarctica to the right, and space to the left as far as Asia. ‘Where e'er you walk' played out the letter ‘Q' of the eternal question, and I did not know what it signified – nor ever would.

From the mid-upper turret, beyond my D/F loop and across the bows, I saw the port and starboard wing broken only by an expanse of the leading edge which glowed in the darkness. Someone switched on the mike of his intercom and blew as if to cool a saucer of tea, glad to hear even the rush of his own breath.

Sirius, the brightest star, was behind us, and I picked out Canopus to the southeast. Far in front loomed another escarpment of bad weather, and the crate would soon begin a slow climb to get over the top. A blue glow came from the flame-dampened exhausts, and through the astrodome I could just make out, inside our huge flying belly, the dim light above Rose's navigation table, and the lamp of my wireless operator's position. A tug at my leg was a signal from Nash to climb down.

‘You're all to cock,' he snapped. ‘Stick to your own trade.'

I clamped my headphones on, informing Bennett, back at the controls, that the loop aerial indicated a stormy passage.

‘I'll go right through. Can't afford to lose this flying wind. We'll be longer with the murk, but will overtake it in the end. So pull in the trailing aerial.'

If it was out, and lightning struck, I would be the first to get a knocking. A gutted set and a stunned operator might be the final safeguard for radio silence, but I didn't think Bennett would want to go that far. I got the trailing aerial in, but let it go again, thinking that maybe a dose of shock would clear my head, and that wireless operator's roulette was a fair game to play.

Word came for safety belts, and I clipped myself in. Turning the page of my log book, I felt the secondhand aeroplane rear where no air was, then float as if on snow. The feeling underfoot was curious, as if we were held in the palm of some being to whom our flying boat was made of balsa wood. The electricity of anticipation ran through me, and my fingers moved without thought towards the morse key, which I would have pressed except that a sudden drop banged my knees at the table, and forced wide open eyes to witness every angled corner.

Rose, huddled over charts, grabbed the sextant, while his Dalton computer chased a perspex ruler down the ladder towards the galley. The good side of his face sheered by the bulkhead, and I felt a pang at the thought that he would be scarred there as well – till my neck was wrenched the other way and I saw the skipper holding grimly on, stability his sole aim. Rain splashed the windscreen, and we seemed under the ocean instead of two miles above. Over the intercom a steel door banged regularly on a wet plank, never tiring, till I thought to tighten the aerial connection. Nash was secure in his mid-upper, but when the plane levelled for a moment said: ‘Do that again, Skipper!'

Which brought a curt response from Bull: ‘Nearly broke my fucking elbow.'

While Bennett and Wilcox struggled to get out of a corkscrew descent, my hand gripped the morse key as if that action alone would bring us through the storm. I felt aileron wires and rudder joints cracking under the strain, and waited for that last ounce of pressure to pitch us hell-bent into the drink. I was otherwise too wary of losing equilibrium and being slammed against the click-stops to be afraid. Stresses and strains were matched to four engines, and there was no better plane in which to have a thirteen-rounder with the sky.

‘If you believe that, you'll believe anything,' said Appleyard. My hand rested a couple of seconds on the key, making a letter ‘T' which, if joined to the last symbol sent, would make ET. And what then? The floor slipped sideways and fell. I wanted to play the morse key like Niedzielski his piano, and instead of sending no more than a pip and a squeak bash out a heartache letter-telegram to Anne, explaining that my love for her was even more intense because I was in a situation where to think of it blunted my attitude to danger.