The Rainbow and the Rose (7 page)

He was out of his coat now, and ready to try it. I thought as I brought her in that I had two things now to think about at the same time, the aircraft and the doctor. Hitherto the safety of the aircraft had been my main concern, but now I had to think about the safety of the doctor and watch what he was doing. Still, in the previous run the aircraft had been pretty stable on the ground … I was uneasily aware, as I brought her in towards the strip, that this was getting near the limit. The chance that I had taken in putting this little aircraft on the ground across the strip and holding her there had proved to be a reasonable one. Now, however, things were getting dangerous. I was asking a lot of this young doctor, though perhaps he didn’t know it. I could quite easily kill him.

Five feet – slower now – three feet – it was bumpier than ever. A little slower – one foot – and she was on the ground and motionless with the tail up. It was more turbulent than it had been before; I could not hold her so for very long. I shouted, ‘Try it now!’

He lifted his legs underneath him and screwed his body round. The seating side by side was very close in that small aeroplane; to get out backwards he had to put his head pretty well in my lap; my hand upon the throttle was in his way, and I dare not let that go. I raised my elbow high and he put his head under my arm, and at the same time I think he pressed the door back with his body and put one leg out. I dared not look what he was doing because as the door opened things were happening to the machine; I had to keep my eyes ahead, my left hand delicately on the stick, my right hand delicately making tiny movements with the throttle in spite of his head under my arm jerking my elbow. This was getting very dangerous indeed.

He forced his body backwards and opened the door further, and put his left leg down and found the step.
The door was now more than a foot open and the effect on the machine was very bad. Elevator control seemed much reduced, she needed quite a bit of rudder, and I had to open up the throttle making things still more difficult for him. All this I did without thinking, instinctively, only conscious that this aeroplane was in a bad way. He forced the door still further open with his backside, searching for the ground with his right foot.

Then the gust came. I knew that it was coming; I suppose I saw it blowing the rough herbage. I opened up the throttle a trifle, I think, but I didn’t dare to put her nose down further for fear of hitting the propeller on the ground. I shot a glance at him, half out of the machine and searching for the ground with his foot, and in that instant while my eyes were averted the gust came down on us more strongly, lifting the machine. By the time I got my eyes back to the windscreen we were five feet up.

There was only one thing to do then, and that was to go off again. I gave her a little more throttle and put the nose down a little more. The doctor was half out of the machine, his stomach on the doorsill, but he still had his left foot on the outside step. I said as quietly as I could, ‘Get back in again, Alec.’

I flew on straight towards the sea, heading in to wind, at a low altitude, flying as slowly as I dared to make less pressure on the door. The machine handled like a pig, the door held wedged well open by his body. I hooked my right hand under his shoulder to help him struggle into the machine again, but the pressure of the air upon the door was pinching his legs. I shot a glance forward, and then leaned across him and forced the door open with my right hand, freeing his legs. With that help he managed to struggle back into the cabin and close the door; the control became normal again, and I put her into a slow climbing turn.

‘You all right?’ I asked, metaphorically wiping the sweat from my brow.

‘
I’m
all right,’ he said. ‘I could have got out easily but for this damn door.’

A shadow passed across the machine and it grew suddenly cold. I looked up, and a cloud was passing across the sun. It was only a small, isolated cloud and the sun would be shining again in a minute, but others were coming up from the horizon, now dark and menacing. The weather would not last more than an hour longer at the most; in any case we should not have fuel to stay so long. I glanced at my watch and was surprised to see how late it was. In five minutes we must be on our way back to Buxton, or we wouldn’t get there.

I circled for a minute or so, torn with indecision. I could land him if I jettisoned the door. When I took off again, without the door … I turned round again and looked at the perspex sheet, the fabric covering of the rear fuselage. It looked terribly frail, accustomed as I was now to a large, all metal airliner. It would be dicy. With a heavy heart I came to my decision, wondering if this was cowardice or good sense. It certainly wouldn’t help to have another crash, perhaps another badly battered pilot. There comes a point, I thought, when cowardice merges with good sense. I turned to the doctor beside me. ‘This isn’t any good,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to go back to Buxton and try something else.’

‘I’m quite ready to have another go,’ he replied. ‘Let’s try it again.’

He didn’t realise the risks that I was running, of course. He didn’t realise that our lives had been balanced on a knife-edge of danger. When I was a younger man I wouldn’t have cared two hoots for that, of course, but now I was forty-six years old. For many years as a prudent airline captain I had avoided dangers, and to do so was now second nature to me. The sort of flying that I had been doing in the last twenty minutes cut
clean across everything that I knew to be right. Now it was time to pull up and stop behaving like a crazy teenager.

I shook my head. ‘It’s just not good enough. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to go back.’

He resigned himself. ‘I suppose there isn’t any way of picking up that suitcase?’ he enquired. ‘It’s got all my instruments in it.’

I said, ‘I’m afraid there’s not,’ and set a course for Buxton, angry and mortified, feeling that I had failed. We flew in silence after that. Cloud was forming again over the mountain tops so that I had to deviate and go towards the coast, flying over the shoulders close beneath the cloud to make the distance as short as possible, the coastal plain on my left hand. Finally we came off the mountains and the flat land to the north lay before us. The petrol gauge was jumping on the zero stop, which meant we had about two gallons left, but there were flat paddocks now in front of us. I started to let down, found Buxton, and came in to land. The Proctor did not seem to have arrived from Hobart yet. I put down just by the hangar and taxied straight forward into wind; the boys came out to catch the struts and I taxied her right inside.

When I killed the motor we sat motionless for a moment in the silence. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t make it,’ I said at last. ‘I thought we’d have been able to. It was worth trying.’

He said, ‘I’m sorry I was such a fool about the door.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘I’m a bit new to this.’

‘You were all right,’ I said. ‘It was too difficult for anyone.’

Monkhouse, the ground engineer, came up to the machine as I opened the cabin door on my side to get out. ‘No go?’ he enquired.

I shook my head. ‘I put her down, but she needed quite a bit of throttle. With the slipstream on the door the doctor couldn’t get out.’

He nodded slowly. ‘You didn’t jettison the door?’

I shook my head. ‘I thought of that, but I didn’t like to try it. Tell me, will these things fly without the door in place?’

‘ ’Course they will,’ he said. ‘Captain Pascoe took up a parachutist in this one last year, time of the Pageant. We flew it hours and hours without the door. They fly all right.’

I bit my lip. ‘I didn’t know that. I was afraid to jettison it.’

‘It’s an airworthiness requirement for all sorts of aircraft,’ he observed. ‘Anything that can be jettisoned, the aeroplane’s got to fly safely without it. These fly all right without the door.’

I got out of the machine in silence. Now that he mentioned it, the airworthiness requirement struck a faint chord of memory. I have never been a test pilot, never had anything to do with flying of that sort. I had never had to fly an aeroplane with an escape hatch open, and I had never bothered my head about it. I should have done, perhaps. Because I hadn’t, Johnnie Pascoe now might die.

I walked a few steps out on to the tarmac. The sun had gone and lingered as only a faint indication over to the north-east. It was overcast and grey and bleak, the cloud ceiling at about fifteen hundred feet, and descending. The wind was much as it had been before, but in the west it looked dark with more rain coming. I went back into the hangar and walked round the machine to where the doctor was getting out. ‘Mr Monkhouse tells me this machine will fly all right without the door in place,’ I said. ‘Would you be willing to go out again, at once, and have another stab at it?’

‘You mean, take the door right off?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t fall out, would I?’

The question was a reasonable one, because the door comprised practically the entire side of the cabin; in that
little aeroplane it was an enormous hole. ‘You wouldn’t fall out,’ I said. ‘You’re strapped in with your safety belt. But I’m afraid it may be cold for you.’

‘I don’t mind that …’ He looked up at me. ‘Now we’ve started on this thing we’d better see it through. Most of my equipment’s in that suitcase, so I can’t do much here. We’ll have to be quick, though, won’t we? Because of the weather?’

I nodded. ‘I’ll get the machine refuelled right away.’ I turned and spoke to Monkhouse, and then I asked him, ‘Is there anything to eat here? I’ve had no breakfast.’ I was hungry, cold, and getting very tired. I had been up all night, and I had done a lot of flying since I had slept last.

‘There’s my sandwiches for lunch,’ he said. ‘Over on the bench there, with a thermos of coffee. You can have those.’ I protested a little, but he said, ‘I’ll go and get some more when you’ve taken off.’

I offered to share his lunch with the doctor, but he refused; the vicar’s wife had given him breakfast before we started. I stood by the bench eating mutton sandwiches and drinking coffee from the thermos, thinking what an awful fool I was. I, the great airline captain, the self-acclaimed expert who had barged in to take charge of this affair, and put up a black right away. Even Billy Monkhouse, ground engineer in a pipsqueak show like this, even he had known the fundamental fact I had forgotten in my arrogance and pride.

Tired as I was, the only thing now was to go on with it. Johnnie Pascoe would have had a doctor with him now but for my ignorance. The food and the hot coffee were putting new life into me, and I braced myself. I could repair the damage I had done. If we got off at once, we could still beat the weather down to the Lewis River, though I might have a sticky time getting back.

It took about ten minutes to fill up the aircraft with about
fifteen gallons of petrol from the old, hand-operated pump, and to put in a gallon of oil. Then we got in again. I saw that the doctor’s safety belt was properly done up, for there was little else now to retain him in the cabin in bumpy conditions. ‘I feel a bit like the young man on the flying trapeze,’ he said.

‘Quite happy?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘I’ll be able to get out all right this time.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ I nodded to the ground engineer and he swung the prop. I ran her up a bit and tested the magnetos, and then taxied out on to the aerodrome with a boy on each wing strut and turned her into wind for the take off.

I lifted my eyes to look around after my pre-flight check, and saw a car drive in off the road and up to the hangar. It crossed my mind that it might possibly be Dr Parkinson who was supposed to be flying up to us in the Proctor, and I paused for a moment, watching. Then I saw it was a taxi by the sign over the windscreen, and the door opened and a woman got out. Billy Monkhouse could deal with her, I thought, and I nodded to the boys, opened up the throttle, and took off.

It was bad in the air, very turbulent, the cloud ceiling down to about twelve hundred with a clammy coldness of approaching rain. With virtually no side to our cabin the grey wisps seemed to come right into the aircraft, and perhaps they did, for the map grew soggy in my hands. I had to deviate towards the coast much more than previously, and as we went the: cloud forced us lower and lower. By the time we got to Trial Harbour I was flying down the coast at about seven hundred feet in the increasing murk. I knew then that it would be touch and go if we could get up to the tiny airstrip at the Lewis River, which was five hundred and thirty feet above sea level. If we did, there would be nothing to spare.

I found the entrance to Macquarie Harbour, crossed it to the south shore, and flew round Cape Sorell, the top of which was in the cloud. I checked the time, and did a bit of navigation, working with one hand upon the map upon my knee. It was another sixty-eight miles to the Lewis River, and we were making good about eighty-seven miles an hour over the ground. I calculated in my head. If we were doing ninety we would have forty-five minutes to go, but it was three per cent slower, so call it forty-seven minutes. I pencilled the time upon my map off Cape Sorell and the E.T.A. Lewis River, and went on, keeping the coast in sight upon my left. Ten minutes later it began to rain.

I must have known that it was pretty hopeless then, but I went on. It was my fault that Johnnie Pascoe hadn’t got the doctor with him, and there was always the faint chance that the rain might stop and the clouds break when we got to the Lewis River. We went on down the coast with visibility less than a mile, and as we went the cloud forced us lower till we were flying at about two hundred feet well out to sea, the coast just visible on our port hand. It was a desolate, deserted coast fringed with black reefs that had a very heavy surf breaking upon them, shooting up in places almost a hundred feet high. If our motor had packed up in that place our chances of survival would have been absolutely nil.

It was raining all the way from Cape Sorell. The water ran off the windscreen on the doctor’s side and blew from the edge straight into his lap. In ten minutes he was soaked, but there was nothing we could do about it. We went on, trying to check each river mouth and identify it as we passed. On the west coast of Tasmania, however, the maps are very inaccurate because nobody lives there; we soon lost track of where we were and had to go on till we had run our time.