James Long - Sixth Column

‘Can’t you have both?’

He suddenly felt he’d gone a bit too far. He just shrugged expressively and they stood in awkward silence as they watched the plane bank around in a circuit and settle in for an impeccable landing. It disappeared behind the hangars for a while then taxied round the corner into view with a sudden crescendo of exhaust, weaving on to the apron in front of them before the engine cut and the propeller rocked to a sudden halt. Gavin got out and beckoned to her.

‘He’ll do,’ he said, ‘have fun.’

She clambered in on to a utilitarian seat of pale blue plastic and Johnny showed her how the straps worked. He gave her a headset, fiddled with the switches, then the engine started with a blast of noise which made her glad of the muffling headphones.

‘Are you ready?’ His voice was tinny in her ears.

She nodded. He looked all around, pushed the throttle open and swung the plane around. They taxied out past the hangars and paused short of the runway. A voice came in her ears and she realized it was Johnny, talking in a flat, experienced tone to someone else.

‘172 Golf Kilo Uniform, ready for departure. Outward to Blubberhouses Moor, for local practice flying.’

Another voice came on. ‘Roger Kilo Uniform. You’re clear for take-off. Wind eight knots two five oh degrees. Not above two thousand feet until you clear the area.’

She expected to be scared but was instead simply surprised at the full throttle crescendo of noise and vibration. She lost sight of the runway ahead and it wasn’t until she looked out of the side window and down at the dwindling ground that she realized how little time the plane had taken to leap back into its element.

‘Look straight ahead,’ Johnny’s voice said in her ear and there, already – dragged close as height pushed back the horizon – the sun showed bright on the ranks of huge white golf balls standing out from the dun moorland around them.

‘Can we just fly over them?’

‘Apparently we can. There’s no restriction zone. The man says he thinks the Americans have asked for one but the Home Office wouldn’t agree. It’s not like radar. They aren’t beaming out any microwaves to fry low flying planes, they’re only receiving signals. Anyway they’re an important landmark for pilots coming in to the Leeds Bradford control area.’

‘How low can we go?’

‘As soon as we’re out of the airport control area, we can go down to five hundred feet.’

He flew in slow circles, low down over the base, banked over so she could see straight down out of the side window. She knew it so well but this was the first time she had ever had the luxury of seeing the entirety of it, laid out like a map, seeing it without the constant expectation of shouts, screeching tyres, heavy hands on her shoulder. They went round and round and round until she had taken in every inch, sketching plans in her notebook of exactly where the new construction was, where a diagonal track was being bulldozed the other side of the Saddlebush bunker, where an interesting door she had never seen before opened into the back of the new Frogwood bunker behind it.

‘Seen enough?’ Johnny asked in the end.

Reluctantly she nodded.

‘Let’s go back the pretty way,’ he said.

She took him in, relaxed, expert, scanning the sky around ceaselessly.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Other traffic,’ he said, ‘I had a near miss with a Tornado once. He wasn’t looking where he was going. One minute there was a tiny little speck high up on the left. The next he was right on top of me. When he came by I could hear the engines and that’s saying something in one of these. Gives you a healthy respect.’

‘You’re obviously an expert,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Kind of you to say so.’

‘Well, after all, you are a professional pilot.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I must have misunderstood,’ she said. ‘The man back there said you couldn’t be because you’ve only got a private licence.’

The plane wobbled. It definitely wobbled and it wasn’t turbulence. Johnny took a deep breath and tried to force his hand back into the proper relaxed touch on the yoke. The hand, coupled to the world’s biggest lie-detector, still threatened to betray him.

‘I’m sorry?’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The man back there when you hired the plane. When you took off the first time, I told him you flew for a living and he said you have to have a different sort of licence for that.’

Johnny put on a surprised face and took a moment to search the horizon. ‘I’ve got both,’ he said as casually as he could. ‘The thing is, I got my commercial licence in Australia so until I do the paperwork here it’s easier to show them my PPL.’

‘Oh, I see.’

He glanced at her, wondering whether to force the issue by asking a ‘Don’t you trust me?’ question but she looked quite happy and he decided he’d only be pushing his luck. Distraction seemed a better idea.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘it’s your turn.’

‘My turn to what?’

‘Fly it.’

‘Oh come on,’ she said, ‘I can’t fly.’

‘It’s not so difficult once you’re up in the air – at least until you have to come down again. Go on. Just rest your hand on the yoke. Put your feet on the pedals and follow my movements.’

He showed her the basics for a few minutes while they flew in lazy circles over the moors and gradually saw her relax.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘it’s all yours. Just keep the wings level and the horizon about where it is now.’

She didn’t stiffen up like most people do. There was just a trace of tension in her face but that quickly softened into a delighted smile as she felt the plane responding. He coached her through some turns and she got the idea of co-ordinating her hands and feet in no time at all. ‘Hey, this is fun,’ she said.

He glanced out of the side window, looking for a reference point, and saw a microwave tower almost below them. ‘OK, try a full three-sixty-degree circle. See if you can make that tower the centre of it. Just concentrate on keeping a steady rate of turn and bank.’

‘What tower?’ she said and he pointed. ‘That must be Raven Stones,’ she said, ‘The BT tower.’

They started the circle. She was concentrating, glancing sideways to check where the tower was, then ahead at the horizon again. She looked sideways again and this time she stayed looking sideways so that the nose began to dip and the bank steepened.

‘Straighten out,’ said Johnny calmly as the air speed rose and the altimeter began to unwind.

‘Sorry,’ she said, and he helped her with a light finger on his control yoke as she got the nose up.

‘You stopped looking at the horizon,’ he said, ‘that’s what happened.’

‘I was…’ She started to make an excuse then stopped herself. ‘No. You’re right.’ She looked out of the window again. ‘Just let me do one more turn?’ She did a careful wide circle to the left, then straightened up. ‘Can you take it back over the Stray while I have one last look?’ she asked.

‘OK.’ Johnny looked ahead. The Raven Stones microwave tower was dead ahead, and beyond it, almost in line, was the white gleam of the Stray’s golf balls. He concentrated on those, saw her looking down to the side but concerned himself with checking the rest of the sky and didn’t see what it was that held her interest down on the moor below. A small tracked digger, working on a short trench in the middle of nowhere. It was an unusual sight in the middle of a moor – just a digger, a pick-up truck and half a dozen men, standing stock-still, waiting for the plane to go away.

‘Can you do one last circle over the Stray?’ she asked and when they got there, she concentrated hard on the new bunker, Frogwood – the bunker where, Lanie had said, they were all ready for a big induction meeting this evening. It wasn’t a new door, the place she had seen. It was some sort of small, ragged hole. She marked it and its surroundings carefully.