James Long - Sixth Column

‘OK,’ she said, ‘can I have another go?’

Under his coaching, she flew it all the way back until they could see the airport ahead. He called in on the radio and took over as they waited for a small airliner to clear the runway and then they began to angle down to the ground on final approach, ‘It’s a funny one,’ he said, ‘Whatsisname showed me on the check-flight. You have to come in on the high side when the wind’s like this, because you can get a sudden down-draught at the last minute.’

No sooner had he said it than the Cessna abruptly began to sink sickeningly but he was ready with more throttle and the touchdown was almost perfect.

‘Sorry about that last bit,’ he said as they taxied in.

‘It was fine,’ she said, ‘I really, really enjoyed that. Thank you, Johnny.’

There was a warm feeling in his chest as he looked at the expression on her face. ‘You’re a pretty calm customer,’ he said, ‘I’ve known passengers scream on approaches like that.’

‘I can’t think why.’

Back in the office, he did the paperwork, paying cash so she didn’t see any credit cards in his real name.

‘Thanks a lot, Mr Kay. Hope you enjoyed it,’ said Milburn as they left, but, the name once again seemed to slip naturally past her.

What now? he thought. This was an opportunity to grab with both hands, to move their relationship on a few notches. That was the whole point and he had to have something to take back to Sibley. He didn’t even begin to admit to himself that there were other, equally powerful reasons for wanting to spend more time with her.

‘What about a walk somewhere?’ he said as they got in the car.

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘A walk was just what I had in mind. Well, a sort of walk, anyway. You’ve shown me a bit of your world. I’d like to show you a bit of mine.’

He didn’t tumble to it for a while, following the Citroën up the road, through Otley and beyond, turning off to thread their way through lanes and small hamlets. He thought they would be heading towards open moorland, to some favourite spot of Heather’s, and was therefore surprised when she pulled off the lane and stopped on a wide verge barely on the edge of the moor with fields stretching back down the slope behind them, dotted by farm buildings. He looked around, surprised and a little disappointed, unable to see over the rising ground immediately ahead where rough bracken promised the end of cultivation.

‘Where are we?’ He asked but she shook her head, laughing.

‘Follow me.’

There was a farm track heading uphill on the other side of the lane but it wasn’t until they were a few hundred yards up it that the convex slope of the hill revealed the first disconcerting hint of what lay ahead and he kicked himself for not guessing earlier.

With every step they took, more and more was revealed of the stark, startling white bulk of the Ramsgill Stray radome array.

Heather, slightly ahead of him, stopped and turned.

‘There you are. I thought you ought to see it from the ground; see the whole foul extent of the place. Somehow it doesn’t look quite so bad from the air.’

The base was now in full view, stretching out to the east and far to the south of them. The golf balls were not quite circular, but had been constructed of small flat panels round geodesic frames. There were trees in between them screening parts of it.

‘It’s huge,’ he said, ‘huge and horrible. I take your point. Now can we go somewhere nice?’

‘Nice? No, I want to take you inside.’

Just like my first dive, he thought, when my mother conned me all the way to the top of the high diving board saying she wanted to show me something then wouldn’t let me go back down the ladder. He remembered clearly the balance of ridicule against paralysing fear as he looked down at the far off surface of the water and knew he was being allowed no other way out. Heather was calling his bluff, though she didn’t know it, making him one of them. Ivor would probably be very pleased, he thought. He squared his shoulders and headed into the unknown.

The track came to a small road at the edge of the base. Beyond a narrow belt of trees, bushes and scrub there was a high wire fence and beyond that he could see a sweep of brick-built houses set round a perimeter road. The golf balls rose into the sky on the far side of the houses. Johnny saw a remote camera on a spidery metal tower, scanning the fence.

‘Stop looking at the camera,’ Heather said, ‘stick close to me, and when we’re inside just look confident. Like we’re going somewhere. Talk to me as we go.’

Ironic, he thought, she’s teaching her grandfather to suck eggs. I’ve been through school on this one. She’s found out the hard way.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the camera swivel slowly away from them.

‘There’s at least fifty monitor screens inside,’ she said, ‘they can’t watch them all at once. As soon as it’s facing the other way, we have to go quickly.’

‘Go where?’ he said, looking at the fence, but she glanced up at the camera and was off, straight into the bushes. He followed, pushing between the branches and found himself up against the wire mesh, next to her.

‘Damn,’ she said, ‘they’ve fixed it. There was a gap here last time. We’ll just have to climb.’

Climb? He looked up at ten feet of mesh. ‘Won’t someone see us?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ He was talking to her feet. She was up the fence like a cat and he had to go after her. His feet were bigger than hers and the toes of his shoes were blunter so it was hard to get much purchase in the diamond gaps of the mesh. His fingers took the strain, making him wish for gloves. He felt as vulnerable as it was possible to be as they climbed higher, certain that at any moment someone would look out of a window or glance at a monitor. He pushed the thought out of his mind and went on climbing, aware that Heather had already reached the top and swung quickly down the far side.

The top was the worst bit, something he hadn’t been good at even on the assault courses of his extension training, a knife-edge frontier, defying balance. Heather’s voice reached him.

‘Roll over it. Reach down for a handhold, head first, and swing your body down.’

That hurt. His fingers, hooked into the narrow wire, took the full momentum of his thirteen stones swinging downwards. When they could take no more, he let go and fell the remaining distance, rolling as he hit the ground and coming up panting, but unhurt.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you about it as we walk, but don’t look round like a tourist – only if I point things out. You’ve got to be so engrossed in me that no one expects us say anything to them as we pass. Talk very quietly though in case they hear your accent.’

They’d crossed a strange national border into a mongrel land where the worst of British council house architecture was surrounded by a sedimentary layer of Americanization. Some of the cars parked at the kerb seemed to rival the houses in size. Bright red and yellow plastic was everywhere, slides, sandpits, climbing frames; their colours, designed to battle Texan sunshine, undimmed by the Yorkshire sky’s feeble challenge.

There were houses both sides of the curving road, brick houses built in ugly little terraces, four to each terrace with open grass around them. Beyond the houses they came to a school with a red roof, bright pictures taped to the windows surrounded by a playground full of more climbing frames, ladders, scrambling nets though the plastic was here replaced by wood, soaked in red ranch-paint. After that was a bank with an unfamiliar cash machine in the wall, then a big building with a glass conservatory built on one side in which they could see people eating.