James Long - Sixth Column

He put the mike down. ‘The chopper will only take Parry,’ he said. ‘It’s not one of the bigger ones and it has a medical team on board for your VIP.’

Visions of Cherbourg, their precious witness, Heather’s continued freedom dwindled.

‘So what about us?’

‘You like Alabama?’ said the Captain, and he chuckled.

It was Sunday, so the 10.15 a.m. train from Plymouth to London was full of holiday-makers returning home, children racing up and down the aisle and depressed parents queuing in the buffet for crisps, lager and British Rail bacon-and-tomato rolls, whose salty smell had spread through their carriage.

Captain Lammers had let his joke stand for an hour, enjoying their discomfiture before letting them in on the plan. They were to be transferred to a suitable ship heading for a UK port as soon as it could be arranged. The navy came to their rescue in the late afternoon, by which time the Waspik Trader was a hundred miles further west. Captain Lammers wasn’t going to screw up his schedule any more than was strictly necessary. There had been several more interviews over the RT during the afternoon. Johnny had turned down every request to talk but the Captain seemed to like temporary celebrity status and accepted them all.

The wind had dropped by then and the sea was much calmer. They met HMS Brilliant forty miles off Lyme Regis and the frigate’s seamen came across to collect them in one of her boats. Heather had been quiet and withdrawn for most of the afternoon. Johnny didn’t know how to reach her through his own haze of after-shock. Jo had reacted in the opposite way, bubbling with humour, interested in everything around her. ‘Whoops, here we go again,’ she said as they lifted her into a breeches buoy for the transfer to Brilliant’s boat.

‘Are you all right?’ said Johnny.

‘All right?’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t for your poor dad, I’d be having the time of my life. I haven’t had so much excitement since I’ve been in the chair. It’s better than a day at Alton Towers.’

Heather and Johnny said grateful farewells to Captain Lammers. ‘We look after your toy for you,’ he said gruffly as they looked forward at the plane. ‘Don’t know how you get it back, though.’

Johnny studied the remains through the bridge windows. ‘I think it’s for the scrap heap. Anyway I’m not too sure I want to do any more flying for a while.’

The messages from the hospital were noncommittal. Sir Michael was conscious but his condition was giving cause for some concern. He was running a fever. The word ‘comfortable’ was singularly lacking from the bulletins they were given.

Devonport dockyard found them beds for the night within the base where the medical officer checked them over carefully and decided Johnny’s bruised face would mend by itself. He’d called the hospital again as soon as they were ashore. There was no improvement.

On Sunday morning they had had to run the gauntlet of a pack of photographers at the dockyard gates but the naval driver, lending himself enthusiastically to the job, got them to the station by some high-speed driving through the backstreets without any of the press following. They wheeled Jo rapidly through the station and just caught the 10.15 to London. The Sunday Mirror , the News of the World and the Mail on Sunday were very much in evidence around them. They had gone to town on the story. Each of them carried banner headlines with variations on the ‘Diplomat in mid-Channel air drama’ theme. There were photos of Sir Michael and imaginative diagrams of how they’d landed the plane.

No one was taking any notice of them and Johnny hoped that meant their own faces didn’t feature in any of the other papers. He felt utterly weary, aching where his body was dealing with the damage caused by the force of the crash. He borrowed an Observer and the three of them pored over it. It described Sir Michael’s condition as ‘critical’, which came as a shock until they reassured themselves that they had spoken to the hospital much more recently than the paper could possibly have done.

The papers didn’t know Johnny was Sir Michael’s son. All they had was his name and that he lived in London, but they did know he was a hero. That was the nub of it and Captain Lammers, for all his apparent anger at the time, was the main witness to that. He was quoted as saying he would not have thought the landing was possible and that Johnny was a skilful and daring young pilot.

The train was completely full and there was an over-friendly man in the other seat at their table, with the rest of his family across the aisle. He saw them looking at the story and decided to share his thoughts with them. ‘Bloody smart, eh?’ he said. ‘Incredible, really. I mean that bloke saved their lives, didn’t he? Bloody quick thinking, that. Must be Superman, that bloke must.’ He went on in the same vein for a couple of minutes or more without adding greatly to the store of original thought on the matter.

Heather, sitting next to Johnny, reached for his hand, out of sight under the table and squeezed it. She didn’t let it go.

They couldn’t talk about it, not with their companion opposite certain to hear, but it was all they wanted to talk about. Johnny leaned back, acutely conscious of the tiny movements of Heather’s fingers in his hand, aware that she was as worn-out as he. Jo on the other hand, was still on some sort of high, revitalized by the whole experience. She started humming and winked at them. It was a familiar tune but in his worn-out state, it took a while for Johnny to put words to it. He got it suddenly, ‘Trains and boats and planes…’ and despite himself, he nearly laughed. Something showed on Heather’s face too and the man opposite looked slightly uncomfortable as though he thought he might be the butt of this private joke.

Jo broke the spell, looking through the rest of the paper and saying suddenly, ‘Here. Look at this.’ She pushed it over, stabbing at one of the articles with her finger. It was an account of the previous week’s events at the Hurst Inquiry, centring on the admission by a former Conservative junior minister that he’d approved export permits for a variety of dubious weaponry. At the end of the article, it listed the attractions coming up at the Inquiry in the week ahead. Monday, it said, 11 a.m. Sir Greville Kay, GKC Chemicals.

A taxi from Reading reunited them with the Volvo at the airfield. Frankie was nowhere in sight and Johnny had no wish to talk to anyone else so they drove off as quickly as possible. It was the first time the three of them had really been completely by themselves since the crash and Johnny couldn’t sidetrack the worry in the forefront of his mind.

‘This Dr Beevor,’ he said, ‘tell me the whole thing in detail. ‘How exactly does her evidence come into it?’

‘She would have been the independent witness to Hayter’s assault. I’ve only heard it second hand. Jo, you tell him.’

‘Heather was unconscious, you see,’ said Jo. ‘I was in the car, out on the side road, because of the wheelchair, waiting for her. She and Rachel – you won’t have met Rachel yet – climbed in. I suppose I waited about half an hour then Rachel came tearing up the road, told me Heather had been knocked out.’

‘She saw it happen?’

‘No, she didn’t,’ Heather said. ‘I was in the foyer of one of the bunkers. She was outside by the domes, but she saw me being carried out and she could see it looked pretty bad, so she ran to get help.’

‘Anyway,’ said Jo, ‘we wanted to go and phone for help but we were in Heather’s car and she had the keys you see, so Rachel got me out into the chair and we flagged down a car. The first one was a farmer in a Land Rover and he just didn’t want to know. He drove off but the second one was a little Ford with a woman in it, which was a bit more hopeful. We told her there was someone hurt in the base and she said, “well you’re in luck ’cos I’m a doctor.”’