Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

This wasn’t the first time he had been to Brooklands, a banked motor-racing track built by a rich landowner to promote British motoring and please his motor-mad young wife. Ranklin had gone once to watch a motor-race, and then with a brother officer who wanted to test his new motor-car on the banking. But it was only in the last few years that aviators had begun to use the space enclosed by the track as a flying field, sharing it with a sewage farm into which they apparently crashed so regularly that a special hosing-down hut had been added.

They drove in through a tunnel under the banking on the north side and then down beside the finishing straight to the ‘aviation village’ at the south end. This was a collection of wooden buildings and a long terrace of identical sheds backing onto the banking of the motor track. Nobody seemed to be flying, but there were half a dozen aeroplanes of various shapes being tinkered with in front of the sheds. Ranklin later learnt that by mid-morning the day was already nearly half over, the windless hours around dawn and dusk being the safest time for novice pilots and unproven aeroplanes.

Corinna seemed to know her way around and, inevitably, to be known by almost everybody. She replied cheerily to several men in shirt-sleeves and oil smudges (whose names, Ranklin guessed, she couldn’t remember) as she led the way to the Blue Bird Restaurant, a glassed conservatory in front of one of the workshops. They sat down at an outside table and Ranklin ordered coffee.

Falcone sat itchily, obviously longing to get closer to the aeroplanes, but Corinna smiled reassuringly and said: “Andrew’ll show you around and introduce you to people.”

“He knows you are here?”

“He knows. He’ll just be scraping off the top layer of grease.” There was a firmness in her voice that suggested a past occasion when Andrew had turned up unfit for social consumption.

Ranklin held up his pipe. “D’you mind if I . . .?” She smiled approval and he lit it. In truth, she didn’t approve of smoking at all, but would have choked to death rather than give men yet another excuse to get away by themselves. In the same spirit, she looked grimly at two little groups of wives and girlfriends making the best of each other’s company while the men got on with their latest craze. Without being a tomboy, Corinna would happily have ruined her long white gloves rather than be left to gossip on the sidelines.

Coffee and Andrew Sherring arrived simultaneously. He was clearly his father’s son, towering over Ranklin and Falcone, but to anyone who had met Reynard this was a papier-mache version of the granite original. He carried his height and broad shoulders in a self-conscious stoop.

He shook hands, obviously having put on gloves for that purpose, since he was in shirt-sleeves and a half-buttoned waistcoat. Then he kissed Corinna. “Hi, little sister. I’m afraid we haven’t got much to show you today, most of the guys are-”

“At Hendon, we know. But Senator Falcone prefers a quiet word with the back-room boys. And did you get my telegram yesterday?”

“Oh sure. I got your pal O’Gilroy fixed up with the Bristol school here. He’ll probably be around at lunchtime.”

“Thank you. Now-” clearly handing out a reward; “-Senator Falcone was telling me he was one of the guys behind the volunteer flotilla that went to Africa a couple of years back.”

From that moment, she and Ranklin became part of the landscape. Andrew swung round on Falcone and his craggy-soft face cracked into a grin. “That’s really so, sir? Then you know Cagno and Manissero? And maybe Professor Panetti?”

“But of course, they are my friends.” Falcone’s smile was just as delighted.

Andrew gulped his coffee. “Let me introduce you to a couple of the boys before they get off for Hendon. Corrie, can you and . . . ?” He waved a hand at Ranklin, having forgotten his name already.

Corinna smiled indulgently. “You go right ahead, we’ll trail along in your dust. But you’d better find the Senator some overalls if-”

Falcone made a sweeping gesture across his jacket, which was pale enough to show a fly’s footprint, said: “Oh, poof,” and hurried to match Andrew’s lanky stride.

“Greater love of machinery hath no man than he who won’t take off a twenty-dollar coat to get a closer look at it.” She sipped her coffee. “You, my poor darling, are obviously an anachronism. I’ve never known you get excited by so much as a pencil sharpener.”

“I have a secret vice: leave me alone with an artillery piece and I can’t keep my hands to myself.”

“Is that so? Remind me not to share a room with one: I might be offended if I forced you to choose. I suppose I shouldn’t ask just why you and Conall are interested in the Senator.”

“O’Gilroy’s here quite genuinely-”

“But not you.”

Ranklin shrugged casually. “He’s interested in buying stuff for the Italian Army, like aeroplanes. We’re interested in his interest. By the way, d’you know anything about BSA? – Birmingham Small Arms?”

“Never heard of it, but I’ll listen now.” What they both heard was a sudden clattering roar from across the tarmac. “Shall we join the grease monkeys?”

Like most people, Ranklin had spottted few differences between the various aeroplanes he had glimpsed in the recent skies. If pushed, he might have recalled that some appeared to be double-decked in the matter of wings whilst others were single-decked – but no more. Now, after half an hour wandering around in the wake of Andrew Sherring and Falcone, and overhearing their chatter, he was astonished by the variety which they saw in even the half-dozen aeroplanes on view.

Clearly they varied in size: from just over twenty feet from wing-tip to wing-tip to twice that. And the chassis that held the ground wheels ranged from what looked like an upended iron bedstead bound with rubber bands to simple V-shapes clutching the axle. Some had the engine and propeller (he was impressed by the propellers, which were beautifully carved wooden sculptures) at the front, others at the back, which meant that the body of the aeroplane had to detour around them in a forest of struts and wires. Wires! – he had never been close enough to realise that every aeroplane was held together by what looked like the offspring of a birdcage and a harp.

But there were as many common denominators as differences: the framework was always of carefully shaped wooden struts and spars (he wasn’t surprised to learn that there were many ex-boatbuilders among the workers) covered with tight-stretched fabric, often patched, and varnished against the weather. He flicked a finger surreptitiously against one machine and it was taut as a drum. And gradually he began to appreciate a mechanical logic in what he saw.

In fact, Ranklin had a reasonably good grounding in simple science and engineering: the first of his two years at the Royal Military Academy had been shared with future Engineer officers. Now he tried to recall that teaching and see how machines which he could clearly put out of action with a penknife might charge through the air at speeds which, as wind, would uproot strong trees and flip roofs off houses.

Abruptly he realised they were now standing outside a workshop and by a quite simple-looking machine, sparkling with fresh varnish, which Andrew had been explaining, and he had just said: “Do you think this could make Farnborough drop their stupid ban on monoplanes, Captain?”

Oh God, Ranklin thought: this is Andrew’s aeroplane and I haven’t heard a word he’s said about it. And he thinks I’m something to do with the Flying Corps and the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough. Speaking very slowly in a self-deprecatory tone he said: “I’m brand new to flying, just getting my eye in,” while he stared desperately at the aeroplane’s lines and rummaged through his thoughts like a man searching his desk for a lost cheque.