Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

It had the engine at the front and a single wing supported above the ‘cockpit’ on a tripod of struts, while longer struts reached out from the base of the tapered square body. Dull metal (aluminium?) covered it from engine to cockpit, but the rest was the usual fabric on wood, still mostly unstained with oil and smoke.

Straight lines was the only thought he had. At least mostly straight and right-angled compared with some of the curves on other machines they had seen. That was what gave this aeroplane its clean no-nonsense look.

“I’d say,” he ventured, “that it should be relatively easy to manufacture.”

And God had smiled on him. Andrew punched the air with a gloved fist. “ Right – you got it in one, Captain. That’s what I was shooting for: don’t add curves and complications just because they look nice. If there’s a good reason, sure. But always think of the guys on the shop floor who’ve got to put the thing together. Right down to the sizes of bolts: we’ve got just six sizes of bolts in her. Some of your fellows are using twenty. ’Part from anything else, that’s twenty mistakes they can make. Isn’t that right, Alec?”

Standing respectfully a step behind him was a squat man in a white craftsman’s apron with the age, moustache and bearing of a foreman. “We don’t make mistakes, Mr Sherring, sir. And my lads would have built her any shape you like and got it right.”

“Sure you would, but what about when you’re turning out twenty airplanes a day and using boys just out of school? They won’t all be skilled craftsmen.” He took a short leather coat from the edge of the cockpit and began wriggling into it. “Get a couple of lads to hold the tail and I’ll take Mr . . . Senator Falcone up.”

He ducked under the wing to fiddle at the engine and Corinna said: “Twenty a day? What’s the boy talking about?”

“War,” said Falcone.

Corinna’s eyes widened and she looked to Ranklin for an opinion. He gave a small shrug, but Andrew had been right. If aeroplanes were any use in war, you would need them by the dozen, expendable as worker bees, not hoarded and protected like the queen. And there was something very American in Andrew’s thinking: this particular aeroplane might be a mere hobby, a waste of time and money, but he had instinctively designed it for factory production. Most Englishmen simply wouldn’t have thought of that.

Andrew came back, pulling a cap from his hip pocket and putting it on backwards whilst Falcone, dark eyes shining, reversed his own cap. It was so much a ceremony that when Ranklin caught Corinna’s eye, they had to look away before they burst into undignified giggles.

Andrew helped Falcone into the cockpit and climbed in after him. The seats were almost side by side, with the passenger’s set back about a foot so that Andrew’s shoulders overlapped Falcone’s. Foreman Alec had taken off his apron and appeared to be injecting petrol into each cylinder of the engine – the whole of which turned as another man moved the propeller around. This must be the peculiar ‘rotary’ engine O’Gilroy had talked about.

Then Andrew, who had been peering into the cockpit, presumably checking his controls, looked out and said the terrible words: “Captain – I’ll take you up when I’ve given Senator Falcone a flip round the block. About twenty minutes, okay?”

Ranklin didn’t hear the quick dialogue between Andrew and the foreman, was barely aware of the propeller being swung, the sudden metallic chatter of the engine and the thin blue-grey smoke whipping away in the propeller blast. He watched dazedly as the two men moved to steady a wing-tip each, helping steer the aeroplane as it trundled, rocking stiffly, across the rough grass.

But when it jounced into the air it left all science and engineering behind and it was obvious that that thing was never meant to carry anything as sane and precious as Capt. M. Ranklin, RA.

As it turned unsteadily over the concrete banking and the sound faded, Corinna asked gravely: “Have you ever been up before?”

“No,” Ranklin croaked.

“Hmm. This really wasn’t my doing. I suppose Andrew thinks you were looking for a ride, coming from the War Office and all that. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. And you don’t want Conall out-bragging you, do you?” She was being sympathetic and understanding and Ranklin could have killed her. A woman’s job was to assume men were fearless and leave them alone with their fear.

“Have you ever flown?” he asked.

“A couple of times. Not with Andrew, though. Somehow, when you’ve seen your kid brother trying to learn to ride a bicycle, you don’t . . . well, you can guess how it is. I loved it – after the first few minutes.”

Was this supposed to make him feel better?

For want of something to say, he commented: “Odd smell the engines have. I suppose it’s the oil burning off, and it seems familiar somehow, but-”

“Castor oil. They use it in all aeroplane engines, Andrew says. Don’t know why. I believe it can have an effect, but only after a long flight.”

I would’t bet on that, Ranklin thought grimly.

By the time the aeroplane came rocking and switchbacking down, propeller turning only in bursts, and bounced back on to the ground, Ranklin was as ready as he ever would be. He had convinced himself he was from the War Office, here to assess the machine for scouting purposes (he had borrowed a map from the car) and decide where a Lewis machine-gun might be mounted on it – if that really was what the future held. In short, something to concentrate on and a pretence to keep up.

Unfortunately, of course, none of this could stop the flimsy contraption dissolving in mid-air and splattering him into utter non-Matthew-Ranklinness on the Surrey landscape.

Foreman Alec escorted him around to the right-hand side where the propeller breeze whipped at his hair ( not wearing his cap backwards seemed to be the last control over his life that he had left). Falcone climbed down, passed over a pair of oily goggles, slapped him on the shoulder – a jolt his stomach could have done without – then helped him up into the cockpit. Short as he was, Ranklin felt like an elephant tiptoeing along a shelf of china, and wasn’t reassured by the way the structure bent or bulged wherever he touched it. Then he was wedged in behind Andrew’s right shoulder on a thin basket seat, the wing above just clearing his head, and grinning falsely to show he was ready.

“All snug?” Andrew bellowed above the engine noise, ignored Ranklin’s answer, and waved to the men back at the wing-tips. The aeroplane swayed around, the engine buzzed, wind swirled in Ranklin’s face and they moved. Jerk, bump, lurch as the tail rose, rock, skid, the thing was obviously quite out of control – then the ground sagged away, the movements stopped being abrupt and became dreadfully soggy and this was flying.

Ranklin relaxed – slightly – his grip on either side of the seat and looked ahead, ready to be impressed. He could see clouds, and they looked like clouds; he looked at the distant horizon and it was a distant horizon. He looked at the ground below, and it was the mouth of Hell, bottomless and beckoning. He looked quickly at the dashboard.

Noticing his stare, Andrew tapped a finger on one instrument – there were only three – that looked like a thermometer and Ranklin saw it registered 500. Miles an hour? He was almost willing to believe it, then realised it must be feet above the ground. They lurched again and he grabbed for his seat, terrified that touching anything else might rip the machine apart or hurl it out of control.

“Few rocks in the air, with this sun,” Andrew yelled. “Get above it soon after a thousand.” That must mean something, but Ranklin didn’t feel like opening his mouth. The sun suddenly glared at him from above the wing and he realised they were turning, the horizon sliding across the nose.