Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

Quite abruptly, like a boat slipping into harbour, it was calm. Almost as if they had stopped. It was still noisy and windy, but a steady noise and wind. The lurching, the ‘rocks in the air’ (irregular air currents?) had gone, and when Andrew turned again it was a smooth inevitable movement as on the racetrack banking below.

Ranklin risked a deep breath and began to take in impressions. The way the fabric on the wing above quivered continuously, and a dribble of oil, flattened by the wind, crawled back along the metal skin ahead. Then, daring to look further, the way the landscape towards the sun was a bright haze but seemed crystal clear in the opposite direction. The vivid smear of white steam or smoke that must be a train – he’d never thought it would show up like that – and the obvious curve of the railway, far more distinct than the tangled, linking roads.

But all oddly blotched, as if someone had spilled huge oil-stains over the landscape . . . which he suddenly realised must be cloud shadows. He had never thought of clouds as having site before, and stared at the evidence until their turn brought the sun sparkling off a bright snake that must be a stretch of river.

That reminded him of the map and he dragged it from a side pocket and cautiously unfolded it in the eddying wind around his lap. Andrew looked down, grinned and shouted: “We’re not lost yet!”

Ranklin shook his head, grinned back and called: “Just experimenting.” He had folded the map to show the immediate area, and taking the sun to be roughly south, tried to pinpoint himself. Andrew tipped the aeroplane towards Ranklin’s side and pointed past him. “Byfleet.”

Ranklin forced himself to look, but the bottomless pit had become toys: houses, trees, cars and carts. And dots with shadows that must be people except that none of them seemed to be moving. Then he realised they must have stopped to stare up at him, or at least the aeroplane wheeling and buzzing in the bright blue. He felt embarrassed, a poseur because he didn’t belong in this aeroplane any more than they did, then grinned at his absurdity.

Andrew was pointing at his own mouth. “Lunch?” Ranklin nodded and swivelled the map to match their turn towards the obvious oval of Brooklands that suddenly appeared from under the nose. It was odd how things below did seem to appear and disappear, how much depended on the angle of the light and one’s own angle, which ranged from the vertical to the horizontal. Map-reading from the air was obviously a new art.

Then he remembered BSA and the lightweight machine-gun. Pointing it straight ahead was one obvious solution, then you could aim the whole aeroplane and – oh dear: he’d forgotten the propeller spinning in the line of fire. And pointing it elsewhere gave a very small arc of fire and obvious aiming-off problems. He was trying to count the variables involved when the rocks in the air, and his stomach, came back. But salvation was in sight and he felt better diving towards it, the engine burping irregularly (but, he hoped, intentionally) than climbing into the unknown.

Then the ground was coming up faster and he was sure Andrew had misjudged it, or maybe was fainting, and braced himself just as the nose lifted and they were down with a thump and rattle which dwindled away to silence except for Andrew saying: “Damn, lost it,” and he realised the engine had stopped.

They rumbled to a stop and Andrew began clambering out. “That’s the one trouble with these engines, they will cut out on landing. We’ll walk it from here.”

He came around to guide Ranklin down, then went to the tail, lifted it to waist height and simply pushed. After an initial grunt, the machine rolled easily, helped by a couple of mechanics attaching themselves to the wing spars. Ranklin walked beside Andrew.

“Tell me,” he asked, “how would you mount a machine-gun on an aeroplane like this?”

“With a hell of a lot of difficulty,” Andrew said. “She’s got a good view downwards, you saw that-”

Ranklin had. It had been quite good enough, thank you.

“-but any other direction, you’d be shooting off struts and wires and probably the prop. Vickers is building one with a pusher prop specially for their machine-gun; your War Office must know about it.”

Ranklin mumbled something about how departments never talked to each other.

Corinna was waiting by the shed, head slightly on one side and wearing a very broad grin. Ranklin could feel himself grinning back like a schoolboy; it was lucky that everybody else was concentrating on the aeroplane.

“Well?” she asked.

“I did enjoy it. After the first few minutes. It’s . . . it’s different,” he said lamely.

“There’s some, like brother Andrew, would say it’s a whole new world.”

Ranklin turned to look back at the sky, realising that until only minutes ago it had always seemed to him a flat, painted backcloth to life. And that to most of the people who had stopped to stare up at him it would never be anything else. “Yes,” he said, “I can see how it could be.”

Corinna was looking at him gravely. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. And came back safely.”

They found O’Gilroy waiting at the Blue Bird. Ranklin had anticipated Falcone’s surprise at seeing his former bodyguard reappear as student aeronaut and old acquaintance of Reynard Sherring’s daughter, but decided to let it happen. If O’Gilroy began to seem a Man of Mystery, and worth confiding in, it might not hurt.

They even managed to keep straight faces when Falcone introduced them to each other, O’Gilroy being “a friend I met in Belgium who also works for your Government”.

“Really?” Ranklin said coolly. “It’s a big government.”

They managed to drift aside while Andrew and Falcone went back to the higher levels of aviation.

“Got me first flight this morning,” O’Gilroy said chirpily.

“What a coincidence.”

O’Gilroy stared. “Ye sneaky bastard. In Sherring’s machine? How did ye like it?”

Ranklin already regretted spoiling O’Gilroy’s triumph. “Terrified the whole time.”

That repaired most of the damage. “I was pretty scared meself – but ye get over it.”

“I’m not so sure. If God had meant me to fly he’d have had me hatched, not born. Do you know the menu here? – what should we order?”

Andrew and Falcone managed to cram in a few mouthfuls between chatter. But this time Ranklin listened carefully. He now felt like a day-tripper hearing two experienced travellers swap reminiscences of a new continent, largely unexplored but with some agreed and well-trodden trails – and already its heroes and martyrs.

One of the heroes was Adolphe Pegoud and Ranklin hadn’t heard of him – but neither, to Andrew’s surprise, had Falcone.

“But you must have done,” Andrew protested. “The Frenchman who flies upside down.”

Falcone’s suspicious look showed he thought this was some Anglo-Saxon leg-pull. But Andrew persisted: “No, honestly, I’m not fooling. It’s been in all the aviation magazines the last two weeks. He’s giving a display here next Thursday.”

“You say it is written about for two weeks? I have been travelling, not reading . . . But, upside down?” He revolved his hands for emphasis.

“Sure. He dives into it . . .” Andrew’s hands joined in. “He’s using a strengthened Bleriot, and he’s tied in, of course. He flies, I don’t know, less than a minute upside down, but it’s for real. Him and Bleriot are both coming here. I want to get hold of Bleriot himself, find out how he’s stressed that machine. Hell, it’s a monoplane, same as mine.” He turned on Ranklin. “If your people can go on saying monoplanes aren’t strong enough after they’ve seen that . . .”