Jon Cleary - High Road to China

‘You’d have thought she’d been flying Brisfits all her life. She’s a natural, George.’

‘I don’t think she liked me laying down the law about how much baggage she could take with her. That Chink maid who came down with her must have thought she was going in a Zeppelin. She’d packed four suitcases for her.’

Henty, Sun Nan and Eve came across from the Rolls-Royce, where Anna, the maid, stood with the three suitcases that had been refused by Weyman. Eve and Sun were dressed in brand-new flying suits and both wore helmets; Eve carried the lacquered wooden box, now wrapped in hessian, under her arm and Sun carried his bowler hat under his. Eve looked pale but determined and Sun looked pale and scared.

‘Mr Sun tells me he has never flown before,’ Eve said.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Weyman. ‘We could run into rough weather all the way across France.’

‘Mr Weyman, we had better get one thing straight before we leave. I need both you and Mr O’Malley, but I need Mr Sun much more than either of you. He refuses to tell me who his master is or where he is to be found, for fear that as soon as we take off Mr Henty will cable the authorities in Shanghai and try to have a rescue mission mounted from that end. I shouldn’t want to risk my father’s life by having such a mission look for him, but Mr Sun doesn’t trust me. So I need him to guide us to where my father is being held captive. Don’t forget that – and keep your anti-Chinese feelings to yourself. I’m paying you for your skill as a mechanic and pilot, not for your opinions on the Chinese.’

Weyman flushed and for a moment it looked as if he was going to explode in a fury of abuse and walk away. Eve wondered if she had been too outspoken; if George Weyman did walk away it might be too late to get someone to replace him. But she could not back down; he had to understand there were other considerations that over-rode his stupid prejudices. She stared at him, painfully aware of the tightness of her jaw; her tear ducts were ready to burst, but she kept them dammed. She was determined there would be only one boss on this journey and it would be she. It was her father they were setting out to rescue and nothing was going to stop her.

‘Righto,’ Weyman at last said, ungraciously. ‘But don’t ask me to let him ride in the cockpit behind me. I’ll never trust the blighters.’

Then he did turn and walk away, but Eve knew she had established who was boss. Eager to be gone before more complications arose, she went across and said goodbye to Anna, who wept, then sat down on the suitcases, like a refugee stranded with nowhere to flee to. Eve left her and went back to Henty.

‘Goodbye, Mr Henty. I’ll cable you whenever possible to let you know how we’re progressing.’

‘I have your route,’ said Henty. ‘If there is any word from your father in the meantime, I’ll send a wireless message to the British embassies. Good luck.’

He ignored Sun Nan, passing him to shake hands with O’Malley. Then he walked back to the Rolls-Royce and stood beside it, now and again jabbing his stick into the ground, still frustrated by his helplessness. He knew China better than any of those who were about to take off, with the exception of Sun Nan, but he knew his leg would not have stood up to the journey that lay ahead. Sick at heart, envious, he watched the three planes taxi down to the end of the field.

In the lead Bristol, O’Malley checked his instruments, looked to either side of him at the other two planes, then raised his hand. He pushed the throttle forward, set the rudder to neutral, let the plane pick up speed as it began to roll. He had always flown by the seat of his pants, knowing the exact moment when whatever had to be done should be done; but this Bristol was carrying a bigger weight load than he had ever taken into the air before and he kept an eye on the airspeed indicator. He saw it go past the 45 miles an hour when one could usually lift the machine off the ground; he let it build, 50, 55, then he gently pulled the stick back and felt, or rather sensed, the ground slip away from beneath him. As soon as he was airborne, knew he had enough power to keep climbing, he looked back. But there was no need for him to be anxious. Eve Tozer and George Weyman were climbing behind him, coming up smoothly and banking to follow him as he set the course down through the valley to Redhill, then to follow the railway line to Ashford in Kent and on to the coast. They were flying in wartime V-formation with O’Malley as leader. Three armed warplanes flying in war formation, heading for some sort of showdown on the other side of the world: I’m dreaming, thought O’Malley. Then he looked up at the clouds closing down on him, heard the sirens of the wind singing as they brushed by him, felt their fingers against his face, knew the dream was the heart of reality and rejoiced.

That day the world was having its usual convulsions. Bolshevist troops were advancing on Warsaw and falling back before Baron Wrangel’s White Army in the Crimea; Parer and McIntosh landed in their DH9 in Darwin, having taken exactly eight months to fly the 10,000 miles from London; there was heavy selling on the New York Stock Exchange; Landru, the French Bluebeard, was swapping jokes with newspapermen while police sifted the ashes in his villa for the bones of his victims. News was being made that might become history or just another tick in the continuing tremor of time passing.

But O’Malley, Eve and Weyman knew none of that and would not have cared if they had known. Sun Nan, heart in mouth, bowler hat pressed to his stomach like a poultice, had never had any interest in the world outside China anyway. He peered ahead through his goggles, looking for the Middle Kingdom beyond the grey horizon.

They crossed the coast at Folkestone, O’Malley watching the thunderheads building up in the Channel to the south of them. Twenty-five minutes later they were over the mouth of the Somme, the thunderstorms behind them.

A few more minutes’ flying, then familiar territory to O’Malley and Weyman lay below. O’Malley looked back and across, pointed down at the ground. Weyman nodded, then O’Malley saw him thump his gloved hand on the cockpit rim in an angry gesture. O’Malley understood, but gestures now were futile and too late. He looked down at the flat landscape, searched for the hill he had walked up that July morning four years ago; but at this height there were no hills. He saw the trenches zigzagging across the earth, the scar tissue of war; weeds and bushes and wild flowers were growing in them now, but in his mind they were only proud flesh on the wounds. He flew over the shattered towns and villages, saw the rebuilding going on; people stopped in the squares and looked up, but nobody waved. A cleared patch of ground stood in the loop of a winding road; crosses, like white asterisks, stood in ranks, the dead drawn up for inspection. They died in ranks like that, O’Malley thought. Oh Christ! he yelled aloud into the wind and behind his goggles his eyes streamed.

Eve saw the wings of the plane ahead of her wobble; she moved up closer, wondering what message O’Malley wanted to convey to her. But he didn’t look towards her; instead she saw him push his goggles up and wipe his eyes with a handkerchief. Then she looked down at the ground, saw the trenches and the ruined farmhouses and the church with the shattered steeple like a broken tooth, and remembered Arthur Henty telling her that more men had died that first morning of the battle on the ground below her than on any other day in the entire history of war. And for what? Henty had said; but she had known he had not been asking the question of her. Then she saw O’Malley looking across at her and she lifted her hand and waved. It was meant to be a gesture of sympathy, but there was no way of knowing that he understood it.