Jon Cleary - High Road to China

‘The Bristol will stay up for three hours,’ I said. ‘I flew one for a while during the war. Say about three hundred miles or a little over.’

‘We could stretch that by fitting extra tanks,’ said George. ‘Assuming you cruise around ninety to one hundred miles an hour, with the extra tanks you’d probably get another hundred, possibly more, to your range. Let’s say four hundred and fifty miles maximum.’

Miss Tozer stared at the Bristol Fighter. It had been a great warplane, a two-seater almost as manoeuvrable as any single-seater and twice as effective because it had carried two guns, one fired straight ahead by the pilot and the other able to be fired in a complete circle by the observer. George and I had flown as a team in one of them and in three months we had brought down nine Huns. Miss Tozer walked round the machine, then came back to us.

‘Mr O’Malley, could you get us some maps? I think we need to sit down and have a talk. Perhaps we could go back to your office?’

Two people in our office crowded it; a four-person conference would have split it at the seams. ‘We’ll go back to our shed – we can find a spot there where we can have a talk. George will have to scout around for some maps – all we have are some of England and some old war maps of France and Belgium. But before he goes scrounging – ’

‘Yes?’

‘This machine won’t do for what you have in mind. For one thing, it can carry only you and Mr Sun Nan. There won’t be room for a second pilot. You mentioned the possibility of a second machine, but all we have is our Camel. It wouldn’t have sufficient range.’

She was quiet for a moment. She had a habit, that I was to come to recognize later, of holding her chin in one hand, almost as if she had a toothache; but it was her pensive attitude, as if she were holding her head steady while she deliberated. Then: ‘How many other Bristol Fighters are there here?’

‘At least half a dozen,’ said George. ‘Two of them are in as good condition as this one.’

‘They happen to be two on which we have an option,’ I said.

‘I thought you might have,’ said Miss Tozer, and suddenly I knew she had already begun to doubt Henty’s recommendation of me as a gentleman. ‘How much would they cost?’

I almost quoted the ADC price; but then I thought, nothing risked, nothing profited. ‘Roughly £750 each. How many were you thinking of buying?’

Miss Tozer looking at George, the honest broker. ‘What would you say they would cost, Mr Weyman?’

George swallowed, didn’t look at me. ‘By the time the extra tanks and everything had been fitted, about £750.’ There went our profit: I had forgotten all the extras that would be needed. ‘It’s a fair price, Miss Tozer.’

‘I’m sure it is, Mr Weyman,’ she said, not looking at me. ‘Do you have a pilot’s licence?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll buy three.’ She took her hand away from her chin; she had all her thoughts sorted out. ‘I’ll fly this one and you and Mr O’Malley can fly the other two. We’ll fit extra tanks to each of them – we can put an extra tank on the top wing, can’t we? – but your two machines will also have extra tanks in the rear cockpits. In other words we can carry our own emergency supply dump.’

I was amazed at the calm, cold efficiency of this beautiful girl who, without benefit of maps, with no knowledge of the route she would have to fly, had already anticipated some of the basic problems such a trip would present. It was as if she had had a satellite’s view of the world between England and China. Except, of course, that in those days anyone would have been locked up who had suggested such a view was possible. Only God’s eye was the empyrean one then and I’m sure He occasionally shut it in disgust at what He saw.

‘Could you find some maps, Mr Weyman? In the meantime, Mr O’Malley, I’d like some tea.’

George, looking slightly dazed, went off. I said, ‘Pardon me for mentioning it, Miss Tozer, but I don’t think George and I have yet agreed to accompany you. I’m not taking off at twenty four hours’ notice to fly all the way to China and not know why I’m going.’

‘You’ll be well paid. Isn’t that a good enough reason for going?’

‘It’s a good reason, but it’s not enough.’

We had now walked back to our shed. The Camel stood in the middle of it, the star lodger. Against one wall were the camp beds of the other two lodgers, George and me. Near the beds were a kitchen table, two chairs, a cupboard with a sagging door, a stove that looked like something that had fallen off George Stephenson’s Rocket; pots and pans hung on nails on the wall, like the armour of the poor, and a length of old parachute silk was a curtain that hid the rack on which hung our skimpy wardrobe. In the far corner there was a chipped bath and a rough bench on which stood a basin and a large bedroom jug. The bench continued along the wall, holding all George’s tools, till it came up against the cubby-hole that was our office. The only hint of affluence in the place was the Camel and it already showed the pockmarks of the surrounding poverty.

Miss Tozer looked around her. ‘Who lives here?’

‘We do.’

Even Henty looked stunned, as if he had bought a ticket for Ascot and found himself in the Potteries. He rushed to our defence: ‘It’s only temporary, I’m sure.’

‘That’s what we said when we moved in here over a year ago. Don’t apologize for us, Henty. We’re broke. Kaiser Bill could raise more credit at our bank than we could.’ Since George had already wiped out the profit I’d been anticipating, I could afford to be honest; it was about all that I could afford. I turned to Miss Tozer, took a nose-dive. ‘Never mind the reason why you want to fly to China. We’ll go with you. As you said, the money is good enough reason.’

‘I admire your honesty, Mr O’Malley.’ But she sounded as if she was surprised by it, too. She walked out again to the open doors of the shed, stood staring off into the distance – towards China? Perhaps: she was looking east. She took something from the pocket of her suit, fondled it without looking at it: it was a gold watch and chain. Then she came back to us. ‘I’ll tell you why I have to fly to China.’

Which she did, her voice faltering only once, when she mentioned that her father would be killed if we did not reach Hunan by the deadline date. My ear faltered, too, because I found it hard to believe what she was telling me. But the proof was there in her face and in that of Henty behind her.

‘It may be dangerous, Mr O’Malley. Perhaps now you won’t want to come.’

‘She needs your help,’ said Henty before I could volunteer to be a hero; then looked at his crippled leg with hate. ‘I wish to God I could go!’

George came back, one big hand clutching a roll of maps, the other holding a school atlas. I told him why Miss Tozer wanted us to fly to China with her. He listened at first as if I were telling him about a proposed joy-ride to the Isle of Wight; then abruptly he exploded. He swung round, pointing a rifle-barrel of an arm at Mr Sun Nan still standing beside the Rolls-Royce.

‘Is he part of this? You mean you take that sort of threat from a – a damned Chinaman? I’d kill the swine!’

‘If we kill him, Mr Weyman, we’ll probably also kill my father. If you dislike the Chinese so much, perhaps you’d better not come with us.’

‘He’ll come,’ I said. ‘We need him. We’ll go with you, but it will cost £500 for each of us and our return fares.’

‘Five hundred each!’ Henty, I hadn’t suspected, had a bookkeeper’s mind. ‘That’s preposterous! You’re making money out of someone else’s difficulty!’