Nicholas Royle - First Novel

As I looked, she tightened her grip on my hand a fraction.

Just enough.

I could see the fine down on the tops of her breasts. The dark cleft between them. They rose and fell as her breathing grew louder. I didn’t want her to do anything more, neither to speak nor to unbutton the blouse further. She seemed to sense this.

When the next jet cast its enormous shadow over the car she watched our reflection in the windscreen as I unbuttoned her blouse, slipped her bra strap off her shoulder, peeled the cup away, caught her breast in my palm. I squeezed it gently, then more firmly, catching her nipple between my forefinger and thumb. I detected a slight wheeze in her increasingly loud breathing. I squeezed harder, heard her catch her breath, a slender moan beginning in her throat that matched precisely the whine of decelerating engines from the next airliner to pass over. With my right hand now I released the other bra strap. Still she sat facing forward as a procession of screaming jets came down low over the car. I made her lean forward far enough to allow me to unclip the bra, which I threw on to the back seat. She reclined again, shivering as my hands moved over her upper body. Cradling her breasts, stroking the back of her neck. Then, with her right hand, Susan Ashton leaned down to release the recline lever and kicked the seat back with her bare feet. The slightest opening of her legs and consequent upwards drift of her skirt constituted no more invitation than I needed. As I shifted across, she unbuckled my trouser belt and a moment later my knees were pressing into the forward edge of her seat. By now we were both breathing heavily and the Golf’s windows were misted over, but every time a plane overflew the car we felt its passage stirring the marrow in our bones. Roughly one plane in every six was a jumbo or equivalent, the noise from which would drown out any sound coming from inside the car. I couldn’t imagine that Susan Ashton was paying the same kind of attention to the air traffic as I was, but she timed her orgasm perfectly, climaxing with a great cry of release as the car shuddered under the sonic onslaught of a 747.

They flew across the island to Zanzibar Town. Dunstan pointed out the Arab Fort and the Anglican cathedral. Frankie spotted the clinic where she and Joan worked on the edge of Stone Town. Dunstan turned the plane gently over the harbour and flew back over the so-called New City in a south-easterly direction so that he was soon flying parallel with the irregular south-west coastline.

‘Uzi Island,’ shouted Dunstan as he pointed to the right. The two girls leaned over the back of his seat to get the best view. Ray watched the way their hips and bellies pressed into Dunstan’s shoulders. The squadron leader seemed to sit up straighter, flexing the muscles at the top of his back, as if maximising the contact between them, his hands maintaining a firm grip on the controls.

‘Where’s that?’ asked Joan, pointing to a tiny settlement in the distance.

‘Kizimkazi. Not much there. Hang on.’ So saying, he banked sharply to the left, unbalancing both girls, who toppled over then picked themselves up, giggling. Ray watched a twitch of pleasure in Dunstan’s cheek. Frankie smiled hopefully in Ray’s direction. He smiled back instinctively, but then looked away.

They crossed the southern end of the island, then kept going out to sea before turning left again and describing an arc that would eventually bring the plane back over land north of Chwaka Bay. The horizon — an indistinct line between two blocks of blue — had become a tensile bow, twisted this way and that in the hands of a skilled archer; the plane itself was Dunstan’s arrow. Ray watched the squadron leader’s hands on the controls, a shaft of sunlight edging through the left-side window and setting the furze of reddish hairs on his forearm ablaze.

The RAF station at Uroa came into view: a couple of low-lying buildings in a small compound, a handful of motorbikes, a Jeep and one truck that Ray surmised would be the supply vehicle driven there by Henshaw and Flynn. As the Hercules overflew the station, several men appeared from inside one of the huts, running out on to the beach waving their arms. Ray looked back as Dunstan took the plane into a steep left-hander and headed away from the island once more.

‘They’re moving the truck,’ Ray said. ‘They’re driving it on to the beach.’

‘They must want to play,’ said Dunstan with a grin as he maintained the angle of turn.

The nurses grabbed on to the back of the pilot’s seat.

‘This is like going round that roundabout,’ said Frankie to Joan, ‘on the back of your Arthur’s motorbike.’

Dunstan looked around.

‘My ex,’ Joan elucidated.

‘What we’re about to do,’ Dunstan yelled, ‘you can’t do on a motorbike, no matter who’s driving it. Hold on tight and don’t look away.’

Dunstan took the plane lower and lower. The beach was a mile away, the altitude dropping rapidly.

‘Five hundred feet,’ Dunstan shouted. ‘At five hundred feet you can make out cows’ legs.’

‘There aren’t any cows,’ Frankie shouted back.

‘That’s why I’m using this,’ said Dunstan, tapping the altimeter with his fingernail.

Ray watched the needle drop to 400, 350, 300.

‘Two hundred and fifty!’ Dunstan roared. ‘Sheep’s legs at two hundred and fifty. Not that there’s any sheep either. We are now officially low flying, and below two hundred and fifty,’ he shouted as he took the rattling hull down even lower, ‘is classified as very low flying.’

The ground looked a lot closer than 250 feet to Ray, who knew that the palm trees on this side of the island grew to a height of more than thirty feet. He watched their fronds shudder in the plane’s wake, then turned to face forward as the station appeared beneath them once more. The truck had been parked in the middle of the beach, the men standing in a ragged line either side of it, raising their hands, waving at the plane. From this distance — by now, free of the palm trees, no more than fifty feet — it was easy to recognise Henshaw, and Flynn, who was jumping up and down in boyish enthusiasm. The girls whooped as the Hercules buzzed the truck, leaving clearance of no more than thirty feet. Ray turned to watch the men raise their hands to cover their faces in the resulting sandstorm.

‘Fifty feet, ladies,’ Dunstan boasted, enjoying showing off. ‘We’re allowed to fly this low to make free drops.’

‘What are free drops when they’re at home?’ asked Joan.

‘When we want to drop stuff without parachutes. Boxes of supplies. Equipment. Whatever.’

Frankie had fallen silent and was looking back at the line of men.

‘What is it?’ Joan asked her.

‘That young one, the blond one, I’m sure I’ve seen him before.’

‘He’s been in the clinic, Frankie. I saw him in the waiting room. He must have been your patient, because he wasn’t mine. I’d have remembered him, if you know what I mean.’

Frankie put her hand up to her mouth as she did remember.

‘Oh God, yes,’ she said. ‘Such a nice boy. He was so embarrassed. I felt terribly sorry for him.’

Dunstan had already started to go around again. The blue out of the left-hand side of the plane was now exclusively that of the ocean, the sky having disappeared. Ray waited to see if Frankie would say more about Flynn. She saw him watching her and fell silent.

She was similar to Victoria, but when Ray looked at her he felt nothing. Victoria was gone and the feelings he had had for her were gone also. It didn’t mean they hadn’t existed. But they could not be reawakened. Something in Ray had changed, even if he didn’t understand the full nature of the change. He didn’t doubt that he was still grieving for Victoria, but living on the island, in the company of Dunstan and the other men, was altering him. He couldn’t have said what he did feel, only what he didn’t.