William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

The time had come. As if in a dream Carriscant found himself climbing into the rear saddle in the nose of the Aero-mobile. The two warping handles jutted up in front of him and without thinking he grasped them firmly, pulling them this way and that and causing the tail to turn in response. A soft salvo of flash powder greeted this impulsive gesture. Behind him Pantaleon began to swing the propeller. Carriscant prayed earnestly for a fuel leak, a faulty connection, a blown gasket, anything, but on the third attempt the pistons fired and the shrill irate roar of the Flanquin filled his ears. He felt the vibrations travel up his spine and suddenly he wished he was wearing different clothes: he felt a complete fool in his white linen suit and his glossy English brogues. Pantaleon flapped round the wing in his leather coat as the second propeller began to turn. He climbed into the forward saddle and inserted his feet into the stirrup controls. He twisted round to face Carriscant, his eyes bright, two darker spots on his brown face where his blush glowed.

'Thank you, my friend,' he said emotionally. 'All that bad feeling is behind us now. Please tell me it's so.'

'Completely forgotten, Panta.' He paused. 'Now, you're quite sure this is safe.'

'You're more at risk in a carromato,' he said, with serene confidence. 'Now remember, only when I reach up for the air-catcher do you take over the warp controls. Otherwise, do nothing.'

'Right.'

Pantaleon reached up to the twin handles above his shoulder and pushed them, raising the long flap on the leading edge to its full extent. Then he turned up the throttle control to full and the Aero-mobile began to thrum and judder violently. He gave the signal to the boy to pull away the wooden chocks and released the brake on the bicycle wheels.

With a brutal jerk the Aero-mobile lurched forward. Carriscant was flung backwards and as the whip crack effect hurled him forward again his nose smashed heavily into Pantaleon's back between his shoulder blades. His vision dimmed as his eyes flooded with salty tears and he sensed, rather than saw, the hot plumes of blood jet from his nostrils.

He was aware of the tremendous noise of the engine and the hollow drumming sound of the wheels on the roadway planks as the machine began to pick up speed. As he blinked his eyes clear he saw the dark dripping splash of his blood on Pantaleon's coat back and, to his horror, he realised that his entire front was a sopping swathe of red, that pools had gathered in the creases in his lap and that more was still snorting from his nose.

'Stop!' he screamed. 'You've got to stop it!'

Pantaleon was sitting hunched forward over his controls, oblivious, like a racing cyclist in a sprint. Carriscant now felt the speed of their passage whip the ribbons of blood and snot away from his nose to sprinkle the rear section behind him, the heavy drops pattering on the stretched fabric. Then there was a sudden decrease in noise and he. realised the drumming of the wheels had ceased. Beyond his left thigh he saw the cruciform shadow of the Aero-mobile begin to shrink slowly. To his absolute horror he realised that they had taken to the air.

In front of him Pantaleon began to whoop and caw like some maddened, tormented bird. Glancing down, he saw the white discs of the lopped trees at the meadow's end flash beneath them and he realised they were considerably higher than ten feet from the ground. The engine too seemed to be straining unnaturally hard as the sensation of forward motion gave way and was replaced by a kind of dreamlike buoyancy as the Aero-mobile seemed to rise almost vertically in the air like a gull gliding in a warm thermal.

'We're too high!' Carriscant yelled.

Pantaleon turned, gaped in shock, and almost fell from his saddle at the sight of his blood-boltered passenger.

'My God! What happened?'

'We're too fucking high!' Carriscant screamed in his face.

'Take the controls!'

Panicking, suddenly obedient, Carriscant gripped the two warping levers and felt the animate vibration of the flying machine transfer itself to his body. Pantaleon reached up and took hold of the air-catcher flap handles. And pulled down.

The machine shuddered and the Aero-mobile slipped nervily sideways.

'Mother of God!' Pantaleon cried in alarm.

Carriscant felt one of the warping levers whip itself forward out of his grasp and the machine began to descend in a quickening sideways glide to the left. Carriscant reached forward and tugged on the handle. It would not move, jammed fast.

'We've passed it!' Pantaleon screeched, pointing.

Over on the right Carriscant saw the square of white canvas disappear beneath the lower wing. They were higher than the bamboo still, he saw, higher than the palm trees. Jesus. Fifty, sixty feet, he thought. Oh my God. But the left side wings were still pointing down and there was no doubt that their side-slipping descent was growing speedier by the second.

Suddenly the engine cut out. The straining roar was replaced by a pleasant whistling and creaking noise as the wind sang over the stretched wires and the wooden armature of the flying machine stretched and contracted beneath these unfamiliar stresses.

'What's happening?' he yelled in Pantaleon's ear.

'We've done it, my friend! We've done it!' Pantaleon sobbed.

Over to the right Carriscant saw the belvedere of Sam-paloc convent and suddenly thought crazily – 'low flying dove'. In front of him, over Pantaleon's heaving shoulders, he saw the thick green mass of the riverine trees that marked the course of the San Roque estero.

Lower, lower, they went and the pitch of the singing wires grew shriller and less pleasant.

To his absolute shock he saw that Pantaleon was no longer bothering to work the controls. His face was buried in his hands as he sobbed fiercely in his triumph, blubbing and laughing in his moment of ecstasy.

Carriscant tugged vainly at his jammed warping control.

They swooped over a terrified peasant in his carabao cart.

The sunlit green wall of trees whooshed up to meet them.

The last sounds he heard were Pantaleon's fervent sobs and the ethereal arctic whistle of the bracing wires.

He never felt the impact, but he could not have been unconscious for very long. He came to, winded, on his back, with a horrible silence in his ears. He became aware of a ghastly unfamiliar coolness in his legs from the waist down. His first thought was: I am paralysed and I shall never live with Delphine. After a second or two's smouldering, bitter despair he raised his head and realised his legs were submerged in water while his torso rested on a crescent of sand formed by a side eddy of the San Roque creek. Then he was jolted anew by the blood-soaked front of his suit, a coruscating red in the hazy sunshine. I must have lost pints, he thought vaguely, a good gallon. He touched his nose gently: tender but unbroken. He rolled on to his front and crawled out of the water. Then he vomited all the beer he had drunk, a lifetime ago, it seemed. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stood up with great care.

The Aero-mobile was twenty yards away, a crumpled sad-looking mess; its wings sheered off and folded back along its body by the impact of the two trees it had plunged between. Carriscant approached unsteadily. His entire body was beginning to ache. There was no sign of Pantaleon.

He crouched by the water's edge and washed his face clean of his blood. He told himself that any second now he would hear that daft elated voice saying, 'My God, Salvador, what did I tell you! We're the most famous men of our time!' but all that came to his ears was the disturbed twittering of the river birds and the sonorous ringing of the convent bell at Sampaloc, summoning its stunned citizens to come to the aid of the men in the machine that fell from the sky.