by Nevil Shute
She climbed away straight from the aerodrome till she was at about seven hundred feet, then levelled off and did a wide turn to the left. She flew back over the aerodrome and did a couple of steeper turns, and by that time I knew that she was gaining confidence. Then she went over downwind and commenced the gliding turns that would bring her close up to the hedge. She came in rather high but carried on and touched down about the middle of the aerodrome, bounced two or three times, and came to rest. I saw her looking towards me as I stood upon the tarmac, and I signalled to her to go on and do another.
When she taxied the machine into the hangar she was flushed and excited. I walked up to the cockpit as she came to rest. ‘That was all right,’ I said. ‘Were you quite comfortable?’
She pulled her helmet off. ‘It was marvellous,’ she said. ‘The first one was a rotten landing, I’m afraid.’
‘It wasn’t too bad,’ I told her. ‘The second one was better. You came in a bit high on the first one. Did that upset you?’
‘Yes, it did,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure if I ought to put on engine and go round again, and I dithered a bit over that, and then I decided there was plenty of room. I think it put me off.’
‘That’ll all come right with a bit of practice,’ I said.
She nodded, and got out of the machine. And then she turned to me and said quite seriously, ‘I don’t know how to say what I’m feeling, Captain Pascoe. But I do want to thank you for all you’ve done in teaching me. I felt so safe.’
I laughed. ‘I’m glad of that, Mrs Marshall. It’s what I’m here for, after all.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But there are ways and ways of doing things.’ And then she said, ‘If I come out again this afternoon, could I have another go?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘It would be a very good thing. I’ll do one circuit with you first, and then if everything’s okay you can take it by yourself again.’
She came for her appointment at three o’clock. I was in the air with another pupil and glanced at my watch when I saw the Alvis on the road, but she was ten minutes early and I finished my half hour. When we landed I found her sitting in the other Moth, the one that she had flown that morning, savouring it, thinking about flying.
‘I won’t be a minute,’ I said as I passed her.
She smiled. ‘Don’t hurry. I’m quite happy.’
I came out five minutes later and got into the machine, and sat there while she took it off and did a circuit of the aerodrome and landed it again. Then I turned and nodded to her, and got out of the machine, and stood beside her. ‘She’s all yours,’ I said. ‘Don’t stay up longer than half an hour – I don’t want you to get tired. Do four or five landings. Don’t get out of sight of the aerodrome, but if you should lose sight of it just come down low and look around the horizon till you see the gasometer. All okay?’
She nodded and smiled at me, and I turned and walked away across the grass.
I watched her from the office window as I had a cup of tea. Some of her landings were better than others, but none of them was really bad. Stan Hudson, the ground engineer came in and watched one or two of them. ‘Doing all right,’ he remarked. ‘Pleased as a dog with two tails, she is.’
I nodded. ‘Going to make a good pilot.’
When she came in at the end of her half hour I strolled out to meet her at the entrance to the hangar. ‘That was all right,’ I said. ‘Feeling happy with her now?’
She nodded. ‘I feel that I could take her anywhere.’
‘Well, you can’t. We’ll have to do some navigation if you’re going to go places. But you’re flying it all right.’
She said, ‘I feel we ought to celebrate, or something,’ she said. ‘It’s been such a wonderful day.’
I laughed. ‘There’s nobody else coming out this afternoon for a lesson. I’ll open up the bar and we can have a drink to mark the occasion.’
She said, ‘Oh, do let’s do that! I’ll go over and change.’
When she joined me I had opened the roller shutter and stood behind the bar. ‘What are you going to have?’ I asked. ‘This one is on the club.’
She said, ‘I’d like a gin and French. But I’ll pay for it. What will you have, Captain Pascoe?’
‘I’d like a beer,’ I replied. ‘But you get one free drink upon the club for going solo. Only one.’ I served her drink, and pulled the barman’s stool up, and we sat down with the bar between us.
She sipped her drink, and I lit a cigarette for her. ‘I tried to tell you this morning what all this has meant to me,’ she said presently. ‘I put it very badly. It’s been like stepping out into another world. A terribly exciting world, a much wider world. A world where one could hurt oneself in lots of ways, or even kill oneself. What I was trying to say this morning is that you’ve made it all so safe. I’d never have dreamed three months ago that I should ever fly an aeroplane. If I’d thought about it at all I’d have thought I’d never have the nerve, that I’d be too old, and too frightened. You’ve made it all seem so safe and easy, and showed me how to step out into the wider world. That’s why I’m so terribly grateful to you, and I always shall be.’
‘There’s nothing to be grateful for,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been doing my job. The thing is, that you didn’t know the job existed.’
‘I suppose so. Captain Pascoe, if we did some navigation and cross-country flights together, I could really go to places, couldn’t I? I mean, I could fly to France, and Italy?’
‘Amy Johnson’s just flown to Australia,’ I said. ‘I’d like to see you with fifty hours solo and fine weather before you fly abroad.’
‘It’s all right to fly across the Channel, is it?’
‘Oh, yes. You go to Lympne and refuel there, and from there it’s only about twenty-five miles over to Boulogne. You want a nice fine day for it, and get up high, and wear a life jacket. Lots of people do it.’
‘I couldn’t do that in a club machine, though, could I?’
I shook my head. ‘You wouldn’t want to do it in the winter, and in the summer the machines are all in use. Most people who go over to the Continent have their own machines.’
‘Is it difficult to own an aeroplane yourself?’
‘Not more than a car, or not much more,’ I told her. ‘You could have a Moth of your own and keep it here. We’d maintain it for you.’
‘How much would a Moth cost?’
‘A new one costs about seven hundred and fifty – depending on the equipment, you know. You could get a good second-hand one for about five hundred. Most private owners find it costs about three hundred a year to run.’
‘If I wanted to buy one, could you help me buy it?’
‘Of course I would.’
She stared into her empty glass. ‘I must be going crazy … Not on one gin and French, either. Intoxicated with going solo. To talk of buying my own aeroplane …’
I took her glass and filled it up again. ‘If you’ve got the money, I should say it’s not a bad thing to do. Get you out into that wider world that you were talking about.’
‘I’ve got the money,’ she said. ‘As for the wider world, I’m not sure I’m not in it now. Up till the time I joined this club I’d done nothing that I want to remember, except music. Now, I just want to remember every minute of every day, as long as I live.’
I smiled. ‘You’d better start and keep a diary.’
‘I don’t need to.’ The second gin must have given her confidence, because then she asked, ‘Have you got great bits of your life you never want to think about again? Somebody once told me that everybody has.’
It was a new idea to me, and I thought before replying.
‘Yes, I think I have.’
‘Very long bits – years and years?’
‘Two years,’ I said. ‘The last year of the war and the year after that.’
‘Did you have a very bad time?’ she asked softly.
I nodded.
‘Was that when you were shot down an
d taken prisoner?’
I suppose the beer had loosened up my inhibitions, too. ‘It wasn’t that,’ I said. ‘I got married, and it wasn’t a success.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s rotten when that happens.’
‘It’s a long time ago now.’
She asked, ‘Are you still married?’
I laughed shortly. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. She divorced me for desertion, in America, at a place called Reno where divorce is pretty easy. I’m not sure if that’s valid here in England. I don’t think it is.’
‘Why did you desert her?’
‘I don’t think I did. I think it was the other way about, but it would take a lawyer to find out. You see,’ I explained, ‘she was much better off than I was, in her job.’ I hesitated, and then asked, ‘Did you ever see Judy Lester?’
‘The actress? Judy Lester? Of course I did. Was she your wife?’
‘For just a bit,’ I said.
‘She was in Picardy Princess, in the war. And then she was in Lucky Lady. She was awfully good.’
‘Too good for me,’ I said a little bitterly. ‘She was earning two hundred pounds a week when I was earning three, after the war.’
‘Is that what broke it up?’
‘That, and other things. She got a job in Hollywood and went out there, and then she got tied up with a band leader, and divorced me.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘Women can be terribly silly in these things, sometimes.’
‘Not only women,’ I said, laughing. ‘So can men.’
She laughed with me. ‘I suppose so. All fools, all the lot of us.’ She finished her drink, and got up from her stool.
‘Will you have another?’ I asked. It was a long, long time since I had been able to talk to anyone like that.
‘Not me. I should be tiddly, and then I’d crash the Alvis.’ We walked towards the door. ‘May I come out and have another go on the Moth tomorrow?’
‘Sure. Half past ten?’
‘That’ll be fine.’ We walked to her car and I opened the door for her. ‘I’m going to think about that Moth – a private one,’ she said. ‘It’s rather a revolutionary idea.’
‘This place is a bit of a snare, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘One thing leads to another.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t I know it!’
When she came again I let her do a little more solo, and then started in to teach her something about aerobatics. She wasn’t much interested in loops and spins after the first excitement, and she said that flick rolls made her feel sick. I kept her at it, however, because they would accustom her to getting her machine out of any attitude it might get bumped into; she saw the force of that, but seldom did them afterwards upon her own.
Then I started in to teach her navigation. She wasn’t greatly interested in that at first; to her it was a lot of tedious sums that seemed unnecessary when you had roads and railway lines to follow. So one day I told her to fly me up to Leeds for lunch at the Yorkshire club, and to work out the course and fly there. She put on the correction for variation the wrong way and she forgot all about the wind, but it was a nice fine day. When we’d been flying for about an hour and a quarter a big town showed up ahead of us and a bit to the right, with a very large river in front of it. She said down the speaking tube to the front cockpit, ‘Is that Leeds, Captain Pascoe?’
‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘I’m just the passenger.’
‘It looks like Leeds,’ she said, ‘all except that river. That’s not shown upon the map.’
‘I can’t help that,’ I said. ‘I want my lunch. You’ve got about two hours’ fuel left.’
She flew on to the city, and there were docks and trawlers and ocean-going ships and an indication of the sea over to the east. Presently she said in a small voice, ‘Captain Pascoe.’
‘Yes?’
‘I think we’ve come to the wrong place. I’ve been looking at the map, and I think this must be Hull.’
‘You take me to Leeds,’ I said. ‘I’m hungry and I’m getting very cold. You’ve got about an hour and three quarters’ fuel left.’
She turned and began to fly north-west. Presently she said, ‘It’s thirty-five miles to Sherburn, so that’ll take us twenty-six minutes, but I can’t remember about the variation. Do I take it off or add it on?’
‘Add it on to get the magnetic course,’ I said. ‘What are you doing about wind?’
‘I’m not doing anything. I can see the smoke from a train and it’s just about straight ahead of us.’
‘Sure we’re going to get there in twenty-six minutes, then?’
‘Oh …’
‘You’ve got about an hour and a half’s fuel left.’
She found the aerodrome in the end and made quite a smooth landing. We taxied in and met the pilot instructor. She said to him, ‘We came rather a long way round, but we got here in the end.’ And then she turned to me and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry for being so stupid.’
‘You weren’t stupid,’ I said. ‘Everybody’s got to start.’
‘I got so muddled,’ she explained. ‘The noise of the engine, and the wind, and nothing to write on. I didn’t seem to be able to think properly.’
‘That’s the big difficulty,’ I told her. ‘You want to work it all out before you start and put a nice thick line upon the map.’
‘I put the nice thick line,’ she said. ‘But the ground wasn’t the same as on the map.’
‘Come into the clubhouse, and bring the map and your ruler. I’ll show you what you did wrong.’
In the club I offered her a soft drink. She said, ‘Do you think they’d have any milk?’ I went and asked in the kitchen, and got her a glass of very cold milk, and over that we held the post-mortem. Then she worked out the course to take us home again, and got it right this time.
Over lunch she said, ‘I’ll have to do a lot more of this. Could we do another one tomorrow?’
‘Saturday,’ I said. ‘I’ll have lessons all day. We’ll have to get back quick, because I’ve got two this afternoon.’
‘Oh dear, Sunday … Monday’s the day off. Could we do one on Tuesday?’
‘I’ll have to look at the book,’ I said. ‘Now that the weather’s getting better we’re getting a bit booked up. We should be able to fit one in on Tuesday or Wednesday.’
‘That’s nearly a week.’
‘It’s a bit difficult taking the club machines away in the summer,’ I said. ‘They get booked up.’
‘I know. I’ve been thinking a lot about having a machine of my own.’
‘Airwork usually have a few second-hand Moths, if you’re really thinking about it.’
‘A second-hand one would be better, to start on, wouldn’t it? I mean, I’m not very experienced.’
‘It might be. Would you like me to ring up Parkes and find out what’s available?’
Her eyes fairly danced. ‘Could we do that when we get back, this afternoon?’
‘Of course.’
‘Come on. Let’s go now.’
I laughed. ‘I haven’t finished my cheese.’
‘You don’t want your cheese. It’ll make you fat. Let’s go, and ring up Airwork.’
She dragged me away from my lunch, and we got into the aeroplane and flew back to Leacaster, straight as a die down her pencilled line upon the map. When we landed and got out of the Moth, she said, ‘Was that better?’
‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘That’s because you wanted to get back here. No wandering away to Wigan this time.’
‘Let’s ring up Airwork.’
When I got through Parkes told me that they had two Moths, one with a Genet motor and one with a Cirrus Mark II. The Cirrus one was what would suit her best; it was in the shop for its C. of A. inspection and would be finished in about a week. By my elbow she said urgently, ‘Ask him if I can have it painted any colour I like.’
‘What colour do you want?’
‘White,’ she said. ‘White, with
red registration letters and a red leather seat.’
‘Take a lot of keeping clean.’
‘Never mind. Ask him.’
I did so. ‘He says that’s all right, but he wants to know pretty soon. It’ll cost you a bit more.’
‘I don’t mind that. When could we go down and see it?’
I thought for a moment. ‘Monday?’
‘But that’s your day off!’
‘I’m not doing anything particular. We could fly down on Monday, if you like. Give you a bit more cross-country practice.’
‘That would be marvellous,’ she breathed. We flew down to Heston on the Monday morning, about a two-hour flight. The Moth was all dismantled in the workshops, of course, and it looked a bit of a shambles to her, but I welcomed it because it gave me a chance to have a good look at the condition of the structure. It was quite all right; it had been kept under cover all its life and not parked out in the rain. I told her it was a good buy, and the salesman showed her one that they had just reconditioned, all new-looking and shiny, and she was as pleased as Punch. The salesman took me aside and told me that he had reserved two and a half per cent commission for me for the introduction, and I told him that I didn’t want it, that he was to take it off the price that he had quoted her. I don’t know why I did that because it was fair business, but it seemed like making money out of her great pleasure. We went into the office and dealt with the questions of the extras, her red leather seat and the turn and bank indicator that I made her have, and she wrote a cheque and paid it over there and then. We went over to the restaurant for lunch.
Colin Hicks was there, the chief pilot. I introduced her to him and he offered us a drink; as we were flying back I had a ginger ale and she had her glass of milk. I told him that she had just bought a Moth from the firm, and he asked the registration. When I told him, he said, ‘Major Struther’s old Moth. That’s a good machine. He sold it because he was posted out to India.’ She was interested, of course, and he turned to her. ‘We’re having a rally at La Baule in June with the Aero Club de Paris,’ he said. ‘You must come to that. Your Moth knows the way – it was there last year.’