Trustee From the Toolroom

by Nevil Shute

  She clapped her hands, laughing. ‘I was so afraid you’d say the blue one because I like the blue one best because it’s the prettiest and because I saw you make it right from the start.’ She slithered down from his knee. ‘I’ll go and fetch the grey one now.’ So that moment passed.

  In the last day or two problems of health in the tropics obsessed Katie’s mind. ‘Pith helmets,’ she said. ‘That’s what people out there wear in the sun. You must buy one of those as soon as you get there, Keith. You don’t want to go getting sunstroke. And mosquito nets to sleep under at night, else you get malaria. Perhaps you ought to take one of those along with you.’

  ‘There’s some kind of a pill you can take for that,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask at Evans’s in the morning.’

  They decided that he should travel in his best blue suit and the heavy woollen overcoat that he had bought after the war and kept for best, and wear the imitation Panama hat that he reserved for his annual August holiday in Cornwall. He packed a suitcase with his cricket shirts, blazer, and grey flannel trousers, two suits of heavy woollen underwear, and a clean grey workshop coat. He got from his bank a hundred pounds’ worth of dollar travellers’ cheques, and took with him a few pounds in notes. He put the small petrol-electric generator set into his pocket in its box. Then he was ready to go.

  Chapter Five

  The journey to Honolulu in the D.C.6.b. was an unmitigated, sheer delight to Keith Stewart. He had never been out of England and though he had flown once or twice as a passenger he had little practical knowledge of aircraft. He had, however, an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of things electrical and mechanical, and to be given the free run of the big Douglas was to open a glittering storehouse of technical interest to him. He caught a transport down to Blackbushe very early on the Thursday morning, and entered his Wonderland.

  The aircraft had been stripped of all passenger seats and upholstery. Behind the flight deck was a crew rest-room; on the port side two pairs of seats faced across a table, on the starboard side there were two bunks. Behind again there was a toilet to port and a small galley to starboard, and aft of that the cabin was an empty shell right to the aft bulkhead.

  Keith spent an hour in the office with Mr Thorn and Captain Fielding, putting his signature on various documents. In the course of the formalities he learned the names of the other crew members, and was a little surprised at their number. There were six apart from the captain and himself: three co-pilots of varying experience and standing, a navigator, a radio operator, and an engineer, Dick King, who knew all about Keith Stewart. The formalities over, he carried his suitcase down to the aircraft with Mr King, who showed him where to put it, and changed, putting on his grey workshop coat.

  Presently, soon after eleven o’clock, the crew came aboard, led by the captain, who told Keith to sit in one of the unoccupied rest seats and strap himself in. The doors were slammed shut, the steps withdrawn, and two of the younger pilots came and joined him in the other seats. On the flight deck the crew commenced the preflight checks, the engines whined and started one by one, the captain spoke to the tower and got clearance to taxi. Engines were run up at the threshold of the runway, and presently the aircraft moved forward, lined up, and took off.

  She got off very quickly with no load on board, and only half fuel. As the flaps came up the two young pilots undid their belts, indicating to Keith that he should do the same. They all moved forward to the flight deck, Keith keeping behind out of the way.

  There was nothing to be seen out of the windows or through the pilot’s windscreen but the grey January cloud. Everybody on the flight deck seemed to be busy; though they sat relaxed and motionless he could sense the nervous tension. The grey wisps of cloud whipped past, and once they emerged into clear air between two layers of cloud and entered cloud again, so that he knew that they were climbing. From time to time the captain spoke to Dick King, who made adjustments to the throttles and the prop controls; from time to time the navigator or the radio officer left his seat and spoke to the captain, who nodded, sometimes glancing at the clock on the instrument panel.

  Keith had never before been on the flight deck of a large aircraft, or been in any aircraft at all while it was flying blind. He was impressed and somewhat amazed by the things he did not know. These men were working as a team, doing things together quickly and accurately, things that he could only guess at. He knew that on their teamwork the safety of the aircraft depended. All his own skill and ingenuity could not assist them by one iota; the most that he could do to help them in their work was to keep right out of their way.

  He went aft again into the rest quarters and examined the galley. That was understandable, at any rate; there were tins of coffee and tins of tea, and tinned milk, and tinned meats and vegetables, and bread and butter and cheese and jams. This was within his competence. He could not assist these people in their work, mechanical though it was, and that was humiliating, but he could keep them well supplied with coffee and biscuits. He set himself to discover where everything was stowed.

  Presently he sat down again; there was nothing to be seen at all but the grey fog. One of the young co-pilots came and sat beside him. ‘Half an hour to go,’ he said. ‘He’ll be starting the let-down in a few minutes.’

  ‘How high are we?’

  ‘Fifteen thousand. We’re going to do a G.C.A. approach.’

  Keith asked timidly, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Ground control. They get us on the radar screen and talk us down on to the runway. It’s quite interesting. You can hear it all on the loudspeaker if you come forward. But don’t get in anybody’s way.’

  The note of the engines changed as the let-down began, but nothing else seemed to alter. When the young man beside him got up and went forward Keith followed him. A trickle of remarks was coming from the loudspeaker over the windscreen between the pilots, half heard by Keith at the rear, one quarter understood. ‘Delta November, you are cleared down to six thousand feet, six zero zero zero feet, QFE nine nine eight, nine nine eight, course three two zero.’ And then, ‘Delta November, Roger.’

  He could not understand any of it. The co-pilot seemed to be flying the machine; Captain Fielding sat relaxed, watching the instruments and fingering a black hand microphone, occasionally raising it for a short remark. Everyone was standing or sitting very quiet. Nobody was peering from the windows, for there was nothing to see. Once Captain Fielding, turning to say something to the navigator, noticed Keith Stewart at the back of the standing officers, and smiled slightly at him. Then he turned and faced the instruments again.

  The stream of half-heard, quiet orders from the loud-speaker brought them lower, lower, upon changing courses. ‘Delta November, you are cleared to descend to two thousand feet. Check your QFE, nine nine eight.’ Keith saw the captain raise the microphone, and heard, ‘Delta November, Roger.’ They sat in motionless tension. Then, ‘Delta November, turn now, right, on to heading zero four zero.’ And presently, ‘Delta November, you are now on final and eleven miles from touchdown. Commence your descent at six hundred feet per minute. Check your wheels and flaps for landing.’

  There was activity in the cockpit; the wheels went down with a thump, the flaps crept half way out, the note of the engines rose higher as the pitch decreased. There was still absolutely nothing to be seen but the grey fog outside. There was dead silence on the flight deck. ‘Delta November, you are four miles from touchdown, closing with the centre line. Turn left now five degrees on to heading zero three five.’ The captain said laconically, ‘Roger’.

  ‘Two miles from touchdown now, and on the centre line.’

  Suddenly the fog was ripped apart, and streaks of it flew past the windscreen and the windows. The quiet voice said, ‘Turn right two degrees on to zero three seven; you are one and a half miles from touchdown. Can you land visually?’

  The runway, broad and long and comforting, lay immediately in front of them. The captain lifted the microphone and said, ‘Delta November is vis
ual. Thank you.’ He hung the microphone upon a little hook and placed his hands and feet on the controls, nodding to the co-pilot. One of the juniors turned to Keith and said, ‘Captain likes everyone strapped in for landing.’ They went back to the seats, and as they settled down in them the wheels touched the runway.

  The engines roared suddenly in reverse pitch and died again, the brakes squealed a little, and the aircraft slowed, turned from the runway, and taxied to a remote part of the tarmac where the batsman waited. One of the lads by Keith grumbled, ‘They’re putting us the hell of a way from anywhere. I got an aunt in Allerton. I told Ma that I’d try and get to see her.’

  The other said, ‘They’re putting us over here so the truck can get to us to load, and be out of the way.’

  The machine came to rest, and the engines stopped. On the flight deck the crew entered up their various log books and forms; one by one they came down the cabin to the door, now open. The captain stopped by Keith. ‘Saw you watching the talk-down,’ he said. ‘Did you understand it?’

  Keith smiled. ‘Some of it. Not very much.’

  ‘Everyone to his trade,’ the officer said. ‘As soon as we get clear of this foggy muck you can come and sit up front.’

  He passed on, and Keith left the machine with Dick King. ‘How did you enjoy the flight?’

  Keith smiled. ‘Like being on the Underground.’

  ‘It was a bit. Not much to look at, is there? The Met says we’ll be out of this by the time we’re over Ireland.’

  ‘What time do we take off?’

  ‘Depends what time we finish loading. I don’t see any sign of the truck yet. We’d better get some dinner while the going’s good.’

  They made for the restaurant. ‘That’s one thing I wanted to ask you,’ Keith said. ‘Who cooks and dishes out the food while you’re in flight?’

  ‘I do,’ said the flight engineer.

  ‘All the way? You’ve got to sleep some time.’

  ‘Oh well, one of the others does it if I’ve got my head down, or they go without.’

  ‘I could help with that,’ Keith said. ‘I can serve coffee and biscuits or heat up a can of stew. I don’t know that I can help in any other way.’

  ‘Well, that might be a help. I’ll show you what we do.’

  The loudspeaker broadcast a call to the telephone for Mr King while they were having lunch. He came back to the table. ‘Bloody truck’s arrived,’ he said, and gulped down his cup of tea. ‘See you later.’

  He made off back to the machine. Keith finished his lunch quickly and followed him, anxious to miss no moment of the play. The semi-trailer stood by the aircraft with the sausage-like component on the tray swathed in hessian, twelve feet long and weighing about five tons. Beside the truck Dick lounged with one of the co-pilots, idle. ‘Needn’t have hurried over dinner,’ he said to Keith. ‘Waiting for the bloody crane now. Captain, he knew better.’

  Presently the mobile crane arrived, and a Land Rover loaded with baulks of heavy timber, and the slow, delicate business of loading the rotor into the cabin through the door began, and positioning it in the right part of the cabin when it was in, and straining it down to holding lugs with steel ropes and turnbuckles. Keith could do nothing technical to help these men who knew their job so well, but he worked all afternoon as a labourer for them, moving heavy timbers under their direction and passing wires. It took three hours to get the load in place and secured. Then the tank wagon came to refuel the aircraft. It was half past five before everything was finished.

  ‘We’ll have a meal before we go,’ said Captain Fielding. ‘Take off at seven o’clock.’

  A foreman electrician from the works was to accompany them and instal the rotor in the Cathay Princess, a man called Adams. Dick introduced Keith as they walked towards the restaurant again. ‘This is Mr Keith Stewart,’ he said. ‘Writes for the Miniature Mechanic.’

  Mr Adams stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Not the Keith Stewart?’ he enquired.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Mr Adams put out his hand. ‘Well, did you ever! Wait till I tell the lads in the shop I met Keith Stewart!’

  The words comforted Keith, assuaging something of the inferiority complex that had begun to descend upon him; there was so much here that was technical that he did not know. Here, in Dick King and in Mr Adams, were two who recognised what he could do in the little technical field that he had made his own. He went on to the restaurant with them with restored confidence in himself. Technical fields, he reflected, of necessity were small; if you were expert in one subject you could not be expert also in all the others, for no man’s mind was big enough. The man who designed the radar presentation that the controller had used to talk them down that morning would not himself have been able to bring them into a safe landing, for he would not have known sufficient about aeroplanes.

  They ate together at a long table in the deserted restaurant, all nine of them. The navigator sat next to Keith. In reply to a question, he said, ‘Be about midnight, local time, when we refuel at Frobisher. Nine hours flight. Be just the same if it was daytime, because they don’t see the sun there much this time of year. Say it’s an hour to refuel. Another nine hours to Vancouver gets us there around dawn. After that it’s daylight down to Honolulu.’

  In the cold, windy January darkness they walked back to the aircraft at about half-past six, and climbed on board, and made their way forward through the cabin, climbing over the many securing wires of the rotor. Lights were switched on, the steps were withdrawn from the door and the door itself was slammed shut and secured by one of the young pilots. Mr Adams and Keith settled in a couple of the seats and strapped themselves in, and the routine of pre-flight checks began on the flight deck.

  ‘You done this often before?’ asked Mr Adams.

  Keith shook his head. ‘I’ve never been out of England.’

  ‘You don’t want to, either,’ said Mr Adams decidedly. ‘Last year the missus and the daughter kept on at me. Would I take them to the South of France? They’d read about it in the books, and Grace Kelly and all that. Well, I did. God love us, what it didn’t cost, flying to Nice and flying back again! And when we got there, not half so much fun as we’d have had at Blackpool. But they liked it … Gave them something to talk about in Salford.’

  ‘That where you live?’

  ‘Aye. Ever been there?’

  Keith shook his head.

  ‘The Salford and Eccles Model Engineers would like it fine if you could come up to judge one of their exhibitions, Mr Stewart. They had the last one in the Town Hall - October was it, or November? A lot of your designs were there …’ They went on talking model engineering while the starters whined, the motors caught and ran, and the Douglas turned and taxied slowly to the runway, framed in amber lights.

  They took off down the runway, and were airborne. For a moment or two Keith saw the lights of Liverpool away over on the left; then they were blotted out by cloud and only the bright glow of the exhaust manifolds could be seen, and the rhythmic pulsations of the red wing-tip light reflected from the mist. ‘Looks like we’re in cloud again,’ said Keith. ‘It was like this all the way from Blackbushe.’

  Mr Adams stirred from a post-prandial doze. ‘Wonderful the way they find their way about,’ he said comfortably, and dozed again.

  Keith was too technically interested to follow his example. He got up and stood in the dim alley leading to the flight deck, watching what was going on. Nothing much seemed to be happening; the pilots sat relaxed and he judged that the machine was on the automatic pilot, for neither of them seemed to be flying it. The pilot’s microphone hung idle on its hook, but now and again the radio operator seemed to speak to someone from his desk. Dick King sat upon a folding seat between and behind the pilots, but he did not seem to be doing anything.

  As he watched, the darkness ahead through the windscreen seemed to lighten for a moment, darken again, and lighten. Suddenly a wisp of white cloud ripped by the windscreen and they
were momentarily in moonlight. More cloud rose up ahead and enveloped them, and that in turn was ripped away. Then they were flying in full moonlight over a white, moonlit floor of cloud and climbing away from it. It seemed to Keith the most wonderful sight that he had ever seen, for it was new to him.

  He could not repress his technical interest. He moved forward and spoke to Dick quietly: ‘How high are we?’

  The engineer said, ‘Thirteen thousand five hundred. Have a cup of coffee presently, when we level off to cruise.’

  The captain heard the question, and the answer. ‘We’re going up to twenty-one thousand,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know when we’ve settled down at cruising altitude, and you can come and sit up front here, if you like.’

  Keith went back to his seat, and sat looking out on the moonlit clouds below, at the serene, untroubled security of the wing. Presently the note of the engines altered, the nose of the machine dipped slightly, and she seemed to take a new, stable, and rather quieter flight. He judged that this was the change to the cruising condition, and this was confirmed when Dick came aft to the galley. Keith got up to help him with the coffee and biscuits.

  ‘Captain says we’ll have a meal for anybody who’s awake and wants it at twenty-three zulu - at eleven o’clock English time. Then another sometime after we leave Frobisher. Breakfast on the ground at Vancouver. Coffee and biscuits every couple of hours or so.’

  ‘When are you going to sleep?’

  The engineer smiled. ‘Pretty soon, mate. Take off, landing, and refuelling - those are my busy times. I’ll take one of the inside chairs soon as we’ve cleared this coffee.’

  ‘Show me what you do about the meal. I can look after that if you’re asleep.’

  When coffee was over and the cups rinsed, Keith went forward. The captain got out of his seat and stretched, and at his invitation Keith got into it and sat relaxed, watching the wide, dim panorama of deep blue sky and moonlit cloud far below. He studied the instruments massed on the panels in front of him, examining them one by one. Most of them were familiar to him in theory; some of the others were explained by the legend on the dial. When prolonged cogitation failed to yield the function of a lever or a dial he asked the first officer beside him, who explained it to him. He passed over the radio equipment without questions, knowing that the explanations would be quite beyond his understanding.