by Alan Silltoe
We stood at the bottom of the ladder. ‘I couldn’t care less,’ I said.
‘That attitude will get you nowhere.’
‘It got me here.’
‘It’ll keep you here. Or under the bog with a penguin pecking at your liver. The French claim Kerguelen, and to go there and recover the treasure from under their noses is illegal, old boy.’
‘The mission’s difficult enough, without Bennett disposing of people he’ll need to get the plane to wherever he decides to head after his gold’s stowed aboard.’ I climbed up, and put on the earphones. I cared very much, not wanting to alarm Rose in case the others noticed his disturbance.
Static was less intense, and I swung the needle till a jazz band sounded like a juggernaut whose unoiled axles were squeaking and grinding over the stones. I got back onto my listening frequency, wondering if I should tell Bennett that we had his death list. He would think I was as much off my head as I considered Rose to be out of his. We would only know that the note had any significance if Bennett got up from his seat and carried out a square search for what he had lost.
We hadn’t long to wait. He came loud and clear over the intercom, speaking calmly, yet seeming a shade on the still side of breathlessness.
‘What I don’t want is for any of you to keep a diary, or make notes, or start letters which you won’t have the opportunity to finish – or post. Filling in diaries while on board will be frowned on, because all details of this trip must be kept secret. Your memories must black out whatever takes place. At the end of our journey, navigation and wireless logs will be handed in. Stray chits for calculation, or bits of paper containing call signs, or inside-out pieces of cigarette packets with engine performances or fuel consumptions scribbled on them will be handed in to me. In other words, whatever happens is not to be communicated to the press, nor any information given to people not permitted to receive it. Everything is restricted, and for official use only. That is to say: ours, and nobody else’s. But mostly I’m talking about diaries and journals, because none of us want to be incriminated for minor breaches of the international navigation laws which we might inadvertently make. It’s too easy for written evidence to be used against us in a court of law.’
He was talking to himself.
‘Roger,’ I said.
So did Rose.
Then Wilcox and the others gave their assent.
Nash added: ‘I never wrote anything in my life, Skipper. It’s not my style. If I don’t keep a log, I don’t have to cook it!’
Bennett laughed. ‘Hi-di-hi!’
‘Ho-di-ho!’ said Nash.
I tucked the notes I had made into my left flying boot. If he expected me to eat them, or turn the wad in, he couldn’t have been more wrong. He hoped one of us would produce that scrap of paper so mindlessly dropped. Rose winked, and I gave the thumbs-up.
I tapped out a few signals, hoping none of the crew would hear, but the contacts bled all over the intercom.
‘Splashing a bag of Dolly Mixtures across the sky, Sparks?’
‘Only testing, Skipper. I disconnected the aerial.’
‘Didn’t sound like it. If God gets a bearing on us, we’re doomed. He’s a sharp old bastard.’
‘He’d have to be, to get that.’
‘So pack it in. When I say we’re on radio silence, don’t play roulette with those nursery-coloured clickstops. Put the silencer on your heartbeats – like me. Everything provides a fix for some big-eared operator in the sky, or on the sea. Any more playing around and even the Radio Doctor won’t get you going again. Just grow up, and do as I say. There’s always someone in the world sharper than you.’
I saw his back, solid and unmoving, protecting his heart, keeping a straight course and constant speed, as if he didn’t even trust the automatic pilot.
‘Tore a strip off you, did he?’ said Wilcox.
I gave him the fuck-off sign, and fished into my bag for the Smith and Wesson. With enough rounds for all emergencies, it nestled solidly among my possessions, the cold-comforter from Malaya that I was glad I’d got. Fired at Bennett, the great plane would cone into the sea before Rose and I (and maybe Wilcox) could get him out of the seat and set the kite back on an even keel.
My brain was no good. I had betrayed myself. To pit my endurance against the circling rush of electrified air was all I could manage. Murderous action was only fit for a theatre, preferably while I watched and, when excitement became too intense, hoped the curtain would descend and leave me with my own inactive reality.
Bennett inhabited the whole stage because, at one with his imagination, he felt no division such as that between the two that lurked in me. He sat at the controls of a world that was bigger to him than any other, as if not even God could break the unity of his cast-iron obsession. I contemplated destroying him before he could lead us into danger. But that would mean entering the zone of his obsession, where all thought would be clouded, and success elude me. The only way to fight was to get back to work, and establish a life-line to the outside world.
The more I searched, and found nothing, the more vulnerable I felt the flying boat to be. Instead of holding the loaded gun at Bennett’s back I pinned myself to the tuning dials, knowing that nothing short of disaster could lift any of us from our private worlds. I heard Royal Navy ships sending to each other, and to Trincomalee in Ceylon. Their call signs seemed as far off as the Line of Capricorn, and pipingly distinct. They were the great morse-soloists of the age, brisk telegraphists whose machine-like rhythm was a pleasure to listen to. I noted their direction, and wanted to know whether they were frigates, destroyers or survey ships; whether they weren’t caught in the flurrying tail of a monsoon, or smudges of smoke on the placid sea. What was the purpose of their manoeuvres? I looked out, as if beyond the earth’s curvature, to force ship or plane into vision. But from the window of my flying radio shack, there was empty sea, and my effort at hallucination could not populate that vacant water.
I was glad to get back to my place, where the faintest squeak was backed by an intelligence that had initialled its duration and the leap of its distance – the Heaviside ricochet piercing the static racket. Whatever had diminished the power of its pure note, and furred the lines of clarity on its way from the transmitter, must be the same force that prevented me asking questions by which I might have bottled all problems up. Nothing could be done to cure my impotence, however, or resolve my ignorance. I had always been shifted by fate, something which I had known long ago.
Perhaps the Navy ships had nothing more to say. I missed their robust precision. From our freebooting flying boat the tenuous connection of their signals had comforted me, and now their absence exaggerated my isolation. Rose called out a course correction, and Bennett took us a few degrees to port. The local time was ten minutes to five in the afternoon. A ceiling of highball cumulus, speckled cloud ragged at the edges of its denser parts, formed at twenty thousand feet, sun filtering through bars which kept us prisoners from the universe beyond.
I was divided between regret at having signed on, and enjoying the adventure I had let myself in for. Harmony could only be maintained by doing my job. But the split, being necessary, would need a third of me to keep them under control, which led me to wonder what other part of me would keep them in order? Only all states fusing into one, and fuelled by the conveniently forgotten split, could ensure self-preservation.
In the meantime, as dusk came on, I had to accept that there was no safety for one unless there was safety for all. The next moment I told myself again that I couldn’t care less, but the part of me that knew better, earthed as much as it could be in such a place, continued to search the ether.
12
Dusk was gunmetal blue, and smelled of sulphur. There was an ominous wall of cloud to climb over, or fly under, or get around, and I could think of nothing except what we would find on the eastern side after travailing all night along the cone-like convergence. The new day would bring us to the island, and events bey
ond that were too much in the unknown to contemplate. But the darkness remained, and though my awareness of Bennett’s intentions and Rose’s fears had faded, and questions as to our future seemed irrelevant, I vacillated in mood between feeling entirely beleaguered and fitting in with the general pattern. I could not think why the night would demand all my attention, but decided that no matter what conflict erupted among the crew, I would remain as the radio operator whose duty it was to stay on watch for whatever information I could obtain to keep the plane secure. The flying boat was our world, and I did not want the world to end. Against the bumps of the elements it was flimsy, but the enclosed space was safe, and I was the ears of its inhabitants, doomed though they might be, able to hear from the outside, as well as having eyes with which to bear witness on the inside. Being the sort of person I knew myself to be was the extent of my power. I could fulfil my function, nothing more.
Bennett took off the automatic pilot and made a frontal attack on the looming battlements of cloud. Static became pandemonium at the airless pockets we fell into, and at the precipitous updraughts that sent us leaping. On the flight deck water beaded across the perspex. Through the turbulence I kept a grip so as not to be thrown off my feet.
At my set the static of the world converged for a conference at dusk, the worst time for reception. I searched for one clear voice of morse, however irrelevant, but every frequency was swamped. A rolling stone gathers no morse, I said to Rose, and settled on the 6500 HF DF frequency, sliding to one side or the other but getting little more than indecipherable squeaks.
The stars had gone, as if they had vanished with us into the spongy barrier of cloud. From the side hatch the propellers purred normally, seeming to make little noise. Grumbling underfoot felt like the earth giving way. I disregarded the yawing of our boat in the ocean-air, and my gyro-stomach took control. Swathes of rain and sleet slewed the canopy, and Bennett eased us through a series of alarming bounces, not yet over the top into clear air.
The lamp glowed, and I gladly returned to the semicircular window of my radio-face with its indicator lines of different colours. Someone stood nearby, and I pulled half a world of static from one ear to see Nash lighting a cigarette. ‘The storm’s very pretty. I watched it from the mid-upper, but every flash gave me a pain in the arse, so I came down.’
I tapped the set with my pencil. ‘A storm like this makes me want to talk – about this one-eyed expedition, maybe.’
‘If you’ll stop listening to Dick Barton or Mrs Dale’s Diary on that clapped out wireless, perhaps we will. Follow me to the rear turret. Tell Rose you’re going for a kip, or he’ll want to join in the pow-wow.’
Old fliers, with more than the five senses, can pick the air to pieces like a bird, and find a way through. Bennett pressed on regardless. The cloud ceiling rippled below, but in the distance was an archipelago of holes – dark pink and dirty grey, a purple band circling the sky, a well-advanced dusk I had never seen before and thought I wouldn’t see again.
Darkness faded the rosy view. More cloud ranges bordered the northern sky. Streaks of white fire snaked themselves into the sea, one after the other, and no sooner did they hit water than they were as if by magic transferred back to the sky, to descend again, up and down, as if they would go on until the sky burned itself out. Closer to hand, Venus was rising, and shone on the sea.
I followed him down the temple of the fuselage. Half in and half out of the turret, his back to the guns, he resembled a gnome in spite of his bulk, outsized perhaps, and balancing to avoid too heavy a grip. His glint was amiable, but the lower lip showed anxiety. The boat grumbled underfoot as I crouched, and wondered how I would know if he was telling the truth, or whether there was any truth left to tell. Curiosity satisfied meant being told the worst more often than it meant knowing the best.
‘The stars are flashing their peepers, so Rose can find out where we are. The skipper would like to know, I expect.’ He shuffled his feet. ‘I could never abide not seeing stars when we were on ops, even if it was dangerous. When I can’t see stars or the ground, my level goes, if you see what I mean. Being in fog or cloud always scares me. I might see something I don’t like, though I can’t think what that would be. Or we might smash into a house, or a ship, or a cliff-face even though we are at ten thousand feet. My bloody sins coming back to haunt me, I expect, if it’s anything at all.’
I moved to get at my cigarette case. ‘Bit late to talk about our sins.’
He spat, though nothing came, then struck a match for our smoke. ‘There’s no time better than now when it comes to atonement.’ The light which united us showed him to be smiling. ‘But what I can’t understand is why a young chap like you volunteered for this sort of job. What the heck have you got to atone for?’
‘If I knew I wouldn’t be here, though if you ask me where I would be if I weren’t here I don’t think I could tell you.’ His jungle of atonement had no attraction for me, as he surmised, but I told him I was here because of money, adventure, work and a broken marriage. If he reversed the order he might well get it right.
‘I thought there was more to you than met the eye.’ We smoked, and listened to the test-bed grind of the engines rather than to our own thoughts. Darkness brought more ease, screened us from peril, and generated a denser element of companionship. ‘Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?’ he said at last.
‘I thought religion and politics were out on this trip?’
‘Well, we’re not in the French Foreign Legion, either,’ he said. ‘But nothing will be out before it’s ended. Bennett’s on a treasure-hunt, and there’ll be no let-up till it’s over. The gold’s got to be lifted quick, because we aren’t the only people after it. Someone knew enough to set another combine working against us, but we’re on our way there first, as far as we know. If they should see our fuel ship and board it, they’ll find nothing, because the stuff will already be away – by flying boat. Bloody neat, eh?’
We sat through the space of two cigarettes. ‘The trouble is,’ he went on, ‘that Bennett lives in a world of his own. Nobody can get at him. But it’s important to the rest of us that we know everything, so you’ve got to listen for any ship close enough to bash out morse so strong it parts your hair: it’s bound to be on the same game as us, because no others get to where we’re going – except maybe the odd whaler. Tell me as well as Bennett all you hear. You’ll earn your keep, and our gratitude.’
It was wise not to show emotion or surprise at being plainly asked to divide my loyalty between him and Bennett. The reason did not seem clear, and if it had maybe I would have liked his advice even less. I was jolted as if, sitting in a room with a clock on the shelf, I began to hear its ticking again, when in fact it had never stopped. The noise of four engines rushed back into my ears as the war-surplus flying boat churned its airscrews through black sky, leaving a wake of exhaust fumes, the only roar for thousands of miles, and undetectable because no other vehicle was within range. We had the air to ourselves.
‘There’ll be hardly a pint of juice left in each engine by the time we get there,’ he said. ‘If these tail winds weren’t pushing us along we’d have a ditching to look forward to. I’ll certainly be glad when we’re bobbing about on that fjord like a cork in the sink at Christmas!’
‘I can’t understand why we’re so well-armed,’ I said: ‘Browning machine guns seem a bit excessive.’
He reached out and patted their grips. ‘They aren’t for shelling peas. Nor are we going to make a wartime shit-picture. It might be all show, but it would be a shame if we got everything on board and somebody tried to pull it away from us.’
‘But who?’
He stood up, about to push by me. ‘I can’t see into the future. But if anybody tries to get that gold from us, I’ll blast ’em out of sky or water, let me tell you.’
I was aware of Bennett, immovable at the controls, mindless in his set purpose. Our lives were in his hands. But they had been in our own individual hands before
we had delivered them into his. ‘Are you glad to be on this trip, Nash?’
He turned, still stooping. ‘I’d rather be here than in jail, which is where I was three months ago. I’ll never go there again. It’s paradise being here, compared to that.’
‘Paradise can sink,’ I said.
He grunted, and went on his way before me, saying: ‘I’d rather go down from paradise than from any other place.’
13
When an aircraft on 6440 kilocycles informed Cape Town – ZSC – of his time of arrival from Durban – ZSD – his morse had a hollow tone, like someone clapping hands in the distance. I passed their messages to Bennett, but he stuffed the paper in his chart bag. ‘No action.’
Caught by the hiss of ether, thermionic valves worked overtime trying to interpret the emptiness. The headset was my balaclava comforter, supplying atmospherics that sounded like a load of gravel shooting from the back of a tip-up lorry.
Another shadow dissolved mine under the angle-lamp. Bennett’s eyes were surrounded by grey flesh. ‘Tell me as soon as anything happens. You’re the only one who can.’
Why me? There was no answer. He left Wilcox at the controls and went down the ladder. What plain talk entered the earphones would be pounded out myself, sending me through a black hole and searching along the space lanes, away from a world whose morse no longer made sense. Now that Bennett had gone to rest I could transmit. Wilcox was too concerned with keeping the artificial horizon and his splintering coughs in synchronization to notice, though what messages I would send, and to whom, I did not know. I could hear from further away than my signals would reach, but even with a more powerful transmitter my text would be distorted beyond readability.