The Lost Flying Boat

by Alan Silltoe

  Even so, I was tempted to put my hand on the key and try to contact another soul beyond the flying boat’s periphery. Perhaps a ship was close, though few kept continual watch, while those that did were unlikely to come this way, and the frequency they listened on had little range. What would I say? I did not know, but maybe: Who are you? Where are you? Can you hear me? QRA? QTH? QRK? If he replied, I might enquire: Why am I here? But there was no ‘Q’ Signal for that. Never ask questions that cannot be answered, otherwise there will be no end to what you want to know. Yet an end was needed, was vital, though you may never get it. Emptiness is a desert, whether sky or water, and being in the wilderness tells you that there is no limit to sense or consciousness. Send that on your morse key and see how far it gets you! Mad bastard! Give us the proper griff, the pukka gen. Whatever there is to seek, you will not find it there. Your dots-and-dashes go into space, and vanish from weakness. The same with thoughts, unless there is a God to count the ricochets back into your heart and explain why you are alive.

  Circular reflections induce fatigue. What grip is to be got on space? Nash asked why I had come, and I could have replied that if you have to there’s no alternative. No one can tell why, though if a reason has indeed triggered off your impulse then you are faced with the fact that no reason can prevail against an impulse. It is useless to argue, or otherwise repine at the fundamental vagaries of fate. But do not come out the same as you went in.

  ‘Some char, Sparks. It’s the Relief of Mafeking. Everybody’s nodding off. If it wasn’t for Wilcox, the kite would have pranged by now.’

  ‘Don’t get that biscuit tin near the tapper,’ I said, ‘or a short circuit’ll send a howl of pain through the sky.’ Appleyard laid a stack of biscuits like a gambler’s winnings on my log book. ‘It’d sound as if somebody’s stepped on a mongrel’s leg, and Sirius would jump a mile. He wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘He’d have to lump it, then. One sugar, or four?’

  ‘Is it strong?’

  ‘Enough to rot a wedding ring. No bromide, though, like in the old days.’

  ‘Put in a couple, then take your bucket to Rose. He can do with a drop before his next star sight. Tell him that the bright pointer of the Southern Cross is coming up abeam, if I’m not mistaken.’

  The tea separated nerve wires at the back of my eyes. I heard them pinging, and was awake, thoughts once more in a Ben Hur race. Chasing gold was not for me, unless of another sort, but of what quality I hardly knew. My place was with Anne, though not in the state I had left her. She would never want what I craved. We couldn’t exist together, so there was no point in hankering. I was as alone as everyone else in that airborne assembly of walking wounded.

  Rose must have given Wilcox notice before getting star sights, because it felt as if we were cruising over black velvet. Every man froze at his station. If the engines went fatally and we were forced to ditch, we would know our position to within five miles or so, which was some comfort, providing Bennett allowed me to send an SOS before smacking the chop.

  I pressed my finger to emit one dot – breaking radio silence by the single letter ‘E’. What information would anyone get from that tick of electricity in their earphones? Only the fact, according to Bennett – who did not hear that shortest letter of the morse alphabet while he slept – that another transmitter was close by.

  One part of me had surely known of my intention, but the other did not. That which knew had got the upper hand, while the other was aware of nothing. To accept responsibility for the error that had been committed, I needed to believe that the side which knew of my intentions had been to blame, but I could only feel guilty if that part of me which did not know had initiated the action.

  I had been unconscious of outside phenomena for five minutes, proved by the last entry in my log. The crackle of atmospherics had been so deafening that no ear could have intercepted that single absconding dot – which vanished like a fish in muddy water. The only noise I can tolerate is static, out of which I gather information, or into which my thoughts melt. I prefer to be controlled by chaos rather than order. Whatever comes from order is written down and forgotten, whereas chaos rules by patience and subterfuge. When I was twelve I was walking home from school and hearing Handel’s Largo still in my ears from the classroom. Wanting to sing the words on the street, I was unable to. I’d had to wait to make my own rhythms, and send them out in morse from a stricken flying boat plunging along the wind lanes of the Roaring Forties, Antarctica to the right, and space to the left as far as Asia. ‘Where e’er you walk’ played out the letter ‘Q’ of the eternal question, and I did not know what it signified – nor ever would.

  From the mid-upper turret, beyond my D/F loop and across the bows, I saw the port and starboard wing broken only by an expanse of the leading edge which glowed in the darkness. Someone switched on the mike of his intercom and blew as if to cool a saucer of tea, glad to hear even the rush of his own breath.

  Sirius, the brightest star, was behind us, and I picked out Canopus to the southeast. Far in front loomed another escarpment of bad weather, and the crate would soon begin a slow climb to get over the top. A blue glow came from the flame-dampened exhausts, and through the astrodome I could just make out, inside our huge flying belly, the dim light above Rose’s navigation table, and the lamp of my wireless operator’s position. A tug at my leg was a signal from Nash to climb down.

  ‘You’re all to cock,’ he snapped. ‘Stick to your own trade.’

  I clamped my headphones on, informing Bennett, back at the controls, that the loop aerial indicated a stormy passage.

  ‘I’ll go right through. Can’t afford to lose this flying wind. We’ll be longer with the murk, but will overtake it in the end. So pull in the trailing aerial.’

  If it was out, and lightning struck, I would be the first to get a knocking. A gutted set and a stunned operator might be the final safeguard for radio silence, but I didn’t think Bennett would want to go that far. I got the trailing aerial in, but let it go again, thinking that maybe a dose of shock would clear my head, and that wireless operator’s roulette was a fair game to play.

  Word came for safety belts, and I clipped myself in. Turning the page of my log book, I felt the secondhand aeroplane rear where no air was, then float as if on snow. The feeling underfoot was curious, as if we were held in the palm of some being to whom our flying boat was made of balsa wood. The electricity of anticipation ran through me, and my fingers moved without thought towards the morse key, which I would have pressed except that a sudden drop banged my knees at the table, and forced wide open eyes to witness every angled corner.

  Rose, huddled over charts, grabbed the sextant, while his Dalton computer chased a perspex ruler down the ladder towards the galley. The good side of his face sheered by the bulkhead, and I felt a pang at the thought that he would be scarred there as well – till my neck was wrenched the other way and I saw the skipper holding grimly on, stability his sole aim. Rain splashed the windscreen, and we seemed under the ocean instead of two miles above. Over the intercom a steel door banged regularly on a wet plank, never tiring, till I thought to tighten the aerial connection. Nash was secure in his mid-upper, but when the plane levelled for a moment said: ‘Do that again, Skipper!’

  Which brought a curt response from Bull: ‘Nearly broke my fucking elbow.’

  While Bennett and Wilcox struggled to get out of a corkscrew descent, my hand gripped the morse key as if that action alone would bring us through the storm. I felt aileron wires and rudder joints cracking under the strain, and waited for that last ounce of pressure to pitch us hell-bent into the drink. I was otherwise too wary of losing equilibrium and being slammed against the click-stops to be afraid. Stresses and strains were matched to four engines, and there was no better plane in which to have a thirteen-rounder with the sky.

  ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ said Appleyard. My hand rested a couple of seconds on the key, making a letter ‘T’ which
, if joined to the last symbol sent, would make ET. And what then? The floor slipped sideways and fell. I wanted to play the morse key like Niedzielski his piano, and instead of sending no more than a pip and a squeak bash out a heartache letter-telegram to Anne, explaining that my love for her was even more intense because I was in a situation where to think of it blunted my attitude to danger.

  Bennett fought to get us higher, as if he had in mind a definite ceiling to the storm. Lightning danced along the wing, fixed by a trap of blue steel, which caused the plane to fall as if to get out of its way. ‘Who gave us that weather forecast?’ Nash croaked along the pipeline. ‘I’ll have his guts for garters.’

  ‘They won’t taste good.’ I passed on a forecast which I had not taken down:

  = SOUTH INDIAN OCEAN FROM 40 TO 50 SOUTH LATITUDE BETWEEN 50 TO 60 EAST LONGITUDE FOR NEXT TWELVE HOURS STOP FALLING 933 VEERING NORTH FORCE 9 OR 10 STOP VISIBILITY I TO 2 MILES = +

  A cumulo-nimbus fist struck the hull, as if we were on a rough sea meeting an anvil-rock thought to be hundreds of miles away. ‘There are tree trunks in the sky,’ Nash said. ‘Or army lorries, I can’t tell which.’

  The craft levelled like a dead log, and flew miraculously for half a minute. ‘A monsoon in the wrong season,’ Bennett said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  I composed the telegram and sent it out: Once fall in love do not give up, I told her, skip-distance and sunspots notwithstanding. Listen to own voice only, stop. Look into nightsky for your face. My sending sounded like fingernails scraping along a washboard, but there was no chance of being heard. Only the proper rhythmical thump of a real transmitter could get anywhere.

  Could words of love break through by will alone? I sent a mixture of four short and three long signs, the Lucky Seven of her name going into the storm and getting nowhere, as the flying boat skated through black rain.

  The night part of our trip was shortened by going easterly, yet seemed endless. Electricity hovered in and out. I felt like a fly which, primed by the good pickings of a long summer, and sensing an autumn death approaching, is filled with the strength to live forever.

  The craft charged on, pushed without mercy by the wind. To move the body was a hazard. A descent to the galley might break a limb. Ordered to stay by my receiver, I searched for a significant message and, getting nothing, knew I would have to invent one. As long as operational gen was passed to Bennett, I could pluck down any telegrams and scan them for myself alone. Greetings from Anne who felt the pain of our separation would come in clear out of Portishead or Rugby:

  Missing you. Come home as soon as you can. You did wrong to go. Why ever did you?

  I didn’t, I tapped back.

  You did. Remember? I had big trouble finding where you were.

  The ether was livid with the gibbet-rope of the question mark. Do you love me? Will you ever come back? Are you serious? You never were, were you? I don’t think you ever really loved me.

  I did.

  You didn’t.

  Well, I love you now.

  Do you? How can you be sure?

  I’m sure because I know.

  Whipcracks of recrimination decorated the sky – till I put a stop to it. My hand on the morse key sent HAPPY BIRTHDAY. What did it matter whose? Only whales might hear, if they had the right antennae.

  ‘All stations are forbidden to carry out the transmission of superfluous signals. Messages must not be transmitted to addresses on shore except through an official station. Private communications are strictly forbidden.’ The rule book was peppered with such heavy type, but we were too far out for hand or eye or the ear of authority to reach, and though the power was mine, natural forces governed its effectiveness.

  Rose, before being impelled to more work when we came again into the clear, dozed with his head resting on the chart table. He had put into abeyance the dread that if the overcast was higher than our service ceiling for a thousand miles in front he wouldn’t be able to get a fix and find Kerguelen. Without stars, dead reckoning would put us out by such a margin we would miss our landfall, in spite of its spread. Beyond the point of no return in fuel, we would be all but lost if the stars stayed shut. Radio bearings on Durban or Mauritius, over two thousand miles away, were no substitute for an astro fix. In any case, with so much static, I could barely distinguish call signs.

  Someone had picked up my foolish telegraphic greetings to Anne, because a strong signal through the atmospherics asked who was calling, which could only have meant me. I switched the aerial to D/F, ready to rotate the loop and find his general direction.

  There were longer intervals between eruptions of static. I waited for a signal from whoever had heard me sending, so as to get a bearing. Had he already taken one on me? My doodling had lasted long enough. Perhaps he had been too surprised to act and, like me with him, was only waiting to hear me send again in order to confirm our direction. My hand stayed off the key, as no doubt did his. If he asked again who was calling, I would know that he was merely curious as to who or where I was. But if he didn’t send, and waited for me to do so, he was someone to beware of.

  A cold sweat clammed my forehead, and my heart thumped as if belonging to a drunken man about to zig-zag over a level-crossing with an express coming. We were flying straight, and everyone on board sighed with relief. The ship was less at the the whim of back-draughts and upcurrents. As if a work bell had sounded, Rose picked up his sextant and took readings from the astrodome. Bennett’s voice came over the intercom: ‘How’s the radio silence, Sparks?’

  ‘Thought I heard someone, Skipper.’

  ‘Any idea who?’

  ‘Too much interference.’

  ‘What did he send?’

  ‘Wanted to know if somebody was calling him.’

  ‘And was anybody?’

  ‘Not that I heard.’

  ‘Did you hear, or didn’t you?’

  ‘There’s nothing I don’t hear if it’s hearable. I’m waiting for him to come back. If he’s somewhere close I’ll get a decent bearing.’

  ‘Let me know as soon as you can.’

  I said something about the ungodly behaviour of skip-distance, to which he responded that, if we did but know it, skip-distance, like everything else, was anything but ungodly, though I was no doubt correct in assuming there was no method by which such phenomena could be tamed.

  He left the controls, and stood close, the angles of his face emphasizing a funereal determination to push on at all costs, though it was plain that he wasn’t as fit to pilot a flying boat on an exploratory haul over the ocean as he had seemed before setting out. I had never seen anyone with a deadly illness, which fact may have suggested that I was doing so now, but the glare of his right eye made it appear dead, as if struck by blow after blow from the inside. He’s for the sick bay, I thought, but since we were still flying I supposed I must be wrong. My news of a ship somewhere ahead may have been a shock, but he kept the composure that was expected of a skipper: ‘Nail him with a bearing if you can. I’m going to the galley to see who’s working on breakfast.’

  Fully determined to do as I was told, I fell asleep.

  14

  I lay by a stream with no clothes on. Neither had Anne, and we laughed on the grass in the sunshine as she tried to pull a rusty blade out of my stomach. The water made a hissing sound, and tree branches crackled in the wind. The knife would not come loose, but I felt no pain. When the jaunty trilling of a bird said: ‘Who is calling me?’ she stopped tugging at the knife-handle. Why should a bird ask such a question?

  Neither body nor spirit, half gone and half not, I was cushioned by dreams, shorn of care or will. But I awoke instantly to hear morse singing CQ CQ CQ DE ABCD ABCD = QRZ? QTH? QRA? QRK? QSA? QRU? = + K K K and got enough of a bearing out of his garrulousness to tell that he was east-north-east, though without knowing the distance.

  Perhaps I had inadvertently pressed the key while dozing, and he was trying to discover whether I had been calling him. Rose was working ou
t star shots for our position, locking us in a box of airspace among broken bars of cloud. By the time he knew where it was we’d be some miles further on – as if we had never been there. But from that vital fix an alteration of course would make for an accurate landfall, and leave a reserve of fuel so that we could search for our alighting place. We had been airborne seventeen hours, and Wilcox had long since got the pumps working to bring the second instalment from tanks in the hull.

  A bluebottle-green in the sky came and went. Nash bumped me on the back. ‘It’s downhill from now on, Sparks.’

  ‘I hope it’s not too steep.’ I felt grime at the eyes that only proper sleep would cure. With daylight beaming in at half past four, the hole we made in the sky moved as we moved, leaving a vacuum tadpole tail behind, a warm envelope refilled by sub-zero cold. A welcome smell of coffee spread from the galley. Appleyard was at the stoves preparing breakfast. A healthy hunger prevailed, but the skipper sent back his platter of chops and beans, and Bull who played the waiter stood by the ladder eating it with his fingers, mess-irons sticking out of his pocket. He wiped his mouth on Bennett’s linen napkin. ‘Two dinners are always better than one!’

  The sky was empty, blue overhead but almost white to port where the sun stood on the horizon like the yolk of an egg looking cold enough to begrudge what warmth we might get when we landed. Morse rippled on every note of the musical scale, and there was nothing to do except let it settle, and wait for the nearby ship to ask again who was calling and why.

  I had no will to track my tracker, if such he was, because the easy life was here, and for a few minutes, while breakfast was eaten, the duty I was paid to do lost its influence. If Bennett gave me a call to make I would sweat out a few pokes at the tapper, and the person I was supposed to find would no doubt come back loud and clear, wondering why the hell I had been sleeping my head off when we could have been playing an exciting game of wireless-telegraphic noughts-and-crosses.