The Lost Flying Boat

by Alan Silltoe

  A blackening cape blocked our view into the next stretch of water, like a prison-grille never to lift. Above, streaks of blood poured between bands of luminous green, letting in wind that scattered the mist. ‘Pray for half an hour of good visibility tomorrow.’ We told Nash we would do our best.

  Fishes ruffling the water, and a few birds overflying. All I wanted to see was Armatage rowing from the shore, dinghy awash with brains, heart, tongue and liver of a leopard seal slain with his knobkerrie. We hoped our trackers weren’t adept at night-flying. In their place, Bennett would have been. Some light was bound to show while refuelling from the Difda. Nor did I like to think of any disruption to our tricky performance of getting airborne with over three thousand gallons of fuel on board.

  A further letter K from me was responded to by ‘1/2’ – meaning a half hour to go before sighting. Passing the message to Bennett, I supposed that our signals, however brief, were being monitored, thus giving unmistakable confirmation of our presence in one of the island’s indentations. Effective radio silence was impossible on either side, for they too had revealed themselves.

  Bennett said I would have to take an occasional turn at the knobs-and-levers now that we had lost Wilcox, and proceeded to instruct me in the duties of flight engineer. He produced papers and manuals and, after explaining a diagram of the fuel system – amended in red to include the tanks installed for extra long range – showed me the relevant gauges on the panel, the fuel pressure warning lights and oil temperature gauges, as well as items that I only half understood, and would not be able to remember. I was left with the Pilot’s and Flight Engineer’s Notes, and various other dog-eared publications, and told to gen up between now and morning. If anything puzzled me, I had only to ask. ‘Nash could do the job, but he’s likely to be more use as a gunner.’

  I wondered whether such a flying boat had ever been flown by so few, and found it hard to believe that Wilcox could be effectively replaced.

  13

  When our supply ship moved around the headland as if lit up for VE Day Bennett ordered turrets to be manned. Darkness wasn’t down, and we could see each other without lights: whoever skippered the Difda must have thought his navigational feat in threading the fjord in such visibility deserved a campaign ribbon – and clasp. ‘Call the bloody fool up on the flashbox and ask him to show essential lights only – with my compliments. If he doesn’t pour water on ’em, we’ve had it. Sight on the bridge – if you can find it. I’ve never seen such a rotten old bucket.’

  She had two masts, flagless rigging culled from a rubbish yard on the Medway, and funnel salvaged from a factory boiler after an air raid. All of us commented on such a random assembly of spare parts. Yet she had survived her journey and brought our juice. She seemed little bigger than the flying boat, but the distance was deceptive, and her size increased as she rolled on her way in calm water towards us.

  I clicked Ks till the answering flash came, feeling a spillage of tension as soon as my fingers were still. Bennett was split between gratitude that the relief ship had arrived, and being ready to meet any treachery by having our machine guns sighted on her decks, as if he expected to see an Oerlikon spit shells, or boats rowed towards us by cutlass-toting jailbirds commanded by Long John Silver.

  Acknowledgements from the Difda were prompt between each word. The signalman began his message with a light twice as powerful as my twelve-volt twinkle, proving by speed and rhythm that he was also a founder member of the Best Bent Wire brigade – acid test words which, if got through without a mistake, show that the ink on your ticket is not only dry but has long ago turned brown with age.

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘He’ll comply – and sends his greetings.’

  ‘Tell ’em to anchor as close as need be for transfer of fuel.’

  ‘CLOSE IN FOR FUEL FEED,’ I sent.

  Back came: ‘WE KNOW OUR JOB.’

  ‘What was that, Sparks?’

  ‘They’ll do it.’

  ‘What’s he saying now?’

  ‘The captain’s coming over to say hello as soon as they’ve anchored.’

  ‘Tell him he’s welcome.’

  He flashed back thanks – TKS printed on my mind before reason separated each letter. I pictured a bearded old captain standing by the operator, a hook in place of his left hand, perhaps a corrugated cap whose crown had been worn through by his bald head, an obviously fierce gaze, and certainly a stubby pipe fouling the air but keeping his insides primrose-fresh. He gauged their way perfectly along the water, maintaining an exact position in mid-channel.

  ‘He knows how to take no chances.’ There was admiration in Bennett’s tone. The manoeuvres needed no passing of texts, so the operator flash-chatted gossip meant for us alone: ‘ONE OF YOUR BLOKES SIGNED ON.’

  Bennett talked refuelling procedures with Nash at the top of the ladder, and neither saw me sweat:

  ‘NAME?’

  ‘SMITH.’

  I sent back the wireless operator’s laugh, and he responded with: ‘NNNPD’ – meaning ‘no names no pack drill’. I pelted him with another laugh.

  ‘PICKED HIM UP FROM WATER.’

  Must have rowed miles. Bennett stood by my shoulder, but the man was sending too fast for him to read. ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘Only chatting, Skipper.’

  ‘Watch the plain language. Just tell them to get a move on.’

  ‘PROCEED SOONEST POSSIBLE.’ Then, as if repeating the message: ‘KEEP HIM STOP DEAD IF HE COMES HERE.’

  ‘DEAD ALREADY – DRUNK. DA DA DI DI DI DI DA DA.’

  I laughed back, and imagined the blow-up if Bennett discovered Armatage to be nearer than was supposed – after his deft transfer of allegiance.

  They took care not to foul our moorings, and Bennett considered them close enough at two hundred yards. From the ship’s bulk, exaggerated in new-born darkness, a message announced that Captain Ellis, the master, was on his way over. ‘DONT CROSS HIM OR HE WILL KNIFE YOU – LAUGH LAUGH.’

  I visualized the shaking of hands as he stepped on board, one chief meeting another. The two men with him stayed in their boat, as if for a quick getaway. Going to the top of the steps I saw a small sandy-haired man of about forty wearing rimless glasses and smoking a cigarette, carrying an attaché case with initials on the side that were not his own. He looked around our domain. ‘Nice little world you’ve got. Bit like the inside of a cardboard giant. How many crew?’

  Bennett told him.

  His laugh was forced, and dry. ‘A one-watch ship, eh? Show me over the place. It’s my first time on a thing like this.’ He was an agile ladder-climber, and I moved out of his track so that Bennett could explain the flight deck panels. He drew his finger across the chart table, as if it were covered in dust, and glanced at my radio place as if I weren’t sitting there. ‘How is your survey work?’

  ‘All we need is the fuel to get back.’

  He descended the ladder. ‘My chaps’ll get it on by midnight. When I promise ’em a bonus they work like blacks.’ His face was bland, but his hands twitched. ‘I heard a plane nosing about this afternoon, so I want to be at sea by dawn. I’d get shot of the place as well, if I were you. I think you have rivals in your line of business.’

  Bennett wasn’t made for talk, so Ellis had to provide his own, which seemed no hardship. ‘Funny thing but, do you know, we have a stowaway on board. God knows where he came from. Maybe a castaway. Took him on this afternoon. He was well fed and decently dressed.’

  ‘A castaway?’

  ‘Must have been. All he needed was drink. He’s drunk now, in fact. No sense in him – like Europe after the war.’

  Nash was close by, and we both wanted to throttle him. He stopped, as if remembering. ‘He’s a Norwegian – came off one of their whalers. That’s all I got out of him, before my chief engineer put a keg of booze in his paws. Took ticket of leave, I suppose. Funny things happen, south of the Line.’

  I looked out of the portho
le, as if uninterested. Bennett’s frame unclenched. But he must have known. ‘Which reminds me,’ Ellis said, ‘maybe we should take a glass before we set to. I usually have a drop about this time.’

  Bennett’s room was out of range. Engines vibrated from the nearby ship that seemed to own the fjord. The bridge was vacant, and I supposed the signaller was back in his cabin with a plate of supper. Nash came to the flight deck. ‘You heard what Captain Windbag said?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And what did Wankers-doom with the magic flashlight say?’

  ‘The same. He’s over there, as pissed as a newt. They’ll keep it quiet, though.’

  ‘I hope he knows he’s left us in the lurch. I’d like to break his neck, but we can’t risk a shindy. Bennett’d want a drumhead court martial, and we haven’t got time.’

  I’d have been a fool to keep such forebodings to myself. ‘Maybe Armatage sensed something.’

  ‘Don’t talk tripe. He just got the wind up.’

  ‘I thought blokes like him never did.’

  ‘You’re not worth much if you don’t. None of us were sworn in,’ he said by way of apology. ‘Not properly, anyway. Not this time.’

  He didn’t want to go on, and neither did I.

  Captain Ellis was merrier than when he stepped aboard, and less loquacious. Also, his briefcase weighed more. He shook Bennett’s hand, and passed the money to the man in the boat, advising him not to drop it if he valued his next hundred years’ pay. I watched them leave for their rusting but trusty ship, sharply visible against the side of the fjord.

  So many tanks were filled that nothing less than a flying bowser would take to the air. For a few hours Rose and I were, as Appleyard said, superfluous to requirements. Barrels were derricked two by two over the side and brought across in a lifeboat whose motor smoked like a matelot’s briar. I went to the galley to make coffee, but Nash pushed me from the stove saying did I want to blow them all to kingdom come? I felt slightly less stupid when he laid into Appleyard who had pulled out a box of matches to light up between consignments. Nash raged that he had nothing but lunatics for a crew and, taking no chances, went into the rest room where Rose was lying on the bunk making smoke-rings from his repaired pipe.

  On the flight deck I was hoping to get in touch with Armatage, to find out why he had committed an act which filled me with awe. To abandon what you had pledged to serve was to lose a world and go into the wilderness. Must one be sworn in before doing one’s duty? Couldn’t one live without taking an oath? It was imaginable, but frightening, and my feeling for him was of pity rather than condemnation.

  There was no movement on board the Difda. All interest was on traffic between ship and flying boat. Perhaps Armatage was not drunk. Maybe Captain Ellis needed an extra man for his crew, which was why he had connived in keeping him there. He had rendered us more vulnerable than we cared to believe. With three people less, our flying boat seemed forlorn, so I sat at my receiver to imagine I was among company.

  The mild antics of atmospherics on 500 kilocycles separated me from the surrounding industry. Then my call sign thumped all speculation aside, came as loud as if emitted from the nearby ship. My hand went forward to respond. I refrained. It was dangerous to doze. I might send without thinking. Someone kept a listening watch, and tapped my call sign in the hope that I would give myself away.

  He called again. Please do, I said. Just as the postman always knocks twice, so a telegraphist will tap his request two or three times in the hope of getting through. By his bearing I could tell that their ship was coming north.

  Bennett counted barrels by the hatchway as they swung over. I informed him of what I knew, and returned to my wireless. Those who listened so diligently for me could not know what happened on the four megacycle band where the fast steely morse of coded messages passed between Royal Navy ships to the north. On short wave such signals could be hundreds, even thousands of miles distant. I was tempted to retune and get in touch, resisting only because my signals might bleed onto the frequency of the other ship and give our presence away. If they already suspected where we were I had nothing to lose, but to introduce a new element into the equation might mean the end of our flying boat and its cargo of gold. I was beginning to believe that we were surrounded by enemies, and that they were closing in.

  Bennett would decide what was to be done. I switched off the set, and slept with my head resting on the desk.

  14

  Nash and Appleyard reeked like leaking faglighters. We all did, said Rose. Whether we had worked or not. One spark, and the expedition would vanish. For a while anyone looking on would have thought we had swallowed a half bottle of whisky each, such were our high spirits as we larked about.

  But a breeze cleared the air. Nash’s body flashed under the wingtip as he swam in circles, and he stuck up two fingers at Appleyard’s: ‘Come back! We don’t want to lose you as well!’

  He pulled himself in and splashed us with cold water, then searched his kitbag for dry clothes because we were expected to spruce up for departure. I put on a clean shirt and shaved, and used half a tin of blacking on my shoes. Appleyard dipped his dental plate in the sea, and slotted it back with a shiver.

  I was stationed on the flight deck with the signal lamp.

  ‘Tell them thank you,’ Bennett said. ‘And wish them good luck.’

  I sent in full as their anchors rattled up.

  ‘SAME TO U,’ their operator replied. ‘WILL LOOK AFTER YOUR BLOKE.’

  ‘Look after who?’

  I cursed his slow sending. Perhaps he hadn’t slept for days. ‘I asked him to remember me to a friend of mine.’

  There were times when Bennett, able to do every crew member’s job, did not make things easier for himself or the rest of us. I moved aside, out of his bloodshot gaze. He pulled the lamp away. ‘Unofficial plain language is forbidden.’

  Impossible to say what he suspected. His sensibility was sufficiently acute for him to know, and if he did, something stopped him taking action. ‘From now on, send only messages that originate from me.’ He thrust the lamp back. ‘Is that clear?’

  Once around Black Cape, the fuel ship would be seen no more. I wanted to be with Armatage, looking back at our immobile crate that would stay behind as a decoy in the fulsome visibility of dawn.

  Fuel cocks were checked and fuel contents gauges registered as full. The priming pumps were in working order, and the oil system was OK’d by Nash and Bennett. The galley was sufficiently aired to light a stove for supper, and Appleyard used the last eggs to make omelettes. We sat at table, hatches battened against the cold. Whisky was poured into steaming tea, so we drank to our take-off in the morning. I couldn’t envisage the event but neither, if turned out, could anyone else, and we finished our meal in silence.

  Nash and Appleyard were rewarded with four hours’ sleep for their labour of refuelling, so the nightwatch was split between Rose doing the first stint and me the second. During my two hours free I envied those who weren’t kept awake by the nagging of anxiety. Nash, our mainstay, lay at peace, hands clasped behind his head, his pruning-saw snore forming a duet with Bennett’s tread around his small room. Appleyard kipped by the stove, under a blanket which he’d acquired during his recruit training and had never been without.

  I could cut off from the sounds of people by turning on my radio, an extension of the senses which connected me to the spheres. I wanted to be in both worlds at once: one with ordinary life, and also float through the atmospherics of the heavens. But the two would not exist together, and I could only blunder from one to the other until such time as I found a way of combining the attractions of both.

  As in everything, one had to make a choice. But those I had so far made had taken refuge behind the phrase ‘I couldn’t care less’, because to care would demand too much energy, too much thought, too much consideration for others, too much anxiety about our fate, thus creating unnecessary (and unwanted) disturbance. To gather wisdom from those expe
riences in which I had been forced by fate to take part, and to combine that wisdom with speculation and intelligence gathered from the ether, were two areas of the same necessity. Craving both, I could deny neither one nor the other, though for the moment I couldn’t put up with Bennett’s obsessive footfall or Nash’s grinding snores.

  I trod soundlessly to the flight deck, passing boxes covered in tarpaulin and well lashed down so that none would move when airborne. Rose at the controls was so still that I thought he too was asleep, until a finger by the throttle-levers twitched. I sat on the arm of the other seat. ‘What were you thinking about, before I came up?’

  Such a question couldn’t bring a serious reply, but he answered with a weariness that lack of sleep alone hadn’t given. ‘I was meditating on the benefits of a new face.’

  The unexpected response had nothing to do with our plight. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘I’d like to get rid of the personality that gave it to me.’

  Anger was pushed out by curiosity. ‘We’d all like to do that.’

  ‘You’ll be telling me I have to live with it next.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But I’m not sure I want to.’

  ‘You don’t have much choice.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong. Can man make something as perfect and beautiful as a flying boat, and not have choice?’ His emotion surprised me. He pushed the throttle lever of the port inner slightly forward, then drew it back again. ‘I’ve known since I was born that I could end it whenever I liked. But there’s nothing more calculated to make one live forever! I suppose it helped me to survive all those ops over Germany.’

  ‘What about the rest of the crew?’

  ‘They were lucky, perhaps. Skilful, to a certain extent. That we were brave goes without saying. So were those who didn’t come back.’

  It was hard to talk sense in the gloom. ‘Fate decides everything, I suppose.’