The Lost Flying Boat

by Alan Silltoe

  His hands searched the floor, felt the shape of each box like a blind man. He pulled the one nearest the door to safety, though with such steady flight it was in no danger of falling out. The universal clock never stopped ticking. He put on his cap, and when he stood I fired again. He brushed a hand across his face as if a bee had stung, and gave a grimace, almost a smile, of agony and surprise. I could not meet his eyes as he pushed by, but looked at the sea passing far below.

  My foot caught the box that Nash failed to heave into the blue. I scraped my fingernails in sliding it over, fearful of being pulled out. The lid opened, and a stream of gold like a bird’s wing swung towards the water, lighting its grey track. I wanted to leap after it, but the action would not come. Boxes that broke went down in an arc of sunlight, darkening as they disappeared. Those that stayed intact spun like a depth charge, but made no visible splash as they hit the curving waves. I forgot where I was. My soul was in contact with happiness. I was in danger of being caught in the slipstream but, agile and confident, knew I could not go. At the end of such labour, reality rushed back, and I moaned so loud that I heard myself even above the noise of the engines – the reverse of waking from a bad dream.

  The work wasted my spirit to the marrow. I expected to be engulfed as the flying boat touched water, but the loss of weight reduced our rate of descent. How Bennett climbed to the flight deck I’ll never know. I felt no surprise. He sat at the control column, staring towards the horizon. The altimeter read five hundred feet when I looked over his shoulder. He spoke.

  ‘What did you say, Skipper?’

  ‘We’re going in.’ The face below his cap-peak was carved in white marble, lips showing dissatisfaction at the state of affairs for which, his expression said, he blamed himself. His hand came to me, and I felt pressure from the ice-cold palm. The exhaustion from sending the boxes to oblivion made me afraid of the dark. His smile wrenched out of me a spirit that I never got back.

  His voice was weak but clear when he said something about the fire-tender pinnace standing by. ‘Take care, Sparks. Emergency landing.’

  I put on my safety belt. Determined to make the best touch-down of his life, he controlled the plane so as to meet gently the swell of an empty sea. My mind registered dreams rather than impressions. I could be dead immediately, but couldn’t have cared less. While holding their fearful chaos at bay, I knew that fate would have me in its power forever.

  ‘We tried,’ Bennett said.

  There was one enormous bang after another, as if a giant hammered the hull with his fist, demanding to be let in. A rush of water streamed by. I thought we were already underneath, the Aldebaran like a hand fitting into a glove of water. The starboard engine cut, and when the floor came up my head struck against the clickstops of the transmitter. The port engine stopped, and we spun around. I thought the blood which poured was water as I rolled towards the ladder, an electrical shock pulsing through my arm.

  One acts, or is acted upon. The will takes over when life is in danger. The threat from natural forces releases a natural force for combat. If the odds are too great, you succumb. If not, you have the chance to survive. No time to question who decides, and afterwards there does not seem to have been anyone else there but you.

  I pulled myself to the bridge. Bennett had struck the windscreen and smashed it. I dragged his body over the controls, cold salt water giving back energy. I laid him between the navigation table and my wireless position, the sound of gurgling sea beyond the canopy and down by the hatch. The flying boat was a hulk, and I let myself down the ladder to the last box of coins. The boat lifted and slid in the swell, and I vomited from the rhythm and the intense reek of petrol until my stomach seemed about to detach from its moorings. I drank water, and spewed that too. When I was empty I felt glad that at least part of me would go down with the boat.

  Strength came back, and in my madness (hard to think of it as anything else) I hauled the box along the deck, step by step to Bennett’s body. I opened the box with a fire-axe, and scattered coins till his uniform was speckled. Then I closed his eyes, so that he would go down like a hero.

  A strut of the port float buckled. The galley was flooding when I went for a canister of water, and diligently foraged for tins of food. My work was without thought. I laughed at such feeble precautions while throwing food in. In an untended ocean life could not go on. Being alone, there would be no casting lots to decide who would be eaten in order that others could survive. But I wanted to get as far from the flying boat as I could, a great weariness leaving me only enough energy to follow those who had preceded me.

  Wing tip uncovered, bones of structure visible, float lopsided, the flying boat settled into its bed of water, and I got into the dinghy.

  21

  The tailplane passed overhead. Pushing away from the carcase I felt like the last man on earth, with no prospect of meeting anyone, and obsessed by the fact that there was nothing to live for.

  The same grey ceiling covered the sky. Wind numbed me, in spite of hard work on a heavy sea. But I was not rowing as strenuously as I imagined. The Aldebaran subsided, seen as the swell took me high to show a white tangle and the upstanding blade of its tail. When the dinghy next lifted onto a crest there was only watery space. The wind never stopped, so I huddled under tarpaulin. Being cold, the dark comforted me. I had left my watch, and didn’t know the time. The covering let in light, so I felt the difference between night and day.

  I ate when hungry, and having eaten threw off the tarpaulin to look about. The heave of water and the wind that talked in a foreign language became normal life. I didn’t care when food and water were finished.

  The survival kit contained materials for a spinnaker sail. When hoisted, the tone of the wind changed. It would take three months to reach Australia. If I drifted from shipping lanes I would fall in with the icy seas of Antarctica.

  With a length of rope I threaded the tarpaulin through rings that circled the dinghy, making a cover as far as the mast. I looked out from under during the day. A single-engined fighter came from above the cloud-base and made so fast towards me that if I had not retreated to the furthest side of the dinghy the space between my eyes would have been blasted by the propeller. The noise stretched my eardrums to bursting. When the plane left off shooting up my boat the sound of the sea became an amiable melody until, shipping so much water, I baled out for fear of becoming swamped.

  My clothes were never dry. I fed on hard biscuit and what was in the tins. When the food was finished there would be nothing to worry about except the torment of dying. Lack of fibre was preceded by lack of moral fibre. I drank the water. There was no use delaying death.

  A solitary black Pathfinder at five hundred feet was followed by so many four-engined bombers that the sky was full. Where did they come from? I counted more than four thousand. They went over the horizon. The noise deafened, then faded. Where had they gone? I wept without shame.

  I went into and out of sleep, into hope and then despair, became raving, and then calm. I measured time by the minute, then willingly slept through appalling dreams to avoid the desolation, so that a whole day would go by.

  Sometimes my sleep had no dreams. I drifted, and did not know where I went. Dreams waited to torment me in daylight. The sun was so menacing I imagined it, instead of rising, as if about to crawl along the surface of the sea towards me. At dawn I saw the Aldebaran. How could it have taken off when I had seen it sink? All parts intact, its beautiful form flew just above the sea, belly glistening in the sun. I waved, and shouted for help. Those on board could hardly miss me. I prayed that the captain would alight to pick me up. Its portholes were black spots. Propellors were feathered, each set of triple blades stark in the air. But it moved as if the engines worked on full power. There was a rush and whistle as the aero-boat gained height, banked onto a reverse course, then came by again, Bennett’s skeleton at the controls.

  I leapt into the water. An icy blast wiped the flying boat from my eyes. The
dinghy was a hundred yards away. I swam happily. The sky was empty. When I decided to stop swimming my arms would not obey. I shouted an order, but from the crest of a wave was thrown against the dinghy. I clung to the side, then pushed myself away.

  I lay exhausted under the tarpaulin. Hands pressed my ears to keep out the roar of engines, the crackle of atmospherics, the insistent signals of morse which I’d hoped never to hear again, and speech in no language that I could understand, and bird-cries, and the barking of dogs. Even the grave-like hiss of the sea was held at bay, every sound muted as I stayed under cover and closed my eyes knowing that communication – the purpose of my life – had got me nowhere.

  Light filtered in. Drinking water had gone, the last container finished. Dreams killed thirst, but when no dreams came I chewed biscuit, and held back my vomit for fear of entrails roaring out of my mouth. Read the omens. I slept in a black cone, drifted to the narrowest end. Engine noise increased, though I would not look. Kerosene smelled above the drumming. The dream was endless.

  A broad, bearded man, wearing a duffelcoat, a woollen hat and fur-lined boots, and holding a boathook took over my vision. ‘We nearly ran you down. Don’t you have any lights? Good job we didn’t pass you in the dark, mate.’

  The black cliff had a ladder up the side. The journey was over, though I went on living. How I did so would not make a story. God drives a hard bargain. You live a dream, then have to pay for it, though with death in the offing no one loses.

  They said I was talking funny as they hauled me on deck. But I laughed, knowing that nothing else would happen in my life worth recording. Even though I was alive, I had gone down with the flying boat.

  JERUSALEM (MISHKENOT SHA’ANANIM)

  LONDON

  WITTERSHAM

  DECEMBER 1981 – APRIL 1983

  A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight

  Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.

  So, like all his schoolmates, he left school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.

  The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.

  In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosis—only discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.

  It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped living—there was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviews—and scripts for the films of his first two books, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.

  Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alan’s books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.

  Time passed … the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.… Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range extended. I usually went with him, and as by then I also was having work published, sometimes the invitation was to me, and he would assume the role of consort.

  Looking back, I realize what a wonderful life we had then. But a year or two before his eightieth birthday, Alan told me he was not feeling well. It was always hard to persuade him to see the doctor; this time he suggested it himself. There were many hospital appointments for investigations and tests—the National Health Service was as excellent and thorough as ever—and a few weeks later the diagnosis came: There was a cancer at the base of his tongue. His suspicions were confirmed. Although he had continued to smoke his pipe (and the occasional cigar), now he stopped at once. The tragic program of treatments started, and the inevitable oscillations between hope and despair. Twice it seemed that he was cured; then it all began again. In April 2010, not long after his eighty-second birthday, Alan died. We had hoped he could die at home, but he needed the facilities of a good hospital. Months later, on a cupboard shelf in his study, I found the manuscript of Moggerhanger.

  Sillitoe in Butterworth, Malaya, during his time in the RAF.

  Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight shared their first home together, “Le Nid”, while living in Menton, France, 1952.

  Sillitoe in Camden Town in 1958, soon after the publication of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

  Sillitoe at his desk in his country house in Wittersham, Kent, 1969.

  Sillitoe in Berlin while on a reading tour in 1976.

  Sillitoe sitting at his de
sk in his flat, located in Notting Hill Gate, London, 1978.

  Sillitoe writing at his desk in Wittersham in the 1970s or ’80s.

  Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight at the PEN conference in Tokyo, Japan, 1984. They both gave readings at the conference, and Sillitoe was a keynote speaker, along with Joseph Heller.

  Sillitoe standing on the porch of his wife’s apartment in Nashville, Tennessee. He visited Ruth while she was a poet-in-residence at Vanderbilt University in January of 1985.

  Sillitoe (right) in Calais, France, with Jacques Darras (center), a French poet and essayist, August of 1991.

  Sillitoe in front of his and Fainlight’s Somerset cottage with his friends, American poet Shirley Kaufman and Israeli literary critic and academic H. M. “Bill” Daleski.

  Sillitoe on holiday in Penang, Malaya, in 2008. Sillitoe spent time in Malaya as a radio operator for the RAF in 1948.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1983 by Alan Sillitoe

  Cover design by Jason Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3445-6

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  180 Maiden Lane

  New York, NY 10038