Suddenly the unnerving roar of the engine subsided to the gentle caressing swish of wind against the wings. I relaxed and was sick. The saucer of the earth gradually flattened as we glided towards the field. Gently the plane transferred its weight from the air to the ground and the swish gave way to a rumble of wheels and tail skid as they creaked protestingly over the field. We stopped, and everything was still.
In the last few moments of that flight, after fear and panic departed, leaving a brilliance of perception that follows all malaise, I realized that now I wanted to fly. Wanted the exhilaration of fear and difference. A world beyond my step-brothers.
We had lunch at the airport and I spent the afternoon enquiring about the economics of learning to fly. To my dismay I learned that I could not qualify for a licence until I was seventeen. I could however commence flying lessons immediately. I was introduced to the Chief Flying Instructor who, as I watched in awe, spoke of pounds, shillings and pence. Fortunately my mother was with me and absorbed these essential matters.
That night and every night for weeks my mother and I discussed and argued interminably. The entire family and all my relations were united in their opposition against my wish to fly. The four pounds a week, they suggested, could be more usefully spent on a finishing school, preparation for university or marriage, or scores of other estimable projects.
2
I had my first flying lesson two months later. It was a trial lesson with the Chief Flying Instructor prior to committing myself to the full course necessary for obtaining an ‘A’ licence. This first lesson was in a Hornet Moth, with side-by-side seating arrangements and an enclosed cockpit. Looking back I realize that most of my early difficulties were due to the lop-sided effect of sitting on one side. As the instructor levelled off high above Johannesburg he gestured to me to take over control. At that time I was about five feet tall and could barely reach the control column and rudder bars. I stretched, coupled my fingers around the joystick and clung on, hard. The following series of evolutions, a faithful exposition of all I had read in a book entitled ‘Learn to Fly by Correspondence Course,’ defy description.
‘Try some straight and level flight,’ said the instructor wearily.
‘But I am,’ I answered.
‘Oh.’
We landed, I was sick again and we had a fatherly chat in his office.
Despite his advice I arranged to take the full course and had five rather unproductive lessons on the Hornet Moth before transferring to the illustrious Tiger Moth. This machine, vehicle of pioneering record-breaking flights, with its tandem seating and open cockpit seemed more of a friend than an enemy to be conquered. Each Sunday, weather permitting, and in South Africa it usually did, I had one lesson lasting an hour and a lecture or two on ground subjects.
Getting to the airport, 45 miles from home, had become a problem so I bought a motor-bike or, rather, my mother bought one for me. This of course played havoc with her estimated budget of flying costs.
I failed to fulfil gloomy prognostications of an early death and became inordinately attached to this machine. It reacted to my moods. A bilious approach would provoke mule-like obstinacy and though I would kick the starter for hours it would remain inanimate. Happiness, induced by Sunday sunshine and freedom would bring a response of eagerness and burbling vivacity and we would roll along, friends, reluctant to turn back, anxious to explore together the next hill, the next horizon.
Flying, and my motor-bike, injected me with confidence. My inferiority complex almost vanished and boys became objects of scorn rather than envy. I held court with scores of them, patronizing one against the other, letting them bathe in my reflected glory as an ‘ace’ with queenly condescension. Only one little beast resisted and refused to become my liege. I cycled interminably past his home with passion and hatred in my heart. Unfanned, the flame soon expired and the courted became the despised courtier.
My life became a happy whirl of study and flying... and a waiting for Sunday. I learned the alchemy of Meteorology that produces the allies and enemies of the sky. Of the levels of pressure sporting in the desolate Arctic wastes that, later and thousands of miles away, would transform the sky from blue placidity to dark satanic fury. Of the counter-pressures, friends of pilots, that would restore serenity. I learned of the things that go up and down inside engines, though to this day I do not believe they do these remarkable things. The mysteries of Morse code were unravelled from dots and dashes. The stars became signposts to distant destinations and the quaint rotations of the sun and moon became a logical sequence upon which all life depended as I progressed from medium turns to steep turns and from gigantic bounces to tolerable arrivals. The mere sight of an aircraft sufficed to fill me with pride and not a little humility.
About this time, after sojourns in schools of varying quality though, in South Africa, identical curriculum, I managed to matriculate. So ended my formal education. I fully intended later to go to Oxford. My schooldays over, I devoted myself to flying.
After seventeen hours of dual flying, my instructor considered that I could probably get an aircraft into the air and down again without too catastrophic a result. My first solo! I was turned over to the Chief Flying Instructor for the flying test that precedes all first solo flights. He clambered into the Tiger Moth, plugged in the speaking tubes and sat motionless. After an exaggerated pre-flight inspection of the aircraft I climbed into the seat behind him. I examined carefully the back of his neck; it was inscrutable and he needed a hair-cut. I too sat motionless, considering this encouraging fallibility until a gentle ‘Well?’ erupted down the speaking tube.
We began badly. The engine would not start. With eyebrows eloquent the mechanic pushed and pulled at the propeller until both he and I were bathed in perspiration. The neck was still motionless and inscrutable. When I least expected it the engine sprang into unnecessarily hearty life, nearly decapitating the mechanic. Ghost-like my throttle closed as the Chief Instructor closed his (all controls are duplicated and interconnected on training aircraft). The mechanic, by now a confirmed misogynist, obeyed my signal and thankfully removed the chocks from in front of the wheels. Gingerly I opened the throttle and taxied to the down-wind boundary of the field.
‘I want you to do three complete circuits and landings, please. And relax,’ instructed the metallic voice.
‘Yes sir,’ I screamed down the tube. The neck winced involuntarily.
‘Don’t shout!’
‘Yes sir,’ I whispered.
‘What?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘I’m not knighted... yet,’ he answered.
Brooding over his heavy irony I stopped at right-angles to the take-off path and carefully went through the cockpit drill that precedes all flights. Petrol on and sufficient for the flight. Throttle friction nut adjusted to prevent the throttle from slipping back during the take-off. Trim-tabs set. Both magneto switches on. Mixture control fully rich. With a last look round the sky I turned into wind and opened the throttle firmly, at the same time easing the control column forward to lift the tail. At 60 m.p.h. the aircraft climbed gently. Tense and unsure I watched the airspeed indicator and tried to keep its elusive needle pointed steadily at 70 m.p.h. as we climbed straight ahead to 1,000 feet before I throttled back to cruising power and levelled off. Carefully I started the 180-degree turn that would bring us back parallel to the aerodrome. I turned too steeply and found myself too close to the field. I edged out hoping he would not notice, but an exaggerated look at the field by the head in front dispelled that hope. As the aerodrome passed under the port wing-tip I turned again through 90 degrees and prepared for landing. Throttling right back and trimming the aircraft for the gliding attitude I turned in at 70 m.p.h. and gradually flattened the angle of glide until we sailed over the leeward boundary at 20 feet or so flying level with the ground. As the speed dropped I eased the nose higher until we were in the three-point attitude and then, as the book says, the aircraft will sink gently to the grou
nd. It didn’t, and I waited in what I thought was the three-point attitude for anxious moments. A sinking sensation was followed by a distressingly hollow thud. I stopped without further incident, taxied back to the take-off point and awaited comments.
‘Not bad. Try and make your circuit a little cleaner and don’t level off so high on landing,’ came the voice from in front.
I could have kissed him. With this shrewd praise my nerves vanished and I completed the next two circuits and landings with moderate success. After my third landing the Chief Instructor took over and, whilst taxi-ing back to the take-off point, issued instructions in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘You can go solo. Do one circuit and landing and pick me up after you’ve landed. I’ll wait here.’ We stopped and he climbed out. I waved and swung into wind. I was astonished at the visibility. For twelve flying hours I had had to peer over and around the instructor’s head a few inches in front of me. Now there was nothing but pregnant vacancy. Only then did I realize I was alone.
In the most complete solitude I have ever experienced I joined the sky. Looking down at the earth receding into a blur of green and brown I sang and handled the aircraft carelessly. At last there was no instructor in front to comment acidly on the skidded turn or wayward airspeed. ‘Look,’ I cried. ‘Everyone look up. It’s me; Jackie Sorour. I’m flying, flying, flying.’
I waggled the wings and waltzed around the circuit in lyrical bliss. Even the aircraft seemed to respond to this magical moment.
‘I’m flying, I’m flying.’ I repeated the phrase, ecstatically aware, as one is rarely aware, of the moment at the moment. I knew that I could not deserve many more like it.
I landed smoothly and taxied back to pick up the Chief Instructor. He looked at my radiant face, smiled and held out his hand. ‘Good show, nice landing. Take it up again for twenty minutes but don’t lose sight of the airfield. I’ll walk back.’
I shook hands, took off and drank more elixir.
After landing and receiving the congratulations of my fellow students I straddled my motor-bike and drove home furiously. To my intense disappointment the house was deserted. I sat fuming and fidgeting until my family returned, waited my moment and then calmly announced: ‘I went solo today.’
3
Whilst passing the first milestone, that of going solo, and preparing for the second, my ‘A’ licence, a further project was passing through my mind. I dismissed it as firmly as I could whenever the thought overcame my natural reluctance. But the more I tried to banish it the more strongly it returned. My normal instincts of self-preservation were as ineffectual as Canute’s demand of the sea. I wanted to try a parachute jump. That isn’t true, I didn’t want to. Nobody wants to do that. This was another obstacle of fear that by its very enormity of terror fascinated me as a doomed rabbit is fascinated by a snake.
During the following months as I prepared for my flying licence examinations I frequently glanced over the side of the Tiger Moth aircraft and looked at and through the emptiness beneath me. There flashed through my mind the image of my body falling through space, tumbling, tumbling to oblivion. I watched my body until it became a speck amongst the myriad of specks that made up the landscape. This recurring image brought violent attacks of vertigo and made me shrink, unnerved, into the cockpit, hating myself and the devil within that drove me to such idiocy.
Evidently I should explain why I had to jump. Ingenuously I have thought it simply the action of a coward. I had to prove to myself that I was not a coward; therefore I must jump. Later a more facile analysis by a flying comrade suggested that it was my innate sense of publicity. That so strong was my conceit and wish to be a celebrity, even at that tender age, I was prepared to go to the lengths of risking my life for public adulation. Another pseudo-psychiatric suggestion was that I wanted to be a boy and, therefore, this was simply another manifestation of frustrated masculinity. Now, in comparative maturity, I must confess the second theory rings true. (Though not for constant and international fame would I jump again.)
I waited patiently for my seventeenth birthday and practised interminably the various tortuous manœuvres on which I would be tested for my licence. ‘Figures of 8’ around two pylons, and dead-stick landings to within inches of a chalked circle in the middle of the airfield. The ‘8’ was a test of flying accuracy. Two pylons had to be encircled at a constant height and airspeed with the evolution of the ‘8’ to be as near perfect as possible. The flight path resembled a pair of spectacles, with the pylons in the centre of the lens. The cross-eyed effect of my earlier efforts caused a certain amount of unkind amusement but as the day neared I managed to give the impression of normal eyesight.
The flying test was arranged soon after I was seventeen. It was a sunny day, with people going their ways quite normally. I felt mild resentment that on such a day they could be so unconcerned.
The sealed barograph, an infernal contraption that traced on a chart any variations of height during my solo test manœuvres, was placed in the rear of the aeroplane. With this omniscient and incorruptible passenger and under the watchful eyes of the Chief Flying Instructor and fellow students I perspired my way through the test. I landed and accompanied the Chief Instructor, and the barograph, to his office. With ballot box tensity the seals were broken.
‘Hum, what happened there?’ asked the instructor, pointing to a sharp dip in the pen’s spindly trace.
‘A thermal current,’ I lied hopefully.
‘Some current!’ he said as he continued examining the tell-tale trace. I examined him examining it and observed the analogy of the lines around his eyes and mouth. As they deepened, so my spirits sank sympathetically.
‘I think it will do,’ he observed finally. ‘We’ll send it to the Ministry. Now for the ‘‘Oral.’’’
Half an hour later, having survived the barrage of questions, I left his office. A week later my licence arrived.
The celebrations over, my thoughts returned to the parachute jump. Three months later I was still trying to obtain permission from the Ministry. Their replies were a masterpiece of prevarication not, under the circumstances, entirely blameworthy. Not to be outdone I decided to see the minister. I do not know who was the more astonished as I sat in his office in a vast leather chair, my legs dangling a few inches from the carpet: he at my audacity, I at my success in sitting in this exalted office. I peered over the desk and, strengthened by the knowledge that he had done the first parachute jump in South Africa, launched into what must have been a brilliantly persuasive soliloquy for within a few days I received official permission to jump.
My mother and I sat at home one serene Saturday evening. Idly she brushed aside her sewing and turned on the radio for the nine o’clock news.
‘...particular crisis had passed. Hitler had declared himself satisfied... At six o’clock tomorrow morning Miss Jackie Sorour, a young South African girl aged seventeen, will attempt a parachute jump from 5,000 feet over Swartkop aerodrome... Here are the sports results...’
I was dumbfounded and watched horrified as disbelief and incredulity passed across my mother’s features.
‘What on earth... Jackie, are you mad! How dare you! I forbid it.’ She got up, a tiny tower of rage.
‘I must do it now,’ I appealed, alarmed at her anger. ‘Everything’s arranged.’
‘The funeral as well?’ she answered.
For the first time in my life my mother and I quarrelled bitterly. I felt ashamed at my deceit in not taking her into my confidence. However, the unfortunate announcement over the radio, made without my knowledge or consent, forced her compliance. She appreciated that I could not draw back now.
The next morning my mother drove me to the aerodrome. Under a thin cheerless drizzle the pavements glistened drably in the half-light of approaching dawn. The windscreen wiper clicked thumpily in unison with my heart.
As daybreak lifted the pallor of the low unseasonable clouds it revealed the airport road unusually heavy with traffic. The
car-parks were full and cars had spilled on to the perimeter of the aerodrome; their owners sitting on the roofs placidly munching sandwiches. How I envied them. The faint lingering hope that I might escape the inevitable vanished with a thud into the pit of my stomach.
My mother stopped before the airport buildings and, rather importantly, opened the car doors for me. I stepped out into a blaze of flashes as press photographers jostled their way on to the front page.
The pilot, solemnly benevolent, strapped me in before we took off in a haze of waving handkerchiefs. As we climbed, climbed, climbed, the sun shone through the broken clouds giving dimension to the height.
‘O.K.,’ he shouted as we levelled off at five thousand feet. ‘When you’re ready.’
I undid the straps and cowered in the seat. ‘What did you say?’ shouted the pilot. I shook my head; I could hardly admit that I had sobbed: ‘Oh Mum.’
Insane with fear I stood up on the seat and clambered out on to the lower wing. The slipstream screamed at my insolence and only the firm grasp of the pilot leaning out of his seat prevented me from being blown off unceremoniously. It suddenly occurred to me that sitting on the wing of an aircraft at 5,000 feet is a most extraordinary thing to do. I sat for long seconds gazing down at the mile of space beneath and the unfamiliar silhouette of the tail, usually unseen, perched inconsequentially on the end of the fuselage. Defying the fury of the wind I waved at the pilot. He waved back. I did it again; it seemed so funny with my legs dangling absurdly over the chasm beneath. The wind still struggled. ‘Stop pushing,’ I protested, ‘I’ll jump when I’m ready.’
Spitfire Girl Page 2