by Max Hennessy
Alix Courtney had appeared from the hangar now, still wearing the oil-stained jodhpurs, and stood on the edge of the group, as unsmiling and unmoved by her father’s enthusiasm as Boyle. He didn’t seem to notice it.
‘Hello there, hon,’ he said gaily. ‘You know that? You heard what I just said to Lave? I told you about Ira, didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘I heard about him.’
She seemed untouched by her father’s gusto and was watching him with the same wariness with which she regarded everyone.
‘How do you feel, Pa?’ she asked.
‘OK, OK!’ Courtney waved a hand in an energetic gesture. It didn’t seem to impress her much.
‘You look as though you could do with some sleep,’ she said. ‘Did you get your loan?’
Courtney paused just long enough for Ira to get the feeling that there were other things on his mind besides the business for which he’d appeared in Medway.
‘Not yet,’ he boomed in his huge voice.
‘You’ve been trying a long time, Pa.’
Courtney grinned. ‘You bet! They took about three days to tell me “No”. I reckon if God built the world in six, with a day of rest on Sunday, they ought to be able to turn me down in six minutes, don’t you?’
He put his arm round Ira’s shoulder and tried again to move towards the hangar, but Alix’s voice came once more, flat and suspicious.
‘Pa, if you didn’t get the dough, what are you going to do?’
He beamed at her. ‘Don’t let it worry you, Alix,’ he said. ‘She thinks too much,’ he explained to Ira. ‘That goddam mind of hers has been a plague to me ever since she was a child.’
‘Pa!’
Courtney stopped dead and, from the expression that sped fleetingly across his face, Ira saw that her insistence bothered him.
‘Banks are all alike, Alix,’ he explained in a pained, patient way. ‘Always ready to bite the hand that feeds ’em. I’m still negotiating. We aren’t broke. I only want capital to expand. That’s all. I can always see Joe Hughesden. I’ve worked with him for years.’
‘Joe Hughesden’ll swallow you alive if you give him a chance,’ Boyle growled, his voice rasping and fretful. His eyes rested on Courtney as though he were a frivolous child.
‘Joe Hughesden’s an honourable man,’ Courtney said.
Alix snorted. ‘To Joe Hughesden, honour’s a matter of taste, and his taste isn’t mine.’
Courtney stopped dead. ‘For God’s sake, Alix!’ he said. He still wore a wide smile but somehow it seemed to hide an old irritation, as though he felt she spent too much time sitting in judgement on him. They both seemed a little on edge, Courtney because of his failure, Alix because she was obviously not looking forward to the discussion on the new aeroplane that would have to take place before long.
For a second there was a pause and Ira had a feeling that there was a greater gulf of disagreement between father and daughter than Courtney allowed to be obvious. Then Courtney fished in the pocket of the coat he was carrying and held up a bottle of whisky, grinning all over his face. ‘Get some glasses, Alix,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a drink. It came from Bermuda. Or so the guy said, though it could just as easily have been Chicago. Let’s go into the office.’
They followed him towards the hangar and Courtney thrust a bundle of mail towards Ira. ‘Came to my place in Boston,’ he said. ‘It’s for you.’
Ira thrust the letters into the pocket of his jacket without looking at them and Courtney put an arm over his shoulder again.
‘This is going to be the biggest goddam celebration that ever was,’ he announced. ‘This is going to beat Armistice Night and the Fourth of July and the end of the Civil War all rolled into one.’
‘It isn’t celebrations you want, Pa,’ Alix said. ‘It’s sleep.’
Courtney ignored her, talking to Ira as if he were trying to pretend she didn’t exist. ‘I sure am sorry to drag you from your business, Ira,’ he went on. ‘But when I heard from that guy in Shanghai that you were in China, I just had to have you. Did you sell your business? Oriental Air Carriers, they told me. I guess I haven’t heard of them.’
Sammy grinned. ‘Not surprised,’ he said. ‘They died young.’
Courtney didn’t hear him. He was carrying them before him, herding them almost like a sheepdog, moving them all towards the hangar with little pushes from behind, impatient, eager and enthusiastic. ‘I heard you’d been in Russia,’ he said. ‘And I knew you’d been in Africa. Any guy who can fly round places like Russia, Africa and China ought to be able to fly across the Atlantic.’
He swept them through the hangar doors. ‘You seen the machine?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Ira said carefully. ‘I’ve seen the aeroplane.’
‘She’s a great ship, isn’t she?’
Ira intercepted the glance Alix flashed at Hal Woolff as her father spoke, but Courtney was enthusiastically crossing the hangar floor now towards the half-completed fuselage on the horses at the back. His vast strides seemed so out of place with his small frame he seemed to be making a series of leaps.
He stopped in front of the plane and ran his hand over the undoped white canvas, and the workman busy over it with thread and curved needle stepped back with a grin as he had his back slapped.
‘Best plane in the USA,’ Courtney told him noisily. ‘I put a lot of work into that, Ira.’ He was pushing them towards the office now. ‘Courtney aeroplanes will be making the Atlantic look like a bus route five years from now. Nobody can say the United States hasn’t stepped out of the days of the pioneers at last, eh, Lave?’
The old man looked round him from where he was dragging up a box to sit on. ‘Well, we aren’t still fightin’ Indians,’ he said.
Alix had produced glasses by this time and Courtney began to slosh whisky into them. Woolff followed him round with water from a bottle filled from a tap in the hangar.
‘Here’s to us,’ Courtney said with a wide grin. He swallowed the whisky at a gulp and filled the glass again.
‘You should lay off that stuff, Felton,’ Boyle growled.
Courtney grinned. ‘Glory be to Moses in the bulrushes,’ he said, ‘this is a special occasion!’ He lifted his glass again. ‘Here’s to beating the lot of ’em – Byrd, Davis, the whole goddam gang! What do you think of her, Ira?’
Again he didn’t wait for an answer but crossed to the office window and stared out into the factory where the workmen were moving leisurely about the half-built fuselage and wing.
‘I came down here,’ he said, almost as though he were offering a company report, ‘to keep it cheap. So we had more money to play with. So we could get the very best for her. And so the goddam newspapers don’t get nosing around too soon. When she’s ready I want her to burst on the public like the sun coming up out of the sea. I want ’em to see her and think, Goddam, that’s the one that’ll do it!’
He swung round to face them, beaming, and Ira was unhappily conscious of the frozen faces of everyone else. Courtney still failed to notice, however.
‘She’s a great-looking ship, isn’t she?’ he said.
He turned, his manner intimidating in its directness, and jerked a hand towards the half-built machine. Immediately there was a silence as Ira sought for words that would be critical without being hurtful. Clearly, Courtney had staked a lot on his creation.
He saw Alix glance again at Woolff, then Woolff lit a cigarette slowly and looked at Sammy.
Courtney became aware of the silence. ‘Well, come on!’ His face was puzzled now, the ghost of the broad grin still hanging on his lips. ‘What do you think of her?’
Ira took a deep breath, thoroughly unhappy in the role that had been assigned to him. ‘I think we need to talk about her, Felton,’ he said.
Courtney’s face fell. ‘Talk about her?’ he said. ‘Hell, you make her sound like two cents rotten. I’ve wrestled with that goddam thing too long to want to talk about her.’ The smile made an atte
mpt to return, and he looked at his daughter and Woolff. ‘Well, good grief,’ he ended, ‘come on! What’re you kicking about, Ira?’
Ira stared at him, suddenly aware that there was a puffy look about his eyes that he hadn’t noticed at first, and he realised that, despite his nervous energy, Courtney was far from fit. Too little exercise, too little fresh air, and the strain of too much business worry had taken their toll of him over the years since they’d met during the war, and his features were covered with a thin sheen of perspiration over an unexpected sallowness. Boyle was watching him with alert narrowed eyes, sitting on a box and hugging an attaché case full of papers to his chest as though he thought one of them might steal it. Ira was conscious of five pairs of eyes on him.
‘She’s unorthodox,’ he managed at last.
‘Sure she’s unorthodox!’ Courtney boomed. ‘She’ll need to be unorthodox to fly that far in one hop. You thinking of those engines slung under the top wing?’ He moved about the office eagerly, obviously not really concerned with Ira’s ideas. ‘Seaplane construction. Used on PN-9s, Boeings and the NC boats.’
‘They flew a lot slower than we’re hoping to fly, Felton,’ Ira managed to break in at last. ‘I think she’ll need some modifications.’
Courtney’s eyes flicked from one to another of them, finally resting on Boyle’s face as though hoping he might draw encouragement there. But the lawyer was obviously out of his depth and unable to help. They were all in a half-circle round the desk now as though they were holding a wake, and suddenly Courtney’s manner was hostile.
‘OK’, he said sharply. ‘Let’s have it! Let’s have the bad news! What did I do wrong?’
Ira struggled again with his words. ‘I think perhaps you approached it wrong,’ he said.
‘How?’ Courtney’s words were clipped and short now, and all the enthusiasm and gaiety had gone. Ira could see Alix’s face was miserable and full of concern for her father.
‘OK,’ Courtney urged. ‘Let’s start from the bottom up. Is the undercarriage wrong?’
I wish that were all that was wrong, Ira thought.
‘It’d be all right for a bicycle, Felton,’ he said slowly. ‘We’re going to have to lift a heavy load off the ground, probably from a rough field. It’s not strong enough. I don’t like that concertina shock absorber.’
‘OK,’ Courtney waved his hand, and he looked faintly relieved. ‘That’s nothing! We can fix that soon enough!’
He sloshed whisky into his glass, as though he half-expected that they’d cleared the hurdle of their problems. He sloshed more into Ira’s glass, too, and looked up with a smile, then he caught the grim look in Ira’s eyes.
‘There’s more?’ he said.
‘There’s more,’ Ira admitted. ‘You’ve planned for a radio. I don’t want a radio.’
Courtney looked puzzled. ‘How the hell will you know where you’re at if you don’t have a radio? Byrd’s got a radio. You need a radio.’
‘I’d rather rely on my navigation. Radios are big and heavy. I’d rather have petrol.’
Courtney seemed about to protest but Alix interrupted.
‘He’s got a point, Pa,’ she said and, after the hostility between them earlier, Ira was surprised to find her taking his side so readily.
Courtney’s eyes flickered round them and Ira studied him, wondering how close this project of getting an aeroplane non-stop across the Atlantic was to his heart. Then Courtney was talking again. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But before you go any further remember I got my plans checked by one of the best men there is. Frank Mulroy. He came over from the West Coast to do it. He has all the latest ideas.’
‘He’d have been wiser to recommend a single-engined machine,’ Sammy said bluntly, ‘for the size you’ve planned for.’
The real basis of their objections was out now and Courtney’s head jerked up. ‘Byrd’s got a three-engined plane,’ he pointed out sharply. ‘Davis’s got a three-engined plane.’
‘Fonck had a three-engined plane,’ Ira said quietly.
Courtney was clearly shocked by this attitude and his manner had suddenly grown cold and distant. ‘That all?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ Ira said slowly. ‘I think the basic point is that you’re making a mistake building a biplane for record-breaking. Monoplanes are the planes of the future, Felton. Biplanes have a built-in drag.’
Courtney’s face was grim. ‘Anything else?’
Ira gestured helplessly. ‘I think that’ll do for now,’ he said miserably.
For a moment, Courtney stared at him, his hand straying to his waistcoat pocket. He extracted a small tin and took out two purple pills which he popped into his mouth and washed down with a gulp of whisky, then, as though it had been boiling up inside him during the nervous movement of his hands, his anger burst out of him in a shout.
‘For God’s sake,’ he said bitterly. ‘Anybody’d think I was a damned amateur! This isn’t the first plane we’ve built. Courtney aircraft are flying all round the United States. Two of ’em are carrying mail already. So will this. I planned to sell ’em for mail and I’d put my whole organisation behind this project! I was prepared to stake everything, and that goddam plane’s costing me a mint of money. Mulroy didn’t take his fees in trouser buttons!’
He had an aggressive, pained attitude now, as though he felt he’d been badly let down by them all. ‘We designed her between us, I guess, from my ideas, so she could be adopted for mail or passenger-carrying later. For God’s sake, why shouldn’t a passenger-carrying aeroplane cross the Atlantic?’
‘Why shouldn’t it?’ Ira agreed. ‘So long as it’s the right one.’
‘And this isn’t? For God’s sake, Ira’ – Courtney lost his temper completely – ‘I didn’t pay your fare all the way from China to tell me what was wrong with my ship! This is my plane and I only hired you to fly it.’
Unyielding independence had driven past generations of Cornish Penalunas out of the narrow creeks between Polruan and the Gribbin to do battle with the wide Atlantic in every capacity from naval man and excise official to plain honest-to-God pirate, and the unswerving rigidity of generations of nonconformist sailors whose only weapon against the sea had been their own black stubbornness showed in Ira’s face. He had been tinkering with aeroplanes ever since he’d been a schoolboy and flying them from not very long afterwards, and he had the confidence of sheer experience.
‘You’ve got to decide what class you’re in, Felton,’ he said quietly. ‘Whether you’re among the big stuff or the small stuff. The three-engined giants have got a lot of money behind them. The private concerns are going for small machines. They’ve both got equal chances. You’re somewhere in between with this machine. If we have three engines and one cut, maybe two might pull us out of danger. If we have two and one cuts, one engine’ll never get her across the Atlantic with a full load of petrol for two.’
‘Neither will one, if that cuts,’ Courtney snapped.
‘With one engine,’ Ira said, ‘if it cuts, your chances are still as good as if one of two cuts, and the whole thing’ll be less complicated.’ He paused. ‘And I think you can get better engines these days, Felton, than Gnome-Rhônes.’
‘What do you want? Maybachs?’
Sammy snorted. ‘Water-cooled,’ he said. ‘Too much plumbing. You’re spouting steam all over the sky all the time. And these German motors burn benzol. It’s too wasteful. You’d have to change your wing design for ’em, too. We should go for air-cooled radials.’
Courtney seemed almost to be choking on his indignation by this time. Alix watched him with a white face, her eyes anxious. Boyle sat on his box, still clutching his glass in one hand and his attaché case in the other, his expression watchful. Woolff looked wretchedly unhappy, as though he wanted to agree with Ira and Sammy and couldn’t because of a long-standing loyalty to Courtney.
‘Goddam!’ Courtney managed at last. ‘I picked on you because I thought you were the greatest flier I knew, Ira. You were
the one guy I thought could get my machine across the Atlantic.’
Ira gestured awkwardly, aware of Courtney’s rage and disappointment. He had obviously set great store by his design and their comments had shattered him.
‘Flying your machine across the Atlantic’s the one thing I want to do, Felton,’ he said.
‘My God, it looks like it!’ Courtney gestured, his face red. ‘All fliers are only stunt men when all’s said and done,’ he snorted. ‘And this Atlantic thing’s just the biggest stunt of ’em all. Maybe you don’t have the guts…’
‘Pa…!’ Alix’s yell of protest stopped him dead. She had leapt to her feet and lifted her hand as though she were going to bring back her arm and deliver a haymaker, and Ira suddenly realised that in their haphazard life together there had probably been times when she had.
‘For God’s sake…!’ she choked.
Courtney stared at her and, as she dropped her hand, he picked up the half-empty whisky bottle and swung on his heel towards the door.
‘Come on, Lave,’ he said bitterly to Boyle. ‘Maybe I hired the wrong guy. Maybe I should get a real flier to prove there’s nothing wrong with my ship.’
He stopped at the door of the office. ‘I’ll take the Pierce Arrow,’ he announced to Alix in an unsteady voice. ‘You’ll have to get Hal to bring you home.’
The door slammed behind him, and they saw him crossing the hangar in those vast comical strides so that Boyle was having to run to keep up with him. For a while, as he disappeared, there was silence, then they all moved uncomfortably, embarrassed and awkward, and Woolff let out his breath in a long whistle.
‘That sure was warm while it lasted,’ he said.
Sammy drew a deep indignant breath and Alix turned to Ira, surprisingly angered by her father’s intemperate words. She seemed lost for something to say and, as her jaw worked, trying to force something out, there was another silence.
Ira smiled. ‘This is what’s known in literature as a pregnant pause,’ he said.
Her eyes flashed and she looked as though she were about to choke with embarrassment. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to say. He said you were yellow!’