by Max Hennessy
He became aware of Alix’s eyes on him. ‘How about it, Ira?’ she asked. ‘You ready to go?’
He nodded. ‘We’re ready. We’ve got all the Rand-MacNally maps we need.’
‘You can’t beat ’em,’ Courtney approved. ‘What about the licence?’
‘It’s through.’ Woolff’s head jerked up. ‘International-experimental. They’re painting the number on her tomorrow.’
‘It’s only fair to point out,’ Ira said, ‘that if she doesn’t behave well, I shan’t go for the Atlantic.’
‘For Sweet Jesus’ sake, Ira!’ Courtney exploded. ‘What do you want? Angels?’
Ira grinned. ‘Don’t let it get you down, Felton,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect there to be much wrong.’
Alix looked round, the smoky black eyes on his face again. ‘How about a passenger?’ she suggested. ‘Someone who knows the country?’
Ira regarded her gravely. ‘The whole point of navigation,’ he said, ‘is that you don’t have to know the country.’
She didn’t argue, but it immediately became clear that the suggestion had set Courtney’s mind racing. He sat bolt upright in his chair.
‘Now, see here,’ he said excitedly. ‘I think you’ve got a great idea there!’
Alix’s head jerked round. ‘Forget it,’ she said quickly.
Courtney leaned forward eagerly. ‘We need publicity now,’ he said. ‘The ship’s built and we’ve got to start thinking about selling more like it. The press’d go overboard for that. It’d be the nuts, and Alix, you’ve flown over the whole of the Eastern states on your own, from Mexico to Maine.’
‘I said it didn’t matter,’ Alix said harshly.
‘How about this, then?’ Courtney offered. ‘The boys are flying me back to New York. I’m in a hurry. I’m needed there. I’ve got to meet a business deadline.’
Alix looked alarmed and her eyes widened. ‘Land’s sakes, Pa, you know you couldn’t take a flight that long! The doctors would throw a blue fit.’
Courtney waved a hand. ‘I’ll be OK,’ he said.
‘Pa, you’re not flying to New York!’ Alix’s alarm had increased, and she crushed out her cigarette in an ashtray. ‘I’ll do it if Ira’ll take me.’
Courtney was beaming now. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You go. I’ll see that the press are on hand when you arrive. This’ll be great – a Courtney arriving in a Courtney plane.’
‘You haven’t asked Ira yet,’ Alix pointed out sharply.
Ira was watching the by-play with interest, and he glanced now at Sammy. They’d discussed the publicity they expected to receive when they arrived in the North because they knew New York was fed on ballyhoo and sensation and the weirdest of publicity stunts. There would inevitably be aeronautical officials to see and perhaps even a local politician or two hoping to make the front pages. There was no real reason why Alix shouldn’t accompany them.
Sammy caught his eye and grinned. He seemed to have a curious regard for Alix, and she’d always been prepared to swap ideas about aerodynamics, drag coefficients and thrust and stress factors, whenever he chose to bore her with them.
‘There’s one snag,’ Ira pointed out. ‘An experimental licence means we can’t carry passengers.’
‘Sign her on as an extra crew member,’ Courtney suggested.
‘It might be a good test,’ Woolff said. ‘It’d be equivalent to another hundred-fifty pounds of fuel.’
‘One-twelve,’ Alix snapped and Woolff grinned at her.
She was staring at Ira now, a confused shine in her eyes. The blind flying she’d done with him had been exact and efficient. He knew she wouldn’t be merely a passenger and he’d noticed the desperate appeal in her expression.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll start as soon as the fog clears. I’ll chart the course tomorrow.’
‘Do it tonight, Ira,’ Courtney urged. ‘Tomorrow the fog might be gone. Sammy – why not contact the Weather Bureau right now? They keep up a twenty-four-hour service for shipping and we might just have a forecast for the morning.’
* * *
As the party broke up, Courtney pushed his chair back with a scraping noise across the uneven floor boards. ‘How about us all going into Charleston and finding a drink?’ he said. ‘Lave knows a place where you can get real Scotch. Show the boys around some – the Battery, the old Slave Mart, the Heyward-Washington House and the guns that fired on Fort Sumter.’
Alix frowned. ‘I’ve seen the guns that fired on Fort Sumter,’ she retorted. ‘And so have the boys. You should be going to bed if you’re going back up north tomorrow.’
Courtney looked rebellious. ‘I’ve taken my pills,’ he growled.
She gave a bark of laughter.
‘If you’re on pills, it isn’t a night out you want, it’s a crutch.’
As they moved into the hall towards the library, Ira stopped to light the enormous cigar Courtney had insisted on giving him, and he heard Alix’s voice coming from the dining room, not loud but sibilant, as though she were letting drive in anger at her father.
‘You lay off this press business, Pa,’ she was saying. ‘You’re not going to turn this flight into a three-ring circus.’
Courtney chuckled. ‘Hell, we need publicity now, Alix,’ he said. ‘We’ve finished. We’re ready. This is when we need it.’
‘We can’t afford publicity,’ Alix snapped. ‘We’ll get all the publicity we can do with when we get the plane across.’
‘Aw, rats, Alix! Publicity’s dough, and we need dough!’
Ira had lit the cigar now, and was just moving out of the hall, embarrassed by what he’d heard, when Alix’s heels clattered across the warped wooden blocks of the floor.
‘I don’t trust him, Ira,’ she said.
He turned. ‘Who? Your father? Why not?’
She gave a deep sigh, then she frowned and an uncertain movement of her hand changed into an irritable little gesture.
‘He’s up to some deal with Joe Hughesden,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it is but I don’t trust Joe Hughesden either. Pa’s been dealing with him for a long time now and they never got on. Why should they behave like old buddies now?’
Ira offered her a cigarette and she took it without a word, waiting with nervous fingers for him to light it for her, then she drew deep puffs at it as though she couldn’t contain her anger, blowing out the smoke and fanning it away from her face with a savage slapping motion of her hand.
‘I expect he knows what he’s doing,’ Ira said.
She looked up quickly. ‘Pa never knows what he’s doing,’ she snapped back. ‘He never did. He moves too fast, and when he stops he finds he’s done something he didn’t intend. I hope to God he hasn’t over-extended himself over this damn plane. That two and half thou he promised never turned up.’
Ira looked puzzled. ‘Hal paid the bills with it,’ he said.
She was silent for a moment, then she moved her head angrily. ‘I sent it,’ she said.
Ira drew on his cigarette in silence. ‘Would he want you to?’
She frowned. ‘He’s got nothing to do with it,’ she said. ‘I’m free, white and twenty-one, and somebody had to.’
Ira studied her for a moment, wondering if he ought to tell her what Nestor had said while she’d been in New York with her father – about Courtney trying to negotiate a loan in Medway. He suddenly wondered, even, if it had been the reason for his urgent and brief visits to the South from Boston.
She was watching him from the shadows, her eyes on his face. ‘Did you ever have trouble with your father?’ she asked.
Ira smiled wryly. ‘My mother did. He spent all the housekeeping on aeroplanes.’
She tossed her cigarette aside, half-smoked, and faced him, looking sad and lovely, her eyes bright, the wide passionate mouth managing an uncertain smile.
‘Do something for me, will you, Ira?’ she said. ‘Come with me into Charleston. I feel like some night life after all.’
Chapter 4
Sammy had offered no objection to driving home alone and Ira suspected he had an assignation somewhere with the girl from the store. Sammy had grown up fast in the last year or two, and there was a devil in him sometimes that made him chase everything that was going, whether it were a girl, money or merely excitement.
Alix drove the old Chevrolet fast and expertly, though she seemed absorbed with her thoughts and took too many risks. Every now and then they saw a cow or a mule among the trees, disembodied and legless among the milky vapour that swirled about it, staring into the headlights as the car bored through the arch of ghostly branches it illuminated with its own lamps.
They crossed the Ashley River and headed down King Street towards the sea. Near the Battery, she stopped the car under the high wall and, without saying a word, got out and stood staring into the mist where they could see the dim lights of shipping through the fog.
The slow groan of a freighter’s siren came from beyond the blankness as it edged nervously into the harbour. Behind them the lacy iron balconies of old houses were dimly silhouetted by the glow of lighted windows pushing through the trees and the silent palmetto flags.
As Ira came up alongside her, Alix pushed a cigarette at him and held up her lighter. The glow from a street lamp fell on her face. ‘Damn big business,’ she said.
‘You still on about that?’ Ira asked.
She turned on him angrily. ‘Sure I’m still on about that,’ she said. ‘Why is it that when men start making money, they always want more and kill themselves to get it? He’s been like this ever since my mother died, as though he has to stop himself thinking that he’s alone. Maybe he ought to marry again. I wouldn’t mind.’
She paused. ‘I was married,’ she went on.
‘Yes.’
‘I divorced him.’
‘I heard that, too.’
‘Don’t you want to hear why?’
‘Now’s not the time for the disasters and dishonours of the day, Alix.’
She dragged on her cigarette and threw it away only half-smoked. ‘You’re going to hear ’em all the same,’ she said.
She drew a deep breath that was almost a sigh. ‘He came from Boston,’ she went on. ‘He flew aeroplanes. I’d been going around with a boy I’d known at school in New York. We used to go swimming and sailing. He had an old flivver and we used to go to the tea dances and out to Long Island to look at the sea. I guess I thought I couldn’t ever be happier. But I grew out of it. It began to seem unreal. You can’t live on sugar cake all your life, can you? Then I met my husband. I guess I married him on the rebound.’
She drew another deep breath and moved her hand slowly in a derisive gesture. ‘It didn’t work out,’ she went on. ‘Because I was only eighteen. I hated him before six months were up. He said he wanted a home and kids but I never believed him. He liked booze and aeroplanes and fast cars too much. He wasn’t as tough as he pretended to be. I even think he was scared of me a bit. I was always telling him to slow down. One night around Thanksgiving he’d been at his hip flask and he hit the kerb and I was thrown out. I wasn’t hurt at all, but he was still in the car when it hit a tree.’
She drew a deep breath and went on in short spare sentences that came out awkwardly – almost as though they hurt. ‘He was pretty smashed up. The minister came and begged me to pray for him. Because he was my husband. I couldn’t tell him I hated his guts. Because I guess maybe his parents loved him, even if I didn’t. Yet I felt it was my fault and I tried to do something about it. But I couldn’t pray worth a damn. Every time I got started I kept remembering the things he’d called me when he was drunk. In the end I got up and had a cigarette instead. He didn’t die. He got over it but we were all washed up. I never lived with him again, and we got a divorce the year afterwards.’ She dragged at her cigarette. ‘I guess I’m boring you.’
‘A bit.’
She managed a twisted smile. ‘You never say what you’re expected to say, do you?’
‘It stops people taking you for granted.’
She managed another smile. ‘I won’t go on much longer. Only I’ve got to tell somebody. I’ve never really laid it on the mat before. Do you mind?’
‘Go on, Alix, get it off your chest.’
She sighed in the darkness. ‘When it all fell through I went rushing back to the boy from New York. But he was married, too, then, and scared stiff of me. He thought his wife would find out. It was all lousy.’
She was silent for a long time. ‘I’m sick of men,’ she said. ‘Most men, anyway. I need someone who’s not scared of me, someone who’s prepared to offer me a slap across the jaw if necessary. I’m twenty-two now and I’ve racketed around too long. If I don’t do something worthwhile soon, I’ll end up jumping out of a window. That’s why I wanted to see this plane built. To feel I’d done one worthwhile thing in my life. From now on I’m looking for a man with guts. That’s all there is left.’
She stared at Ira, her eyes glittering in the glow of the street lamp. ‘You aren’t saying very much,’ she pointed out. ‘Have you ever been in love?’
‘Yes.’
She seemed surprised. ‘You have? When?’
‘Not long ago.’
‘Why didn’t you marry her?’
‘She was killed – flying.’
She was silent for a moment, shaken by his words. ‘Oh!’ She paused, her eyes suddenly concerned. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to probe.’
‘It’s all right. I’ve got over it.’
‘Do you want to talk about it to me?’ she asked gently.
‘Some time perhaps. Not now.’
‘I guess I don’t feel like whooping it up, after all,’ she said quietly. ‘Let’s go get a cup of coffee in a diner.’
* * *
Her mood was heavy and had never allowed the evening to get off the ground. When they stopped at a roadside restaurant she was still deep in her own thoughts.
On the way back to Medway, however, she stopped the car by the road in a patch of conifers, where they could smell the damp and the pine needles, and they were as alone as if they were in another world, listening to the tick and whisper of the trees and the shufflings of small animals in the darkness.
She smoked a cigarette slowly, not speaking, then, her eyes bright in the glow of the dashboard lights, she threw it out of the car and turned towards Ira. Her face was calm and a little puzzled.
‘Are you scared of me, Ira?’ she asked unexpectedly.
‘Why should I be?’
‘Lots of men are. We try to be broad-minded about divorce over here but people are still wary of a girl who’s been married. They treat you as if you were a fast-buck operator. Cautious. As if you might be infectious.’ She looked at him again under her eyebrows and in the semi-darkness it was impossible to tell what she was thinking. ‘You’re the only man I’ve met who’s never made passes at me,’ she pointed out.
Ira grinned. ‘It’s safer not to.’
‘Why?’
‘I couldn’t be sure of the result. All the same, in the dark and wearing that perfume, I could find my resistance wearing a bit thin.’
She paused, then she moved restlessly alongside him.
‘I guess I could make it thinner if I tried.’
‘I don’t think you’d need to,’ he admitted. ‘Pity the grass’s wet and the mist’s on the damp side.’
She laughed – a genuine laugh – and slid along the seat towards him. ‘We could put the hood up,’ she suggested. ‘Or there’s a bungalow on the beach. It’s locked up. The key’s under the porch.’
* * *
The fog hung on for the whole of the next day and, though they rang from the airfield at impatient intervals, the story remained the same: Low press
ure to the west and south, with heavy cloud over high land; and rain – even ice and sleet – to the north.
The information that Nungesser was about to take off, however, had apparently been too optimistic because, after a report from Paris that he would leave from Le Bourget within a matter of hours, nothing further had been heard of him, though Levine in New York claimed to have got his crew troubles sorted out by making his third pilot, Lloyd Bertaud, the navigator.
‘The pilot will be chosen from Clarence Chamberlin and Bert Acosta, both experienced men,’ he announced. ‘They will appear in flying suits at the last minute and their names will be written on separate slips of paper. One slip will be drawn from a hat and the name on it will decide the pilot.’
It seemed an odd way to choose a pilot for a flight as taxing as one across the Atlantic would be, and could only lead to confusion, lack of preparedness and indifference, and Ira decided privately that perhaps after all they hadn’t quite as much to fear from the Bellanca as they’d thought.
They were all a little on edge by this time, nevertheless, because their preparations were complete now and as there was little they could help with at the airfield, the only sensible thing to do was to keep away. Courtney had gone to New York to await their arrival and Woolff was busy strengthening and replacing the shock absorbers and making last-minute checks on the engine, and there was no point in getting in his way.
The bad weather continued to cover the land and the Medway Examiner ran a series of wildly improbable stories about their imminent departure which grew more imaginative with every day the bad weather held on.
The final gem arrived one morning while they were still luxuriating in bed, and Sammy sat up with a jerk, spilling coffee and rattling the paper.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ he said. ‘You’ve been relegated to co-pilot, Ira!’
He threw the paper across and Ira fought to straighten out the sheets.