by Max Hennessy
GIRL TO MAKE NEW YORK FLIGHT. ALIX COURTNEY WILL BE PILOT.
Ira’s eyes swept over the words, then he tossed the newspaper aside. The story didn’t worry him at all but he’d been disturbed and angry for some time since the drive into Charleston. They had not returned to Medway until the early hours of the morning – Ira at the wheel of the car, Alix bolt upright alongside him, her eyes fixed firmly ahead – passing through the town with the beginning of daylight before the first unwilling mule was on the dusty road to Charleston. Not surprisingly, he’d expected her to show some sign that she was aware he was alive, but he’d seen no sign of her since and when he’d telephoned Magnolia she’d put him off with a brief and patently false excuse. After that, the telephone had been answered with the information that she was out.
His eyes brooded on Nestor’s headline for a while, then he caught Sammy’s gaze on him.
‘What the hell are you looking at?’ he demanded, and Sammy gestured, his face innocent.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’
They had barely finished breakfast when Alix arrived unexpectedly, swinging the old Chevrolet round in front of the hotel with a swish of gravel. Her imperious manner was gone and she seemed strangely humble and apologetic. Ira studied her warily.
‘I expect you’re wondering where I’ve been,’ she said brusquely.
‘I thought you’d want to tell me,’ Ira replied. ‘You seem very hard to get hold of.’
Her eyes flickered away from his, worried and unhappy. ‘I didn’t want to see you,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘I had things to do. I wanted to be on my own for a while,’
She gestured at the headlines in the newspaper on the table, as though trying to brush his questions aside. ‘That’s none of my doing, Ira,’ she said.
‘I didn’t think it was.’
‘It was that damned Nestor. I’d like to hit him over the head with a house brick. He came to the house and asked for a story. I should have held my tongue, I guess.’
She seemed to feel the need to make her protest almost too firmly, as though she felt guilty for her earlier rudeness and was anxious to put it right.
‘I told him the truth,’ she said. ‘That I was just going along as spare crew and that I’d be giving you a spell if you needed one. I don’t like publicity of that kind.’
Ira shrugged, uncertain how to deal with her. ‘Don’t lose any sleep over it,’ he advised. ‘We’ll worry about publicity when we get to the other side.’
Her eyes were still on his face, speculative and troubled at the same time, then she looked up at him, her expression suddenly challenging. ‘How about taking me with you, Ira?’ she asked.
‘We are doing.’
‘I mean to Paris.’
Ira grinned. ‘For the publicity?’
She frowned and shook her head. ‘Because I’m a good pilot and I know what you’re aiming at.’
‘I’ve got Sammy,’ Ira pointed out gently. ‘He’s pretty hot stuff, too.’
The velvety-jet eyes were still on his face, steady and appealing. ‘I’d like to come, Ira,’ she said. ‘I’ve wanted to make the trip ever since we first considered it.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s no stunt for a woman.’
Her eyes flickered for a moment uncertainly then they lifted again to his, direct and unafraid. ‘I’ve flown blind with you,’ she said. ‘I can do without sleep as well as you can. I can endure cold.’
‘Suppose we have to come down in the sea?’
She flashed him a sudden unexpected frightened look. ‘Don’t say that, Ira,’ she said quickly.
‘We might.’
She raised her eyes to his again. ‘OK. I can stand that, too.’
He shook his head. ‘No go, Alix,’ he said gently. ‘It’s no job for a woman. We’ve spent weeks working out weights and balances. We’ve got it poised on a knife-edge. An extra passenger would have to be counter-balanced with less petrol.’
She studied him for a while, her eyes disappointed, then she nodded, accepting his decision calmly with a little smile that was more wistful than happy. ‘I guess so,’ she agreed. ‘OK. Forget it. It was always in my mind but you’ve made your point. I’ll just be around to wave you off.’
* * *
Sammy had watched the whole interview in silence and as the old Chevrolet moved away, he glanced at Ira.
‘Ira, old cock,’ he said. ‘That girl’s got her eye on you.’
Ira said nothing. Sammy was too shrewd a judge of human emotions to be very far wrong.
Sammy grinned at his expression. ‘There’s no need to start protesting,’ he said.
‘Who’s protesting?’
‘I’ve seen her eyes. When she’s talking to me, she’s looking over my shoulder at you all the time. When I say something, her head’s cocked to hear what you’re saying at the other side of the room. She shows all the symptoms.’ Sammy grinned ruefully. ‘I don’t know what it is you’ve got, old lad, but you’ve got something. You’ve always only had to stand around looking heroic and flashing those baby blue eyes of yours and the dames go down like ninepins. I wish I had it. I always have to work like hell.’
Ira said nothing and Sammy’s smile faded. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her,’ he pointed out earnestly.
‘Who said there was?’
Sammy seemed to be pleading Alix’s case with a surprising vehemence and Ira suspected that, like Woolff, he was more than a little smitten himself. ‘She’s got more than most dames,’ he went on. ‘And it’s all where it ought to be.’ He paused. ‘I wouldn’t mind handling it myself,’ he admitted slowly, ‘only I was left at the post weeks ago.’
Ira stood for a moment in silence, his brows down, then he looked up and grinned. ‘Let’s go through the mail,’ he said.
Their mail these days had begun to include requests for signed photographs and offers from various kinds of crackpots who were anxious to put patent navigating instruments, charts or fuel conservation devices at their disposal, and this time there was another letter from China which informed them that the airline they had left behind was not only still managing to function on one old rebuilt De Havilland but was doing so well a second one was being considered. There were also a few offers of marriage, a suggestion that they appear in a movie, and a second letter from Cluff.
‘He says he’s coming to see us,’ Ira said.
‘He’s one guy I can do without,’ Sammy observed. He’d never forgiven Cluff his backsliding in Africa.
‘He says he’s got some project he wants to talk about.’
‘Probably wants to borrow fifty dollars.’ Sammy tossed aside the True Confessions magazine his girlfriend had lent him and reached for his wallet. Fishing inside it among the thick wad of letters he always carried, he produced a photograph, going brown with age and dog-eared with usage.
‘See that?’ he said.
It was a picture of the two of them with Cluff, whose smiling face stared out at them from the fading print with a strange sort of wistful appeal. He had never been a strong character.
‘He borrowed five quid off me when we had that taken,’ Sammy said. ‘He said he wanted to have a cabinet print done for his family in England. He didn’t ever get it done, but I never got my five quid back.’
* * *
During the afternoon the weather improved and the day ended in a peaceful sky that changed slowly from yellow to pink, and the last flights of martins were chattering noisily as they swooped above the hotel when Ira was called to the telephone.
It was Alix. She sounded excited.
‘Saddle up, Ira,’ she said. ‘The Weather Bureau just rang! The low-pressure area’s moving away and it’s clear along the eastern states.’
‘Right!’ Ira gestured frantically at Sammy standing near the door, his hair slicked down with brilliantine and wearing a starched collar ready for a date. ‘I’ll contact ’em myself and ring you back.’
The We
ather Bureau confirmed what she’d told him. ‘It’s moving out into the Atlantic,’ they said. ‘You’ll find it clear towards the Mex border, too.’
‘What about further north?’
‘Still shut in, but it’ll start clearing there, too, within twelve hours. By the time you get up there, it’ll be OK.’
Ira slammed down the receiver and rang Magnolia again. Alix answered at once, as though she were waiting alongside the instrument.
‘This is it all right,’ Ira said. ‘We go tomorrow. Take-off time’s fixed for four-thirty. Can you be at the field at three-thirty?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll ring Hal Woolff. Get an hour or two’s sleep.’
She laughed and her voice sounded tremulous with excitement. ‘You kidding?’
* * *
It was still dark when they arrived at the airfield and there was a mist in the trees along the fringes of the runway, but it would soon disappear when they left the coast and the sun got up. The flight path along the field was still obscure, but Woolff had long since set flares along it to give direction for an early take-off, and a workman was moving along the field lighting them.
‘Runway’s clear.’ Woolff appeared out of the shadows as the hired car came to a stop, his lace strained, his manner tense. ‘I’ve had a truck up and down it.’
Even as they climbed out of the car, they heard the roar of an engine and the old Chevrolet drew up alongside. Alix was wearing a fashionable skirt and yellow blouse.
Sammy stared. ‘You dressed for flying?’ he asked.
She heaved a flying suit and helmet out of the car. ‘As much as I need to be,’ she announced tartly. ‘We don’t need fancy doodads. They’re going to see that you can travel by aeroplane without dressing up like a polar bear.’
The men who’d built the Dixie were waiting on the concrete apron, some of them with their wives and children.
‘Attaboy, Captain!’ One of them came forward to shake hands. ‘Bring us back a bottle or two from Paris.’
‘How about looking up a dame for me, Captain?’ another one asked. ‘I was a doughboy over there in the war. She might remember me.’
The petrol lorry was just edging away from the aeroplane and Woolff came forward again.
‘You’ve got the fuselage tank three-quarters loaded, Ira,’ he said. ‘It came in sealed tins and it was all filtered as it went in. Don’t forget to get the tail well up because she’ll be tail-heavy. You’ll probably get some spillage through the vents as you take off, but it’s nothing to worry about. And watch that Hughesden pump. If it fails, you’ll have to use the hand pump to transfer gas to the wing tank. It’ll gravity feed fine from there. OK?’
‘OK.’ Ira nodded.
‘How’re you navigatin’? Followin’ the railways?’
‘No.’ Ira shook his head. ‘Compass. It’ll help us fix how accurate it is, and it’ll be good practice. We can check it by the railways during the day and by airfield beacons at night.’
He struggled into his flying suit. Sammy appeared from the darkness. ‘All set, Ira,’ he said.
There was a grind of gears as the lights of the petrol lorry vanished. Then Woolff reappeared.
‘Everything’s fixed,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to make a note of what she uses so we can make an extra check before you leave for Europe. See you in New York.’
They climbed into the wicker seats, with Sammy alongside Ira, and Alix cramped in just behind in the darkness.
‘OK. Switches off.’
‘Switches off.’
The engine exploded into life and they sat shivering in the cockpit as it warmed up.
Across the field, they could just see the beginnings of daylight. Trees were appearing through the darkness, faint outlines against the sky, and in the distance the white blur of a frame house. Then Ira lifted his hand and the chocks were jerked away.
The wind was blowing towards the hangar and they were able to swing into position quickly. For a second, Ira sat staring at the instruments, making mental checks, then he glanced at Alix and Sammy, and opened the throttle wide.
Chapter 5
The rumble and clatter of the wheels across the bumpy field stopped abruptly as they lifted over the trees. Below them as they climbed towards the east they began at once to see the glow of Charleston, and it was possible to fix the coastline by the way the lights stopped dead at the empty sea. In the grey-blackness, occasional solitary glimmers showed where ships rode at anchor, but they could see the shape of the bluffs and the curve of the rivers quite clearly from the street lights and the bunched bright bulbs round the shipyards and along the Cooper where the oil installations lay.
The stars were already fading in the sky with the first hint of daylight, and the horizon to the north was growing more distinct. Then ahead of them they saw the orange-red ball of the sun appear out of the pink mists, and the glow was immediately reflected on the dew-wet roofs of half a dozen houses and along a stretch of swamp water.
Alix, sitting behind Sammy, seemed subdued and silent as they turned south-west towards their course. Alongside Ira, Sammy gave directions in matter-of-fact tones, professional and calm for one so volatile, and unemotional as he always was in the air. ‘Course two-five-seven, Ira,’ he said. ‘The wind’ll shove us north a bit but we’ll get a bit of help from it, too.’
They swung on to course, leaving the sun behind them as they headed over the swamps. Below them they could see steely stretches of water and the feathery tops of the trees, and here and there, where the swamps opened out, a boat and a face turned upwards in the growing light.
Down below were swamp adders and insects, and only a few paths through the leaning trees and cane brakes towards the scattered patches of cultivated land. It was a lonely area that was difficult to cross, but they were lifting over it now as easily as if they were stepping over a stile.
Flying had introduced a new and simpler element into transport that would one day do away with railways, and they were already on the brink of the new era, about to leave behind the days of stunting and exhibitions as flying became as normal as riding in a train. The end was already on its way for all those who wrested a living from playing up its hazards, because, a few years from now, fliers would be more anxious to show its safety than its dangers.
‘Engine sounds OK,’ Ira said, listening to the steady beat vibrating through the thin skin of the machine.
Navigation was easy. The light was good and it was possible to see for miles. The vastness of the land made it easy at 4,000 feet to pick out the landmarks which stood out clearly against the earth, because there was none of the older European chequerboard pattern of small fields. Here there were few hedges, only vast areas of forest showing green among the grey.
They had left the swampy land of South Carolina behind them now and were approaching the border. Two hours and ten minutes over the red earth of Georgia and they could hope to pick up the Chattahoochee at Eufaula. For almost all the distance to San Antonio they would be flying over flat country where, if anything went wrong, they would have no trouble making an emergency landing, because the mountains were a hundred miles to the north and they would see no rising ground until they picked up the Edwards Plateau near the Mexican border. Only when they turned north for New York would they have to cross the high land of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia to reach the coastal plain, and that presented no serious obstacle.
They sat in silence for almost an hour, all of them occupied with what they were doing, then Alix leaned forward from the rear seat. ‘Statesboro below you, Sammy,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ll be picking up the Oconee River soon.’
Her voice was still subdued but she was reading her map quietly and efficiently, offering only comments that would help Sammy with the navigation.
The sun was rising in the sky now and it was growing warmer in the cabin so that they all had to unfasten their flying suits. It was still behind them at the moment so that the visibility was good, and they
climbed to 5,000 feet to pick up the Ocmulgee and pass between the town of Americus and Lake Blackshear which Alix identified for them, simply and without unnecessary comment.
‘You’ll see the Chattahoochee in around forty minutes,’ she pointed out. ‘Eufaula’s on the western bank, on a spit of land. Ought to be right on course.’
The flat land stretched monotonously in front of them, rich and luxuriant and watered by a hundred meandering rivers, green-purple in the sunshine with small scattered towns and villages and clusters of barns where farms lay.
They were approaching the Georgia border now and heading into Alabama. When the rains came, down there the streets of the little towns turned to red mud, grass grew on the sidewalks, and the houses sagged around the narrow shaded squares. It was an area that had never been developed much, a place of few cities, small towns and not many villages, and on a hot day in summer the bony mules hitched to the country carts flicked their tails in the sweltering shade of the oaks, and men’s starched collars began to wilt by the middle of the morning. By midday the shutters were closed and the people were hiding in darkened houses that were silent except for the grinding of the noisy summer flies.
It was a long stretch of uninteresting flying, with no variation of course and little to absorb their attention but small towns and airfields with names on the roofs of new wooden hangars that had been built in the recent flying boom, and pointing arrows like aerial signposts marked ‘Houston’, ‘New Orleans’ and ‘Dallas’. There was little for Ira to do beyond let his eyes flick across the instruments, checking switches, throttle, mixture and stabiliser. Alongside him, Sammy’s eyes were moving constantly over the panels with his own, as he wrote down pressures and fuel consumption on a data board or roved over the Rand McNally maps. Behind them, Alix seemed to be sunk in her own thoughts.
The sun had swung to the south and the cabin was growing warm as Sammy directed Ira on to a new south-westerly course and soon afterwards they saw the sea again, breaking into the coastline in vast areas of flooded land that were overgrown with heavy trees. Around midday they saw the vast curving course of the Mississippi and the coastline with its silver-blue inlets like lacy patterns in the grey-green of the shore, and picked put the coastal railway line running from New Orleans and Baton Rouge towards Houston.