The Complete Flying Officer X Stories

by H. E. Bates

  Coming out of periods of stupor, he would hear Carmichael talking. The deep Canadian voice was slow and steady. It attracted him. He found himself listening simply to the sound and the steadiness of it, regardless of words. It had the quality of Carmichael’s hands; it was calm and steadfast.

  It occurred to him soon that the voice had another quality. It was like the bailing of the water; it never stopped. He heard Carmichael talking of ball games in Montreal; the way the crowd ragged you and how you took no notice and how it was all part of the game; and then how he was injured in the game one summer and for two months couldn’t play and how he went up into Quebec province for the fishing. It was hot weather and he would fish mostly in the late evenings, often by moonlight. The lake trout were big and strong and sometimes a fish took you an hour to get it in. Sometimes at weekends he went back to Quebec and he would eat steaks, as thick, he said, as a volume of Dickens and rich with onions and butter. They were lovely with cold light beer, and the whole thing set you back about two dollars and a half.

  “Good, eh, Johnny?” he would say. “You ought to come over there some day.”

  All this time they baled furiously. There was no break in the clouds, and the wind was so strong that it sometimes swivelled the dinghy round like a toy.

  How long this went on he did not know. But a long time later Carmichael suddenly stopped talking and then as suddenly began again.

  “Hey, Johnny boy, there’s your light.”

  He was startled and he looked up wildly, not seeing anything.

  “Not that way, boy. Back of you. Over there.”

  He turned his head stiffly. There behind him he could see the dim cream edge of daylight above the line of the sea.

  “That’s the light we want,” Carmichael said. “It don’t go out in a hurry either.”

  The colour of daylight was deeper, like pale butter, when he looked over his shoulder again. He remembered then that it was late summer. He thought that now, perhaps, it would be three o’clock.

  As the daylight grew stronger, changing from cream and yellow to a cool grey bronze, he saw for the first time the barbaric quality of the sea. He saw the faces of Carmichael and Hargreaves and Johnson. They were grey-yellow with weariness and touched at the lips and ears and under the eyes with blue.

  He was very thirsty. He could feel a thin caking of salt on his lips. He tried to lick his lips with his tongue, but it was very painful. There was no moisture on his tongue and only the taste of salt, very harsh and bitter, in his mouth. His arm was swollen and he was sick with pain.

  “Take it easy a minute, kid,” Carmichael said. “We’ll bale in turns. You watch out for a ship or a kite or anything you can see. I’ll tell you when it’s your turn.”

  He sat on the edge of the dinghy and stared at the horizon and the sky. Both were empty. He rubbed the salt out of his eyes and then closed them for a moment, worn out.

  “Watch out,” Carmichael said. “We’re in the Channel. We know that. There should be ships and there should be aircraft. Keep watching.”

  He kept watching. His eyes were painful with salt and only half-open. Now and then the sea hit the dinghy and broke right over it, but he did not care. For some reason he did not think of listening, but suddenly he shut his eyes and after a moment or two he heard a sound. It was rather like the sound of the sea beating gently on sand and he remembered again the day when he had seen the girl in the biscuit-coloured hat and how it was summer and how much he had liked the sea. That day the sea had beaten on the shore with the same low sound.

  As the sound increased he suddenly opened his eyes. He felt for a moment that he was crazy, and then he began shouting.

  “It’s a plane! It’s a bloody plane! It’s a plane, I tell you, it’s a plane.”

  “Sit down,” Carmichael said.

  The dinghy was rocking violently. The faces of all four men were upturned, grey-yellow in the stronger light.

  “There she is!” he shouted. “There she is!”

  The plane was coming over from the north-east, at about five thousand. He began to wave his hands. She seemed to be coming straight above them. Hargreaves and Johnson and then Carmichael also began to wave. They all waved frantically and Hargreaves shouted: “It’s a Hudson, boys. Wave like raving hallelujah! It’s a Hudson.”

  The plane came over quite fast and very steady, flying straight. It looked the colour of iron except for the bright rings of the markings in the dull sea-light of the early morning. It flew on quite straight and they were still waving frantically with their hands and caps long after it had ceased looking like a far-off gull in the sky.

  He came out of the shock of this disappointment to realise that Carmichael was holding him in the dinghy with one arm.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  “I know,” Carmichael said.

  He knew then that he was not all right. He felt dizzy. A slow river of cold sweat seemed to be pouring from his hair down his backbone.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You’re all right,” Carmichael said. “Don’t try to stand up again, that’s all. How is your arm? I wish there was something I could do.”

  “It’s O.K.,” he said.

  He remembered the plane. The sky was now quite light, barred with warm strips of orange low above the water in the east. He remembered also that it was summer. The wind was still strong and cold, but soon, he thought, there would be sun. He looked overhead at the grey-blue and the yellow-orange bars of cloud. They were breaking a little more overhead and he knew now that it would be a fair day for flying.

  “Does the sun rise in the east or a little to the northeast?” Carmichael said.

  They held a little discussion, and Johnny and Hargreaves agreed that in summer it rose a little to the northeast.

  “In that case we seem to be drifting almost due north. If the wind helps us we might drift into the coast. It’s still strong.”

  “It’s about forty,” Hargreaves said. “It must have been about eighty last night.”

  “It was a point or two west of south then,” Johnny said.

  “I think it’s still there,” Carmichael said.

  They all spoke rather slowly. His own lips felt huge and dry with blisters. It was painful for him to speak. He was not hungry, but the back of his throat was scorched and raw with salt. His tongue was thick and hot and he wanted to roll it out of his mouth, so that it would get sweet and cool in the wind.

  “Keep your mouth shut, Johnny,” Carmichael said. “Keep it shut.”

  He discovered that Carmichael was still holding him by the arm. In the hour or two that went by between the disappearance of the Hudson and the time when the sun was well up and he could feel the warmth of it on his face he continually wanted to protest; to tell Carmichael that he was all right. Yet he never did, and all the time Carmichael held him and he was glad.

  All the time they watched the sea and the sky and most of the time Carmichael talked to them. He talked to them again of Canada, the lakes in the summertime, the fishing, the places where you could eat in Montreal. The sea was less violent now, but the waves, long and low and metallically glittering in the sun, swung the dinghy ceaselessly up and down troughs that bristled with destructive edges of foam. Towards the middle of the morning Hargreaves was very sick. He leaned his head forward on his knees and sat very quiet for a long time, too weak to lift his head. The sickness itself became covered and churned and finally washed away by incoming water. After this only Johnson and Carmichael troubled to watch the horizon, and they took turns at bailing the water, Carmichael using one hand.

  For some time none of them spoke. Finally when Johnny looked up again, it was to see that Johnson too had closed his eyes against the glitter of sunlight and that only Carmichael was watching the sea. He was watching in a curious attitude. As he held Johnny with one hand, he would lean forward and with his hat bale a little water out of the dinghy. Then he would transfer the hat from one hand to the othe
r and with the free hand press the fabric of the dinghy as you press the inner tube of a tire. As he pressed it seemed flabby. Then he would look up and gaze for a few moments at the horizon, northwards, where at intervals the sea seemed to crystallise into long lips of misty grey. For a long time Johnny sat watching him, following the movements of his hands and the arrested progress of his eyes.

  Very slowly he realised what was happening. He did not move. He wanted to speak, but the back of his throat was raw and his tongue was thick and inflexible. When he suddenly opened his mouth his lips split and there was blood in the cracks that was bitterly salt as he licked it with his tongue.

  He did not know which struck him first; the realization that the thin lips of grey on the horizon were land or that the dinghy was losing air. For a second or two his emotions were cancelled out. The dinghy was upside down; the bellows were gone. He felt slightly light-headed. Above the horizon the clouds were white-edged now, and suddenly the sun broke down through them and shone on the line of land, turning the lips of grey to brown. He knew then that it was land. There could be no mistake. But looking down suddenly into the dinghy he knew that there was and could be no mistake there either.

  He began to shout. He did not know what he shouted. His mouth was very painful. He rocked his body forward and began to bale excitedly with his free hand. In a moment the rest were shouting too.

  “Steady,” Carmichael said, “steady.”

  “How far is it away?” Hargreaves asked. “Five miles? Five or six?”

  “Nearer ten.”

  “I’ll take a bet.”

  “You’d better take one on the air on the dinghy.”

  It was clear that Hargreaves did not know about the air in the dinghy. He ceased bailing and sat very tense. His tongue was thick and grey-pink and hanging out of his mouth.

  It seemed to Johnny that the dinghy, slowly losing resilience, was like something dying underneath them.

  “Now don’t anybody go and get excited,” Carmichael said. “We must be drifting in fast, and if we drift in far enough and she gives out, we can swim. You all better bale now while you can. All right, Johnny? Can you bale?”

  Bailing frantically with his one hand, looking up at intervals at the horizon, now like a thin strip of cream-brown paint squeezed along the edge of the sea, he tried not to think of the fact that he could not swim.

  All the time he felt the dinghy losing air. He felt its flabbiness grow in proportion to his own weight. It moved very heavily and sluggishly in the troughs of water, and waves broke over it more often now. Sometimes the water rose almost to the knees of the men. He could not feel his feet and several times it seemed as if the bottom of the dinghy had fallen out and that beneath him there was nothing but the bottom of the sea.

  It went on like this for a long time, the dinghy losing air, the land coming a little nearer, deeper-coloured now, with veins of green.

  “God, we’ll never make it,” Hargreaves said. “We’ll never make it.”

  Carmichael did not speak. The edge of the dinghy was low against the water, almost level. The sea lapped over it constantly and it was more now than they could bale.

  Johnny looked at the land. The sun was shining down on smooth uplands of green and calm brown squares of upturned earth. Below lay long chalk cliffs, changing from sea-grey to white in the sun. He felt suddenly exhausted and desperate. He felt that he hated the sea. He was frightened of it and suddenly lost his head and began to bale with one arm, throwing the water madly everywhere.

  “We’ll never do it!” he shouted. “We’ll never do it. Why the hell didn’t that Hudson see us? What the hell do they do in those fancy kites?”

  “Shut up,” Carmichael said.

  He felt suddenly quiet and frightened.

  “Shut up. She’s too heavy, that’s all. Take your boots off.”

  Hargreaves and Johnson stopped bailing and took off their boots. He tried to take off his own boots, but they seemed part of his feet and with only one arm he was too weak to pull them off. Then Carmichael took off his boots. He took off his socks too and Johnny could see that his feet were blue and dead.

  For a minute he could not quite believe what he saw next. He saw Carmichael roll over the side of the dinghy into the sea. He went under and came up again at once, shaking the water from his hair. “O.K.,” he shouted, “O.K. Keep bailing. I’m pushing her in. She’ll be lighter now.”

  Carmichael put his hands on the end of the dinghy and swam with his feet.

  “I’m coming over too,” Hargreaves said.

  “No. Keep bailing. Keep her light. There’ll be time to come over.”

  They went on like this for some time. The situation in the dinghy was bad, but he did not think of it. His knees were sometimes wholly submerged and the dinghy was flabby and without life. All the time he hated the sea and kept his eyes in desperation on the shore. Then Carmichael gave Hargreaves the order to go over and Hargreaves rolled over the side as Carmichael had done and came up soon and began swimming in the same way.

  They were then about five hundred yards from the shore and he could see sheep in the fields above the cliffs, but no houses. The land looked washed and bright and for some reason abandoned, as if no one had ever set foot there. The sea was calm now but it still washed over the dinghy too fast for him to bale and he still hated it. Then suddenly Johnson went over the side without waiting for a word from Carmichael, and he was alone in the dinghy, being pushed along by the three men. But he knew soon that it could not last. The dinghy was almost flat and between the force of the three men pushing and the resistance of water it crumpled and submerged and would not move.

  As if there were something funny about this, Johnson began laughing. He himself felt foolish and scared and waited with clenched teeth for the dinghy to go down.

  It went down before he was ready, throwing him backwards. He felt a wave hit him and then he went under, his boots dragging him down. He struggled violently and quite suddenly saw the sky. His arm was very painful and he felt lop-sided. He was lying on his back and he knew that he was moving, not of his own volition but easily and strongly, looking at the lakes of summer sky between the white and indigo hills of cloud. He was uneasy and glad at the same time. The sea still swamped over his face, scorching his broken lips, but he was glad because he knew that Carmichael was holding him again and taking him into shore.

  What seemed a long time later he knew that they were very near the shore. He heard the loud warm sound of breaking waves. He was borne forward in long surges of the tide. At last he could no longer feel Carmichael’s arms, but tired and kept up by his Mae West, he drifted in of his own accord. The sun was strong on his face and he thought suddenly of the things he had thought about in the plane: the straw on the runways, his father eating the currants, the girl in the biscuit-coloured hat. He felt suddenly that they were the things for which he had struggled. They were his life. The waves took him gradually farther and farther up the shore, until his knees beat on the sand. He saw Carmichael and Johnson and Hargreaves waiting on the shore. At last new waves took him far up the shore until he lay still on the wet slope of sand and his arms were outstretched to the sky.

  As he lay there, the sea ran down over his body and receded. It was warm and gentle on his hands and he was afraid of it no longer.

  O’Callaghan’s Girl

  In the early days at the station, when I was first posted, almost the only man I knew was O’Callaghan. He was a pilot with a French mother and an Irish father, with the result, they used to say, that he spoke French with an Irish accent. I personally never spoke to him in French. It was hard work to speak to him at all.

  I do not know how I came to make friends with O’Callaghan. When you spoke to him he ran away. His soft, dreamy, very blue eyes were always shy.

  “A good film?” you would say.

  “Quite good.”

  “Have a good trip?”

  “Quite good.”

  That was all.


  In those days the weather was very bad. For several nights together there would be no operations. In the early evenings O’Callaghan and I would go out together.

  “What shall we do?”

  “What you like.”

  “A flick?”

  “What you like.”

  Whenever he answered you, O’Callaghan smiled in a dreamy, captivating way.

  One evening we were standing in Mullins’s bar. We were having a drink and eating a ham sandwich. It was late and the bar was very crowded.

  “Why, hello!” the girl said. “Why, Cally!”

  “Hello,” O’Callaghan said. He looked like the shyest person I had ever seen.

  The girl was dark, almost swarthy, with curly black hair.

  “Well, for goodness’ sake, Cally, where have you been hiding yourself?”

  O’Callaghan smiled.

  “But it’s my birthday!” she said. “Introduce me.”

  She was a little happy.

  “Introduce,” O’Callaghan said. “This is Françoise.”

  “Part French,” she said. We smiled at each other, but she turned her eyes away almost immediately to O’Callaghan and smiled at him.

  “A drink, for your birthday?” he said.

  “I really shouldn’t. I’m with friends.”

  She had a drink in her hands. She waved the glass and showed us her friends, in the far corner of the bar. They waved back to her.

  “I’ll get the drinks,” I said.

  I went away to the bar and came back, after a time, with two sherries and a light beer.

  O’Callaghan and the girl were leaning against the wall, talking in French to each other. It was true: O’Callaghan spoke it with a slight Irish accent.

  “Happy birthday,” we said.

  “It was really my birthday yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry,” O’Callaghan said.

  “That’s just like him,” she said to me. “He forgot me. He forgot my birthday. Oh, Cally, where have you been? Why do you hide yourself away from me?”