Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Your husband,’ Grover sounded almost apologetic, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t quite got a fix on his background.’

  I began to work my way through Adam’s flying career, beginning with his years in the Fleet Air Arm. Across the table, Grover was making notes. When I got to the bit about the Falklands War, he looked up.

  ‘Did you bring his log books by any chance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I dipped into my bag and laid them carefully on the table. Log books tally every hour of a pilot’s flying career, an exhaustive A to Z listing every aircraft flown, every journey made, every landing survived. In Adam’s case, the total hours flown exceeded seven thousand, and I watched Grover thumbing through the entries for 1996, taking tiny sips of tea as he did so.

  Finally, he stole a look at his watch and then glanced up.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to hang on to these. I’ll give you a receipt, of course.’

  I began to protest but thought better of it. Over the last ten days, Adam’s log books had acquired an almost religious significance. They were sacred to me, relics I’d guard with my life. In the absence of the real thing, they were the closest I could get to that succession of adventures that had been the story of our marriage. Open these pages, and I could hear Adam’s voice, see him grinning as he capped his biro, and undid his harness, and levered himself upwards out of the cockpit.

  ‘Will I get them back?’

  ‘Of course you will. I just need to go through them properly.’ He gestured around. ‘This isn’t really the place. Nor the time.’

  We looked out across the concourse, suddenly busy with dozens of newly arrived passengers. I watched one woman standing on tiptoe, searching for a familiar face. When she saw him, she waved, and plunged through the crowd, throwing her arms around him, and I turned away, engulfed again. Grover was talking about the trips he’d made to Jersey. So far, he’d been twice.

  ‘How well do you know young Liddell?’ he enquired.

  ‘A little,’ I said, hunting for a tissue. ‘Adam knew him much better than I did.’

  ‘And the Cessna he was flying?’

  ‘That was Steve’s. Or in Steve’s care.’

  ‘But your husband hadn’t flown it before?’ Grover’s hand tapped the log book he’d been examining.

  ‘No, not to my knowledge. He’d flown Cessnas before, of course, but not that one.’

  Grover nodded. He had a little smear of cream at one corner of his mouth. I wanted to tell him, to point it out, but there was something about the man that slightly intimidated me. DC Perry, I thought, had talked to me this way. Endless questions. Serious eye contact.

  ‘So what do you think happened?’ I asked.

  Grover was frowning at the last of the scones.

  ‘To tell you the truth I don’t know. The 172’s a simple enough aeroplane. Your husband had lots of experience. There’s nothing that stands out.’ He took a last look at the scone then screwed his napkin into a ball and stowed it neatly on his plate. ‘We got an aftercast from Bracknell as well. That didn’t tell us much either.’

  ‘A what?’ I’d never heard the term before.

  ‘An aftercast.’ For the first time, Grover smiled. ‘It’s the opposite of a forecast. We ask for the weather at a particular time and place and the Met people at Bracknell do the honours.’

  ‘And what did they say?’

  Grover gazed at me a moment then flipped back through the pad beside his plate.

  ‘Broken cloud,’ he said. ‘Ten knots of wind from the west. Sea state moderate.’ He looked up. ‘Nothing dramatic there, I’m afraid.’

  We gazed at each other for a moment, another avenue blocked, another explanation off the list. The air/sea rescue search had been abandoned after the first forty-eight hours. To the best of my knowledge, Harald’s chartered fishing boat was still out in the Channel, but so far they’d found nothing.

  ‘Say there’s no wreckage,’ I began. ‘Say nothing ever turns up. What then? Do you look on the seabed? Send a submarine down?’

  Grover shook his head and sighed.

  ‘I’m afraid not. A passenger aircraft? Something off the public transport list? Almost definitely. On this occasion? A Cessna? One on board? Sadly not. If resources permitted, I dare say I’d give you a different answer but the way things are just now…’

  He trailed off and I looked out at the concourse again. The man and woman I’d seen earlier had disappeared. Grover, meanwhile, had changed tack. He wanted to know about Adam’s state of health. I reached for my bag again and produced the envelope I’d found in one of the files in Adam’s office. The envelope contained his licences, complete with all his ratings certificates, the results of the various exams he’d taken, plus copies of his medical reports.

  ‘My husband had an ATPL,’ I said. ‘The last time the medic saw him was back in October.’

  An ATPL is an Air Transport Pilot’s Licence. To stay in compliance, Adam had to undergo a medical examination every six months. I watched Grover thumbing quickly through the contents of the envelope. These, too, he said he’d have to take away.

  He glanced up.

  ‘GP?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I just wondered whether your husband was registered or not.’

  ‘Of course.’ I tried to remember our GP’s name. In three years at Mapledurcombe, we must have been to the surgery - at most - a couple of times. ‘His name’s Jennings,’ I said at last. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Grover took his time pinning the documentation together and returning it to the envelope. Then he frowned. ‘It’s just that sometimes the GP has a different story,’ he said. ‘To who?’

  ‘To the CAA medic, the chap who does the ATPL test. The one may know more than the other. It’s a question of disclosure, really.’

  ‘You’re suggesting my husband may have kept something back?’ I was beginning to resent this conversation.

  ‘Not at all. Though it does happen, Mrs Bruce.’ Grover’s fingers were back on his watch, twisting the metal strap. ‘Stress, of course, is something we can’t properly measure. But equally it’s something we shouldn’t ignore.’

  ‘You’re saying he was under stress?’

  ‘Not saying, no. It’s a question, not a statement.’ He shook down the cuff of his shirt, hiding the watch. ‘You see, there’s no such thing as an inexplicable accident. In fact, strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as an accident. Everything has a cause. Causes have effects. There’s a logic tree, an order of events. Stress can be a component, often is.’ He frowned. ‘Were there any signs at all? Something you might have noticed? Looking back?’

  I thought long and hard. Not about whether Adam had been under stress or not. But whether I owed this man the truth.

  ‘He wasn’t under any stress,’ I said at last. ‘At least, not as far as I know.’

  ‘No financial problems?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Business going OK?’

  ‘Yes.’ I returned his smile as best I could. ‘Our business was fine.’

  Grover nodded and reached for his pen. After scribbling a line or two he closed the notebook and returned it to his briefcase. The moment we’d met he’d said how sorry he was to hear about my husband. Now he said it again. In his line of work, he met all too many widows, women whose lives had suddenly been changed utterly. Thirteen years back, when he’d joined the Branch, he thought he’d get used to the trauma and the heartbreak. Now, older and wiser, he knew better. Sudden, unexpected death, he said, was beyond comprehension. Some women never got over it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not the way I meant it.’

  ‘No, but -’ I shrugged. I’d had enough. I wanted to go home. He reached across the table and put a restraining hand on my arm.

  ‘There are other women,’ he said gently, ‘who cope. Their courage never ceases to amaze me. It can happen. I
promise you.’

  He asked about my plans for Old Glory. Someone on Jersey must have told him a fair amount because he seemed to know exactly what we offered. I explained that the business would go on. Bookings were excellent. Our first guests would be arriving in a month or two. Between us, my sister and I would - in his phrase - cope.

  ‘Good, I’m glad. If I may say so, this Old Glory of yours is a brilliant idea.’

  I gazed at him, heartened. He sounded genuine. In fact he sounded positively supportive. He was inquiring about pilots for the forthcoming season, asking who’d be flying our guests in place of Adam. I named a couple of pilots from the airshow circuit, people he seemed to have heard of.

  ‘Do they have commercial licences?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Should they?’

  He smiled at me, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. I realised he was marking my card. It seemed we were friends.

  ‘They most certainly should,’ he said. ‘Otherwise the CAA get very shirty.’

  ‘Shirty?’

  ‘Yes, my dear. It’s a very grey area. Your husband was fully certificated. Use a pilot who isn’t and they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks. Believe me. I’ve seen it happen.’ He tapped the side of his nose and got to his feet. For a second I stared at his outstretched hand, then it dawned on me that he was off. ‘Mother-in-law’s coming to dinner,’ he explained, extracting a card from his wallet and slipping it into my hand. ‘The wife gets upset if I’m not there to carve the joint.’

  We walked out of the airport terminal together. His Rover was parked in the lot opposite. He extended his hand again and gave mine a little squeeze.

  ‘Take care flying back,’ he said, ‘and do ring me if anything comes up.’

  By the time I got back to Mapledurcombe, it was nearly six o’clock. Andrea had the lights on in the kitchen and I stood in the gathering darkness for a moment or two, watching her scrubbing the paintwork around the big stainless-steel extractor hood we’d installed over the Aga. She’d found a pair of collapsible steps from somewhere or other and she was balanced on the top, her body bent forward, attacking the heavier stains with the kind of manic concentration I remembered so well from our days at Gander Creek. Judging by the transformation in the rest of the kitchen she must have been at it all afternoon, and I wondered how much of her anger with Hamish she’d managed to work out on our newly gleaming surfaces.

  She glanced over her shoulder as I walked in.

  ‘It’s there on the table,’ she said. ‘I meant to give it to you yesterday but I forgot.’

  She returned to her scrubbing while I opened the letter. I recognised my mother’s handwriting at once. The letter ran to half a dozen pages. There was lots about Gander Creek, including a very funny account of the traumas of this year’s wool clip. Kate, my younger sister, had fallen in love with one of the shearers and was threatening to elope with him to Australia. This, in my mother’s view, would be disastrous, not least because Kate still lived at home and helped my mother out with the thousand and one jobs that always needed attending. Subdividing the holding the way my mother had done after my father’s death had certainly made life easier, but a glorious week in Montevideo had recently given her a taste for civilisation and reading between the lines, I could sense that she might soon be leaving the Falklands for good. Whether that would mean she’d come to the UK was anyone’s guess but I suspected that sooner or later it was inevitable.

  Curiously, there was very little in the letter about Andrea, except a rather brisk dismissal of Hamish. ‘Your father never really trusted him,’ she’d written, ‘and on reflection he was absolutely right.’ At the very end of the letter, as if she’d been working up the courage to broach the subject, my mother had written about Adam. What bothered her was the absence of a body. It was terribly important, she wrote, to say a proper goodbye. Only then would I be able, in her phrase, to turn the page and start a brand new chapter. I wasn’t altogether happy about the implications of this particular metaphor -did she mean a new relationship? - but I knew she had my welfare at heart.

  Andrea had finished with the paintwork. She clattered down the steps and tore off her rubber gloves. ‘Well? What does she say?’

  ‘She wants me to arrange a memorial service.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  I’ve no idea.’

  I read the last page of the letter again. A memorial service, according to my mother, would be the right and proper way to confer God’s blessing on the man who’d meant so much to me. The phrase ‘God’s blessing’ surprised me. We’d never been especially religious at home, practising a rather cheerless form of Anglican worship when the occasion demanded, and this sudden gust of godliness was wholly out of character.

  I read the last few sentences aloud. Andrea was hunting for an ashtray.

  ‘She wants to come and stay,’ she said when I’d finished, ‘Best hat and frock.’

  *

  That evening, I took Andrea over to meet Ralph Pierson. My mother’s suggestion had planted a seed in my mind and the more I thought about a memorial service, the more convinced I became that she was right. But just how should I go about making the arrangements? The last occasion that Adam and I had seen the inside of a church was years back, for the christening of a friend’s baby. Ralph, on the other hand, was a regular churchgoer.

  When we got to St Lawrence, and I eased the car in through Ralph’s front gate, I found an ancient Escort in the drive. The car must have belonged to Jamie. When he opened the door to my knock, his face creased into a grin and he was still smiling when I stepped aside and introduced Andrea.

  ‘My big sister,’ I explained. ‘She’s staying for a while.’

  Ralph, as ever, was warm, and cheerful, and immensely helpful. Jamie busied around with the drinks while I explained about my mother’s little wheeze. Ralph pondered the suggestion over a stiffish whisky then finally told me to leave it to him. He’d be up at the local church the following morning for Sunday matins. He knew the vicar well. He was sure something could be arranged.

  Throughout this conversation, I was aware of Andrea and Jamie perched together on the sofa beside the fire. Andrea had adopted her usual pose - eyes narrowed behind a gauzy blue veil of cigarette smoke - and without too much coaxing Jamie was telling her all about the frustrations of trying to make a living in London. The world of the tree surgeon, like pretty much every other world, was unbelievably cut-throat. Guys with forestry degrees and proper insurance and hundreds of pounds’ worth of the right equipment were being underquoted by cowboys with nothing but a head for heights. After nearly six months, Jamie had begun to suspect that making even a half-decent living was near-on impossible. All in all, he’d had enough.

  Andrea, I could tell, was intrigued. I can read my sister like a book and the way she kept tipping back her head and smiling her inscrutable smile told me everything I needed to know.

  On the way home, I checked I’d got it right.

  ‘You really suggested we might offer him a job?’

  ‘Suggested, yes. A thought, that’s all.’

  ‘But there’s nothing wrong with our trees.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point. He’s young. He’s strong. He’s eager. And he’s obviously had enough of London. Are you telling me we couldn’t find work for someone like that? Wouldn’t need someone like that?’

  ‘Depends what you have in mind.’

  I let the comment rest between us. Andrea was sitting low in the passenger seat, her feet propped on the dashboard, her hands clasped round her knees, totally relaxed. Without checking, I could picture the smile on her face.

  ‘He just seemed so nice,’ she said at last. ‘So willing. So enthusiastic’

  ‘He’s twenty-one,’ I pointed out.

  ‘So?’

  It was a challenge. I ignored it. We drove on in silence. Minutes later, I slowed for the turn into Mapledurcombe. At the end of the drive, beside the steps to the front door, I p
ulled the car into a tight turn and killed the engine. For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then Andrea stifled a long, lazy yawn.

  ‘You do the flying,’ she murmured. ‘Just leave the rest of it to me.’

  Chapter seven

  Next morning, on impulse, I pulled on a skirt and a half-decent jacket and drove back to Ralph’s. I parked outside his bungalow, and when he answered the door I asked him whether he minded me joining him for matins. He said he’d be delighted to have company, and we walked the half-mile or so to St Lawrence Parish Church.

  The church was a disappointment, a damp, forbidding Gothic pile beside the main road. Stands of wilting daffodils dotted the graveyard and I stood by the door, shivering, while Ralph chatted to a succession of worshippers he obviously knew well. One or two of them were couples but I was struck by the number of single women, most of them elderly, who struggled slowly up the path from the gate. St Lawrence, I thought, was obviously no stranger to widowhood.

  Ralph, it turned out, was a server at the church, which meant that I had to sit alone. The interior of the building was a definite improvement on what I’d seen of the outside, much warmer for one thing, and before Ralph disappeared to robe up he found me a seat in a pew near the back. While I waited for the service to start I counted the heads in front of me, trying to imagine how Adam’s friends and family would fit into this cavernous semi-darkness. Ralph later told me that a congregation of seventy-odd was a good turn-out for a morning service, but even this number left the church looking bare and empty.

  When Ralph finally appeared, he was second in the procession up the aisle. He was wearing a rather nice blue cassock and he gave me a smile and a wink as he carried his candle towards the altar. The first hymn we sang was ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’, the stirring plea for lost souls at sea, and it was Ralph himself who softened the irony when we met again outside.

  ‘Vintage stuff.’ He gave me a smile, ‘Adam would have loved it.’

  I told him he was probably right. We’d been joined by the vicar, a tall, thin figure, much younger than he’d somehow appeared during the service. He had a full black beard and his face was pitted with acne scars, but it was the eyes that held my attention. They were the kindest eyes I think I’ve ever seen, a deep, deep brown, full of life and something I can only describe as a kind of innocence. The way he smiled, and clasped my hand, triggered in me a feeling of profound well-being. I could trust this man. He’d listen.