Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Delirious.’

  ‘Good. Two on board, short field, you’re looking for sixty-one inches boost. Lift the tail at sixty m.p.h. Keep right rudder in. A hundred and five and she’ll fly.’ He paused. ‘I’m on the controls with you, Ellie. Make it a good one. And trust me.’

  There was something almost plaintive in that last remark, something odd I couldn’t quite pin down, but I drove the thought into the very back of my mind, slipping the brakes again and hauling the Mustang on to the grass strip. With the nose occupying most of my forward vision I couldn’t see the white markers down the centre-line of the runway, but the tower and the Touchdown Cafe were exactly where they should be, and experience told me to trust my judgement.

  I gave my harness one final tug, kissed the top of my left index finger (one of Adam’s superstitions), and then eased the throttle smoothly forward. The Mustang began to move, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Within seconds, I could feel the rudder biting on the airstream, correcting the left yaw. At 60 m.p.h., as instructed, I pushed the stick slowly forward and the tail began to rise. Suddenly, in front of me, I could see what was left of the runway, and the road beyond, and away in the distance the long, dark hump of St Boniface Down.

  The bumping was beginning to ease now, cushioned by lift, and as the airspeed needle wound past 100 m.p.h., I eased the stick back, aware of the road flashing beneath us. Off the leash, the Mustang began to accelerate quickly and I maintained a modest rate of climb as the fields beneath began to form the jigsaw I knew so well.

  ‘Gear,’ Harald prompted.

  I reached for the undercarriage retract and heard the happy clunk of the wheels seating in the under-wing bays.

  ‘Forty-six inches. Two thousand seven hundred r.p.m.’

  My left hand returned to the throttle. I cut the boost back as smoothly as I could, and then retracted the flaps.

  ‘Altitude?’

  My eyes went to the altimeter. Nine hundred feet already. Shit. I glanced to my right, sweating again, only too aware of how quickly everything happened in this glorious aircraft. Five hundred feet was standard for the right-hand turn-out. Already we’d made twice that height. I nudged the stick to starboard, balancing the turn with a little right rudder. The Mustang responded like the horse of my dreams, dipping a wing, maintaining the climb. I increased the boost an inch or two, nervous of losing power in the turn, and drew a round of applause from Harald.

  ‘Ts and Ps?’ he murmured.

  I scanned the instrument panel. Temperatures and pressures were fine. I looked out. We were over the middle of the island now. The visibility was crystal clear, a sure sign of an approaching front, and away to the north I could see the long finger of water that reached up to Southampton. We levelled off at 2,500 feet and I cut the power back to 2,200 r.p.m., making a gentle turn towards the west. Our airspeed had settled at 250 m.p.h. and I watched Tennyson Down slip by on the port side as we headed out across the Needles.

  The one thing that Harald and I hadn’t discussed was where, exactly, we were going. We had fuel for at least an hour’s flying but if I was to stay in control I wasn’t keen to complicate my first outing with anything as ambitious as navigation. There was a full set of airways maps tucked into the pocket by my right hip. Adam always carried them, but it was all I could do at the moment to keep the aircraft trimmed and flying sweetly.

  Way ahead, I could see the blue shadow of the Purbeck Hills and the startling white of the chalk cliffs beyond. The airspace south of this lovely corner of Dorset is a danger area, reserved for military use.

  ‘Make a left,’ I heard Harald say. ‘One nine zero.’

  I eased the stick to the left and then steadied the aircraft on the new heading, aware of how precise, how accurate my flying had to be. Fighter pilots stay alive by getting it exactly right, one hundred per cent of the time.

  One nine zero was almost due south. We were en route to France.

  ‘Take her up to three seventy.’

  ‘You mean speed-wise?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Three hundred and seventy m.p.h.? I inched the prop and the throttle forward and - on Harald’s cue - adjusted the mixture to auto-rich. The needle on the airspeed indicator wound up past 350. At 370 m.p.h., as requested, I cut back. I’d never been so fast in my life, not in my own aircraft, yet there was absolutely no sensation of speed apart from the deafening clatter of the engine.

  ‘New heading,’ Harald grunted. ‘Two seven zero.’

  West again. I checked right. Way below us I could see one of the big oil tankers, inward bound for the refinery at Fawley, and for a moment I wondered if there was anyone on deck, anyone looking up, anyone who might be watching this little silver fish flashing overhead.

  ‘See those clouds, Ellie? On the nose?’

  I looked forward. Through the blur of the prop, I recognised the beginnings of the incoming front, a grey smudge on the horizon that signified a skirt of high cirrus. It looked an awfully long way away.

  Harald again.

  ‘OK, Ellie, here’s the plan. You climb above the cloud. I’m estimating eight thousand max. We’ll try a couple of landings. I’ll call the moves. Then we’ll go home.’

  ‘Landings?’ I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

  ‘Sure.’ I could hear him chuckling. ‘You’ve never tried this before? Landing on the tops of clouds? Hey…’

  The front grew bigger in the windshield. I began to climb, maintaining speed. The power of the Mustang was awesome. You just turned it on. Like water from a tap, it seemed limitless.

  All at once, the sea disappeared beneath us and I found myself amongst the tops of the clouds, shreds of thin grey vapour flashing past. I’d been right about 370 m.p.h. Once you got close to anything, it was incredibly fast.

  At Harald’s prompting, I levelled out at 10,000 feet. The cloud rippled beneath us, like a newly laid carpet.

  ‘Take the boost back to forty-six. You want the cooling flap on auto. Fuel-wise, go for the fullest tank.’

  I did as I was told. Looking down, I estimated we had almost 2,000 feet between us and the top of the cloud.

  ‘OK, bring her round till we’re downwind. You’re looking for zero one five.’

  I banked the Mustang, harder this time, feeling the faintest shiver in the airframe.

  ‘Good. Now chop the speed. Below two seventy-five you can take twenty degrees of flap.’

  I eased the throttle back. The aircraft began to slow. When the airspeed hit 260, I selected twenty degrees of flap. I felt the airflow roughen and watched the speed fall off. At 160 m.p.h. Harald told me to lower the gear. I reached for the undercarriage lever and tried to push it out of the restraining gate. It felt very stiff. When I pushed harder, it refused to budge. I gave up.

  ‘It won’t move,’ I told him.

  Harald didn’t say a word. I told him again. Still nothing. I sought his face in the rearview mirror bolted to the apex of the windshield but all I could see was the top of his head. I couldn’t believe it. The bastard was hiding from me. Adam would never have done this. We’d have been down on the ground by now, settling into omelettes fines herbes and a decent helping of chips.

  ‘Harald?’

  ‘Sort it out, Ellie. Take your time.’

  I hesitated. He sounded like he meant it, like it was some kind of test, and for a moment I wondered whether he’d planned it this way, something he and Dave might have cooked up, a deliberate glitch to stretch me to the limit. The clouds were getting closer. Miles ahead, beyond the front’s leading edge, I could see the long, low swell of the Isle of Wight.

  I looked down at the undercarriage lever, wondering whether the lowering sequence had even begun. Just in case, I re-selected up, then I edged the lever out of the gate and pushed down again. The resistance was still there and it got stiffer and stiffer but I kept pushing, all the way down, until I heard two clunks and saw three little green lights winking at me. I’d done it. I�
�d passed the test. The undercarriage was down.

  ‘Atta girl.’ Harald had come to life. ‘Left to base, full flap, speed one four zero.’

  My breath was coming in shallow gasps. I was wet with sweat. I dipped a wing, shedding more speed, positioning the Mustang for the final turn on to our pretend runway. The cloud had become a blurry grey, racing past beneath us. Harald called finals. Over the make-believe perimeter fence, he wanted no m.p.h. My eyes were glued to the onrushing cloud. We were losing height nicely. I risked a quick look at the airspeed indicator. I’d never worked so hard in my life, no m.p.h. Perfect.

  Suddenly we plunged into the cloud. All I could see was grey. Moisture was beading for an instant on the outside of the canopy before it shredded, torn sideways by the airflow. I fought the temptation to pull the stick back, to push the throttle forward, to claw our way back to the sunshine above.

  Harald was pleased.

  ‘Pretty nice, Ellie,’ he murmured. ‘Pretty damn nice.’

  Seconds later, the aircraft still sinking, he took control. I heard the undercarriage retract and felt the aircraft respond as the power came back on. He flew the Mustang beautifully, instinctively, the way that Adam had flown it, and I sat back in the front seat, physically exhausted, happy to be a passenger for the rest of the flight.

  South of the Isle of Wight, we did a brief series of aerobatics, nothing outrageous, a couple of loops, a single lazy roll, and a manoeuvre called a Cuban Eight that brought us racing in towards Ventnor at less than a thousand feet. I watched the little resort grow rapidly bigger, then Harald hauled back on the stick as the beach and the promenade flashed beneath us. I watched our shadow racing across the top of St Boniface Down, still dazed, and I braced myself for entry into the landing circuit for the airfield beyond, but Harald seemed to change his mind.

  He banked the Mustang savagely to port, standing the aircraft on one wing. The force of the turn pulled at my face and limbs, and as the aircraft steadied I looked down again. Harald was slowing the plane, applying flap, and we began to lose height, stately now, all passion spent. I saw a road snaking through a village, then a valley shadowed by the late-afternoon sun, and a stand of trees greening the shoulder of a down. I tried to orientate myself, to visualise where we might be on the map.

  Below us was a pond, and a scatter of farm buildings, then the ground seemed to come up to meet us and I braced myself a second time, thinking Harald must have got it wrong. He hadn’t. The ground fell away again, just as suddenly, and I found myself looking at a tiny church, half-hidden by trees, and a line of white headstones beside a hedge. I stared down at it, transfixed. The Old Church at St Lawrence. The secret I’d brought back at lunchtime.

  ‘You mentioned it this morning,’ Harald murmured. ‘What a great, great way to say goodbye.’

  After we’d landed, back at Sandown, we all shared a pot of tea at one of the tables outside the Touchdown Cafe. Andrea was burbling about her afternoon - the friends she’d made, the pictures she’d taken - and when she remembered to ask whether our little trip had gone well, I barely had the energy to nod.

  ‘It was good,’ I told her. ‘It was very, very good.’

  Later, before Harald helped Dave push the Mustang back inside our hangar, I had a chance to corner him alone. He was taking the Yak back to Jersey. He’d be leaving within the hour.

  ‘I just want to say thank you.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘You’ll never know how much that meant to me.’

  Harald nodded towards the Mustang.

  ‘She’s a beauty,’ he said. ‘The sweetest ship I’ve ever flown.’

  We said nothing for a moment or two. Then I reached out and touched his hand. He glanced round at me, surprised.

  ‘I’d like you to fly her at the memorial service,’ I said. ‘Would you do that for me?’

  He didn’t answer but looked away, across the airfield. Then he excused himself and walked across to the Yak, parked beside the Mustang. I watched him rummaging in the luggage compartment behind the rear seat. When he returned, he was carrying a black dustbin liner. He reached inside and pulled out an old green sports holdall. He offered it to me. It had the legend Jaguar on one side.

  ‘My boys in the Channel picked it up yesterday,’ he said tonelessly. ‘There’s never gonna be a good time to give you this but I guess…’ He shook his head, visibly distressed, avoiding my eyes.

  I took the sodden bag, holding it at arm’s length. It was still dripping.

  ‘There was nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No wreckage?’

  ‘Like I say, nothing.’

  I nodded. The last time I’d seen the bag had been a couple of weeks ago when Adam had given it to me to mend. The zip had gone. I’d tried to fix it and failed.

  ‘Look in the side pocket,’ Harald muttered. ‘Get it over with.’

  Trembling now, I inserted my fingers in the wet lining. There was something plastic inside, a card of some kind. I pulled it out and turned it over. The card was American Express. The signature was Adam’s.

  I looked up, offering Harald the bag. I wanted him to take it. I never wanted to see it again.

  ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours, Ellie.’

  We didn’t say anything for a long moment. Beside the Mustang, Dave was looking at us, curious. Harald came close and put his arms around me.

  ‘Of course I’ll fly at the memorial service,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  Chapter eight

  We held the memorial service three weeks later. My mother, as Andrea had predicted, flew up from the Falklands and Adam’s parents came over from Canada. We contacted as many friends and other relatives as we could and in the end there was just enough room in the tiny church to squash everybody in.

  The service was simplicity itself. There were prayers, of course, and one of Adam’s fellow pilots from his Sea King days gave us a very funny account of his service career. We all recited the 23rd Psalm and Adam’s sister, who has a lovely voice, sang a French folk song that had never failed to move Adam to tears.

  At the end of the service, the vicar - whose name, I now knew, was Douglas - gave a very brief address. He’d obviously done his homework, contacting various buddies whose phone numbers I’d supplied, and his tribute to Adam - warm, heartfelt, astonishingly accurate - was a memory that will stay with me for ever. For someone who’d never even met my husband, he seemed to have established an extraordinary rapport, and as he commended Adam’s soul to God, briefly turning to touch the parachute I’d laid on the altar, I wondered whether there wasn’t, after all, something in the phrase ‘life everlasting’. Adam, bless him, hadn’t gone. He was there, in that church; there, in that wonderful man’s closing address.

  After the service came the fly-past. Harald brought the Mustang low over the fold of chalk downland behind the church, dipped a wing, and then set course for mid-Channel. Mr Grover, the AAIB investigator, had given me a set of co-ordinates that put Adam a mile or so shy of the fifty-degree north reporting line, and Harald was carrying his SatNav to get the location exactly right.

  When he got there, he circled low and dropped a bouquet I’d prepared the previous evening. My mother had been unhappy about a bouquet. A wreath, she insisted, would be more seemly. For once in my life, I ignored her. A wreath was exactly what Adam wouldn’t have wanted. My bouquet, on the other hand, an extravagant confection of roses, interlaced with woodland bluebells, snowdrops, spring crocus and angel’s tears, would doubtless raise a very big smile indeed. My mother, surprised and a little hurt by my refusal to concede her point, had tried to make an issue of it, but I headed off the inevitable argument by playing the overstressed widow.

  ‘You’re lucky I’m coming to the service at all’, I told her. ‘I should be the one dropping the flowers.’

  From St Lawrence, we all drove back to Mapledurcombe. Andrea had worked nonstop for the best part of a week getting the eats and drinks exactly right. Taking char
ge of what she called ‘the practicals’ was, she insisted, the least she could do. My own time would be far better spent in trying to come to terms with my loss, and all the other stuff - the preparation, the transport, the accommodations - I was to leave to her.

  I protested, of course, but to be honest I was only too grateful to fall in with her plans. Harald’s return of Adam’s sports bag had shaken me infinitely more than I’d expected and the wet, clammy feeling of the sodden leather had stayed with me for days. While I was on the phone to Mr Grover about the Channel co-ordinates I’d naturally mentioned the bag, and when he asked whether I might send it over to him, I’d been only too happy to oblige. I had many glorious memories of my dead husband but his tatty old sports bag wasn’t one of them. Its very familiarity, the fact that it and Adam had been practically inseparable, made it - oddly enough - all the more repugnant. It had travelled with him in the Cessna. It had been there, probably lodged under the passenger seat, when he’d died. Far from being a small, intimate, domestic object, part of the warp and weft of our shared life, it had become something sinister, a mute witness of an event I’d infinitely prefer never to think about. It had to go, and when I wrapped it in a brand-new dustbin liner, and squeezed it into a huge Jiffy bag, I was glad to see the back of it. Yours for keeps, I scribbled to Mr Grover. When you’ve finished with it, throw the thing away.

  Back at Mapledurcombe, after the memorial service, you could practically hear the collective sigh of relief. All of us, I think, had been apprehensive about the service, partly because the English are pretty hopeless at grieving, and partly because people of our age and inclination - still young, still active, still taking risks - hate being reminded of the consequences of getting it wrong. Back home though, refuelling on endless bottles of Chenin Blanc and Cape Chardonnay, the gathering quickly had the makings of a party. By the time dusk fell, even Adam’s father was managing to raise a smile, not so much - I suspect - in solidarity with the mood of the rest of us,but at Andrea’s determination to impress a wayward French display pilot who’d been a particular favourite of Adam’s.