Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘You’re right.’ I nodded vigorously. ‘So what exactly did he say?’

  The waiter had returned now and Harald scribbled a signature on the credit card slip. Then he looked up.

  ‘He asked me to make sure you’d always be OK,’ he said softly. ‘He asked me to look after you.’

  ‘Me?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he loved you. Because he cared. Because he never wanted to see you hurt.’ He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. ‘Now does that answer your question?’

  On the way back to Standfast, confused, exhausted, drained of all anger, I had a major attack of the guilts. This man had been more than kind to me. He’d kept the business afloat. He’d shipped me halfway round the world. And now he was spending his own precious time teaching me to fly one of the world’s trickier aircraft. Yet all I could do in return was put him on the spot about Adam. As we sped down the long, dark blacktop, I felt cheap, and adolescent, and ungrateful, and when we finally made it back to the Casa Blanca, I tried to make amends.

  The wind had got up, and standing in the warm darkness beside Harald I could hear the slap-slap of the halyard against the metal flagpole.

  ‘Tell me about the flag, Harald.’ I gestured up at the ghostly cross and stars rippling in the night wind. ‘Why that one?’

  ‘It’s the Confederate flag. Dixie. The old South.’

  ‘Were you born round here? Is that where your heart is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you like it?’

  ‘The mind-set, yes.’

  I wanted to slip my arm through his, be friends again, but Harald wasn’t having it. I followed him into the house. It was barely half past ten but already the place was in darkness. He led the way to the kitchen and turned on the lights.

  ‘Help yourself to anything. Coffee, juice, whatever. There’s liquor if you need it. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  He gave me a thin smile and a peck on the cheek and he was halfway up the hall before I heard his footsteps falter. Then he was back again. The base station for the cordless phone was on top of the dresser. He picked up the phone and gave it to me.

  ‘Take it to bed if you want to. The code for the UK’s zero-zero-four-four.’

  He left me holding the phone, and seconds later I heard a door opening and closing down the hall. Then came a soft surge of music, something classical, and I sank into a chair at the long pine table, feeling terrible. Adam asked me to make sure you’d always be OK. That’s what he’d said. Adam asked me to look after you because he cared.

  Cared about what? That I was a child? That I was vulnerable? That I’d fall apart at the first suspicion that the man I’d loved might have had eyes for someone else? I shook my head, confused and bewildered and above all disgusted with myself. I’d seen the look in Harald’s eyes. He was disappointed with me. He thought I was worth more than Jamie, worth more than my petulant outburst in the restaurant, worth more than a daily drip-feed of schoolgirl letters. God knows, maybe he was right. Maybe I should try and grow up, be stronger, behave like the woman he so obviously thought I could be.

  I hauled myself to my feet and drifted across to the fridge. There was a corked bottle of Chablis in the rack, half full, and I poured myself a generous glass. The wine tasted of oak and apples and I drank it the way you’d drink fruit juice, big, needful swallows. I was thinking of that first night Jamie and I had slept together at the hotel over in Jersey. Maybe it really had been Harald’s Mercedes down in the courtyard. Maybe he’d followed us, discharging his pledge to Adam, keeping an eye on the wilful, headstrong widow.

  I thought about it some more, trying to work out the way he’d have done it, keeping his distance in the dark, parking up beside the pub where we’d stopped for a drink, and then I suddenly remembered the girl at the check-in desk at the airport. She knew where we’d gone. She’d even given me the hotel’s number. So all Harald had to do, like any caring friend, was phone the airport to check we were away safely. The girl, of course, would have said no. They’ve had to stay overnight. They’ve gone to this place up the road.

  What then? I shut my eyes a moment, knowing full well that it was absolutely in Harald’s character to drive across and make sure we were OK. He’d probably had plans to join us for a meal, chat a little more about the States, make us feel at home. But when he got to the hotel he’d have found the restaurant empty, and a double room booked, and the curtains drawn up on the first floor. No wonder he was keeping me at arm’s length. No wonder he was so distant.

  I returned to the fridge and emptied the remains of the Chablis into my glass. A couple of brief hours had transformed Harald into a kind of father figure - concerned, watchful, occasionally forbidding. He had my best interests at heart. He was trying to nudge me in directions he thought Adam would have wanted. The last thing that I - or Jamie - should do was misinterpret any of that.

  I took my glass to my room, feeling better. At least I knew where I was. At least, emotionally, things were a little simpler. I sat on the bed with my legs up, reading the rest of Jamie’s letter. After the initial outburst, he’d quietened down - almost as if he, too, had realised the need for a bit of restraint. The next few weeks, he said, would be like one of his longer runs.

  We had to pace ourselves, save ourselves, be patient. We had to have the faith and the trust to know that the days would roll by, and that May would spill into June, and that this huge, yawning gap in our lives would come to an end.

  He said he’d ringed my birthday on the calendar he kept by his bed at Ralph’s: 10 June. By then, I’d be back. By then, we could celebrate, maybe even go flying together, just like the old days. In the mean time, I was to promise him that I’d take care, stay in one piece, and make sure I put the bloody undercarriage down before I tried to land. At the end of the letter, above the neat row of kisses, he’d written ‘Three greens?’, a gesture that - to me - touched the very essence of what there was between us. In the air and on the ground we were a wonderful team, but there were rules that applied to even us. Break those rules, ignore gravity, and we’d very definitely come to grief.

  I re-read the letter, smiling at Jamie’s wilder excesses, and then went back to the kitchen. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to share this feeling of mine that we’d come to an important moment in our relationship. It wasn’t that we needed to rein each other in. It was just that we ought to - in his phrase - pace ourselves.

  Tingling with anticipation, I took the phone back to bed. It would be lovely to hear his voice, to compare notes, to agree that - together - we were on track.

  I dialled Mapledurcombe. The phone rang for ages. I hadn’t bothered to work out the time in England and it was Andrea who spared me the effort.

  ‘It’s five o’clock in the morning,’ she mumbled. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I was looking at the wine glass. ‘How are you?’

  ‘How am I? Bloody tired if you want the truth.’

  I said I was sorry for phoning so early. I heard the scrape of a match in the background, then Andrea was back on the phone again. This time she sounded a little more coherent. I asked her how things were going and she said fine. The first week’s guests had only arrived a couple of days ago but already she knew she could count on at least three invitations back to the States. They were sweet, the men especially, and they all thought Mapledurcombe was divine.

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘How about the flying?’

  I’d fixed for a couple of commercial pilots, both friends of Adam’s, to be on standby for the Harvard and the Mustang. Our guests would have to fit in with these guys’ work schedules but Andrea assured me that it was all sorted.

  ‘It’s going to be hard to get them out of the house, though.’ I could hear her laughing. ‘You won’t believe how much they love this place.’

  She went off on a long story about some woman or other, a MrsFernstein, and I sipped the wine, waiting for the punchline. When sh
e’d finished laughing, I bent to the phone again.

  ‘How’s Jamie?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘What?’ My voice gave me away. Where was he? What was going on?

  ‘He’s been in London,’ Andrea explained. ‘Since the day you left.’ ‘Where?’

  ‘London. He said he needed time off. It’s a real pain, Ellie, but I could hardly say no, not after everything he’s done.’

  Jamie’s letter was still open on the duvet. I stared at it, numb with disbelief. What about all the problems he was supposed to be having with my rabid sister? What about those photos she’d found in his precious garden shed? Why tell such extravagant lies when I was bound to be talking like this to Andrea?

  I lifted the phone again, determined not to give myself away.

  ‘Any idea when he’s back?’

  ‘Tomorrow night. He phoned last night.’ She paused. ‘Any message?’

  I shook my head and mumbled something about sending him my love. Then I put the phone down.

  Some time later, I’ve no idea exactly when, I crept out of the bedroom. I was still fully clothed but I’d slipped off my sandals. I padded through the darkened corridors, following the sound of music. There was a thin strip of light at the bottom of the door to Harald’s den. I knocked softly. There was no answer. I knocked again and then, very slowly, pushed the door open.

  Harald was lying full-length on the sofa beside his desk, his eyes closed. Light from the desk lamp had pooled around a photo he’d propped against his laptop. The photo was a black-and-white shot in one of those clear plastic stand-up holders. It showed a man in a long black leather coat. It was obviously winter, because there was snow on the ground behind him. The man had a strong, young face, pinched with cold. His eyes were deeply sunken and his cheeks were hollowed with fatigue but he was trying to smile. I looked at the photo a moment longer, certain I’d seen the face before. Then I remembered the shots lined up on the shelf behind Monica’s armchair. Same half-smile. Same overwhelming sense of exhaustion.

  Harald’s eyes opened. He ran a hand over his face and got up on one elbow.

  ‘Something the matter?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I’ve just come to say sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Tonight. I behaved like a child. Just ignore me. Pretend it never happened.’

  Harald gazed up at me. Then his face broke into a grin.

  ‘You’re right, it never happened.’ His eyes closed again. ‘Sleep well.’

  Chapter fourteen

  Exactly a week later, two days ahead of schedule, I went solo. The moment, when it came, was almost an anticlimax. We’d spent the morning practising aerobatics, Harald leading me through a series of rolls. The rolls led to a wonderful manoeuvre called a Cuban Eight which I’d been doing for years in my Moth. The Cuban is basically a couple of half-loops stitched together in the middle - forming a sideways figure eight - but getting it as right as Harald demanded involved a degree of accuracy that stretched me to the limit.

  My fourth or maybe fifth Cuban Eight was the one that drew Harald’s applause. We were fifty miles south of Standfast and on the way back he took me through a couple of hesitation rolls. As ever, he was interested in precision - pausing the roll at exactly 90 degrees, exactly 180 degrees, exactly 270 degrees, before flicking it back to the horizontal. My first attempts were pretty woeful and I used up far too much sky, but with the airfield in sight I won my second gold star of the morning.

  ‘Very nice,’ he grunted as we joined the circuit and I lowered the undercarriage for the gentlest of landings.

  Back on the apron, he did some calculations on the fuel load and organised extra Avgas while I made notes for the inevitable debrief. By the time I’d finished, he was unbuckling his parachute harness. Thinking it was time for lunch, I got out and began to do the same. A hand on my arm told me to stop.

  ‘She’s yours,’ he said. ‘Take her back south. You’ve got fifty minutes in the wing tanks, plus a reserve.’ He grinned at me. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

  At first I didn’t understand the implications of what he was telling me. Then he glanced at his watch and said he had some calls to make, and it dawned on me that I was to go off on my own. As ever with Harald there was no drama, no fuss, just a second or two of eye contact and the question that said it all.

  ‘OK?’

  I nodded. I expected a flutter of nerves but somehow it didn’t happen. To clamber back into the machine and fly away by myself seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  Harald watched me settle in the front cockpit. When I was comfortable, he climbed up and checked the harness. Then he patted me on the shoulder and asked me what I’d like for lunch.

  ‘Tuna on rye,’ I said at once. ‘And three bottles of champagne.’

  Barely five minutes later, I was airborne. I banked away to the south, still climbing. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and for some reason the visibility was much sharper than usual. Up at 7,000 feet I could see the long white line of the coast all the way down beyond Naples. I climbed higher still, the engine drumming away in front of me, and the further south I went the more I sensed that something about my flying was very different.

  It wasn’t simply that I was alone. It was something else, something so unfamiliar that it began to unsettle me. I double-scanned the instruments, checking my heading and speed against my watch, drawing and redrawing my course in my mind. I looked out to port and starboard, and then over both shoulders, wary for other traffic, ever more anxious to pin down this vague feeling of impending trouble. The aircraft, for once, was trimmed out beautifully. We were alone in the sky. So what was it that kept niggling away at me?

  The realisation, when it came, spread a big, fat smile across my face. At last, after nearly a fortnight of nonstop effort, I had time. Time to look out at the view. Time to plot the long left-hand turn that would take me back towards Standfast. Time to realise that the Mustang - in the end - was just another aircraft, a friend as well as a legend. I shook my head in admiration, understanding at last why Harald had been cramming so much into the last ten days’ flying.

  My log book told the story. With a huge high-pressure zone anchored over the Gulf of Mexico, we’d been up two, sometimes three times a day, each sortie packed with fresh problems, fresh solutions. Scarcely a minute would pass without Harald nudging me from the rear seat. Another abrupt departure from straight-and-level. Another spin. Another chance to watch the flat brown fields below revolving and revolving until I’d stabbed hard at the rudder and lowered the nose and put myself back in control. These traps that Harald would so carefully set seemed never-ending, and after barely a couple of days I’d found myself developing an instinct for trouble that became a kind of sixth sense. The aircraft had become an extension of my own nervous system. It would speak to me, tell me things. The tiny shivers that triggered a stall. The change in the engine note when we flew through cloud. How heavy the controls became when we hit the throttle and explored certain corners of the flight envelope.

  At the end of each of these extraordinary days, with my knee pad full of despairing notes, Harald would debrief me, unpicking each situation, untangling each crisis, explaining the theory behind my ever-increasing repertoire of responses. At the start, to be fair, he’d warned me about the way it would be, how he’d push me as hard as he pushed any other fighter pilot, stretching the flight envelope wider and wider, but I’d never imagined for a moment how physically and mentally draining this process would be. Most nights, I’d been in bed and asleep by half past nine. My world, quite literally, had shrunk to the cockpit of the Mustang. I ate, slept, dreamed flying. Nothing else mattered. Not Adam. Not Mapledurcombe. Not even Jamie.

  Now, alone in the Mustang for the first time, I thought about it with a sense of wonderment. By being so ruthless, by making life so bloody difficult, Harald had given me immense confidence, and it was only now that I realised just how important that confidence would be. T
here were a million ways this aeroplane could still take me by surprise, but Harald had stretched me to the point where the basics - staying airborne, staying in one piece - had become second nature.

  This was my very first Mustang solo. I wasn’t required to bomb anything, or race around the sky after some lunatic from El Salvador or Honduras, or even climb up to 13,000 feet and induce a spin or two. But that, of course, was exactly the point. What should have been an ordeal was in fact turning out to be a pleasure. After an eternity of heart-stopping challenges and split-second decisions, I’d earned my just rewards. Thanks to Harald, I could take off, bimble around and then land again. All by myself.

  He was waiting for me on the apron back at Standfast. He was sitting in Chuck’s Jeep, his flying boots up on the dashboard, his peaked cap pulled low over his eyes. He watched me close down the engine, and when I hauled myself out of the cockpit he got out of the Jeep and helped me down off the wing. He didn’t ask me how it had gone. That wasn’t Harald’s way. He just looked up at the open cockpit, and patted the warm panels behind the engine exhausts, and told me we were off for a picnic.

  We drove down to the very edge of the airfield. A track I’d never seen before led through an open gate in the perimeter fence, and we bumped along for about a mile before stopping beside a tiny lake. I’d noticed the lake from the air. In the late afternoon, approaching from the north-east, the sun lanced off the water, and the lake became a puddle of molten gold that told me I was on track for a landing.

  Harald, bless him, had taken me at my word. He spread a blanket in the shade of a big old cypress and produced a bottle of ice-cold Krug from a battered cool box.

  ‘Real glasses?’

  ‘Special occasion. They once belonged to my dad.’

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. Harald laid the two fine-stemmed crystal glasses side by side, giving them a wipe as he did so. The champagne cork made a splash as it hit the water. I watched the Krug bubbling in the first glass.