I circled as long as I dared, looking for wreckage. Away to the west I could see a long feather of wake from an outbound tanker. At length, still dazed, it occurred to me to radio back. The VHR emergency frequency is 121.5. For a second or two my finger hovered over the transmit button. Then I shook my head. Harald wasn’t going to haunt me. I wouldn’t let him. Not now. Not ever.
I gave my call sign and reported what had happened. The rescue people have an amazing radar set-up. They can pinpoint your position within seconds.
‘I need a heading for Sandown.’ My eyes were glued to the engine temperature. I need to get home.’
There was a brief silence. Then the voice returned.
‘You’re plumb on the fifty-degree north line. Squawk 7700 and steer zero three zero. Forty-four miles to run.’
I made it back in one piece. Later, when Dave Jeffries took the engine apart, he reckoned I got the Mustang down with five minutes to spare. By then, it was academic. Harald, very definitely, was dead. While Ellie B, with her rebuilt Merlin, would be airborne again within months.
Christmas at Mapledurcombe that year was magical. Andrea had made very big friends indeed with the young director who produced the documentary about Adam and Harald, and he stayed with us until the New Year. I’d done a lot of the flying for the aerial sequences, which in some respects was more terrifying than the real thing, but by Christmas we’d had a chance to see what the director called the rough cut, and we were relieved, as well as pleased. Andrea’s new beau had done a very fine job indeed.
The film was transmitted in February, on the anniversary of Adam’s death, and the first phone call after the closing sequence came from Jamie. He and Gitta were living up near Oxford and he told me how moving the closing sequence had been. I’d only agreed to let the film go ahead on the condition that it ended with some kind of montage of my favourite photos of Adam. The way the director handled it was incredibly sensitive, the slowly dissolving images scored to a piece of Ravel, and Jamie told me that he’d cried, too. I could tell from his voice that all was far from well between him and Gitta but I resisted the temptation to enquire further. When I asked about the baby, he said they’d finally decided to name it after his grandfather. Poor Ralph hadn’t survived the year. We buried him in October. I can’t believe how much I miss him.
Six months after the film was transmitted, a package arrived for me from Florida. Inside was a videotape and a letter from Monica. She’d seen the film on cable TV and hadn’t regretted her refusal to take part. It hadn’t done justice to either her husband or her son, and if I was really interested in the truth then perhaps I should take a look at the video. I did so. It contained eighteen seconds of black-and-white combat footage. The Messerschmitt 109 gets bigger and bigger. Bits of the tail and part of the wing fall off and a small black package, barely human, tumbles out of the cockpit. Then the plane disintegrates. We’d spent months trying to trace the footage for use in the film but an exhaustive search of the USAF archive failed to turn it up. Harald’s reach, it seemed, was infinite.
The day after I watched Monica’s video, I drove back to St Lawrence and walked up the narrow path to the old church where we’d said goodbye to Adam. It had been raining all morning and there was a blustery wind up the Channel stirring the stands of iris that lined the path from the churchyard gate.
I sat on a bench for a long time, thinking. Adam would have loved it here. He’d have loved the sigh of the wind in the big old trees, and the way that the church nestled so comfortably amongst the shadowed gravestones. He’d have loved the silence and the feeling of peace. Most of all, I like to think, he’d have loved being with me.
I got up from the bench and walked down to the corner of the graveyard, remembering his touch and the way that he grinned when he was really happy. Harald had been right about the Mustang. He’d never have sold it. Not for all the money in the world. I smiled to myself, thinking for a moment that I could hear him laughing, then I looked up, half-expecting the swans to reappear, but I all could see were the tumbling clouds and a single shaft of watery sunshine, far out to sea.
GRAHAM HURLEY is an award-winning documentary producer who now writes full time. Away from the typewriter, he pursues a lifetime’s ambition to master windsurfing, colloquial Spanish and the perfect chicken bhuna. He lives, blissfully, with his wife,Lin, in Portsmouth.
How far can you go?
When Ellie Bruce loses her husband, Adam, in an unexplained flying accident over the English Channel, her life is torn apart. The aftermath ofhis death brings shock after shock. Their business, which she believed was flourishing, is on the point ofcollapse. And it seems that Adam was having an affair…
Surviving the wreckage will be her greatest challenge. Her husband’s pride and joy, a World War II vintage Mustang, is the key to what remains of her life. Ellie must fight to keep the plane. And to keep it she must learn to fly it.
But the Mustang has a past. It is a past that draws Ellie into a terrifying battle of wills with her husband’s ex-business partner. Everyone the plane touches is pushed to the limit, to the limit of courage, to the limit oflove. And beyond…
Permissible Limits is about the long shadow of World War II, it is about flying at its most demanding and about a woman who must suddenly survive in a man’s world.
REVIEWS FOR NOCTURNE BY GRAHAM HURLEY
‘With a deftness that is sharp and painful, Hurley entices you into the terrified and confused mind of his heroine. This spooky novel is utterly gripping’
Daily Telegraph
‘A compelling narrative w ith an unexpected twist in the tail’
Books Magazine
‘Intricate pacey and thrilling, this is a book to keep you awake all nighteven after you have finished it’
Harpers & Queen
Permissible Limits Page 46