‘Come on, men!’ Ross called over his shoulder as we started our second lap of the circuit. ‘Bennett, pick it up! I can hear you wheezing from here!’
Benny clutched his sides and tried to curse, but couldn’t find the breath.
I quickened my pace and turned to run backwards beside him. He scowled: ‘Bugger—off.’
Turns out Benny hated exercise. Loathed it. Cursed it. Cursed everyone in sight, too.
I smiled and turned back around, settling into my old rhythm—breathe in for two strides, breathe out for two strides. I relaxed my shoulders and kept my stomach firm and slightly pushed out, like I was being pulled forward by a rope tied around my middle. I’d done a lot of running with the Barrier Boys in Broken Hill, but it had been years since I’d really stretched out my legs for more than 100 yards. Felt good to be blowing out the cobwebs. I promised myself I’d run up the 30-ft sloping banks when I got a bit fitter. Today, I just needed to finish.
Ross was 40 yards ahead, and the sight of him heading into that huge banking turn on the white cement track was so remarkable I almost stopped to watch. I pumped my arms like pistons. An image of Fred Alford popped into my head. Damn! I needed to respond to that letter. I wondered if his arm was any better, or if he’d had any luck finding work. I hoped Mrs Alford was alright. Every time I sat down to write, I’d just stare at the page before screwing up the paper. Responding made it real. If it was real I had to deal with it. So I ignored it, just like we’d been trained to do in the war. We all saw what happened to blokes who felt too much, too often. The poor fellas went mad. I’d blocked out Helena just like that, because I didn’t want to go where the hurt would take me.
The Vickers Sheds loomed up on my right. Ross was already doing sit-ups beside the track.
‘Well done,’ he said as I pulled up and doubled over to catch my breath. ‘I reckon it’d pay for us all to give up the cigarettes for a bit, but I got too cranky last time I tried.’
‘Speaking of terrible moods,’ I said, turning to watch Benny coming down the track. His army shorts were hanging off his hips, his undershirt had holes in the seams under the armpits, his red face was twisted like an old shoe.
‘Ha!’ said Ross. ‘Leave him to me.’
Benny flopped onto the grass, spitting up phlegm. ‘These bastard boots …’
‘Yes,’ said Ross, springing upright. ‘I’ll see if we can’t come up with something a little lighter on the foot.’ He sprang upright. ‘Right lads, fifty push-ups!’
Benny groaned.
‘Make that 60 push-ups. Followed by 60 sit-ups and 60 star jumps.’
‘Right-o,’ I said, dropping to the ground and counting out loud to needle Benny.
‘From tomorrow we’ll be doing 80 of each,’ Ross announced. ‘We won’t get through this air race if we’re not fit.’
Ross was right. We’d seen the strain on his body during the flight to India. Piloting the Handley Page was a Herculean task. To keep the plane level, he was constantly pulling against wires and cables to move the rudders and ailerons. Some days his neck and shoulders were so cramped he could barely get himself out of the cockpit.
The 11,000-mile race to Australia would be even more gruelling. For our part, Benny and I would be doing engine maintenance and repairs overnight, most likely without the help of decent equipment to lift machinery in some of the more remote landing spots. We needed to be fit.
After push-ups, I was about to start my sit-ups when I noticed four women coming around the side of the Vickers Sheds. They were dressed in white shirts and black knee-length skirts over woollen stockings. I recognised them, too—one of them had been showing Benny a quick way to strip the Vimy fuselage yesterday.
‘Hey, Benny,’ I said under my breath.
‘What?’ he grunted, his face like thunder. His push-ups were pitiful.
I nodded toward the women, who’d started doing stretches. ‘Over there …’
‘Jesus, it’s Joan,’ he muttered, straightening his back.
Ross had started his star jumps, oblivious to the women. ‘First thing this morning we’ll talk to Rex about extra fuel capacity,’ he said. ‘Wal, what do you think about some kind of compensator between the front and back fuel tanks?’
‘That would make sense,’ I said. The women were doing torso twists—I heard a couple of them giggle and wished I hadn’t stripped down to my singlet. My shorts felt like big old bloomers. I’d lost a bit of weight, and nothing looks more pathetic than a small bloke in oversized clothes.
‘I want to keep the fuel more evenly distributed along the length of the aircraft,’ Ross continued. ‘That way I won’t have to wrestle with her so much in the air.’
‘How about we rig up a system that automatically pumps the fuel between tanks as they empty?’ I said. ‘That’ll keep the levels consistent and the plane won’t end up too nose-heavy.’
Benny made reasonable work of his sit-ups. He must have caught the eye of one of the girls as he stood to do his star jumps, because he called out ‘Morning!’ in a cheerful voice.
‘Morning!’ they called back. Their voices rang out through the autumn air of Brooklands. Sounded lovely.
Yesterday, we had 25 of them staring at us. The Vimy had been moved into the centre of the main construction shed and the male and female workers had been told to gather around. The women certainly looked like a workforce in their matching brown work coats and bonnets, and it was the first time I’d seen women wearing trousers. I guessed most of them were in their 20s, and unmarried. They lived in the Vickers boarding hostel up behind the sheds.
Once, there’d been hundreds of women rostered to keep the production lines running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But redundancies had cut their number to the bone. The hostel was largely empty now—home only to a skeleton crew and, as of a few days earlier, us three blokes.
Rex Pierson had asked for quiet before introducing Ross as an Australian war hero and Benny and me as mechanical geniuses. I’d stared at my boots most of the time. Then Ross made a little speech, his voice echoing in the great empty space, and the women looked at him like he was a movie star. He said it was a great honour to work with the company that had built the very aircraft that had crossed the Atlantic only three months earlier. He said the Vimy’s days of record-breaking were not over, and they all cheered when he said we’d take a photo of a kangaroo beside the Vimy in Australia. Then the woman in charge, Miss Dickson, walked over to introduce her team leaders. She was taller than me. Had broader shoulders, too.
‘Done,’ I said, finishing my last star jump. It felt good that I’d beaten Benny.
‘Breakfast!’ said Ross. He led the way toward the hostel, mumbling about needing better maps so he could confirm flying distances and fuel requirements.
The women were jogging slowly on the spot, their black skirts lifting and falling, lifting and falling.
‘I’ll be with you in a sec,’ Benny called after us, tightening his belt and rolling his shoulders. ‘Might just do some final stretches.’
They knew their stuff, those Vickers women. So did the men concentrating on the inner workings—fitting the Rolls-Royce engines, the fuel and oil lines, the instruments and gauges.
The company had come a long way since the first Vickers aircraft, an airship 512-ft long that broke its back on the inaugural flight. It was a story you couldn’t forget: dubious workers had christened the poor airship the Mayfly, because they thought it may fly, but it may not. An Admiralty inquiry later ruled the whole thing had been the work of a lunatic. I was glad things had changed since 1911.
The job of stripping back the Vimy took us days, and it was incredible to watch the frame being revealed as the fabric was peeled away. Made you realise this flying caper really was a miracle. Some of the frame was steel, but most of it was lightweight tubing rolled from sheets of spruce. Miss Dickson said the spruce wood was native to a tiny strip of land on the Pacific coast of America.
It was different working with w
omen, more calm and happy, somehow. I liked the constant buzz they made, quietly talking as they bent over their work.
Once the Vimy had been stripped, the girls got to work re-covering the plane in Irish linen. They sewed together long strips of linen on machines, then affixed the fabric to the aircraft with thousands of tiny knots of waxed cord. Then they shrank the fabric over the frame with nitrate dope. More than half a dozen thick coats of dope were applied to make the fabric weatherproof and protect it from sunlight.
The dope fumes were awful. Miss Dickson made the girls drink lemonade at regular intervals, as a tonic I suppose. Often, me and Benny went outside when it got too bad. It was the only place we could smoke because the dope was so flammable. More and more, Joan seemed to be out there, too.
Joan was from Elephant and Castle, south of the Thames. Nice girl, tall, with green eyes and red hair trimmed into one of those new shorter styles. She and Benny really got on. She’d said: ‘D’ya really see kanga-rews in the streets of Melbourne, Benny?’ and he’d say, ‘Jeez, Joan, your Souf London accent’s a larf. Say “kangaroo” again.’ Then she’d say his accent was funnier, and round and round they’d go. She laughed every time Benny opened his mouth, so of course he did it often. Wasn’t long before he was smitten, and I was happy for them both.
Jack Alcock was testing the new amphibious Vickers Viking by that stage, and he often stopped by to offer advice. He was Sir John Alcock now, thanks to his record-breaking flight, but we just called him Jack. He was quiet and unassuming, nothing like you’d expect, and he got on like a house on fire with Ross. You could hear a pin drop whenever he was in the shed. Eyes followed him everywhere.
While the women were re-applying the fabric, we were doing things like adding extra fuel tanks inside the fuselage. The fuel pumping system we created worked a treat. We also split the rudder cables into sections, so if a cable frayed on the way to Australia we wouldn’t have to replace the entire 30 ft.
It was clever the way Vickers had instrument gauges installed onto the sides of the engine cowlings. That way, we could all sit in our cockpits and monitor the engines—water temperature, oil pressure and revs per minute. Benny chose to be responsible for the port-side engine—that’s the left side, facing forward. I had to look after the starboard engine.
They were good times. Exciting times. We lived and breathed that plane. Even slept right beneath her, some nights, when we worked so late it was almost morning again. And slowly it felt like she was becoming one of us. A British bomber with an Australian heart.
Then came the 14th of October, 1919.
It was the day Etienne Poulet departed Paris bound for Australia and we were left reading about his courage and his sacrifice and his plans to fly the route Ross had mapped out with Biffy.
We were working on the Vimy’s rudder when Rex Pierson came in waving the telephone message from Biffy: Poulet planned to be in Australia in 25 days.
I looked around at all the bits of our machine lying on the cement floor. We were weeks from being ready, and that’s if everything went to plan. Ross was as frustrated as the rest of us, but he was too good a leader to say anything that lowered morale.
‘Etienne Poulet might have a head start,’ he called out, hushing the whispers and the cursing, ‘but he doesn’t have a twin-engine, British-built Vimy!’
Jack Alcock said he heard the cheer on the other side of Brooklands.
Be kind. That’s the only advice Mum ever gave us boys about women. One rule. Two words. She said if we couldn’t get that right, no other advice would help.
When Shirley Hopkins walked down the path, all shiny lipstick and soft curves under her grey coat, I quickly jumped out to open the car door.
‘Whoa. Easy fella,’ said Benny from behind the wheel. Joan giggled and thumped his arm.
It was Sunday and Ross had given us the afternoon off. Benny had wangled a car from the Vickers garage and talked me into spending the afternoon with him and Joan and her best friend, Shirley Hopkins. The two girls had worked together at Vickers until the lay-offs after the war. Joan said Shirley simply adored Australian servicemen, and was dying to meet me.
Shirley and I settled into the back seat, while Benny asked Joan for directions to the river.
‘Next right,’ said Joan, ‘then a left.’
‘Say “roight” again,’ said Benny, teasing her as he changed gears.
‘Benny!’ she said, hitting his knee. ‘I can’t keep saying “right” or we’ll go the wrong bloody way!’ Her laugh was deep and throaty. It gave me a little pang in my chest, like I was a kid again, longing for something.
I leaned back in my seat to smooth my hair without being obvious. Shirley was studying the pink polish on her nails, stretching out her fingers in her lap. The backs of her hands looked red and sore.
Joan and Shirley started chatting about people they knew at Vickers. I looked out the window, listening as their strange accents filled the car.
We passed some kids standing around a busted wooden billy cart. One of them was screaming his head off, clutching a bloodied knee while his mum knelt beside him, licking a handkerchief and dabbing at his leg.
‘So Shirley …’ I said, taking a deep breath to stop the wobble in my voice, ‘what do you do in Weybridge?’
‘What do I do?’ she asked, staring out the window and tucking her hair behind her ear. It was blonde and wavy, cut into the same short style as Joan’s. ‘You mean, what do I do since I was laid off by Vickers after ’elpin’ Britain to win the war?’
‘Shirley, don’t start,’ said Joan. ‘Wal’s just makin’ conversation.’
I blushed beetroot red.
‘Sorry, Wal, it’s been a long day,’ said Shirley, turning to look at me. She had the same south London accent as Joan. When she said ‘Wal’, the L sounded like another W. ‘I’m a housemaid at the Lincoln Arms—makin’ the beds, cleanin’ behind the bar an’ all that.’ She was in her early 20s but her smile made her look older. ‘At Vickers I had me own team of doping girls. I did, you know. BE2s were my favourites.’
I nodded and tried to offer an encouraging smile. ‘The BE2 was a ripping little plane,’ I lied. The BE2 was a dog. Fokker fodder. ‘Reliable workhorse, eh Benny?’
Benny grinned in the front seat. I felt my face starting to go hot again, so I shut my mouth and looked out the window.
We were near the river now. A fours team was gliding over the water, their oars in perfect time. I pictured the Murrumbidgee, the brown water swirling and swollen after winter, the gums all ghostly grey across the way, knotted and gnarled and alive with bossy galahs. Helena’s small white hand drawing circles in the river sand.
‘Pull up over there, Benny,’ said Joan, ‘and we’ll lay the blanket on the bank—near that gap in the weepin’ willows.’
Benny had brought a few long-neck beers, and the girls got all giggly making sure no one was around before they had a swig. I was a bit shocked when they did it. I couldn’t see Helena drinking from a bottle in a million years. But it was fun, sitting there in the soft autumn sunshine, leaves on the ground, passing around the bottle and sharing cigarettes. It was the first time I got a real sense of what life might be like when me and Benny put the war behind us.
Shirley laughed at a couple of things I said. Touched my leg once when she spoke to me. It felt good.
Two mallards waddled toward the water, pecking the grassy bank as they went. ‘Hey, boys,’ said Joan. ‘Wot’s the name of that funny animal you’ve got in Australia? Bit like an otter, with a face like a duck?’
‘I reckon you mean a platypus,’ I said.
‘That’s it!’ said Joan. ‘Plat-eee-pus. I studied them at school.’
‘Awww, say that again for me,’ said Benny.
‘Plat—eee—pus!’ said Joan, leaning over and kissing him on the lips three times as she said it.
‘Have you ever seen a plat-eee-pus, Wal?’ asked Shirley.
‘No, I’ve never seen one,’ I said, shifting sl
ightly on the blanket. Benny was whispering into Joan’s ear. ‘I’d like to see one though. They’re supposed to be very shy.’
I took a swig of beer, watching the mallards drifting downstream.
‘Right-o,’ said Benny, flicking away a cigarette and rising to his feet. ‘Me and Joan might go for a little stroll.’
‘No worries,’ I said.
‘Have fun,’ said Shirley.
We watched them walk off, arm in arm, Joan’s head resting on his shoulder. Benny had left me the final beer and I opened it before offering Shirley the first swig.
Neither of us spoke for a while. A man and woman walked by on the opposite bank, his arm draped around her shoulders. Their voices carried across the water to us, where we sat among our willows. In the distance, I heard a car door open and shut.
‘What’s it like to fly a plane, then, Wal?’ Shirley asked, handing me the bottle. When she wiped her lips I noticed her nail polish was chipped.
I thought for a moment. ‘No one’s ever asked me that. It can get very cold, and you’d think it would be quiet but it’s really noisy. Not just the engine, but the wind racing past the struts and wires.’
‘No, silly,’ she said, drawing on her cigarette. ‘What does it feel like?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t reckon I can describe it. Everything just seems small.’ A ladybird landed on my trousers. I laid my hand flat and let it walk onto my palm. ‘It does make you feel different. More peaceful maybe. Like your troubles are far away.’
She touched my arm, offering to share her cigarette. The ladybird opened its wings and flew off. ‘You got a sweetheart back home, Wal?’
I felt my chest tighten when she said it. ‘Not sure,’ I said, taking the cigarette. ‘I did have.’
‘What happened?’
I took a drag and exhaled slowly, thinking about that parcel from Fred. ‘She was expecting me home after the war, but I flew to India instead.’ I flicked some ash onto the grass. ‘I reckon she got sick of waiting.’
‘Gor, Wal. I’m sorry. What’s ’er name?’
‘Helena.’ I coughed and tried to remember when I’d last said it. ‘Can’t blame her, I s’pose. After all those years.’
Long Flight Home Page 14