Long Flight Home

by Lainie Anderson

  ‘Ross,’ said Keith. ‘We won the war, remember?’ He took a sip of beer and leaned back in his seat. ‘Most diggers over here voted “Yes” in both plebiscites. The men thought it was only fair that others did their bit to fill the spaces left by the dead and wounded. That said, there were plenty who didn’t want their mates to see the horrors they’d seen, or hear the screams they’d heard.’ He forked some pie into his mouth. ‘It was hard to argue with that.’

  We ate in silence for a bit, and I wondered if there’d ever be a time when quiet moments weren’t filled with the ghosts of dead brothers and fallen mates.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Buck,’ said Ross.

  Keith smiled briefly, revealing his bucky teeth. ‘Me too, Froggy. The alternative’s lousy.’

  I stretched out as far as I could reach and manoeuvred my shears along the top of the hedge. Marmaduke and Banshee ran circles around the bottom of the stepladder and I was worried they’d knock it out from underneath me.

  ‘Be gone, scoundrels!’ the Colonel bellowed, before turning his ruddy face up toward me. ‘What’s this Smith brother like?’

  I watched the dogs bound across the lawn, feeling the warmth of the Sunday sun on my face. It was nice to be back at Cheveney. Nice to have clear skies for a change. Nice to be invited, too. Ross had seen Biffy up in London and told him I’d been crook, and soon afterwards Mrs Borton had telephoned Vickers to say they were sending a car to collect me for a day of restorative soups and sunshine. When I volunteered to do some hedging, Mrs Borton protested but the Colonel nodded his head vigorously. ‘That’s the way, lad. Get the juices flowing.’

  Keith Smith wasn’t an easy man to describe. He wasn’t easy to like, really, but maybe that’s because I always compared him to Ross and he always came up short.

  ‘Keith’s good with maps,’ I said finally, stepping down off the ladder to move it along a few feet. ‘Benny says he’s meticulous, too. It’s a weight off Ross, knowing the navigation is sorted.’ I made sure the legs were steady before climbing again. ‘They’ve divided the route into four stages, with six or seven landing spots in each. London to Cairo. Cairo to Calcutta. Calcutta to Singapore. Singapore to Australia.’

  The Colonel had his own set of shears and was clipping away brutally at the lower half of the hedge, with Mrs Borton following in his wake to clear up the mess. ‘Good show,’ he said. ‘And how about that Poulet, eh? Down in Italy already, I hear.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s a worry. Ross says Matthews and Kay are likely to set off in the Sopwith Wallaby sometime this week too—maybe even tomorrow. We need to get a move on.’

  The Colonel had stopped clipping and was filling his pipe with tobacco. ‘Biffy says you take one shortcut with an aircraft engine and you pay twice later. Perhaps with your life. Steady as she goes, son.’

  I found my balance at the top of the stepladder and began levelling the next section.

  Over in the enormous kitchen gardens behind the hedge I saw a solitary magpie, with his round white belly, smart black waistcoat and long tail. British magpies looked so proper compared to our big, knockabout maggies back home.

  ‘Mrs Borton,’ I said, ‘can you please tell me that magpie rhyme again?’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘The one I grew up with was …

  One for sorrow,

  Two for joy,

  Three for a girl,

  Four for a boy.

  Five for silver,

  Six for gold,

  Seven for a secret never to be told.

  The Colonel looked up at me. ‘How many can you see?’

  ‘Just the one,’ I said.

  ‘Salute him, lad. Quickly now! Bad luck otherwise.’

  I looked back into the kitchen gardens and saluted the bird, adding quietly ‘G’day Banjo’.

  As a kid I’d had a pet magpie called Banjo. My brother Jack reckoned there’d been too many mouths in the nest and Banjo had been kicked out before he could fly. He had the softest feathers. Used to curl up on my lap like a kitten, until his wings got strong and he flew away. Whenever I saw a magpie back home after that I thought it might be Banjo. And I couldn’t hear a crow’s caw without wishing it was a magpie’s warble.

  It didn’t seem real that we were just going to start the Vimy’s engines one day soon and fly away like Banjo did. Home to Australia. Rex Pierson had shown us a newspaper clipping from the New York Times that said Christopher Columbus didn’t take one tenth of the risks the air pioneers would face on the race to Australia. It said we’d be throwing the dice at death. I didn’t ever think about it like that, though. Not with Ross.

  I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and handed it down to the Colonel. ‘I’ve been meaning to show you this, sir. Maybe you’ve heard it before?’ I’d written the poem out with a view to reading it aloud, but was too embarrassed to have a go, now it came time to do it.

  The Colonel held the page away from his face, trying to decipher my handwriting. ‘What’s this? Oh, my word.’ He turned to wave Mrs Borton toward him. ‘Laura, you’ll want to hear this …’

  ‘Ahh,’ I said. ‘There is a curse word in it, Mrs Borton.’

  ‘Nothing I haven’t heard before,’ she said, tutting, as she moved in closer and bent to tickle the dogs behind the ear so they’d sit still beside her. I stepped down a couple of rungs to lean my elbows on the top of the stepladder, looking at them both below me.

  The Colonel patted his chest, arranged his glasses and was about to begin when he looked up and said, ‘What in blazes is an “ack emma”, Wal? I’ll think we’ll need to know.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘During the war it was a signaller’s timekeeping term for “a.m.”, so it also became slang for an “air mechanic” like me.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said the Colonel, returning his gaze to the piece of paper and clearing his throat.

  The gallant young airman lay dying, and, as under the wreckage he lay,

  With the ack emmas standing around him, these last parting words did he say:

  Take the cylinders out of my kidneys, the connecting rods out of my brain;

  From the small of my back take the crankshaft, and assemble the bastard again.

  Laura clapped. ‘Did you write that, Wally?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, shocked she thought it was possible. ‘One of the observers at No. 1 Squadron came up with it. I could never write anything as good as that.’

  ‘Bah!’ The Colonel said, tucking the piece of paper in his jacket pocket and striking a match to re-light his pipe. ‘Anyone can write poetry. Words and application. That’s all it takes.’

  It was late afternoon when we finished the yew hedge and stood back to admire the job I’d started weeks ago on my first morning at Cheveney. The Colonel pointed to long shadows running across the lawn to the east and said I’d be following them soon on the flight home. ‘Godspeed to you all,’ he said, and I was touched by the pride in his voice.

  Mrs Borton offered me my old room for the night but I was keen to get back to Brooklands ahead of Ross’s training session in the morning. While I waited for Tom to bring around the car, she brought out a small package and asked me to give it to Ross. ‘Open it,’ she said, touching my arm. ‘It’s for all of you. For luck.’

  ‘Marmaduke!’ I said, when I saw his little face.

  It was a perfect replica of a tiny mascot pilot that Biffy had installed on our Handley Page. We’d all felt his loss when the bomber was destroyed in India. This little fella looked exactly the same: about six inches high, seated with his hands clutching the steering sticks, and a tiny two-blade propeller out front. His uniformed body and head were made of carved, painted wood, complete with flying cap and goggles.

  ‘Marmaduke II,’ Mrs Borton said, scratching the ears of Marmaduke the dog as she spoke. ‘I thought we should have another one made for the Vickers Vimy to help guide you all home.’

  ‘Better than those silly stuffed black cats Alcock and Brown took across the At
lantic,’ the Colonel said.

  ‘He’s perfect,’ I said, rubbing Marmaduke’s flying cap with my thumb. ‘Ross will love him.’

  Chapter 15

  ‘Matthews and Kay have taken off!’ yelled Ross from the back of the shed, before disappearing back to the telephone in Rex’s office.

  A murmur rose around the Vimy. ‘Hush, ladies!’ Miss Dickson said firmly. ‘Let’s just get these boys in the air.’

  ‘Damn,’ muttered Benny under his breath. ‘We can say goodbye to the bloody money, then.’

  Under the race rules, crews had 30 days to reach Darwin and win the prize money. It was the 21st of October, which meant Matthews had until the 20th November to get there. Poulet was slowly but surely working his way east across Europe, too. We’d just heard he was in Albania.

  So the clock was ticking, loud and fast.

  The Vimy was still weeks from being rolled out into the sunlight. The paint job wasn’t done. The electrics weren’t finished either. Jack Alcock’s test flights needed to come after that, and then we had to get Ross confident at the controls.

  Our chances of victory were getting slimmer by the day.

  Ross strode up with Keith close behind. ‘Okay, so I’ve been on the phone to Biffy and the Air Ministry. It appears Matthews could be headed for Germany.’

  ‘Germany?!’ said Benny. ‘That’s not on the official route! I thought the Air Ministry said we had to head south to Italy and on to Egypt?’

  Ross shrugged his shoulders. ‘I know. But flying over northern Europe is actually a more direct route. It’s a risky venture with the weather at this time of year, certainly not a risk I’m willing to take. But maybe Matthews thinks he can steal himself a few days if he gets clear skies?’

  Benny looked up into the glass ceiling. ‘Please God, let it snow.’

  I followed his gaze.

  Except for that hedging day at Cheveney, the weather had been shocking for the past week. Blanketing fog. Raging winds. Pelting rain. We were all hoping it would clear before the Vimy was ready for testing and take-off.

  Keith nodded. ‘The approaching winter certainly seems more fierce than the last two years. If Matthews gets caught in Cologne, it will buy us time. Otherwise he’s going to be tough to beat.’

  ‘And I hate to say it,’ said Ross, ‘but those Sopwith blokes know how to design a decent machine.’

  They’d been building the Wallaby in the Sopwith sheds on the other side of Brooklands. We’d seen it out for a test flight, but the aircraft had been a closely guarded secret until the company released an article in Flight magazine. She was the largest single-engined aircraft ever built, with adjustable seats so the pilot and navigator could sit well up above the fuselage, or drop right down to be fully enclosed out of the weather under a sliding roof. A canvas sheet separating the two airmen could be removed to create a single cockpit. And there was a complete set of dual controls for both men, so Thomas Kay could fly the plane when Matthews needed a rest.

  ‘How did Matthews’s departure go from Hounslow?’ asked Benny.

  Under the race rules, all planes had to depart from Hounslow Aerodrome east of London, or the Calshot Seaplane Station on the south coast of England. It was a pain for us because we wanted to fly direct from Weybridge. Instead, we had to detour a few miles up to Hounslow to get five official race seals added to the plane just before departure. Those five seals had to be intact when we landed in Darwin to show we hadn’t switched aircraft or converted the Vimy too drastically.

  Ross crossed his arms. ‘There was a large crowd of press. Matthews made a big show of carrying the first airmail from England to Australia. It was a letter from King George V to Governor-General Munro-Ferguson.’

  I looked down at my filthy hands and began wiping them with a rag, feeling sick that the Vimy was still stuck in a hangar.

  ‘Matthews circled around the aerodrome for nearly half an hour for the photographers,’ Ross said. ‘And then Harry Hawker joined them in his little Sopwith fighter and escorted them all the way to Dover.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Benny, running a hand through his hair. ‘Hawker doesn’t mind getting his face in the newspapers, does he?’

  ‘It’s business,’ said Ross. ‘Hawker is a Sopwith man. He told reporters the Sopwith’s reliability and cruising speed should see Matthews and Kay overtake Poulet in no time. Hawker is smart—he knows this race is all about selling planes. It’s time we got smart about publicity, too.’

  Keith raised his hand. ‘I know a man in London who can help with that. Bloke by the name of Murdoch.’

  ‘Can I checking the spelling of your surname please, Sergeant Shiers?’ the reporter asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It’s S-H-I-E-R-S.’

  ‘Sounds like “fliers”,’ added Benny, ‘because we’re going to be the first fliers home to Australia.’ He pointed at the reporter’s notepad. ‘Write that one down.’

  I elbowed Benny in the ribs to shut him up, but I couldn’t blame him for being excited. It was hard not to be. The press had finally started paying us some attention, and within days we’d be departing for Australia.

  It was the 9th of November. Two days earlier, 20 of us blokes had pushed the Vimy out of the Vickers shed and onto the gloomy tarmac for her first test flight with Jack Alcock. When we turned over the engines, Ross yelled into my ear, ‘Listen to that deep-throated song of contentment and gladness!’ It made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  Felt like an eternity as Jack taxied her down the runway with her engines roaring, and when her wheels left the earth we all leapt into the air, too, cheering with relief and excitement. By early afternoon, Ross was at the controls with Jack, while Benny and I were suited up in the open rear cockpit, looking down on Mother England in all her green-hedged glory. We pointed out the road to Kent and Cheveney, the Hand & Spear pub in Weybridge, the spot by the River Wey where we’d spent the afternoon with Joan and Shirley. It was the first time I’d been in the air since India, and it felt like home, among the squealing bracing wires and the booming Rolls-Royce engines.

  ‘What do you reckon, lads?’ Ross had said afterwards. ‘Solid as a rock, eh? Engines are running perfectly.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Benny, pulling off his flying cap. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it a few weeks ago, but she’s a beauty.’

  The only thing delaying us now was the delivery of fuel and oil to the more remote aerodromes. Shell had agreed to arrange the distribution of petrol along the route for all competitors, and Wakefield provided the oil. The 30-day schedule didn’t allow for any time being wasted while supplies arrived.

  Ross and Keith had spent a lot of the past week travelling up to London, too, meeting with an Australian correspondent by the name of Keith Murdoch. I think Murdoch took one look at Ross and knew if any pilot was going to make it home to Australia, it was him. They both had Scottish parents, and that seemed to count for a lot. Ross agreed to send cablegrams from along the route back to Murdoch at the United Cable Service based out of The Times offices in London. His special messages were to be published in the Sydney Sun, the Melbourne Herald and a lot of other papers, too.

  Ross got Benny and me to write down a few particulars about our experiences before and during the war, and a day later we were presented with press biographies that made all four of us sound like war heroes. Keith was described as a ‘pilot of unusual ability’. Benny’s work experience in Melbourne made him sound like he invented the combustion engine. And mine was even better, suggesting I’d rapidly gained promotion in the Flying Corps and ‘ … owing to his ability and resourcefulness he was on many occasions sent out in the desert to bring in crashed or damaged machines, which was at times a most difficult and arduous task’. I didn’t say anything to Benny, but we both knew Ross must have provided those details about me. Made me feel 10-ft tall reading it.

  So Keith Murdoch was helping to make us famous, and Benny and me could never quite tell if it was for his benefit or ours. Maybe it was a bit of bot
h. At any rate, a lot of journalists suddenly started asking a lot of questions. And Keith Murdoch was always there in the background, with his serious face, black woollen coat and smart grey trilby.

  ‘So Sergeant Shiers, when do you think you’ll depart for Australia?’ asked the reporter from Flight magazine.

  ‘I’ll leave that one to Captain Smith,’ I said, pointing toward the Vimy. ‘He’s the man in charge.’

  We were outside at Brooklands, dressed to the nines in our AIF and RAF service uniforms for a series of press interviews and photographs with the Vimy. It was a miracle the rain had stayed away—Benny was fond of noting storm clouds had been overhead ever since Keith Smith arrived.

  The press photographers asked us to all line up together in front of the plane. I straightened my spine, placed my feet slightly apart, held my hands behind my back and tried to look interesting, just like Ross had told us to do.

  ‘Nice-looking aircraft,’ called one of the reporters standing behind the press photographers. ‘What does the G-EAOU stand for, Captain Smith?’

  ‘It’s a registration, you dunce,’ called another reporter.

  ‘Like a car,’ said another. ‘G stands for Great Britain.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Ross, glancing back at the huge white letters painted along the dark-green fuselage and wings. ‘We think it stands for “God ’Elp All Of Us”.’

  A roar went up, and the pressmen scribbled furiously.

  ‘Knew they’d like that one,’ Benny whispered.

  When the photographers had the pictures they needed, about half a dozen reporters began firing questions at Ross.

  ‘So, Captain Smith,’ said a bloke with a black trilby with a little white feather, ‘Prime Minister Billy Hughes has sent a cable to Captain Matthews in Germany, advising him to never mind the thirty-day time limit. It seems the duration doesn’t matter, so long as an Australian reaches Darwin first. What do you say to that?’