They acknowledged. ‘Squawk 7000 g’day.’
7000 on the transponder. The conspicuity code. We were not uniquely identified. We might yet become invisible. I listened out on the Scottish frequency, but I didn’t give them a call. Here were the familiar landmarks Caitlin and I had previously encountered – the Kincardine and Clackmannan bridges, the Grangemouth Refinery. We crossed over Bannockburn and Stirling Bridge and I thought of all the battles waged below us seven hundred years ago. Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument fell away behind us. There were fewer recognisable features ahead. I felt we were slipping out of a zone of comfort into an undiscovered terrain. Over the mysterious Flanders Moss I descended to 500 feet and, as we neared the Highland fault line I picked up the main trunk road that would let us snake through the mountain passes and the glens. I switched the transponder off. We had vanished.
Caitlin seemed to have recovered her joie de vivre. She said in a conversational tone, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has switched off the seat belt sign. You are free to move about the cabin. However …’
I was concentrating on the flying. I wanted to keep off the radar screens. How low could I drop?
‘There will be a complimentary bar service, and then we will be serving dinner.’
If I flew much lower the CAA might start getting calls from irate owner-occupiers whose roofs I’d buzzed.
‘Our flight time this afternoon is …’
And then there was always the possibility of meeting an RAF Tornado screaming up the glens at 500 miles an hour and at 250 feet.
‘Our flight time this afternoon is …’
‘Two hours.’
‘Two hours! Where we going? America?’
‘Caitlin, shut up. I’m trying to think.’
‘Why are we so low?’
‘For God’s sake!’ I was too busy to reassure her. I was ‘maxed out’, looking for unexpected elevations, power lines, and RAF jets.
‘Are we going to crash?’
‘Only if you keep wittering on.’ I could feel her chirpiness suddenly plummeting away.
‘I wanna go home.’
‘Not now.’
She started to cry. Fine. Just so long as she doesn’t have a tantrum. Not at 250 feet. I might have to give her a slap. We lapsed into our respective morose, brooding, moody silences. She pretended to sleep. Then she slept.
And everything was deteriorating. There was a heavy dark grey ceiling barely above us, enveloping us, oppressively, like a shroud. I was getting some spots of rain on the canopy. Normally I would have turned well before now, sought clearer skies, diverted, gone back to base. But there could be no question of going back. Every sortie has its point of no return. I remembered Forster’s expression. A tipping point. I was well beyond it. I would keep heading north-west and be driven lower and lower by the weather, until the failing light compelled me to land.
An hour later she opened her eyes. It was the turbulence that woke her. We had run into a major depression. She stared out at the gloom.
‘God.’ She peered down at the coastal fishing town beneath us.
‘Where’s that?’
‘Mallaig.’
‘Looks like Murmansk.’
‘Not long to go now.’ The land fell away behind the trailing edge of the wings. Ahead, dusk had filched all the colour out of the landscape of the island that I now realised I had wanted to reach. The water was oil black. And we were low on fuel. Armadale, Tarskavaig Point, Strathaird, Soay, and then Rubh’ an Dùnain. A series of short hops and at last we were on the island’s west coast.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, at this time the captain has commenced his descent.’ Caitlin was always quick to rediscover her laconic poise. ‘Please return to your seats, fasten your seat belts, ensure your tray table is fastened and your hand luggage stowed away in the lockers or beneath the seat in front of you …’
Loch Eynort. Suddenly it was dark. There was a single cough from under the cowling, and then the little Lycoming engine resumed its steady beat. I held the nose of the aircraft on a westerly heading and let the coast recede behind us. That remark Major Forster had made, about a point of no return, preoccupied me. How far out to the west did it lie? And I thought of my lord Hamlet’s soliloquy, and started to recite it to myself, in snatches, piecemeal.
‘Be … not … question …’
‘Are we really going to New York?’
We were back in the cockpit of the Slingsby, spinning between its twelfth and thirteenth rotation. Another opportunity to let go. Relinquishment. It was possible to forgo everything. Desirable even. How wonderful to make a tidy exit, to be found in one’s hermit’s cell, dressed in rags, surrounded by bare walls, one’s sole personal effect a battered cup. Slings … sea of troubles … heartache.
‘What’s the fuel situation?’
I’ve always found the idea of dumping baggage deeply seductive. I’ve never been a collector. It had all started as a mere affectation, a refusal to hoard. It was something I had learned from my father. He had been an efficient man, a great user of the waste paper basket. ‘The three Ds!’ he would say. ‘Deal with it, delegate it, ditch it!’
‘Alastair?’
Consummation, rub, shuffled … So clear out the loft, get rid of old diaries, old love letters. It’s past. Let it go. Give your old suits to Oxfam, take all these useless mantelpiece trinkets to the charity shops. Clear your shelves. The second-hand book shops will be delighted. What a liberation it will be.
‘Ally, please …’
Whips, scorns, contumely …
But it’s not merely a question of material possessions. Work, wealth, ambition, music, love, desire, (disprized, fardels …), even hope itself …
‘Alastair you’re frightening me.’
The undiscovered country from whose bourn …
Abruptly Caitlin seized the joystick and yanked it over to the right. The aircraft’s nose responded obediently and tracked steadily round the horizon. I snapped out of my reverie. We had come so far off shore that all I could discern was wind and rain and blackness. There was a violent lurch as we hit an air pocket and dropped 50 feet. My head actually struck the canopy. I suddenly woke up to the fact that we were in the middle of a storm. A flash of brilliant light briefly illuminated the cockpit and was immediately followed by a tremendous crump! The Slingsby lurched violently again, my headphones spluttered, and the needles on the instrument panel spun senselessly as the gyros toppled. Now we were flying east, blind, as an act of faith. The Lycoming gave another single, quiet cough. Then came the dark contour of the shore line, obliquely, 500 feet below and on the right. Caitlin said, ‘You have control!’ There was a tremor in her voice. I took the stick and banked to port. Tracking north-north-west now, looking ahead, questing. We’re here. Abruptly my night vision switched on. We had arrived abeam the cliff face at the south-east rim of the bay. There is the carious tooth rock formation down at the water’s edge. Now we are out over the bay on the downwind leg of a right hand circuit. Cliff face up ahead to the north. And there is the waterfall flowing backwards, casting spray over the cliff top. Mixture rich, carburettor air intake to warm, throttle back to 1500 rpm. I flew as near to the rock face as I dared and then banked right on to base leg. The paddock just off the beach looked tiny from here.
‘Caitlin. Get your harness as tight as you can.’
Abruptly the engine died.
Endlessly you practise for this. Sometimes you undershoot, sometimes you overshoot, sometimes you get it right. I had to get it right. I pulled the nose up to gain some precious height and then pulled it round obliquely on to my round-out point. There was silence but for the spatter of rain on the canopy and the windmilling of the prop. Best glide rate? Maybe about 70 knots. I was muttering to myself. Brake off, undercart down, mixture lean, fuel pump off … I leaned forward and flicked off the master switches, the mags, and I closed the fuel cock. No going round now. So difficult to get perspective in the gathering darkness. Surely we
’re too high! Resist the temptation to pull on full flap. Only when you know you’re going to get in. Bleed off some height. I pushed left rudder and applied right aileron and bled off 50 feet in the sideslip. Enough! Oh God, you’ve overdone it. There’s a fence, and a stream, just at your round-out point. You’re not going to make it. Maybe just … Full flap now. Coming in low over the black sand, the bracken remnants, and the diamond-hard boiler plates. A brief glimpse of the stream and the fence. I dumped the Slingsby down unceremoniously on the grass. She bounced and yawed into the air and then sank down again and stayed on the deck. I put as much pressure on the toe brakes as I dared and the aircraft juddered to a halt with her undercarriage intact.
The intensity of the silence. Then the incessant drumming of the rain on the canopy. Release the hood lock and pull the perspex bubble back over your head. Headphones off, and look up to the sky and let yourself be drenched by the wind and the rain. Yes. It’s good to be alive. Somewhere in the distance there is the boom of the surf, echoing off the imposing cliff buttresses at each end of the field. An instant of broad daylight followed immediately by the one o’clock gun directly above us. We need to get out of this.
Now I am like an automaton. Release the buckle of the five point harness, pull yourself out of the cockpit and jump down. Grab the prop and pull. Already the Slingsby is settling into the saturated earth. The warmth of Caitlin’s body beside me, pulling. Find a meagre recess of shelter, grab a torch, secure the cockpit, make the plane safe. There’s a track, leading to a big house, and beyond it, further inland, a tiny hamlet. I saw it all from the air. There are no lights on in the big house. It looks unoccupied. Another series of flashes and rumbles as we head inland up the path. Run! Another flash – a five-barred gate and a million heavy rain drops bouncing off the track and turning it into a river. Leap the gate. Here is the great shadow of the house. Slither down an embankment and off a short wall into the trench of the basement level, coming up hard against the dank mossy stonework. Choose a window, find a brick. But now Caitlin is prising the heavy stone from my fingers, taking my hand in both of hers. And then I watch her insinuate her fingernails under a sash and pull it up ten inches.
It was enough. Caitlin slithered through. Clumsily I followed. As I slipped down towards the parquet floor she half broke my fall and grasped me very tight in a prolonged hug. I noticed the way her soaked T-shirt was clinging to her body. She was trembling. There were no alarms.
Another flash from outside, as if a photographer were recording our forced entry. It briefly illuminated a full-size snooker table. We had broken into the low-ceilinged house billiard room. There were storage heaters on at either end of the room. We were back in darkness. Not quite. The heaters afforded an eerie light by which I could make out the contour of the table, the pockets, the flat expanse of the baize underneath the overhead gantry. It occurred to me dully that they had been left on to prevent the table from warping.
I felt an exquisite flutter of excitement. I was losing control. I left Caitlin and carried out a quick exploration by torch light of the rest of the basement. I found a kitchen, a pantry, and a linen cupboard. I grabbed some blankets. We had everything we might need. I had a notion that if I ventured upstairs I might trip an alarm. Back to the warmth of the billiard room. She was standing by the window through which we had entered, looking out and up at a line of rhododendron bushes and evergreen firs swaying extravagantly in the gale.
‘Take off your wet things.’
She turned slowly and stared at me. For a minute we held one another’s gaze. Physical threat, mortal danger, these are the great aphrodisiacs. Abruptly Caitlin peeled off her T-shirt. She had nothing on underneath. Then, without removing her gaze from my face, she kicked off her shoes and snaked out of her jeans. Then she slipped her panties to the floor and kicked them away. A flash of sheet lightning briefly illuminated the firmly contoured body. The keloid scar seemed to glimmer like an ember and then to die away. She was back in the shadow. She turned her head slightly in the direction of the billiard table as if to draw my attention to its green baize surface. Then she turned back to hold my gaze again, quizzically, with a half-smile. There was a low rumble of thunder.
Sororate?
I moved towards her. I held out the blankets. ‘Get some rest.’
I closed the door behind me. I made a tour of the basement, once, and settled on a cramped couch in the basement corridor, covered in a dust sheet. I stripped off my own wet things, covered myself in three blankets, and closed my eyes.
XXII
In my dream I couldn’t get the blue to stay on its central spot. It kept meandering off to the side cushion, as if the floor sloped, or the table wasn’t true. Yet all the other balls remained still. It tormented me, the blue’s contrariness. The blue was a very important ball. It occupied a very pivotal role, midfield. A kind of quincunx role. It was the door of opportunity between the baulk colours and the high premium scoring balls. I spotted it again and reattempted the shot. This time it stayed still. That’s how I knew I was awake again. I crouched over the baize and adopted my stance; relaxed posture, firm bridge, now align cue ball with object ball, a little left hand side. Pause … Not too much backward motion of the cue. Firm, confident strike, keep your head steady like a golfer and hold the posture. I watched the blue traverse the baize and flop into the top right pocket.
They were standing at the doorway, just beyond the corner of the table where the blue had disappeared. I hadn’t heard them come in. They looked just as they had looked when I had opened the door to them at Thirlestane.
‘Where’s the Sheila?’
I laid the cue down on the baize.
‘Eh? Where’ve you put her?’
‘She’s perfectly safe.’ My voice was soft and remote. I hadn’t spoken for a long time. I had been alone for many hours. ‘She is beyond harm.’
I had forgotten about the lit Stuyvesant I had balanced on the edge of the snooker table. It had burned away like a slow fuse and was starting to damage the wood. I picked it up and took a last drag and stubbed the butt out in an ash tray that was already full.
The two men interchanged glances. Major Forster left the room. I had no doubt he would search the house. I wondered if he would find her. For a moment I couldn’t remember where she was. Had I left her in the big drawing room upstairs? No, that might have been last night. So much had happened since. But it was jumbled in my mind. Had we been off the island? Surely we had. But I had come back on my own. First I hadn’t been able to join up my tactics and strategies. Now my memories were all out of order. Retrograde amnesia.
I had woken in a terrible downer. The storm had blown itself out. I had fossicked in the pantry and boiled a jug and opened some tinned fruit. I let myself noiselessly into the billiard room. Caitlin had built a little wigwam for herself by one of the storage heaters. Her breathing was soft and even. I slipped back out of the window and walked back down to the bay to make sure the Slingsby hadn’t blown away. The beach was littered with discarded fishing tackle. MacKenzie had got that right. I turned the aircraft into wind, a northwesterly. I made an attempt to cover the wings with old foliage. At least she might not be immediately recognisable from the air. Then I went back up the track to the house to explore the yard and the outhouses. There was a rusty old banger in the garage, a Hillman Hunter, about forty years old. The garage was full of junk. I remember a dry, friendly oil rag smell. An old dresser at the back was crammed with tools. I remember siphoning the Hunter’s petrol tank to make sure there was some fuel. If I got under the dashboard I could hot-wire a start. I didn’t spend a childhood on a Northland farm for nothing. There wouldn’t be any computerised jamming systems in a 1970s car.
I got out of the vehicle and there was Caitlin’s silhouette in the dawn light at the garage door.
‘What now Captain?’
‘Caitlin, I’m going to drop you off at Uncle Hector’s.’
‘Who the hell is Uncle Hector?’
I’ve never been interested in genealogy. I never could chart the convolutions of my late mother’s extended family.
‘You’ve been crying.’
She brushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘It’s just the wind.’
‘There’s food in the pantry if you want to grab some. Best get going.’
For once, she didn’t argue. I had the nagging sense that she had at last identified me as bad news. Like a lover, she had gatecrashed my life for a while. She had come along for the ride. When she finally realised the ride was going nowhere, she would get off without demur. Go and pick up the pieces of her life. Don’t look back. Above all, don’t stick around when things are about to go pear-shaped. We would have a parting by mutual consent. I was a loser. I carried the stench of death around with me. A dead man walking. And she was an encumbrance. I didn’t need her. For what I had in mind, I needed 50 litres of aviation gas and a gun. And I had an idea where I might get them.
Major Forster slipped back into the billiard room and shook his head at Ralph Parkinson. He had done exactly the same in my flat, a hundred years ago. Dr Parkinson said, ‘Aeroplane?’ Forster nodded and went back out. I guess he would take a walk to the beach.
‘You stay here last night?’
Did I? I can’t remember. Was this my second night? I’d gone to get some fuel. There were two possibilities. First, the strip at Lower Breakish, but it had looked as deserted as a disused wartime airfield obliterated by grass. I hadn’t wanted to cross the bridge to the mainland but I had to get to the strip by Duirinish, above Am Ploc. At Badicaul I spoke to two men outside a black croft, and came back to the car with a package.
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