by Nevil Shute
I hesitated in my turn. I would have given my eyes to go off on a trip like that and it would have been a very welcome change from my office routine. But whoever went would have to go at once. “I’d go like a shot, sir,” I said. “But I’ve got this paper to read on Thursday of next week, the one on the performance of high Mach numbers. Of course, I could cancel it.”
He said, “I had forgotten that.” He shook his head. “You’ll have to stay for that—after all, the Royal Aeronautical Society is an important body; you can’t treat them like that. No, it will have to be Honey. You really think he will get on all right upon a trip like this?”
“I’m sure he will, sir,” I replied. “Technically, he’s certainly the best man we’ve got to send. And as regards the physical aspects of the journey, we can warn Ottawa that we’re sending over somebody who isn’t very fit. They’ll make things easy for him, and push him through all right.”
We stood in silence for a minute; evidently he didn’t like it much. “I only wish he had a better presence,” the Director said at last. And then he straightened up. “All right, Scott, I’ll tell Ferguson what we’ve decided, and I’ll get on to the Secretariat about the air passage. You’d like him to fly out at once?”
“Immediately, sir. I don’t think we can afford to waste a day.”
I went up to my office and sent for Mr. Honey. He came in blinking through his thick spectacles; his hair was untidy, his collar was dirty, and there was a smear of what I judged to be an egg upon the front of his waistcoat. He looked even more of a mess than usual. It was certainly a problem how to clean him up without hurting his feelings and making him bloody-minded, to make him look a little more presentable before I pushed him off to Ottawa.
I told him what had happened in London and I showed him the report of the accident. He did not seem to be very interested in the factual circumstances of the crash, but tie seized on the photographs and looked for a long time at the stump of the tailplane front spar. “It has all the appearance of a fatigue fracture,” he said at last. “Look. There’s no crumpling or elongation of the metal there. There’s practically no distortion of the flange at all, right up to the point of fracture. That’s not natural. That’s a short fracture, that’s what that is. The metal must have been terribly crystalline to break off short like that.”
I could see what he meant, though the detail was very tiny in the photograph. It was one more thing.
I told him that we had decided that an officer should fly to Ottawa at once, and that we were arranging for a seaplane or amphibian to take a party up to Small Pine Water immediately for a further technical examination of the wreckage. “I want you to go and do that, Honey,” I said. “I don’t know anybody who could do it better.”
He stared at me. “You mean—that I should go to Canada?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I want you to go at once, starting the day after tomorrow. It really is most urgent that we should get this matter settled up and find out if that tailplane failed in fatigue or not.”
“I don’t know that there’s all that rush about it,” he said. “I agree—it’s information that we must have ultimately, and the sooner we get it the better, I suppose. But we’ve still got to go on with the trial here, and I can’t possibly get out even a preliminary report for limited circulation till November.”
“I know,” I said patiently. “But that’s the other aspect of it, Honey—the long-term research. What I’m concerned about now is—have we got to ground the Reindeers that are flying now?”
He said irritably, “Oh, the ad hoc trial. Surely, anybody can do that, and leave me free to get on with the stuff that really matters.”
“This is the most important thing of all at the moment, Honey,” I said firmly “Look. You’re an older man than I am, and probably a better scientist. Perhaps I’m better as an administrator than you would be—I don’t know. In any case, here I am sitting in this office and it’s part of my job to decide the priorities of work in this department. I think this trip to Canada is top priority of anything that’s going on at Farnborough today and I want you to drop everything else and go and do it, because I can’t think of anybody who could do it better. It’s not an order, because we don’t work that way. But I hope you’ll accept my decision about priorities, because that’s what I’m here for.”
He smiled, a shy, warm smile that I had never seen before. “Of course,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I only hope I shan’t have to spend too long away from here.”
I thought about that for a moment. “I know it’s important to get you back as soon as ever we can,” I said. “I don’t want to see the basic work held up. I’ll see that you get an air passage home immediately the job is done. I should think you’d probably be away from here for ten days or a fortnight.”
His face fell. “So long as that?”
“I don’t believe you’d do it in much less. First, you’ve got to get from here to Ottawa. Then there’s the flight back from Ottawa to north-east Quebec, and then to reach the site of the accident is a day’s trek on foot. And then the whole thing in reverse again, to get back home.”
“It’s an awful waste of time,” he grumbled.
“It’s not,” I said. “That’s my sphere of decisions, Honey, and I tell you that it’s not a waste of time.”
“It is from the point of view of the basic research.”
“So is eating your breakfast,” I remarked. “But you’ve got to do that, too.”
I went through the various arrangements that would have to be made for carrying on his trials in his absence; he was quite business-like and alert where anything to do with basic trials was concerned, and in ten minutes we were through with that. “Now about your trip,” I said. “It’s going to mean some days of living rough in the Canadian woods, I’m afraid. You’ll be with the R.C.A.F. and they’ll look after you, but I understand that there’s a ten or fifteen mile walk from the lake you land on to the site of the crash, and the same back again. It’ll probably be quite difficult going. Have you got an outfit of clothes that would do for that, Honey?”
“I’ve got some good strong boots. I haven’t looked at them for years, but I think they’re all right.” He paused, and then he said, “We used to do a lot of hiking on Sundays, when my wife was alive.…” He stared out of the window, and was silent for a moment; I did not care to interrupt him. “We used to go in shorts.… I’ve got those somewhere, I think. Do you think shorts would be suitable?”
The thought of Mr. Honey turning up in Ottawa in short hiking pants as a representative of the Royal Aircraft Establishment made me blench. “I wouldn’t take those,” I said. “I don’t believe they wear shorts in the woods, on account of the mosquitoes. I’ll get a letter through to Ottawa asking them to kit you up for the trip, and we can charge it up as necessary expenses. I should take the boots with you, or … no, they’ll supply those too. But look, Honey, go in your best suit. You’re going as the representative of this Establishment. Put on a bit of dog, you know. Don’t let anybody sit on you in any technical matter; you’re the expert, and you’re the man that counts. We’ll back you up from here in anything you feel you’ve got to insist on.”
He nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said.
“Now, how about your personal affairs? Are you all right with those?”
He hesitated. “Well, no, I’m not. I’ve got a man from the electricity company coming in one day next week to fit up that electric hot-water heater. And then there’s Elspeth—I shall have to see if I can get somebody to come and sleep in the house, I suppose. It’s rather a long time for her to be alone.”
I was a bit staggered at the suggestion that he could leave Elspeth alone at all. “What about her?” I asked. “Have you got a relative who could come and stay with her?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anybody like that.” He paused for a minute in thought, and then he said, “Don’t worry about that, Dr. Scott—I’ll
think of something. I’ve left her for two days at a time, once or twice when I had to. Of course, she’s older now, but I think this is much too long to do that. I think I can get Mrs. Higgs—that’s my charwoman—I think she’d come and sleep in while I’m away.”
The thought was distasteful to me, but it was at any rate a possible solution to his problem. If we had had a second bedroom at the flat I would have offered to put up his child myself, but we hadn’t. Moreover, Honey’s domestic affairs were really no concern of mine and there was a limit to the extent that I could allow them to influence me in the work of the Establishment. But I was sorry for Elspeth.
“I’ll see that you get back as soon as ever we can manage it,” I said.
“That’s very good of you—I really don’t want to be away longer than is necessary, for a variety of reasons.” His eyes dropped to the accident report on the desk before us. “Have you told the Rutland Company anything about this yet?”
I had forgotten all about the design staff who had produced the Reindeer, or if I had remembered them I had placed them in the background of my mind. “I haven’t told them anything about it yet,” I said slowly. “I thought perhaps it was better to wait until the matter was rather more definite. Do you think we ought to get in touch with Prendergast now?”
“I don’t want to,” he said quickly. “I was wondering if you had.”
“No, I hadn’t done anything about it.” The apprehension of a new series of difficulties swept over me. E. P. Prendergast was the Chief Designer of the Rutland Aircraft Company, and the author of the Reindeer. In person he was a big, dark man with bushy black eyebrows and the face of an ascetic monk. He was about six foot four in height and broad in proportion to his height; he was nearly sixty years old, but he was still a very powerful man. He was one of the oldest and most successful chief designers in the country, and the Reindeer was the last of a long line of lovely aircraft that had come out of his office. He was a very great artist at the business of designing aeroplanes, and like all great designers in the aircraft industry he was a perfect swine to deal with.
There is, of course, a good explanation in psychology for this universal characteristic of the greatest aeroplane designers. A beautiful aircraft is the expression of the genius of a great engineer who is also a great artist. It is impossible for that man to carry out the whole of the design himself; he works through a design office staffed by a hundred draughtsmen or more. A hundred minds, each with their own less competent ideas, are striving to modify the chief designer’s original conception. If the design is to appear in the end as a great artistic unity, the chief designer must be a man of immensely powerful will, capable of imposing his idea and his way of doing things on each of his hundred draughtsmen, so that each one of them is too terrified to insert any of his own ideas. If the chief designer has not got this personality and strength of will, his original conception will be distorted in the design office and will appear as just another, not-so-good aeroplane, He will not then be ranked as a good chief designer.
All really first-class chief designers, for this reason, are both artists, engineers, and men of a powerful and an intolerant temper, quick to resist the least modification of their plans, energetic in fighting the least infringement upon what they regard as their own sphere of action. If they were not so, they could not produce good aeroplanes. For the Government official who detects an error in their work the path is not made easy, and of all men in the aircraft industry the most dangerous to cross was E. P. Prendergast. He was deeply religious in a narrow, Calvinistic way. He could be in turn a most courteous and charming host, a sympathetic and an understanding employer, and a hot-tempered fiend capable of making himself physically sick with his own passion, so that he would stalk out of a conference of bitter, angry words, and retire to the toilet and vomit, and go home to bed, and return to his office three days later, white and shaken with the violence of his illness. He was about the greatest engineer in England at that time and he produced the most lovely and successful aeroplanes. But he was not an easy man to deal with, E. P. Prendergast.
The Director sent for me again that evening. He had had Ferguson working all day on the matter; cables had been passing to and fro with Ottawa and the Treasury had been persuaded that it was necessary to spend the dollars. Priority had been allocated for the passage, and it looked as if Mr. Honey would get off on Sunday.
After all that, I raised the matter of the Rutland Aircraft Company. I said, “At what stage do you think we ought to get the firm in on this thing, sir?” I paused, and then I added, “E. P. Prendergast …”
He glanced at me. “Yes … Prendergast.” He was silent for a minute, and I knew what he was thinking. If anybody dared to say the Reindeer tail was not above suspicion and could not produce good evidence for that assertion, E. P. Prendergast would go up in a sheet of flame. He would complain to the Minister, as he had done before, that he could not carry on his work in an atmosphere of petty backbiting and vilification by minor civil servants. He would offer, in the most dignified way, to give up his post and go to America if it would assist the Minister in his direction of the Industry. But if it was the desire of the Minister that he should continue to design British aircraft, then he must be protected from the expression of the petty jealousies of petty Government officials. As I have said, we had had some of this before.
The Director said, “I doubt if Mr. Prendergast would find Honey’s theoretical work very convincing.”
“I’m damn sure he wouldn’t,” I said. “He’d chew him up and spit him out in no time.”
“I don’t know that the time is quite ripe to inform the firm,” he said thoughtfully. “After all, there’s nothing they can do till it is proved that fatigue is actually taking place. We ought to have a cable from Honey in a few days which will indicate what really happened to that prototype machine. I think that would be the time when we should get the firm into the matter, when the question of some modification arises.”
“I think so, too,” I said. “I think it’s a bit early yet to worry them.”
I told Honey to make preparations for his passage on Sunday, and I put him into touch with Ferguson, who knew him well, over the matter of his passport and his money, Then I went home, and that evening over supper I told Shirley all about it. “He’s going to get the charwoman to come and sleep in the house with Elspeth,” I said.
“Oh, Dennis—the poor child! Is that the best he can do?”
“I asked him if he hadn’t got a relation who could come in,” I said defensively. “He said he hadn’t got one.”
She was indignant. “But do you mean to say she’s going to be all alone for a fortnight, except for the charwoman? Dennis, you can’t let him go away like that! He must make some better arrangement for her.”
“I can’t help it if he goes away and leaves her like that,” I said irritably. “I can’t run his life for him. I’m his boss; I’m not a ruddy welfare worker.”
“I know.” She was silent for a minute, and then she said, “Perhaps after he’s gone we could go round there and see how she’s getting on.”
“I think we ought to do that,” I agreed. “It’s a rotten way to leave a child, but there doesn’t seem to be much else that he can do. And he’s the only man to go to Canada.”
3
IT WAS THE practice of the Central Air Transport Organisation at that time to fly the Atlantic by night. The aircraft took off from London Airport at about eleven o’clock, landed at Gander in Newfoundland to refuel before dawn, and continued on to arrive at Montreal or New York about the middle of the morning.
Mr. Honey travelled up to the air terminal at Victoria after supper on Sunday night. He was tired and confused with the events of the day. He had had a good deal of trouble in persuading Mrs. Higgs, his charwoman, to leave her husband and come to sleep in his house; in the end she had agreed to do it “to oblige” and for ten shillings a night. He had had little sleep the night before because he had stayed up la
te making every possible arrangement he could think of for the comfort and security of his small daughter while he was away. Although by normal standards he looked after her very badly, he worked hard to do his best and he took his responsibility for her quite seriously. He had had much to do at the office, too, to secure the smooth progress of his trial by day and night during his absence. With all these responsibilities he started off upon his journey tired and a little worried lest he had forgotten something that he should have done.
At Victoria, however, the C.A.T.O. travel organisation took him in its arms and wrapped him round as if with cotton-wool. While he was waiting in a deep armchair in the assembly hall a pretty stewardess brought him a cup of coffee with a couple of biscuits, and a choice of newspapers to read; he blinked and thanked her shyly. Presently his name was called out on a list, and he had to rise and walk a few steps to the motor-coach, where a rug was wrapped around to preserve him from the evening chill. He was driven to the airport and passed quickly through the emigration formalities; then he was ushered down a covered passage and into an aeroplane before he had even time to look at it. He probably would not have looked at it in any case, because he was not much interested in aeroplanes unless they had fatigue trouble.
In the warm, brightly lit cabin of the aircraft he was received by a tall, dark girl in the uniform of a stewardess, one of two that served the Reindeer passengers upon their flight. She showed him to his seat and took his coat and hat from him, and saw that he was comfortably settled down with magazines within his reach. Then she pulled out the safety belt from behind the seat and showed him how to clasp it round his body, talking to him brightly and cheerfully all the time. “It’s only just for taking off and landing that you have to do this,” she said. “Just for the first five minutes. I’ll come and tell you when you can undo it.” She adjusted the strap for him with quick, expert hands. “There—is that quite comfortable?”