The Stick

by David Beaty

  Weird again! That hateful word! He doubted the royal flight, and the place on the board was nonsense. Had he been acting weirdly of late? Had the forgetting of his gloves been noted? Had Slade said something?

  ‘You’re wife’s all right, is she?’ Tilsley asked, as if he too had been pondering the question. ‘Not expecting or anything, is she?’

  He shook his head. ‘ No, no. Nothing like that.’

  Suddenly a whole new terrible vista of possibilities opened up to him, and for the rest of the flight over, he was torn by anxiety, by a certainty that something terrible had happened, not to Belinda, but to Jane. His granddaughter might be seriously ill, or even have died. Jane herself involved in an accident.

  The rain over England didn’t seem to have paused since he left London. It began hammering on the aircraft as they descended over Cornwall. Just around Basingstoke, the stewardess brought a note from Tilsley. He’d had a message that Paul was to report to Woodhouse in his office as soon as he landed.

  It was well past midnight. No general manager stayed in his office to talk to one of his Captains, however senior, unless it was something very important or very bad.

  It was both. Paul could tell somehow as soon as he pushed open the office door. He could see Woodhouse’s shadow moving backwards and forwards across the light below his inner door as he crossed the secretary’s office. That office was in darkness, her typewriter covered, her desk tidy, the atmosphere full of restrained gloom.

  Woodhouse must have heard the door close behind him. He opened the door, letting out a flood of light.

  ‘Come in, Paul. Come in.’ His voice was kindly but vibrant with regret. ‘Sit down.’ He waved him to the chair opposite the desk and opening a cupboard in the corner brought out a square decanter.

  Whisky. Christ! The news must be bad.

  Woodhouse poured a couple of stiff pegs and handed one to Paul. Harker didn’t feel like whisky, his mouth was too dry, but he took the glass.

  ‘Go on,’ Woodhouse said, ‘drink up!’ And when Paul hesitated, ‘You’re going to need it!’

  Woodhouse’s brow was furrowed, his lower lip thrust out. He’s got some news, bloody bad news, and he doesn’t know how the hell to begin to tell me.

  He intercepted a long mournful look from Woodhouse and thought in panic, Christ, it is Jane! I know it’s Jane. He tossed the whisky down. Immediately Woodhouse reached out for his glass and topped it up. While he poured, the neck of the decanter rattled against the side of the glass. He didn’t look at Paul.

  ‘It’s about Archie. Dreadful business. I’m afraid he’s killed himself, Paul. I hope the press won’t make a meal of it. Madge found him hanging this morning from one of the beams.’

  Madge, of course, was wonderful, and the press had other things to make meals of. Being wonderful was Madge’s role, Paul thought, like loving and giving was Harriet’s, and receiving Belinda’s.

  No, Madge told Paul, when he drove straight round there, she hadn’t seen Belinda. She’d tried to ring her when it happened and since, but there was no reply. Mrs Woodhouse was sitting with Madge. She rose when Paul came in, gave him a wan smile, and told Madge she would go and see to her husband’s supper, but she’d be back with her bag to spend the night.

  Madge was dry-eyed and composed.

  ‘I’ve had my nightmare too, Paul,’ she said stonily. ‘I’ve always been afraid he’d do this, when he couldn’t bear to live with his ghosts any longer. Now he’s done it, I’m almost relieved. The worst has happened, what else is there to fear?’

  He couldn’t answer that one.

  ‘I think last night he decided he’d be better off joining them.’

  Good God, Harker thought, was it only last night it all happened – the dinner party, Slade’s exorcism of Archie’s ghosts, Archie’s tears? It felt a hundred years.

  ‘He hanged himself with a webbing strap in the study. Like them really. Like Peter and Tiger. Don’t look so sad, Paul. He’s all right. And I’ll be all right. Everyone’s being very helpful. I won’t be alone. The wives are forming a roster to stay with me till the inquest’s over.’

  The inquest was straightforward. Ever meticulous, Archie had left a note. In it, he praised his wife’s loyalty and love. He was giving her a certificate, Paul thought, to hold to her like his own Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Services in the Air. Look everyone, I can’t have failed, for look at this!

  Belinda refused to come both to the inquest and the memorial service. Archie had willed his body to medical research and, proud of his short wartime association with the RAF, had asked for the memorial service to be held at the RAF church of St Clement Danes in the Strand.

  ‘Inquests and memorial services are just not my line,’ Belinda said. ‘They’re for older people. I’ve never been to one in my whole life. I’m not going to begin with Archie’s. Anyway, I won’t be missed. There’ll be lots of people.’

  But miles away from where most of Atlanta’s staff lived, the service was sparsely attended. The Woodhouses were there, of course. He was still looking anxious about the press and possible bad publicity for Atlanta. The Osbornes stood next to them and the Tilsleys. There were a couple of old men in RAF blazers, and a sprinkling of some of the younger aircrew, Griffiths amongst them.

  Griffiths came up and shook Madge’s hand as Paul escorted her out into the fragile November sunshine. The flagstones outside the church were full of fallen leaves. London traffic thundered by uncaringly on either side of them.

  ‘He’s quite a nice lad,’ Madge said, watching Griffiths cross the road and disappear. ‘He came round to see if he could help in any way. He had a great respect for Archie …’ Then in the same toneless casual voice, as if what she said followed quite naturally on: ‘Belinda is unfaithful to you, Paul. Griffiths told me. He feels sorry for you. You see, he lives next door to Slade. He’s seen her Mini parked outside. All night.’

  Paul opened his mouth to defend Belinda, but somehow the words wouldn’t come. He felt suddenly overwhelmingly tired and unsure of himself, a spent force. He was an ageing pilot, overlooked for promotion, a failing friend incapable of sustaining Archie, and now the deceived husband, a failure with Belinda, a failure all round.

  As he drove Madge home from the memorial service, it began to rain again. Now the wipers had a new refrain:

  Peter, Peter pumpkin-eater,

  Had a wife and couldn’t keep her . . .

  ‘Give Belinda my love,’ Madge said when she got out

  at Thatched Cottage.

  ‘Will do,’ he smiled.

  But as usual, Belinda was not at home.

  Harker did three more trips before he taxed Belinda with Slade. Between those trips, he saw little of her because he spent what free time he had over at Thatched Cottage helping Madge to get packed and sorted. Madge-like, she had made her decision and was sticking to it. Thatched Cottage was up for sale. Those For Sale notices gave him the shivers, as if he already suspected something like that would happen at Elmtrees. Madge was going to live up in the peace and quiet of the Lake District with her unmarried sister. She didn’t care if she never saw an aeroplane again.

  Less than a month after Archie died, Paul saw Madge off on the train for Carnforth, They promised each other to write. Madge wept as the train pulled out, but she had a certain aura of peace about her which he had never noticed before. Paul himself felt like weeping, not for Madge, but for that long lost golden period of their lives in which Madge had figured.

  He returned to Elmtrees, determined to tax Belinda.

  ‘Paul! Why so serious? And why so late?’ Belinda asked him as he came into their bedroom where she sat, varnishing her nails. ‘Don’t you remember Stephen is taking us to the theatre?’

  ‘No, he’s not!’

  She paused with her brush upraised, her shiny red lips indignantly parted. ‘He most certainly is!’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘I told you last week, Paul. Just before you went to Madge’s last Sat
urday. I said was it all right if we accepted and you said yes. I remember distinctly.’

  ‘Nonsense! I wouldn’t accept any invitation from Slade.’

  ‘Why not? You have before.’

  ‘Not since the Truscott dinner.’

  She jumped to her feet.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re blaming Stephen for what that weirdo did!’

  Suddenly he hated her. He came over and put his hands on her shoulders and shook her till her perfect china doll teeth rattled like a skeleton.

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Even Madge doesn’t do that. And you’re hurting me!’

  ‘Madge is more forgiving.’

  ‘It’s only because you see yourself in Archie’s shoes.’

  He clenched his fists. He ached to hit her. Instead he said,

  ‘And you see yourself in Slade’s bed!’

  He thought she was going to slap his face. She raised her hand. Then surprisingly she laughed.

  ‘How very old-fashioned you sound, Paul! How terribly, drearily old hat! Antique. A different generation, a …’

  She was interrupted by the sound of the front door bell.

  ‘That’ll be Stephen now,’ she said, blowing on her nails and rushing over to the dressing-table mirror. ‘ We’re late. Do hurry!’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ Paul turned and ran downstairs. He threw the front door open. Dressed in a velvet evening jacket and a frilled shirt, the young psychologist waited on the doorstep.

  Paul looked at him for a moment in total silence. Though he gave due warning of his intentions by putting up his fists, what he did then was unforgivable.

  He gave Slade the most terrific punch on the jaw.

  He had the satisfaction of feeling the sharp crack of contact, of seeing Slade’s face jerk backwards. The young man reeled back into the laurel bushes. Then Harker slammed the door.

  He rubbed his knuckles. It was the wrong use for his capable hands. Harriet would have been ashamed of him. Or maybe she wouldn’t. After a couple of minutes, he heard the sound of a Jaguar being driven furiously away, then Belinda’s high-heeled steps on the stairs.

  ‘Paul, what on earth’s happened? Where’s Stephen gone? Has he forgotten something? When’s he coming back?’

  She didn’t speak to Harker again till he went out on Service the following afternoon. Though she had spoken to a number of people on the phone, she had refused to answer his question – was she in love with Slade? She had simply given him what was known as a speaking look. She slept that night in the spare bedroom, and was still there when he got up to pack.

  He drove to Heathrow Airport, still in a white heat of anger. The afternoon was windless and surprisingly mild. He tried to force his mind off his problem with Belinda and to think of the flight ahead. He parked his Citroën and walked along to Operations. Immediately, he was struck by the hush.

  Then he saw there were big cancellation notices all along the counter. The cabin staff had just called a lightning one day strike in support of their pay claim.

  The flight deck crew, the Operations Officer told him; could go home till called tomorrow.

  Paul returned to Elmtrees. Belinda’s Mini was in the garage, but there was no sign of her.

  Mrs Webb, recently a very offended lady, was just winding up the flex of her Hoover. The house was always in such a pickle these days, she couldn’t do more than the downstairs and she couldn’t tell him how much longer she’d be prepared to come.

  Had she seen Mrs Harker? Yes, she had. She’d left half an hour back with that dark-haired friend of theirs who drove a green Jaguar.

  By ten o’clock that night, Belinda had not returned. Harker made himself a cheese sandwich, had a bath and padded through into the bedroom. Belinda had, unusually, made the bed before she went and with rare solicitude folded a fresh pair of pyjamas under his pillow, ready for his return from New York.

  As he unfolded them, a note fell out. He picked it up.

  Dear Paul, it said in Belinda’s flamboyant writing. Yesterday convinced me what I’d suspected for some time. You’ve got a bad temper. I really can’t live with you any longer. I don’t love you, you don’t turn me on any more and Stephen says you don’t love me. You did ask me if I loved him, now I’ll answer. Yes. Perhaps we can sort things out, dividing the house etc. without too much aggro. Belinda. And then as an afterthought: I really think the age difference was too much.

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He slipped the note under his pillow and slept.

  The following morning, he got up, showered and rang the airport. Management was conceding. The strike was over. He was to report for service at the same time today. He made himself some toast. He re-read Belinda’s note. He felt no immediate sense of loss. Perhaps that came later. The house seemed to have shaken itself free of her and to hold him companionably to itself.

  His bag was already packed. He put in another shirt. Then he stood in the hall looking round him. There would be a divorce, he supposed. Things would change. Would the house be a casualty then of Belinda’s charming greed? She would make him pay a high price. But somehow he couldn’t make himself care. She could have what she wanted. She could come and help herself.

  Then he reached out and picked up Harriet’s stick, the only thing of real value in the house, and let himself out of the front door without a backward glance.

  PART THREE

  Friday, 16th November 1979

  ‘Spreading over the wing, Skipper …’

  A blaze of sulphur yellow silhouetted Adams’ head.

  ‘Diving!’

  Harker pushed the control column forward. Dislodged from its niche, Harriet’s stick fell across his knees. Brushing it aside, momentarily his fingers touched its warm roughness.

  ‘Full power on good engines.’

  The whole fuselage shuddered, veering to starboard. He jammed his left leg stiff as steel on the rudder.

  ‘Down!’ He thrust all his considerable weight forward on the control column. ‘Adams, you too. Harder! Give it everything you’ve got!’

  He picked up his microphone. ‘London … X-Ray November. Mayday … Mayday! On fire! Number Four engine!’

  ‘Where are you?’ The voice was controlled and quiet.

  ‘Beyond Newbury. Diving!’

  ‘Fire extinguishers?’ The voice was reminding him, ‘You’ve pulled the fire extinguishers?’

  ‘The lot. No bloody use!’

  Silence from the ground.

  ‘And you’re no bloody use either,’ Harker thought. ‘ Not your fault. But you can’t help us. No one can. There’s just Griffiths, Adams and me and nearly three hundred frightened passengers and the cabin crew. Christ!’

  With sudden clarity he remembered Harriet’s private nightmare, that he would need her and she wouldn’t be there. He was glad she wasn’t alive, wasn’t sitting in front of a television screen like some poor relatives would be, in a moment to see the newsflash, the flight number, hear the urgent BBC announcement of the emergency.

  ‘X-Ray November … are you still there?’

  ‘Still here.’

  ‘Are you returning?’

  ‘Trying to.’

  ‘Tire out?’

  The orange light of the flames was dancing on the instruments. Sweat was running down into his eyes.

  ‘Fire worse.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘God knows, now. Still diving.’

  ‘We’ve cleared the field. Fire services all round have been alerted.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Your vector to steer is zero nine three. We’re ready for you to come home.’

  Come home, he thought. Some bloody hope! How did a flaming meteor hurtling earthwards come home like Mary’s bloody little lamb. Unless somehow he got this fire out, they’d never get home or anywhere else. How many minutes had they left before they were a flaming torch?

  Down they went into clammy darkness, lit only by their fire. Rain sweated on the windscreen.
Cloud grabbed them, shook the wings, rattled the engines. The shrieking of the jets seared his ears. Still the flames clung like cobras.

  ‘Push … push!’

  For a second, he slipped back through over twenty years. He was holding Harriet’s hand at Jane’s birth. He tightened his grip. He shouted hoarsely, ‘Harder! Push harder!’

  ‘I’m doing my best, sir.’ Adams’ voice was desperate, almost tearful.

  The instruments blurred into phosphorescent rings on the vibrating panel.

  ‘All you’ve got, Adams! Push!’

  They were fighting the nose down. The scream shrilled as the

  angle deepened.

  ‘Skipper,’ Griffiths was shouting. ‘Your height!’

  Harker had been watching the altimeter needle, unwinding like

  a clock gone mad. As the ground warning alarm clanged, he yelled,

  ‘Pull back! Now … now!’

  The control column felt like a rod of iron. The nose wavered,

  rose a little, then went sharply up. The engines coughed, died away,

  then roared into life again. The aircraft began shivering

  uncontrollably. The G knocked the breath right out of their lungs,

  pinioned them to their seats.

  At ten thousand feet a minute, the Astrojet roared skywards.

  Out of the corner of his right eye, Harker saw the flames subdued

  and flattened. But still there.

  ‘Adams … full port aileron!’

  They heaved up the wing together. The torch of fire rose almost

  vertically above them as the climbing turn tightened.

  Still burning. Brighter if anything. The passengers must be terrified

  out of their wits. He hoped to God the final terror didn’t await

  them.

  The steep climb slackened as the speed dropped. The aircraft

  shivered on the stall.

  ‘Dive now!’ he shouted. ‘ Push, man! Right forward!’

  The nose dropped … down … down … down …

  ‘Speed, Skipper!’ Griffiths yelled. ‘Your speed’s going over the