First Time Solo

by Iain Maloney

  I got to take control. A loop round the airfield but it might as well have been intercontinental. Once you were up the instructor handed over control. You turned to port, then flew straight a bit, port again then reduced speed, handed back control and came in to land. Straight and level flying, climbing and descending went into the log book. The Tiger Moth was easy to fly; difficult to fly well. A swing prop so the propeller had to be started by swinging it round by hand. This was done by local girls who worked on the base and was a dangerous job: some lost hands. A cruel thing, to make them do it. Back up in the air. Lighter, buoyant, unshackled and soaring. Nerves on the runway, dropping away, just that moment, the present tense, time held still, the absence of tick, the second before a wave breaks, when it hangs. Britain from above, God’s eye view, the base below, moving south from us, the land stretching out north and east, rolling hills, green and pleasant land. Heading north, my horizon filled with peace. Reminded of Doug talking about what the world would look like if there were no people, what it had looked like before we’d come along with our buildings and cables and roads.

  A sudden noise startled me. I jumped slightly and knocked the tube to the floor. It was Thor attempting communication. What had he said?

  Sounded like, ‘You have control.’

  I scrambled about trying to retrieve the tube so I could reply. The kite dropped and I was lifted into my straps. I couldn’t reach the tube. Every time my fingers touched it, it slipped away. I could feel the kite tipping, diving, beginning to spin.

  Caught the tube, got it up and back into place, wrenched the stick into position, adjusted the throttle and pulled her out of the spin, textbook. Straight and level. Breathed. Took hold of the tube.

  ‘I have control.’

  ‘You amaze me,’ said Thor, his tone reprimanding but not angry.

  I took her back to a decent altitude. ‘Now,’ said Thor. ‘Breathe.’

  I exhaled, re-entered the moment. ‘Keep your eyes on the instruments,’ said Thor. ‘Don’t worry about outside. Always trust your instruments. If the artificial horizon says you are level, then you are level, regardless of what your senses tell you. You can be tricked. The kite can’t.’

  ‘If I’m in a dogfight, sir, then I can’t watch my instruments.’

  ‘True, but by the time you get into a dogfight your kite will be as much a part of you as your own arms. You won’t need to do more than glance at them. For just now however, concentrate on the dials.’ Keeping her level was tricky and needed constant adjustments. I was amazed at how bumpy it was up there. The main problem was the sensitivity of the controls; the slightest nudge could send the kite careering across the sky. At times it felt like riding a bicycle over a ploughed field. I was glad of the protection of the parachute underneath me. One instinct that had to be fought by anyone who’d ever driven a car or a truck was to treat the rudder pedals like brakes. We’d been warned more than once on the ground not to ‘stand on the brakes’ since we wouldn’t stop, but we might go into a spin. I’d only driven a couple of times so I didn’t have that instinct to fight. I did however have to overcome the urge to pull back on the controls like they were the reins of a horse. All that did was send us leaping into the sky. I banked, levelled out, banked again. Slowly I relaxed, let just my fingertips guide the stick and she responded, smoother and smoother. We’d been up for thirty minutes but it felt like a matter of seconds. I was beginning to get the hang of her.

  ‘Right,’ said Thor. ‘I have control. Lock your stick. To land, first you begin the descent, and reduce airspeed slowly. Not too fast. If you slow too much we’ll drop out of the sky. The aim is for us to reach that point inches above the runway.’

  I watched the dials, the dropping of airspeed and altitude. I knew the theory, the danger of stalling if airspeed disappeared, but this wasn’t a textbook. You had to judge the distance and calculate the rate of descent, the airspeed needed to bring us down exactly. You had to keep her level so she did a three point landing, bringing both wheels and the tail skid down perfectly at the same time. It was pretty tricky but it was considered a poor show to land two-point. A mark against.

  ‘Well done, Devine.’ said Thor. ‘Your first flight in control. We’ll have you taking off and landing soon. If the weather holds we’ll get you up again tomorrow.’

  Buzzing. I vaguely heard Thor, like he was underwater. As I walked back to the crew room I drowned in adrenaline. I’d done it. It was like music.

  I had a day off and was back up the day after. New duties for the log book: Medium turns, gliding and climbing turns. Over the weeks we were to do spins, stalls, forced landings with the engine cut, side-slip and land in a cross-wind. As I read each one, I tried to imagine myself doing it. Thor’s calm, strong voice and the rising confidence from each successful flight. When a mistake happened and Thor had to step in or sharply order me to do something, to correct it myself, I tucked the lesson away, did it again, got it right, two in a row. I knew they were testing my ability to learn, to adapt. I had to be flexible, open, I had to know the kite inside and out, know how she’d react in any given situation, know how to counter any sudden change. Thor usually let me struggle through whatever mistake I’d made. ‘You have control,’ he said. ‘But don’t stray too far. We’ll just run through the basics. I don’t like the look of that front.’

  Deep, dark storm clouds curled over the horizon. I ran my eyes over the dials, over my surroundings, over the dials, over my surroundings. ‘When you check your surroundings,’ said Thor, ‘you must remember to check the ground as well as the sky.’

  Why had he said that? Had I missed something? I scanned the ground for anything unusual, something I should have seen. Ah, there it was. A chequered flag. Flying cancelled. Land. I moved her into position. ‘You have control,’ I said, preparing to lock the stick.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Thor. ‘You have control.’

  Had I done something wrong? Had I misread the flag?

  ‘Take her down, Devine. You can do it.’

  Making a mistake at ten thousand feet was one thing, making a mistake at ten feet was a lot more serious. Try not to think about the ground. Stalling. Crashing. Failing. ‘Gradually, air speed and altitude, straight and level, breathe Devine, you have to breathe. Bring both wheels and the tail skid down together, straight and level, that’s it, that’s it. Touchdown.’

  There’s an area. Most people never notice it, the space between the land and the sky. It’s not like a line, a border where one stops and the other begins, rather there’s a place where you’re still in the sky but under the influence of the land. It feels like gravity is heavier, stronger. At ten thousand feet you’re free to move any way you want. In those last feet it’s magnetic. Every pilot knows that tension, the fight for control as you approach. It’s like passing from one world into another, through some special zone between. The first time you fly through it, it scares the bollocks off of you. A little wobble, reduced speed, taxied to a halt. Exhaled. The swagger that took me back to the lads after landing was more pronounced than ever. I’d fucking landed.

  The storm front moved in and parked itself over us. There’d be no more flying until it shifted. We played cards, tried to chat up the women that helped around the base. They did everything from start the kites to serve food in the mess, but most of them had been working there for a year or two and were more than used to the way RAF cadets thought. Even Terry tried only half-heartedly, more as a way to pass the time. He was still pining for Winnie in Babbacombe. They’d promised to write. We’ll Meet Again, was about hope, not reality. Four years of war had taught us all that no, you probably wouldn’t meet again, even if you both survived.

  I wrote to Willie, threw it away. Useless words.

  Terry and I spent hours in the mess playing the tunes Terry seemed to write with endless ease. Joe was getting mouthy with us. I tried to think of a solution, boxes, dustbins, anything, but nothing suited Joe. I mentioned the problem to Terry.

  ‘Har
d luck,’ was all he offered.

  ‘You’re not worried about the band?’

  ‘I’m worried about him. He’s going to do something, probably to Clive, and I don’t want to be anywhere near him when he does.’

  I didn’t think it was that bad. Joe hated Clive and would never forgive him for the first fight, for beating him, but beyond another fight, there was little Joe could do. And Clive was ready for him. Neither would get to sucker punch the other again. The storm may have grounded us but it didn’t interrupt guard duty. We cycled in three groups over three nights to keep the Tiger Moths safe from sabotage or paratroopers. We were dropped at dusk beside the kites, a mile from the camp, and abandoned. No phone, no form of transport, just us, a rifle with bayonet and no ammo. The first night of the storm was our turn.

  A windy night and cold, so we huddled together in the lee of a hut. The rain was holding off but we expected it back any minute. The wind wasn’t giving up. We stayed close to shelter, a technical breach of regulations but no-one cared and no-one would find out. Only the most sadistic of officers would bother getting out of bed in the middle of the night and coming out into a storm just to catch us. Still, we kept an eye out for officers just as much as for Jerry.

  ‘This reminds me of home,’ I said. ‘Of school holidays.’

  ‘Really?’ said Terry. ‘You spent your school holidays guarding Tiger Moths with a rifle? I must’ve I had a pretty sheltered upbringing.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean being out all night with my pals. There’s a forest behind my house, mostly rhododendrons, ash, beech, but enough bigger things like oak that we could make proper tree houses. We’d a whole sequence of walkways, thick branches tied together so we could get across large sections of the forest without ever touching the ground. We built platforms, swings, things like that. We’d play hide and seek, war games, the usual stuff.’

  ‘This was when you were, what, sixteen, seventeen?’ said Terry.

  ‘Ha ha. No, ten, eleven.’

  ‘Sounds terrific,’ said Doug. ‘There are no forests around us, just the odd copse. They’ve all been cut down for building or for clearing farmland. All our games had to be played in the open. War games are pretty boring when there’s nowhere to hide but face down in the mud.’

  ‘We used to do it like football,’ I said. ‘You know, two captains, pick teams, keep score. My brother Dod and I were always the captains. Our forest, we knew it best, so it was always us. Against each other. We’d play capture the flag, or manhunt. Games would last for days. During the summer we’d sometimes go on all night.’

  ‘Your parents let you play out all night?’

  ‘It was only dangerous if the Lord was having a shooting party. Then we had to stay indoors.’

  ‘My Da never worried,’ said Joe. ‘Alec and I stayed out most nights, hanging round the closes, getting intae all kinds of trouble, trouble with the law, trouble with other boys, gangs, trouble with fathers of daughters. Da never gave a fuck. Always far too drunk. Suited him. Suited us. If we werenae there he couldnae hit us. If we werenae there he could forget about us.’

  ‘When you were ten or eleven?’ said Doug.

  ‘Aye. Alec was a bit older than me and I was always with him, except when he was with a lassie. Mind you, that was most of the time. Until he got intae the politics. Then it was lassies half the time, politics the other half. Sometimes meetings, sometimes handing out pamphlets, selling papers, sometimes a proper scrap with the Fascists. Good days.’

  ‘And you were always with him?’ I said. ‘Even in the fighting?’

  ‘Course in the fighting. A man’s gottae learn tae fight sometime, and where could be better than with his big brother against the scum of the fucking Earth?’

  ‘I never spent much time with my brother,’ said Doug. ‘He was always off somewhere else, travelling, visiting friends. He hated Yorkshire, being so far from “culture”. He was away at boarding school and only came home briefly during holidays. Then he left school for university and trips to the continent. Then the war started and he joined up. I’ve only seen him once since thirty-nine.’

  ‘He’s in the RAF?’ said Terry.

  ‘Yes. Lancasters.’

  ‘He’s commissioned?’ said Joe.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your family rich then?’ said Joe, in that tone.

  ‘No. Edward got the last of the money, nothing left. I went to the local grammar and then signed up. No university or foreign jaunts for me.’

  ‘What did your old man do?’ I said.

  ‘He owned a woollen mill,’ he said, keeping an eye on Joe, who muttered something that sounded like means of production. ‘But it went bust.’

  ‘Why?’ said Terry.

  ‘His mill became uncompetitive because he wouldn’t cut costs. You see, his competitors were laying off workers, bringing in more and more machines, cutting wages, increasing hours. My father wouldn’t do that. The mill had been in our family since his grandfather, and most of the workers had been there for generations too. It was like a family. The mill paid for schooling for the worker’s children, paid for doctors when they got sick. Looked after them, you know. They helped us so we helped them. Well, you can’t make money that way, not in this day and age. But he wouldn’t change. He wouldn’t let them down. In the end he had no choice and it went under.’

  ‘Sounds like a good man,’ said Joe.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Doug. ‘But I don’t think it was anything special. It used to be like that around us. All the mill owners looked after their own. But times changed and look what happened. You can’t make money as a good man.’

  ‘True,’ said Joe. ‘But after the revolution it’ll all be different.’

  ‘You’ve got a brother and all, don’t you Terry?’ I said.

  ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘Older?’

  ‘He is, yes. He’s a miner, protected occupation, so didn’t get called up.’

  ‘You didn’t want to be a miner as well?’ said Joe.

  ‘No,’ said Terry. ‘I mean, I should’ve been. All planned out, isn’t it? Miners in my family as far back as anyone cares to remember, which admittedly isn’t far, but you know me, I’m not one for doing what others tell me. So, on my eighteenth, when Gareth was preparing everything for me to join him in the pits, I ran off to the recruiting office and signed up for this malarkey. The names he called me. You’d think I’d signed up for the bloody Luftwaffe. Still, it was signed and sealed and nothing he could do about it. RAF got me first. Much rather be up in the air than underground. Both’ll kill you but the view’s better up there.’

  ‘I was the same,’ I said. ‘Signed up without talking to my folks. I mean I’d have gone anyway. Farming’s only protected if you’re over twenty-five. But after losing Dod, my mother was never the same.’

  The wind was picking up, making conversation more and more difficult. We drifted off into our own worlds of reminiscence, lost in the past. ‘What’s that sound?’ said Doug, after a few minutes.

  We listened for a moment but the swirl was so loud it was hard to tell even the direction sounds were coming from. ‘Nothing. It’s just the wind,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not just the wind,’ said Doug. ‘I know the wind. It doesn’t sound like that. The low thrumping is the wind. What’s that creaking?’

  ‘My back,’ said Terry. ‘I need to get into a warm bed. Or a warm woman. Preferably both.’

  ‘That’s definitely not the wind,’ said Doug and began pacing, stepping off in different directions trying to triangulate the sound. I could hear it now as well.

  ‘That noise,’ I said. ‘I think it’s coming from the kites.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Doug.

  We walked over to the planes, guns ready, though no-one really expected to find a saboteur at work. ‘It’s the wind,’ I said. ‘Look.’

  I pointed at the planes. The noise was the wind battering the canvas and wood bodies of the Tiger Moths. They were taking a hamme
ring like a ship in a storm. ‘That’s can’t be doing them any good,’ said Terry.

  ‘It’s not,’ said Doug. ‘I think we’re going to have a—’ Before the word ‘problem’ was even out of his mouth one of the Tiger Moths took an especially strong gust under the wings, lifted up and flipped over.

  ‘Shit,’ said Terry. We dropped the rifles, useless against wind, and ran over to the wreckage. ‘Why is it when we’re on watch that things go wrong?’

  Two of the other kites were lifting off the ground. Doug, Terry and I ran to one, hung onto the wings, trying to keep it grounded. Joe ran to the other and grabbed the propeller. Us three were winning but another big gust lifted Joe’s kite, him still hanging onto the prop. ‘Fuck! Help!’

  ‘Let go, for fuck sake let go,’ I shouted.

  He did, dropped back to earth. The plane continued over onto its back with a crunch. Another started to go, I joined Joe and we held that one down. We had no rope, no way of tying them down, all we could do was run from plane to plane, forcing it back down, trying to beat the wind. No sooner did we get one down than another went. We hung onto wings, wheels, whatever it took to keep it down. Sometimes it wasn’t enough. By the time the wind finally shifted, six kites were on their backs, wheels up like dead insects. The ones we’d kept the right way up were damaged where we’d been hanging on. There wasn’t one plane that would be able to take off. ‘Well done us,’ said Terry as we surveyed our night’s work. ‘Jerry doesn’t need to bother with paratroopers, he just needs to wait for a windy night.’