Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  I blew a long cloud of smoke as I stood looking at the photograph twenty-eight years later. At that time and for some years afterwards it seemed to me that Dad had never been so stupid. He could be very dense sometimes. Before the inquest I had tried to make him understand something about aeroplanes, with the superior knowledge of about five hours’ solo to my credit. I had said to him that the accident needed a good deal of sifting and investigation; she had got into a spin at six or seven hundred feet right over the middle of the aerodrome, and that sort of thing just didn’t happen to an experienced pilot like Brenda Marshall. But Dad had been pig-headed and legal that day, and had refused to listen to me. He just said that aeroplanes were very dangerous things for women pilots, that she must have fainted, and that anyway I couldn’t possibly know what had happened in the machine. He had taken that line at the inquest, too. He had asked the standard, rather stupid, questions about the airworthiness certificate of her Moth and about the validity of Brenda’s licence and about her general state of health, and he had written all that down in longhand. He had examined Dr Haughton who had given him an account of her multiple injuries, two broken legs, fractured pelvis, three fractured ribs, fractured right forearm, fractured jaw, and fractured left clavicle, and had told us that the cause of death was shock, and Dad had written all that down. He had examined the police sergeant who turned up on a bicycle just before she died and had a long account to give that told us nothing, and he had written all that down in longhand, too.

  By that time the inquest had lasted for an hour and a half, and I suppose Dad felt that he had done his stuff. He shuffled his papers together and announced that after a full investigation of this very sad affair he found that the deceased had met her death by accidental causes in a flying accident. He expressed the sympathy of the court with the dead woman’s mother and with her husband who was shortly to come out of hospital. With that he closed the court, and at home he refused to discuss the case with me at all. As he had been so stupid about it all, I didn’t pursue the matter. Soon after that Johnnie Pascoe left Duffington to take a job with Imperial Airways in India and the club got another pilot instructor. Her mother went away and took the baby with her but it died a short time later, someone told me. Within six months there was another tragedy at Duffington when Derek Marshall who had had shell-shock in the war and had been in and out of hospital ever since, got himself involved in a particularly unpleasant case of rape and blew his head off with a shotgun. After that the house was sold and some people called Forsyth came to live there, who bred goats.

  It was years before it gradually occurred to me that possibly Dad hadn’t been so stupid after all. But he was dead by that time, and I never had a chance to verify my hunch.

  The cold milk was beginning to work, and I was feeling more relaxed. I stubbed out my cigarette and went into the bedroom, glass in hand, and found the little bottle of hypnotic pills in my haversack, and swallowed one down with a mouthful of milk. The unmade bed was beginning to look inviting, but I went back to the sitting room for a few minutes to stand by the fire and finish my glass of milk. The time was half past nine.

  Johnnie Pascoe, I thought, must know much more about Brenda Marshall than I did, because I had seen him kissing her in the half-light late one evening in the hangar, behind the Blackburn Bluebird. I remember that evening particularly because it was the evening she came back to Duffington from France. She had been away in France for the whole of the winter, and in those months her Moth had been down at Heston for a C. of A. She had stayed in London for a few days on her way home, and had picked up her Moth after its overhaul and flown it home. When she came back to Duffington that April afternoon we had none of us seen her since the previous September, and it was grand to have her back. I was in the air with Johnnie Pascoe doing dual when she came in. He saw her first, a little speck in the south-east just above the horizon, coming towards us, and we flew to meet her, and turned and flew alongside her Moth in formation, waving at her as she waved back to us. From the air we watched her landing and landed ourselves immediately, cutting short my lesson, and taxied in behind her. I hung around till dusk examining her Moth after we had pushed it into the hangar, because it had had Sperrys put in it at the overhaul and I wanted to ask one or other of them how you used them. But they were both too busy to have time for me. It hurt a bit to see him kissing her although I was able to laugh at myself, for she was nearly thirty and a married woman and I was only just eighteen. But they both looked so happy I was glad for them, and after all her husband had been in the loony-bin for years.

  I stood there wondering, as I had wondered for the last two years since chatting with him in the pilots’ room at Sydney airport, whether the baby had been his, the one that died. When I was eighteen it never entered my head and if it had it would have been incredible. But now, with greater knowledge of the world, I wondered …

  Presently I finished my glass of his milk, went back sleepily into his bedroom, threw off his dressing gown, and got back into his bed. The Nembutal was beginning to work, and I was drowsy now. The time was about twenty minutes to ten. His travelling alarm clock was on his bedside table by my side; I reached out for it and set it for five o’clock. With any luck now I could get to sleep before the doctor brought the nurse into the house, and I settled down upon his pillows with his bedclothes round my shoulders.

  Twenty-eight years later, for Johnnie Pascoe the wheel had come round the full circle, for he was now a pilot instructor at a little flying club again teaching young men and women how to fly an Auster or a Tiger Moth. Successive waves of sleep were passing over me and sinking me down into forgetfulness of present things, and as I went I wondered if he had ever had another pupil such as Brenda Marshall. I knew how it had happened; it was all as clear as if it had been yesterday. She lived with her mother in the big house at the entrance to the village, and she drove an Alvis sports saloon. In a way she owned the aerodrome because it had been requisitioned in the war from one of her husband’s farms, and the Air Ministry were still leasing it. For a year after I arrived in Duffington I saw nothing of her. I lived at the hotel, the Seven Swans, and I was busy working up the club, and I was getting most of the enterprising young men and women of Leacaster as members. I knew the Marshalls’ car and I knew who she was by sight, and I had heard that her husband was in some hospital. It was a surprise to me when the Alvis drew up outside the hangar one bleak morning in January and she got out. I had never spoken to her but I knew that in a way she was our landlord, and I went out of the office to meet her.

  She came towards me. ‘It’s Captain Pascoe, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  I smiled. ‘That’s right.’

  She said, ‘I’m Mrs Marshall.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘I’m very glad to meet you.’

  She said, ‘I ought to have met you a long time ago, but we don’t go out a great deal.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘I felt I must come down here and see what’s going on. After all, we’re such near neighbours.’

  ‘I’d like to show you everything there is to see,’ I said. The January wind whistled around us from the north. ‘Would you like to come into the office? There’s a coke stove in there. We’ve got a fireplace in the club room, but we don’t light the fire unless we know that there are people coming out. Only the week-ends. Things go a bit flat in the winter in a flying club, you know – although the hours are keeping up quite well. We did a hundred and five hours in December.’

  ‘That’s splendid,’ she said vaguely. I showed her to the office, and the hot air and the stink from the coke stove hit us like a blast, She threw back her fur coat. She was bare-headed, and the short reddish-brown curls were massed all over her head, boyish. She was rather pale, and I thought she did not look well.

  ‘Have you got a lot of members here?’ she asked.

  ‘Two hundred and ten flying members,’ I told her, ‘and about three hundred associate members. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Oh
, please don’t bother.’

  ‘We usually have one about this time.’ I went out and spoke to the ground engineer, and asked him to slip over to the clubhouse for another cup, with a saucer, unusual in the hangar. Then I went back to my visitor and found her standing in the office door looking at the aircraft. ‘They’re so much bigger when you see them close up,’ she observed.

  ‘These two are Moths,’ I told her. ‘That’s a Bluebird.’

  She walked over and looked into the cockpit of the nearest Moth. ‘All these clocks mean something, I suppose …’

  ‘That’s the most important one,’ I said. ‘Tells you how fast you’re going. Have you ever flown?’

  ‘Just for ten minutes, about two years ago,’ she said. ‘A man was here giving joyrides.’

  ‘Would you like to go up again?’ I asked. ‘I can take you up any time. We charge two pounds ten an hour.’

  She brightened. ‘Could you do that?’

  ‘That’s what we’re here for. We could go up this morning, if you like, but you might enjoy it more when it’s sunny. I’d like to take you, any time you say.’

  She looked out of the hangar door; it had begun to rain a little. ‘I’d love to go up again, but it’s a bit piggy now. I’d like to go when you can see something.’

  I laughed. ‘Quite frankly, Mrs Marshall, so would I. Creeping along in the rain just above the tree tops, trying to find one’s way back here by recognising the cows, isn’t really my idea of fun. There’s a change forecast for this evening, though. We might get a fine day tomorrow.’

  We went back into the office for our tea. ‘Esmé Haughton’s a member of this club, isn’t she?’ she asked.

  ‘The doctor’s daughter? She’s been doing quite a bit of dual. She’ll be going solo in a week or two.’

  ‘She was telling me about it last night. She said that everybody has such fun down here …’

  ‘We get quite a crowd here at the week-ends,’ I said. ‘It gets to be a bit of a riot sometimes, I’m afraid, but we do our best to keep things under control. Everybody’s fairly young, you see. Still, I got the Lord Mayor as a member last week and the Chief Constable the week before, so they can’t think too badly of us.’

  ‘Esmé told me Colonel Chance had joined. She says he’s learning to fly.’

  I nodded. ‘He’s had two lessons. He’s going to be all right.’ The Chief Constable had two sons in the Royal Air Force, and he wanted to learn the craft that was important in their lives.

  ‘He’s awfully old to learn to fly, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think he’s about fifty-eight. It’s not difficult, you know, so long as you’ve got good eyesight.’

  ‘Can a person really learn to fly when he’s as old as that?’ she asked. ‘I always thought you had to be frightfully young.’

  I smiled. ‘Not to fly this sort of aeroplane. Of course, if you want to fly the latest Air Force fighter, then you do have to be young. The Avro Avenger and the Hawker Fury – they do two hundred miles an hour and they land at over sixty. But anyone can fly this sort of aeroplane.’

  ‘Women also?’ she asked. ‘Could you teach me to fly?’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Marshall. Would you like to learn?’

  Her eyes sparkled. ‘It would be marvellous! But I thought I’d be too old.’

  I smiled. ‘You must be under thirty, surely.’

  She nodded. ‘That wouldn’t be too old?’

  ‘Of course not. Your eyesight’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think it is. I don’t have to wear glasses.’

  ‘Your heart’s all right? There’s nothing the matter with you? It doesn’t look as if there is.’

  She laughed, and blushed a little. ‘I think I’m quite all right.’

  ‘Of course you can learn to fly,’ I told her. ‘You’ll probably get a lot of fun out of it.’

  ‘I believe I should. I used to sail a boat. It’s like that, isn’t it?’

  ‘A bit,’ I said. ‘You’re keen on sailing?’

  She nodded, and put down her cup. ‘Would you like to come outside and sit in the machine?’ I suggested. And as we walked over to the Moth I said, ‘If you’re going to learn to fly you’ll have to join the club. That’ll cost you three guineas.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s really what I came here to do. I didn’t mean to learn to fly at all.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘One thing leads to another.’

  I showed her the footholds on the fuselage and helped her into the back cockpit. When she was settled down and comfortable I started in to show her the controls, using the Gosport patter. I found that she was rather above average of women pupils for her comprehension of things mechanical. That was probably due to her position; she was used to driving a fast car and interested in it. The oil pressure gauge and the rev counter were familiar to her, and she readily grasped the starting-up procedure to avoid kicking back. She learned the idea of the main controls without much difficulty, and when she had got that far it seemed to me that she had had enough for one day. She sat on for ten minutes longer in the machine, getting the feel of it, and to assist her we swung the Moth round to face the rain-swept aerodrome through the open door and lifted its tail up into flying attitude upon a trestle to make the look and feel of the machine realistic for her.

  Presently she got out of the machine, made an appointment for a lesson the next day, and drove off in the Alvis.

  It was sunny and cold next morning, with a touch of frost in the air and not much wind. I fitted her up with a helmet and headphones, lent her my leather coat and goggles, put her into the back cockpit, strapped her in, and saw that she was comfortable. Then I got into the front seat and the G.E. swung the prop for me, and I sat explaining to her over the phones what I was doing in the pre-flight checks. Then we taxied out to the far hedge, and got into the air.

  She wanted to see her home, Duffington Manor, from the air, so we did a circuit over that, and then went up to a thousand feet for her to learn to fly straight and level, while I gave her the patter. She got on all right, and at the end of half an hour I took over the control and told her we were going in to land. She was to rest her hands and feet lightly on the controls and just watch what I did.

  She said, ‘Before we land, do you think we could loop the loop?’

  I was surprised. ‘Would you like me to loop it?’

  ‘Not if it’s any bother. But I would like to loop the loop one day.’

  ‘We can loop it now,’ I said. ‘We’ll get a little bit more height, first.’ As we climbed I made her check her safety belt. Then with her hands and feet resting loose on the controls I dived the thing a bit and sailed it over in a loop, telling her what I was doing all the time, cutting the engine when the ground came down from the ceiling. When we were flying level again I twisted round to look at her, and she was flushed and laughing. ‘That was marvellous!’ she said.

  I turned back to the voice pipe. ‘Did you have your hands and feet on the controls?’

  ‘Yes. I felt everything you did.’

  ‘Okay. I didn’t feel you.’ I learned then that she had a very gentle touch, very sensitive hands. ‘Keep them there while we land.’

  I brought the Moth on to the circuit and in on final to the hedge with a bit of sideslip, talking my patter all the time. I put it on the ground and taxied into the hangar, and stopped the engine. I got out and helped her out of the machine, and when she was on the ground she said, ‘I don’t know when I enjoyed anything so much. How long were we up for?’

  ‘Half an hour,’ I said. ‘That’s enough for one lesson.’ She was flushed and bright-eyed, looking ten times better than she had the day before.

  ‘It seemed like five minutes. Can I have another one tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to learn to fly, it’s quite a good thing to go on and do it every day, if you can manage to. You don’t forget things in between.’

  ‘How long would it take me before I could go solo?’r />
  I smiled, and thought for a moment as we walked towards the office. Women usually take longer than men, but she had very good hands and some knowledge of motor cars. Still, I’d have to be very sure of her before I let her go. Navigation would probably be a weakness; she might lose sight of the aerodrome and get lost. ‘Most people take ten or twelve hours dual,’ I said. ‘Twenty or twenty-five lessons.’

  ‘Three weeks,’ she said. ‘Then one day you just get out of the front seat and tell me I can go alone?’

  I laughed. ‘That’s right. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘I’d love a cup of tea.’

  We went into the office and I sent the boy for tea, and she took off my coat and helmet and ran a comb through her short, curly hair. She was full of questions about the machine and her instruction, really interested and very much alive. I took twenty-five bob off her for the lesson and three guineas for her membership, and seven and six for a book of flying instruction that I thought would do her good. Then the tea came, and she took a cigarette off me.

  As she was smoking it, she asked, ‘Tell me, Captain Pascoe – are you English? I’m afraid that’s a frightfully rude question.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s a very natural one. I’m Canadian. Have I still got an accent?’

  ‘Not an accent,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It’s more of a rhythm. I thought at first you were American, and then I didn’t think you were. Forgive me for asking.’

  ‘I come from Hamilton, Ontario,’ I told her. ‘I came to England in 1915 to join the R.A.F., and I’ve hardly been home since. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get to talk quite like an Englishman.’