by Nevil Shute
He gave her a long run and let her fly herself off the ground. Once in the air she climbed better than he thought she would; he made a couple of circuits of the aerodrome to gain height and then pushed off over the twin forts of Spithead to Portsmouth, still climbing steadily. He kept her at two thousand five hundred for the remainder of the crossing, then dropped a little over Haslar to give his passengers every view of the unlovely country.
He could see the two factory chimneys that Riley had mentioned clearly, and flew east over the town till he could see the field with Riley just taking off in it. He marked it by a little shed in one corner, and then turned and flew seawards. He skirted along the coast till he had gained sufficient height for the crossing; then, when he was opposite Ryde, went straight across, losing height all the way, and circled the town at about a thousand feet. Then, with a glance at his watch, along the coast past Osborne by way of Cowes to Newport, where Stenning’s machine was plainly visible at the end of a long street of red villas. Then he made for home.
He made a wide circuit of the aerodrome to fill in the last minute of the time, then glided down to land. The machine touched, bumped a little, slowed. Morris turned her, taxied in towards the hangar, jumped out, and helped his passengers to alight.
‘That was a bit of all right,’ said the man, ‘ — that was.’ He seemed confused, and fumbled with a note-case.
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ said Morris. ‘You pay me — that’s right, two pounds ten. I hope the lady enjoyed it too?’
‘Oh, didn’t I just!’ said the girl. ‘Alf, wasn’t it lovely?’
Morris pocketed the money and directed them off the premises, pressing a card of charges on them. Two pounds ten to the good. At least ten shillings of that should be profit, which would mean a shilling for him at the end of the week.
He returned to the car.
He had no more passengers that day. In the afternoon he distributed the placards, returned, and spent the rest of the day with the mechanic, overhauling the new planes extended horizontally on the trestles.
Riley came in about five o’clock; he had had a slack day. Morris heard him coming and walked to meet him; together they inspected the new planes. Morris handed over his earnings and they stood talking for a little, looking out over the aerodrome to where the sea lay blue and sombre in the evening sun.
‘It’s good to be back,’ said Morris unexpectedly. ‘There’s a cheerful sort of feeling about living on an aerodrome.’
Riley did not reply, but turned back towards the hut, his mind full of the business. ‘We could do without that ridge on it,’ he said. ‘I bust a tail-skid there the other day.’
3
LIFE AT THE aerodrome ran evenly on its way. Morris was initiated into the regular routine of the business, and found it very boring. The hours were long; that to him was rather an advantage; it was good to be able to bury oneself in work. At Oxford, he had never been able to do that successfully. There the work was brain work, at which one could not concentrate for more than a comparatively short period of the twenty-four hours. Here it was easier; one could work at this manual labour for just as long as one liked.
The work on the ground, in fact, atoned for the boredom of the ceaseless joy-rides. To Morris the work on the machines never staled; there was a satisfaction in keeping something in good running order, in keeping a good machine in perfect trim. He found the life amusing enough on the whole; the free and easy atmosphere suited him well, unbusinesslike though it was. There was, as somebody in authority remarked, too much of the ‘Cheerioh’ business about aviation at this time for it to be a really paying proposition. The Isle of Wight Aviation Company was not alone in its business methods; on the regular air lines it was still customary for a ten-passenger machine to wait for one passenger who was late. Air transport was not yet taken seriously even by those who had most to lose in it.
In spite of its questionable business methods, the Isle of Wight Aviation Company made a considerable amount of money during the summer months. Business at the various seaside resorts was brisk; the novelty of aviation had not yet worn off, though it was on the wane. Morris found himself earning at the rate of six or seven pounds a week, while Riley and Stenning were putting money by steadily, gradually replacing their sunk capital. Though they were making more money than ever they had done before in the business, this seemed to be due solely to the increase in the machines; the actual interest of the public was clearly on the wane. Signs were not wanting that next year joy-riding would be far less popular; there were not enough special orders to justify the inauguration of a special air-taxi service. The business seemed to be coming near its end; Riley and Stenning ceased to buy new material, and devoted all their energies to saving money.
It was one Sunday morning that Stenning came back from the telephone with the information that the lord of the Towers, near Cowes, had instructed his butler to telephone to them to inform them that he would visit them during the afternoon with a car-load of his house party.
‘That’s the stuff,’ said Riley meditatively. ‘I wonder if they know our usual charges?’
Stenning snorted democratically. ‘They’ll ruddy well have to take their turn in the queue, if there’s a crowd,’ he said. It was evident that he was hoping for a crowd.
‘Better put up a flag in honour of the event,’ said Morris.
‘I don’t see any point in that,’ said Stenning. ‘Besides, we haven’t got one.’
‘Better not risk it,’ said Riley regretfully, still meditating the finance of the visit. ‘It gives one a bad name, that sort of thing.’
‘Well,’ said Morris cheerfully. ‘I hope you enjoy yourselves.’ His machine was laid up for an overhaul.
Riley turned to him sourly. ‘You’ll look pretty blue if they tip us half a crown apiece, won’t you?’
Morris laughed, and strolled off to work on his machine.
In due time the Rolls-Royce arrived, and from a distance Morris watched the preparations round the machines. He chose a grassy spot near the fence and sat down to watch. Presently two passengers embarked in one machine; the engine burst into life, and Riley moved out over the aerodrome. He faced up into the wind, began to move, swept over the ground faster and faster, and went away in a climbing turn with full load.
There was a kind of grunt from behind Morris; a critical approving grunt. He turned to see who had grunted.
The only person within range was an immense man leaning over the fence, watching Stenning preparing to get off. He was a man considerably over six feet in height, massively built, with a great red face that seemed vaguely familiar and a great untidy shock of red hair, bursting out from under a tweed cap a size or two too small for him. He was well turned out in faded plus-fours; he looked a typical country squire or gentleman farmer. Stenning got away in a less spectacular manner and the stranger grunted again, less approvingly. Then he noticed Morris watching him from the inside of the fence, and spoke to him.
‘Clerget?’ he asked. His voice, so soft as hardly to be audible, contrasted oddly with his appearance.
‘Hundred and ten Le Rhones,’ said Morris, naming the engine.
‘So?’ said the big man softly. ‘They get off very well with the load — particularly the first one.’
Morris moved a little closer to the fence.
‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘They’re good machines — and we spend a good deal of time looking after them, of course.’ He liked the look of this chap. ‘But, of course, the difference in the get off there’ — he indicated the aerodrome— ‘was more a matter of pilots. That first one was Malcolm Riley, rather a famous man in his way, though one doesn’t see much of him in the papers.’
‘Oh yes ... I remember him. Test pilot for Pilling-Henries in 1918, wasn’t he?’
‘You know him?’ asked Morris in surprise.
‘Not personally. I have met him.’
Morris wondered who this was, who was evidently no stranger to the business.
/> ‘You were in the Air Force in the war?’ he said.
‘Er, no,’ said the man, a little nervously. ‘I didn’t go to the war. My name is Rawdon.’
Morris knew now where he had seen that face and figure before. It had been in an illustration to one of those foolish articles that technical papers occasionally effect— ‘Idols of the Industry’, or something of the sort.
‘Would you care to come inside?’ he said deferentially. ‘I’m a pilot here — I represent the firm.’
The big man placed one hand on the top rail of the fence and vaulted it as lightly as a boy.
‘Ha,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t know I could do that still.’
Captain (by courtesy) C. G. H. Rawdon had had an undistinguished career before the war. He had merely been one of a number of gentlemen of private means who had been flying and designing aeroplanes obscurely since 1909. There had been nothing very striking about him; he never saw reporters, never walked about London in flying kit, never did anything that got into the daily papers, never made records of any sort. He had merely gone on in a stolid, bovine manner, building rather good machines in a shed at Brooklands and risking his life upon them daily with about as much emotion as he would have devoted to the manufacture of jam. To those of his friends who attempted to dissuade him, rightly seeing no point in risking life without publicity, he had merely stated that he liked it. There seemed to be no means of prolonging the argument. So they left him to it, and shook their heads over him when war broke out.
His first machine reached the Front after a long series of delays early in 1916; the historic Rawdon Rat. As soon as the first experimental Rat made its appearance, he was organized, protesting, into a Limited Company, and bidden to design like fun; the rank of Captain in the RFC was bestowed on him to save him from conscription. But no encouragement was needed. The next production was the Robin, a single-seater scout that was cordially disliked by all pilots but the very expert, who swore by it until it was passed over in the race for increased horse-power. Next came the Ratcatcher, an improved Rat with a more powerful engine, followed by the Reindeer, a light, high-speed bomber. Last of all the machines to be used in the war came the Rabbit, a single-seater of phenomenal performance. This in turn would have been surpassed by the Runt had the war continued for another six months; as it was, the engine for the Runt was never properly developed, and the type was abandoned.
In his post-war policy he had been unusually fortunate. His factory had been divided into two parts during the war; the experimental section which was located on a small aerodrome near Southall, and the production factory a little nearer London. The grave crisis of the termination of the war did not find him unprepared; he early realized that aircraft would be a small business again, exactly as it had been before the war. His business partners had realized this fact also, with the added significance that the manufacturing of aeroplanes would not merely be a trade that would bring in a negligible profit, but one that might require considerable subsidies from other departments of the firm. Rawdon, then, had found his way easy. He had abandoned his firm and left them in the production factory, blindly confident in their ability to make money by the building of motor bodies, and the mass production of antique furniture, and had retired to his experimental aerodrome.
Here, in the rickety buildings at Southall, he sat surrounded by the best of his old staff, and watched his rival firms drift slowly into bankruptcy. He obtained one or two contracts for the reconditioning of Ratcatchers and Rabbits for foreign governments, and presently the Air Ministry gave him a contract to design and build an experimental torpedo carrier.
Most of this Morris knew already. What he had not realized was that the designer was really an ordinary man, who was not too technically minded to despise the operations of a seaside joy-ride company. It was easy to forget the humanity of anyone connected with this trade. To the daily press, a man, once a pilot, remained an ‘airman’ for the rest of his life, whether he were to be married, divorced, confined in a lunatic asylum, or hanged. There was no escaping the label.
They stood chatting for a little about the business; then the designer harped back to the original subject.
‘Who was that second pilot who got off then?’
‘Captain Stenning,’ said Morris. ‘I don’t know if you ever met him; he spent most of his time instructing near Gloucester, I believe.’
But Rawdon had never done so, and the conversation drifted to general subjects. With all his knowledge, the big man had a childlike interest in any new thing connected with aviation.
Morris, amused at his persistence, found himself recounting the minutest details of the business. Soon, by what seemed a natural transition, the conversation drifted to personalities, and his whole career in aviation was laid bare. This was a more serious matter, Morris pulled himself up, began to consider what he was saying and to wonder whether it might not be possible to touch this man for a little information and advice upon his own account. It would not do to let such a man get away without sounding him. Presently the designer gave him the opening that he was looking for.
‘And so you’re sticking to this business?’ he inquired, in his gentle even tone.
Morris glanced at him. ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ he said. ‘Think it worth it?’
The other returned the glance quizzically. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘That’s rather what I thought.’
The designer considered for a little. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘there’ll be a great shortage of pilots one of these days; not yet, but soon. There aren’t any more coming on.’
‘I dare say,’ said Morris. ‘But what kind of pilots? Engine-driver sort?’
‘Of course, it’ll come to that — in a very few years.’
There was a minute or two of silence.
‘Look here,’ said Morris. ‘I’m not trying to touch you for a job.’ The designer smiled. ‘But how does one set about getting on to the design side? It’s the only stable part of this industry. I did mathematics at Oxford. Would there be anything doing for me in a design office do you suppose?’
‘What as?’ asked the designer. It was a disconcerting little query.
Morris rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know how things go in a firm,’ he said. ‘But isn’t there any opening on the design side for a man like me?’
‘I don’t think there’s a chance of it,’ said Rawdon frankly. ‘Take my own firm. I had six or seven of your sort in the war, on stress and performance work. I’ve got two now, and the rest have taken temporary jobs till they can get back into aviation again. And you don’t know anything about it — differential equations won’t help you much in the design of aeroplanes — not yet, anyhow.’
Morris considered for a minute or two. ‘One must do something,’ he said, ‘and this won’t last for ever. Tell me, on the design side you have people who calculate stresses and loads — stress merchants you call them, don’t you? How does one set about that work — how does one start in it? My own idea is that it’s pretty easily picked up. One might combine it with piloting.’
‘That might help, certainly,’ said the designer. ‘I had a mechanic pilot once, but he wasn’t much good — he always had to be leaving his job for someone else to finish while he went flying. That might not be so bad in the office.’
‘What does one have to know?’
The designer looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I don’t suppose it would be so very much for you,’ he said. ‘You want to get up to about the Civil Engineer’s level — eventually. With some aerodynamics. I suppose one could get it up by oneself all right. The difficulty would be to get anyone to take you on and give you a trial.’
‘One might get a job as a pilot and work one’s way in,’ said Morris.
‘It might be done that way, I suppose. I can give you the names of one or two books if you’re really thinking of it.’
He wrote down three names on a visiting card and handed it to Morris.
‘If you know something about what’s in those,’ he said, ‘you’ve got a chance. And I don’t really see why a mathematician like you shouldn’t be able to pick it up, though it’s not a job I’d care about myself.’
The two machines came in in company after flying round the Solent. Stenning came in to land first; then when he was out of the way, Riley put down just outside the hangars. Again Rawdon gave his approving little grunt.
Morris got up. ‘Come over and have a look at me machines,’ he said. ‘Riley would like to meet you again. You’ll stay and have some tea with us, won’t you? We live in one of those huts.’
They walked over the grass to the machines. The party of visitors were packed into their car and rolled away with dignity.
‘Got a job after tea,’ said Riley. ‘One of us is to go and chuck stunts outside an old lady’s bedroom window at the Towers. Twenty minutes or so — loops and rolls.’
‘I’ll go if you like,’ said Morris. ‘I’ve not done anything today yet. Riley, this is Captain Rawdon.’ But he was not there when he turned, for Captain Rawdon was away examining the detail of a strut-fitting on one of the machines, full of insatiable curiosity. Riley went up to him.
‘This an Air Ministry modification?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Riley. ‘Pleased to meet you again, sir.’
After a scratch tea they strolled back to the hangar. Rawdon, it appeared, was yachting about the Solent and had put into Ryde with his host, who held that Sunday afternoon should be spent at anchor. Rawdon had come on shore for a walk and had gravitated almost unconsciously to the aerodrome.
‘Better take my machine,’ said Stenning. They busied themselves for a little time with ballast; Morris climbed in.
‘One moment,’ said Riley. ‘The old lady’s room is on the south side. They’re hanging a bath-towel out of the window so that you’ll know which it is. She particularly wants to see a loop.’