Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
Conquerors of the Sky (6 page)
Even stranger things began happening inside Adrian as he continued walking across the quadrangle. Something almost as big as Louis Bleriot's monoplane began doing loops inside him. He felt hot and cold at the same time. His heart pounded and he thought he was going to faint. When it did not stop he thought he was going to die.
When the looping finally stopped Adrian felt so tired he went to bed. He did not go to supper and he did not get up for class the next day. He lay in bed and listened to the rain falling outside.
Ruined ruined ruined
it said with every drop. It was so sad. He wept for himself and his father.
Ruined
filled the whole world with fog and drizzle and mist.
Ruined ruined ruined
it said with every drop. It was so sad. He wept for himself and his father.
Ruined
filled the whole world with fog and drizzle and mist.
After a while Adrian lost track of time. He vaguely remembered being hot and thirsty and hungry and being carried from the dormitory through the rain to another part of the school. The next comprehensible thing he heard was a man's hoarse voice.
“A living dead man? I don't understand. Is it some sort of American expression?”
Adrian was in the infirmary. The headmaster, Augustine Deakwell, was standing on the right side of his bed. He was very fat and wore sideburns, big white puffs of hair on both cheeks.
“It's a form of coventry, Mr. Deakwell. The senior boys invoke it for various reasons.
That was Mr. Goggins, the young master who was in charge of the third form. He was on the left side of Adrian's bed. He had big teeth and a stiff brush mustache. He had brought Adrian to the infirmary when he found him lying in his dormitory bed, sobbing.
“Hah? What's he done? Ratted on someone?” the headmaster asked.
“I think it's a good deal more malicious, Mr. Deakwell.”
“If what Goggins tells me is true, Deakwell, you've got a first-class scandal on your hands.”
It was his mother's friend, Geoffrey Tillotson. He loomed at the foot of Adrian's bed, scowling at the headmaster. His cheeks seemed pinker than usual, his jowls more formidable. He was wearing a black suit and a gray vest and gray tie with a large pearl stickpin in the center of it. His black derby was perfectly straight on his large head.
“If my son Peter wasn't a graduate, I'd have your head on a platter by next Monday, Deakwell. I leave it to you to straighten things swiftlyâand mercilessly. In the meantime, I'll take this lad to his mother.”
On the train, Tillotson bought Adrian a roast beef sandwich and a mug of cocoa. He told him he was proud of him for defying the sixth formers and becoming a living dead man. He said he was very sorry for what had happened and he hoped it would not make him dislike England. It was the fault of a few boys who misused their power as sixth formers. They forgot it was their responsibility to teach second and third formers the traditions of Anson, to make them proud of the famous men who had graduated from it.
“Every so often in all sorts of places, from schools to Parliament, rotters get into power,” Tillotson said. “Eventually some brave fellows stand up to them and put things right.”
“Like the Reform Acts,” Adrian said. He had read about this great struggle for democracy in Macaulay's
History of England.
History of England.
“Exactly.”
For the rest of the trip Tillotson talked about airplanes. He said his son Peter was becoming a very good pilot. An Englishman named de Havilland was building planes that were better than the ones the French made. Even better than the ones made by the Wrights, the Americans who had invented the machine. He gave Adrian a book full of photographs of planes at an air show outside Paris.
After a week with his mother, Adrian returned to Anson with Geoffrey Tillotson. On the train Tillotson assured him matters had been “put right.” Remembering St. Edmund's, Adrian was not so sure. He still felt very sad.
In the quadrangle, Adrian encountered Ponty, who gave him a broad smile and said: “'Allo, Van Ness. Glad you've come back.”
That night Mr. Goggins had Adrian and Ponty and a half-dozen other third formers to dinner in his rooms. He talked about things having “gone wrong” but would be “ripping” now, he was sure of it. He said he hoped they would all try to be more friendly to their American guest, who had proved himself a “brave fellow.”
“Bravissimo!”
Ponty said. The other boys rapped their tea mugs on the table and said, “Hear, hear.”
Ponty said. The other boys rapped their tea mugs on the table and said, “Hear, hear.”
The next day, something even more remarkable happened. A biplane zoomed low over the school and climbed high into the sky to do a series of spectacular dives and banks. The pilot landed on the north playing field and the entire student body rushed there for a close look at the machine. The pilot climbed out and everyone gasped. It was Peter Tillotson, who had graduated two years ago.
“Where's my friend Van Ness?” Peter asked.
Adrian was shoved forward by wide-eyed third formers. “Get in,” Peter said in his rough way.
Adrian climbed into the front seat and Peter buckled a thick belt around his waist. He asked Mr. Goggins to spin the propeller. In a moment they were bouncing down the playing field toward a line of trees in the distance. “Hang on!” Peter shouted, and they cleared the trees by a foot.
Aloft, Adrian looked down on the school and marveled at the way it was dwindling, exactly the way Shakespeare had described the men and boats below the cliffs at Dover in the scene where Lear went mad. Everyone was mouse-size and the buildings looked more and more like toys. The sadness started to fall away from him. He began to feel proud and free and happy.
“How do you like it?” Peter shouted above the roaring motor.
“Ripping!” Adrian shouted.
“This is only the third time I've been up alone. Soloing, they call it. You can get killed with no warning but it's worth it. Hang on, we'll try a loop.”
He pointed the nose of the plane toward the sky and climbed straight up. Instead of flipping over, they hung there for a second, then fell off to the right in a screaming dive. “Afraid I've got to practice that,” Peter said, after they pulled out.
They made a rather bumpy landing. The entire student body swarmed
around them again. “I've only got time for one more ride. Who will it be, Adrian?”
around them again. “I've only got time for one more ride. Who will it be, Adrian?”
“Ponty,” Adrian said.
Peter took him up and this time completed a loop. Ponty said it was the most remarkable sensation of his life. He vowed to learn to fly as soon as possible.
From living dead man, Adrian soared to leader of the third form. No more was heard of Von Ness, son of the German spy. The next two months were the happiest of his life.
One afternoon in mid-May, as Adrian sat in the library reading about the Battle of Waterloo, Ponty tapped him on the shoulder. “The head wants you, Van.” He puffed his cheeks and stuck out his stomach and waddled away in a perfect imitation of Mr. Deakwell.
In the headmaster's office, his mother sat alone. She looked unusually beautiful in a jet-black suit. Adrian often thought she resembled one of those tall, proud Gibson girls in magazine illustrations. “Oh, darling,” she said. “I've got some bad news. We have to go home.”
“Why?”
“Your father's dead. He was killed in an accident. Foxhunting. He ran into a low-hanging limb and broke his neck.”
Adrian waited for her to weep, to let him weep. But she did nothing of the sort. She told him to go to his room and pack. They were catching the fastest ship home, the SS
Lusitania.
It was sailing from Southampton the next day.
Lusitania.
It was sailing from Southampton the next day.
Adrian trudged across the quadrangle, suddenly remembering everything. Von Ness the spy, the months as a living dead man, the sadness. He felt angry at his mother for having exposed him to these ordeals. Beneath that anger was a deeper, colder enmity for her refusal to weep for his ruined father. He found himself wishing he could get in a plane and fly thousands of miles away from his mother and never see her again.
“Youâyou there, young fellowâis that an American accent I hear?”
Frank Buchanan paused in his effort to tune the motor of a de Havilland Scout, wiped grease from his hands and nodded. The man had the lean face, the spaded beard, the fiery eyes of Mephistopheles in his youth, when his hair was bright red. A flowing gray coat enveloped him almost to his shoetops. He gestured at Frank with an ebony cane. He was surrounded by a half dozen of the most elegant women Frank had ever seen.
“It sounds like I'm hearing one too,” Frank shouted as his helper got the motor to stop choking and sputtering and emit a racketing roar.
“Hailey, Idaho,” the man shouted, holding out his hand. “The name's Pound. Ezra Pound.”
“The author of
Canzoni
?” Frank said.
Canzoni
?” Frank said.
“A mechanic who reads poetry!” Pound cried. “You see what I've been saying? Americans aren't a lost cause. There's hopeâif we can get more of them to Europe.”
They were standing on the grassy airfield at Hendon, a suburb of London, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in May 1914. Every week some two hundred thousand people came out to see the latest planes race around the pyloned course. Britons of all classes had become fascinated by flight. A pilgrimage to Hendon was a must to those who hoped to have any claim to sophistication.
“Do you understand how these things work?” Pound said, leading Frank away from the snarling Rhone rotary engine. “Why one crashes, another stays in the air? The principle behind it?”
“I've learned a few things from Geoffrey de Havilland,” Frank said modestly. He could have said much more. He had spent a year in France working for Louis Paulhan, the pilot he had met at the Dominquez Hills air show. Paulhan and other designers were churning out planes in a dozen factories around Paris. He had even accompanied Paulhan to the wind tunnel constructed by Louis Eiffel, builder of the famous tower. In the tunnel French designers studied the effect of airflow on models of the planes they were building.
In England, a photograph of
Rag Time
had won him a job in de Havilland's design department. The big blond Englishman had built one of Britain's first flyable planes in 1910. He was now working for the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which operated from an old bus garage in Hendon. Frank had come to England to learn more about the changes the British were making in the airplane's basic design. De Havilland was working with scientists who had been studying aerodynamic problems in their laboratories. They recommended moving the wings of a plane back to the middle of the fuselage, closer to the center of gravity, enlarging the tail and the aileronsâall aimed at giving the aircraft as much stability in the air as a boat on the water.
Rag Time
had won him a job in de Havilland's design department. The big blond Englishman had built one of Britain's first flyable planes in 1910. He was now working for the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which operated from an old bus garage in Hendon. Frank had come to England to learn more about the changes the British were making in the airplane's basic design. De Havilland was working with scientists who had been studying aerodynamic problems in their laboratories. They recommended moving the wings of a plane back to the middle of the fuselage, closer to the center of gravity, enlarging the tail and the aileronsâall aimed at giving the aircraft as much stability in the air as a boat on the water.
A few minutes' conversation convinced Pound that his American discovery was the perfect man to introduce his circle of poets and poetry lovers to the mysteries of flight. Pound saw the plane as a prime example of his artistic theories. Since he arrived in England in 1908, he had become a one-man cultural crusade, churning out poetry and critical essays proclaiming that the new century required an entirely new art. He called his theory Vorticism and he publicized it in the pages of a magazine called
Blast.
Blast.
Vorticists believed art could and should represent reality with the same precision as an equation in fluid dynamics or solid geometry. They wanted to make a poem or story work as precisely as a machine. At the heart of every work of art there was a vortex, a pulsing fist of forces that gave it energy and meaning. It was the critic or the editor's task to find that vortex and help the writer exploit it to the utmost.
Within a week, Frank Buchanan found himself the center of attention in
Pound's small dark apartment in Kensington. A dozen guests, most of them women, listened wide-eyed as he proposed to demonstrate the central idea of flight. He took a piece of paper and curled one end of it over a pencil. Raising it to the level of his lips, he blew on it. The paper rose. “I have just produced lift,” he said. “You are now in the world of aerodynamics.”
Pound's small dark apartment in Kensington. A dozen guests, most of them women, listened wide-eyed as he proposed to demonstrate the central idea of flight. He took a piece of paper and curled one end of it over a pencil. Raising it to the level of his lips, he blew on it. The paper rose. “I have just produced lift,” he said. “You are now in the world of aerodynamics.”
Why does air traveling over a wing create lift? “The air on top of the wing moves faster than the air under the bottom. In the eighteenth century, a Swiss mathematician named Bernoulli experimented with water flowing through a pipe. He proved that the faster it flowed, the lower the pressure in the pipe. Later, an Italian scientist named Venturi proved the same thing was true for air. That's why the higher pressure of the slower air under the wing creates lift.”
“Exactly how emotion works in a poem or story!” Pound cried.
“The other components of a plane are weight, drag, and thrust,” Frank continued. “These are easier to understand. Drag is created by the resistance the surface of the plane meets as it moves through the air. Weight is the force of gravity and thrust is the forward motion we get from the engine.”
“In a poem or story,” Pound said, “Drag corresponds to the writer's ability, weight to the reader's stupidity, and thrust to the publisher's greed.”
So it went for the length of the lecture, Pound finding literary analogies for all Frank's aeronautical terms. Pound was particularly fascinated by the way air flowing over the wings and down the fuselage of a plane formed negative vortexes that created a phenomenon known as
flutter,
which could tear a wing or a tail apart.
flutter,
which could tear a wing or a tail apart.
“Precisely the way the wrong metaphor can wreck a stanza, the wrong rhythm can ruin a poem, the wrong character can mangle a story!” Pound said.
A blond young woman in the center of the semicircle asked: “What is the future of this marvelous machine?” She had the face of a Pre-Raphaelite angelâthe pale cheeks, the wide blue eyes, seemingly vacant, waiting to be charged with emotion.
“Its future is as unlimited as the sky above our heads,” Frank said. “The plane can abolish distance, annihilate frontiers, unite peoples in Tennyson's wonderful vision of a Parliament of Man!”
“Tennyson!” Pound exclaimed. “My dear fellowâthat's a name we don't allow in this house. He's a has-been.”
“He never will be, to me,” Frank said. His mother had read the great English poet aloud to him almost every night in his boyhood.
“The Idylls of the King”
was his favorite poem.
“The Idylls of the King”
was his favorite poem.
“The danger of teaching mechanics to read has now become visible,” Pound said. “They form their own opinions.”
“But Ezra,” said the blond young woman. “He also likes your
Canzoni.”
Canzoni.”
“That only demonstrates, to use an aeronautical term, his instability,” Pound said.
The highlight of the evening was a midnight supper cooked by Pound, a delicious oyster stew, complemented by an Italian white wine that he served with an inimitable toast. “Come let us pity those who are better off than we
are. Remember that the rich have butlers and no friends and we have friends and no butlers.”
are. Remember that the rich have butlers and no friends and we have friends and no butlers.”
The conversation swirled over art and politics, with the blond girl quizzically probing Frank's opinions. Her name was Penelope Foster and she was unquestionably attracted to him. “Do you think we shall have peace or war, Mr. Buchanan?” she said in a liquid voice that sent shimmers of desire through Frank's flesh.
“Oh, peace,” Frank said. “War would be a ridiculous waste of time and energy.”
“The British upper class can hardly wait to go to war with Germany. Proving, among other things, their imbecility,” Pound said.
“You're quite wrong, Ezra. The Huns need to be taught a lesson,” Penelope Foster said.
The rising power of Germany obsessed almost everyone in England. Their fleet and army were challenging Britain's supremacy everywhere, in Africa, China, the south Pacific. Their corporations were invading markets such as America, where English goods had once been supreme.
“If we have a war, do you think your planes will be in it?” Penelope asked.
“As scouts,” Frank said. “They'll be the eyes of the army. In fact, their mere presence may make war impossible. How can a general maneuver a great army when a plane can swoop down and discover it miles before he can reach his objective? Planes can produce a stalemate, where neither side can gain an advantage.”
“I think you badly underestimate the brutality of generals,” Pound said. “What about planes as bombers? In the
Arabian Nights,
Sinbad the Sailor describes how two ships were destroyed by Rocs, giant birds carrying huge stones.”
Arabian Nights,
Sinbad the Sailor describes how two ships were destroyed by Rocs, giant birds carrying huge stones.”
“We don't have motors powerful enough to lift a serious amount of bombs,” Frank said, guiltily omitting his experience bombing Mexicans from
Rag Time.
He did not want to believe that anyone who experienced the exaltation of flight could use it to rain death on human beings. Even Craig had been dismayed by the effect of their bombs on Los Banyos.
Rag Time.
He did not want to believe that anyone who experienced the exaltation of flight could use it to rain death on human beings. Even Craig had been dismayed by the effect of their bombs on Los Banyos.
Frank escorted Penelope Foster home to a nearby flat. The daughter of a colonial office civil servant, she was a poet who tried to create small, exact word portraits of nature and humanity in a style Pound had dubbed
imagism.
Pound told her she had talent and the samples she showed Frank in her rooms proved it. She called them
London Lives.
In ten lines or less, each depicted a London type, a burly bus driver, a screeching fishmonger, a banker flourishing his umbrella “like a scepter,” a scrawny messenger on his bike, risking his life in the traffic “like a sparrow in a gale.”
imagism.
Pound told her she had talent and the samples she showed Frank in her rooms proved it. She called them
London Lives.
In ten lines or less, each depicted a London type, a burly bus driver, a screeching fishmonger, a banker flourishing his umbrella “like a scepter,” a scrawny messenger on his bike, risking his life in the traffic “like a sparrow in a gale.”
“All lift, no drag,” Frank said. “I hope I can create planes like these some day.”
“You will. I can sense it in you. A pulsing thing Ezra calls the gold thread in the pattern. Some people possess it instinctively.”
“How does it work?” Frank asked.
“I'm not sure. It's part spirit, part technical mastery. A desire to grasp the essence of thingsâin art, in machines.”
A plaintive sadness throbbed in Penelope's voice. Her lovely head drooped in a kind of mourning. “I sense the gift has passed to you Americans. You're the guardians of it now. We English nurtured it for a centuryâ”
“Can Iâmay Iâkiss you?” Frank said.
He wanted to possess this Sibyl, to explore her body as well as her soul. “No,” she said. “It's much too soon.”
“I want to make you part of my golden thread, my essence,” Frank whispered. “In California, we believe it's never too soon.”
The first part of that plea was Frank Buchanan, the second part was Craig. Frank was still an unstable blend of the two personalities. But Penelope proved she was worthy of her classic name when it came to evading suitors.
“This isn't California,” she said.
In love for the first time, Frank became a regular visitor to Pound's Kensington circle. He listened to the poet read his magical translations from the Provençal and the Chinese and discourse with casual brilliance on Dante, Shakespeare, Homer. Frank took Penelope Foster up for a ride in a de Havilland Scout, the sturdy two-seat reconnaissance plane they were building for the Royal Flying Corps. She adored it but unlike the Baroness Sonnenschein and Muriel Halsey, she still declined Frank's offer of a similar ascent in her bedroom. Instead, she gave him a poem.
Crouched on the grass
The plane is a clumsy cicada
Who could believe
It devours clouds
Consumes cities and rivers
Challenges the sun
With its growling shadow?
The plane is a clumsy cicada
Who could believe
It devours clouds
Consumes cities and rivers
Challenges the sun
With its growling shadow?
Frank called Penelope his priestess and accepted the celibacy she imposed on him. Although they saw themselves as citizens of the new century it was a very Victorian love. Pound was their high priest, weaving a spell of beauty, a promise of triumphant art, around their lives. For three months Frank Buchanan, soaring in planes and poetry, was a happy young man.
But history was rumbling toward them on the continent. The Great Powers, as the newspapers called them, had devoted millions to building huge armies while their frantic diplomats devoted hundreds of hours to weaving intricate alliances to maintain a balance of power that was supposed to make war impossible. When a Serbian anarchist assassinated the crown prince of Austria, the illusion of peace evaporated. Austria threatened Serbia, Russia warned Austria, Germany threatened Russia. France warned Germany.
On August 4, 1914, Frank Buchanan awoke in his Hendon rooming house.
Guy Chapman, his fellow junior designer, was pounding on his door. “Frank, Frank!” he was shouting. “It's the bloody war. It's started!”
Guy Chapman, his fellow junior designer, was pounding on his door. “Frank, Frank!” he was shouting. “It's the bloody war. It's started!”
Frank stumbled out of bed and found Chapman clutching a copy of the
London Times.
GERMANS INVADE BELGIUM roared the headline. England had warned Germany that if they violated Belgium's neutrality to attack France, Britain would declare war. At the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, chaos reigned. Geoffrey de Havilland and several other key people had been drafted by the Royal Flying Corps. Frank and Guy Chapman were the only designers still on the job.
London Times.
GERMANS INVADE BELGIUM roared the headline. England had warned Germany that if they violated Belgium's neutrality to attack France, Britain would declare war. At the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, chaos reigned. Geoffrey de Havilland and several other key people had been drafted by the Royal Flying Corps. Frank and Guy Chapman were the only designers still on the job.
Over the next year, Frank watched the airplane turn into a weapon of war. From the scout the generals had envisioned it became a fighter plane, when a Dutch designer named Anthony Fokker taught the Germans how to synchronize a machine gun to fire through the propeller. Then it became a bomber as more and more powerful motors created larger and larger planes capable of carrying as much as a thousand pounds of high explosives.
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