Permissible Limits (22 page)

‘
No?’

‘
No.’ He reached for my glass and replaced it with a tumbler of sparkling Badoit. ‘Busy afternoon. Things to do.’

‘
Like?’

Harald studied me a moment, then reached for his own glass of mineral water.

‘
Remember us talking about you flying the Mustang?’ He touched his glass to mine. ‘No time like the present.’

All three of us drove over to Sandown after lunch. I’d eaten barely anything, partly excitement, partly
anticipation
, and partly something else more difficult to define. After the worst week of my life, I’d finally won a little peace for myself, and Harald - whether he knew it or not - was putting it in jeopardy.

I’d walked him into the study before we’d left and shut the door behind me.

‘
I’m not altogether sure this is such a great idea.’

‘
Why not?’

‘
Don’t you think it’s a bit hasty? A bit soon?’

Harald had shaken his head. The one accusation I could never lay at his door was indecision. He always knew exactly what he wanted to do. And why.

‘
The weather’s perfect,’ he pointed out, ‘but it ain’t gonna last. They’re calling a front for late this afternoon and after that it’s anyone’s guess.’

‘
But what about next week? Or the week after?’

‘
I’m away. Back in the States for a coupla days. Then Australia and the Far East.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Andrea’s been telling me what you’ve decided. I think it’s a great plan.’

‘
Decided?’

‘
The business. Who does what. As I read it, Andrea’s the home body while you do the flying. Isn’t that the way it shakes down?’

I frowned, trying to fight a feeling of mild irritation. Harald had a way of accelerating events, of taking the merest hint of a decision and turning it into a
fait accompli.
Andrea and I had certainly discussed how we might organise ourselves over the coming season but I wasn’t aware that anything was set in stone.

‘
I might not be in the mood,’ I said, changing tack. ‘Have you thought about that?’

Harald laughed.

‘
Mood? This is flying, Ellie. Not sex.’

‘
I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘
Sure you didn’t. Hey -’ He reached forward, touching me lightly on the arm. ‘No offence but I really think you should try and hack this thing. I’ve talked to Dave. He’ll have the ship ready for two thirty. Like I say, perfect weather.’

‘
Dave Jeffries?’ I was getting annoyed now. What right did this man have to part my mechanic from his Sunday off?

‘
Sure. And he’s happy to oblige, since you ask. In fact he thinks it’s long overdue.’

‘
Really?’

‘
Yeah. Talk to Dave and he’ll tell you Adam should have been taking you up round the back end of last year.’

‘
He did. Twice.’

‘
To learn to fly. Not to cab you to some fancy restaurant.’

Harald stared me out. You could almost feel his contempt for the nicer things in life. Like surprise trips across the Channel. And intimate
a deux
lunches. In Harald’s world there were lists of things to do, and a schedule to make sure they got done. Very seldom, it seemed to me, did he draw anything but the straightest of lines between two points.

‘
Be careful, Harald,’ I said quietly. ‘I’d like us to stay friends.’

He looked at me a moment longer, his eyes very black, then -abruptly - he softened. There was a folded slip of paper on the desk. He picked it up and gave it to me.

‘
I saw Dennis last night,’ he said. ‘I was staying over.’

‘
Dennis Wetherall? In St Helier?’

‘
Sure. I deposited the money. He gave me a receipt.’

‘
What money?’

‘
The payment for the Harvard. We discussed it. Remember?’

I was looking at the receipt. Old Glory’s bank balance was healthier to the tune of £160,000.
1
glanced up. Harald was opening the door.

‘
Mind if we take your car?’ he asked. ‘I came over by cab.’

Dave Jeffries was waiting for us at the airfield. The Mustang was out on the ancient rectangle of hardstanding in front of our hangar, parked beside Harald’s Yak, and Dave was perched on one wing, his head buried in the cockpit. Hearing the estate car, he slid down the wing and walked across to meet us.

Andrea was second out of the car after Harald. She’d changed into a rather striking trouser suit - bright yellow with big, fabric-covered buttons - and she was wearing a huge pair of sunglasses. Sandown airfield isn’t the centre of the fashion world and I think she was a bit disappointed at the boxy little control tower and the nearby wooden shack - the Touchdown Cafe - that served hot drinks and a variety of filled rolls. There were a couple of local flyers sitting at one of the tables outside, men I knew well, and they lifted their mugs in salute when I waved.

Harald was already circling the Mustang, pausing beside the nose and reaching up to run his fingers across the spinner. Last year, Adam had commissioned Ralph to research the original paint scheme for our Mustang, and after some debate the pair of them had settled on leaving the fuselage and wings a bare metal silver. The rudder and the spinner were painted in bright red, while the panel on top of the long nose had been finished in matt green. The panel extended from the propeller to the front of the cockpit, shielding the pilot from the lethal effects of dazzle. In its very restraint, the colour scheme looked impressive, and I especially liked the way that most of the aircraft had stayed unpainted. A silver fish, I thought. Sleek. Agile. And almost impossible to catch.

Dave joined Harald and the pair of them completed a circuit of the aeroplane before pausing again, this time to stoop beneath one wing and peer up into the wheel well. I hung back a little, fiddling with the zip on my flying suit, trying to ignore the churning in my stomach. Now that the time had arrived for me to actually fly the plane, every other consideration had fallen away. I’d forgiven Harald for barging into a very special Sunday and being so bossy. I no longer cared whether or not I was in the mood. It didn’t even bother me that I’d left most of Andrea’s wonderful roast and forgone a bottle of my favourite wine. All that mattered now was doing myself, and Adam, justice. The Mustang would ask everything of me. I was determined not to fail.

Harald and Dave were back within earshot. As ever it was technical chatter, boys’ talk about some stage or other in Dave’s rebuild. Harald wanted to know how Dave had come up with the pipe runs in the wheel wells, the big bays beneath the wings they’d just been inspecting. I dimly remembered Dave once having a similar conversation with Adam. Adam’s grasp of technical detail had been sketchy, to say the least, but Harald was word-perfect, and I listened to the two men talking about B nuts, and sleeves, and the hydraulic advantages of right-angled bends. For this very reason, Harald had won Dave’s respect from the moment they first met, and they barely acknowledged my presence as I joined them beside the cockpit.

They were talking about the dual conversion now, Adam’s decision to ask Dave to make room for another body in the cockpit. This had meant, amongst a million other things, extending the bubble canopy backwards.

Harald was running his fingers along the groove where the retractable canopy seated on to the fuselage.

‘
We had some problems,
’
he said, ‘back in the States.’

‘
You did?’ I’d rarely seen Dave so animated.

‘
Yep, some guys said we’d foul up the airflow back over the rudder, especially when we rigged for landing. Thought so myself, as a matter of fact.’

‘
So what happened?’

‘
Nothing.’ Harald threw him a grin. ‘The tail comes down easy, same as ever. Maybe you have to work a little harder keeping her in a straight line, but nothing fancy, no real heroics.’ Harald at last turned to me. ‘Dave’s been filling me in on the maintenance side. He was working on the engine last week and he found a bit of stem wear on a couple of the valves. He’s replaced the head and bank assemblies so there shouldn’t be a problem. Give her sixty-one inches boost and auto-rich for take-off. You’ll need three thousand r.p.m. on the dial. Climb is forty-six inches. Cruise, twenty-two hundred and thirty-two in auto-lean. Rein her that tight, and we’ll still be looking at two eighty true up at twelve thou.’

Dave nodded in approval. I studied my nails. I’d been through scenes like this before, bludgeoned and bullied by men determined to show off their technical prowess. As a prelude to one of the most important take-offs in my flying career, it was deeply unpromising.

Harald was looking at me, waiting for a response.

‘
You copy that?’

‘
No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t. But twelve thousand feet sounds optimistic’

‘
Why?’

‘
Above ten and a half thousand, you’re in airways.’

The two men exchanged glances, and Dave, at least, had the grace to look rueful. I knew they couldn’t argue with the facts. One of the big attractions of the Isle of Wight for private pilots is the amount of unrestricted airspace. To be able to fly where you like, up to 10,500 feet, is pretty rare in the south of England but above this altitude a different set of rules applies. The major commercial north-south airway was no place for a Mustang with a first-time pilot at the controls.

Feeling a little better, I followed Harald up on to the wing. Before I strapped myself to my parachute and harnessed up, he wanted to talk me through the controls. I stepped carefully over the combing around the front cockpit and settled myself into the bucket seat. Wherever possible, Adam had wanted to maintain the original military feel of the aircraft - an obvious attraction for our overseas veterans - and with one or two modifications Dave had left everything the way the Americans had designed it. There was no padding, no upholstery, no fancy touches. Under my feet, the floor was of plain wood, with steel scuff plates beneath the rudder pedals, and the instrument panel still had the heavy yellow band that separated the key blind-flying instruments from the other dials that registered r.p.m., and oil pressure, and all the other read-outs from the engine.

I flexed my arms sideways and wriggled my bottom into the seat. Ralph had always told me how spoilt the Mustang pilots had been for space, and now - on the verge of flying the thing - I knew exactly what he meant. Harald was beside me, squatting on the wing. About a hundred metres away, beyond the Touchdown Cafe, I could see Andrea talking to the driver of a blue BMW.

‘
Wing flap lever… carb air controls… rudder trim tab… aileron trim tabs… throttle quadrant… friction nut… prop control… landing gear handle…’ I followed Harald’s hand up the left side of the cockpit. When he got to the end, I made him repeat it all over again, then a third time while I followed his hand with mine, back and forth, up and down, touch for touch. He reached across and we did the same down the starboard side of the cockpit, my right hand memorising the shape of each control while I kept my eyes fixed on the instruments, just the way Adam had taught me on the Moth and the Harvard.

After a while, at my insistence, Harald would name a particular control and I’d find it, my eyes shut this time, totally blind. We played this game until I was touch-perfect. With Dave back in the hangar, Harald was infinitely more patient and I think my thoroughness, my determination not to cut corners, must have impressed him, because at the end of it he gave me a little peck on the cheek.

‘
You did fine,’ he said softly, ‘just fine. Sorry if I frightened you before.’

‘
You didn’t frighten me.’ It was my turn to smile. ‘Bored, yes. Not frightened.’

Dave came out with the parachutes. We jumped down and struggled into the harnesses, taking it in turns to check for adjustments. Andrea was back with her camera and she insisted on taking a shot of the two of us with the Mustang in the background. Harald hated having his photo taken - I’d noticed this before - and Andrea had used up half the reel before he consented to put his arm round me. Close to, he felt stiff and a little bit embarrassed, though when I told him to relax, he laughed.

‘
That’s my line, Ellie,’ he said, shepherding me back towards the aircraft.

Harald stood on the wing again while I strapped in. Once the harness was tight and he’d checked it, he did a final walk-round, paying special attention to the control surfaces, the big flaps and
ailerons
on the
main
wing
and
then
the smaller elevators
on the tailplane. From up in the cockpit, I tried to follow his progress but the shoulder straps constrained me and I couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like in combat. Just looking ahead was enough of a problem. With the fuselage resting on the tail wheel, and the long, long nose stretching away to the propeller, I hadn’t a clue what lay in front of us. The smell was familiar, though, from my trips with Adam. It was a curious smell, the scent of the happiest bits of my marriage, a gleefully abandoned mix of hot oil, sweat and all the nervous anticipation that goes with a 1,500 horsepower Merlin engine and that wonderfully blunt defiance of gravity.