Permissible Limits (23 page)

I felt the aircraft sink a little as Harald and Dave clambered up to the rear cockpit. Like Adam, that first time he took me up in the Moth, Harald was insisting that I ride in the front. Not only would this offer me a seat in the dress circle but it would give me my first taste of going through the start-up procedures. Only from the front could the engine be primed and fired.

Harald was making himself comfortable behind me while Dave checked his harness. Seconds later, I was listening to Harald’s voice in my earphones.

‘
I’m gonna talk you through the pre-start,’ he said, ‘just the way they did it during the war. Pretend you’re a rookie out of elementary training. No need to memorise anything. We’ll go through it again later.’

I muttered assent and followed him as he took me through the checks. Battery on. Flaps up. Carb heat to Cold Air. Aileron trim zero degrees. Elevator trim zero degrees. Rudder trim six degrees right. The list went on and on and as my hands flew round the cockpit I couldn’t help thinking about Adam. He used to do this too. The same mantra. The same invocation. Mixture. Prop. Throttle. Gear. Oh Lord, be good to us. Finally, Harald broke off.

‘
OK,’ he murmured. ‘So now you light the fire.’

I heard him calling, ‘Clear prop,’ and I saw Dave raise his thumb. On Harald’s cue, my finger found the priming pump and then the starter switch. The big four-bladed propeller began to turn very slowly, no coughs, no splutters, no smoke. I’d been here before, with the Moth and the Harvard. Probably underprimed, I thought.

Harald came through on the intercom.

‘
Fuel and mags are on,’ he said. ‘Fuel pressure’s good so try a coupla extra seconds priming. Watch out for flooding, though.’

He called, ‘Clear prop’ again, and I went through the start-up procedure for a second time. The propeller began to revolve, rocking the aircraft on its undercarriage. Suddenly there was a puff of smoke, and then another, and then the engine burst into life and the propeller blurred in front of me. Harald guided me to the lever beneath the throttle quadrant. I moved it from Idle Cut-Off to Rich and then settled deeper into my seat, scanning the instruments, shutting away the ghost of Adam. The oil pressure began to rise; r.p.m. flickered a fraction over 900, then slowly increased to 1,300.

‘
Ready to taxi?’

‘
Fine by me,’ I said. ‘Just take care of my baby.’

I heard Harald talking to the tower. They gave him permission to taxi and I watched Dave ducking beneath the wing to pull the chocks away. The throaty beat of the engine rose, then Harald released the brakes and we began to move forward, bumping off the ridged concrete on to the cropped grass. Andrea was standing beside Dave. She had both hands over her ears and when I waved she grinned back, shouting something I couldn’t hear.

Harald’s voice again, giving me control.

‘
I’ll talk you through,’ he said. ‘You set?’

‘
I’m fine.’

‘
OK, first off, just check the brakes.’

I did what I was told. The lightest pressure on the tips of the rudder pedals brought the Mustang to a near-halt.

‘
Gently.’ I could hear the smile in Harald’s voice. ‘Now push the stick forward. That unlocks the tail wheel. You’re steering with the brakes, just like always.’

I eased the control stick forward through the neutral position and I felt the wheel lock disengage. The technique was just like the Harvard and the thought comforted me. Harald was right. I was no different, in essence, to the hundreds of young Americans who’d trodden exactly the same path, graduating from a biplane, through the sturdy old Harvard, to this sleek thoroughbred. They, like me, would doubtless have been sweating, though in their case the immediate future was infinitely bleaker. No matter what happened over the next hour or so, at least I’d never have to face an Me 109.

We were abreast of the control tower now, and behind the tinted glass I could see a couple of figures silhouetted against the light. One raised a hand and I abandoned the throttle long enough to wave back. There was nothing around us and I began to weave the aircraft left and right, scrolling big fat S shapes across the grass. With so much engine in front of me it was the only way to be sure about hidden obstacles.

I loosened my grip on the control stick and flexed my fingers. I was wearing skintight leather gloves, a lovely deep-green colour and deliciously sensitive. The gloves had been a Christmas present from
Adam, years
back,
and
I’d
treasured them ever since.

‘
Ts and Ps?’ It was Harald again.

Ts and Ps stands for temperatures and pressures. I quickly scanned the instruments, knowing how vital it was to keep an eye on the oil and coolant temperatures.

‘
Oil’s fifty-five degrees,’ I sang out. ‘Coolant eighty.’ Harald, of course, had a perfectly good set of duplicate instruments in the back but that wasn’t the point. This was a pupil-teacher relationship and it was my job to come up with the right answers. ‘Oil pressure’s seventy-five p.s.i.,’ I went on. ‘Hydraulic pressure a thousand.’

‘
Rad flap open?’

‘
Affirmative.’

‘
Fuel?’

‘
Left tank boost pump on.’

‘
OK, stop at the holding point.’

I leaned out of the canopy, feeling the hot breath of the exhaust against my cheek. The holding point was down the far end of the airfield, twenty metres or so from the threshold of the marked grass strip. As we zigzagged towards it, I realised that I was beginning to enjoy myself.

Earlier, before driving across to the hangar, Harald and I had confirmed the wind with the tower. This afternoon, as Harald had promised, it was nearly perfect, a gentle five knots a couple of degrees off due west. The runway at Sandown runs 05/23, a heading which gave us a whisper of crosswind but nothing to worry about. Cross-winds can be a problem for all aircraft, but in a taildragger like the Mustang, they can actually help. The Mustang swings to the left on take-off, a consequence of the clockwise rotation of the prop, so firm pressure on the right rudder pedal, slightly diluted to take account of the cross-wind, should do the trick.

We reached the holding point and I turned the Mustang into wind. Before take-off we always do an engine run-up, and today was no exception. I quickly checked the instruments again, following Harald’s quiet instructions. For the second time in five minutes it occurred to me that there was something almost religious about our little duet, a pattern of prompt and response that wouldn’t have been out of place in a church service. The Old Church at St Lawrence, I thought. The stone wall, and the wooden gate, and the jumble of ancient headstones beyond.

‘
Ts and Ps?’

‘
Fine.’

‘
Fuel?’

‘
OK.’

‘
R.p.m.?’

‘
Thirteen hundred set.’

‘
Prop lever?’

‘
Fully forward.’

‘
Feet on brakes?’

‘
Check.’

‘
Canopy closed?’

‘
Give me a moment.’

I wound the canopy forward and locked it shut, softening the cackle of the engine. The workload was heavier now and I was glad. No time for nerves. No time for fretting about what might go wrong.

‘
OK,’ I heard Harald say, ‘stick hard back. Now open the throttle. We’re looking for thirty inches’ boost.’

Inches are a measure of air pressure. Thirty inches happens to be the ambient - or atmospheric - pressure. For take-off, with the engine on full power, we’d need twice this, the extra pressure forcing the fuel into the hungry Merlin.

My left hand eased the throttle forward. The beat of the engine quickened and I felt the tail twitching around behind me. The r.p.m. climbed to 2,300 and I pushed a little harder on the brakes. Unrestrained, the aircraft would be off.

‘
Mags?’

I reached for the mag switches and cut them, one after the other, watching for the drop as I did so. Magnetos are a key link in the ignition chain. Without at least one, the engine won’t fire. I watched the needle sink on each of the mag dials. Left mag 50 r.p.m. drop, on again. Right mag 70 r.p.m. drop, on again. Exercise the prop; 2,300 to 2,000 r.p.m., twice.

‘
Good.’ I had Harald’s approval. ‘Throttle back to idle.’

The r.p.m. dropped to 800 and I opened the canopy again. One last lungful of God’s good air. Then we’ll go for it. With the engine idling, I thought I could hear birdsong. I looked sideways, down the line of the runway. Half a mile away, beside the cluster of parked aircraft in front of the tower, I saw a splash of yellow. Andrea was waiting. She’d have her camera raised, and maybe an admirer or two in tow, and later - sitting on the kitchen table back at Mapledurcombe -she’d doubtless tell me about her afternoon’s adventures. The image made me smile and I felt a sudden gust of affection, totally unexpected. This one was for her too. Not just for Adam.

Harald was calling for departure. The tower replied with an affirmative. We were to climb to five hundred feet, make a right turn out. No conflicting traffic. I closed my eyes a moment. I’d flown from this strip dozens and dozens of times, but never this tense, never this
aware, never with this absolute sense of focus. In
my
earphones, there
was a new noise, slightly tinny, and for a moment I thought we had a mechanical problem, then I realised it was Harald. He was whistling. I bent my head, trying to make out the tune, and abruptly he stopped.

‘ “
Battle Hymn of the Republic”,’ he murmured. ‘In case you were wondering.’

I grinned and thought of telling him to stick to the day job, but already he was running through the final check list. Twenty-degree flap. Mixture auto-rich. Cooling doors open. Hydraulic pressure 1,000 p.s.i. Harness tight and locked. Hood closed.

I reached up for the canopy one last time and wound it forward.

‘
Happy?’

‘
Delirious.’

‘
Good. Two on board, short field, you’re looking for sixty-one inches boost. Lift the tail at sixty m.p.h. Keep right rudder in. A hundred and five and she’ll fly.’ He paused. ‘I’m on the controls with you, Ellie. Make it a good one. And trust me.’

There was something almost plaintive in that last remark, something odd I couldn’t quite pin down, but I drove the thought into the very back of my mind, slipping the brakes again and hauling the Mustang on to the grass strip. With the nose occupying most of my forward vision I couldn’t see the white markers down the centre-line of the runway, but the tower and the Touchdown Cafe were exactly where they should be, and experience told me to trust my judgement.

I gave my harness one final tug, kissed the top of my left index finger (one of Adam’s superstitions), and then eased the throttle smoothly forward. The Mustang began to move, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Within seconds, I could feel the rudder biting on the airstream, correcting the left yaw. At 60 m.p.h., as instructed, I pushed the stick slowly forward and the tail began to rise. Suddenly, in front of me, I could see what was left of the runway, and the road beyond, and away in the distance the long, dark hump of St Boniface Down.

The bumping was beginning to ease now, cushioned by lift, and as the airspeed needle wound past 100 m.p.h., I eased the stick back, aware of the road flashing beneath us. Off the leash, the Mustang began to accelerate quickly and I maintained a modest rate of climb as the fields beneath began to form the jigsaw I knew so well.

‘
Gear,’ Harald prompted.

I reached for the undercarriage retract and heard the happy clunk of the wheels seating in the under-wing bays.

‘
Forty-six inches. Two thousand seven hundred r.p.m.’

My left hand returned to the throttle. I cut the boost back as smoothly as I could, and then retracted the flaps.

‘
Altitude?’

My eyes went to the altimeter. Nine hundred feet already. Shit. I glanced to my right, sweating again, only too aware of how quickly everything happened in this glorious aircraft. Five hundred feet was standard for the right-hand turn-out. Already we’d made twice that height. I nudged the stick to starboard, balancing the turn with a little right rudder. The Mustang responded like the horse of my dreams, dipping a wing, maintaining the climb. I increased the boost an inch or two, nervous of losing power in the turn, and drew a round of applause from Harald.