Permissible Limits (24 page)

‘
Ts and Ps?’ he murmured.

I scanned the instrument panel. Temperatures and pressures were fine. I looked out. We were over the middle of the island now. The visibility was crystal clear, a sure sign of an approaching front, and away to the north I could see the long finger of water that reached up to Southampton. We levelled off at 2,500 feet and I cut the power back to 2,200 r.p.m., making a gentle turn towards the west. Our airspeed had settled at 250 m.p.h. and I watched Tennyson Down slip by on the port side as we headed out across the Needles.

The one thing that Harald and I hadn’t discussed was where, exactly, we were going. We had fuel for at least an hour’s flying but if I was to stay in control I wasn’t keen to complicate my first outing with anything as ambitious as navigation. There was a full set of airways maps tucked into the pocket by my right hip. Adam always carried them, but it was all I could do at the moment to keep the aircraft trimmed and flying sweetly.

Way ahead, I could see the blue shadow of the Purbeck Hills and the startling white of the chalk cliffs beyond. The airspace south of this lovely corner of Dorset is a danger area, reserved for military use.

‘
Make a left,’ I heard Harald say. ‘One nine zero.’

I eased the stick to the left and then steadied the aircraft on the new heading, aware of how precise, how accurate my flying had to be. Fighter pilots stay alive by getting it exactly right, one hundred per cent of the time.

One nine zero was almost due south. We were en route to France.

‘
Take her up to three seventy.’

‘
You mean speed-wise?’

‘
Sure.’

Three hundred and seventy m.p.h.? I inched the prop and the throttle forward and - on Harald’s cue - adjusted the mixture to auto-rich. The needle on the airspeed indicator wound up past 350. At 370 m.p.h., as requested, I cut back. I’d never been so fast in my life,
not
in
my own aircraft, yet there was absolutely no sensation of
speed apart from the deafening clatter of the engine.

‘
New heading,’ Harald grunted. ‘Two seven zero.’

West again. I checked right. Way below us I could see one of the big oil tankers, inward bound for the refinery at Fawley, and for a moment I wondered if there was anyone on deck, anyone looking up, anyone who might be watching this little silver fish flashing overhead.

‘
See those clouds, Ellie? On the nose?’

I looked forward. Through the blur of the prop, I recognised the beginnings of the incoming front, a grey smudge on the horizon that signified a skirt of high cirrus. It looked an awfully long way away.

Harald again.

‘
OK, Ellie, here’s the plan. You climb above the cloud. I’m estimating eight thousand max. We’ll try a couple of landings. I’ll call the moves. Then we’ll go home.’

‘
Landings?’ I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

‘
Sure.’ I could hear him chuckling. ‘You’ve never tried this before? Landing on the tops of clouds? Hey…’

The front grew bigger in the windshield. I began to climb, maintaining speed. The power of the Mustang was awesome. You just turned it on. Like water from a tap, it seemed limitless.

All at once, the sea disappeared beneath us and I found myself amongst the tops of the clouds, shreds of thin grey vapour flashing past. I’d been right about 370 m.p.h. Once you got close to anything, it was incredibly fast.

At Harald’s prompting, I levelled out at 10,000 feet. The cloud rippled beneath us, like a newly laid carpet.

‘
Take the boost back to forty-six. You want the cooling flap on auto. Fuel-wise, go for the fullest tank.’

I did as I was told. Looking down, I estimated we had almost 2,000 feet between us and the top of the cloud.

‘
OK, bring her round till we’re downwind. You’re looking for zero one five.’

I banked the Mustang, harder this time, feeling the faintest shiver in the airframe.

‘
Good. Now chop the speed. Below two seventy-five you can take twenty degrees of flap.’

I eased the throttle back. The aircraft began to slow. When the airspeed hit 260, I selected twenty degrees of flap. I felt the airflow roughen and watched the speed fall off. At 160 m.p.h. Harald told me to lower the gear. I reached for the undercarriage lever and tried to push it out of the restraining gate. It felt very stiff. When I pushed harder, it refused to budge. I gave up.

‘
It won’t move,’ I told him.

Harald didn’t say a word. I told him again. Still nothing. I sought his face in the rearview mirror bolted to the apex of the windshield but all I could see was the top of his head. I couldn’t believe it. The bastard was hiding from me. Adam would never have done this. We’d have been down on the ground by now, settling into
omelettes fines herbes
and a decent helping of chips.

‘
Harald?’

‘
Sort it out, Ellie. Take your time.’

I hesitated. He sounded like he meant it, like it was some kind of test, and for a moment I wondered whether he’d planned it this way, something he and Dave might have cooked up, a deliberate glitch to stretch me to the limit. The clouds were getting closer. Miles ahead, beyond the front’s leading edge, I could see the long, low swell of the Isle of Wight.

I looked down at the undercarriage lever, wondering whether the lowering sequence had even begun. Just in case, I re-selected up, then I edged the lever out of the gate and pushed down again. The resistance was still there and it got stiffer and stiffer but I kept pushing, all the way down, until I heard two clunks and saw three little green lights winking at me. I’d done it. I’d passed the test. The undercarriage was down.

‘
Atta girl.’ Harald had come to life. ‘Left to base, full flap, speed one four zero.’

My breath was coming in shallow gasps. I was wet with sweat. I dipped a wing, shedding more speed, positioning the Mustang for the final turn on to our pretend runway. The cloud had become a blurry grey, racing past beneath us. Harald called finals. Over the make-believe perimeter fence, he wanted no m.p.h. My eyes were glued to the onrushing cloud. We were losing height nicely. I risked a quick look at the airspeed indicator. I’d never worked so hard in my life, no m.p.h. Perfect.

Suddenly we plunged into the cloud. All I could see was grey. Moisture was beading for an instant on the outside of the canopy before it shredded, torn sideways by the airflow. I fought the temptation to pull the stick back, to push the throttle forward, to claw our way back to the sunshine above.

Harald was pleased.

‘
Pretty nice, Ellie,’ he murmured. ‘Pretty damn nice.’

Seconds later, the aircraft still sinking, he took control. I heard the undercarriage retract and felt the aircraft respond as the power came back on. He flew the Mustang beautifully, instinctively, the way that Adam had flown it, and I sat back in the front seat, physically exhausted, happy to be a passenger for the rest of the flight.

South of the Isle of Wight, we did a brief series of aerobatics, nothing outrageous, a couple of loops, a single lazy roll, and a manoeuvre called a Cuban Eight that brought us racing in towards Ventnor at less than a thousand feet. I watched the little resort grow rapidly bigger, then Harald hauled back on the stick as the beach and the promenade flashed beneath us. I watched our shadow racing across the top of St Boniface Down, still dazed, and I braced myself for entry into the landing circuit for the airfield beyond, but Harald seemed to change his mind.

He banked the Mustang savagely to port, standing the aircraft on one wing. The force of the turn pulled at my face and limbs, and as the aircraft steadied I looked down again. Harald was slowing the plane, applying flap, and we began to lose height, stately now, all passion spent. I saw a road snaking through a village, then a valley shadowed by the late-afternoon sun, and a stand of trees greening the shoulder of a down. I tried to orientate myself, to visualise where we might be on the map.

Below us was a pond, and a scatter of farm buildings, then the ground seemed to come up to meet us and I braced myself a second time, thinking Harald must have got it wrong. He hadn’t. The ground fell away again, just as suddenly, and I found myself looking at a tiny church, half-hidden by trees, and a line of white headstones beside a hedge. I stared down at it, transfixed. The Old Church at St Lawrence. The secret I’d brought back at lunchtime.

‘
You mentioned it this morning,’ Harald murmured. ‘What a great, great way to say goodbye.’

After we’d landed, back at Sandown, we all shared a pot of tea at one of the tables outside the Touchdown Cafe.
Andrea
was burbling about her afternoon - the friends she’d made, the pictures she’d taken - and when she remembered to ask whether our little trip had gone well, I barely had the energy to nod.

‘
It was good,’ I told her. ‘It was very, very good.’

Later, before Harald helped Dave push the Mustang back inside our hangar, I had a chance to corner him alone. He was taking the Yak back to Jersey. He’d be leaving within the hour.

‘
I just want to say thank you.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘You’ll never know how much that meant to me.’

Harald nodded towards the Mustang.

‘
She’s a beauty,’ he said. ‘The sweetest ship I’ve ever flown.’

We said nothing for a moment or two. Then I reached out and touched his hand. He glanced round at me, surprised.

‘
I’d like you to fly her at the memorial service,’ I said. ‘Would you do that for me?’

He didn’t answer but looked away, across the airfield. Then he excused himself and walked across to the Yak, parked beside the Mustang. I watched him rummaging in the luggage compartment behind the rear seat. When he returned, he was carrying a black dustbin liner. He reached inside and pulled out an old green sports holdall. He offered it to me. It had the legend
Jaguar
on one side.

‘
My boys in the Channel picked it up yesterday,’ he said tonelessly. ‘There’s never gonna be a good time to give you this but I guess…’ He shook his head, visibly distressed, avoiding my eyes.

I took the sodden bag, holding it at arm’s length. It was still dripping.

‘
There was nothing else?’

‘
Nothing.’

‘
No wreckage?’

‘
Like I say, nothing.’

I nodded. The last time I’d seen the bag had been a couple of weeks ago when Adam had given it to me to mend. The zip had gone. I’d tried to fix it and failed.

‘
Look in the side pocket,’ Harald muttered. ‘Get it over with.’

Trembling now, I inserted my fingers in the wet lining. There was something plastic inside, a card of some kind. I pulled it out and turned it over. The card was American Express. The signature was Adam’s.

I looked up, offering Harald the bag. I wanted him to take it. I never wanted to see it again.

‘
Keep it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours, Ellie.’

We didn’t say anything for a long moment. Beside the Mustang, Dave was looking at us, curious. Harald came close and put his arms around me.

‘
Of course I’ll fly at the memorial service,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

Chapter eight

We held the memorial service three weeks later. My mother, as Andrea had predicted, flew up from the Falklands and Adam’s parents came over from Canada. We contacted as many friends and
other
relatives as we could and in the end there was just enough room in the tiny church to squash everybody in.

The service was simplicity itself. There were prayers, of course, and one of Adam’s fellow pilots from his Sea King days gave us a very funny account of his service career. We all recited the 23rd Psalm and Adam’s sister, who has a lovely voice, sang a French folk song that had never failed to move Adam to tears.

At the end of the service, the vicar - whose name, I now knew, was Douglas - gave a very brief address. He’d obviously done his homework, contacting various buddies whose phone numbers I’d supplied, and his tribute to Adam - warm, heartfelt, astonishingly accurate - was a memory that will stay with me for ever. For someone who’d never even met my husband, he seemed to have established an extraordinary rapport, and as he commended Adam’s soul to God, briefly turning to touch the parachute I’d laid on the altar, I wondered whether there wasn’t, after all, something in the phrase ‘life everlasting’. Adam, bless him, hadn’t gone. He was there, in that church; there, in that wonderful man’s closing address.