Permissible Limits (34 page)

‘
Do you have a bathroom?’ I enquired. ‘Only I’d like a little wash before we head back.’

We didn’t, of course, leave. The rain was already lashing at the mullioned windows and there was absolutely no question of getting the Moth airborne, let alone finding our way back across the Channel. Instead, at Harald’s insistence, we folded up the maps and trooped downstairs for tea.

Over scones and clotted cream, Harald was infinitely better behaved, filling me in with details about the kind of schedule he’d planned with the Mustang, baiting each successive week with some new enticement. How I’d learn to cope with abrupt or radical stall departures. How I’d be able to interpret the merest tremor in the airframe. How I’d be flying deeper and deeper into the very corners of the Mustang’s performance envelope and be able to come out with a smile on my face.

‘
You fight like you train.’ Harald was talking to Jamie. ‘You ever hear that?’ Jamie said he hadn’t. Harald shook his head. ‘Too bad. It’s what the old-time fighter pilots used to say. Stretch yourself and stretch the airplane. Do it till it’s second nature. Do it until you’re
wearing
the goddamn ship. Then, when it matters, it’ll look after you. Hey…’ he leaned forward, ‘… I’ll give you an example. Peacetime. Not wartime.’ He looked in my direction, gesturing me closer to the table, holding both hands flat, palms down over the china pots of strawberry jam. ‘You’re flying some display with your wingman. You both lay down one of those dazzling airshow strafing passes. Then you want to bring her around in a pretty big hurry so you pull hard in the break and there’s just a flicker of airframe buffet and then - wham - you’re snap inverted and everything’s upside down because - hey - you’re pointing at the ground. Well?’ He sat back and favoured me with one of his rare smiles. ‘What do you do?’

Jamie was open-mouthed. I shook my head and said I didn’t know. I was still staring at his hands as he went through the manoeuvre again, determined to milk the story of the last drop of tension. Where had I seen this body language before? The hands? The smile? The face tilted up in triumph as the Mustang plunged earthwards?

‘
Pass,’ I said for a second time when he asked me what I’d do. ‘Just listening to you terrifies me.’

‘
But that’s the point, Ellie, that’s the point exactly. It needn’t terrify you. Not if you do it the way I’ll be showing you. Not if you
train
right.’

I nodded, only half-hearing him, sitting back in my chair while he went through some other manoeuvre with Jamie, weaving his hands left and right, posing fresh problems for himself and his wingman. The image had come back to me now, the memory of where I’d seen these gestures before.

It had been at Ralph’s place, the night he’d shown me the photos of Karel Brokenka, the Czech pilot who’d downed the Me109. Brokenka had been standing on the tarmac beside his Mustang, newly returned from some sortie or other, and he’d been telling the story precisely the same way, hands outstretched, one flattened palm chasing the other.

Now I looked at Harald afresh, wondering for the first time exactly how far his flying experience extended. As a businessman, according to Dennis Wetherall, he kept dangerous company. Arms-dealers, I assumed, could scarcely do otherwise. But what if Harald was infinitely more hands-on than even Dennis had imagined? What if he’d been up there, at the cutting edge, doing what Ralph had done? What Karel Brokenka had done? What if all this hot flying wasn’t entirely for the benefit of umpteen thousand punters at some Florida airshow? What then?

In truth, I didn’t know the answer, and there was no way I was going to find out over tea and scones, but the question continued to haunt me and the more I listened to Harald impressing Jamie with his Mustang stories, the more I remembered Ralph musing about what it took to become a top-scoring fighter ace.

These men were ruthless, he’d said, and even a little mad. They suffered tunnel vision. They thought of nothing but the next kill. It wasn’t a question of flesh and blood, of inflicting anything as mundane as pain. It was just an overwhelming determination to engage your opponent, to out-fly him, and out-turn him, and out-dive him, and then come in so close, so tight, so intimate, that there was absolutely no possibility of squeezing the trigger and missing. What happened next - whether he lived or died, got horribly burned or survived intact - was of absolutely no consequence. The point of that glorious moment was getting back, and shedding the parachute harness, and standing beside your aeroplane while your buddies gathered round and you extended each hand, explaining - second by second - exactly the way it had been. Another kill. Another downed Me109 to join the little frieze of swastikas below the cockpit hood.

Impressive? Compelling? Brave? I didn’t know. But listening to Harald, that stormy afternoon in the hotel outside St Helier, I recognised all too clearly the authentic voice of the real Mustang pilots and for the first time the thought of the aircraft - its shape, its sound, its silhouette - froze my blood. Not, after all, a plaything, a pretty relic of some half-forgotten war, but a killing machine, a predator, as effective now as the day Karel Brokenka bloodied her. Last year, some time, Adam had taped a warning to himself on the dashboard in the front cockpit. The warning read
permissible limits
. Was this what he’d meant? Had he, like me, listened to Harald Meyler?

I tried to explore these thoughts with Jamie in the taxi back to the airport but, unusually, he didn’t seem in the mood to listen. He was sitting in the front alongside the driver and when I leaned forward, telling him about the photos Ralph had shown me, he simply nodded, staring out through the blurry windscreen. The weather, if anything, had got worse, and the wind was lashing at the stands of elm and oak beside the road. On the phone, from the hotel, I’d booked a couple of seats on the early-evening Air UK flight back to Southampton, accepting Harald’s offer to return the Moth when the weather cheered up, but now I was beginning to wonder whether even the big turbo-prop would be able to cope.

When we got to the airport, it turned out I was right. There was a small crowd of passengers around the Air UK desk. Most of them looked relieved.

‘
Delayed or cancelled?’ I asked the ticketing girl.

‘
Delayed for now,’ she said. ‘But to be honest I think you’ve had it. The next three or four hours are going to be awful and tomorrow’s not looking much better.’

I glanced at Jamie. He hadn’t been listening.

‘
We’re marooned,’ I told him. ‘Harald was right. We should have stayed at home.’

The girl behind the desk had some accommodation vouchers. The airline had a discount deal with a nearby hotel and we were welcome to take advantage of it. When I asked Jamie what he wanted to do, he shrugged.

‘
Looks like we’re stuck,’ he muttered.

I agreed there was no option. While the girl hunted for the vouchers, Jamie wandered off.

‘
You’re lucky.’ The girl had found the last of the vouchers. ‘We’ve had a bit of a run.’

‘
Should I phone up? Make sure they’ve got a room?’

‘
Good idea.’ She glanced at my ticket and made a note of my name. ‘They do good seafood. Lovely mussels.’

I phoned from a call box across from the ticketing desk. When I got through to the hotel, the receptionist had one room left.

‘
It’s a twin,’ she said. ‘En suite.’

I was watching Jamie. He was standing in the airport bookshop, thumbing his way through a cycling magazine. There was something about him that told me he’d speared in. The smile had gone. The spark. When he looked up and caught my eye across the concourse he ducked his head again, as if he didn’t want the attention.

The receptionist was asking for a decision about the room. She had some more calls waiting.

‘
I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘Expect us in a couple of hours.’

We took another taxi and let the driver drop us at a pub he’d recommended. It was nearly seven o’clock. The pub was empty, a dispiriting roadhouse with appalling decor that must have been run by the taxi-driver’s brother. Jamie drank Guinness. I had a glass of lukewarm white wine. We shared a couple of packets of crisps, not saying very much. At length I reached for a beer mat and slipped it gently over the top of Jamie’s pint. The last month or so had earned me the right to be candid.

‘
What’s the matter?’ I asked him. ‘Tell me.’

Jamie’s a tall lad, well over six foot, but the last couple of hours seemed to have physically diminished him. He was almost slumped over his Guinness. He didn’t look up.

‘
Nothing,’ he muttered.

‘
Come on. There is. I can tell.’

Jamie shook his head. Whatever had upset him, whatever had happened, he was in no mood to talk about it.

‘
Hey.’ I grinned at him, a gesture of solidarity. We were buddies, partners in a wild adventure. I’d already told him how well he’d done on the way over, but even this hadn’t lifted his spirits. Now I tried again. ‘It was a wonderful landing,’ I told him for the umpteenth time. ‘The Moth’s a swine on hardened runways.’

‘
I was lucky,’ he grunted. ‘Any other day I’d have messed it up.’

‘
Why do you say that?’

‘
I dunno.’ he shrugged. ‘It just felt right, that’s all.’

‘
This morning?’

‘
Yes.’ He began to stir, a flicker of the old Jamie. ‘I was really looking forward to the flight back. Next week. All that.’

He sat back on the banquette, looking me in the eye, the rest of it unsaid. This morning, back at Sandown, we’d mapped out the next steps in his flying education. Soon, if he was to head for a Private Pilot’s Licence, I’d have to hand him over to a qualified instructor. Before that, though, I wanted to see him take the Moth up by himself. Wednesday happened to be the day we’d ringed for his first solo flight. Now, thanks to Harald, Wednesday was off.

‘
It’s Florida, isn’t it? Me doing my thing?’

‘
No.’ He shook his head again. ‘Not at all.’

‘
You don’t mind?’

‘
How can I? You said it yourself. It’s the chance of a lifetime. Thirty-five hours in someone else’s Mustang? You’d be daft to turn it down.’

‘
So it’s not a problem?’

‘
Not Florida, no. Not the Mustang, either.’

One of the things I loved about Jamie wasn’t simply his honesty but the gift he had for softening the more brutal truths. Now he could scarcely have been more direct, yet even so he was leaving it to me to draw the obvious conclusion.

‘
It’s Harald? You’re upset about Harald?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Why?
His face twisted into what might have been a smile. ‘Why am I pissed off that you’re spending six weeks with another man? Why am I pissed off that he’s wealthy? And unattached? And owns half the warbirds in the world? Why am I pissed off that he obviously fancies you? Can’t wait to get you out there? And why, most of all, am I pissed off that I haven’t got any rights here? Not one?’

Jamie very rarely made speeches.
I
fought the temptation to
applaud.

‘
Rights?’ Deep down I felt immensely pleased. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘
No, you don’t. And the really sick thing is I haven’t even got the right to explain.’

I leaned forward over the table. I’d mistaken anger for something else, something far gentler, and I’d got it badly wrong. Jamie was seriously upset.

‘
Why not try?’ I suggested. ‘Why not try and explain?’

I touched him lightly on the hand. He withdrew it at once, an instinctive reflex action, as if I’d scalded him.

‘
Don’t,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘
I’m sorry. I was only -’

‘
It doesn’t matter.’ He tipped the beer mat off the Guinness and took a long, deep pull, avoiding my eyes. Ralph, I thought. His murmured plea when we’d been talking a week or so back. Be gentle with the boy. Don’t add to the hurt.

‘
For the record,’ I said quietly, ‘there’s nothing between Harald and me. We’re good friends. He’s been more than kind. Without him, I’d have been in a terrible mess. But that’s where it ends. He knows it and I know it.’

‘
I don’t believe you.’

‘
It’s true. He’s fifty-five, Jamie. At that age you get wiser. You accept things. You know what’s possible and what’s not.’