Permissible Limits (37 page)

The rest of the flight passed in near-silence. Harald was busy juggling radio frequencies most of the time, hopscotching from controller to controller as we droned south-west towards the Gulf Coast. Even at 5,000 feet the heat haze blanketed the ground beneath us, blurring the scatter of townships that dotted the landscape. The terrain was flat here, all of it cultivated, the huge fields parcelled together by long, thin ribbons of road. From time to time, the sun would splinter briefly on stretches of water, and twice I saw big lakes off to the east, a dull gunmetal grey, not at all the way I’d imagined the Sunshine State.

After about half an hour, Harald tapped me on the arm. Exhaustion, and the heat of the sun through the perspex, had made me drowsy.

‘
Ahead there, look.’

I followed his pointing finger. Through the blur of the propeller I could see the dark mass of an approaching city. The city straddled the mouth of a river and beyond the high-rise office blocks of the downtown area I could just make out the long curl of an offshore island. The water here was very different, a brilliant blue, and Harald began to lose height, dipping a wing to give me a grandstand view as we followed the river into the heart of the city.

‘
Fort Myers,’ Harald grunted. ‘I’ll give you the tour later.’

‘
You live near here?’

‘
Thirty miles inland.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I thought we’d take a look at the Gulf first.’

We were over open water now, closing on the offshore island, and I gazed down, marvelling at the whiteness of the sand against the deep blue of the ocean. The coast here had been highly developed, a waterside jigsaw of apartment blocks, marinas and shopping complexes, and I listened to Harald describing just how the area had exploded in recent years. The way he tallied the statistics - highest per capita boat ownership, richest population profile - didn’t sound the least bit enthusiastic and I was still wondering exactly why he’d chosen this place as home when he pulled the Cessna into a tight
180
-
degree turn and headed back inland. Minutes later, much lower, the sprawl of houses and backyard pools had given way once again to an
endless
expanse of fields. The
sight
of a
line
of
one
of
those
huge
irrigation sprinklers throwing out long ropes of water made me think quite suddenly of Jamie. He’d just installed something infinitely smaller in the garden at Mapledurcombe and only a couple of days ago I’d watched him showing it off to Andrea.

A couple of days ago? Jamie? I shut my eyes a moment, squeezing hard, determined not to be swamped again. I’d thought of him nonstop for most of the way over, but now was the time to concentrate on this new chapter in my life. I’d never before set foot in the States. I’d never before been offered any flying remotely as exciting as the Mustang. Unless I got myself back into some kind of mental shape, I was in danger, in Adam’s phrase, of spinning in. Spinning in, very definitely, was not on my agenda. Apart from anything else, it would probably kill me.

A change in the engine note opened my eyes again. We were down below a thousand feet, easing in towards a touchdown on what I assumed was the local municipal airfield. We were landing to the south-west and Harald had put on a pair of battered aviator sunglasses.

‘
Your place is near here?’

‘
My place
is
here.’

I looked again. The runway, fully paved, couldn’t have been less than a mile long. Taxiways at either end led to a couple of hangars. One of them looked big enough to take a medium-sized jetliner. The doors of the other one, not much smaller, were open and as we got lower and the angle flattened I could see a cluster of familiar shapes inside. At least three Mustangs. A couple of Harvards. A Yak without an engine cowling. And a bigger two-engined transport plane called a Dakota. I’d seen them before at airshows with Adam. The beat of their engines was, according to my late husband, the sweetest sound on God’s earth.

Harald was hauling back on the control yoke, juggling the flaps against a modest crosswind. When he finally wheeled the Cessna on to the racing tarmac, I barely felt the bump.

‘
What do you use those for?’

I’d seen three white lines painted across the runway, the last one a foot or so beyond a tangle of rubber scorch marks from previous landings. Harald was toe-ending the brakes and cleaning up the control surfaces.

‘
Tell you later,’ he said. ‘It’s a game we sometimes play.’

‘
Game?’

‘
Yeah.’ For the first time I sensed the grin was spontaneous. ‘Welcome to Standfast.’

We taxied to the apron in front of the smaller of the two hangars. An ancient jeep came bouncing across the grass towards us. In the distance, surrounded by palm trees, I could see the long white outline of what looked like a house.

The jeep pulled up beside the Cessna. The man at the wheel was wearing an old army shirt, the sleeves rolled up over a pair of brawny arms. He threw Harald a lazy salute and turned off the engine. Harald opened his door and in the sudden silence I could hear the sharp metallic clang of someone at work with a hammer. It came from inside the hangar, each blow echoing for a second or two.

The driver of the jeep was still looking at Harald. He was a big man, tall, broad-shouldered, with a tight, greying crew cut and a deeply tanned face. Harald had taken his glasses off. The hot wind across the airfield ruffled his hair. He nodded towards the hangar.

‘
How’s it shaping?’

‘
Fine. Enrique says he’ll have it done by sundown.’

‘
And the FAA guy? He phoned back?’

‘
Sure, he’s talking mid-May. I told him we’d need a coupla days’ notice.’ Harald turned to me. ‘You recall that 109 I mentioned?’

I frowned, trying to place the conversation. Then I remembered that Harald was doing some heavy restoration on an old Messerschmitt. As soon as it was airworthy, he planned to ship it to Europe.

‘
The Fighter Meet,’ I said brightly, ‘September.’

‘
That’s right. Care to take a look?’

Harald introduced me to the driver of the jeep and all three of us walked over to the hangar. The driver’s name was Chuck Beatty. He had a wonderful Southern accent and none of Harald’s reserve. By the time we were standing inside the cool of the hangar, I’d practically told him my life history.

‘
Mapledurcombe?’ He was running one huge hand through his grizzled hair. ‘What kinda damn name is that?’

Before I had a chance to tell him, Harald was escorting me across to the far corner of the hangar where a couple of mechanics were working on the Messerschmitt. I was struck at once by how small it was, almost dainty. The nearby Mustang, with its broad undercarriage, underslung radiator and long silver snout, looked twice the plane.

Harald was questioning one of the mechanics in Spanish. He and Harald were crouched beneath the exposed engine, Harald nodding while the mechanic’s torch mapped the tangle of pipes. At length Harald emerged, standing upright beside the cockpit.

‘
We had
a
coolant problem,’ he
explained. ‘Enrique’s
fixed it though, so we’re back on schedule.’

‘
For what?’

‘
Certification. An inspector comes down from Atlanta. These guys show no mercy. The smallest glitch -’ He drew a forefinger across his throat.

I raised a dutiful smile, only half-listening. Something on the Messerschmitt had caught my attention. The tape sealing the mouth of the cannon on the nearside wing had been shredded and there were scorch marks on the bare unpainted metal of the wing’s upper surface behind it.

‘
What happened there?’

Harald followed my pointing finger. Harald looked, if anything, embarrassed.

‘
First coat of primer goes on at the weekend. Second and third coats Tuesday and Thursday. By the time the FAA guy flies in, she’ll be back in full camouflage.’

‘
I meant the black marks. There. You can see them.’

I stepped across and ran my finger over the blemishes. The metal felt faintly greasy to the touch. By the time I turned round again, Harald was bent over an open wooden box. There was a metallic slithering noise and as I watched he pulled out a long belt of ammunition. There must have been hundreds of shells, each one seated in its shiny brass casing, the lead nose tipped in red.

‘
Twenty-millimetre cannon.’ Harald nodded at the Messerschmitt. ‘Standard issue on the 109G.’

I was still staring at the ammunition belt. The shells seemed so sleek, so beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

‘
And they’re real? Live?’ My fingers found what was left of the tape over the mouth of the cannon. ‘You’ve used them? Tried them out?’

‘
Of course.’ Harald sounded amused. ‘How else do we test the guns?’

‘
But no one…’ I shrugged, feeling hopelessly naive,’… minds?’

‘
Minds?’ It was Chuck’s turn. He was laughing. ‘In the land of the free, ma’am?
Minds?
‘

Afterwards, Chuck drove us to the house. I sat in the back of the jeep, hanging on for dear life as we weaved
and
bumped over the parched grass. I couldn’t get the image of the cannon shells out of my head. What were they doing there? Why on earth would anyone want to fly around with belts of live ammunition? Crossing the runway, I thought of asking him but decided against it. Sooner or later, I knew full well that Harald would tell me anyway. One of the reasons he’d got me here, I’d decided, was to put me wise about real flying.

The house was even bigger than I’d thought, a low, white, wooden-framed structure built around three sides of an inner courtyard. A shallow-pitched tiled roof overhung the veranda at the front and the slim fluted pillars that supported the roof lent the place a slightly colonial feel. With a couple of wicker chairs and a servant or two, I might have stepped into an outpost of the Raj.

Chuck was lifting my bags out of the back of the jeep. I joined him on the newly surfaced drive, brushing myself down, still looking at the house. At the end of a line of garages stood a flagpole, and at the top I thought I recognised the limp folds of the Confederate flag.

‘
Welcome to the Casa Blanca.’

I turned round, shielding my eyes against the sun. Harald was behind the wheel.

‘
You call it the White House?’

‘
Sure.’ He nodded. ‘You speak Spanish?’

‘
A little. We learned it at school.’

‘
De verdad?
‘

‘
Si.
’

Harald looked at me for a moment, his face for once betraying his surprise, then he said that he had to fly again. He’d be back before dark. Later, over a meal, we’d all have a proper chance to talk. I nodded and began to thank him for meeting me and flying me down but he waved my little speech away, pumping the accelerator and pulling the jeep into a tight turn. On the back, a line of stencilled white letters read
Standfast Inc.

‘
You coming in, ma’am?’

I followed Chuck into the house. After the heat outside, the air-conditioning was a huge relief. Chuck led the way through a maze of rooms, cool parquet floors patterned by sunshine through the half-shuttered windows. There were pictures everywhere, mostly of aeroplanes, and one or two really nice pieces of low-slung bamboo furniture, but the place had a sparse, almost formal look to it, mostly
- I
think - because of the lack of clutter. Nothing ever seemed to have happened here. No one had half-read
a
newspaper, or half-finished
a
snack or a cup of tea, or paused for any one of those little self-indulgences that dot most people’s working day. In this respect, the house felt empty and austere and a little bit intimidating, and it was a relief when I saw Chuck come to an abrupt stop, rap lightly on a door and then step aside to let me through.