Round the Bend (8 page)

We went back to the office to talk turkey. Harry Ford got the secretary to come along to his office, a lean Scotsman called Taverner. He had been through my figures and gave the papers back to me, and then we talked about a hire purchase deal.

“How much could you pay in the way of a deposit, Mr. Cutter?” the secretary asked.

“A thousand pounds,” I said.

“That’s only twenty per cent of the cost of the aircraft. From the profits you show, you should be able to do better than that.”

“I’ve got to keep some liquid capital in the business,” I said. “The cost of flying out the Airtruck to Bahrein is one thing. I don’t think I can do more than that.”

“Mm. I think that leaves too much for your business to carry. Ye can’t pay off four thousand pounds in a year.”

“Why not? You see what I can make with just a Fox-Moth.”

“Aye,” Mr. Taverner said. “Ye’ve done very well, but you won’t go on like that. You’re paying no insurance for a start. Maybe that’s wise with just the Fox-Moth, and in any case, you’ve got away with it. But if we give you credit terms upon this Airtruck, you’ll have to insure it with a policy that we approve. That’s a bit off your profits.”

He paused. “But the big difference is going to be that from now on you’ve got to employ pilots and ground engineers. Up till now you’ve been doing everything yourself, and you’ve made close on two-thousand-five-hundred-pounds’ profit in six months. But you’ve taken no pay yourself. I’ll guess that you’ve been working like a horse and you’ve been making money at the rate of five thousand a year, and maybe you’re worth it. But it’s going to be different from now on.”

He turned to Ford. “What will he have to pay a pilot, working from Bahrein?”

“A thousand to twelve hundred.”

“And a ground engineer?”

“About eight hundred.”

The secretary turned to me. “Ye’ve got to have staff now, Mr. Cutter, with two aeroplanes, and that’s going to alter the whole picture. Put in the wages of yourself at fifteen hundred, and a pilot at twelve hundred, and a ground engineer at eight hundred, and there’s three thousand five hundred pounds added to your overhead expenses right away. I’m not saying that there’ll be no profit left, but I doubt, I doubt very much, if you can pay off four thousand pounds on an Airtruck within a year on the work you’ll do with it. It does not seem possible to me, or in two years either.” He paused. “Ye’ll not get the utilization with the larger aeroplane that you get with your Fox-Moth.”

“I agree,” said Ford. “All operators find the same thing. When you’re operating just one aeroplane, a charter service can look very promising. Directly you have to start in and employ a staff, the whole thing alters and the costs go leaping up. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.”

There was a pause.

“That may be,” I said. “This thing of mine is different.”

They smiled. “In what way?” Ford asked.

“If other operators go on the way you say, they must all be bloody well daft,” I said. “I can’t afford to go paying pilots twelve hundred a year. I’ve got a pilot flying the Fox-Moth for me now while I’m away, a darned good pilot, running the business side as well. Do you know what I’m paying him?”

“What?”

“Two hundred and fifty rupees a month,” I said. “That’s two hundred and twenty pounds a year.”

They stared at me. “With flying pay?”

I laughed shortly. “No. Two hundred and twenty pounds a year, flat.” I paused. “I’ve got a boy of sixteen cleaning down the aircraft. He’ll work up and be a ground engineer one day. Do you know what he gets? Thirty bob a month.” I snorted. “I’m not surprised that charter operators go broke right and left if they pay the wages that you say.”

They sat staring at me. Then Ford said, “Are these natives?”

“That’s right,” I said. “The pilot’s a Sikh. The boy’s an Arab.”

“Oh. Would you propose that this native pilot should fly the Airtruck?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“We’d have to think about that one, if you’re going to want credit terms on the sale. We should have an interest in the machine.”

“Think all you like,” I said, “so long as you do it quick. This Sikh I’ve got is an ex-officer of the Royal Indian Air Force, and he’s done over three hundred hours on Hurricanes without an accident, much of it operational flying. If your Airtruck’s so bloody difficult to fly that he’s not safe on it, I don’t know that we can go any further.”

Ford laughed. “You know I don’t mean that. Anybody could
fly an Airtruck. The proposal to employ a native pilot is a bit of a novelty, you know.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You’ve got to go on the record. If he’s got a record of safe flying and if he’s got a B licence, that’s good enough for me.”

“I suppose so. If the business grows, would you propose to employ more than one?”

“I’ll answer that in six months’ time,” I said. “If Gujar Singh is the success I think he will be, he’ll be the chief pilot, under me. In that case, any other pilots I take on may very well be Sikhs. I don’t see that there’d be any place in a set-up like that for British pilots at a thousand a year.”

Taverner asked, “What about the ground staff? Would you use Asiatic ground engineers for your maintenance?”

“I don’t know,” I said frankly. “That’s much more difficult than the pilots. I’m fully licensed as a ground engineer myself, A, B, C, and D. I can use Asiatic labour for a time, under my supervision. Then we’ll have to see. But I think by the time. I need them Asiatics will turn up. I had some working under me in Egypt during the war. They were all right.”

Harry Ford laughed. “You’re planning an air service staffed entirely by Wogs!”

I was a bit angry at that. “I call them Asiatics,” I replied. “If you want to sell an Airtruck you can quit calling my staff Wogs.”

“No offence meant, Mr. Cutter,” he said. “One uses these slang phrases.… I take it that the point you’re making is that by the use of native staff you can reduce your overheads to the point when you can bear the hire purchase cost of eighty per cent of an Airtruck spread over a year.”

I nodded. “That’s right. I can pay off the aircraft in a year, and still make money.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t want you to think that a native staff is solely a question of money,” I said slowly. “If I extend my operations, it will be in the direction of India, not towards Europe. Europe’s crowded out with charter operators already, all going broke together. There’s more scope for charter work as you go east. If I develop eastwards, then by using Asiatic pilots and ground engineers exclusively, I shall be
using the people of the countries that I want to do business with. That’s bound to make things easier.”

Taverner chipped in then, and we went over my prospective overheads in the light of the payments I would have to make for Asiatic staff, and the sum naturally came out a good bit better. They left me then to go off and have a talk about it by themselves, and when they came back they said, fifteen hundred down and the machine was mine. I stuck my heels in and refused to pay a penny more than twelve hundred, and when I left the works that evening the machine was mine for delivery in about ten days, subject to the completion of all the formalities.

I went to Southampton that night, and got home at about nine o’clock. There was no telephone at home, of course; I’d sent a telegram from the works to say that I was coming, but it was nearly six o’clock when we telephoned it and after delivery hours, so Ma hadn’t got it. I walked in at the street door and put my bag down. Ma was in the scullery, and when she heard the door go she called out, “That you, Alf?” She thought it was Dad.

I said, “It’s me, Ma—Tom!” She came rushing out and put her arms round me and kissed me, and ticked me off for not letting them know which day I was coming. And then she said, “My, Tom, you do look brown. How long have you got at home?”

“Only a week or two,” I said. “I’m getting a bigger aeroplane, and flying out again as soon as it’s ready.”

“Not bust yet?” she asked.

“Not quite,” I said. “Where’s Dad?”

“He stepped out to the Lion for his game of darts,” she said. “He should be back now, any minute.”

“Mind if I go down there and fetch him, Ma?”

She nodded. “He’ll like you to meet his friends, Bert Topp and Harry Burke, and Chandler. Don’t be more’n a quarter of an hour, Tom. I’ll start getting supper now.”

I went down to the pub, and there was Dad playing darts with Harry Burke. I said, “How do, Dad,” and he said, “How do, Tom,” and I told him I’d been home, and he told the barman to give me a pint, and went on with his game. The barman said, “Been out in the sun?” and I said, “Persian Gulf,” and he said, “Uh-huh,” and I sat and watched Dad going for the double at the
finish of the game. It was just as if I’d never been away at all, as if Bahrein and Gujar Singh, and Sharjah, and Yas Island were places and people I’d read about in a book.

I walked home with Dad when he’d finished the game, and told him something about what I’d been doing on the way. Back home when we sat down to the light supper that they had before going to bed, Ma asked me, “What’s it like out where you’re working, Tom? What does it all look like?” She paused. “Is it all palm trees and dates and that?”

“Not in the country,” I said. “Nothing grows outside the towns, because of the water. There’s no water at all. The land is desert-great flat stretches of sandy sort of earth, with maybe rocky hills or mountains here and there. All yellow and dried up under the sun. You get groves of date palms and greenery outside Bahrein and outside most towns, where they irrigate with water from wells.”

Dad said, “Sounds a bad sort of country.”

“I rather like it, Dad,” I said. “It gets hold of you, after a bit. It’s good for people—you don’t get any of the pansy boys out there. It can be lovely when you’re flying, too. Some places and in some lights, the desert goes a sort of rosy pink, all over, and then if you’re flying up a coast the sea can be a brilliant emerald green, or else a brilliant blue, with a strip of white surf all along the edge like a girl’s slip showing.”

“Ever had a forced landing in it and got stranded?” Dad asked,

I shook my head. “Not yet, and I don’t want one. I had to put down once because of a sandstorm, and sit it out in the cabin for five or six hours; then it got better and I took off and went on. I always take a petrol can of water in the aircraft.”

Ma said, “My …”

They wanted to know if I’d got anyone to help me, and I told them about Gujar Singh and Tarik. It was difficult, of course, to make them understand, however hard I was trying, however much they wanted to. Dad said,

“Like niggers, I suppose they’d be?”

I shook my head. “No, not like niggers. Gujar Singh’s an Indian.”

“Lascars are Indians, I think,” Dad said. He only knew the types he’d seen about the docks, of course.

“That’s right,” I said. “But this is a different sort of Indian. A better sort than lascars, more of an Army officer type.” I went on to describe what Gujar looked like, but I don’t know that a description of him really helped me in describing what I had come to feel; that our minds ran on similar tracks.

Ma said, “They’d be heathens, I suppose?”

The question worried me a bit, because I wanted her to like them. I wanted her to understand. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Both of them believe in God—just one God, not a lot of Gods. I suppose you’d call them heathens. They don’t believe in Jesus Christ as God—the Moslems think He was a prophet, just like Moses. But I must say, they seem to say their prayers very regular, which is more’n we do.”

Ma was trying her best. “They don’t go to church, I suppose?” she asked. “Just have heathen temples, like?”

“They’ve got their own places where they go to pray,” I said. “Friday is the big day, like our Sunday, when they all go to the mosque. Most businesses shut up shop on Friday, and the offices and the banks shut on Friday, too. We don’t work on Fridays, but we work on Sundays. They’re very particular about Fridays, and then of course, they’re always at their prayers. I told young Tarik after the first day, I said, ‘You do your praying in the lunch hour and after we knock off, lad—not in the time I pay you for.’ A chap in the radio set-up put me wise to that one. They’ll swing it on you if you let them. But then on your side, you’ve got to be reasonable and fix the hours of work so they can get their praying in.”

“Do you mean they go off to the mosque on a working day?” Dad asked.

I shook my head. “They can do it on any quiet little bit of ground, it seems. A Moslem has to say his prayers five times a day. What young Tarik does, he goes out on a little bit of flat ground just beside the hangar and he faces west, about in the direction of Mecca. That’s their holy city, where they go for pilgrimages. He takes off his shoes and stands up straight, and puts both hands up to his ears, and prays. Then he stands with his
arms folded in front of him and prays. Then he bends forwards with both hands on his knees, and prays. Then he goes down on hands and knees and puts his head on the ground, and prays. Then he sits down for a bit and thinks about it all, and then he starts in and goes through it all again. He goes on like that for about ten minutes, like doing physical jerks. Only you can’t laugh about it, Dad, when you see them at it. They take it all so serious, just like us in church. It means a lot to them.”

“Five times a day they go through all that?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Young Tarik’s hours are sort of fluid, ’cause there’s only just him there at present. He’s supposed to start at seven in the morning, and I must say he’s usually there on time. He works till nine, and then gets a break for a cup of tea or a bit to eat, and prayers. Starts again at nine-thirty and works till twelve, and gets an hour then for his dinner and prayers. Works from one to four-thirty, and knocks off for prayers. That makes an eight hour day. If he works over, then I give him a bit more at the end of the month.”

Ma said, “Seems like they’re not heathens at all, if they say their prayers that much.”

“They’re not Christians, Ma,” I said. “But honestly, I don’t think you could call them heathens, either. They believe in God all right.”