Beneath the Dover Sky

by Murray Pura

  “If Jane were among the schoolchildren in London or Liverpool, they would be merciless because she’s different.”

  “And that’s why she’s not among the schoolchildren in London or Liverpool!” snapped Libby. “That’s why we’re at Dover Sky and a tutor comes from Dover three days a week. How do I protect my daughter from her British grandparents?”

  Michael gripped her hand and put it to his lips. “We love her. She knows that.”

  “Of course we do.”

  “And the day will come when your mom and dad will too. I believe that.”

  “Darling, you believe anything. You’re always on the up and up.”

  “Ever since I met my English nurse during the war.”

  Her blue eyes lost their fire and softened. “Yes, that’s true. Ever since her.” She leaned her head against his chest and his arm went around her. “I expect you’re right. They’ll become proper grandparents one day. I just don’t know what it will take.”

  12

  August, 1927

  The Orkney Islands, northern Britain

  Ben Whitecross peered out of the cockpit at a black and yellow airplane also idling on the runway. It was the same kind of three-engined Fokker he was sitting in. “Von Zeltner again. Doesn’t that bloke ever give up?”

  Michael Woodhaven leaned over from his seat and looked back past Ben’s shoulder. “He probably wonders the same thing about us.”

  Ben glanced at his brother-in-law’s neck. “A bit flashy for an endurance race, don’t you think?”

  Michael patted the orange silk scarf. “Jane asked me never to take it off, so here it stays. You can always put on sunglasses if it’s too bright for you. I’m sure Ramsay had something for your pocket.”

  “He did.” Ben grinned and tugged out a large wooden soldier dressed as a fighter pilot, complete with goggles and a white scarf. “It does look like me, don’t you think?”

  “With its wooden head? You bet.”

  They both laughed and returned to checking the dials and gauges.

  “Oil looks good.” Ben tapped the face of one of the gauges. “Petrol is topped up.”

  “Well, it won’t be if they don’t get this show on the road. We’ve been idling for ten minutes already.”

  “Looks like something’s up.”

  A tall man in a long trench coat waved his arms. Another man beside him had a blue flag that he was unfurling.

  “Right. Here we go. We’re fourth in line. The Belgian is first, then the Dutch lad, then Zeltner, and then us. I’ve got the first leg to the Channel. After that it’s your stick.”

  Michael settled himself into his seat. “We’ll go over Dover Sky as we agreed?”

  “‘Course we will. Won’t cost us any time. The whole crew’ll be there except Catherine and Albrecht.”

  Michael checked the map on his knee. “No reason we can’t do a flyover of Tubingen. It’s within the flight path.”

  “I doubt they’ll be on the rooftop watching for us.”

  Michael shrugged. “I’ll do it anyway.”

  “It’ll probably be dark.”

  He shrugged again.

  “Our turn.” The man with the blue flag was waving it at them. Ben opened the throttle. “In any case, we can’t play cricket with the whole clan. Robbie’s still in Palestine, and we’d have to go well out of our way to fly over his head.”

  “Can’t have that. We should visit him after.”

  Ben grunted. “Could do.”

  “There’s Kipp in Morocco.”

  “African landfall’s Algeria, one country over. Then we land in Sierra Leone for our second leg. We’ll not see Kipp anymore than we’ll see Robbie.”

  Michael rustled around in a paper bag at his feet and pulled out a large ham sandwich. With a wink at Ben he bit into it.

  “Hey, mate!” Ben protested. “That’s for later.”

  Michael shook his head. “I’m famished.”

  The Fokker roared into the sky.

  Lord Preston paced back and forth in the library at Dover Sky.

  “Where are the children?” he suddenly asked Victoria.

  She put down her teacup. “With Harrison and Holly, of course.”

  He glanced over the faces in the room. “What about Caroline?”

  “On a stroll with Jane,” said Libby who was sitting next to Victoria.

  Edward had both arms along the back of a couch he was sprawled in. “Relax, Dad. The BBC will broadcast if there’s any news of the race. The planes were all there at Gibraltar.”

  “Two days ago. No news from Sierra Leone. Africa is the rough spot, Edward. None of them will have enough fuel.”

  “They’ve all strapped on extra containers of petrol they can release into the main tank if they need it.”

  Lady Preston’s hands were clasped tightly in her lap. “Do stop this pacing and fretting, William. You’re making me anxious. I was quite all right after you and Jeremy prayed an hour ago. Now you follow it up with your lion in the cage restlessness, and now I’m on pins and needles.”

  “Sorry, my dear. Forgive me.” He cocked his head. “What’s that?”

  Jeremy was sitting next to a radio that was housed in a cathedral-shaped wooden cabinet on four legs. He’d been listening to weather reports and music with the volume turned down. Hearing the broadcaster’s voice at the same time as Lord Preston, he turned a knob.

  “This is the BBC. We’ve heard by cable from colleagues at Cape Town Radio,” the announcer said.

  Outside the library windows that had been opened to let in the summer breeze and the salt air from the sea, a boy shouted, “I’m a plane! I’m Daddy.”

  “Two airplanes have landed. At the time the cable was sent to London from Cape Town, another aircraft was spotted approaching the landing site from the north and west.”

  “Vrooooom. Vroooooom.”

  “There are reports of at least one plane going into the sea as it followed the African coastline. Fishing vessels attempted to reach the aircraft before it sank, but they were unsuccessful. It remains unidentified.”

  “Ramsay! Watch out! You almost ran over your brother!”

  “Right, everyone! Round to the back of the manor for oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips! Missus Norah and Missus Bev have baked up dozens!”

  “Another telegram from Cape Town Radio has reached us at our studios here in England. The news in it is at least an hour old. A plane has crashed upon arrival at the Cape Town airfield. Cape Town confirms it is one of the four British planes entered in the endurance race in honor of Charles Lindbergh. There are no further details.”

  “Yaaaaaaaay!”

  “Hurry! Last one gets the horse’s oats!”

  “Lord Preston?” Skitt had entered the library.

  The family members were hanging on every word the broadcaster spoke. Libby and Victoria held each other’s hands. Head down, Lord Preston merely grunted in response to Skitt’s summons.

  “It’s the telephone, m’lord. Do you want to take it in the parlor?”

  “Who is it, Skitt?”

  “It’s the prime minister, m’lord. He says he has important information for you.”

  ALBRECHT AND CATHERINE

  AIRCRASH AT CAPE TOWN LANDING SITE. MICHAEL KILLED. SURGEONS IN CAPE TOWN REMOVED BOTH OF BEN’S LEGS. IT IS STILL TOUCH AND GO WHETHER HE WILL SURVIVE. AT HIS PARENTS’ REQUEST MICHAEL’S BODY IS BEING SENT FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO NEW YORK. AS YOU CAN IMAGINE WE ARE QUITE DEVASTATED HERE. VICTORIA AND LIBBY ARE BEARING UP BUT WE ALL COULD USE YOUR PRAYERS. IN PARTICULAR PRAY FOR BEN. WILL SEND ANOTHER TELEGRAM WHEN THERE’S MORE NEWS.

  JEREMY

  Dover Sky

  “I feel old, quite old, my dear.” Lord Preston awkwardly patted Libby’s hand. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  Libby looked down at her hands in her lap. “I don’t suppose any of us have words for some of these things, do we, Father?” She tried to smile. “I could have lost him during the war. We had almost ten year
s together because he wasn’t shot down like his brother. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “It is, yes.”

  “You are in agreement that Jane and I travel back to New York to see the gravesite? And attend the special memorial service in September?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t want to leave Vic’s side, but we must go, Father. Mum doesn’t seem to understand.”

  Lord Preston closed his eyes a moment. “It is a great blow. Two years ago Christelle and now this. And Kipp still fighting with the Foreign Legion in Africa. It’s too much for Elizabeth.”

  “I asked Ben, and he said it was the right thing to do.”

  He patted her hand again. “Never you mind about Ben. We all have our eyes on him. His leg stumps are healing up nicely, and he gets around very well indeed in his wheelchair. The doldrums have passed, and his spirits are much brighter. If he thinks you should go to New York and be with the Woodhavens, then that is what you should do.”

  “He wrote a lovely card about Michael for Mr. and Mrs. Woodhaven.”

  “Wonderful. And so have your mother and I. We expressed our condolences by telegram, of course, but a card is so much more personal.”

  Libby wiped at one of her eyes with a handkerchief. “You have all been very kind.” She put the cloth to her nose and blew softly. “I don’t know what I’d do without family.”

  “Times like this remind us why the Lord gives us one another—not to quarrel with but to be nurtured and defended by.”

  “Please keep Jane in your prayers too.”

  Lord Preston nodded. “Naturally we do.”

  “I fear Mum and you still have a problem with her Chinese background.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Michael loved her dearly.” Libby put the handkerchief to her nose again.

  “We all do, my dear.”

  “Commander Fordyce has been very nice to her since Michael’s death.”

  “Indeed.”

  “He always has a gift for her.”

  Lord Preston was silent.

  Her tears came. “I just want Mum and you to see she is as much a Danforth child as Ramsay or Peter or Owen. She so badly needs your love now that her father is gone.”

  “She has it, my dear. She has it unreservedly.”

  Dear Libby,

  Now that you have been in New York several weeks and it is more than two months since Michael’s passing, I pray a good many of your wounds have healed. I do not expect you to be on top of the world, of course. I only hope you see some light at the end of the tunnel.

  You know how long your sister Catherine grieved over the loss of her husband, Albert. And Kipp almost threw himself off a cliff when Christelle died. We are still reaping the bitter fruit of his recklessness—a crash landing in the Sahara and enlistment in the French Foreign Legion putting him right back in another war. Terrible. I fret over him every day. Please do not take Catherine’s or your brother’s route in your sorrow.

  Grieve, yes, but not as one without hope. I trust that a year from now you shall see your way clear to engagement with a man as fine as Michael. You are still very young and must look to the next fifty or sixty years of your life.

  This brings me to the matter of Jane. I know you and Michael felt it was a good deed while you were in America to adopt her. Indeed, it was a gracious act of Christian charity. But now you must forge a new life for yourself. Surely the Woodhavens will take her in and give her a home? It is one thing for Catherine to hang on to Sean. He really is her son and our blood runs through him. But you cannot move ahead and look for a husband of your station with a girl from the Orient calling herself your daughter and a Danforth. For one thing, it simply isn’t so. For another, no Englishman will accept you with Jane at your side. She is a sweetheart, and you have done your best by her. Let the Woodhavens take her in and raise her in remembrance of their son.

  You need to begin again with a clean slate. I am certain that within months of it being known your mourning period is over and that you are unattached to Jane, any number of excellent men will be calling at Ashton Park or Dover Sky for you. I am convinced of it.

  Forgive me for being forthright. I know you won’t like it, but someone must say these things while you are deciding what you will do and where you will live. Your father will not talk about these matters, so it is left up to me. Spend as much time in New York as you need, and then return to England alone. Believe me, such a course of action is the best way to begin again. It is the best route for you to follow.

  All my love, my dear Libby. God bless you.

  Mother

  October, 1927

  London hospital

  “I could feel a buzzing or tingling in my legs. When I looked down they were both twisted at impossible angles. There was no pain at all. I looked over at Michael, and I could tell he was dead. People worked to yank the canopy back and then reached into the cockpit. Some men hauled out Mike. It was Zeltner who cut away my harness and got his hands under my arms. He and his copilot pulled me free. I was in and out of consciousness over the next few days. They used morphine and heart stimulants to keep me going. By the time I was in the clear, they had already shipped Mike’s body to New York City. Once I was strong enough, they started flying me in short hops back to England.”

  Jeremy sat in the chair by Ben’s hospital bed. He was dressed in black clothes with a white clerical collar at his throat. Ben didn’t look at him as he spoke, and Jeremy stared at the floor.

  “I’ve tried to put up a bold front, but it’s hard, Jeremy. Every day is very hard. They say I won’t walk again, that it’ll always be a wheelchair for me. They’ve scratched flying so there’s not much to look forward to. I keep wondering how Mike would have stood up to this. Lib says he was an absolute bear when he crashed during the war. Maybe he learned from that and would have been more chipper than I am.”

  Jeremy cleared his throat without looking up. “You don’t know that. He may have been much worse having gone through this twice.”

  Ben, sitting up in the bed with a pillow behind his back, kept on talking as if Jeremy hadn’t spoken. The sun was going down, and the room was darkening but neither moved a hand to turn on the bedside lamp. “Mum and Dad have no idea I’m feeling this way. Neither do Vic and the boys. It’s bad enough losing Michael. They don’t need me moaning and groaning and adding to the gloom. So whenever I see them I play ‘the man.’ ”

  “Surely you can be honest with Victoria.”

  “I can’t. She said she’s reminded of losing our first baby, and that she feels wretched when she sees me without my legs. I thank God every day you haven’t lost heart, she said. So I’ve got to soldier on. I need your help for that.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Just what you’re doing. Listening. Giving me a few upbeat words now and then. Saying a few prayers. Since you lost your right arm and hand while fighting in France back in 1914, I know you understand some of what I’m going through. That helps too, along with the other things.”

  “I’ll come over from the church as often as you like, Ben. Once or twice a day if you want.”

  “I won’t be here forever. What’s the date today?”

  Jeremy looked up. “Wednesday, the twelfth of October.”

  Ben glanced at him. “They’ve taken plaster casts of my stumps now that they’ve shrunk down. They’ll start fitting metal legs with cushions and straps in about a week. I’m going to make myself walk, Jeremy.”

  “You’ll do it.”

  “And once I get the hang of walking, I’m going to fly again.”

  Jeremy nodded, his eyes strong and dark behind his glasses. “Right. You will.”

  “I need you to put the backbone in me.”

  “Believe me, Ben, you’ve got plenty of it.”

  “I need more. They’ll adjust the legs until the fit is just right, give me some walking lessons, and then after that I’m on my own. They want me close enough so I can drop in if
there’s a problem. I plan to take up residence at Dover Sky.”

  “Just you?”

  “No. I’ll bring Vic and the boys down. They’ll have Charles and Matthew to play with, not to mention Jane. She can be their big sister.”

  Jeremy sat up in the chair and took off his glasses. “That will be fine. Emma and I would love to bring Peter, James, and Billy to Dover Sky once a week. Overnights on a Friday would be best. We’d head back on Saturday afternoons so I can be ready for church on Sunday.” He pushed the right temple and earpiece of his glasses under his wooden hand so the lenses were upright. Then he polished them with a white cloth from his pocket. “Ben, I take it you’re not aware Libby and Jane won’t be returning to Dover Sky? They’ll be wintering in Germany with Albrecht and Catherine.”

  “What?”

  “They are heading straight there from New York. I gather she’s supposed to be in Tubingen by the end of the month.”

  “But why isn’t she returning to England? My Ramsay loves Jane. He finds her quite the tomboy.”

  Jeremy smiled. “My lads feel the same way. Though Jane plays the princess well when it strikes her fancy. In any case, Lady Preston wrote a letter to Libby in New York City telling her to have done and leave Jane with the Woodhavens. Something about starting afresh without being encumbered by Jane now that Michael is gone.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m afraid not. You can imagine how well that went over. Libby’s heartbroken. She loves Jane, and Jane is a strong link to the life she had with Michael. Lib dashed off a letter in reply, certainly not the kind Lady Preston wanted to get. Now there’s a great row going on between the pair of them. Catherine invited Libby to Germany, and Lib accepted straight off. Now it appears Jane will be big sister to Catherine’s son, Sean, instead of your boys and mine. She’ll have a friend in Baron von Isenburg’s daughter, Eva, too. The von Isenburg girl is twelve, so they’re close enough in age.”

  “I can’t believe what you’re telling me. It never rains but it pours.”