The Challenging Heights

by Max Hennessy

  They had rehearsed the rigmarole of starting the engine until Father O’Buhilly had it perfectly, then Dicken had drawn marks on the dirt floor of the cell to indicate exactly where the mounting slots were in the fuselage to enable him to climb quickly into the rear cockpit when the engine was running.

  ‘But not,’ he explained, ‘before you’ve yanked the chocks away from the wheels. Those are the triangular wooden blocks which stop the machine moving forward when the engine’s running. If you forget them, we might have trouble. Chocks first, then the cockpit.’

  The priest nodded. ‘I have it, me boy.’ He tapped his head. ‘Up here. ’Tis full o’ nothing else so there’s plenty of room.’

  ‘Once you’re in the cockpit,’ Dicken said. ‘You’ll find you’re probably standing on sandbags. They were for ballast, to trim the machine on the way up here in place of a man, and if they haven’t been removed, get rid of them. Toss ’em over the side. But try to do it before we start moving fast. We don’t want ’em bouncing off the tail surface. There’s no gun to get in your way. Which is a pity,’ he went on, ‘because we might have put a burst or two into Lee’s precious yamen as we left. Can you work a gun?’

  Father O’Buhilly smiled. ‘I worked one often in the Argonne, me boy, but I would imagine the Almighty might frown on that sort of revenge. So perhaps it is as well we haven’t one. Since we finished the last cigarette, I’ve been harbourin’ thoughts in me mind that don’t become a servant of God.’

  The following afternoon, another DH9, bearing Chiang’s sunburst markings on the wings, landed and stopped outside the cell with its engine throbbing. A man climbed out of the rear cockpit and headed for Dicken’s machine. Climbing into the cockpit, he sat there checking the controls, while the pilot of the new machine worked the propeller. As the engine roared to life, the chocks were hauled away and the machine rolled forward.

  With grim faces, Dicken and Father O’Buhilly watched it lift into the air at the end of its run and begin its climb away to the hills.

  ‘Well, that seems to be that,’ Dicken said. ‘It looks like being Shanks’ pony after all.’

  When the rice appeared that evening, Lee brought the pilot of the Chiang DH9 with him.

  ‘I say,’ he said. ‘This is Captain Hsu. He learned to fly in America. He has come to thank you for the gift of your so splendid aeroplane to his squadron. It is now beyond your reach.’

  Hsu was a lean good-looking Chinese who spoke English with an American accent. He wore smartly-cut breeches, a short leather flying jacket and a white silk scarf, with ribbons attached to the top of his flying cap in the manner of the pilots in the American pulp magazines.

  As the bowls of rice were placed on the floor, Lee gestured. ‘When Captain Hsu goes tomorrow, we shall withdraw northwards. You’ll go with us as hostages for our safety. We shall be celebrating our new aircraft tonight with rice wine.

  The sun went down in a lemon yellow sky and they could hear a lot of laughter from the big house with the curved eaves where Lee had his headquarters. Dicken was staring through the bars of the cell window at Hsu’s DH9. It was a new aircraft but its mechanics had not cared for it and there were streaks of oil along the engine.

  ‘What are ye thinkin’, me boy?’ O’Buhilly asked. ‘Now the aeroplane’s gone?’

  Dicken was silent for a long time. ‘That there’s another one, Father,’ he said. ‘That one.’

  ‘What are you gettin’ at, me boy?’

  ‘Why don’t we take it in place of the one we’ve lost?’

  ‘Y’have terrible thoughts, me boy. Here I was thinkin’ almost the same thing meself.’

  Dicken smiled. ‘If we took Hsu’s machine,’ he said, ‘it would be a fair exchange. It’s even probably newer than the one they’ve pinched. Unfortunately, there are two sentries there now and I couldn’t get one without the other raising the alarm.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with me tacklin’ the other, me boy?’

  ‘Does your religion permit violence of that sort?’

  ‘I’ve tried to convince you, me boy, that the Almighty’s more broadminded than most people think. I’m sure He wouldn’t object, if I do a little prayin’ beforehand to let Him know what we’re about. So long as I report to the Orderly Room, I think it will be all right.’

  When it was dark, they quietly worked at the bars in the window until the crumbling cement in the upper sockets fell away. Quietly removing them, Dicken was about to lay them on the ground when he hefted their weight in his hand, smiling at the priest.

  ‘Father, do you think God would permit you to hit the sentry with one of these? It ought to be enough to keep him quiet for a while without killing him.’

  O’Buhilly smiled back. ‘I don’t think the Almighty would frown on a severe headache,’ he said.

  ‘Right. You know what to do. Let’s go through it once more. It’ll be exactly the same with this machine as mine. Can you do it– quickly?’

  ‘Did I not see it, boy? Right there, outside the window. Did not Captain Hsu obligingly go through the whole rigmarole for me within yards of me nose? I already had thoughts in me head of replacing our machine with that one and I gave it the utmost attention just in case your own thoughts were the same as mine. I have it clear in me mind.’

  ‘And the sentry? You can fix him?’

  As the priest nodded, Dicken stuck the iron bar in his belt and climbed on to his back to clamber into the window opening. Sitting there, he grasped Father O’Buhilly’s hand and hauled him up, before dropping quietly through to the other side. Father O’Buhilly followed him, landing alongside him in the shadows.

  Quietly they crept on to the field until they could see the wide wings of the aeroplane against the sky.

  ‘It’s facing the wrong way,’ Dicken said. ‘When we’ve polished off the sentries, we’ll have to swing it round before we go through the start-up routine.’

  Crouching in the long grass close to the sentries, he whispered to the priest. ‘You take the nearest. I’ll whistle when I’m ready.’

  Working to within two or three feet of the sentry, Dicken whistled gently. Almost at once there was an answering whistle and he saw the sentry stiffen. He was staring towards where Father O’Buhilly was crouching as Dicken leapt to his feet and swung the iron bar. There was a grunt and the Chinese crumpled up, his rifle clattering to the ground. Almost at once, he heard a scuffle where the other sentry stood, then a muffled cry and, hurrying across, found the priest struggling with one hand over the man’s mouth. As Dicken’s arm swung and the man collapsed, Father O’Buhilly’s teeth flashed in the faint light caused by the glow of the moon coming over the trees.

  ‘I think the Lord was holding me hand,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hit him hard enough. Heaven be praised for unbelievers like yourself.’

  Dicken gestured at the aeroplane and together they lifted the tail and swung it round. ‘Chocks,’ he said. ‘Otherwise she’ll jump forward when the engine starts.’

  Pushing the chocks back into place, he climbed into the cockpit, wriggled himself into the seat, checked the controls and looked at the instruments. He could just make out in the faint light what he was doing.

  As he stuck up his hand and waved, Father O’Buhilly’s face turned towards him. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes. For God’s sake, Father, get on with it!’

  ‘Right, me boy. Switch off. Petrol on. Suck in.’

  Dicken repeated the phrases after him and Father O’Buhilly turned the propeller as he’d been told. Then he wiped his hands on his trousers, scraped his boots to make sure of his foothold and leaned forward with his hands resting on the blade.

  ‘Contact,’ he said.

  The magneto switches clicked.

  ‘Contact! Heave, Father!’

  As Father O’Buhilly pulled out and down, the engine coughed to life,
seemed in some doubt, then caught and began to roar. The sound was the most exciting thing Dicken had ever heard. Inside the cockpit, his head down, he watched the revolution indicator and the pressure gauge. As he looked up he saw the priest climbing on to the wing.

  ‘Chocks, Father! For God’s sake, the chocks!’

  ‘Sorry, me boy! I forgot!’

  Scrambling down, the priest reached under the wing for the chocks. In the half-light, Dicken was quite certain he’d be hit by the propeller but he remembered to back away instead of moving forward and a second later he was scrambling on to the fuselage. As the machine began to swing into the wind, a screech came from the cockpit. ‘The sandbags! Where are the sandbags, boy?’

  ‘There aren’t any! This one came with a passenger.’

  By this time, they could hear men shouting and shots being fired. The first figures emerged from the darkness as Dicken opened the throttle. Slowly, maddeningly slowly, the DH9 began to move forward, rolling across the uneven turf. As it began to pick up speed a man ran out and tried to grab the wing but he was knocked flat on his back as the aeroplane passed over him. A rifle exploded and Dicken heard the whine of the bullet. As he lifted the tail, a few more figures appeared dead ahead, waving their arms, and there were flashes as rifles were fired. Praying none of them would run into the whirling propeller, Dicken lifted the tail and glanced at the air speed indicator, but it was too dark to see it and he had to make a guess. Yanking at the control column, he felt the nose rise and all the figures in front fell away beneath and behind, then they were in the air and, holding the machine close to the ground until he had built up sufficient speed, he hauled on the stick and swept into the air in a steep climbing turn.

  Five

  Joyce Mahaffy welcomed Dicken back with open arms.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you for ever,’ she said. ‘And I was going to Wei Hai Wei to mope. How about coming with me and making it a holiday? We can celebrate. Can you get away?’

  It was easy enough to get leave after being a prisoner and the island was wooded and beautiful with no traffic beyond rickshaws. The hotel was a long wooden bungalow divided into what looked like horse boxes set on a green rise over the harbour, where lights shone from warships anchored on the swaying water. Pomegranates glowed among their spiky leaves and white acacias dripped petals like snowflakes in the fading evening light.

  It was an idyllic place to be but Dicken was curiously unsettled. He knew his affair with Joyce Mahaffy was going to produce nothing and he wasn’t sorry when the time came to return to Shanghai. As he walked into Orr’s office, Orr rose and tossed down a file.

  ‘You’re for England,’ he announced at once. ‘Staff College. The way to the top. A few years from now I’ll be saluting you instead of t’other way round. And that’s how it should be, because you’re young and I’m not.’

  Joyce bade him a tearful goodbye, though he suspected the tears were laid on for his special benefit and didn’t have a great deal of meaning. She promised she’d follow him home but he doubted if she ever would, and he said a maudlin goodbye to Father O’Buhilly in his stark little room over a bottle of Irish whiskey.

  ‘I don’t suppose we shall ever see each other again,’ Dicken said.

  ‘Ach, it is most unlikely that we will not,’ the priest retorted. ‘Two people who met and defeated General Lee, as we did, me boy, are bound to cross each other’s paths again before long.’

  It was strange to be back in England where the girls had taken to applying a lot of make-up and wearing their skirts higher above their knees. In addition the motor car had been discovered and horse traffic was beginning to show signs of disappearing.

  Halfway through the course Dicken received an un-expected letter from Zoë’s sister Annys, Diplock’s wife, who, it seemed, had followed him home on the next ship. She was concerned about Zoë’s business interests. The single small business she’d received under her father’s will was now a chain of garages operating along the south coast and was making money hand over fist. The recession that had hit industrial England had barely touched the south and according to Annys, the manager Zoë had appointed was suspected of fiddling the books.

  He turned out to be an ex-captain of the RASC, called George Peasegood, smooth-tongued, sleek haired, and given to wearing yellow spats, and as he talked to Dicken it was obvious he was being very careful what he had to say. It didn’t take Dicken long to decide he was indeed helping himself to the profits and he wrote his views at length to be forwarded to Zoë when he managed to find her.

  Towards the end of the staff course it was announced that it was routine for students to spend a few weeks with the air force of a foreign country. Hatto, on the same course, suggested they plump for America.

  ‘Most people go for Europe,’ he said. ‘Because it’s nearer and cheaper, but the States shows more imagination and initiative. Nobody’s ever asked for it before.’

  Their request was turned down, but the Under-Secretary of State for Air happened to appear the following day and in a speech commented that he couldn’t understand why no one ever asked to go to America. Since a wink was as good as a nod, they promptly reapplied, quoting him, and Hatto persuaded his father in the House of Lords to put on a little pressure in the right places, and the Air Ministry changed its mind. A few weeks later they found themselves on the deck of a transatlantic liner staring at the incredible skyline of Manhattan, and the manoeuvres of a small red and white biplane which had met the ship far out of reach of land and had swooped and dived just above the mast and done delirious loops and half-rolls in the bright sky to the surprised delight of the passengers. Its appearance seemed to imply that in America it had long since been decided that there was a future in the air.

  It wasn’t long since the Atlantic had been flown direct from New York to Paris and everybody was now trying to get in on the act. As long ago as 1919, even before Alcock and Brown had flown the Atlantic, a French-born New York hotelier called Orteig had offered a prize of 25,000 dollars for the first man to achieve the feat, but at that time there were neither the aeroplanes nor the engines fit for ocean flying and experienced airmen had preferred to wait. When Orteig had renewed his offer in 1925, however, aeroplanes had changed. The lines were sleeker, their engines more reliable, and finally a young American airmail pilot called Lindbergh had managed it.

  The achievement had not been made without loss of life, however, and six men had died, though it had caused no slackening of enthusiasm and since Lindbergh’s feat two other aeroplanes had also made it and flying had burst out in the States like an exotic new flower.

  The tall buildings of New York shouldered the stars, while girders, stark against the sky, indicated where new ones were still going up. Somehow the place made Dicken feel he had never been so much alive. The streets were crammed with motor cars – Chevrolets, Franklins, Fords and a dozen other makes he’d never heard of, sedans, limousines, roadsters, coupés, all long and cumbersome and swallowing petrol, all fitted with vast headlights like enormous basins with glowing insides, all thundering and rattling and backfiring so that the area between the towering brick and concrete skyscrapers was hazy with smoke and breath-catching with the smell of burnt fuel. In England, motoring had still barely caught the public imagination and there were still as many horse-drawn carts as petrol-driven lorries, but here in America the craze had swept across the country like a forest fire, filling the streets, changing the whole face of the land, and, with the hurrying pedestrians who crowded the sidewalks, giving an impression of immense wealth, power and urgency. As an American on the ship crossing the Atlantic had said, there was a lot wrong with his country – girls with bobbed hair, painted faces and skirts halfway up their thighs, prohibition with its attendant gangsters, bootleggers and hijackers, and corrupt politicians with a finger in a hundred and one pies anxious to make a fast buck – but there was one thing that wasn’t wrong an
d that was business. America was booming.

  The tabloids brought the same breathless excitement to the news that was obvious in every pulsing movement of the streets, screaming at the top of their voices the latest vice exposure, the latest disgraced name, the latest disaster – and disasters, exposures and scandals all seemed bigger in America than in Europe. FILM STAR’S LOVE NEST RAIDED. RACER CRASHES INTO CROWD. BOOTLEGGER SHOT DEAD IN BAR. It was a land of tremendous vitality whose leisure seemed as urgent as its business, yet from the middle of all the violence that was implicit in the foot-deep headlines, middle-class honesty and labour shone like a beacon from the cramped Vermont features of President Coolidge. From shops, offices and hotels, his photograph directed its disdainful stare on the people he represented, his expression implying a total disagreement with all their habits, their enthusiasms and their excitements, everything they enjoyed, but judging by the undiminished vitality everywhere, apparently unable to do a thing to curb a single one of them.

  Dicken and Hatto were received with enthusiasm by the American airmen who immediately made up a party to show them the town. Starting at a restaurant, they produced flasks even as they sat down and calmly poured large tots of bootleg whisky into the glasses on the table. Nobody turned a hair because it was clear everybody else was doing the same.

  ‘You have to learn to live with prohibition,’ one of the Americans pointed out.

  Later they were taken to a teetotal bar which appeared to be almost empty but, after a quiet word with the barman, they were directed to a blank door where a conspiratorial knock opened it into a smoky room packed with respectable-looking men of all ages rapidly knocking back whisky and gin.

  ‘If you want a bottle of scotch,’ one of the Americans said, ‘ask the bellhop. He knows where to get it. You can also buy kits in the drug stores to distil gin in the bath but I shouldn’t try it. You can use it as dope on your airplane.’