The Challenging Heights

by Max Hennessy

  As they finished their meal, he looked up at Zoë. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘Back to my apartment,’ she said. ‘I thought you might like to take me to bed and it’s got more mod cons than this place.’

  He smiled at her, puzzled at her attitude. She seemed to wish to be his wife, but never to have the responsibilities of a wife.

  Her apartment was large and well-furnished and she offered him a drink.

  ‘Bootleg as usual,’ she said. ‘Everybody gets blotto on bootleg over here.’

  They sat listening to the radio for a while, Zoë snuggled against Dicken on the settee. He found himself wondering how often Harmer had been in his place but he didn’t ask questions, accepting the strange fact that he had a wife who wasn’t a wife.

  ‘What happens after staff college?’ Zoë asked.

  ‘Posting somewhere. Perhaps England. More than likely abroad. Coming?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t hesitate. ‘Air Force wives are bad enough in England. I bet they’re twice as bad abroad.’

  ‘They’re with their husbands.’

  ‘Do you resent me not being with you, Dicky Boy?’

  ‘I’ve grown used to it.’

  They made love pleasurably but without any great passion and Dicken found himself wondering if the coolness came from the fact that Harmer had also been in her bed.

  ‘Don’t fly to Hawaii,’ he said abruptly.

  What made him say it he didn’t know. But he’d known Zoë since she was little more than a child and had met her first when he’d fallen in love with her sister. Their marriage seemed to be one largely of convenience, because they had spent remarkably little of it together, but there was still something that tied them together, some strange invisible thread that bound them.

  She had turned her head on the pillow to stare at him. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because, unless Harmer’s a better navigator than you are, you’ll never make it.’

  Again she seemed doubtful. ‘He’s studied it.’

  ‘More than you, I hope. Listen, Zo, I don’t want to stop you if you’re set on it, but let me check you again. Will you do that?’

  She continued to stare at him, then she nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said abruptly. ‘You can check me out.’

  The following day, they hired one of the elderly Jennies from the owner of the display. It was obvious at once that Zoë’s navigation was elementary and, as they climbed from the cockpit, she gave Dicken an anxious look.

  ‘How did I do?’

  ‘Zo, you’ll be committing suicide if you try for Hawaii.’

  Tears came to her eyes. ‘I’d got my goddam heart set on it,’ she said.

  ‘Then you’d better get it unset. As my wife, I could probably take out an injunction to stop you.’

  ‘You’d never dare!’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps I wouldn’t. But for God’s sake, take a month’s crash course. If at the end of it your instructor thinks you can do it, then go ahead. You can learn a lot in a month.’

  He had a feeling that above all else she would have liked to have settled down to matrimony and all it meant, that she felt that life was passing her by, but, having built up the image of a liberated woman aviatrix, she had to live up to it. Nothing in the world would change her mind, he knew, certainly not argument; yet he also knew that because of the past he could never simply abandon her. He needed her in a curious way and was certain she needed him.

  She was studying him again, her expression lost once more, then she snapped abruptly to life.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll do that. There are plenty of boys around the hangars who’d be glad of a few bucks to give me some instruction.’

  ‘Listen,’ Dicken begged. ‘Don’t go to “one of the boys round the hangars”. Go to an expert. Pay him what he’s worth. If you learn something you can use it on other flights.’

  That night they had dinner together again but she disappeared beforehand to telephone Harmer. She was away a long time and Dicken, putting back gin cocktails that tasted vaguely of aircraft dope, wondered what she was having to say to persuade the Canadian. If Harmer had any brains, he would see the sense in the argument. The Pacific was wide and Hawaii was small and good navigation was going to be important.

  When she came back, her expression was a strange mixture of relief and anxiety. ‘It’s all off, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The port engine keeps blowing cylinders and he can’t decide why. We’ll never make it now.’

  ‘For which,’ Dicken said dryly, ‘I’m very grateful.’

  She gave him an angry look then cheered up again. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘The Japanese are offering 25,000 dollars for the first machine to fly from the North American continent to Tokyo. They reckon they’re isolated out there. They’ve got no civilian flying and they want to encourage it. Casey says he’ll change the engines and we’ll fly to Vancouver and have a go at that instead.’

  ‘At least,’ Dicken commented, ‘if you miss Japan, you ought to hit China. It’s bigger than Hawaii.’

  She hugged him. ‘Come upstairs,’ she whispered.

  Their love-making this time was more tender.

  ‘I love you, Dicky Boy,’ she murmured.

  ‘You’ve got a bloody funny way of showing it,’ Dicken said.

  She was silent for a moment, then she moved her shoulders. ‘I can’t help being the way I am,’ she said. ‘I’ll never change. You don’t as you grow older. Just get more so. But I do love you.’

  ‘It’s a funny kind of love.’

  She was silent for a moment then she answered in a small voice. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But it’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘In spite of Casey Harmer?’

  ‘Yes. In spite.’

  ‘He’s been your lover, hasn’t he?’

  She ignored the question and went off at a tangent. ‘Will you come and meet Casey?’ she went on. ‘He says he’d like to meet you and I want you to look at the machine he’s built. I want you to approve. We’ll go as soon as I can tie things up here.’

  They flew to St Louis in the Racer and Zoë allowed Dicken to do the piloting, while she practised her navigation. The aeroplane was surprisingly stiff on the controls for such a small machine and responded badly to the movements of Dicken’s hands and feet on the control column and the rudder bar. As he flew he watched the stubby wings quivering on either side of him in the bumpy air as they crossed the Appalachians. The machine felt as wrong as it looked, off-balance, awkward and stubborn, and he found himself hoping that the new machine Harmer had built was an improvement. His criticism bothered him but at least he knew he was working from a practical knowledge of aeroplanes, an experience of hard flying that was almost as long as that of anybody alive. He had flown all kinds of machines in all kinds of conditions and wasn’t one of those people who criticised aviation from the depth of a club’s armchair.

  Landing at the city airport, they found a large roadster parked behind the hangars. Zoë drove it with her usual dash, and Dicken reflected that she was – and probably always had been – far better with a car than with an aeroplane.

  ‘It’s Casey’s,’ she said, almost apologetically, as though probing his thoughts and emotions for a safe resting place.

  Outside the city there was a second smaller airfield made from a group of meadows with the hedges removed. There was a line of sheds where small aircraft were being wheeled out and at the other side an old wooden hangar stood on its own. As Zoë stopped the roadster outside it, Harmer appeared and Dicken saw at once why he appealed to Zoë. He was taller and better-looking than Dicken, but he had the hard-headed look of a businessman and his features were spoiled by a calculating expression. ‘Casey,’ Zoë said, ‘this is my husband.’
/>   Harmer thrust out his hand. ‘I’ve heard of you,’ he said.

  ‘Dicken’s come to see the machine, Casey,’ Zoë said. She seemed nervous, as if she expected Harmer to resent Dicken, and Dicken to be critical of the aeroplane for purely personal reasons.

  Harmer gestured at the wooden hangar. Inside was a huge red and yellow biplane, studied by a group of interested spectators and small boys. It had an open cockpit and, though, with its two huge motors, it had a look of power, it had the same wrong look the Racer had, too heavy, too awkward, and with insufficient thought given to keeping down its weight.

  Inside the cabin behind the pilot’s cockpit there was even a touch of luxury in a colour scheme of red and gold, and space for two wicker chairs.

  ‘She’ll be carrying passengers after we come back from Japan,’ Harmer said, pushing the hangar doors back to give them more light. ‘People want to fly these days and they’ll want to fly in this machine.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been wiser to strip her down to the limit?’ Dicken asked. ‘Save weight. She’s a long way to go.’

  ‘She’ll do it,’ Zoë said. ‘We want to prove she’ll do it, so people will want to use her. She’s called the Baltimore Bantam.’

  ‘Bit big for a bantam, isn’t she?’

  Harmer shrugged. ‘Just a name, I guess.’

  ‘She’s going to do it to Tokyo easily,’ Zoë said, her enthusiasm beginning to show again. ‘The hell with the Dufee Derby. We can get just as much money flying to Japan when the new engines are properly installed. What was wrong with the others, Casey?’

  ‘They didn’t work,’ Harmer said laconically.

  They walked slowly round the machine, Dicken touching the elevators and rudder thoughtfully, studying the biplane tail and the four huge wheels. The machine reminded him of the Vickers Vernons in Iraq. Bright-eyed, Zoë waited for his opinion.

  ‘She’s superbly instrumented,’ she said. ‘She’s carrying safety equipment, too – two inflatable rubber dinghies.’

  ‘Wouldn’t one do?’

  ‘A spare in case of emergencies.’

  ‘Won’t it add weight? Lindbergh flew what amounted to a petrol tank with wings and not much else, and did it alone to save weight.’

  Harmer gave him a quick look, as if he suspected resentment of the fact that Zoë was to accompany him, then he went on quickly. ‘I designed her myself,’ he said. ‘The engines are Junkers, the best there are.’

  ‘I’ve heard Wrights are better,’ Dicken said, already aware that he sounded carping and over-critical but anxious to protect Zoë. ‘They weigh short of six hundred and fifty pounds and generate two hundred and thirty-seven horsepower. Lindbergh had one.’

  ‘Byrd had Junkers and he made it, too,’ Harmer growled. ‘He also made it to the North Pole.’ He gestured. ‘This isn’t the first ship I’ve built. She’s going to make us money. She’s got to. She cost me over a hundred thousand dollars. She’ll knock ’em cold.’

  Privately, Dicken didn’t agree. The machine was too big, and was over-decorated and over-equipped, and there was no longer much future in biplanes, though people went on building them, despite the acknowledged fact that they caused tremendous drag. ‘Built-in headwinds’, they were called.

  When he said nothing, Zoë spoke nervously, as if she guessed he couldn’t give his wholehearted approval.

  ‘We’ll fly it to Vancouver just as soon as the ballyhoo over the Dufee Derby’s finished,’ she said. ‘Hell, in this country people live off publicity and it’s no use trying to compete. The newspapers’ll lap it up.’

  ‘Once in Vancouver,’ Harmer went on, ‘we’ll get her ready and take off for Tokyo at the first sign of good weather and a wind from the east.’

  ‘Who’s flying it up?’ Dicken asked.

  ‘Casey and me,’ Zoë said.

  ‘You might have to wait a long time for a good wind for Tokyo. The winds come from the west. Why not take her to Tokyo by ship and fly the other way?’

  ‘It’d cost too much money and the Japs want the flight to end there.’

  ‘She’ll do around a hundred,’ Zoë put in, and Dicken was conscious that she was well aware of his unease. ‘We’re supporting the tail with a wheeled platform to put her in a flying attitude right from the start. It’ll get her off the ground more quickly. It’s an idea that’s been used before.’

  ‘Fonck tried it when he tried to fly the Atlantic in 1926,’ Dicken agreed. ‘It came adrift. What’s her weight?’

  ‘Two tons,’ Harmer said. ‘Six fully loaded. She had a housed cockpit originally but – well, we decided it was safer to have it open. There’ve been cases of leaking exhausts and pilots being asphyxiated, and Davis and Wooster might have been saved when the American Legion crashed if their cockpit hadn’t been glassed over. She’s already flown around two thousand miles.’

  ‘All up?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Harmer sounded faintly irritated, as if he had suddenly noticed, as Dicken had, that in his concern for safety an unspoken doubt was hidden. ‘You don’t go filling a machine that costs as much as this to the brim until you need it. But we’ll fill her for Vancouver and see how she performs. And as for the platform under the tail, we’ve fixed a mirror to watch our rear end. We’ll use the trip north to check that everything works.’

  Nine

  Dicken kept his doubts to himself. It seemed to him that if Harmer had expended as much time and energy on the design of the machine as he had on the safety precautions and the colour scheme he might have had a better chance. The distance to Tokyo was four thousand seven hundred miles, longer than Lindbergh’s flight to Paris, longer than the Derby flight to Honolulu, but at least the Aleutian Islands stretched almost all the way across the North Pacific and in the event of trouble they might be able to reach them.

  The thing that worried him most was Harmer’s casual approach. Lindbergh had taken enormous trouble. He had learned great circle navigation and checked time zone and magnetic variation charts, to say nothing of information on the weather ahead of him. Zoë was still not taking her navigation seriously.

  ‘There’s no problem,’ she insisted. ‘God Almighty, Dicky Boy, for a professional airman you sure let your nerves get on top of you. The navy made it across the Pacific to Honolulu. in a Fokker Trimotor. Even before the Dole Derby last year.’

  ‘The navy usually does the job thoroughly,’ Dicken pointed out. ‘And they installed a lot of navigation instruments and had an expert navigator to provide a dead reckoning course.’

  ‘And they were followed by another machine that didn’t,’ she snapped. ‘It landed on Molokai. They did the trip all the way with a solid cloud floor.’

  Dicken refused to be convinced, but his worries were swamped in the furore that was taking place in the newspapers about the Dufee Derby. Despite the uproar after the disastrous Dole competition the previous year – when the newspapers, which had whipped up the enthusiasm had just as quickly turned their backs on it and claimed no responsibility – the press were plastering their pages with enormous headlines. The United States Navy had more than once indicated that it was not prepared ever again to comb vast stretches of ocean for missing competitors but they were being urged by interested politicians and businessmen to change their minds, while the National Aeronautical Association, which had condemned transoceanic flights instituted for individual publicity rather than scientific progress, were being accused of lacking enterprise.

  As the start drew nearer, the newspapers became almost hysterical, all the chances and non-chances weighed up by newsmen who knew nothing about flying, and nobody seemed to notice that the Hawaiian group was only 317 miles wide so that an error of more than three and a half degrees either way could cause a machine to miss them altogether.

  The entries numbered twelve, the oddest a big awkward triplane, but
while being flown to the starting point at Oakland, in California, it stalled on landing and the three wings had crumpled into a shambles. It had become clear by this time that, despite the disasters of the previous year, there had once again been more enthusiasm than thought in the preparations, and a shocking haste on the part of some of the contestants to meet the deadline.

  Dicken, Zoë and Harmer were all in the same hotel and Dicken noticed that now that Harmer was on the scene Zoë showed no inclination to share his room. In the evenings as they listened to the big brown radio with the fretwork motif on the front, she sat equidistant between the two of them, as if she were establishing the fact that she belonged to neither.

  As the aeroplanes lined up at the Oakland Municipal Airport, it was noticeable that none of the famous firms had provided entries, as though, after the previous year’s casualty list, they didn’t wish to be associated with another failure. But the newspapers, despite their complaints that money prizes did more harm to aviation than not by encouraging the unready to take chances, were busy whipping up enthusiasm with questions about which was to be the fastest machine in the race – a Lampert Omega or a Norden low-wing monoplane. Another of the competitors had already been eliminated when a Trewint with a defective fuel system had crashed en route to the takeoff, killing the two naval officers who were crewing it.

  As they ate a late breakfast on the morning of the start, the newspapers announced that yet another competitor had been eliminated. The Norden had failed on a test flight and the pilot had taken to his parachute too late.