TransAtlantic: A Novel

by Colum McCann

  The airmen climb down off the plane to scattered applause. They are surprised to learn that a local reporter, Emily Ehrlich, is the most serious of all. She never asks a single question, but stands around in a knit hat and gloves, scribbling in her notebook. Short and unfashionably large. In her forties or fifties perhaps. She moves with a hefty gait across the muddy airfield. Carrying a wooden cane. Her ankles are terribly swollen. She looks like the type of woman who might be working in a cake shop, or behind a country-store counter, but she has, they know, an incisive pen. They have seen her in the Cochrane Hotel, where she has lived for many years with her daughter, Lottie. The seventeen-year-old wields a camera with surprising ease and style, a flirtation. Unlike her mother, she is tall, thin, sprightly, curious. She is quick to laugh and whisper in her mother’s ear. An odd team. The mother stays silent; the daughter takes the photos and asks the questions. It infuriates the other reporters, a young girl in their territory, but her questions are sharp, quick. What sort of wind pressure can the wing fabric withstand? What is it like to have the sea disappear beneath you? Do you have a sweetheart in London, Mr. Alcock? Mother and daughter like to stride across the fields together at the end of the day, Emily to the hotel room where she sits and writes her reports, Lottie towards the tennis courts where she plays for hours on end.

  Emily’s name banners the Thursday edition of the Evening Telegram, nearly always accompanied by one of her daughter’s photos. Once a week she has a mandate to cover whatever she wants: fishing disasters, local disputes, political commentary, the lumber industry, the suffragettes, the horrors of the war. She is famous for her odd tangents. Once, in the middle of an article on a local trade union, she darted off on a two-hundred-word recipe for pound cake. Another time, in an analysis of a speech by the governor of Newfoundland, she strayed into the subtle art of preserving ice.

  Alcock and Brown have been warned to be on their guard, since the mother and daughter have, by all accounts, a tendency towards nostalgia and fiery Irish tempers. But they like them both, Emily and Lottie, the odd edge they give to the crowd, the mother’s strange hats, her long dresses, her curious bouts of silence, her daughter’s tall quick stride through the town, the tennis racquet banging against her calf.

  Besides, Brown has seen Emily’s reports in the Evening Telegram and they are amongst the best he has read: Today the sky was truant over Signal Hill. Hammer blows ring across the airfield like so many bells. Each night the sun goes down looking more and more like the moon.

  THEY ARE DUE to leave on Friday the 13th. It’s an airman’s way of cheating death: pick a day of doom, then defy it.

  The compasses are swung, the transverse tables calculated, the wireless primed, the shock absorbers wrapped around the axles, the ribs shellacked, the fabric dope dried, the radiator water purified. All the rivets, the split pins, the stitches are checked and rechecked. The pump control handles. The magnetos. The batteries to warm their flight suits. Their shoes are polished. The Ferrostat flasks of hot tea and Oxo are prepared. The carefully cut sandwiches are packed away. Lists are carefully ticked off. Horlicks Malted Milk. Bars of Fry’s Chocolate. Four sticks of licorice each. One pint-sized bottle of brandy for emergencies. They run sprigs of white heather on the inside of their fur-lined helmets for luck, and place two stuffed animals—black cats, both—one in the well beneath the windscreen, the other tied to a strut behind the cockpit.

  Then the clouds curtsy in, the rain kneels upon the land, and the weather knocks them back a whole day and a half.

  AT THE POST office in St. John’s, Lottie Ehrlich skips across a cage of shadow on the floor, steps to the three-barred window where the clerk tips up his black visor to look at her. She slips the sealed envelope across the counter.

  She buys the fifteen-cent Cabot stamp and tells the clerk that she wants to get a one-dollar overprint for the transatlantic post.

  —Oh, he says, there aren’t no more of them, young lady, no. They sold out a long time ago.

  AT NIGHT BROWN spends a lot of his time downstairs in the lobby of the hotel, sending messages to Kathleen. He is timid with the telegraph, aware that others may read his words. There’s a formality to him. A tightness.

  He is slow on the stairs for a man in his thirties, the walking stick striking hard against the wood floor. Three brandies rolling through him.

  An odd disturbance of light falls across the banister and he catches sight of Lottie Ehrlich in the ornate wooden mirror at the top of the stairs. The young girl is, for a moment, ghostly, her figure emerging into the mirror, then growing clearer, taller, redheaded. She wears a dressing gown and nightdress and slippers. They are both a little startled by the other.

  —Good evening, says Brown, slurring a little.

  —Hot milk, says the young girl.

  —Excuse me?

  —I’m bringing my mother hot milk. She can’t sleep.

  He nods and tips at an imaginary brim, moves to step past her.

  —She never sleeps.

  Her cheeks are flushed red, a little embarrassed to be caught out in the corridor in her dressing gown, he thinks. He tips the nonexistent hat again and pushes the pain through his bad leg, climbs three more steps, the brandies jagging his mind. She pauses two steps below him and says with more formality than it requires: Mr. Brown?

  —Yes, young lady?

  —Are you ready for the unification of the continents?

  —Quite honestly, says Brown, I could do with a good telephone line first.

  She takes one step farther down the stairs, puts her hand to her mouth as if about to cough. One eye higher than the other, as if a very stubborn question got lodged in her mind a long time ago.

  —Mr. Brown.

  —Miss Ehrlich?

  —Do you think it would be a terrible imposition?

  A quick eye-flick to the floor. She pauses as if she has just propped a number of stray words on the tip of her tongue, odd little things with no flow to them at all, no way to get them out. She stands, balancing them, wondering if they will topple. Brown imagines that she, like everyone in St. John’s, would like a chance to sit in the cockpit if there is another practice run. An impossibility of course, they cannot bring anybody up in the air, least of all a young woman. They have not even allowed the reporters to sit in the plane while it waits in the field. It is a ritual, a superstition, it is not something that he will be able to do, he wonders how he will tell her, he feels trapped now, a victim of his own late-night strolls.

  —Would it impose greatly, she says, if I gave you something?

  —Of course not.

  She negotiates the stairs and runs down the corridor towards her room. The youth of her body moving in the white of the dressing gown.

  He tightens his eyes, rubs his forehead, waits. Some good-luck charm perhaps? A memento? A keepsake? Silly that, to have allowed her a chance to speak at all. Should have just said no. Let it be. Gone to his room. Disappeared.

  She appears at the end of the corridor, moving sharply and quickly. Her dressing gown exposes a triangle of white skin at her neck. He feels an acute and sudden pang of desire to see Kathleen and he is glad for the desire, the errancy of the moment, this odd curving staircase, this far-flung hotel, the too-much brandy. He misses his fiancée, pure and simple. He would like to be home. To nudge up against her slim body, watch the fall of hair along her clavicle.

  He holds the banisters a little too tight as Lottie approaches. A piece of paper in her left hand. He reaches out. A letter. That is all. A letter. He scans it. Addressed to a family in Cork. To Brown Street of all places.

  —My mother wrote it.

  —Is that so?

  —Can you put it in the mail bag?

  —No imposition at all, he says, turning on the stairs once more, slipping the envelope inside his tunic pocket.

  IN THE MORNING they watch as Lottie emerges from the hotel kitchen, her red hair askew, her dressing gown fixed to the neck, tightened high. She carries a tray of sa
ndwiches wrapped in waxed butcher paper.

  —Ham sandwiches, she says triumphantly, placing them down in front of Brown. I made them especially for you.

  —Thank you, young lady.

  She crosses the restaurant floor, waving over her shoulder as she goes.

  —That’s the reporter’s daughter?

  —Indeed.

  —They’re a little cuckoo, eh? says Alcock, pulling on his flight jacket, looking out the window at the fog.

  A STRONG WIND arrives from the west in uneven gusts. They are twelve hours late already, but now is the time—the fog has lifted and the long-range weather reports are good. No clouds. The sky above seems painted in. The initial wind velocity is strong, but will probably calm to about twenty knots. There will, later, be a good moon. They climb aboard to scattered cheers, secure their safety belts, check the instruments yet again. A quick salute from the starter. Contact! Alcock opens the throttle and brings both engines to full power. He signals for the wooden chocks to be pulled clear from the wheels. The mechanic leans down, ducks under the wings, armpits the chocks, steps back, throws them away. He raises both arms in the air. A cough of smoke from the engines. The propellers whirl. The Vimy is pointed into the gale. A slight angle to the wind. Uphill. Go now, go. The waft of warming oil. Speed and lift. The incredible roar. The trees loom in the distance. A drainage ditch challenges on the far side. They say nothing. No Great Scott. No Chin up, old sport. They inch forward, lumbering into the wind. Go, go. The weight of the plane rolls underneath them. Worrisome, that. Slower now than ever. Up the incline. She’s heavy today. So much petrol to carry. One hundred yards, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and seventy. They are moving too slowly. As if through aspic. The tightness of the cockpit. Sweat accumulating behind their knees. The motors strike hard. The wingtips flex. The grass beneath them bends and tears. Bumping along on the ground. Two hundred and fifty. The plane rises a little and then sighs again, jarring the soil. Good God, Jackie, lift her. The line of dark pine trees stands at the end of the airfield, looming closer, closer, closer still. How many men have died this way? Pull her back, Jackie boy. Skid her sideways. Abort. Now. Three hundred yards. Good Jesus above. A gust of wind lifts the left wing and they tilt slightly right. And then they feel it. A cold swell of air in their stomachs. We are rising, Teddy, we are rising, look! A slow grade of upwards, an ever so faint lift of the soul, and the plane is a few feet in the air, nosing up, the wind whistling through the struts. How tall are those trees? How many men died? How many of us fell? Brown converts the pines to possible noise in his mind. The slap of bark. The tangle of stems. The ack-ack of twigs. The smashup. Hang on, hang on. The throat still tight with terror. They rise a little in their seats. As if that might unloosen the weight of the plane beneath them. Higher now, go. The sky beyond the trees is an oceanic thing. Lift it, Jackie, lift it for godsake, lift her. Here, the trees. Here they come. Their scarves take first flight and then they hear the applause of branches below.

  —THAT WAS A little ticklish! roars Alcock across the noise.

  THEY HEAD STRAIGHT into the wind. The nose goes up. The plane slows. An agonizing climb over treetops and low roofs. Careful now not to stall. Keep her rising. Higher up, they begin a slight bank. Take her easy, old chum. Bring her around. A stately turn, all beauty, all balance, its own sort of confidence. They hold the altitude. Banking tighter now. Until the wind is behind them and the nose dips and they are truly leaving.

  They wave down to the starter, the mechanics, the meteorological officers, the other few stragglers below. No Emily Ehrlich from the Evening Telegram, no Lottie: mother and daughter have already gone home, early, for the day. They have missed takeoff. Pity that, thinks Brown. He taps the inside of his jacket where the letter still sits.

  Alcock wipes the sweat off his brow, then waves to the shadow of themselves on the last of the ground and steers the plane at half-throttle out to sea. A line of golden strand. Boats bobbing in St. John’s Harbour. Toys in a boy’s bath.

  Alcock picks up the rudimentary telephone, half-shouts into it: Hey, old man.

  —Yes?

  —Sorry about this.

  —Sorry, what?

  —Never told you.

  —Never told me what?

  Alcock grins and glances down at the water. They are eight minutes out, at one thousand feet, with a wind strength behind of thirty-five knots. They lurch over Conception Bay. The water, a moving mat of gray. Patches of sunlight and glare.

  —Never learned to swim, me.

  Brown is momentarily taken aback—the thought of ditching at sea, of flailing at the water, floating for a moment on a wooden strut, or clinging to the rolling tanks. But surely Alcock swam to safety after he was shot down over Suvla Bay? All those years ago. No, not years. Just months. It is odd to Brown, very odd, that not so long ago a bullet pierced his thigh and now, today, he is carrying that fragment over the Atlantic towards a marriage, a second chance. Odd that he should be here at all, this height, this endless gray, the Rolls-Royce engines roaring in his ears, holding him aloft. Alcock can’t swim? Surely that’s not true. Perhaps, thinks Brown, I should tell him the truth. Never too late.

  He leans into the mouthpiece of the phone, decides against it.

  THEY RISE EVENLY. Side by side in the open cockpit. The air rushing frigid around their ears. Brown taps out a message on the transmitter key to the shore: All well and started.

  The telephone is a series of wires wrapped around their necks to pick up speech vibration. To listen, they have earpieces tucked beneath their soft helmets.

  Twenty minutes into the flight, Alcock reaches under his hat and rips the cumbersome earpieces out, throws them down into the blueness. Too bloody sore, he mimics.

  Brown gives a simple thumbs-up. A shame that. They will have no other means of communication now—just scribbled notes and gestures, but they have long ago mapped their minds onto each other’s movements: every twitch a way of speaking, the absence of voice a presence of body.

  Their helmets, gloves, jackets, and knee boots are lined with fur. Underneath, they wear Burberry overalls. At any height, even behind the sloping windscreen, it is going to be freezing.

  In preparation, Alcock has spent three evenings in a walk-in fridge in St. John’s. One night he lay down on a pile of wrapped meat and failed to sleep. A few days later Emily Ehrlich wrote in the Evening Telegram that he still smelled like a freshly cut side of beef.

  SHE STANDS WITH her daughter at the third-floor window, hands on the wooden frame. They are sure at first that it is an illusion, a bird in the foreground. But then she hears the faint report of the engines, and they both know they have missed the moment—no photograph either—yet there is also a strange exaltation about seeing it from a distance, the plane disappearing into the east, silver, not gray, framed by the lens of a hotel window. This is a human victory over war, the triumph of endurance over memory.

  Out there, the blue sky lies cloudless and uninterrupted. Emily likes the sound of the ink rising into her fountain pen, the noise of its body being screwed shut. Two men are flying nonstop across the Atlantic to arrive with a sack of mail, a small white linen bag with 197 letters, specially stamped, and if they make it, it will be the first aerial mail to cross from the New World to the Old. A brand-new thought: Transatlantic airmail. She tests the phrase, scratching it out on the paper, over and over, transatlantic, trans atlas, trans antic. The distance finally broken.

  FLOATING ICEBERGS BELOW. The roughly furrowed sea. They know there will be no turning back. It is all mathematics now. To convert the fuel into time and distance. To set the throttle for the optimum burn. To know the angles and the edges, and the spaces in between.

  Brown wipes the moisture from his goggles, reaches into the wooden compartment behind his head, grabs the sandwiches, unwraps the waxed paper. He passes one to Alcock who keeps one gloved hand on the yoke. It is one of the many things that brings a smile to Alcock’s lips: how extraordinary it is to
be munching on a ham-and-butter sandwich put together by a young woman in a St. John’s hotel more than a thousand feet below. The sandwich is made more delicious by how far they have already come. Wheat bread, fresh ham, a light mustard mixed in with the butter.

  He reaches back for the hot flask of tea, unscrews the cap, allows a wisp of steam to emerge.

  The noise rolls through their bodies. At times they make a music of it—a rhythm that conducts itself from head to chest to toes—but then they are lifted from the rhythm, and it becomes pure noise again. They are well aware that they could go deaf on the flight and that the roar could lodge itself inside them forever, their bodies carrying it like human gramophones, so that if they ever make it to the other side they will still, always, somehow hear it.

  KEEPING TO THE prescribed course is a matter of genius and magic. Brown must navigate by any means possible. The Baker navigation machine sits on the floor of the cockpit. The course and distance calculator is clasped to the side of the fuselage. The drift indicator is fitted in under the seat, along with a spirit level to measure bank. The sextant is clipped to the dashboard. There are three compasses, each of which will illuminate in the dark. Sun, moon, cloud, stars. If all else fails, he will have dead reckoning.

  Brown kneels on his seat and looks over the edge. He twists and turns, makes calculations using the horizon, the seascape, and the position of the sun. On a notepad he scribbles: Keep her nearer 120 than 140, and as soon as he shoves the note across the tiny cockpit, Alcock adjusts the controls ever so slightly, trims the plane, keeps it at three-quarter throttle, keen not to push the engines too hard.

  It is so much like handling a horse, the way the plane changes over a long journey, the shift in her weight from the burn-off of petrol, the gallop of her engines, her rein-touch at the controls.