Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘You liked that?’

  ‘Loved it.’ He took my outstretched hand. ‘More, please.’

  Chapter ten

  Jamie had his way. For most of the following three weeks, to Andrea’s intense annoyance, we went up in the Moth while I piled lesson on lesson.

  We did endless flying in the circuit at Sandown, crosswind legs, downwind legs, base legs, finals. We did high approaches, low approaches, and glide approaches with the engine throttled back. We practised crosswind landings, soft-field landings, and landings that were so laden with problems that they barely qualified as landings at all.

  We did overshoots and touch-and-goes. We did steep climbing turns, steep descending turns and recoveries from a spiral dive. We practised engine failures, mid-air restarts and bits and pieces of elementary navigation. Jamie was as comfortable with reciprocal courses and the problems of magnetic variation as he was with practically everything else I could throw at him. He read maps as if he’d been doing it all his life. The allowances he made for track error and lateral drift were seldom more than a mile or so out. Yet with each successive flight, it became more and more obvious to both of us that the direction we’d taken wasn’t simply a matter of pre-flight planning and headings on the compass.

  One day we set out for Wales, stopping for lunch and half a tank of fuel at a tiny airfield in North Dorset. The weather, miraculously, was still holding and we sat in the sunshine outside a rusting 1940s Nissen hut, peeling the shells off freshly cooked prawns and dipping them into an open jar of mayonnaise. It was a moment of time I’ll treasure forever, untainted by anything more complicated than agreeing that life, for both of us, was wonderful. The cherry trees beyond the tumbledown control tower were in full bloom. The wind tasted of early summer. We barely needed to talk. Just being there was enough.

  Jamie was high on flying. I was stratospheric on something even simpler. I didn’t give it a name then, and even now, looking back, I’m still stuck for the right word. Was I falling in love with him? Yes, I think I probably was, Did I ever stop to wonder where that might lead? No, I don’t think I did. For the first time since Adam’s death - six weeks? ten years? several aeons of geological time? - I’d stopped thinking about the wreckage he’d left behind. Jamie, whether he knew it or not, had released me, and for that I was more glad and more grateful than he could possibly have known.

  At the end of that third week, I found Andrea waiting for me back at Mapledurcombe. Relations had sunk to an all-time low. In fact we were barely talking.

  She was sitting in Adam’s study. She nodded at the phone.

  ‘Harald,’ she muttered.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s in Jersey. He wants to come over. Says he needs to talk about the States.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Tomorrow was Sunday. Jersey was just over an hour in the Moth. Good practice, I thought. Excellent chance to put Jamie’s navigation to the test.

  ‘Fine.’ I smiled at Andrea. ‘I’ll tell him I’ll pop over. Save him the trip.’

  Next day there were signs that the weather was about to break. A nasty wind had blown up and high cloud was streaming in from the south-west. I’d met Jamie at the airfield. I was on the point of cancelling the trip but a couple of minutes on the phone to the Met people persuaded me to change my mind. The weather was indeed expected to worsen but nothing dramatic was predicted until early evening.

  ‘Don’t look so disappointed,’ I told Jamie as I replaced the pay phone. ‘As long as we’re back by four it’ll be fine.’

  Jamie handled the take-off and flew the Moth on the way across. He had a map flattened on his knee, and after we’d passed Alderney and Sark on the starboard beam, Jersey came up bang on the nose. I gave him a round of applause and told him to talk to the tower on the way in. Jersey is a busy commercial airport and the workload was much heavier than we’d been used to. We had a British Midland jet five minutes behind us, and this was very definitely one landing we couldn’t afford to get wrong. The Moth is designed to land on grass, and putting her down on a hardened runway can be a pain. Just the grinding of the tail skid is enough to put most pilots off.

  I was on the point of taking control when Jamie came through on the intercom.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said.

  ‘Mind what?’

  ‘Me doing the landing.’

  I could see Jersey airport down to the side of us. The wind was perfect, if a little blustery, straight down the runway. We were on the point of calling finals. This was no time for indecision.

  ‘You think you can handle it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  That one word was typical. It was what Adam would have said. What Harald would have said. Maybe, even, what I would have said. It meant that Jamie had self-belief. It meant that he could hack it. No wonder he was going to make such a good pilot.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Go for it.’

  He turned on to base leg. We were slightly high and he began to sideslip, shedding altitude. Unlike the big jets, we didn’t need to hit the glidepath miles out and we were already over the perimeter fence when he levelled the aircraft and hauled back on the trim wheel. The flare-out was perfect. The Moth settled on to the centre-line, the slightest bump as the main undercarriage made contact, then a metallic tearing noise as the tail skid grounded.

  For the first time, Jamie let out a whoop.

  ‘How about that?’ he yelled.

  I gave myself a moment to unwind.

  ‘Terrifying,’ I told him, ‘but brilliant.’

  Harald was waiting for me inside the Aero Club. At first I don’t think he realised that Jamie and I had flown over together because after he’d kissed me and asked how I’d been, he just gave Jamie a long, blank look as if he was passing through.

  ‘Jamie Pierson. You two met at Mapledurcombe.’

  Slowly Harald put the name to the face.

  ‘You came over on the bike?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘With a little diecast model? In a Jiffy bag?’

  ‘Yes. That was my grandfather’s idea. Ralph.’

  ‘Ralph. Yes, of course, dumb of me.’ He shook Jamie briefly by the hand. I told him about Jamie’s landing. Jamie looked delighted. ‘You landed the Moth? Just now?’ Harald was frowning.

  ‘Yep. And flew over.’

  ‘And you’re happy about the weather?’ Harald was talking to me. ‘You’re expecting to turn right around and go back home?’

  I was looking out of the window. The cloud base was much lower now and the last of the sunshine - livid and sinister - had gone. I began to tell him about the Met people I’d phoned from Sandown. Three o’clock was my deadline. As long as I was back by then, we’d outrun the forecast storm.

  I stole a look at my watch. Harald extended a hand, covering it.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ he said. ‘We need to talk. By the time we’re through, you’ll be weathered in.’

  ‘How long do we need?’

  ‘An hour minimum.’ He nodded at the window. ‘Believe me, Ellie, even now it’s fifty-fifty.’

  I could feel the pressure of his hand. As gently as I could, I retrieved my wrist. Then Jamie touched me lightly on the arm.

  ‘He’s right. Look.’

  I looked. Rain was dimpling the big plate-glass windows.

  ‘OK?’ Harald put a patient, slightly fatherly arm around my shoulders. ‘Believe me now?’

  After I’d hangared the Moth, we drove across to St Helier in Harald’s hired Mercedes. Harald was staying in the hotel where he’d taken me before, and in daylight the setting was even more impressive. As we walked from the car to the gabled entrance, I paused to admire the peacocks on the lawn. I turned to point them out to Jamie. Typically, he only had eyes for the trees.

  ‘Wonderful.’ He shook his head. ‘Just look at that cedar.’

  Harald was a couple of paces ahead of us. It was still spotting with rain and he was impatient to get int
o the hotel. Hearing our voices, his footsteps faltered a moment, then he changed his mind and disappeared through the big panelled front door without a backward glance.

  Jamie and I exchanged looks. We felt like kids, both of us, and Jamie mimed a slap on the wrist. In practical terms, he was just as businesslike and focused as Harald, but the older man’s brusqueness, his refusal to waste time on the smaller pleasures of life, was lost on him. One of the delights of being with Jamie was his sense of humour. We laughed at the same things, the same little absurdities, and it was already obvious that Harald, in some indefinable way, construed this kinship as a threat.

  He was waiting for us in the lobby. His suite was on the first floor, an expanse of heavy oriental carpet dotted with exquisite antique furniture. Jamie and I sat side by side on a beautifully preserved Regency sofa. The low table in front of us was covered in maps. Even upside down I recognised the long, gangly shape of Florida.

  ‘Here’s where we start.’ Harald beckoned me closer. ‘You’ll be flying into Orlando. I’ll pick you up there. The field’s down here. We’ve got thirteen hundred metres in three directions. Most days, this time of year, we’re flying dawn till dusk.’

  I got off the sofa and knelt on the carpet beside Harald. His finger was indicating an area inland from the Gulf coast. I squinted at the name of the nearest city. Fort Myers.

  ‘This is your airfield?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your planes are there?’

  ‘Most of them, sure. The dual Mustang will be coming from a field up in North Carolina. Guy owes me several favours.’

  I nodded, aware of Jamie’s interest in our conversation. To date, I’d said nothing about Harald’s plans beyond his determination to turn me into a fighter jock. This was the first time, I think, that it had dawned on Jamie that his own flying lessons might be in for some kind of intermission.

  ‘Dates.’ Harald had produced a diary. ‘We’re mid-April right now. The weather over there’s looking pretty good. I’ve got a clear run until early June. Lady at the travel agency I use has a Delta reservation out of Heathrow on Wednesday. How does that sound?’

  ‘This Wednesday?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I stole a look at Jamie. He was clenching and unclenching his left hand, as if he had cramp, something I’d seen him do a couple of times before. It signalled impatience, even anger.

  Harald was still waiting for a decision. I summoned a smile and said I’d have to check with Andrea. I couldn’t just walk out. Not at a couple of days’ notice. Not without talking to her first.

  ‘But we’ve discussed it,’ I added quickly, ‘and in principle it’s fine. She can cope.’

  ‘I know. We talked already.’

  ‘Talked about coping?’

  ‘Talked about Wednesday. There isn’t a problem. She’ll be driving you to the airport.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said evenly. ‘And does she have my bags packed?’

  Harald was still on the floor beside me. He could hear the irritation in my voice, the feeling that once again - uninvited - he’d stepped into my life and determined the way things would be, and when he patted me on the shoulder, and told me to relax, I got to my feet and rejoined Jamie on the sofa. Being rude to someone who’s about to present you with thirty-five hours in a Mustang isn’t something I do readily, but Harald had swamped me - on this occasion - once too often.

  ‘I’ll phone you,’ I said. ‘Until then, I suggest you hang on to the reservation.’

  Harald looked across at Jamie and winked. The wink, to my intense annoyance, said it all. Neurotic woman. Can’t read a calendar. Can’t make her mind up. Can’t, godammit, even get the weather right.

  I stood up, smoothing the wrinkles out of my flying suit. Jamie was looking startled.

  ‘Do you have a bathroom?’ I enquired. ‘Only I’d like a little wash before we head back.’

  We didn’t, of course, leave. The rain was already lashing at the mullioned windows and there was absolutely no question of getting the Moth airborne, let alone finding our way back across the Channel. Instead, at Harald’s insistence, we folded up the maps and trooped downstairs for tea.

  Over scones and clotted cream, Harald was infinitely better behaved, filling me in with details about the kind of schedule he’d planned with the Mustang, baiting each successive week with some new enticement. How I’d learn to cope with abrupt or radical stall departures. How I’d be able to interpret the merest tremor in the airframe. How I’d be flying deeper and deeper into the very corners of the Mustang’s performance envelope and be able to come out with a smile on my face.

  ‘You fight like you train.’ Harald was talking to Jamie. ‘You ever hear that?’ Jamie said he hadn’t. Harald shook his head. ‘Too bad. It’s what the old-time fighter pilots used to say. Stretch yourself and stretch the airplane. Do it till it’s second nature. Do it until you’re wearing the goddamn ship. Then, when it matters, it’ll look after you. Hey…’ he leaned forward, ‘… I’ll give you an example. Peacetime. Not wartime.’ He looked in my direction, gesturing me closer to the table, holding both hands flat, palms down over the china pots of strawberry jam. ‘You’re flying some display with your wingman. You both lay down one of those dazzling airshow strafing passes. Then you want to bring her around in a pretty big hurry so you pull hard in the break and there’s just a flicker of airframe buffet and then - wham - you’re snap inverted and everything’s upside down because - hey - you’re pointing at the ground. Well?’ He sat back and favoured me with one of his rare smiles. ‘What do you do?’

  Jamie was open-mouthed. I shook my head and said I didn’t know. I was still staring at his hands as he went through the manoeuvre again, determined to milk the story of the last drop of tension. Where had I seen this body language before? The hands? The smile? The face tilted up in triumph as the Mustang plunged earthwards?

  ‘Pass,’ I said for a second time when he asked me what I’d do. ‘Just listening to you terrifies me.’

  ‘But that’s the point, Ellie, that’s the point exactly. It needn’t terrify you. Not if you do it the way I’ll be showing you. Not if you train right.’

  I nodded, only half-hearing him, sitting back in my chair while he went through some other manoeuvre with Jamie, weaving his hands left and right, posing fresh problems for himself and his wingman. The image had come back to me now, the memory of where I’d seen these gestures before.

  It had been at Ralph’s place, the night he’d shown me the photos of Karel Brokenka, the Czech pilot who’d downed the Me109. Brokenka had been standing on the tarmac beside his Mustang, newly returned from some sortie or other, and he’d been telling the story precisely the same way, hands outstretched, one flattened palm chasing the other.

  Now I looked at Harald afresh, wondering for the first time exactly how far his flying experience extended. As a businessman, according to Dennis Wetherall, he kept dangerous company. Arms-dealers, I assumed, could scarcely do otherwise. But what if Harald was infinitely more hands-on than even Dennis had imagined? What if he’d been up there, at the cutting edge, doing what Ralph had done? What Karel Brokenka had done? What if all this hot flying wasn’t entirely for the benefit of umpteen thousand punters at some Florida airshow? What then?

  In truth, I didn’t know the answer, and there was no way I was going to find out over tea and scones, but the question continued to haunt me and the more I listened to Harald impressing Jamie with his Mustang stories, the more I remembered Ralph musing about what it took to become a top-scoring fighter ace.

  These men were ruthless, he’d said, and even a little mad. They suffered tunnel vision. They thought of nothing but the next kill. It wasn’t a question of flesh and blood, of inflicting anything as mundane as pain. It was just an overwhelming determination to engage your opponent, to out-fly him, and out-turn him, and out-dive him, and then come in so close, so tight, so intimate, that there was absolutely no possibility of squeezing the trigger and missing. What hap
pened next - whether he lived or died, got horribly burned or survived intact - was of absolutely no consequence. The point of that glorious moment was getting back, and shedding the parachute harness, and standing beside your aeroplane while your buddies gathered round and you extended each hand, explaining - second by second - exactly the way it had been. Another kill. Another downed Me109 to join the little frieze of swastikas below the cockpit hood.

  Impressive? Compelling? Brave? I didn’t know. But listening to Harald, that stormy afternoon in the hotel outside St Helier, I recognised all too clearly the authentic voice of the real Mustang pilots and for the first time the thought of the aircraft - its shape, its sound, its silhouette - froze my blood. Not, after all, a plaything, a pretty relic of some half-forgotten war, but a killing machine, a predator, as effective now as the day Karel Brokenka bloodied her. Last year, some time, Adam had taped a warning to himself on the dashboard in the front cockpit. The warning read permissible limits. Was this what he’d meant? Had he, like me, listened to Harald Meyler?

  I tried to explore these thoughts with Jamie in the taxi back to the airport but, unusually, he didn’t seem in the mood to listen. He was sitting in the front alongside the driver and when I leaned forward, telling him about the photos Ralph had shown me, he simply nodded, staring out through the blurry windscreen. The weather, if anything, had got worse, and the wind was lashing at the stands of elm and oak beside the road. On the phone, from the hotel, I’d booked a couple of seats on the early-evening Air UK flight back to Southampton, accepting Harald’s offer to return the Moth when the weather cheered up, but now I was beginning to wonder whether even the big turbo-prop would be able to cope.

  When we got to the airport, it turned out I was right. There was a small crowd of passengers around the Air UK desk. Most of them looked relieved.

  ‘Delayed or cancelled?’ I asked the ticketing girl.

  ‘Delayed for now,’ she said. ‘But to be honest I think you’ve had it. The next three or four hours are going to be awful and tomorrow’s not looking much better.’

  I glanced at Jamie. He hadn’t been listening.