Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  I found Jamie’s hand and gave it a squeeze, trying to share the thought. We were best mates. We had a fabulous relationship. He was the new start, the clean sheet, I’d so desperately needed. The last thing I wanted to do was turn the clock backwards.

  ‘Clean sheet?’

  I could tell by the tone of his voice that Jamie hated the phrase. Too late, I tried to substitute another.

  ‘A challenge,’ I murmured sleepily. ‘The flying, watching you hack it. It’s wonderful, brilliant, I can’t tell you how -’

  ‘And us?’ He made no apology for butting in.

  ‘Us? We’re here. Isn’t that enough?’

  He caught my hand, fending me off.

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I love you. I care about you. I want you. Christ, if you only knew…’

  ‘Knew what?’

  He looked at me for a long time and then shook his head, and for that one split second the expression on his face told me everything. My chatter about clean sheets and new starts had touched a nerve. Like it or not, I’d just opened a brand-new chapter in Jamie’s young life and the consequences for both of us weren’t going to be something I could easily ignore. Be gentle with him, Ralph had said.

  ‘Do you mind if I write to you?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you’re in Florida. While you’re over there.’

  I saw the anxiety in Jamie’s face. He wants to be sure of me, I thought. He wants to rope me down, make me responsible, make me his.

  ‘You’ll be rushed off your feet as soon as the season starts,’ I said lightly. ‘Then there’s Andrea. Any spare moment, she’ll be on your tail, out of the sun, dagga-dagga-dagga.’ I mimed the rattle of cannon fire.

  Jamie just looked at me. He wasn’t smiling.

  ‘There’s stuff I need to tell you. Explain to you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Me. The person I really am.’

  ‘I know the kind of person you are.’ I brought my hands up from under the sheet, tallying my little list of virtues. ‘You’re talented, and funny, and strong, and wonderful in bed. You’re practical, and sensitive…’ I ran out of compliments. ‘What else could a girl want?’

  ‘You think it ends there?’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t. No one ends there. I’m just telling you what I love about you… telling you the way I feel… What’s the matter?’

  Jamie had swung his legs out of bed. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he had his back to me. I got up on one elbow, wondering what on earth had happened, what I’d said, why - so suddenly - the mood between us had changed.

  ‘Jamie?’

  I could see him shaking his head. For a moment, I thought he was crying but when he turned back towards me, his eyes were dry. ‘This isn’t a game,’ he was staring at me, ‘is it?’

  ‘A game?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ He gestured at the rumpled sheets. ‘A casual fuck. Therapy. Whatever you want to call it.’

  I shook my head, appalled. Then I got up and knelt behind him, my breasts against his back, my arms encircling him. ‘Do I make you happy?’ I whispered. ‘Or was this a mistake?’

  ‘Mistake? Christ, no, far from it.’

  ‘OK.’ I kissed the back of his neck. ‘So tell me.’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Tell me whether I make you happy or not.’

  ‘You make me very happy, incredibly happy, that’s the problem.’ His eyes were glistening. I’d been right about the tears. ‘Past a certain point, I’m lost. I know it. I know the feeling, the way it happens. Past a certain point I just… cave in.’

  ‘It’s happened before?’

  ‘Yes. Once.’

  ‘And here? Now?’

  ‘Lost’ he mumbled, ‘Completely lost.’

  ‘And you think I’m playing games? You really think that?’

  ‘No. No, you’re not. Of course you’re not. I just have to ask, that’s all. I just have to be sure.’

  He turned round again, imploring, and I tugged him gently back to bed. We lay together for a long time, cheek to cheek, belly to belly, not talking. I held him very close. I could feel his heartbeat against my flesh. After a while, it began to slow. I was on the point of reaching for the light when he slipped out of my arms and got up again.

  I could hear him in the bathroom, running water into the wash basin. When he reappeared, he was wiping his face with a towel.

  ‘Something’s wrong’ I said, ‘Isn’t it?’

  He looked down at me, smiling.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. As long as we both mean it.’

  I thought about the proposition for a moment, then I sat up in bed and made myself comfortable. We’d never been less than candid with each other.

  ‘Do you think this was a mistake?’ I asked him for the second time. ‘Only it was my idea, my doing. We could push the beds apart. Pretend it never happened.’

  ‘Pick up tomorrow morning? Where we left off?’

  It was a good question. Both of us knew that was impossible. It had happened. Most of it had been wonderful. But what next?

  Jamie was sitting on the edge of the bed again, the towel laid over his lap. I gave him my hand and he stroked it softly. Twice he told me he loved me. Then he stood up and went to the window, letting the towel drop to the floor. He parted the curtains and looked down into the courtyard. It was still quite early and I said something grown-up about people getting funny about guests wandering around naked. Jamie didn’t seem to have heard me. Something had caught his attention. Slowly, he closed the curtains again. Then he came back to bed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He just stared at me.

  ‘How many other people know we’re here?’ he asked at last.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely sure. Why? Why do you ask?’ He gestured back towards the window. ‘White Mercedes?’ he queried. ‘With a sunshine roof?’ For a moment I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. Then I remembered the drive from the airport to St Helier.

  ‘Harald?’ Jamie nodded.

  ‘Watching,’ he said. ‘From down there.’

  I got out of bed. There was a big blue towel in the bathroom. I wrapped it round myself and pulled back the curtains, staring down. The courtyard was empty. There was no sign of a car.

  Jamie had joined me at the window. I could feel the heat of his body next to mine.

  ‘He must have gone,’ he said. ‘He must have seen me.’

  I looked up at him.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ His hand found mine. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  Chapter eleven

  A couple of days later I flew to Florida. The previous evening, Tuesday, Jamie drove me to London. We spent the night at a small hotel near Heathrow. It was wistful, and passionate, and sad, and we were still awake when dawn broke, talking.

  At the airport, beside the queue for passport control, we said our goodbyes. We hugged, and kissed, and when the overhead TV screens announced Final Boarding, Jamie whispered a question in my ear.

  ‘Three greens?’

  I buried my face in his fleece. Three greens is one of the checks you make before you land. It means all three wheels are down and locked. I looked up at Jamie. He wanted me back in one piece. I couldn’t wait.

  ‘Three greens,’ I confirmed.

  My flight took off late, delayed by a no-show passenger. I cursed the extra time I could have spent with Jamie, watching Windsor Castle disappear beneath a veil of thin cloud. By the time we were over Ireland, I’d written him my first letter, read it, and torn it up. Halfway across the Atlantic, two more were in shreds around my feet. The American woman sitting next to me thought they looked like confetti. The image brought tears to my eyes.

  By the time we landed in Orlando, I was more or less back in control. I knew Harald would be waiting to meet me and I was absolutely determined to be the Ellie Bruce he’d always known: levelheaded, sane, utterly
normal. I no longer cared whether it had really been him in the hotel car park that night. What I did with my private life was none of his business. He was a kind and generous man, and we were the best of friends. End of story.

  I spotted him the moment I emerged on to the arrivals concourse. He was standing beside a vending machine, nursing a can of Coke. The sight of me bumping my luggage trolley through a gaggle of kids bound for Disneyworld brought a brief smile to his lips.

  ‘Here.’ He took charge of the trolley, kissing me lightly on the cheek. ‘Great to see you.’

  We took a cab across the airport to the General Aviation Terminal. Nothing had prepared me for the heat and the sheer brightness of the light, and while Harald paid the driver I stood on the tarmac, feeling the first prickles of sweat inside the creased cotton of my shirt. The flight over had been full to bursting, ten hours in a cramped seat with bad food and worse movies, and I was only too aware of the way I must have looked.

  ‘See the flight line?’ Harald was indicating a row of parked aircraft. ‘Second from the end.’

  I followed his pointing finger, half-expecting to find a Mustang. Instead, shimmering in the heat, I thought I recognised the high wing and the gently angled tailplane.

  ‘A Cessna?’

  ‘Sure. A 172.’

  I glanced at Harald. Adam hd been flying a 172 the day he died. Was this part of the training? An early test of character? Or should I blame it on coincidence and my own hyper-sensitivity? Shouldering the lightest of my bags, I decided on the latter: 172s, after all, were ten a penny. You see them everywhere.

  There was a fuel bowser beside the little plane and I stole a moment or two with my vanity mirror while Harald checked the tanks. The face that looked back at me - wary and a little bit dazed -exactly matched the way I was feeling, and we were airborne on a long, climbing turn over the Orlando suburbs before Harald asked me about the flight over. When I told him more or less the way it had been he pulled a face.

  ‘I tried for Executive Class.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘I’m sorry you ended up in Coach.’

  I heard myself telling him it didn’t matter. The important thing was getting here in one piece. A good night’s sleep would sort me out and by tomorrow I’d be fit for anything.

  Harald glanced across, his right hand easing back the throttle.

  ‘I was going to talk you through the schedule,’ he murmured, ‘but maybe we ought to wait.’

  The rest of the flight passed in near-silence. Harald was busy juggling radio frequencies most of the time, hopscotching from controller to controller as we droned south-west towards the Gulf Coast. Even at 5,000 feet the heat haze blanketed the ground beneath us, blurring the scatter of townships that dotted the landscape. The terrain was flat here, all of it cultivated, the huge fields parcelled together by long, thin ribbons of road. From time to time, the sun would splinter briefly on stretches of water, and twice I saw big lakes off to the east, a dull gunmetal grey, not at all the way I’d imagined the Sunshine State.

  After about half an hour, Harald tapped me on the arm. Exhaustion, and the heat of the sun through the perspex, had made me drowsy.

  ‘Ahead there, look.’

  I followed his pointing finger. Through the blur of the propeller I could see the dark mass of an approaching city. The city straddled the mouth of a river and beyond the high-rise office blocks of the downtown area I could just make out the long curl of an offshore island. The water here was very different, a brilliant blue, and Harald began to lose height, dipping a wing to give me a grandstand view as we followed the river into the heart of the city.

  ‘Fort Myers,’ Harald grunted. ‘I’ll give you the tour later.’

  ‘You live near here?’

  ‘Thirty miles inland.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I thought we’d take a look at the Gulf first.’

  We were over open water now, closing on the offshore island, and I gazed down, marvelling at the whiteness of the sand against the deep blue of the ocean. The coast here had been highly developed, a waterside jigsaw of apartment blocks, marinas and shopping complexes, and I listened to Harald describing just how the area had exploded in recent years. The way he tallied the statistics - highest per capita boat ownership, richest population profile - didn’t sound the least bit enthusiastic and I was still wondering exactly why he’d chosen this place as home when he pulled the Cessna into a tight 180-degree turn and headed back inland. Minutes later, much lower, the sprawl of houses and backyard pools had given way once again to an endless expanse of fields. The sight of a line of one of those huge irrigation sprinklers throwing out long ropes of water made me think quite suddenly of Jamie. He’d just installed something infinitely smaller in the garden at Mapledurcombe and only a couple of days ago I’d watched him showing it off to Andrea.

  A couple of days ago? Jamie? I shut my eyes a moment, squeezing hard, determined not to be swamped again. I’d thought of him nonstop for most of the way over, but now was the time to concentrate on this new chapter in my life. I’d never before set foot in the States. I’d never before been offered any flying remotely as exciting as the Mustang. Unless I got myself back into some kind of mental shape, I was in danger, in Adam’s phrase, of spinning in. Spinning in, very definitely, was not on my agenda. Apart from anything else, it would probably kill me.

  A change in the engine note opened my eyes again. We were down below a thousand feet, easing in towards a touchdown on what I assumed was the local municipal airfield. We were landing to the south-west and Harald had put on a pair of battered aviator sunglasses.

  ‘Your place is near here?’

  ‘My place is here.’

  I looked again. The runway, fully paved, couldn’t have been less than a mile long. Taxiways at either end led to a couple of hangars. One of them looked big enough to take a medium-sized jetliner. The doors of the other one, not much smaller, were open and as we got lower and the angle flattened I could see a cluster of familiar shapes inside. At least three Mustangs. A couple of Harvards. A Yak without an engine cowling. And a bigger two-engined transport plane called a Dakota. I’d seen them before at airshows with Adam. The beat of their engines was, according to my late husband, the sweetest sound on God’s earth.

  Harald was hauling back on the control yoke, juggling the flaps against a modest crosswind. When he finally wheeled the Cessna on to the racing tarmac, I barely felt the bump.

  ‘What do you use those for?’

  I’d seen three white lines painted across the runway, the last one a foot or so beyond a tangle of rubber scorch marks from previous landings. Harald was toe-ending the brakes and cleaning up the control surfaces.

  ‘Tell you later,’ he said. ‘It’s a game we sometimes play.’

  ‘Game?’

  ‘Yeah.’ For the first time I sensed the grin was spontaneous. ‘Welcome to Standfast.’

  We taxied to the apron in front of the smaller of the two hangars. An ancient jeep came bouncing across the grass towards us. In the distance, surrounded by palm trees, I could see the long white outline of what looked like a house.

  The jeep pulled up beside the Cessna. The man at the wheel was wearing an old army shirt, the sleeves rolled up over a pair of brawny arms. He threw Harald a lazy salute and turned off the engine. Harald opened his door and in the sudden silence I could hear the sharp metallic clang of someone at work with a hammer. It came from inside the hangar, each blow echoing for a second or two.

  The driver of the jeep was still looking at Harald. He was a big man, tall, broad-shouldered, with a tight, greying crew cut and a deeply tanned face. Harald had taken his glasses off. The hot wind across the airfield ruffled his hair. He nodded towards the hangar.

  ‘How’s it shaping?’

  ‘Fine. Enrique says he’ll have it done by sundown.’

  ‘And the FAA guy? He phoned back?’

  ‘Sure, he’s talking mid-May. I told him we’d need a coupla days’ notice.’ Harald turned to me. ‘You r
ecall that 109 I mentioned?’

  I frowned, trying to place the conversation. Then I remembered that Harald was doing some heavy restoration on an old Messerschmitt. As soon as it was airworthy, he planned to ship it to Europe.

  ‘The Fighter Meet,’ I said brightly, ‘September.’

  ‘That’s right. Care to take a look?’

  Harald introduced me to the driver of the jeep and all three of us walked over to the hangar. The driver’s name was Chuck Beatty. He had a wonderful Southern accent and none of Harald’s reserve. By the time we were standing inside the cool of the hangar, I’d practically told him my life history.

  ‘Mapledurcombe?’ He was running one huge hand through his grizzled hair. ‘What kinda damn name is that?’

  Before I had a chance to tell him, Harald was escorting me across to the far corner of the hangar where a couple of mechanics were working on the Messerschmitt. I was struck at once by how small it was, almost dainty. The nearby Mustang, with its broad undercarriage, underslung radiator and long silver snout, looked twice the plane.

  Harald was questioning one of the mechanics in Spanish. He and Harald were crouched beneath the exposed engine, Harald nodding while the mechanic’s torch mapped the tangle of pipes. At length Harald emerged, standing upright beside the cockpit.

  ‘We had a coolant problem,’ he explained. ‘Enrique’s fixed it though, so we’re back on schedule.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Certification. An inspector comes down from Atlanta. These guys show no mercy. The smallest glitch -’ He drew a forefinger across his throat.

  I raised a dutiful smile, only half-listening. Something on the Messerschmitt had caught my attention. The tape sealing the mouth of the cannon on the nearside wing had been shredded and there were scorch marks on the bare unpainted metal of the wing’s upper surface behind it.

  ‘What happened there?’

  Harald followed my pointing finger. Harald looked, if anything, embarrassed.