Permissible Limits

by Hurley, Graham

  He was right. Flying the Mustang imposed an incredibly heavy workload - eyes, ears, fingertips, nerve ends - and paying the aircraft the respect it deserved took every ounce of my concentration. Time and again, over the weeks to come, Harald was to hammer this message home. It was all about detail, he’d insist. It was all about preparation, about getting the smallest things right. The truly successful pilot, the guy who’d die in bed, was the guy who’d get immense satisfaction from the smallest of the small print. A perfectly plotted course. An exquisitely flown instrument approach. Finding the best technique for bringing various aircraft types smoothly to a halt. Only by mastering the small things, he said, would I be able to build that faith, that inner confidence, that would enable me to cope with split-second decisions that could otherwise lead to catastrophe. Without that confidence, any pilot might one day be overwhelmed.

  ‘By what?’

  ‘The terror.’

  It was our third sortie of the day and I was exhausted. To my shame, and perhaps relief, I’d even forgotten about Jamie.

  ‘The terror?’ I repeated blankly.

  ‘Sure. Flying’s unnatural. We were never meant to do it. If it’s an expression of anything, it’s an expression of will.’ He paused. ‘We all want to play God. Flying tempts you to do just that. You get to think you’re all-powerful. There’s nothing you can’t do, no place you can’t go. Then - BAM - something happens, something breaks, something falls off, and hey, you’re as mortal as the next guy.’

  I checked the mirror. I’d never had Harald down as a philosopher but there was a new tone in his voice, a thoughtfulness I’d never detected before.

  ‘I disagree,’ I said. ‘I think flying’s completely natural. At least, that’s the way it feels to me. Maybe I’ll come back as a bird.’

  ‘You are a bird. You fly very well.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘I do.’

  I felt the warmth flooding through me. Up above 6,000 feet, high above the coast, we’d been practising recoveries from clean stalls. Time and time again, I’d slow the aircraft down, nudging back the stick, waiting for that tiny tremor through the airframe that signalled a loss of control. The wing always dipped to the left and the first couple of times I had my heart in my mouth as we plunged earthwards. But Harald was right about pushing the limits. The more I practised the stalls - even the trickier ones - the more routine, the more familiar, they became. I wasn’t, after all, flying a legend. Merely a very powerful aeroplane with imperfect manners and a tendency to bite hard when you weren’t paying it the right kind of attention.

  This realisation gave me just the beginnings of confidence. I could get on top of this. I could hack it. From the back, Harald said very little, setting me trap after trap, challenge after challenge, but I could tell from his tone of voice that I was doing OK. One of my landings, an absolute greaser, had even drawn a second or two of applause.

  I looked down at the ribbon of beach below, smothering a yawn. This was Florida’s Gulf shore. Late afternoon, the shadows of the big waterfront condominium blocks were beginning to lengthen and I could see a pair of motor cruisers ploughing up the coast towards the smudge of a distant marina. The Mustang seems to fly nose down. The view forward through the grey disc of the propellor is better than most planes and there’s a tendency to think you’re forever in a shallow dive. I’d noticed it first on my maiden flight with Harald, back on the Isle of Wight, but already I’d mastered the urge to check the altimeter, another little sign - I realised - that this thing wasn’t quite as intimidating as I’d thought.

  I got on the intercom to Harald. Fatigue was beginning to get the better of me, though the last thing I’d ever do was admit it.

  ‘What next?’

  ‘Home. Standfast.’

  ‘We’re through?’

  ‘For today, yes.’

  ‘You want to give me a heading?’ ‘No, use the map.’

  I slid the map out of the pocket to my right. My own version of dead reckoning put us thirty or so miles south of Fort Myers. The next city along the coast was Naples but I resisted the temptation to do the obvious — hang on until we got there and then fly the radial back. Instead, I dropped the left wing and pulled the aircraft round until we were heading north-east again. On a day like today, with good visibility and no wind to knock me off-course, I knew I’d fly close enough to Standfast to make a visual contact. After that, with my new-found confidence, it would simply be a matter of pulling off another yummy three-pointer.

  We droned inland, the sun still hot through the canopy. I could hear Harald singing to himself behind me, an old John Denver song. The heat and the music compounded my fatigue and once or twice I had to fight to keep my eyes open.

  Then, very suddenly, I heard a voice in my earphones. It was Harald.

  ‘Five o’clock low,’ he said. ‘I have control.’

  I felt the stick jerk sideways out of my hand. Harald was flying the Mustang now, standing the aircraft on its starboard wing and hauling it round in a turn so sudden and so tight that I began to pass out. A huge weight was crushing my chest. I could hardly breathe. I tried to reach for the dashboard but my left hand wouldn’t move. I began to panic. I’d been in plenty of g turns with Adam but nothing this painful.

  Abruptly, the pressure eased. We were near vertical, still diving. I did my best to focus on the altimeter. Two thousand three hundred feet and unwinding fast. The stick moved again, coming back towards me, and I braced myself as the savage pull-out forced the blood into my legs. Colours drained from the cockpit. Everything went grey. And then I heard Harald laughing, not quite a laugh, more a yelp, and I peered forward through the windshield, seeing another Mustang, silver and red this time with a yellow and black chequer-board tail, hanging in the air in front of us.

  The pilot must have seen us at this point because he broke hard to the left, diving for the ground. Harald followed him, a slightly tighter turn, gaining all the time. My eyes were swimming. Bits of gleaming swamp were coming up to meet us and I tensed for the inevitable pull-out. When it came it was even more brutal than the last and I think I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I remember is finding ourselves back at altitude - 3,000 feet at least - with the black and yellow tail of the other Mustang still filling the windshield. There must have been some kind of protocol in these mock dogfights because I could hear Harald exchanging banter with the pilot up ahead. They were talking in Spanish, and when they’d finished Harald came back to me on the intercom.

  ‘Guy’s name’s Ernesto,’ he grunted. ‘And right now he’s a dead man.’

  He muttered something else about the perfect bounce, then gave me back the stick. Every nerve in my body told me to stay a passenger for the rest of the day, but after this morning’s little pep talk I knew that simply wasn’t an option. What we’d just been through was a little mild horseplay, nothing else. There was one landing left and the privilege was entirely mine.

  We were second in the circuit after Ernesto’s Mustang. I watched him cranking down his gear and then make the last turn on to long finals. I switched the fuel to the fullest tank, throttled back, and with the speed dropping below 170 knots checked for three greens as I lowered the undercarriage. My temperatures and pressures were good. The tower had given me clearance to land. Glancing down to the left, I pulled on my harness, then selected full flap for the final approach. Trimming and re-trimming, I lined the aircraft up with the approaching runway. At twenty feet, I eased the stick back, letting the aircraft sink, waiting for the soft kick of the landing. With the nose up, I’d lost the horizon. Adam used to talk me through this in the Moth. ‘If you can’t see the bloody runway,’ he’d say, ‘then it must be there.’

  And it was. I felt a couple of nudges, then the rumble of tyres told me we’d landed. The stick well back, I anchored the tail wheel to the runway and then applied the brakes, gentle dabs at the toe-pedals, nothing too forceful, nothing that might put the aircraft on its nose. The gr
ass beside the runway began to slow. With 600 metres still in hand I went for the first of the two run-off exits, winding back the canopy and letting the hot, moist air sluice in. I put one cheek into the slipstream. My face was bathed in sweat.

  ‘You did great.’

  It was Harald. I thanked him. I wanted to sleep for a year.

  He came to my room to collect me at half past seven. I’d even been too tired to read the rest of Jamie’s letter. Harald was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of black jeans. It shouldn’t have suited him - too young, too hip - but somehow it did. For a man of fifty-five he still had an amazing body.

  I sat in his car, an imported Jaguar XJS. It smelled of new leather and that special wax they put in the body sections.

  ‘I thought you were joking,’ I said. ‘You should have saved yourself the trouble.’

  ‘Taking you out?’

  ‘Making the effort. You’re the one who’s going to have to do the talking. I’m dead from the feet upwards.’

  We drove into Fort Myers. All I really remember is an endless avenue of palm trees, miles and miles of them, following the river all the way to the bay. When we got to the ocean, we crossed a bridge on to Sanibel Island. The sidewalks were thick with elderly couples, stooped and nut-brown. Harald drew up outside a restaurant called Clancy’s. We got out and he tossed the keys to the uniformed doorman.

  ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Starving.’

  The table he’d reserved was at the back. We picked our way across the floor, and when we’d sat down a waiter came for the drinks order. I had a small pitcher of home-made beer. Harald stuck to Diet Coke. Waiting for the food to arrive, we went over the day’s flying, instructor and pupil. Again, Harald told me how well I’d done. I said I’d enjoyed it. It had been all the things he’d promised - a wild mix of challenge, terror and exhilaration -but thanks to him, I’d never once let it get on top of me. He liked that. It felt, he said, like the very best kind of compliment. It meant that I’d listened to him. It meant that I was gutsy as well as able. And it meant, above all, that he’d been right.

  I didn’t quite know how to take the last bit but I was determined to hang on to this new relationship of ours. We respected each other. We trusted each other. We really could be friends.

  Over the second helping of baked grouper, I changed the subject.

  ‘Tell me about Adam,’ I said quietly, ‘How well did you really know him?’

  ‘Pretty well.’

  ‘And you liked him?’

  ‘Very much.’

  I nodded. There was no perfect way to approach this, no rules about minimum speeds, flap settings and all the other stuff you had to learn to stay alive. I decided on long finals, nice shallow glide path.

  ‘He was away a lot,’ I mused. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘And sometimes, you know, I felt I lost touch a bit.’

  I went on about Mapledurcombe for a while. The house, I said, had been as demanding as any baby. I’d had to nurse it to keep the business alive. Much to my regret, there’d been absolutely no chance of spending as much time with Adam as he’d deserved.

  ‘He thought you were doing a wonderful job.’ Harald was shredding the last of the flesh from the grouper’s backbone. ‘I know he did.’

  ‘But was that enough, do you think?’ ‘Enough?’

  Harald caught my eye and I knew at once that all my careful preparations for landing had gone pear-shaped. He knew already. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

  I leaned forward. Touchdown, I thought. At last, the truth.

  ‘Adam was having an affair, wasn’t he?’

  Harald wrinkled his nose, as if a bad smell had just wafted in from somewhere or other.

  ‘Adam was crazy about you,’ he said softly. ‘It was obvious to anyone who knew him. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for you.’

  ‘Like buy me a Spitfire?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that’s exactly the way he’d play it, don’t you see? He was a lovely man, a lovely, lovely man, but he was larger than life, Harald. And he couldn’t get enough of it.’

  ‘Enough of what?’

  ‘Life. Mustangs. Spitfires. Women. Whatever. It was all meat and drink to Adam. He was terrible at…’ I shook my head, staring at the wreckage of the grouper, ‘… drawing the line. He wanted everything, all the time.’

  ‘But he had you.’

  ‘I know he did. Of course he had me. But me wasn’t enough. He was an attractive man. He was over there on bloody Jersey all by himself. He had money, time, opportunity. And he got bored really easily. You know he did. You must have seen it.’

  Harald might have been smiling.

  ‘Are you making a case for yourself here? Only something doesn’t quite fit.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like all this. It’s almost as if you wanted him to have an affair. Retrospectively, of course.’

  ‘I hated him having an affair. It broke my heart.’

  ‘But you definitely know, do you? There’s no doubt in your mind?’

  So far I hadn’t mentioned Michelle La Page, but I was too exhausted to care any more about withholding bits and pieces of this sordid little story. Either Harald was the friend I wanted him to be, or something else was going on. Briefly, I told him about finding the photograph in Adam’s office drawer. Harald was less than impressed.

  ‘Pretty girl. Nice day on the beach.’ He shrugged. ‘What does that prove? Except he had a camera.’

  ‘There was a message on the back.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘It was pretty explicit, Harald. It didn’t leave much to the imagination.’

  ‘You want to tell me what it said?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Harald leaned back, letting the waiter clear the plates away.

  ‘Maybe the message was for someone else. Have you thought about that?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Harald. Whoever collects other peoples’ billets-doux? It just doesn’t happen. Especially to someone like Adam. He was as red-blooded as the rest of you. Probably more so.’

  This protestation, for some reason, made Harald smile again.

  These smiles of his were beginning to get to me. He knew. I knew he knew.

  ‘Listen Harald, you were good friends with Adam, good buddies. Believe it or not, I know how these things work. Men confide in each other, just the way women do. Something was going on and I just don’t believe you weren’t aware of it.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Something was going on?’

  ‘No, Adam was a really good friend.’

  ‘And that’s where this conversation ends? Is it loyalty, Harald? Discretion? All that crap?’ I was getting really angry now. ‘You’re my friend, too, you know. Or isn’t that quite the same thing? What should I do, Harald? Wear Chinos? Get myself a deeper voice? Drink more beer?’

  His hand came out and covered mine. It was the first time he’d ever touched me like that.

  ‘It’s an impossible question, Ellie. There’s no way I can answer it.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Ever.’ He nodded.

  ‘But you know?’

  ‘That’s your assumption.’ ‘You must know.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘So why the games? Why the evasions? Just tell me, for God’s sake. Tell me whether you know or not.’

  Harald gave my hand a little squeeze and then leaned back.

  ‘What difference would it make?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Every difference. Every bloody difference in the world.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would prove it one way or the other. And that would put my mind at rest.’

  ‘OK.’ He nodded. ‘So say it was true. Say he was having an affair. Would that make life easier?’

  The final word in that sentence settled heavily between us. Easier. Easier for me. Easier for Jamie. Easier to justify a widow losing her heart to a twenty-one-year-old. Was there any poi
nt in trying to complete this conversation? Was there anything left to say?

  I lowered my head, sullen, disgruntled. I felt about twelve.

  ‘You know Jamie,’ I muttered. ‘Or you’ve met him, at least.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s it. He’s there. He’s been kind to me, more than kind actually. These things make you vulnerable.’

  ‘Someone dying?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked up at him. ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  There was a long silence. I felt incredibly tired. Then Harald stirred.

  ‘We’ve all tried, Ellie. We’ve all done our best…’ He frowned, fingering the tablecloth. ‘I’ve never lost a wife… you know… had a marriage go from under me. It must be tough.’

  ‘It is. It’s bloody tough. And I’m grateful, Harald, don’t get me wrong. Old Glory, our Harvard, all the time you’ve spent, all the money, this…’ I gestured round. ‘God knows what I’ve done to deserve it.’

  Harald watched me tallying the help he’d given me since Adam’s death. The smile had gone now and there was another expression on his face, infinitely bleaker. He signalled to the waiter, calling for the tab. It was barely half past nine. I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Is that it, then? We just go home now?’

  Harald was sorting through a sheaf of credit cards. When he spoke, he didn’t bother looking up.

  ‘You’re tired, Ellie. We’ve got a helluva day ahead of us, a helluva week. I want you solo by the end of the month. That’s a damn tight schedule.’

  ‘But what about Adam?’ I glared at him across the table.

  Harald sighed. He’d had enough of this conversation and he wanted me to know it.

  ‘Adam and I had supper that last night. You probably remember me mentioning it.’

  ‘The Japanese place. Adam had sushi.’

  ‘He did. We also talked a lot. Like always.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wanted me to do something for him, just in case… you know… anything ever happened.’

  ‘He had a premonition? ‘

  ‘Absolutely not. You know him. He’d laugh at all that horseshit.’