The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

  Copyright & Information

  The Bright Blue Sky

  First published in 1982

  © Juliet Harris; House of Stratus 1982-2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Max Hennessy (John Harris) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 0755128028 EAN: 9780755128020

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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  About the Author

  John Harris, wrote under his own name and also the pen names of Mark Hebden and Max Hennessy.

  He was born in 1916 and educated at Rotherham Grammar School before becoming a journalist on the staff of the local paper. A short period freelancing preceded World War II, during which he served as a corporal attached to the South African Air Force. Moving to the Sheffield Telegraph after the war, he also became known as an accomplished writer and cartoonist. Other ‘part time’ careers followed.

  He started writing novels in 1951 and in 1953 had considerable success when his best-selling The Sea Shall Not Have Them was filmed. He went on to write many more war and modern adventure novels under his own name, and also some authoritative non-fiction, such as Dunkirk. Using the name Max Hennessy, he wrote some very accomplished historical fiction and as Mark Hebden, the ‘Chief Inspector’ Pel novels which feature a quirky Burgundian policeman.

  Harris was a sailor, an airman, a journalist, a travel courier, a cartoonist and a history teacher, who also managed to squeeze in over eighty books. A master of war and crime fiction, his enduring novels are versatile and entertaining.

  Part One

  One

  Nicholas Dicken Quinney always considered that his career sprang from the fact that he fell in love twice in the same day – once with a girl and once with flying.

  It had been his intention that Saturday in the early summer of 1914 to watch the cricket at Brighton but he missed the train and decided instead to go to Shoreham where he’d heard some idiot was going to try to fly.

  At that point in his life he had no interest whatsoever in aviation beyond the intriguing discovery that men had learned to get off the ground, and almost until his voice had broken he had remained faithful to a youthful wish to be an engine driver. The man at Shoreham, however, was not one of the well-known aviators – Hawker, Sopwith, De Havilland or A V Roe – and, you never knew, there was always the possibility that he would crash.

  The airplane, remarkably fragile-looking as it trembled in the breeze, had a pusher propeller, front and rear elevators and flat planes without camber. Its ailerons were without compensating cables to keep them in position so that on the ground, without the passage of air beneath them, they drooped like the tail feathers of a cockerel in wet weather. It looked, in fact, as elementary as the box-kites Dicken had been flying on the Downs not very many years before, and the doubts that it would ever get off the ground seemed implicit in the fact that the onlookers numbered no more than thirty. Dicken decided that perhaps he’d made a mistake, and ought to have gone to watch the cricket after all.

  “It’s got a four-cylinder ENV engine,” a voice alongside him said and he turned to see a girl of roughly his own age staring intently at the machine. Beyond her was another girl, taller, blue-eyed, perhaps a little older than he was, and of an electrifying beauty. She wore a large tam o’shanter with a red bobble and had her dark hair done in a large bun at the back of her head. With them was a youth of Dicken’s own age, plump, pale-haired, pale-eyed, with a bulging forehead that spoke of brains, and ears that stuck out high in his skull.

  “It’s Arnold Vickery’s,” the boy said, indicating the aircraft. “He’s my father’s cousin. He asked me to go up with him once.”

  “But you didn’t.” The girl who had first spoken turned to Dicken, a smaller plainer version of the other girl, her hair in plaits, her eyes green instead of luminous blue. “This is Arthur Diplock. Cecil Arthur Diplock.” She made it sound like an insult. “He’s doing modern languages at Oxford. His father’s the Rector of our village – Deane. He’s thinking of following him into the Church.”

  Dicken was polite but uninterested. His eyes were entirely on the older girl.

  “He’s been to the Rectory more than once.” Diplock seemed to sense his interest in his companion and pushed into the conversation. “I came for a bit of a laugh.”

  “I don’t see why we should laugh,” the younger girl said hotly. “It’ll fly. Even if not very well.”

  The tall girl smiled. “This,” she pointed out, “is my little sister, Zoë. I’m Annys Toshack.”

  “Dicken Quinney.”

  “What do you do?” Zoë Toshack asked.

  Dicken hesitated. It needed, he felt, something important, well-paid or highly intelligent to impress them with his skill and the will to succeed. But, though officially he was a second class wireless operator – just! – since he was only seventeen and still legally a minor and his mother had refused to sign the form that would permit him to go to sea, he had had to find a job as a clerk at the gasworks at Brighton, and that was something he wasn’t prepared to admit.

  “I’m in wireless,” he said.

  “One of the coming things,” Zoë agreed.

  “It must be very exciting,” her sister commented.

  Dicken didn’t know what to reply. The fact that this goddess had deigned to speak to him staggered him.

  Diplock seemed to have noticed her interest in Dicken, too, and moved closer, making the most of his relationship to the pilot of the airplane. It was Dicken’s interest in her sister that the younger girl seemed to resent and she kept interrupting with facts about aviation which were considerably less fascinating than her sister’s chatter.

  “He calls it The White Ghost,” Diplock said. “All that bed linen on the wings, I suppose. My father thinks he’s mad.”

  “I think so, too,” Zoë Toshack said. “Airplanes are being built these days with camber to help the lift.”

  �
�Zoë,” Annys Toshack said, “is a bit odd, as you’ve probably noticed. Her ambition is to be a chauffeur of a motor car.”

  Her sister responded vigorously. “Women motor car drivers are the coming thing these days,” she said sharply. “Pa has a stable,” she explained to Dicken. “And traps which he hires out. He also owns a motor and a man’s employed to take commercial travellers and doctors around the countryside. He’s promised when I’m older I can take over when he’s on holiday. I’ve already learned to drive it.”

  “By observation rather than tuition,” Annys pointed out coolly. “And in Father’s style. Once around the village then foot on the accelerator instead of the brake. He’s just opened a garage.”

  “He says it’ll eventually make more money than his stables,” Zoë observed.

  The man who owned the airplane was standing by the machine now, gesturing. He was hardly anybody’s idea of an intrepid birdman. He didn’t have the lean good looks of De Havilland or the brisk energy of Harry Hawker. He didn’t even have Cody’s magnificent waxed moustachios. He was pale, stooping, wore spectacles and smoked non-stop, as if to calm his nerves.

  “He’s so short-sighted,” Diplock said, “that when he’s coming in to land, his mechanic has to run alongside and blow a whistle when he’s about two feet off the ground so he’ll know when to put it down.”

  “One of these days,” Zoë observed, “someone’s going to lose it and then there’ll be trouble.” She gestured. “He’s a musician,” she added. “Did you know? Plays the fiddle. They tune the motor to the note of G.”

  Dicken looked bewildered and she explained.

  “He noticed that when the engine was running really well it gave out a note of G, so he bought a tuning fork and the mechanic tunes it up accordingly. When it’s going at full speed they all hum the note and get the engine to match. If it agrees, everything’s all right. If it’s a semi-tone out, they take out all the sparking plugs for a clean and start again.”

  Dicken felt she was pulling his leg and, anyway, he had eyes for no one but Annys. The fact that she lived in Deane, which was the next village to Willys Green, where he lived himself, was hard to believe. How could he possibly have missed such a creature?

  “He nearly ended in the river the other week,” Zoë said.

  “Who?” Nick wrenched his attention away.

  “Vickery, silly,” Zoë gave him a hard look, as if she were used to young men’s attention wandering from what she was saying when her sister was around.

  “He hasn’t learned to turn yet,” Diplock explained. “He sideslipped into the ground. Fortunately he was only a few feet up. Half the struts and spars were broken, as well as one of the propeller blades.”

  “They glued and screwed it together again,” Zoë took up the story. “But when they came to do the propeller they had to use three bolts and that put it all out of balance, so they put three bolts in the other blade and balanced it by glueing pieces of the mechanic’s dungarees to it until they’d got it right. But don’t ever stand in line with it when the engine’s running. It’ll probably come loose and take your head off.”

  While they were talking, Vickery himself approached. He nodded to the two girls and turned to Diplock.

  “I need a passenger,” he announced. “How about it, Arthur?”

  “What’s wrong with the mechanics?” Diplock asked.

  “Taggart’s too heavy and Green’s scared. I need someone lighter.”

  To Dicken, Diplock appeared less unwilling to go flying than to disappear from Annys Toshack’s sphere of influence. “I’m heavy, too,” he said. “Nearly as heavy as Taggart.”

  “I’ll go,” Zoë volunteered.

  “You’re too young,” Diplock said. He indicated Dicken. “How about him? He’s lighter than me. Not so well-built.”

  Dicken glared. Arthur Diplock, in his view, was not so much well-built as fat.

  Vickery had turned and was looking at him.

  “This is Dicken Quinney,” Annys said. “A friend of ours.”

  Dicken’s heart thumped. To be called a friend was almost too much for him.

  Vickery smiled for the first time. It seemed ingratiating. “Ever been up before?” he asked.

  Dicken had never quite seen himself as an intrepid bird-man. Suddenly, now, he did. At least it would be something to talk about in the office on Monday. Normally, he spent as long as he could in the lavatory reading the newspaper to avoid the job of copying gas meter numbers from one dreary ledger to another.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve never been up.”

  “Well,” Diplock pointed out, “you’ll never get another chance like this.”

  “I’m not going to turn,” Vickery said. “Just one side of the field to the other.”

  Dicken glanced at Annys who was regarding him warmly with those luminous blue eyes of hers.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  Feeling ten feet tall because he knew Annys Toshack was watching, he followed Vickery toward the aircraft. The two men in dungarees standing by it turned as they approached.

  “This is George Taggart, my fitter,” Vickery said. “And Frank Green, my rigger.”

  The two men studied Dicken. As he turned away, he saw Taggart whisper something to the other man, and he suspected they’d decided he was mad.

  Putting his cap on backward like Vickery, he climbed to the passenger’s seat through the maze of wires that held the machine together. He wasn’t sure what to expect. The engine was being run up as they made themselves comfortable and he was startled to see the mechanics standing with their heads cocked, listening. What Zoë Toshack had said about them tuning the engine with a G tuning fork appeared to be true.

  Vickery handed Taggart a whistle. “Don’t forget to blow,” he said.

  “And don’t you forget to stay within reach,” Taggart advised, setting off across the turf. “I can’t run alongside you all the way across the field.”

  Turning to Dicken, who was beginning to wonder by this time what he’d let himself in for, Vickery gestured. “Sit still and don’t fidget,” he advised. “You could have her over.”

  The motor sounded like a sewing machine gone mad, its note high and thin, and as Green let go the wing the machine began to move forward. Dicken was startled at the rattling and the rumbling noise the wheels made over the turf but, almost before he was aware of it, the noise stopped and it sank in that he was airborne. He was about to look down when he remembered what Vickery had told him and sat as if set in plaster of Paris, trying to breathe shallowly in case deep breaths disturbed the equilibrium.

  It reminded him of sliding face-forward down the banister at home, something which required nerve and a good sense of balance, and, without moving his head, he carefully rolled his eyes sideways to see that he was actually higher than the sheds where machines were repaired and business was done. It was hard to believe. He was hardly Icarus but he was flying!

  In the field next to the airdrome, a couple of horses, startled by the high buzz of the motor, galloped away, their tails in the air, and it amazed him that he could actually see them beyond the hedge. Still afraid to upset the balance of the airplane, still rigid in his seat, he peeped fascinated down his nose over the wing.

  The flight ended almost before they started. They began to sink, lower and lower until they were floating over the turf and it was possible to pick out daisies drifting back beneath them. Vickery was looking anxious.

  “The whistle,” he shouted above the noise of the engine. “Where’s the whistle?”

  Remembering what Zoë had told him about Vickery’s short-sightedness, Dicken was caught by a sudden panic, but then he saw Taggart running toward them and heard the blast of a whistle. Satisfied, Vickery closed the throttle and the machine settled and they were rolling to a stop.
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br />   As the engine coughed and died, Vickery turned to Dicken. He seemed pleased with himself. “Enjoy it?” he asked.

  Dicken didn’t answer for a moment. At one point in the flight, short as it was, he had actually been looking down on a seagull planing in to land. It had been too short to be called exciting, too brief to be anything more than a momentary occurrence, but he sensed he had been on the brink of something tremendous. He wasn’t certain what it was, but somehow, just beyond his reach, he felt, had been an experience of incredible beauty that he couldn’t describe.

  “Terrific,” he said. “But couldn’t we have gone up a bit more? Really high. They say Geoffrey De Havilland can get up to five hundred feet.”

  Vickery went pink. “Some days are difficult,” he muttered. “Today there was no lift in the air.”

  Zoë appeared alongside the machine as Dicken climbed down, jumping up and down in feverish excitement. “What was it like?” she yelled. “Tell me before I burst!”

  Dicken tried to look experienced. “There wasn’t much lift in the air,” he said. He looked around. He’d been hoping to describe his adventure not to Zoë but to her beautiful elder sister. “Where’s Annys?” he asked.

  Zoë grinned. “Arthur took her over to the sheds to see the other airplanes,” she said. “He’s eighteen and he has his father’s motor car.”

  Two

  It was only later that the importance of what he’d done dawned on Dicken and he was suddenly in the grip of an immediate and violent infatuation with the sky. He’d flown! Only a few other men had! Men who got their names in the paper and were already achieving an ephemeral fame. He’d joined their ranks! He was a flier! Or, at least, he’d flown! It was unbelievable.

  Suddenly able to impress people with the fact that he’d been up in the air, flying took hold of him in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible a few weeks before and he was eager to learn all about the pioneers – the Americans, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Hawker, De Havilland and the others, even a few new ones he’d not heard of before like Fairey and Dunne and Wilfred Parke – and about the new machines they flew – Cody’s Flying Cathedral, A V Roe’s triplane, the BE2, the RE1, the Handley Page monoplane, the Tabloid that had won the Schneider Trophy for Britain. He began to take Airplane, absorbing information eagerly, and even make the models of Blériots and Farmans he’d once despised.