The Bright Blue Sky

by Max Hennessy

It said all there was to say about Hatto, why he never shirked a job and why he remained an unimportant member of a squadron when many of his contemporaries were living comfortably in safe jobs behind the line.

  “All the same,” he smiled, “you don’t get born with a silver spoon in your mouth without learning to make use of it. We’ll go to a squadron together.”

  It was exciting to be in a mess full of men who were totally dedicated to flying. There was every kind of uniform imaginable, tartan trews, khaki slacks, the blue of the Royal Naval Air Service and the buttons of county regiments and the Guards. The men who wore them had given up their loyalties to their regiments – sometimes even their professional careers – because they felt they had to fly, and it indicated the free and easy atmosphere of a new young service, totally devoid of the stuffiness of the army or the navy.

  They were all young, mostly boys fresh from school because maturity wasn’t wanted in fighters, only good eyesight and quick reflexes, and for the most part they were flying not because they wanted to win the war but because they’d been caught up by the newfangled art and it set them apart. To a man, they were convinced of the future of aviation – even, Dicken supposed, Diplock, who must have felt something for it or he wouldn’t have applied for a pilot’s course.

  The talk was all of take-offs and landings and in every corner men were making movements with their hands to indicate what they’d done with airplanes. Like sailors, they had a special quality and a special presence, and the newspapers had not been slow to notice it. Though they jeered at the articles they read, they enjoyed the references to “death dives” and “loops” and “Immelmann rolls”, which could always be guaranteed to get the girls.

  The RFC was suddenly news. Aviation was still virtually a mystical cult restricted to those who took part in it and journalists had discovered there were stories in these young men who flew. Though Ball was dead, there were new heroes for the public to enjoy – McCudden, Mannock and a Canadian called Bishop – and the references to “intrepid airmen” and “gallant fliers”, which grew with the talk of dog-fighting and aerial battles above the clouds, tended to make the men who flew take advantage of the lack of knowledge of the men who questioned them.

  Flying an Avro with an instructor, Dicken found himself forced down by an unexpected fog and, though the instructor took over the landing, they managed to crumple a wingtip against an unseen stake. Immediately a man with a notebook appeared on the scene.

  “Why did it crash?” he demanded.

  “That damned observer,” the instructor said, indicating Dicken. “Overstoking. I told him to stop but he just went on shovelling it on and the fire went out and the water went off the boil.”

  To everybody’s delight, the story appeared word for word in the local newspaper.

  There was a certain amount of truth in the statement, however, because overstoking could be said to be one of the hazards of flying an Avro. Since the motor was either shut off or at full throttle, the pilot had no control over the speed, and it was sometimes necessary to ease the fuel lever back to stop the mixture becoming too rich. If it were, the machine trailed black smoke, which the pilot couldn’t see, then frightened him to death by giving a despairing cough and cutting out. The corrective action was to close the fuel lever and wait ten seconds but most beginners were too nervous to wait that long and opened after five, which merely accentuated the problem, resulting in a forced landing with the student in such a fret he hadn’t selected a suitable field and found himself at 400 feet in no position to land and with no idea which way the wind was blowing.

  Dicken still had a long way to go. His landings were enough to make everyone shudder and more than once the ambulance was turned out as he came in. Though he managed to survive without smashing any airplanes, nobody could have called him the world’s best pilot close to the ground.

  “I think some swine winds the bloody field up or down as I come in,” he complained.

  “Shouldn’t worry, old son,” Hatto said. “On my first go on an Avro, I flew through a greenhouse. Pickin’ bits of glass out of my face for days after.”

  On the day he was due to go solo on the Avro, he screwed up his courage, determined to make no mistake, only to find at the last minute as he was reaching for his flying clothing that all training flights had been cancelled for an unexpected visit by a member of the royal family who, accompanied by assorted senior officers dazzling in red tabs, was to be treated to a display by what was considered to be a specialised and highly skilled flight.

  Nowadays, not only were they being taught to fly, they were also being taught to fly in that highly dangerous fashion known as “in formation”. The Germans had discovered that by flying in large numbers, layer on layer, they could overwhelm the opposition so that the British were being forced to adopt the same tactics, and the formation flew across the field, closely tucked in one behind each other to show their skill, wings overlapping in a way that seemed to Dicken to be totally useless because there wasn’t an inch of room to manoeuvre.

  “Rather a ragged formation, sir,” one of the bigwigs said modestly.

  “Oh, it’s meant to be a formation, is it?” Dicken heard the royal personage reply, a little blankly. “I thought they were having a race.”

  The flight leader was showing off a little and as they passed the spot where the visiting bigwigs stood, surrounded by privileged civilians and the lesser mortals of the RFC, he threw into the performance an unannounced turn of his own. As he swung to the right the man behind him flew into his tail and, even from the ground, they could hear the crunch of the propeller chewing away at wood and fabric, then both airplanes dropped out of the sky in uneven jerky swoops to slam to the earth just in front of the royal presence. As everybody started running and the ambulance and fire engine howled across the field, the visitors were hurriedly stuffed into staff cars and driven away. The flight leader stepped from the debris unhurt but the man who’d flown into him was carted off in the ambulance spraying blood in all directions.

  Training started again even as the wreckage was being cleared and Dicken was ordered to take up the Avro at once. With the ambulance barely out of sight it was an unnerving prospect.

  Diplock was standing in the hangar entrance. He had finished his course as a steady if unimaginative pilot and was enjoying the fact that Dicken appeared to be anything but.

  “Don’t break anything,” he called out.

  His face set and grim, Dicken didn’t reply. New Avros had a cruising speed of around seventy miles an hour but new ones rarely reached the hands of a learner and an old one with soggy fabric on the wings, oil-soaked fabric on the fuselage, dents in the cowlings and a near-time-expired engine would be lucky to do much over sixty. However, it was a forgiving airplane and, despite the fact that the rotary engine seemed to vomit flames from the open exhaust ports and spray fuel in all directions, it seldom caught fire after a crash and men had been known to step unharmed from the debris of what had appeared to be an appalling crash.

  Hatto was standing by the machine to see him off. “Take your time and go steady,” he advised. “But let us know if anything terrible’s about to happen. It’s considered very anti-social not to call your friends from the hangar in time to view the spectacle.”

  Taking off in an unsteady fashion, Dicken climbed to 9000 feet. The sun was sinking and to the east night was approaching like a shadow lifting over the edge of the earth. The ground below was a dim blueish patchwork of fields with here and there the ribbons of roads, dark patches of woodland and the glint of water. The last of the sun was touching the edges of the wings and the curve of the fuselage with a red glow so that they seemed on fire.

  For the first time, listening to the beat of the big brass-bound propeller, Dicken became really aware of the magic of what he was doing. He was sitting on a wickerwork seat two miles above the ground, so high in the col
d purity of the air that he could see the curve of the earth. Nothing held him there but the throbbing motor and the slender wood and fabric wings that stretched away on either side of him. Startled at his discovery, he studied the machine, wondering what sorcery enabled it to remain suspended in the air. The fabric of the wings was rippling and drumming in the slipstream, the machine was nosing up and down, and all around him there was a smell of petrol, hot oil and dope, and he was nothing but a speck in the sky, separate yet totally alive. He was so high he felt he was touching the face of Heaven, and suddenly, exhilarated beyond belief, he laughed and yelled at the top of his voice, full of exaltation and delight. “Oh, God,” he shouted. “Let me do this for the rest of my life!”

  In sheer joy, he pushed the stick forward until the wires screamed then, shutting his eyes and gently pulling the stick back until it rested against his belly, he held it in that position until the wires screamed once more. Opening his eyes, he found he had done a loop and out of sheer joy promptly did three more and began to fling the machine about the sky as if he were mad, chasing his own shadow across the clouds. Tight turns, rolls, dives and zooms followed until he was down to four thousand feet and could see tiny figures outside the hangar watching him. Though he knew he was almost too low, he tried another loop, but this time the engine failed on the climb and on the top he found the forces which held him in weren’t working so that he was hanging in his straps with air between his trousers and the seat.

  As his feet left the rudder bar, he clutched frantically at the joystick, all his elation gone. Out loud, he shouted, “My God, I’m falling out!” but, while he was still yelling with fear, his clutch on the joystick wrenched the machine over so that he dropped neatly back into the seat and the nose of the machine was pointing earthward once more. Without realising he was in a spin, he automatically put the controls in the opposite direction to stop it and the earth stopped whirling as the machine steadied.

  Frightened silly, he put as much distance between himself and the earth as he could, then, levelling off, looked nervously around again. The circle of fire that was the sun had gone and a cluster of rays lifted to the heavens like a fan, turning a scrap of cirrus into gold dust against a jade sky. But it was suddenly colder, below him the airdrome was fading into a mauve light, and he could see mist creeping across the fields. Christ, he thought, I must hurry.

  In his haste he did a vertical bank over the sheds and scuttled earthward in a tight spiral. At a thousand feet he pulled out, gave the engine a nervous burst to check that it was still functioning and made his way back over the sewage farm, his mind full of the warnings of his instructor. Assuming that the engine failure had been caused by a too-rich mixture, he eased the fuel lever back, but the exact position depended on speed, height, pressure, the airplane’s attitude in the sky and a host of other things and, worried sick, he decided he wasn’t experienced enough to be a very good judge and merely made a blind stab at it.

  Positioning himself carefully, making sure he hadn’t done anything wrong because it was fatally easy to close the fuel lever and then forget it, at the last moment he opened it again. Immediately and quite unexpectedly, there were two loud bangs which frightened the life out of him and the engine came on again at full throttle so that, instead of being in danger of landing in the sewage farm, he was in danger of being carried to the far end of the field and through the hedge. Imagining the embarrassment and the amount of repairs that would ensue, in a panic he closed the lever once more and to his horror found he was now undershooting again. Instead of crashing through the far hedge, he crashed through the near hedge – fortunately at a point where it was thin – bounced on to the thick grass on the perimeter of the field and ran to a stop just on the take off and landing area. As he looked at the torn fabric of the wings, he decided he could say goodbye to flying.

  As he waited outside Morton’s office, Diplock appeared from the orderly room.

  “Hard lines,” he said, smiling. “They don’t go much on people breaking airplanes.”

  Dicken wondered what it would be like flying BEs. He’d had enough of BEs and wanted no more of them. But people who bent aircraft or landed them eighty feet up or outside the airdrome perimeter – and he’d done all three – couldn’t expect to go to a fighter squadron. He couldn’t make out why, since it required just as much skill to land a two-seater, probably more because they were bigger and heavier and less manoeuvrable.

  The Recording Officer put his head around the door and beckoned him in. In front of the commanding officer’s desk, he listened to the report he’d written being read out aloud. Not only did it seem to condemn him utterly, it didn’t even seem to be well written. As the Recording Officer finished, Morton sat with his fingers together in the form of a steeple, and standing stiffly at attention, Dicken waited for sentence to be passed. For a long time, Morton said nothing, then he looked up, an amused glint in his eye.

  “Do you always land like that?” he asked.

  “I try not to, sir,” Dicken stammered.

  “I should hope not. It was less of a landing than an arrival, and it’s always better to run into the far hedge rather than the near one if you have to run into a hedge at all. By the time you’ve crossed the field your speed’s rather less and you do less damage. Try to remember that.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dicken waited, wondering when the chopper was going to fall.

  “That was quite a remarkable bit of flying you did up there,” Morton went on conversationally. “Do you think you could do it all the time?”

  “When I’m up I’m fine, sir,” Dicken said miserably. “It’s getting down that bothers me.”

  Morton scratched his nose. “Well, I think that will come in time and, after all, it’s one of Bishop’s little problems, too. Despite the suggestion that you should go to a two-seater squadron, I’m putting you in for single-seaters with the rest. It seems much fairer to let you take a chance on killing yourself on your own than make an innocent observer share your fate.”

  Hatto decided they should go up to London to celebrate.

  “How about it?” he said to Dicken. “Set the place alight a bit. Might even see a Gotha or two. The old Hun sends ’em over regularly these days. Can’t think why. They never seem to hit much.”

  He had a large open tourer with a square snout and headlamps like searchlights and they rolled toward London together, Dicken in a seventh heaven of delight. He’d avoided BEs, he liked Hatto and Hatto seemed to like him, and it was flattering to be liked by a nobleman’s son, especially as he knew it filled Diplock’s mind with worms of jealousy.

  They picked up two girls Hatto knew, gorgeous creatures Dicken considered way out of his class because they wore dresses which would have startled even Zoë Toshack, and had accents from the best schools and titles that belonged to great families.

  “Good sports,” Hatto whispered. “Do a lot for charity. Hired ’em out the Avro when they had a garden party during the summer. Landed in the field next door on a cross-country and charged a bob a nob to sit in the cockpit. Even took a few up at five bob a go. RFC never noticed and it raised a quid or two for the widows and orphans.”

  They ate at the Café Royal, feeling luxurious and faintly lecherous in the fin de siècle atmosphere of red plush, mirrors and gilt, and after “The Maid of the Mountains” at Daly’s, scrambled into the tourer, Dicken swamped beneath the two girls while Hatto drove toward the Ritz.

  Everybody there seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the war and a few Americans who had crossed into Canada and sworn they were Canadians were giving an extra impetus to the drinking. To Dicken’s surprise, Diplock was there with Annys, who, he had to admit, was looking more beautiful even than usual. As Hatto offered introductions all round, he saw her eyebrows lift a little at the names of the two girls. She’d obviously seen their pictures in one of the society papers.

  While they were talking, the
air raid buzzers went and the laughing crowd dissolved into a shrieking mob. A woman with a high-class accent and a bust like a frigate under full sail turned to Hatto, red with indignation, a fat finger pecking at his wings.

  “Why aren’t you up there?” she yelled. “Driving those swine away!”

  Hatto gave her a little bow. “Sorry, Madame,” he said. “My mother warned me not to talk to strange women in the street.”

  As the mob poured into the foyer, Dicken and the two girls headed for the Underground. The platforms were crowded with people, some of them already equipped with mattresses and rugs. When the air raid stopped, Hatto said he knew where a party was being held and they all scrambled back into the tourer and headed for a flat in Baker Street. A gramophone was playing for dancing, but nobody seemed to be taking any notice and there was a great deal of noise as everybody tried to shout everybody else down.

  Champagne seemed to be flowing in bucketfuls and Dicken remembered nothing of what happened next until he woke up in a bed that wasn’t his own and smelled faintly of perfume. Sitting up, startled, he saw one of the girls alongside him, fast asleep with her head on the next pillow. He’d been warned many times by his mother not “to bring trouble home”, and this, he decided, was trouble with a capital T.

  He was just knotting his tie when the girl turned over, opened her eyes and beamed at him. “Hello, Dicky darling,” she said. “You were so sweet.”

  Dicken didn’t inquire what at but he had a pretty shrewd idea. “Where are the other two?” he asked.

  “Willie took Caroline home. After that I don’t know. Do you think you could make me some black coffee? I think I had too much to drink.”

  Making his escape as fast as he could, Dicken headed for the Ritz bar. Hatto was leaning against the counter, looking pale.

  “What happened to you?” Dicken asked accusingly.

  “Kissed Caroline good night on the doorstep and went to the old family home to sleep. What about you?”