by Carol Baxter
Chubbie could understand why he was bothering. Battered in every direction since the night of Haden’s death, he felt like he was standing at the edge of an abyss and had no choice but to make the deadly leap.
She told him she wouldn’t come to see him off. He accepted her decision, saying it was probably for the best because his parents would be there. Not surprisingly, the elderly couple blamed her for all of his misfortunes.
He came to her house a few days before the flight and took some photographs of her. He also asked for a loan of her watch.
‘Don’t be daft,’ was her response as she looked at her tiny wristwatch. ‘This is so small you could never see the time on it. It’ll only get in your way. Wear a big one that you can see, one with a luminous dial.’
She knew why he wanted it. She had worn it for years. Carrying it with him would make him feel as if he were holding a precious part of her—a good luck charm of sorts.
He was still passionately in love with her, still keen to marry her, still hopeful that Kiki might one day grant him his freedom. If he had been divorced, she probably would have married him. Even though the romance was long gone—for her at least—they were still best friends and it would have solved so many problems. While they weren’t social pariahs, the widespread uncertainty about Bill’s guilt, combined with her own scandalous revelations, had made them curiosities in London’s social scene. Marriage would legitimise their relationship and provide proof that she truly believed in his innocence.
But Kiki refused to release him, despite everything. Clearly the woman had no intention of ever changing her mind. Since Chubbie still yearned for the security of a loving marriage, it had left her with few options. As the post-America months passed, she had realised she would have to cut her ties with him, start afresh without his hovering presence. She didn’t say anything to him, though. Not when he was about to start such a hazardous flight.
Hearing that he would be at Lympne aerodrome for a few days before his flight, she travelled there on Friday, 7 April, for a final farewell. She was horrified at his appearance. Hollow eyes. Gaunt cheeks. He looked like a death’s head. As she watched him, she had a worrying premonition: ‘He’s not going to make it.’
In the days that followed, she kept abreast of his activities through the Express coverage. Reportedly, all he was taking food-wise was a cold chicken, so he could chew on the bones when he was sleepy, some beef extract and two gallons of water, the latter a French Government requirement for those flying across the Sahara.
The Express journalist was at Lympne aerodrome long before dawn on Tuesday morning, 11 April. Chubbie read that Bill looked pale and nervous, and was in a desperate hurry to take off so he could reach Oran before nightfall. Weather forecasts showed that he faced a twenty-mile-an-hour headwind for most of his first leg, which would reduce his cruising speed to around eighty miles an hour, nearly forty miles slower than Amy’s cruising speed. Even though his flight must now be an almost sleepless endurance marathon, he refused to delay it. He told the journalist that he had been promised a good position if he succeeded in breaking the record.
Only the Express journalist, a handful of airport officials and his parents—his teary invalid mother and his ill but recuperating father—were there to wave goodbye to his little blue plane as it raced across the airfield at 5.38 am and headed south into the mist.
Each day, Chubbie grabbed the newspapers and flipped through them, looking for reports about his flight. Wednesday’s morning papers merely recorded his departure from England. She already knew his day’s route. His plan was to fly 1100 miles south over France and Spain to the Mediterranean city of Oran, Algeria, where he would rest for a few hours and refuel.
The evening papers said that he had reached Oran at 9 pm the previous night, which meant that he was already four-and-a-half hours behind Amy at the end of his first leg. It was an appalling start to an already difficult flight. She wondered if he would consider abandoning the flight and starting again at a later time.
She soon learnt that he hadn’t—despite losing even more time. A bureaucratic hiccup, of all things, was responsible. Aviators following the Transsaharienne Company’s motor track were required to pay a 100,000 franc (£800) ‘insurance’ fee to the company to help defray possible rescue costs. She knew that Bill had paid the required fee, but the Oran officials told him they had no record of his payment. They said that he had two choices: to remain in Oran until they contacted the London agent or to pay the fee again. Since Bill had no spare money or time, he signed a statement saying that he would fly at his own risk and would not expect any rescue efforts to be undertaken if he disappeared along the way.
Thursday’s morning papers ominously reported that he had departed from Oran after midnight on Tuesday night in a do-or-die dash across the desert. He couldn’t have had more than an hour or two of sleep, if any at all. Chubbie knew from their carefully worked-out plan that he would fly 720 miles to Reggane in central Algeria, an oasis in the Sahara Desert that served as a French outpost. This would be the most difficult stretch of the journey, because he would have to navigate by dead reckoning alone.
The newspapers said that he had landed to check his location on Wednesday morning around 8.30 am and had discovered that he was at Adrar, eighty miles north of Reggane and slightly east of his direct route. Adrar also lay on the Transsaharienne’s southerly motor track and had supplies of aviation fuel, so he had decided to fill his tanks and hop off from there to commence his Gao leg. He had previously told Chubbie that he expected the flight across the Sahara Desert to Gao to be relatively easy flying because he would cross in daylight with good visibility and would follow the motor track marked out by the Transsaharienne Company. Not only did the tyre marks remain visible because of the sand’s stability, tiny ‘houses’—four walls and an iron roof—were positioned beside the track every six-and-a-half miles to serve as aerial beacons.
Reportedly, when he left Adrar at 9.15 am on Wednesday, he flew into a sandstorm. Blinded by the granular fog, he drifted off his flight path and found himself at Aoulef, south-east of Adrar, around 11 am. Once he regained his bearings, he attempted to continue his journey. Again he found himself lost in the sandstorm. Again he had to land to get his bearings. Realising he no longer had enough fuel to comfortably reach Gao, he stopped at Reggane at 1 pm. It had taken him nearly four hours to fly a distance that should have taken only one.
Chubbie felt tense all day as she waited for Thursday’s evening newspapers, hoping she would read that he had crossed the Sahara safely. All they said was that he had left Reggane the previous day to head south to Gao.
More detailed information soon surfaced. Chubbie learnt that he was exhausted when he arrived at Reggane after battling through the sandstorm. He had organised to have his plane refuelled and then rested for three hours, but he refused any food. Around 6 pm on Wednesday evening, when he had declared himself ready to resume his flight, the head of the Transsaharienne Reggane station tried to deter him. Monsieur Borel told him that the conditions were highly unsuitable for a desert crossing, that there was a strong north-west wind and no moon, so the darkness would prevent him from seeing the tyre marks and beacons on the track. He would be forced to rely on dead reckoning, an especially difficult form of navigation when he had no lights on his instrument panel to help him steer a compass course. It would be madness to take off under such conditions.
However, Bill had dismissed Borel’s concerns, saying that he would light matches to enable him to read the instruments. When Borel realised that he was serious, he had lent him a pocket electric torch. Borel and his men watched Bill’s plane zig-zag as it took off, as if he was too weary to keep it steady.
Chubbie knew that he should have arrived at Gao long before Thursday evening’s newspapers were published. However, the following day was Easter Friday and journalists were having the day off. Everyone was thinking about other things.
Easter Friday was torture. Nothing was open.
She couldn’t phone the Daily Express office to enquire if any further information had come in.
Saturday’s newspapers set her stomach churning. ‘No news has been received of Captain Lancaster since Wednesday,’ revealed The Times. ‘Our Algiers correspondent reports that he left Reggane, an oasis in the Sahara, at 6.30 on the evening of that day for Gao.’ The news account noted that sandstorms were causing bad visibility and that a Transsaharienne car had set off from Reggane to search for him, but had failed to find him.
Bill had been missing for more than two days in the forbidding Sahara Desert, with only two gallons of water to keep him alive.
Chapter Fifty
She had told him she would search for him if he disappeared. She had told him to stay with his plane and she would find him.
That Saturday evening she walked into the office of the Sunday Express’s editor and begged for his help. ‘I must find Bill!’ she told him, adding that she was so worried she had barely eaten for three days. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anybody but me to find him. I have very little money but I will put my last penny into finding him.’ She said that the French were hardly doing anything except sending out a motor-car. ‘What good is a motor-car in the desert?’ she asked in exasperation.
She told him that she had made Bill promise to stay with his plane because she remembered the story of two RAF men forced down in the desert who had left their plane to walk twenty miles for help. The plane was easily located but the men had died by the time rescuers stumbled across them.
She explained that there were only two or three planes in England that were capable of flying to Bill’s rescue. And she begged him for publicity, so she could find a suitable plane, and for financial assistance to mount a rescue operation.
It turned out that the only suitable plane belonged to Dame Mary Russell, the Duchess of Bedford, who three years earlier had flown from Lympne to Cape Town with her pilot, Captain Barnard. Chubbie headed to Gerrards Cross to beg Barnard for his help. He said that he would do anything to assist a fellow pilot in trouble; however, the Duchess’s plane was in no condition for such a long flight and he was personally contracted for at least eight flights to Le Touquet. By the time he and the plane were ready, it would be too late.
Meanwhile, the Daily Express had interviewed Bill’s father who made it clear that he didn’t want Chubbie’s help. ‘It is not our wish that anyone who does not know the terrible flying conditions of the Sahara desert should go out there to try and find our son,’ he said deliberately. ‘It would be a futile attempt and very much against all our wishes.’ He reported that he was in regular contact with the Transsaharienne Company and that they were conducting a thorough search. He wasn’t worried and wouldn’t worry for at least another week, because Bill had probably come down somewhere south-east of Gao. ‘Wherever he is, I am sure that he is quite alright.’
Chubbie was devastated. Edward Lancaster’s head-in-the-sand attitude had destroyed any chance of the Daily Express funding her rescue mission.
She contacted Colonel Jellicoe, the London manager of the Transsaharienne Company, to find out for herself what was being done. He said that, according to the Paris office, wireless messages had zipped across North Africa, advising desert and military bases to keep an eye out for Bill’s plane. A squadron of French military planes had searched the Gao district without success. Another two aeroplanes were heading from Gao to Reggane and would search the terrain for sixty miles either side of the motor track. He assured her that nothing was being left to chance. If Bill had crashed near the motor track, they would find him.
‘I am intensely worried about Captain Lancaster,’ a haggard Chubbie told the press on Tuesday, 18 April. ‘I had a dreadful dream last night that he was lying in the desert and crying for food and water. I live with hopes that he is safe with the natives in some village. I cannot bear to think that he is out there alone. I have walked London endeavouring to secure planes and financial support for a personal search but I have met opposition. If it takes weeks, I shall go and find him alive or dead.’ She said that she hoped to get the loan of a plane and the gift of petrol later in the week, but couldn’t reveal anything more until she was ready to hop off. In the meantime, she would wait to hear the results of the plane and motor-transport searches.
Information continued to trickle out of Africa. ‘We are doing our best,’ an African searcher advised, ‘but it would be an excellent thing if British pilots would realise the risks they run over the desert.’ A dispatch published in the French Journal des Débats grumbled that the search operation had already cost £6000, whereas only a fraction of that amount had been demanded as insurance. ‘It is high time that these ill-conceived and ill-prepared flights were forbidden.’
On Saturday, 22 April, ten days after Bill had left Reggane, the search organisers reported that they had found no trace of him or his plane and that all hopes of finding him alive had largely been abandoned. ‘If Captain Lancaster had succeeded in reaching the belt of vegetation, some 200 miles in depth, which borders the River Niger, there is no reason why he should not be found safe and sound,’ said a French major who was an expert on desert flying conditions. ‘But if he strayed from the track, with only two gallons of water, his chances are very small.’ And if he had strayed from the track, as appeared likely by that time, the potential search area was several times larger than France. No one would even consider conducting such an expensive time-consuming search.
Bill wasn’t the only record-attempting aviator to disappear that week. When Chubbie visited him at Lympne, they had chatted to a handsome Italian airman, Captain Leonida Robbiano, who was about to set off in an attempt to beat the England-to-Australia record. As she pored over the newspapers in the days after Bill’s disappearance, she read that Robbiano’s body and wrecked plane had been discovered near Calcutta.
The mystery of Bill’s disappearance continued to generate press coverage in the months that followed. In May, Chubbie read that Bill’s parents claimed to know he was dead because they had received messages ‘from the other side’ via psychic channels. Bill did not suffer, they had been told, which was a source of great relief to his mother.
In October, the Daily Express reported that a white pilot had apparently come down in a remote part of the Sahara some months previously and was living with local tribes in the Senegal district. As far back as the previous spring, a plane had been seen to descend over west Mali. A moment later, columns of smoke and flames had risen into the sky. Senegal lay to the west of Mali and both were within range of the Southern Cross Minor’s fuel tanks. The continent’s caravan traffic had been suspended for the summer soon after Bill disappeared so no further news had come out of Africa until it resumed in autumn, bringing reports of the white aviator in Senegal. The man—of medium height and a spare build—didn’t speak French and appeared to be of northern European or American origin.
Was it Bill? The general consensus among the aviation experts was that Bill had known he couldn’t beat Amy Mollison’s record when he left Reggane and that his dash across the Sahara was a form of ‘heroicide’. If he had indeed survived a desert crash, had he chosen to remain there rather than face further humiliation upon his return? If it was Bill, perhaps he would later make his way out of the desert and begin life again under a new name.
When no further information surfaced about the white pilot, Chubbie told the world via the Empire News that Bill had died as he wished to die: flying. ‘Yet it was not aviation that killed him,’ she continued, ‘but the false accusation of murder.’ He had accepted the Cape Town challenge in an endeavour to rehabilitate his reputation, although his plane was unsuitable and the odds of his success were a hundred-to-one against him. Having failed, he had died in that flaming pyre that was the dream of all aviators.
Chapter Fifty-One
Without a body—without an answer—it was hard for Chubbie to move on. ‘What if’ and ‘if only’ rattled around in her brain, inevitably coming back to the bi
ggest ‘what if’ and ‘if only’ of them all: Haden Clarke. A moment of alcohol-induced libidinous madness had set in motion a chain of events that had now ended in the deaths of two men. And, try as she might, she couldn’t lay the blame on anyone but herself.
She had planned to cut her ties with Bill but the forced severance left her feeling adrift, wondering what she was to do with the rest of her life. She decided as a first step to get her British pilot’s licence, which she managed after only ten hours of solo flying. She couldn’t afford to obtain a commercial licence—not that it would have been of much use, anyway. The airlines wouldn’t employ a female pilot and she lacked the knowledge to become a flight instructor. Would she, like Bill, have to resort to death-or-disaster flying—to break a record or travel around the world backwards or do something equally crazy—in order to get the public’s attention?
When Colonel Jellicoe of the Transsaharienne Company offered her a job typing and making West African aerial survey maps, she gladly accepted. She had come to know him well while pestering him for information about the search for Bill. And at least the job had something to do with her beloved world of aviation.
One day, a woman named Mary Bruce came into the office and asked the colonel if he would prepare maps for her. She planned to make the first flight to Cape Town in an autogyro—a rotorcraft that flew behind an engine-driven propeller and an unpowered auto-rotating rotor to generate lift. Colonel Jellicoe said that Chubbie prepared his maps and could make Mrs Bruce’s as well.
