The Higher They Fly

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  ‘Robert, I’ll be blunt with you.’

  Tensely: ‘Yes?’

  ‘You want him to be destroyed . . . I mean, as a man.’

  ‘Because of Julie?’

  ‘Probably. Look, I know what you’ve been going through. I know at least part of the reason why you cracked. If I’d had any sense I would have stopped you two flying together; and for that I blame myself. But by trying to pick holes in Truman as a pilot you’re merely disguising your own shortcomings. You can’t deny—whatever the circumstances—that it was he who got you safely down on that test flight. The way things went, you owed your life to him. That’s probably what you like least of all. But isn’t it true?’

  Fleming smiled slightly, but it wasn’t humour. ‘You may be right about that. But I wish I were sure I was wrong about the other.’

  Gregg’s smile was of a different texture. ‘No you don’t, Robert. You hope you’re right!’

  *

  An unpleasant era had followed this interview . . . the never-to-be-forgotten flat in London and the absence of Julie. Solitude, depression, and former girl friends all pronouncing the same sentence. They were astonishingly unanimous.

  Clare said: ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but something about you has changed my mind. I think I should say it.’

  Fleming gazed at surroundings that had always been so comforting and familiar and changeless. There was so much about her that he still loved; her rejection of the superficial which meant that the flat reflected her love for real things. Clare was always broke, mostly because her younger sister, who had been deprived even of the most primitive emotional necessities of upbringing, was a responsibility that Clare felt to a degree little short of the fanatical. This despite Clare’s own rearing had been conducted in an atmosphere that would have been disastrous to someone of less character.

  Little by little the flat had been equipped. New wallpaper replaced the grotesque jungle of improbable trees that had been left by the previous tenant. Prehistoric light fittings had been replaced painstakingly by a team of amateur electricians who numbered among her many friends. Some of the worst furniture had disappeared.

  But the comic oil heater, which stood in the middle of the room defiantly emitting a column of evil smoke, still remained from the old days. And the burn in the carpet, put there by Fleming a year back when a forgotten cigarette outgrew its time on the ashtray, still testified to a happier era when a burned carpet seemed a small thing by comparison with the cause of the neglect.

  Now, he found her looking at the burn and smiling reminiscently. He said: ‘What is it you have to tell me that’s so awful?’

  ‘It isn’t really awful . . . It’s just that the other night you got very drunk and called me up and said some pretty nasty things.’

  ‘To you?’

  She smiled; and it was the old smile . . . the one he had once seen in a crowded office. On that occasion he had looked around the room with studied innocence and said: ‘Would someone be an angel and type up this report?’ At the end of this invitation he had shot a brief glance at her. There had come a moment’s suspense and she had said: ‘I’ll do it.’ If any of the other girls had spoken up he would have been floored.

  As he handed her the report for typing she had looked up for a second and acknowledged the manoeuvre with just the kind of smile he had hoped for—it was not an overt invitation but a recognition.

  He had thought to himself at that moment: ‘I have never seen eyes like that before.’

  Now he wished he hadn’t thrown it all away; and equally he knew he couldn’t restore something that time and experience had changed in them both. And as she smiled and as their eyes met, this truth was mutually acknowledged. For him it was an irony; for her a final release.

  He said: ‘Why did I let Julie spoil everything?’

  The smile went. ‘Does it matter? Do you have to question everything for the rest of your life?’

  This had always happened. He had projected on her a degree of omniscience she didn’t possess; then felt hurt because she didn’t live up to it. He lit a cigarette angrily and went on: ‘Tell me what I said on the phone the other day.’

  ‘You blamed me for it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The aeroplane thing.’ She was committed now and couldn’t stop. As she proceeded with the unfolding of it she realised that the invective had hurt her more than she had thought at the time. ‘You said that if I’d understood you better I would have seen it coming and could have helped you prevent it. You said I never listened to you when you used to have what I called your moods . . . you accused me of all sorts of things.’

  He sat quite still, concentrating. ‘Go on.’

  Clare moved the ashtray so that it covered up the burn in the carpet. ‘Don’t you remember any of this?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  Outwardly she was calm. Her voice was carefully levelled, but her hand shook slightly as she tipped a cigarette out of her own packet—she had never smoked his. He snapped his lighter and she smoked in silence for a few moments. ‘You told me that I drove you away because I evaded all the real issues. Whenever you wanted to talk seriously about yourself I said you were being morbid. So when you rang me up the other night you told me that you felt helpless and on your own, because I wouldn’t listen.’

  She stood up and suddenly kicked a telephone directory which had been lying on the carpet. The volume disappeared under the bookcase. ‘Robert, don’t you realise I thought I was doing the right thing? I was trying to keep your mind off your own problems and you call that “evading issues”. Whenever I succeeded in diverting the conversation you were perfectly happy; or so it seemed to me. You forgot all your problems and enjoyed yourself. I thought that was what I was for—to love, Robert . . . not to lean on.

  ‘Then when you telephoned the other night and said all this you made me feel I’d just been skimming the part I liked and leaving you to suffer the rest on your own. And then I began to remember some of the things you used to try and tell me. I thought you were imagining them and—frankly—I felt you were being neurotic and even childish. You see, I knew Mr Gregg’s opinion of you; everyone said you were a great test pilot but that you over-dramatised things a good deal. I once phoned Mr Gregg—that was the night you drove me fifty miles to nowhere in the Aston Martin and you were going so fast I thought you meant to kill us both——’

  ‘You were very good, Clare. You never said a word.’

  ‘I knew it was important to you . . . Anyway, Mr Gregg told me you were suffering from strain and I was to ignore it.’

  Fleming smiled grimly. ‘He laid me off flying for a month. I didn’t know it was because of that.’

  ‘It wasn’t, entirely. Apparently you were like a bear with a sore head with everyone else as well. And anyway, Julie had appeared on the scene by then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So I suppose you must have been right, to some extent. Probably I did starve you of something without realising it. Well, I suppose Julie knew how to handle you when you were like that . . . did she?’

  ‘Perhaps—but I don’t think it was the right thing to, expect of a woman anyway. And after a while she couldn’t stand it either.’

  ‘It may not have been that at all.’

  ‘Well, whatever it was, Clare, she threw me out in the end.’

  ‘Are you still in love with her?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I don’t really know anything for certain, at the moment. I feel terribly close to you, you know that.’

  ‘You’re lonely and unhappy. I thought you’d probably come here, but I also knew what it would mean. Don’t kid yourself.’

  ‘I think you’re still in love with me, Clare.’

  ‘You make that sound like an accusation . . . but I’m not, darling. In a way I’m a different person.’

  ‘Deliberately so.’

  ‘Does that make any difference?’

  ‘Yes; it could mean you’re protecting yoursel
f.’

  She became more relaxed, and smiled almost as if he were a child. ‘Robert, you’ll never learn! Just because you want me to be in love with you—just for the moment—you have to argue that it must be so.’

  ‘I’d marry you like a shot if you were.’

  ‘Would you? I don’t think you would if you gave yourself time to think it out. What would happen if Julie suddenly changed her mind and wanted you back?—what would you do then?’

  ‘She won’t!’

  ‘You’ve answered it for yourself . . . haven’t you? Anyway, I’m not in love with you. So that’s that. What are you smiling at?’

  ‘You make it sound more like a statement of policy than a statement of fact. I want to marry you, Clare.’

  She quipped: ‘I’ll put you on the list. It’s getting quite a long list, these days, and it’s very good for the ego.’

  ‘I don’t like this new cynical streak.’

  ‘Life makes you cynical.’

  ‘I never thought it would succeed in your case.’

  ‘I don’t know why you think I must always be the exception to human rules. I’m a very ordinary person; and as a matter of fact so are you . . . I didn’t mean that nastily. I mean that you’re not half as complicated as you think.’

  ‘You’re doing it again!’

  ‘Oh, evading your precious issues. Whatever would you do without them, Robert? How would you survive if you suddenly had nothing to be deeply worried about? Look at you now—all frowns and crinkles and strain lines. Is that what you look like when you’re at the controls of an aeroplane? Or is that the only time you really relax . . . when you’ve got too much to do to be able to think?’

  He said: ‘It used to be.’ And there was silence. ‘All right, I’ll accept all you say on face value. But I would like to remind you of one thing. You might be able to help me. If you still want to, that is.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘You’re a Celt. We both are.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a reason for marrying you?’

  He grinned at her. ‘That was nasty.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Go on.’

  He said seriously: ‘It’s a funny thing about Celts. They always know.’

  She frowned at him. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Intuition . . . the night of the car ride. We drove . . . where was it?’

  ‘Wendover. Fancy your not remembering that.’

  ‘My memories of that night are oddly blurred. I can remember driving like a bat out of hell, as you say. And I can remember walking up some hill. There was a monument at the top. It was getting dark and we’d walked all the way up without saying anything.’

  She seemed to shiver. ‘I’m not likely to forget that walk, Robert. You took that hill as if your life depended on it. You didn’t seem to notice my existence until I arrived, panting, behind you. You were looking at the monument. Then . . .’

  ‘Yes? What happened then?’

  ‘How will it help? How can it matter, now, what you did up there, all that time ago?’

  ‘Because something happened to me, Clare! I learned something—from you.’

  ‘And you don’t remember?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. I remember very well.’

  It was as if the room had suddenly gone cold. But the paraffin heater still gave off its odorous glow, and everything was superficially the same. But Clare must have felt something too; she drew closer to the fire and her tilted eyes seemed to be looking into the unseen distance.

  Fleming looked at her. At that moment she didn’t seem real. Or rather, the setting didn’t. He saw her, as she had been that night—a tall, etched figure in the dusk, standing near a monument and seeming herself to be the paragon of womanhood.

  *

  Outlined against a sky that was popping stars one by one as the sun’s fireglow faded from the western hills, she was motionless in the rising night wind except for her hair, which fluttered like the jib-sheet of the little yacht she loved to sail. Her hair was done in a pony tail; yet for all the conventions of young attire—the sweater and jeans which emphasised not only her youth but somehow her timelessness—she was a mature woman at the age of nineteen.

  The wind sang restively in the sproutings of the monument. It was an uneasy, disturbing sound . . . a mingling of past and present, and of day with night.

  Clare waited a long time, determined that he should say whatever it was he wanted to say and in his own time. He wasn’t looking at her now, but stood away from the monument and looked out as far as could be seen toward the distant hills.

  He tried to light a cigarette, but the wind blew out the flame. He tried again; and this time the cigarette caught, but showered sparks as he drew from it and it tasted bitter. He chucked it away and walked across until he was beside her. He said, still without turning his head: ‘How do I know, Clare?’

  She cut her tension and provided the necessary phrase. ‘Know what?’

  ‘How do I know that I’m going to fail?’ He looked up at the stars and they suddenly seemed closer and brighter than. ever before. ‘One day, somewhere in that sky up there I’m going to fail. You know it too. Don’t you?’

  She replied with honesty, but had to even out the tremble in her voice. ‘If you are sure you must fail, then you will.’

  ‘How can I stop? Knowing that much about myself, how can I prevent it happening? . . . or is that one of the questions you don’t like answering?’

  He reached out a hand and took hers. He felt her suddenly tighten her grip on his hand, a reassuring squeeze which didn’t convey what she thought it meant but exactly the opposite. He knew then that she had lost faith in him, just as he knew, a few weeks later, that when he thought he had left her it was in fact the other way around. She had simply provided him with the opportunity.

  Clare felt a pang of fear on his behalf. Maybe it was imagination, or maybe it was genuine premonition, but suddenly he looked like a ghost.

  The illusion was so startling that she felt the little hairs on her arms prickling.

  And it seemed, in that moment, that she could see the monument through his body.

  The moment passed, but it left a change behind it . . . a feeling she could sense but couldn’t define.

  She looked at the tall, grim monument, and then back at him; and saw that he was seeking to match its firm stature in the face of harsh time and the testing force of gales past and yet to come.

  ‘Let’s get back to the car,’ she said.

  ‘Not until you’ve answered me.’

  ‘I can’t because I don’t know.’

  ‘You do know; I can feel it.’

  So could she, and a shiver went with the fear of it. ‘Robert, you mustn’t fly any more.’

  ‘You know I can’t accept that.’

  ‘Then never fly alone.’

  ‘Why?’

  She walked a few yards away from him; and it was as if the separation was necessary to her, in order to say what needed to be said.

  He watched her, and adored her. He memorised, as if for all time, the way she looked then, braced against the wind. She was every inch a Celt; and the strength in her body and in her character was as the soil she stood on.

  ‘Because you’re desperately afraid of it,’ she said.

  She was able to look at him then; and her smile was a different kind of smile from any he had seen on her face before.

  For a moment all the strain had left his face because truth had penetrated from the one direction which made it acceptable.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  *

  Fleming’s thoughts were severed away from him as Scrivens opened the door suddenly and said: ‘The captain of Statelines Forty-Six wants to talk to you on the radio. He’s on Atlantic short-wave, but we’re talking remote control from here.’

  ‘He’s off his nut.’

  ‘You may be right,’ said Scrivens.

  Chapter Five
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  Jack Hubb sat in silence with his arms folded. He stared straight ahead and thought: Dad gave me too much money. He taught me to be idle and enjoy myself and to value the things that a certain way of life could provide. Dad was secretly rather proud of my being a sort of second-class playboy.

  But also he taught me to sit with my arms folded, as I’m doing now. He taught me not to communicate fear to others; and even though I’m not very popular with this blue-stocking on my right—who probably doesn’t even realise there is anything to be scared about anyway—I’m not going to give her the chance to know how I really feel about this aeroplane.

  Dulcie was actually paying little attention to him. Having satisfied herself that this rather basic young man had given up his flanking manoeuvre (though conceding that he wasn’t taking things at all badly) she looked around the cabin to observe the reactions of other passengers.

  Little snatches of conversation were tossed about like a series of nervous shuttlecocks before the game began. Dulcie grouped the badminton players according to the way they erupted. There were the jokers . . .

  ‘Which do you think would be best, Tessa?—breaststroke or the crawl?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know, dear? In the Atlantic the accepted thing is still the Twist . . .’

  Jagged, grateful laughter.

  There were the observationists:

  ‘I always find these situations extremely absorbing. There’s so much to see. Normally flying is frankly dull. Isn’t it? You forget you’re in an airplane. You go from point A to point B and take the whole thing for granted. Isn’t that true though? You take the crew for granted. Then, when you run into minor troubles like this—and of course it can’t be anything very much—it all comes alive. Doesn’t it?—That chap with the Nordic hair, the one with two rings——’

  ‘The first officer.’

  ‘—The first officer, as you say. Suddenly he gets busy. Fairly hopping around. But he’s rather enjoying it, really. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Frankly, I think he’s rather an exhibitionist.’

  ‘What if he is? It’s all part of the game. I remember once, when we were trying to land at Sydney . . .’