The Higher They Fly

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you panicked. Why?’

  ‘I told you! I don’t know!’

  ‘Yes, you do. I know what you’re scared of. Every now and then you decide you’re not a man—so then this happens! Christ, why couldn’t we just have gone off to sleep? I’m tired enough myself, heaven knows! So what do you do? You get me all excited and then you get all scared and we have a row. And you spend half your life telling me I’m a bitch. Who are you blaming, Robert? Can’t you make up your mind?’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling.’

  ‘So you damn well ought to be? Do come to bed. I want a cuddle.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I said a cuddle.’

  ‘This is a cuddle.’

  ‘Nobody ever cuddled a teddy bear like that.’

  ‘It’s just that you don’t feel at all like a teddy bear.’

  She didn’t. Olive skin, lithe yet yielding, echoed his touch with the little flexings of alerted limbs; uttering with him harmony for counterpoints as he caressed her.

  Golden breasts in the glow from the fire . . .

  He gazed on her face and she closed her eyes and was kissed on eyelashes that were the quivering petals of some exotic flower-bird. She looked at him for a second, till the willing crescents of her closed eyelids led his lips down to hers.

  The honey taste of a kiss . . . the prelude which became a chorale . . .

  The fierce symphony whose tumult embraced the full score of love’s expression.

  And then the sighing diminuendo of the strings, the question and answer of the composer’s afterthought, the quiescence of a sustained bell-note which rang through a hushed hall, drifting . . .

  The resolving of a cadence into the peaceful platitude of the one chord in the classic repertoire which could transform music lucidly into silence, and leave you content.

  For a long time they remained there, two tied notes on the same stave of music, lulling in an aftertone that persisted in elegant resonance, till the lingering tones became diffused in dreams, which carried them, echoing somehow sadly, into metaphysical space.

  They awoke, for a few moments, late in the night.

  As he stroked her forehead, and let his fingers invade her hair, and then brush the cool corners of her eyes, he asked her: ‘Why do I get afraid?’

  She smiled at him and he realised how unbelievably well she knew him. And she just said: ‘Please hold me, darling. Don’t talk just now. I want a cuddle.’

  *

  ‘I see. So now you call me a bitch again. Just because you don’t get your own way just when you want it. Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!’

  ‘It just happens to be the third night in succession that you’ve gone out with Jimmy.’

  ‘You told me yourself you’d be too busy to go out in the evenings this week. Does it prove anything if I stay home?’

  ‘It certainly proves something that you go out with the same man three times in one week.’

  ‘You told me he was a friend of yours, and that you wanted me to be nice to him.’

  ‘How nice can you get?’

  ‘We go out to dinner. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘You take too long eating it.’

  She laughed spontaneously, and he couldn’t help but follow suit. Then he said: ‘Whenever you go out to dinner with Jimmy, why is it me that gets the indigestion?’

  ‘You shouldn’t show your jealousy, darling. It’s crude.’

  ‘I refuse to be nonchalant. It’s a strain on the nerves. That would make my indigestion even worse. I’m in love with you, and I’m jealous, and I’m scared stiff of losing you. What’s wrong with that?’

  She turned away from him, and rested her hands uneasily on the dressing table. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’

  ‘Well . . .?’

  ‘I’m still going out with Jimmy tonight.’

  He said grimly: ‘I see.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Then why don’t you explain?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘No. Now.’

  She turned, and tried to conceal anxiousness. ‘Darling, you’re so complicated. Jimmy isn’t.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re thinking of that night last week.’

  She was furious. ‘I knew you’d throw that in my face! How can it possibly matter? I didn’t complain—why should you complain to yourself? And anyway, once you stopped being neurotic and stupid everything was fine and I forgot about it. Now, because of Jimmy, you have to remind me!’

  Fleming was silent for a moment, then spoke calmly. ‘I suppose part of my jealousy is because people like Jimmy don’t suffer from self-doubts.’

  ‘Well, at least that sounds honest! But it’s not the self-doubts that irritate me, Robert. It’s the fact you keep reminding me about them! You eternally cut off your nose to spite your face. One day you’ll do that once too often.’

  This alerted him to the full. ‘You sound very sure of that, Julie.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m just trying to stop you doing it.’

  *

  ‘Robert, you must eat something. You’re looking really ill.’

  ‘Don’t be a bloody little hypocrite.’

  ‘I always have been. Why should I stop now?’

  ‘Strange, but your jokes don’t sound funny any more.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re losing your sense of humour.’

  ‘That’s not all I’m losing, it seems.’

  ‘I did warn you.’

  ‘You mean, you are having an affair with Jimmy? Despite all your denials?’

  ‘I’m not having an affair with anybody.’

  ‘Including me.’

  ‘I explained that.’

  ‘The explanations are wearing a little thin, Julie.’

  ‘Are we going to have another row?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Well then, do you mind if I carry on changing in the meanwhile? Then you can yell at me without making me late.’

  ‘Julie, why are you doing this to me?’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘You’re driving me half out of my mind.’

  She flashed a look at him through the mirror. She looked impatient and irritable and hypotense. ‘Be patient.’

  ‘How would you like the patience to be performed? . . . crawling to you on my hands and knees?’

  She looked round suddenly. Her expression was serious and deeply concerned. ‘Robert, your pride is important to me. Please don’t ever say things like that!’

  ‘Why? Why is it important?’

  She didn’t answer the question, but spoke with rare sincerity. ‘Robert, promise me one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Whatever happens, never destroy my faith in you. Will you promise me that?’

  Whatever happens . . .! He felt his body go limp at the words. The meaning of them—the impending dismissal—was clearer to him than even it was to her. ‘Does that mean . . .?’

  ‘Robert . . . promise!’

  He turned away, and stood very still. ‘All right,’ he said in a voice which had become husky, ‘I’ll make you that promise. Only . . . why?’

  She waited for him to face her.

  He knew he had to.

  When he did, she looked more beautiful to him than she had at any time.

  ‘Because,’ said Julie, ‘you’re the only man I have ever believed in.’

  *

  ‘Hubb?’

  ‘Yes, Captain Fleming?’ The words were a grim accusation. The delay had actually been less than a minute. But in that time Hubb had made a fresh assessment of Fleming and felt cheated because he had been led into trusting the wrong man.

  Stiff with cold, Hubb had tried to wrench his body away from the machinery which had trapped his foot. He couldn’t even get clear by leaving his shoe behind; it was well and truly seized by a pair of claws that meant business. The pressure was tight and arrested the circulation in his foot.

  If he could only ge
t hold of the jury-strut which lay on the floor two yards away from the incision he had made in the metal, he could use it as a lever to open the jaws and so free himself.

  Only, how? He realised he should have had the strut to hand in any case; it would have speeded up the operation had it been ready to insert. But it wasn’t; and this Hubb blamed Fleming for, because Hubb was afraid. Fleming should have told him to have the strut with him.

  Fleming ignored the accusation in Jack Hubb’s voice and found that something made his thoughts flow freely and with inspiration. ‘Jack, is there hydraulic fluid on the floor of the bay above you?’

  ‘It’s lousy with it.’

  ‘Where, exactly, is the strut relative to your present position?’

  ‘About six feet to the left.’

  ‘Starboard side?’

  ‘Correct. Are you going to come and shift it for me then?’

  ‘Standby . . . Captain Crooke, did you get that?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Crooke glanced across at Geoff, who shrugged.

  Fleming said: ‘Then will you swing your aircraft round to the left, without banking her? That way the strut should skid across the floor.’

  The captain saw the soundness of this idea immediately. ‘You’re a cunning devil! . . . Geoff, warn the passengers. Just tell them to hang on to their drinks for this manoeuvre. Then give me full throttle; I don’t want to stall her and we need quite a whip round to shift that strut.’

  Fleming said: ‘Hubb, be ready to catch the end of the strut—otherwise it’ll go clean through the undercarriage doors. Can you reach over the top of the hole you made?’

  ‘Enough.’

  Crooke grinned broadly and said ‘Here we go’ and put on some hard left rudder.

  Hubb yelled: ‘It came about halfway. One more should do it.’

  Crooke said: ‘I’ve always wanted an excuse to do a skidturn in a jet. Hold on, chaps!’

  He did it again. A banana skin shot off Perkins’ table on to the floor.

  And Hubb shouted: ‘I’ve got it!’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jill felt an odd sensation as she walked the length of the cabin. It was as if the whole scene were unreal and forgotten. It no longer existed, yet it looked exactly the same.

  There were still the same assorted people with their assorted personalities, wishes and whims. There were still the same neat rows of adjustable seats, three on one side and two on the other. And the soft lighting and the restrained decor and the rows of oval windows which showed nothing except the darkness outside and the reflection of the lights within.

  But there was a stillness in the aeroplane which hadn’t been there before; so little movement, so little to say. One or two people had pressed the red buttons over their heads and inhaled pure oxygen, mostly out of curiosity or for something to do. Inactive as these people were, rarefied air was no great discomfort.

  Many looked at their watches, then felt ashamed when observed doing it. ‘Just winding it,’ someone explained with an embarrassed laugh. His neighbour wound his, too.

  Jill thought: I am not in an aeroplane. This is a wax model at Madame Tussaud’s. The people are not real, because we are flying in eternity.

  And these people are preparing to die.

  She could not react to the thought. She herself was also a wax model, one capable of walking and speaking and carrying the tray she held now. Capable of reassuring wax people who didn’t exist.

  There was something disturbing about the very lack of any sense of crisis. Where was the evidence that something was being done? Not in here, at least; except that Hubb’s empty seat next to Dulcie told its story by understatement. Only this vacant chair told that there was work going on, behind time and with crisp urgency, somewhere below the floor of the cabin. Even this fact had its remoteness emphasised; the floor was thickly carpeted as if further to conceal the true realities of the situation.

  As Jill passed Jack Hubb’s empty seat she found herself almost hypnotised by it, as if its full significance were suddenly telegraphed to a cinema audience by unnecessary use of a zoom lens. The safety straps lay loosely across the upholstery.

  Dulcie looked first at the seat and then at Jill. The exchange brought life back and the wax model melted back into protoplasm.

  Dulcie knew pretty well what was going on in this girl’s mind. When facts refuse to impinge upon a human brain it is because they are too hard to take. The changelessness apparent to Jill was in direct antithesis to the inevitable change—one way or the other—as dictated by the fuel gauges in the cockpit and the movement of clock-hands which relentlessly closed a gap.

  Then she saw Jill’s reaction to her. The girl removed the filter from the lens and admitted of the passing of time. The two women smiled slightly at each other, and Jill moved on.

  Dulcie had a mind which was the reverse of egocentric. She could not consider herself purely individually and therefore could not impose the same kind of mental numbness that had spared Jill the buzz-saw that awaited them all. Thus integrated with her fellow human beings, Dulcie viewed herself as a part of a whole which had to survive as a whole. It mattered to her that she was in peril only to the same extent as it mattered to her that each one of the others was also.

  After the final Truman episode she had interviewed Mr Valentine. It was clear that he had incited the terrible act, though it would be difficult to prove. No further chances could be taken, however, and after she had been consulted by Captain Crooke it had been arranged that the beefier of the two stewards should sit with the man. Valentine was to be allowed no further alcohol and had been warned that he would be questioned by the Airport Police upon arrival back in London.

  ‘I don’t give a damn,’ he had said. ‘And there are a good many matters concerning this flight which I personally shall reveal to that body.’ He had spoken this last phrase with drunken pompousness, sounding all the more absurd for it.

  Dulcie had tried to tell him that he should seek medical advice in any event. He had looked at her for some time with cod-fish eyes. ‘When you get yourself a husband,’ he said, ‘you won’t have to prove that everybody else in the world is sick except you. I know frustration when I see it.’

  Upon this, Dulcie had turned to Susan. ‘Watch him very carefully. This man is a psychotic.’

  ‘The steward will stay with him all the time.’

  ‘I know. But the man is cunning. He may attack you, or Jill, or Miss Tyne.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  With this, the actress had called Dulcie over.

  ‘I feel awful about it,’ she said. ‘I guessed something was going to happen. The trouble was I couldn’t think what. I certainly didn’t expect . . .’

  ‘Please don’t blame yourself, Miss Tyne. Nobody else did either.’ She changed the subject deliberately. ‘Surely, haven’t I seen you recently in a play? . . . Weren’t you in Lover, Forget?’

  ‘Yes. What did you think of it?’

  ‘To be honest, rather turgid! Pretty exhausting for you too, I should think! Does anyone ever really behave like that?’

  ‘No, but the author led a rather dull life. This was his way of making up for it.’

  ‘Where does he live? In an ivory tower?’

  ‘No. Basingstoke.’

  ‘I wonder what he would have thought if he’d seen the co-pilot trying to smash-up the cockpit?’

  ‘Oh, that would have been far too mundane for him! You see, to some people the drama of living takes place behind the locked doors of bed-sitting rooms.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather repetitious?’

  ‘Yes; but what isn’t? This isn’t the first aeroplane to have been in danger, and I don’t suppose the co-pilot is the first—was the first—to go berserk in a crisis. To me it seems fantastic that a fat, over-indulgent fraud like Mr Valentine could manipulate a madman. Yet he did. And no doubt something of that sort has happened before, because everything has. But how did he know
the way to operate the puppet strings of a maniac?’

  ‘He knew by instinct, not by deduction. One madman can often find the key to another, but he doesn’t know how . . . You are taking all this very calmly, Miss Tyne. May I say how much I admire you for it?’

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘How do you manage it?’

  ‘I perform all my histrionics in the appropriate place, you see—on the stage!’

  *

  Crooke was sweating, and with this outward sign that he was keying up to maximum alertness there came also a snap in his actions, as if he could choose at will the pace at which his brain worked. He had been saving himself for these last twenty minutes.

  He listened intently to the conversation between Fleming and Hubb; and this duologue had speeded up in a way commensurate with Crooke’s own vigour. There had been no further signs of faltering on behalf of either one of these men now, to whom the job itself was totally absorbing and left no cracks through which could filter intrusions of any kind.

  Crooke followed every move and left Perkins to accept from London Radar the vectors which would keep them close to the airport and free from other traffic. Every few minutes Perkins yelled them out, and Crooke acknowledged briefly when a pause came in the RT conversation.

  During one of these breathless interludes Crooke tapped Geoff on the shoulder and signalled him to move one headphone from over his ear.

  ‘Geoff, how long will the fuel last out? Exact figure, please.’

  ‘I’ve worked it out allowing for a steep let-down and a straight-in approach. Twenty-two minutes.’

  ‘Right.’ Crooke thought out the implications of this, then decided to choose this moment to gear the crew for the final stages. ‘Geoff, I want you back in the co-pilot’s seat. We’ll do our pre-landing checks good and early. Just carry out the drills; I’ll take the throttles.’

  Geoff shifted his great hulk up to the front of the cockpit. ‘What happens if Hubb doesn’t make it? Do we calculate on the same reserve?’

  ‘Over and above the twenty-two minute deadline, what have we got?’

  Geoff hesitated. ‘I’ve had to think of the residents in the London Airport area. You know, if we ran dry . . .’