by Nevil Shute
The little group by the hangars stirred uneasily.
Once the tail dropped a little as if to land; the machine had not yet lost way and rose a foot or two from the grass. Finally she sank, touched lightly, rose again, touched again and held the ground this time, ran along, and stopped near the hangars. Riley taxied her in, jumped down, and came to meet them.
‘Don’t care about that engine,’ he said shortly. ‘Not giving half the power it ought to.’
Rawdon and he detached themselves from the group and walked up to the office. Rawdon closed the door behind them.
‘Well,’ said Riley. ‘I had her all out at about a thousand feet — she only did a hundred and fifty-nine on the Pitot. I don’t think that engine’s doing its work; she can certainly do better than that. I didn’t care about the feel of it much. It ran very rough, and seemed a bit sluggish on the throttle, you know. It ran pretty regularly, but for the roughness.’
Rawdon pulled down a file of curves and selected one.
‘What were the revs?’
‘Thirteen-twenty.’
‘Only that — full out on the level? That makes it nearly fifty horsepower down — forty-eight point five.’
‘I’d say it was fully that,’ said Riley feelingly.
They discussed a possible deficiency in the propeller for a little and abandoned it as unlikely. ‘It was designed for her as a racing machine, after all,’ said Riley.
Rawdon whistled a little tune between his teeth. ‘Did you notice the landing speed?’
‘Not when she touched. I looked at it as she was doing that ballooning stunt over the aerodrome; it was rather under ninety — say eighty-seven.’
There was a brief silence in the office.
‘The worst of it is,’ said Rawdon, ‘there’s not so much time.’ He turned up a calendar. ‘If she’s going to be packed and crated and shipped over we must allow ten days before the race. That means we ought to start dismantling her the day after tomorrow.’
‘I’d be inclined,’ said Riley, ‘to have that engine down for a top overhaul. It’s no good sending her over in her present condition. She’d be a laughing-stock. Let’s have her down and see if we can get her any better. Get a man down from the Blundell people — a man who knows all about this Stoat. Then after that I can fly her over in time for the race.’
Rawdon was plainly uneasy. ‘I’ll ring up Baynes,’ he said, ‘and tell him about it — ask him to come down this afternoon if he can spare the time. I should think myself that that’s the only thing to do, unless he decides to send it over as it is and hope for the best.’
But the decision lay with Riley.
So the Laverock was taken to the engine shop and the Stoat extracted with a tackle. On the bench there seemed nothing in particular the matter with the engine. A gentleman came down on a motor-cycle from the makers, took off his coat, and worked on it for three days, assisted by the usual staff. Finally he expressed himself satisfied.
‘But they’re no class, the Mark I,’ he added, wiping his hands on a piece of waste.
Two days later the machine was ready for flying. It was late one evening when Riley took it up again; Morris and one or two others stayed to watch. The promoters of the venture were also present.
The flight was much the same as before. The landing was every bit as unpleasant to watch, though he seemed to be able to do it with certainty, given enough space. The report was better.
‘I got her up to about a hundred and seventy-eight,’ said Riley afterwards to Morris. ‘I think that’s about all she’s going to do. One might get another mile or two out of her on the day — I rather doubt it. They’re putting a fairing on the tail-skid for me now; I’ll have her up again tomorrow morning. Come and have supper at my place; we’ll come back afterwards and have a look how they’ve done that skid.’
It was dark when they returned. Riley went on down to the shop, and Morris turned into the offices to fetch some data that he needed for his private work. He stayed for a time in the deserted office, musing over his papers. Then he went down to the erecting-shop, brilliant with arc-lamps.
The men had finished work upon the tail-skid and were brewing tea over a blow-lamp preparatory to knocking off. Morris examined the skid critically. They hadn’t made a bad job of it.
‘Where’s Captain Riley?’ he asked one of the men.
The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Out on the aer’drome, I think, sir.’ He moved away down the shop through the shadowy aeroplanes, softly whistling the air from Samson and Delilah. Morris walked to a crack between the great sliding doors and stood looking out into the darkness; behind him the song was garnering strength and throbbing plaintively between the long iron walls.
He moved out on to the aerodrome. It was a bright, starlit night, calm and warm. If it stayed like that, Riley ought to have little difficulty in getting that machine across ... though it was not exactly a job that Morris would have cared to tackle himself.
‘Riley?’ he called quietly.
There was no answer. He walked on a little past the hangars, a little sobered by the quiet and the darkness. This was as quiet as an Oxford night ... His mind went off at a tangent:
Fair Helena, who more engilds the night
Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light ...
Fair Helena ...
He smiled a little to himself and walked on past the hangars. Beyond them somebody was smoking a cigarette on a pile of lumber under the hedge.
‘That you, Morris?’ asked Riley.
Morris sat down beside him. ‘They’ve made a pretty little job of your skid,’ he said. ‘Probably put another hundred yards on her to carry in landing.’
The other grunted sourly. ‘All very well for you to talk,’ he said. ‘They won’t let you go near it, let alone fly it.’
‘I sometimes lie awake o’nights,’ retorted Morris, ‘sweating blood for fear they’ll come and ask me to.’
There was a brief silence. Morris suddenly wished his last remark unsaid.
‘Oh damn it,’ said Riley very quietly. ‘What does it matter. It’s got to go over. I tell you, if I backed out of this thing now, I’d just hate myself.’
‘I know,’ said Morris.
‘No you don’t. You see’ — he paused, searching for words with which to frame his ideas— ‘I’ve done this sort of thing all my life, motor-bikes and cars and aeroplanes. It’s the only thing I know. I don’t go in for other things much — amusements. This is the only interest I’ve got ... I suppose really it’s the only thing I live for. I’ve got nothing else. It works all right — only sometimes one seems to have missed things, somehow.’
‘It doesn’t fill one’s life — this,’ said Morris.
The other smiled. ‘It’s done well enough for me.’
Morris pursued his subject. ‘One ought to go about more, meet more people,’ he said. ‘It’s narrowing this life.’ He glanced at the other. ‘You ought to be married,’ he said gently, ‘a hearty old man like you.’
Riley did not answer for a little. ‘I suppose so,’ he said at last. ‘But I’m not like you or Stenning. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love — really in love, that is. Somehow, I cut away from all my people and took up this racing and flying. One doesn’t regret it. But in this game one doesn’t meet the girls that one would want to marry, the girls that one could run a life with as partners. In some ways, it’s just as well. I’ve got no ties, nobody dependent on me, nobody but myself to think for.’
Morris had simply nothing to say. He was amazed at this outburst that he had provoked, delivered so quietly, in so matter-of-fact a manner. Something showed for the moment behind the man’s reserve, something of a great loneliness.
‘You know when you go to the pictures,’ said Riley steadily, ‘and you see one of those American films where the heroine is one of the most beautiful young things on God’s earth. She’s not really. She’s been divorced two or three times, she probably dopes — you’d hate her i
f you met her. Well, it’s like that in getting married. I suppose I’ve funked it — I don’t know ...’
‘The materialization of an ideal,’ muttered Morris.
The other did not seem to hear, but spat a fragment of tobacco from his lip and went off on another tack.
‘It seems to me that one can manage in different ways about this ... love. One can live one’s life to the full, or one can live it wisely. It’s like a band of light — sunlight, you know — that contains every colour there is, all mixed up together. You can take it as it comes. It’s not specially beautiful, but it’s healthy enough — you can have a pretty good time in it. You can get one of those funny things with a crystal — spectroscopes — and split it all up into violet and green and yellow and orange and red. It’s still the same life. You can have a great love and great pain — they go together — or you can have it all mixed up together in a sort of steady dullness, indifference.’
‘One never gets anything worth having without paying for it,’ said Morris. ‘It’s not possible.’
The other glanced at him, smiling a little.
‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘One can take it either way — I took it the dull way. Or, I don’t know that I did really ... it just came like that. Somehow, one way or another, one misses the summer of one’s life — it turns out wet and dull. But one gets compensations. One never gets the disappointment of what you thought was going to be a fine day really turning out wet. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get a little sort of a St Martin’s summer, a pleasure that you’ve really got no right to expect. That’s how I’ve always felt about this business — I couldn’t get on without this aviation now. Something to help along, something to work for. Other people get that with their wives, I suppose.’
There was a silence on the wood pile.
Riley glanced at Morris in the dim starlight. ‘It doesn’t pay,’ he said quietly. ‘Not in the long run. Don’t you forget it. One ought to be married. In a way, one needs it as one gets older. One wants ... I don’t know what. Companionship, perhaps.’
Morris cleared his throat. ‘I was engaged to be married once,’ he said, looking straight ahead of him. ‘Or, no. I was very near it — only I broke it off.’
Riley smiled in the darkness. ‘It’s always like that. Now I suppose you want it on again.’
‘It was better off. She was your cousin, Riley. You remember you introduced us — up at Oxford.’
‘I did not know,’ said Riley quietly. ‘You got engaged to Helen?’
‘I’d better let you know the whole thing,’ said Morris. ‘I’d like to.’ He paused, searching for words. ‘We got to know each other pretty well at Oxford, you know. Going about together. And then I got that job in rubber that looked such a good thing, and I asked her to marry me. It would have meant an engagement of about eighteen months.’
‘Did she accept then?’
‘She asked for a month to think it over. And in that time the rubber business went wrong, and I hadn’t a job or a chance of one. So I saw her and broke it off.’
‘Do you know at all what answer you’d have got?’ asked Riley gently.
‘I know that,’ said Morris. ‘We were ... pretty far gone. It wasn’t an easy job breaking it off like that.’ He paused. ‘One always hopes,’ he said, ‘that one’ll be in a better position one day. In about two years’ time, I think. I think she’ll wait for me.’
He did not seem inclined to say any more, and Riley sat on, gazing over the dim aerodrome, desperately puzzled. He knew that Helen Riley was engaged to be married to Roger Lechlane, and was to be married quite soon.
Riley threw away his cigarette and got up off the pile of lumber. It was characteristic of the man that he could not do anything about this affair on the spur of the moment, that he must mentally make his rough copy and keep it for a day or two to see if it were all right. ‘Good luck to you,’ he said. ‘Let me know if ever I’m any use. I’ll do what I can when the time comes, if there’s any opposition. I don’t suppose there’ll be much, though. Things have got easier in the last few years ...’
Morris did not catch his meaning, and they moved towards the gate. ‘When are you going over, then?’ he asked.
‘Thursday, I expect. So long.’
Riley walked slowly back to his rooms. He had funked telling Morris what he knew; he wanted time to think it over. It would be a pretty hard knock for Morris. He was puzzled; there seemed to be no logic in the affair at all, no rhyme or reason. If he really had been working all this time in the expectation of being able to marry Helen ... He had said that she was waiting. How the devil had he known? Anyhow, he had known wrong, because she wasn’t waiting at all. She was going to marry Lechlane, pretty soon. Morris must have been dreaming.
It was a confused business. He had only heard of this engagement a day or two before; it had surprised and worried him. He knew Helen well, and had met Lechlane once or twice; he did not think they had anything in common at all. But did that matter in marriage? He thought it did — he liked to think it did. He had wondered what the dickens the girl was about, and had correctly attributed it to sheer listlessness. Anything to get away from Bevil Crossways.
But why on earth wasn’t she waiting for Morris? No, probably Morris hadn’t told her that he was coming back; he wasn’t the sort of man to do things by halves. But in that case she ought to know.
The more he thought about it the more convinced he became that she ought to know.
He did not think this marriage with Lechlane would be a happy one for Helen. She wasn’t his sort at all. Morris was a good deal nearer to her; he imagined that they had a good deal in common. She was probably piqued with Morris for jilting her. If she had ever really cared about him that would disappear with explanation.
But it was a risky thing, this messing about in other people’s affairs. He didn’t know; he might do the wrong thing. But anyway, she ought to be told, ought to have all the facts before her. And if he did make a fool of himself, what of it? It wouldn’t be the first time.
He would write to her.
He began to fumble slowly in his breast pocket for a pencil and a scrap of paper, thinking of phrases that he could put this delicate subject into. He would have to make a rough copy of this letter, probably half a dozen. He was so bad at writing.
Perhaps it would be better if he went and saw her personally. That would be much the best way. There was not much time before this race, though, and he was very clear that she must know at the earliest possible moment before the affair went too far. He would be over in Belgium for a least a week. How much time was there before? He would have to take the machine up tomorrow; then, if all went well, he would fly it over two days later. He might be able to fit in a flying visit to Bevil Crossways. He could go down there tomorrow afternoon and come back the next morning. It was short notice to give them; he could fake up some excuse and telegraph in the morning — they were used to him. He smiled a little. Lechlane didn’t do that sort of thing, he’d bet.
That was it. He would go down to Bevil Crossways tomorrow and talk to Helen. He had always been good friends with her; he had been largely instrumental in getting her sent to Oxford. He could talk to her quietly alone, tell her what Morris had told him, explain things that she might want to know, tell her Morris’s prospects. It was always so much better to do these things personally.
He took the Laverock up again next morning and got three more miles out of her, reaching a speed of one hundred and eighty-one miles an hour. This, curiously enough, coincided almost exactly with the estimated speed from wind-channel figures — a coincidence only too infrequent. He managed to steal a glance at the air speed indicator as he landed; it registered eighty-three miles an hour. He thought he could have brought her in a little slower than that.
He had telegraphed to Bevil Crossways announcing his arrival and, with a bit of a scramble, caught the afternoon train down to Gloucestershire. It was good for him to get away for a little before this r
ace, if only for one night. He enjoyed travelling like a gentleman in a train for once in a way. He travelled first-class; it accentuated the pleasurable feeling that he was not responsible for the transport. That responsibility was one that he seldom managed to evade nowadays; whether on the road or in the air he was always controlling the machine. He was tired; it was time he took a decent holiday. He hadn’t had a proper holiday since the war. Perhaps after this race ... he would ask the people at the Crossways if they could have him for a little then.
At the station he found that no car had been sent to meet him. This was very unusual; he wondered if by any chance they had not got his wire. In that case his arrival would be an unexpected pleasure for his hostess. He took one of the station taxis and drove the three miles through the sweet-smelling, stone-walled lanes. He lay back in the old car, very content. Yes, he needed a holiday.
They turned in at the lodge gates and ran up the half-mile of drive, through the rhododendron coppice. There was the house, mellow and grey in the afternoon light, and there on the steps was Helen, waiting for him.
She ran down towards him as the car came to a standstill.
‘Oh, Malcolm,’ she cried. ‘I’m so awfully glad you’ve come. I’ve sent the car for Dr Hastings — Mother’s away and I’m all alone.’
It seemed that old Sir James Riley had fallen down two steps out of his bedroom into the passage half an hour before. He was eighty-one years old.
