Unfortunately, of course, none of this could stop the flimsy contraption dissolving in mid-air and splattering him into utter non-Matthew-Ranklinness on the Surrey landscape.
Foreman Alec escorted him around to the right-hand side where the propeller breeze whipped at his hair (not wearing his cap backwards seemed to be the last control over his life that he had left). Falcone climbed down, passed over a pair of oily goggles, slapped him on the shoulder – a jolt his stomach could have done without – then helped him up into the cockpit. Short as he was, Ranklin felt like an elephant tiptoeing along a shelf of china, and wasn’t reassured by the way the structure bent or bulged wherever he touched it. Then he was wedged in behind Andrew’s right shoulder on a thin basket seat, the wing above just clearing his head, and grinning falsely to show he was ready.
“All snug?” Andrew bellowed above the engine noise, ignored Ranklin’s answer, and waved to the men back at the wing-tips. The aeroplane swayed around, the engine buzzed, wind swirled in Ranklin’s face and they moved. Jerk, bump, lurch as the tail rose, rock, skid, the thing was obviously quite out of control – then the ground sagged away, the movements stopped being abrupt and became dreadfully soggy and this was flying.
Ranklin relaxed – slightly – his grip on either side of the seat and looked ahead, ready to be impressed. He could see clouds, and they looked like clouds; he looked at the distant horizon and it was a distant horizon. He looked at the ground below, and it was the mouth of Hell, bottomless and beckoning. He looked quickly at the dashboard.
Noticing his stare, Andrew tapped a finger on one instrument – there were only three – that looked like a thermometer and Ranklin saw it registered 500. Miles an hour? He was almost willing to believe it, then realised it must be feet above the ground. They lurched again and he grabbed for his seat, terrified that touching anything else might rip the machine apart or hurl it out of control.
“Few rocks in the air, with this sun,” Andrew yelled. “Get above it soon after a thousand.” That must mean something, but Ranklin didn’t feel like opening his mouth. The sun suddenly glared at him from above the wing and he realised they were turning, the horizon sliding across the nose.
Quite abruptly, like a boat slipping into harbour, it was calm. Almost as if they had stopped. It was still noisy and windy, but a steady noise and wind. The lurching, the ‘rocks in the air’ (irregular air currents?) had gone, and when Andrew turned again it was a smooth inevitable movement as on the racetrack banking below.
Ranklin risked a deep breath and began to take in impressions. The way the fabric on the wing above quivered continuously, and a dribble of oil, flattened by the wind, crawled back along the metal skin ahead. Then, daring to look further, the way the landscape towards the sun was a bright haze but seemed crystal clear in the opposite direction. The vivid smear of white steam or smoke that must be a train – he’d never thought it would show up like that – and the obvious curve of the railway, far more distinct than the tangled, linking roads.
But all oddly blotched, as if someone had spilled huge oil-stains over the landscape . . . which he suddenly realised must be cloud shadows. He had never thought of clouds as having site before, and stared at the evidence until their turn brought the sun sparkling off a bright snake that must be a stretch of river.
That reminded him of the map and he dragged it from a side pocket and cautiously unfolded it in the eddying wind around his lap. Andrew looked down, grinned and shouted: “We’re not lost yet!”
Ranklin shook his head, grinned back and called: “Just experimenting.” He had folded the map to show the immediate area, and taking the sun to be roughly south, tried to pinpoint himself. Andrew tipped the aeroplane towards Ranklin’s side and pointed past him. “Byfleet.”
Ranklin forced himself to look, but the bottomless pit had become toys: houses, trees, cars and carts. And dots with shadows that must be people except that none of them seemed to be moving. Then he realised they must have stopped to stare up at him, or at least the aeroplane wheeling and buzzing in the bright blue. He felt embarrassed, a poseur because he didn’t belong in this aeroplane any more than they did, then grinned at his absurdity.
Andrew was pointing at his own mouth. “Lunch?” Ranklin nodded and swivelled the map to match their turn towards the obvious oval of Brooklands that suddenly appeared from under the nose. It was odd how things below did seem to appear and disappear, how much depended on the angle of the light and one’s own angle, which ranged from the vertical to the horizontal. Map-reading from the air was obviously a new art.
Then he remembered BSA and the lightweight machine-gun. Pointing it straight ahead was one obvious solution, then you could aim the whole aeroplane and – oh dear: he’d forgotten the propeller spinning in the line of fire. And pointing it elsewhere gave a very small arc of fire and obvious aiming-off problems. He was trying to count the variables involved when the rocks in the air, and his stomach, came back. But salvation was in sight and he felt better diving towards it, the engine burping irregularly (but, he hoped, intentionally) than climbing into the unknown.
Then the ground was coming up faster and he was sure Andrew had misjudged it, or maybe was fainting, and braced himself just as the nose lifted and they were down with a thump and rattle which dwindled away to silence except for Andrew saying: “Damn, lost it,” and he realised the engine had stopped.
They rumbled to a stop and Andrew began clambering out. “That’s the one trouble with these engines, they will cut out on landing. We’ll walk it from here.”
He came around to guide Ranklin down, then went to the tail, lifted it to waist height and simply pushed. After an initial grunt, the machine rolled easily, helped by a couple of mechanics attaching themselves to the wing spars. Ranklin walked beside Andrew.
“Tell me,” he asked, “how would you mount a machine-gun on an aeroplane like this?”
“With a hell of a lot of difficulty,” Andrew said. “She’s got a good view downwards, you saw that-”
Ranklin had. It had been quite good enough, thank you.
“-but any other direction, you’d be shooting off struts and wires and probably the prop. Vickers is building one with a pusher prop specially for their machine-gun; your War Office must know about it.”
Ranklin mumbled something about how departments never talked to each other.
Corinna was waiting by the shed, head slightly on one side and wearing a very broad grin. Ranklin could feel himself grinning back like a schoolboy; it was lucky that everybody else was concentrating on the aeroplane.
“Well?” she asked.
“I did enjoy it. After the first few minutes. It’s . . . it’s different,” he said lamely.
“There’s some, like brother Andrew, would say it’s a whole new world.”
Ranklin turned to look back at the sky, realising that until only minutes ago it had always seemed to him a flat, painted backcloth to life. And that to most of the people who had stopped to stare up at him it would never be anything else. “Yes,” he said, “I can see how it could be.”
Corinna was looking at him gravely. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. And came back safely.”
13
They found O’Gilroy waiting at the Blue Bird. Ranklin had anticipated Falcone’s surprise at seeing his former bodyguard reappear as student aeronaut and old acquaintance of Reynard Sherring’s daughter, but decided to let it happen. If O’Gilroy began to seem a Man of Mystery, and worth confiding in, it might not hurt.