‘Well, you’re going to fly now,’ Reece said.
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘It isn’t possible. Do you want to crash? I’d never get her off the ground.’
Hilda came over to me. She had hold of my arms, gripping them. ‘You’ve been one of the best pilots in Britain, Dick. When you get into the machine it will all come back to you — you will see.’ She was looking up into my eyes, trying desperately to communicate her sense of confidence.
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s too risky.’
‘It’s either that or stay here till the lava wipes us out,’ Hacket said.
I glanced round at the ring of tight, set faces. They were all watching me, seeing my fear, blaming me now for not getting them out. I suddenly felt I hated them all. Why should I have to fly the damned plane to save their skins?
‘You must get Tucek to do it,’ I heard myself stammering. ‘You must wait till he comes out of—’
‘That is not possible,’ Sansevino cut in.
Hacket stepped forward and patted my arm. I could see the level set of his dentures as he forced a smile. ‘Come on, now, Farrell. If we’re prepared to risk it—’
Reece thrust him aside. ‘Are you going to let us all die here?’ he said angrily.
‘I can’t fly the plane’ — the words seemed to be forced out of me. ‘I daren’t.’ I was half-sobbing.
‘So we’re all to die here like rabbits in a trap because you’re scared. You rotten, yellow—’
‘You’ve no right to say that.’ Hilda hauled him away from me. ‘How dare you?’ she stormed. ‘He has done more than any one. Ever since the eruption started he has been fighting to save us. Did you go to get Dr. Sansevino for Max? No. You were too busy getting the dust out of yourself. And you didn’t go near the lava. Dick has faced death twice to-day. And you have the nerve to call him a coward. You have done nothing — nothing, I tell you.’
She stopped then. She was breathing heavily and she wiped her hand across her hair. Then she took my arm. ‘Come. We will go and get clean. We shall feel better when we have had a wash.’
I followed her upstairs to the bathroom in a sort of daze. I wanted to crawl into a corner and hide. I wished I was back on that roof top. I’d welcome the approach of the lava now. If only it would come. I wanted it to end — quickly. ‘I can’t fly that plane,’ I told her.
She didn’t answer and ran the tap of the bath. Take your things off, Dick,’ she said. And as I hesitated, she stamped her foot angrily and said, ‘Oh, do not be so stupid. Do you think I don’t know what a man looks like without his clothes. I have been a nurse, I tell you. Now get those filthy things off.’ I think she knew that it was my leg I didn’t want her to see, for she left the room saying she’d find me some clean clothes. She flung them in while I was getting the dirt of fin the bath. Then whilst I dressed she washed her face in the basin.
‘Now do you feel fresher?’ she asked as I did up the buttons of one of Sansevino’s shirts. She was rubbing her face with a towel and she suddenly began to laugh. ‘Please, don’t look so tragic. Look at yourself.’ She thrust a mirror in front of my face. ‘Now smile. That’s better.’ She caught hold of my arms. ‘Dick. You’re going to fly that plane out.’
I felt an obstinate dumbness welling up inside me. ‘Please, Dick — for my sake.’ She stared at me. Then her face seemed to crumple up. ‘Don’t I mean anything to you?’
I knew then what I’d known all day — knew that she meant all the world to me. ‘You know I love you,’ I murmured.
‘Then, for heaven’s sake.’ She was laughing at me through her tears. ‘How do you imagine I’m going to bear your children if I’m buried under twenty feet of lava?’
Suddenly, I don’t know quite why, we were both laughing, and I had my arms round her and was kissing her. ‘I shall be right beside you all the time,’ she said. ‘You will make it. I know you will. And if you don’t—’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Then the end will be quick and we shall not mind.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a shot at it.’ But my heart sank as I committed myself to the nightmare of trying to fly again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My recollection of the journey down to the plane is confused and vague. My mood had changed from panic to intense excitement. It had changed the moment I’d returned to the room where Maxwell lay and Hilda had told them I’d agreed to fly them out. They had looked at me then with a new respect. From being an outcast I had become the leader. It was I who ordered them to fix up a stretcher for Maxwell, to hitch George to the cart again, to bring Tucek and Lemlin down. The sense of power gave me confidence. But with that sense of power came the realisation of the responsibility I had undertaken.
I had time to think about this as we crunched down the ash-strewn track to the vineyard. And the more I thought about it, the more appalled I became. The sudden mood of confidence seeped away, leaving me trembling and scared. It wasn’t death I was scared of. I’m certain of that. It was myself. I was afraid because I didn’t think I’d be capable of doing what I’d said I’d do. I was afraid that at the last moment I’d funk it. I was in a sweat lest when I sat in the pilot’s seat with the controls under my hands I’d lose my nerve.
I think Hilda knew how I felt for she held my hand all the way, her fingers gripping mine with a tightness that seemed to be trying to give me strength.
We were a queer cartload. The mule moved very slowly, Hacket holding the reins. Maxwell was coming round and moaning with pain under — his blankets. Lemlin was unconscious, but Tucek, propped against the side of the cart, had his eyes open. They stared vacantly in front of him, the pupils unnaturally large. The little Italian boy was playing with Zina’s hair while she lolled like a courtesan against Reece, her skirt rucked up to show her naked thigh, a dreamy smile on her lips. It was insufferably hot and the sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades.
I remember as we left the villa a little mound of ash by the front door with a swarm of flies buzzing over it. I didn’t have to ask what it was, for there was a hand sticking out of the ash. Roberto’s grave started in my mind a picture of the twisted wreckage of a plane and the flies buzzing in clouds about our swollen bodies. It was all mixed up in my mind with the flies that had crawled in swarms over my smashed leg up there in the Futa Pass so long ago.
I felt my mind drifting over the edge of reality into fantasy. Hacket was swearing at the mule and I found myself identifying myself with the animal’s reluctance to reach its destination. I wanted to go jolting on into infinity, just moving steadily on and never reaching the plane. And then I saw Sansevino watching me curiously. I could see him following the antics of my mind with a cold, professional interest. And then for a moment anger and hate blended in the sweat of the heat and I wanted to be transported in a flash to the cockpit of the plane and go roaring out over the lava with a wild shout of laughter as I proved to them I could do it.
We were down by the rows and rows of planted bush vines now and Hilda’s fingers clutched more tightly at my hand. ‘Where shall we live, Dick?’ Her voice sounded a long way away as though I was hearing her talking to me in a dream. ‘Can we have a house by the sea somewhere? I have always wanted to live by the sea. I think perhaps it is because my mother was a Venetian. The sea is in my blood. But the frontiers of Czechoslovakia are all land frontiers. It will be nice to live in a country that is surrounded by water. It is so safe. Dick. What sort of house shall we have? Can we have a little thatched house? I have seen pictures—’