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Beyond the point of no return, the waiter came with a bucket to empty the ashtrays. He put six more bottles on the table. Bull said it was his turn to pay, and fell down unconscious, clutching the money. Nash thought we had better make our final choices, and I told him I now plonked for the Lancaster, but how final is final?

‘More final than you think.’ Wilcox looked as if he ought to know. ‘The die is cast. I’ll take the Sunny Sunderland.’

Which left Nash with the Spitfire. ‘I’m the tallest, so get the smallest. Always the bloody same.’

We sat on the stairs singing: ‘One step forward, two steps back’, a bitter kind of boozy refrain, which set us grabbing ankles to stop further progress up or down. But we got to our doors and said goodnight. There’s a purpose in hilarity. We were in it together, bespoke tragedians stitching our lives like figures dangling in a paperchain. But in that split second before oblivion I wondered what it was that we were in.

18

Because the oil supply to the port inner engine was giving trouble, it was not until two mornings later that we sat on either side of the motorboat to go on board for departure. Even so, we wouldn’t be airborne for twenty-four hours, till a favourable weather front moved in to see us off.

I felt as pasty as the others looked, a mush-breakfast of coffee and buns like mortar in my stomach. Nash was so stricken by a fit of belching that at one splintering emission Appleyard commented that if he carried on like that he’d come apart at the seams.

Choppy water was like the shifting tiles of a grey roof. I had never been seasick, but felt there was no point in worrying about what might not come. I suppose we all thought the same. ‘If it gets rough, hard-tack will be on the cards,’ said Wilcox.

Bennett wore an overcoat, an airforce type cap and leather gloves. ‘You’ll organize the mess and serve proper meals, even if you’ve as many sealegs to get used to as a centipede.’ Noticing that Bull shivered in the wind, he told him that without a jacket he was improperly dressed, a phrase we found quaint, under the circumstances. ‘You didn’t think you’d need one? On this trip you’re not only paid to do as I tell you, but to think for yourself as well, when necessary. Anyone who can’t work that kind of balancing trick won’t be much good to himself or others.’

Bull did not need a sermon to point out his mistake. He winced at the stricture, and spat into the water. A red band beyond the harbour showed the sun, up but not apparent. An area of cloud fused into pink, then merged with a seam of muddy grey. We turned an arm of the inner mole, and were covered with spray as the boat winged from side to side. The horizon was cut from view by the white port-holed flank of the flying boat rising above the lap of water, and Wilcox interrupted his early morning cough to say that you couldn’t go on board without feeling a lift at the bottom of the stomach. ‘Every time, it’s as if you’ve never been on before.’

Appleyard likened the experience to a woman he hadn’t seen for a while. ‘I might not be expecting to go to bed with her, but I’m happy to be close, all the same.’

Sun broke up the rolls of cloud, and Bull smiled at its warmth, out of the hump into which the skipper had put him. ‘Dropped a clanger, didn’t you?’ Nash said in a low voice.

‘I often do,’ Bull answered. ‘Law and Admin’s a bit strong on this trip, though, ain’t it?’

The boat went under the chill of the starboard wing. ‘It’s going to be a hard one,’ Nash said, ‘that’s why.’

A gull swung by the float and looked in at the hatchway, as if knowing that our twenty-five tonner, on coming to life, would lift to heights it could never attain. Or was it scouting for choice leftovers? ‘He’s more like the bloody adjutant than the old skipper,’ Bull grumbled. ‘I only came for a good time.’

‘You’ll end up with a good dose, the way you’ve been going on.’

When he borrowed money from each of us we couldn’t understand how he had spent up so quickly, till he said he’d been and found a nice black woman to pass the time with. We accused him of shooting a line, because you couldn’t do such a thing in this country. But Nash, who knew better, called in disgust: ‘He’d even shag an oak tree felled by lightning.’

Our pinnace nosed under the wing towards the tail, high out of the water. We were going a circle, as if Bennett wanted the man at the tiller to give us a last view until disembarking at Kerguelen. The bird caught the wind and came round again, button-eyes staring side-on at floats, hull, stern, wings and engines as if reconnoitring every plate and rivet on the mindless assumption that sooner or later an explanation would appear as to what connection the Aldebaran had to earth and sky, thus releasing the gull to fly away with curiosity satisfied. When the bird alighted on the cowling of the inner port engine, Bennett said: ‘Get it, Nash. But don’t sink the bloody ship!’

As we swung for the door Nash held a pistol at arm’s length for a steady aim. The crack disturbed a feather of the gull’s head, causing it to lift, roll along the wing then, apparently, recover and fly away. ‘Just as well you missed.’

‘Scared it, at least.’

‘Can’t have it shitting all over the paintwork,’ Armatage said. ‘Shit from a white gull peels it off. Why is the shit of a white gull black?’

The boat bounced against the rubber tyres and Wilcox, with a final landbound fit of coughing, leapt in through the hatch. ‘Because they eat black puddings,’ Bull said.

‘They don’t have ’em in these parts,’ said Appleyard.

‘They do,’ Bull grinned, ‘and they’re lovely.’

Bennett counted us in, the pinnace held firm by Appleyard’s knots. Conscious that the holiday was at an end, I went over. We were on watch from now on. Duty was the word, and work our pastime. He called for all hands to get in the kit and last remaining stores. We were sweating. Armatage threw each piece into my arms, and I passed it to Bull. We were allowed one holdall or case, which Nash promised would go over the side if we developed a weight problem. Wilcox smiled when everything was stowed. During the work he hadn’t coughed. Bennett climbed the ladder to the flight deck as if going up a monkey-climber in the back garden. There was a smell of petrol and stale food, of diesel oil and seaweed, which gave the kite a maritime personality – dead though it yet was.

Fore and aft, from floor to ceiling, the cavern of the boat’s body caused me to wonder why I had waited so long to make its acquaintance. No aeroplane I had been in was so spacious. The cubic footage daunted me as far as getting to know each cranny, yet the size promised comfort and security. The unmistakable smell of a service aircraft, together with the rise and fall of the boat, brought a whiff of sickness as I went up the aluminium ladder. To the right, behind the cockpit, Rose lifted the lid of his navigator’s table to discover a loose screw in one of the hinges, and asked Wilcox, at his knobs and levers panel, to lend a screwdriver.

In my section was the graduated receiver scale and homely façade of the robust Marconi TR-1154/55. I drew my fingers over the multi-coloured transmitter clickstops and pressed the encased bakelite morse key. There was space to stand up and swing my arms, and with little movement get a view of Appleyard going back to shore on the pinnace to fetch last minute necessities from Shottermill on the quay. The sun already warmed the flying boat, and a gentle rocking under foot made the craft less formidable.