Bennett took off the automatic pilot and made a frontal attack on the looming battlements of cloud. Static became pandemonium at the airless pockets we fell into, and at the precipitous updraughts that sent us leaping. On the flight deck water beaded across the perspex. Through the turbulence I kept a grip so as not to be thrown off my feet.
At my set the static of the world converged for a conference at dusk, the worst time for reception. I searched for one clear voice of morse, however irrelevant, but every frequency was swamped. A rolling stone gathers no morse, I said to Rose, and settled on the 6500 HF DF frequency, sliding to one side or the other but getting little more than indecipherable squeaks.
The stars had gone, as if they had vanished with us into the spongy barrier of cloud. From the side hatch the propellers purred normally, seeming to make little noise. Grumbling underfoot felt like the earth giving way. I disregarded the yawing of our boat in the ocean-air, and my gyro-stomach took control. Swathes of rain and sleet slewed the canopy, and Bennett eased us through a series of alarming bounces, not yet over the top into clear air.
The lamp glowed, and I gladly returned to the semicircular window of my radio-face with its indicator lines of different colours. Someone stood nearby, and I pulled half a world of static from one ear to see Nash lighting a cigarette. ‘The storm’s very pretty. I watched it from the mid-upper, but every flash gave me a pain in the arse, so I came down.’
I tapped the set with my pencil. ‘A storm like this makes me want to talk – about this one-eyed expedition, maybe.’
‘If you’ll stop listening to Dick Barton or Mrs Dale’s Diary on that clapped out wireless, perhaps we will. Follow me to the rear turret. Tell Rose you’re going for a kip, or he’ll want to join in the pow-wow.’
Old fliers, with more than the five senses, can pick the air to pieces like a bird, and find a way through. Bennett pressed on regardless. The cloud ceiling rippled below, but in the distance was an archipelago of holes – dark pink and dirty grey, a purple band circling the sky, a well-advanced dusk I had never seen before and thought I wouldn’t see again.
Darkness faded the rosy view. More cloud ranges bordered the northern sky. Streaks of white fire snaked themselves into the sea, one after the other, and no sooner did they hit water than they were as if by magic transferred back to the sky, to descend again, up and down, as if they would go on until the sky burned itself out. Closer to hand, Venus was rising, and shone on the sea.
I followed him down the temple of the fuselage. Half in and half out of the turret, his back to the guns, he resembled a gnome in spite of his bulk, outsized perhaps, and balancing to avoid too heavy a grip. His glint was amiable, but the lower lip showed anxiety. The boat grumbled underfoot as I crouched, and wondered how I would know if he was telling the truth, or whether there was any truth left to tell. Curiosity satisfied meant being told the worst more often than it meant knowing the best.
‘The stars are flashing their peepers, so Rose can find out where we are. The skipper would like to know, I expect.’ He shuffled his feet. ‘I could never abide not seeing stars when we were on ops, even if it was dangerous. When I can’t see stars or the ground, my level goes, if you see what I mean. Being in fog or cloud always scares me. I might see something I don’t like, though I can’t think what that would be. Or we might smash into a house, or a ship, or a cliff-face even though we are at ten thousand feet. My bloody sins coming back to haunt me, I expect, if it’s anything at all.’
I moved to get at my cigarette case. ‘Bit late to talk about our sins.’
He spat, though nothing came, then struck a match for our smoke. ‘There’s no time better than now when it comes to atonement.’ The light which united us showed him to be smiling. ‘But what I can’t understand is why a young chap like you volunteered for this sort of job. What the heck have you got to atone for?’
‘If I knew I wouldn’t be here, though if you ask me where I would be if I weren’t here I don’t think I could tell you.’ His jungle of atonement had no attraction for me, as he surmised, but I told him I was here because of money, adventure, work and a broken marriage. If he reversed the order he might well get it right.
‘I thought there was more to you than met the eye.’ We smoked, and listened to the test-bed grind of the engines rather than to our own thoughts. Darkness brought more ease, screened us from peril, and generated a denser element of companionship. ‘Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?’ he said at last.
‘I thought religion and politics were out on this trip?’
‘Well, we’re not in the French Foreign Legion, either,’ he said. ‘But nothing will be out before it’s ended. Bennett’s on a treasure-hunt, and there’ll be no let-up till it’s over. The gold’s got to be lifted quick, because we aren’t the only people after it. Someone knew enough to set another combine working against us, but we’re on our way there first, as far as we know. If they should see our fuel ship and board it, they’ll find nothing, because the stuff will already be away – by flying boat. Bloody neat, eh?’
We sat through the space of two cigarettes. ‘The trouble is,’ he went on, ‘that Bennett lives in a world of his own. Nobody can get at him. But it’s important to the rest of us that we know everything, so you’ve got to listen for any ship close enough to bash out morse so strong it parts your hair: it’s bound to be on the same game as us, because no others get to where we’re going – except maybe the odd whaler. Tell me as well as Bennett all you hear. You’ll earn your keep, and our gratitude.’
It was wise not to show emotion or surprise at being plainly asked to divide my loyalty between him and Bennett. The reason did not seem clear, and if it had maybe I would have liked his advice even less. I was jolted as if, sitting in a room with a clock on the shelf, I began to hear its ticking again, when in fact it had never stopped. The noise of four engines rushed back into my ears as the war-surplus flying boat churned its airscrews through black sky, leaving a wake of exhaust fumes, the only roar for thousands of miles, and undetectable because no other vehicle was within range. We had the air to ourselves.
‘There’ll be hardly a pint of juice left in each engine by the time we get there,’ he said. ‘If these tail winds weren’t pushing us along we’d have a ditching to look forward to. I’ll certainly be glad when we’re bobbing about on that fjord like a cork in the sink at Christmas!’
‘I can’t understand why we’re so well-armed,’ I said: ‘Browning machine guns seem a bit excessive.’
He reached out and patted their grips. ‘They aren’t for shelling peas. Nor are we going to make a wartime shit-picture. It might be all show, but it would be a shame if we got everything on board and somebody tried to pull it away from us.’
‘But who?’
He stood up, about to push by me. ‘I can’t see into the future. But if anybody tries to get that gold from us, I’ll blast ’em out of sky or water, let me tell you.’
I was aware of Bennett, immovable at the controls, mindless in his set purpose. Our lives were in his hands. But they had been in our own individual hands before we had delivered them into his. ‘Are you glad to be on this trip, Nash?’
He turned, still stooping. ‘I’d rather be here than in jail, which is where I was three months ago. I’ll never go there again. It’s paradise being here, compared to that.’
‘Paradise can sink,’ I said.
He grunted, and went on his way before me, saying: ‘I’d rather go down from paradise than from any other place.’