Rose, huddled over charts, grabbed the sextant, while his Dalton computer chased a perspex ruler down the ladder towards the galley. The good side of his face sheered by the bulkhead, and I felt a pang at the thought that he would be scarred there as well – till my neck was wrenched the other way and I saw the skipper holding grimly on, stability his sole aim. Rain splashed the windscreen, and we seemed under the ocean instead of two miles above. Over the intercom a steel door banged regularly on a wet plank, never tiring, till I thought to tighten the aerial connection. Nash was secure in his mid-upper, but when the plane levelled for a moment said: ‘Do that again, Skipper!’
Which brought a curt response from Bulclass="underline" ‘Nearly broke my fucking elbow.’
While Bennett and Wilcox struggled to get out of a corkscrew descent, my hand gripped the morse key as if that action alone would bring us through the storm. I felt aileron wires and rudder joints cracking under the strain, and waited for that last ounce of pressure to pitch us hell-bent into the drink. I was otherwise too wary of losing equilibrium and being slammed against the click-stops to be afraid. Stresses and strains were matched to four engines, and there was no better plane in which to have a thirteen-rounder with the sky.
‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ said Appleyard. My hand rested a couple of seconds on the key, making a letter ‘T’ which, if joined to the last symbol sent, would make ET. And what then? The floor slipped sideways and fell. I wanted to play the morse key like Niedzielski his piano, and instead of sending no more than a pip and a squeak bash out a heartache letter-telegram to Anne, explaining that my love for her was even more intense because I was in a situation where to think of it blunted my attitude to danger.
Bennett fought to get us higher, as if he had in mind a definite ceiling to the storm. Lightning danced along the wing, fixed by a trap of blue steel, which caused the plane to fall as if to get out of its way. ‘Who gave us that weather forecast?’ Nash croaked along the pipeline. ‘I’ll have his guts for garters.’
‘They won’t taste good.’ I passed on a forecast which I had not taken down:
= SOUTH INDIAN OCEAN FROM 40 TO 50 SOUTH LATITUDE BETWEEN 50 TO 60 EAST LONGITUDE FOR NEXT TWELVE HOURS STOP FALLING 933 VEERING NORTH FORCE 9 OR 10 STOP VISIBILITY I TO 2 MILES = +
A cumulo-nimbus fist struck the hull, as if we were on a rough sea meeting an anvil-rock thought to be hundreds of miles away. ‘There are tree trunks in the sky,’ Nash said. ‘Or army lorries, I can’t tell which.’
The craft levelled like a dead log, and flew miraculously for half a minute. ‘A monsoon in the wrong season,’ Bennett said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
I composed the telegram and sent it out: Once fall in love do not give up, I told her, skip-distance and sunspots notwithstanding. Listen to own voice only, stop. Look into nightsky for your face. My sending sounded like fingernails scraping along a washboard, but there was no chance of being heard. Only the proper rhythmical thump of a real transmitter could get anywhere.
Could words of love break through by will alone? I sent a mixture of four short and three long signs, the Lucky Seven of her name going into the storm and getting nowhere, as the flying boat skated through black rain.
The night part of our trip was shortened by going easterly, yet seemed endless. Electricity hovered in and out. I felt like a fly which, primed by the good pickings of a long summer, and sensing an autumn death approaching, is filled with the strength to live forever.
The craft charged on, pushed without mercy by the wind. To move the body was a hazard. A descent to the galley might break a limb. Ordered to stay by my receiver, I searched for a significant message and, getting nothing, knew I would have to invent one. As long as operational gen was passed to Bennett, I could pluck down any telegrams and scan them for myself alone. Greetings from Anne who felt the pain of our separation would come in clear out of Portishead or Rugby:
Missing you. Come home as soon as you can. You did wrong to go. Why ever did you?
I didn’t, I tapped back.
You did. Remember? I had big trouble finding where you were.
The ether was livid with the gibbet-rope of the question mark. Do you love me? Will you ever come back? Are you serious? You never were, were you? I don’t think you ever really loved me.
I did.
You didn’t.
Well, I love you now.
Do you? How can you be sure?
I’m sure because I know.
Whipcracks of recrimination decorated the sky – till I put a stop to it. My hand on the morse key sent HAPPY BIRTHDAY. What did it matter whose? Only whales might hear, if they had the right antennae.
‘All stations are forbidden to carry out the transmission of superfluous signals. Messages must not be transmitted to addresses on shore except through an official station. Private communications are strictly forbidden.’ The rule book was peppered with such heavy type, but we were too far out for hand or eye or the ear of authority to reach, and though the power was mine, natural forces governed its effectiveness.
Rose, before being impelled to more work when we came again into the clear, dozed with his head resting on the chart table. He had put into abeyance the dread that if the overcast was higher than our service ceiling for a thousand miles in front he wouldn’t be able to get a fix and find Kerguelen. Without stars, dead reckoning would put us out by such a margin we would miss our landfall, in spite of its spread. Beyond the point of no return in fuel, we would be all but lost if the stars stayed shut. Radio bearings on Durban or Mauritius, over two thousand miles away, were no substitute for an astro fix. In any case, with so much static, I could barely distinguish call signs.
Someone had picked up my foolish telegraphic greetings to Anne, because a strong signal through the atmospherics asked who was calling, which could only have meant me. I switched the aerial to D/F, ready to rotate the loop and find his general direction.
There were longer intervals between eruptions of static. I waited for a signal from whoever had heard me sending, so as to get a bearing. Had he already taken one on me? My doodling had lasted long enough. Perhaps he had been too surprised to act and, like me with him, was only waiting to hear me send again in order to confirm our direction. My hand stayed off the key, as no doubt did his. If he asked again who was calling, I would know that he was merely curious as to who or where I was. But if he didn’t send, and waited for me to do so, he was someone to beware of.
A cold sweat clammed my forehead, and my heart thumped as if belonging to a drunken man about to zig-zag over a level-crossing with an express coming. We were flying straight, and everyone on board sighed with relief. The ship was less at the the whim of back-draughts and upcurrents. As if a work bell had sounded, Rose picked up his sextant and took readings from the astrodome. Bennett’s voice came over the intercom: ‘How’s the radio silence, Sparks?’
‘Thought I heard someone, Skipper.’
‘Any idea who?’
‘Too much interference.’
‘What did he send?’
‘Wanted to know if somebody was calling him.’
‘And was anybody?’
‘Not that I heard.’
‘Did you hear, or didn’t you?’
‘There’s nothing I don’t hear if it’s hearable. I’m waiting for him to come back. If he’s somewhere close I’ll get a decent bearing.’