Separation gave me energy. I made acquaintances, but those at the wireless college who also came from the Air Force knew when to leave me alone. Perhaps a similar madness infected us all. If I went for long walks instead of passing an evening with them in a pub, no remark was made.
7
Some time during my marriage I bought a morse key and, when Anne complained of silence, would take it from the drawer and send insulting messages which she couldn’t read, or repeat the SOS signal over and over after she had gone to bed. Another little mannerism which my dear wife pointed out, because she said it drove her mad, was my habit of whistling. I knew that I did it, because on catching myself I would break off in the mid flow of rhythmical notes which came out between a small gap in my upper front teeth. The sound, piercing though not loud, might have been a bird in its death agony under the paws of a cat, or the tentative beginnings of a kettle about to boil before emitting its usual scream. The sound could be picked up in a crowd by anyone with a sensitive ear, even from some distance away.
The habit was harmless, but I tried to cure myself because any messages sent not only made me vulnerable to the world but enraged my wife. So I stopped in mid whistle, and the noise would cease until, forgetting my resolution (there was no pleasure in such mindless whistling, after all) I would catch myself once more, while at a dance or tea party with Anne or, even worse, standing behind the counter of the shop being overheard by the boss from behind.
The habit ended with Anne leaving, or so I thought, but on finishing radio school, and after a spell at sea, and when getting another job seemed impossible, it came back. I walked into a pub in Albemarle Street and ordered a pint and a sandwich. Impatient at having to wait, the five letters of an aircraft callsign formed slowly on my lips, so that though not a wireless operator, Bennett, a mere stranger who stood nearby, was able to interpret the five letters of morse which I sent again and again.
It was a near miracle, considering the noise, but he had ears that could detect the breath of a dying man across a hundred miles of Antarctic peaks. He also put together the co-sign of my moustache, as well as the forward jutting chin and glinting grey eyes that denoted a man who would pick up any signals that were going. There is also something unmistakable about ex-airmen until they lose their youth, and maybe I reminded him of an aircrew member he once knew, perhaps one of those poor-show bods who had his guts splashed across the TRII54/55 above Bremen and yet was brought back to burial on English soil. There was no knowing. We had been born to give no sign, show no emotion, admit to no foreknowledge. Pragmatical we were, and phlegmatic we would stay, no matter how much the inner cauldron boiled.
He looked at me. ‘RAF?’
‘How did you know?’
‘I’m asking.’
‘Yes.’
Lunch came. ‘I can’t get the bloody mob out of my head.’
‘Nor can a lot of us.’ He smiled. ‘What’s more, we don’t see why we should.’
‘Funny,’ I said.
‘It was a good mob.’
‘Still is.’ I offered him a drink.
‘No, you’ll have what I’m having.’ He called for double whiskies. Such stuff on top of a pint would clog my brain for the afternoon, but I was in no mind to refuse. ‘What sort of wireless were you in?’
I put the beer aside for a chaser, and lifted the whisky. ‘Mainly direction-finding.’
‘The old huff-duff, eh?’
‘The same.’
‘Do any ops?’
‘I was too late.’ Lots of aircrew ended in the cookhouse, pushing food out to the queues. I was lucky to get on the radio at all.
‘As long as you can handle the gear in a plane.’
‘What sort of plane?’
‘Flying boat. I need somebody for a couple of months. If you want a job.’
I looked interested. ‘I might.’
‘Did you do a gunnery course?’
‘Only the basics. They didn’t even want gunners. The war ended, remember?’
‘Don’t I know it?’ He kept silent, and left me wondering whether he really had a proposition to make. Then he said: ‘You’ll get five hundred a month, plus expenses. And come out with another thousand in your pocket.’
I needed a job like I’d soon need a suit to walk about in. ‘Sounds a fair screw.’
He slid down the other half of his whisky. ‘It’s more than eight-and-six a day!’
‘But is it legal?’
He nodded.
Hard to believe, but I was in no state to argue.
‘When can you start?’
I was off my food. ‘I don’t know. After you’ve told me what it’s all about.’
‘Now?’
‘If you like.’
‘I’m being set up in a charter business, and need a wireless operator to make up the crew. Do you have a civvy ticket?’
I did.
‘All right. But no questions about legality. I don’t like it.’
He was the skipper, so I soft-pedalled the interrogatives – and stopped whistling morse from that time on. He said that the original wireless operator, who had been a member of his old crew, had pulled out on hearing his wife was pregnant. He’d only got the phone call that morning, and was at his wits’ end for a replacement.
‘A Super Constellation leaves for Johannesburg in three days.’ We were in his South Kensington flat to settle my travel details and sign articles that, I thought, may not be worth the paper they’re written on.
8
On the quayside Bennett introduced me to Nash, his chief gunner. A squall hid the flying boat to which, day after day, a pinnace went out with supplies from Shottermill’s warehouse. I wondered how we could need a gunner, but kept silent. To ask questions was to have curiosity prematurely crushed, and the hope taken out of expectation. In any case I could wait, no matter what risk such a course might put me or others in.
No landing ground is necessary for a flying boat, and because water covers two-thirds of the earth it has more advantages than any other machine: a combination of Icarus successful and the dolphin tamed. As the huge and handsome boat lifts, its hull bids farewell to the fishes at the same moment that its wings say good day to the birds. The craft meets both and spans two elements, an aerodynamic ark speeding through cloud and clear sky in turn. I had no wish to know what was carried, wanted only to make the flight and collect my bounty.
A policeman skiddled his stick along the corrugated wall of the shed. Bennett peered intently, as if to bring the flying boat back into clarity. ‘Am I going to take that thing off again? I often wonder how much longer I can do it.’
Nash’s laugh was the kind that passes between people who have known each other a long time. It was meant only for Bennett. ‘They used to say you could do anything with the old flying boat, Skipper, except make it have a baby.’
‘On this trip I’ll need to make it have two – if we’re to get back.’
Nash knelt to tie his shoelaces, then said: ‘I remember a picture of the old Mayo-Composite before the war. I expect I saw it on a cigarette card. Maybe we should have dredged up one of those for the job.’
The Aldebaran, of pristine beauty and consummate power, shone almost silver under the sun which followed the squall. Bennett turned: ‘I’m on the wong side of forty, and can’t sweat like I used to. But I couldn’t resist this little job. There’ll be enough in the kitty for no more worries, so I shan’t have to fly again. I’ll be retired, and no one will ask questions. A bit of travel every year, a consultant for some firm or other to bring in a bit extra – that’ll be my life. And if I can’t stand it I’ll come out here, or buy a few thousand acres in Rhodesia.’