So Disdained (25 page)
She stood there very quietly in my arms. "Peter," she said softly, "are you asking me to marry you?"
I grinned down at her. "Lord, no," I said. "Not at this time of night. It wouldn't be proper. I'll do that one morning before breakfast in the cold light of day, when I can see your freckles and you can see the cigarette stains on my fingers. But for tonight, I just wanted you to know that I love you. Before I pack you off to bed."
She drew a little closer to me. "Peter dear," she said, "I've known that for the last two years."
There was hiatus then—an interlude which must have lasted for ten minutes or so. I sometimes think that no gentleman—and certainly no lady—would have enjoyed that interlude so much as we did, or indeed would have permitted it to happen at all. But at last:
"It's time you went to bed," I said, and I wrapped her cloak more closely round her, and we went out of my house and across the stable-yard in a still, moonlit night. In the hall, at the foot of the great staircase, she left me, and I stood and watched her mounting in the dim light till she was lost in the shadows of the passage at the head. I let myself out of the mansion and went back to my house across the yard, and then, since it was one o'clock, I threw off my clothes, and took a couple of aspirins, and went to bed. And I slept at once.
I was roused almost immediately, before I had had time to
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realise that I was asleep. The reading-lamp by my bed was switched on, and I became drowsily aware that somebody was shaking me by the shoulder. I rolled over and opened one eye, and it was Sheila.
"It's time to get up, Peter," she said softly. "Kitter's just come with the car. It's four o'clock."
It was still quite dark. I stirred, sat up in bed, and looked at her sleepily. "All right," I muttered, and I sat there looking at her sleepily for a minute while she smiled at me. "I say . . . was I dreaming, or did I tell you that I loved you last night? Because if by any chance I didn't, I'd like to tell you now."
She laughed softly. "You did tell me something about it, Peter," she said. "But it's sweet of you to say your piece all over again." And she then leaned over the bed and kissed me, and I put an arm round her and returned it sleepily, as I have done a hundred times since then. And when that was over:
"Now you shoot off," I said, "while I get up." And as she moved away I noticed for the first time that she was fully dressed in a light-blue jumper and a tweed skirt. She paused in the door.
"What d'you want for breakfast, Peter?" she inquired. "I've got some coffee here, and toast and marmalade, and there's some eggs. Would you like one poached?"
I passed my hand over my forehead. "I don't know that I can eat anything at this time of the morning."
She nodded slowly. "I'll poach a couple, anyway. If you can't eat them you can mess 'em abaht a bit. But I expect you can."
And then she was gone, and I got up.
I dressed as if I was a starter for a Polar expedition, and when I was ready I went sleepily through into the sitting-room. Sheila had turned my fireplace into a sort of camp kitchen, and breakfast was in train. Kitter was crouching over the fire and helping her; I crossed the room to them. "Have you been to bed at all?" I asked.
She nodded. "Mm. I've only been up half an hour. Now sit down and have something to eat."
"Morning, Kitter," I said. "How's the machine?"
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"Saven's been having another go at her, sir," he said. "We got the juice into her all right, and we've been running the engine again, so's she'd be warm to start when you want her. She's running a treat."
"Glad to hear it," I remarked, and sat down to breakfast. "It should be light enough by half-past five."
I didn't eat very much. Sheila ate one of my eggs, and she cut a couple of packs of sandwiches for me. I took these in the pocket of my ulster, together with a fair-sized flask of brandy. And then, having swallowed a couple of cups of coffee, I was ready.
We left the house at about five o'clock, and set off for the down. That was a silent drive. Sheila was beside me, and Kitter in the dickey-seat behind. I was preoccupied with the details of my course. I remember that I was very much concerned whether I should be able to fix my position when I came to France on the other side of the Channel. The wind was from the south-west, and light. That would help, I thought.
We came to the down at about a quarter-past five, and left the car by the roadside. It was light enough to see fifty yards or so by then; as soon as I stopped the engine of the car I heard a low rumble in the distance, away to the east. Saven was running the engine of the Breguet. That walk over the short grass to the machine seemed to take an infinite time. It was trying, that. I remember that Sheila and I were speaking inconsequently of little trivial things, in short, disjointed sentences. I promised to send her a cable as soon as I got an opportunity, telling her what had happened. It was in both our minds that she would know what had happened if she didn't get the cable, but we didn't talk about that. I hurried on to other subjects hoping that she hadn't noticed the break; long afterwards she told me that she had hoped the same of me. Funny, in a way, but I didn't see it then.
At last we got to the machine. It was very nearly light enough for the take-off by then; already I could see the line of the road half a mile away. Saven was up in the cockpit of the machine, and the pig trough was securely wedged beneath the
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wheels as chocks. I clambered up to the cockpit beside him, out of earshot of the others on the ground.
He throttled the engine till she was just ticking over. "She's running fine, sir." He put his hand on the lever controlling the adjustable propeller. "You want to leave this just like it is. I wouldn't touch it at all, not if I was you. I've set it right for you from the static revs."
I nodded, and asked him one or two questions about the machine. I went over the fuel system with him again to ensure that I had forgotten nothing. And then:
"You'd better get along down to the road for the take-off," I said. "Behind those telegraph wires. I want somebody down there."
He stared at me blankly for a moment, and then: "Lord, sir," he said, "she should go up over those all right. It's only half a load, or something o' that. You want to hold her down on the ground, you know, with the tail well up, till she flies off of herself. And then if you feel she's a bit close, just give her a yank up and she'll be all right."
I nodded. "I know. That's how I used to take off my B.E. with a full load of bombs. But get along down there, all the same." I paused, and then I said: "I'd hate to get singed."
He grinned. "Reckon you won't be able to keep her on the ground. But I'll get along down there, sir, just in case. She's all ready for you to take off. You've got the chocks under now, but Kitter can take them out when you've run up."
I climbed down to the ground again and began putting on my helmet. Saven followed me to the ground, spoke for a moment to Kitter, and set off for the road.
Sheila turned to me. "Where's Saven going to?"
"Down to the road," I said. "He's going to give me a signal as I go over if the engine's running all right."
She nodded, satisfied with that explanation. I finished settling the goggles securely on my forehead—I have never worn them either taking-off or landing—and made sure that I had everything that I wanted in my pockets. And then I turned to her.
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"Good-bye, Sheila," I said, and stooped to kiss her.
She could only reach half-way round my shoulders with her arm. "Good-bye, Peter," she said, and kissed me in return. That was all we had to say that morning.
I straightened up and spoke to Kitter. "I'll run her up a bit," I said. "And then, when you see me wave my hand, get that pig trough out of the way and stand clear. Look out you don't run into the prop while you're doing it."
He hesitated for a moment, and then: "Good luck, sir," he said shyly.
I climbed up into the cockpit again and stowed away my maps; in the machine the controls fell naturally to my hand. I settled myself comfortably into the seat, strapped myself in, and saw that everything in my pockets was accessible.
Then I waved Kitter to the tail; he took Sheila with him and together they lay over the tail plane in the blast from the propeller while I ran the engine up. She ran up very smoothly; the revs and the oil pressure were steady as a rock, and the beat was true. I can remember that in all sincerity I thanked God for having sent me Saven at that time.
I throttled the engine down again, and waved to Kitter. He crept under to remove the pig trough; I saw him come out with it and stand clear. Straight ahead of me, on the far side of the road half a mile away, I could see Saven waiting in the field.
I became very cold, quite suddenly.
I smiled down at Sheila.
And then I settled myself again into my seat for the take-off. It was nine years and seven months since I had last flown an aeroplane.
Before I begin upon the account of that flight of mine, I would like to digress a little in order to explain a little more fully to what order of pilots I belong.
I learnt to fly in England, early in 1916. If this account should be read by anyone who shared that experience with me he may skip the next few paragraphs, because he will know all that I have to say upon that subject. But for those who have learnt to fly since the war in the quiet schools and flying clubs, and for those who have never piloted a machine themselves, I would like to try and point out something of the peculiar terrors, legacies of my early training, which infested all the flying I have ever done.
I was trained in the days of ignorance. That ignorance has been written about in other places, and the only aspect of it which I propose to touch on here is the great ignorance that existed in those days on the subject of spinning. We knew that a clumsily executed turn might have the effect of putting an aeroplane into a spinning nose-dive—a Parke's Dive, some of us called it, because Lieutenant Parke was one of the very few people who had come out of it alive. In general, a spin once started continued to the ground, the machine hitting very violently. And that, literally, was all we knew about it.
When I was taught to fly there was a rumour in the camp that it was possible to put an aeroplane voluntarily into a spin and get it out again. Somebody said that somebody had told him that he had seen somebody do it at Farnborough. Closer to hand, one of our own instructors, a Bachelor of Science and a schoolmaster in civil life, claimed that he had done it. So far as I remember, he had the peculiar idea that the way to get out of a spin was to force the machine into a steeper dive still; as nobody had seen him do it the first time, he was disbelieved.
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Whereupon he set out to show us how to do it, and it is a fact that the rotation of the machine had practically stopped before he hit the ground. I forget his name now. That made us think that there might be something in it after all; that given sufficient height it might some day be possible to recover a machine from a clumsily executed turn before it spun into the deck.
I would like to try and impress upon the reader the intense moral effect that this spin had upon us. It was a ghoulish thing, waiting to spring out upon you in an unguarded moment. All kinds of legends and exaggerations cloaked its path. My own instructor told me that if one got into a spin on an Avro the wings fell off; he, of course, had never dreamed of trying it. Another legend was that the machine frequently turned upside down in its rotation to the ground, throwing the pilot out. Most terrifying of all was the uncertainty of the commencement of this thing. We knew that it began from an imperfectly executed slow turn, but just how bad the turn had to be to loose this frightful thing upon us was what none of us quite knew. For most of us, that made our turns a nightmare, and increased our consumption of alcohol to an extraordinary extent.
I crashed five times during the war, not counting the occasion on which I was shot down. Three of those were ordinary landings upon an aerodrome, and came from shutting off the engine at the wrong moment, I think. The other two were forced landings away from the aerodrome due to engine failure; those at the time I regarded as an Act of God, and a certain crash for any pilot, good or bad. I am told that things are not quite like that now. They tell me that no pupil is allowed to fly solo in these days till he can loop, spin, and pull off a forced landing in considerably better style than the crack pilots of my day. Well, things change.
But what I would wish to point out in connection with this flight that I made upon the Breguet is—simply—that I am a 1916 pilot who stopped flying in 1917. A relic of the past.
The take-off went better than I had hoped. I settled into my seat, pulled the stick back central, and opened up the throttle
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gradually. Straight before me, half a mile away, I could see the white line of the road against the greyness of the down, and the line of the telegraph wires. The Breguet stirred, and moved forward. I thrust the throttle forward to the limit of its travel, and sat tight.
We began rolling over the short turf towards the road. I held the stick a little bit forward, till presently the tail rose from the ground, and the fuselage came level. Then I just sat very still, not daring to try and pull her off the ground, while the telegraph wires loomed closer and the wind came whistling over the windscreen and around my head. She reached the end of the level ground and began to run down the incline to the road, but by that time she was travelling at great speed and I could feel that she was getting light. And then, perhaps three hundred yards from the road, she came off the ground. I made no movement of the stick, but shot a glance at the air-speed indicator. It read a hundred and thirty kilos. She touched ground once more, very lightly, and then without any conscious movement on my part, she was ten feet up. Mindful of my precautions I tried to hold her down a little. The tiny movements that I dared to make were ineffectual; I had her trimmed to climb, and climb she would, so that we were fifty feet up when we passed over the telegraph wires.