The Rainbow and the Rose (22 page)

With the long hours of daylight at midsummer this was
a good flight plan, because it gave us plenty of daylight on the ground. The Moth of those days wasn’t as reliable as it became later, and the engines in our club machines had all done a good many hours. I wasn’t worried about the Bluebird or about Brenda’s Moth, but the other two machines had a habit of shedding their exhaust valve seatings from the cylinder head, which wasn’t quite so good. I made sure that the pilots of those two machines were good, experienced chaps who were accustomed to forced landings, and I took a selection of cylinder heads, engine parts, and tools distributed between the machines, in case of trouble.

Brenda was thrilled at the prospect of this small excursion into France. She had never been abroad before. When it became definite that we were going to La Baule she got herself a set of gramophone records teaching French, and set herself to learn the language. She collected all the maps and drew thick blue pencil lines on them with distance and magnetic course carefully pencilled against each, and she got a Baedeker and read it. She came out to the aerodrome one day with four suitcases of different sizes on approval from the shop and made me sit in the front cockpit of her Moth while she chose the biggest that would go between my knees. One evening at the Manor she displayed a new evening dress that she had got for the occasion, for my approval.

We started off from Duffington on the Friday morning, all four machines fairly heavily loaded. The weather was good when we started, but the forecast was a bit doubtful, with a low coming up from the Atlantic and a chance of rain later in the day. The quicker we got across the Channel the better. I briefed my four pilots with the course, and with the hand signals I would make, and appointed Knox-Turner, who had been on Bristol Fighters in the war, as deputy Flight commander to me. Then we took off one by one and got on course for Lympne, flying in loose formation with Brenda and myself leading in the white Moth.

Everything went fine as far as Lympne, where we landed and refuelled the machines, and had a quick sandwich lunch in the club. Then we took off over the sea for Cape Gris Nez, as I had taken off with the Camel Squadron twelve years before, and passed over the spot where Calvert went down in the sea. I sat for a few minutes with sad memories of those days revived in me. Then I turned and glanced back at the rear cockpit at Brenda, bright-eyed and excited pointing at the coast of France ahead, and came back to the present.

We turned when we were over land and flew on down the coast at about fifteen hundred feet, passing Boulogne, Abbeville, and Dieppe. When we had passed Le Havre and I was starting to think about Dinard and our landing, Knox-Turner in one of the club Moths suddenly started to lose height. His engine was vibrating like a jelly and shooting tongues of flame out of the exhaust, and I knew just what had happened. He throttled back and started in on the approach for a forced landing.

I signalled to the other two machines to keep on circling around, and spoke to Brenda down the voice pipe. She throttled back and went down after Knox-Turner, keeping well out of his way. He picked a good big field and put down into it and made what seemed to be quite a smooth landing. We circled round at about two hundred feet and saw them get out; Knox-Turner pointing at the motor. We waved to them and started to climb back towards the other two machines; as we went I pin-pointed the position on my map. It was near a place called Unverre, a small village about ten miles from Bayeux.

I signalled to the other two machines when we got up to them to fly on, and I led them on to Dinard. We landed there and taxied in to clear the Customs, and I told the
Douane
officers about the machine that had forced-landed near Unverre, which would make a complication. They were very nice about it, but refused a lift back there in one of the
machines with me; they didn’t seem to care for flying. So I hired a car to take one of them to Unverre, and saw him start off.

Brenda offered to fly me back in her machine, so we told the other four club members to fix themselves up in the hotel for the night and we would rejoin forces either late that night if we could get Knox-Turner’s Moth repaired in time to fly that evening, or else early in the morning. I collected all the engine parts and tools from their machines and put them into Brenda’s, and we took off to fly back to Unverre. As it was to be a forced landing in a field she suggested I should fly it from the back cockpit, and so we went like that.

When we got back to the other machine I found that they had picked quite a good field, and I had no difficulty in landing beside them. They had got the cowling off the engine and had diagnosed the trouble, a valve seating, as I had suspected. The weather was fine and we had everything we needed for the job, and so I got to work. We borrowed a couple of chairs from a cottage about half a mile away to stand on, and with an increasing audience of French countrymen and children I started in upon the engine, while Brenda practised her French upon them down below. Presently the officer of the
Douane
from Dinard arrived, and we had to take time off for him.

The engine was a simple one, but we had to change the head and the gasket and remove the cylinder to make a very close inspection of the piston. It was about four hours before we got it all together again, and the sun was setting. We did a ground run then, using the branch of a tree for chocks, and the engine seemed all right, but it was getting too dark by then to do the test flight that I ought to do before club members flew it. We should all have to spend the night at Unverre, and fly on to Dinard in the morning.

We were very tired by that time, and we had had nothing
to eat since lunch. Knox-Turner had gone into the village and had ordered a meal for us at the one inn, which Michelin didn’t seem to think much of but which turned on a good meal for us. He had discovered that it had only one bedroom, with two double beds in it. That seemed a bit matey for us all, so he had got the landlord to ring up the next village, a place called Coudray three miles away, which had a much bigger hotel with three bedrooms. He had booked two of these rooms for Brenda and myself. We picketed the two Moths down and went into Unverre in the local taxi to wash and eat. The whole thing was a delight to Brenda, who had never before seen a French village or a French meal. She had changed into a skirt in the taxi while we were dealing with the aeroplane and she was enjoying every minute, and so was I.

We had a very good meal of thick, country soup, and roast duck, salad, and cheese, washing it down with a couple of bottles of burgundy. Then the landlord suggested that they went to bed early at Coudray, indicating that they did so also at Unverre, and so Brenda and I took our bags and got into the taxi and drove off to La Belle Moisson hotel at Coudray.

When we got there, it became apparent that there had been some confusion, probably due to Knox-Turner’s knowledge of the French language. There was only one bedroom vacant, though it had two double beds in it.

I said, ‘We can go into Bayeux.’

She said, ‘It’s so late, Johnnie. We might not get in there. Don’t you think we’d better take this?’ She smiled. ‘After all, it’s not as if we’d never done it before.’

‘It’s as you think,’ I said.

She turned to Madame at the door. ‘
C’est bien,
’ she said.

The old lady smiled at us. ‘
Bonne nuit, monsieur et madame, et bon repos.
’ She closed the door on us.

‘If we keep on doing this,’ I remarked, ‘something’s going to happen, one of these days.’

She came into my arms. ‘We’ll be free people before long, and, after all, we’re getting our divorce for this. Does it really matter if it does?’

The trouble when you take a Nembutal, or any of the barbiturates, is that you must go on sleeping for the allotted time. However great the distress that dreams impose upon you, you cannot jerk yourself awake, fully awake, that is, till the effect of the drug has eased. I think I may have been partially successful in my struggle to awake because I can remember the whistle of the wind around the exposed little house, and the rain beating on the window. Or perhaps it was some noise that Dr Turnbull made that roused me partially, when he brought in the nurse. Whatever it was, I had to go on sleeping with a dream that turned to nightmare.

I lived in the Seven Swans, the inn at Duffington, and I went down to the saloon bar for a beer before my meal. I was a little weary, because we had taken off that morning at seven o’clock from La Baule to fly to Dinard, and then up the coast of France to Boulogne for the short sea-crossing to Lympne. We carried with us in the luggage locker of Morgan le Fay another silver cup which Brenda had won in the Ladies Race. We had had a cup of coffee at Dinard and lunch at Lympne, where I took over the piloting because Brenda was getting tired. We landed back at Duffington at about five o’clock in the afternoon with all four machines present and in good order. As we got out on the tarmac, a little apart from the others, she said, ‘It’s been marvellous, Johnnie. The most wonderful week-end I’ve ever had.’

She stood unbuckling her helmet. I smiled at her. ‘We’re going to have a lot more like it.’

‘Right away from everything …’ she said. ‘You don’t know what it means. I’ve been so happy …’

‘I’ve been happy, too,’ I said. And then we had to cut it out, because the others were getting out of their machines and coming up to talk about the flight.

When I went into the saloon bar Sam Collins, the landlord, was behind the bar, and Sergeant Entwhistle of the police was there, and Tom Dixon from the garage. As he gave me my beer Sam asked about the trip, and I told them all about it, the forced landing and the valve trouble. ‘Mrs Marshall did very well,’ I said. ‘She won another cup – a great big silver one. For the Ladies Race. Two other Moths were in for it, flown by French girls – one of them with over five hundred hours up. Mrs Marshall won by a short head. She flew a very good race.’

They were pleased and interested, but presently there was a pause, and Sam Collins said, ‘Did you know Dr Baddeley, at The Haven?’

I had to be cautious here. ‘I’ve met him once or twice,’ I said.

‘You heard about him?’

‘No?’

‘Sorry to say he got murdered,’ the landlord told me. ‘Chap jumped out at him as he was going home from the hospital after midnight, beat him to death with a bit of iron bar.’

‘Good God!’ I exclaimed. ‘When did that happen?’

‘Friday night,’ he said. That was the night that we had spent at Coudray. They all stood looking at me with sympathy, and I wondered how much they knew.

They told me all about it. It seemed that he lived in a suburban house two streets from The Haven. Normally he would have occupied the Medical Superintendent’s house inside the grounds, but he had three young children and
disliked the thought of bringing them up in the surroundings of a mental home. He put his deputy, Dr Somers, into the Superintendent’s house and lived outside himself, but near at hand. Because he was not on the spot he was meticulous in turning out at night to visit any patient who required attention, though a less conscientious man would have left the night work to his deputy. He was walking home through the deserted streets soon after midnight when an ex-patient, recently released from the mental hospital at Coatley, sprang out on him and beat him to death. They had got the man without much difficulty.

‘He’ll be for Broadmoor,’ the police sergeant said. ‘Should have been there years ago.’

Little more was said about the doctor, and presently I went and had my supper, wrote a letter or two in the commercial room, and went to bed. I knew that Brenda would have heard the news from her mother. It was difficult for me to telephone to her from the Seven Swans or from the office in the hangar on the aerodrome, because both telephones were public and conversations were liable to be overheard. I had a sense of impending disaster all that night, but there was nothing I could do about it. She came to the aerodrome next day, and we walked together on the grass up the boundary hedge towards the north-east windsock. ‘It’s terrible,’ she said, and all the brightness of the last few months seemed to have gone out of her. ‘Poor Dr Baddeley …’

Presently I asked her, ‘Do you think it will make any difference to us?’

She asked in turn, ‘Have you met Dr Somers?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I only met Baddeley once.’

‘He’s so terribly
righteous,
’ she muttered. ‘I’m pretty sure he doesn’t approve of this divorce.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I don’t know. Something Dr Baddeley said once, I think. He’s a very different sort of man.’

‘In what way, Brenda?’

‘More up to date. More modern. More – rigid, sticking by the rules.’ She turned to me. ‘Like a young schoolmistress in a very modern school, who’s learned it all up out of a book.’ She paused, and then she said, ‘Dr Baddeley was so
kind
. That’s what made him so good.’

I asked, ‘Do you think this chap Somers will get the job? Or will they put in somebody over his head?’

She said, ‘He’s got an awful lot of letters after his name. He’s studied in Austria and in America.’

We were a long way from the hangar now. I stopped and took her hand. ‘There’s nothing to worry over,’ I said. ‘It’s all in train now. We’re just waiting our turn for the case to come up in court.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But when I went there to see Derek this morning, it was – difficult.’

‘With Dr Somers?’

‘No – Derek. Sort of bad-tempered.’ She paused. ‘He’d taken everything so well before we went away.’

There was nothing I could do to make things easier for her, except to give her the assurance of my love. And presently we walked back to the hangar and got out her aeroplane, Morgan le Fay, and started it up, and she took off and went up to the sunlit cumulus above the aerodrome, and I saw her playing in and out of the clouds for nearly an hour, never out of my sight for more than a few minutes at a time. When she landed and taxied in, her eye was bright and there was colour in her cheeks. ‘It was simply glorious up there,’ she said. ‘Like something out of this world.’