 4. "Telephone for you, Bryan. Wish you'd keep your personal business off the official line. I'm not your ruddy P.A." Bryan lowered one corner of the newspaper to see Prentice leaning into the crew room. "I didn't make the call," said Bryan. "You came to fetch me." "Well, she was crying --!" Bryan jumped up, dashed for the door. Prentice kept talking, "I can't stand it when they do that. I think I'd rather have someone shooting at me. At least one knows what one ought to be doing about it -- Bryan, that's my bicycle --!" "Jane!" Bryan could barely make out the words wailed on the line, sobs breaking up Janeis bell-like voice on the telephone in the adjutant's office. "They've done it, Bryan! They've finally done it!" They would be Janeis parents. Lord and Lady Fairchild were always very gracious when Bryan called, but Jane had warned him that they did not approve. "Done what, Jane? What have they done?" "They are sending me to Switzerland! I'll die, Bryan! It's a girl's school!" "When?" "Now! Please come! Please!" Bryan could see her, cradling the receiver with both her hands, the way she would curl around his arm and lay her cheek against it when they walked together. "Where are you?" "Our North place." That would be the estate near Aberdeen, as opposed to "home," in Oxfordshire, or "our City place" in London. "I'll be right there." A tearful hopeful laugh sparkled over the telephone. Even here sniffles were endearing. "O Bryan, can you?" "Is the grass cut?" Bryan stalked out of the adj's office. Prentice had reclaimed his bicycle, so Bryan raced on foot toward the hangars. They were ordinarily closed by tea time, and he was not sure if he could convince the tyrannical flight sergeant that it was imperative he open one for a Pilot Officer, "lowest form of life in the RAF." The doors were shut. No one was about. All the Gauntlets were secured inside. Bryan kicked the corrugated door. It gave a rippling bang. He turned away, growing angry in urgency. He heard an engine. There, as if placed by angels, on the corner of the field nearest the station commander's office, stood a new mono-wing aeroplane, a Hawker Hurricane, ticking over, its cockpit vacant. Bryan walked toward it, its powerful Merlin engine talking to him in an idling bark. The fighter squadron on Joseph Aycock's 'drome was equipped with Gloster Gauntlet MK Is. The unit was due for conversion, but to date only a single Hurricane had been delivered. Since there was not a lot to be done with one aeroplane, Wing Commander Aycock decided this Hurricane was obviously meant to be his personal runabout. Joseph Aycock had never flown a monoplane. The technical officer had run the kite up for him, and had just come inside to collect the Winco, getting into his flying kit, when they both heard the engine song change. The T.O. met Aycock's eyes. The two turned in unison toward the window in time to see the station commander's personal runabout talking a walk. The Hurricane turned into the wind. Bryan Catrell had always wanted to fly. His father's death had done nothing to dampen his desire. Had crystallized it if anything. There was a moment from his childhood gilded in his memory, visiting grandfather's house in Little Barrington. Bryan and his younger brother Victor and a cousin were chasing salamanders in the valley of the Windrush when a strange drone never before heard in the country sounded from the sky. Bryan scrambled up from the streambed into the open field and pointed up. A Sopwith Camel buzzed Grandfather's little house of honey-colored Cotswold stone, and made a low pass across the pasture where the children played. In the cockpit was Bryan's father, handsome as a storybook knight, a long white scarf streaming behind him. He lifted goggles from his blue eyes, flashed a dazzling smile, and waved with a leather gloved hand. He shouted over the rotary engine's din. Only Bryan could make out the words: "If the grass were cut I could land here!" The kite lifted skyward, turned a loop and winged away. The whole town was outside by then, pointing up. That is my father. Bryan's heart overflowed with boundless pride. I want to be that. Richard "Cat" Catrell spent his last years in pain. He had flown in the '14 - '18 War in France. He had crashed there. It left him not quite whole, and he had walked with a huge limp since Bryan could remember. Only in an aeroplane did Cat Catrell know no lack. He died while Bryan was still young. For a long time Bryan denied that the crash in France could have had anything to do with his father's early death, what with all the years in between. Bryan was willing to excuse the aeroplane anything. When at last he could admit the truth, it changed nothing. Bryan wanted to fly. But his mother was not about to lose him too. Margaret Catrell had two boys. She had enough money to give one of them a leg up in the world. She sent Bryan to public school, and then she determined he would sit for Oxford. Before the term even commenced, there was a brawl in town, and Bryan Catrell was in the thick of it. He was delivered from the police into the hands of the bulldogs. The dean graciously allowed Mister Catrell to withdraw from his college. How about Cranwell then, mum? Margaret was as furious as anyone had ever seen her. Bryan had squandered his chances and she was not sending him to the RAF College. No. Victor was going to public school. But Victor would not go. Ever Bryan's most ardent fan, Vicky wanted nothing better than for the adored Bryan to have wings. Family legend had it that Vicky's first word had been "Bryan." Apocryphal of course, because Vicky could not say his r's until he was six years old, but it captured the spirit if not the fact of the history anyway. Because she had known Bryan's father rather well, Margaret recognized she could not win this battle. Bryan applied to the RAF College at Cranwell. Bryan was of more limited means than the usual gentlemen who brought their polo ponies, their hunting dogs, their sports cars, and their own aeroplanes to Cranwell. To Bryan's favor were the old school ties and his father's name. "You want to be like your father," an officer asked at the interview. "More than anything." "Without the prang." "I'd rather not." "Die?" "For my country if I must." "Young men talk easily of dying." "I assume that's why we're sent to fight the wars." "You could be right. But there is not going to be another war." Bryan looked dubious. Everyone knew what was going on in Spain. "Then why do we need an RAF?" "To prevent another war." "I see," said Bryan, who didn't. "Oxford," said the officer, looking over Bryan's papers. "Got sacked, I see." "I wasn't. I did not attend." "Did not attend? And you an exhibitioner. What was the story there?" "Must there be a story?" "There had better be one." "I had a bit of a row with a great lot of townees. Rather a great party that got out of hand." "And ended in the goal." "No, sir. We weren't held." "You were 'assisting the inquiry?'" "That's what they call it." "I see. You were not sent down, you were impelled with some force." "I hate half-measures," said Bryan limply. All was lost. The officer closed the file. "You can fly?" Bryan brightened. "Yes, sir." "We shall see." In shock, Bryan broke into a blinding white smile. The officer's face was stern. Bryan's smile faded. "This is not Spain, Mister Catrell. We do not prove our manhood by getting ourselves thrown into prison." "I wasn't thrown -- " "Are you physically capable of shutting up for a minute, Mister Catrell?" Started to say yes, sir. Instead met the officer's eyes and earnestly nodded. "Thank you. I was saying. We need not prove ourselves in this fashion, and Cranwell does not, any more than does Oxford, want a hooligan in its ranks." Bryan listened with the sinking feeling that Vicky was going to public school after all. "However, I personally cannot see turning someone down for military service because he likes to fight. You seem like a good sort. I trust we can make a gentleman of you." Bryan got on well enough with those above his social standing. With his breezy way, it was easy to forget that he wasn't anybody. He lost his West County accent. His pronunciation was flawless. What he chose to pronounce was not always well considered. He was athletic, friendly, good looking. He had a sweet smile, so said women young and old. Men allowed it was a cheery smile, what with all those teeth. He was not one to try to pull your girl if he knew she was yours, so it was all right if women thought he was sweet. He was good-hearted, tough, careless of authority. He tended to ignore trivial rules which were not trivial to those who safeguarded them. One such guardian of the rules threatened to send him to Botany Bay. "But we don't do that anymore," said Bryan. "For you we could make an exception, since you have a predilection for exceptions." Bryan also had a penchant for flying below treetops, though it was a breach of flying discipline, his usual. Byan had taken a kite on the deck in training to see just how low he could fly. He bowed the treetops and vaulted over barns, beat up a pasture and impressed all the livestock. Bryan had never seen cows run. They had taken to their heels, their switch tails lashing. Then he'd heard shots. Upon his return, he had to explain the shotgun holes in his Gauntlet's wing. "What do you have to say for yourself this time, Catrell?" "I supposed I was slightly careless with my altitude," said Bryan. Reprimanded again. And the evaluation at the end of his stay at Cranwell was a terse, uninformative, "Satisfactory." The unofficial word was not so cautious. "He will either have his own command, or we shall have to shoot him. There is really no other way." Bryan had been stationed "in spitting distance of Cranwell." "If one be of a nature to spit," said the station commander, who took an instant dislike to Bryan. It wasn't personal yet. Aycock simply disliked Pilot Officers on principle. And Joseph Aycock did not think that Bryan was the normal sort to come out of Cranwell. Bryan Catrell may have gone to the best schools, but he did not come from the best family. Marrying for love seldom did much to improve one's social position, and Bryan's family had a history of questionable choices. There was the matter of an Italian grandmother, upon whom blame always settled for Bryan's lack of restraint, unabashed outbursts, and expressions of pure emotion. Catrells married wrong. It was a natural law. So naturally Bryan fell in love with the wrong class. He fell up. Her name was Jane, and Bryan was certain he would die without her. Her parents were too polite to say it to his face, but the verdict Bryan knew: "Lovely boy, not our class." A pair of wings was nice to show off for awhile, but when the word marriage came up, something had to be done. Bryan hadn't expected the balloon to go up so suddenly. Her parents were sending her to Switzerland. Bryan promised to come. Did not know how he was going to make good on that with all the Gauntlets locked up, when he saw the Hurricane waiting there like a sword in a stone. He was doing a walkaround before he knew what he intended. He picked up the 700 that was snapping in the wind on its clipboard. The ignition test had been done. The mag drops were entirely acceptable. The ship was fine. Except that it was overheating while waiting for a pilot. there was nothing else for it. Bryan and the Hurricane must rescue each other. |