The Bright Blue Sky Read online

  Yet, at that moment, he couldn’t tell just which was the more important – flying or Annys Toshack – and, because he considered flying with its inevitable expense entirely beyond him, he could only think of it in the way of distant dreams, while Annys Toshack lived in the next village which was only a bicycle ride away. A long bicycle ride, to be sure, and on a windy day an exhausting one that left him coated with sweat, with his trousers clinging to his legs and his collar like a wet rag round his neck, but it was only a bicycle ride and could be performed at no cost to himself, something of great moment when you were virtually penniless.

  The need for money made him once more approach his mother. He wasn’t sure how going to sea would work out with Annys Toshack at home, but he had vague romantic dreams about hot countries and returning, bronzed, manly and experienced, to her embraces.

  “I’m a qualified second class operator,” he pointed out. “I took the course and passed the examination. I ought to go to sea. So I can get experience to become a first class operator.”

  His mother avoided his eyes. “People get drowned going to sea,” she said.

  Since the heroism of the operators of the Titanic, who had sent out signals for help until the very end, had been the one thing that had prompted him to go in for wireless, and since his mother had paid for his course, it seemed a little unfair.

  “A lot of people go to sea who don’t get drowned,” he pointed out.

  It made no difference. Dicken’s father had been a solicitor’s clerk who had run off with one of the lady typists, and his mother had no wish to see her son also disappear abruptly from her ken. It looked as though he was going to have to resign himself to continuing to do what he did.

  “After all,” his mother pointed out, “it’s a safe job. After fifty years you get a pension.”

  It was an irrefutable argument but, looking around at the other people in the gasworks office, Dicken decided that if he looked like they did after fifty years, he was better off without a pension. He decided to bide his time. After all, if nothing else, not going to sea meant more meetings with Annys Toshack.

  He was in a seventh heaven of delight, aware only of her flawless skin and those large blue eyes on him. It was as though he’d known her for years, and when she finally allowed him to kiss her behind the bushes near her front gate it was as if his whole life had been leading up to that one moment.

  That summer was extraordinary. There seemed to be no rain at all. The scorching sun brought out the plums and the plums brought out the wasps, and Dicken was so head over heels in love he barely noticed what was happening anywhere else in the world.

  He’d never been a political type and never bothered to read much in the newspapers beyond the sports page. His chief concern was Annys Toshack’s unexpected interest in him and the joy he got from watching Diplock glowering from the side lines. Despite his father’s motor car, Diplock didn’t seem to be making much headway and Dicken started looking at himself in the mirror, wondering what it was that gave him the edge over his rival. All he could see was a normal sort of face topped with a thatch of unruly dark hair. His eyes seemed normal enough, too, and though his nose was straight it didn’t appear to have any special qualities. The only advantage he could see was that his face already looked stronger and more mature than Diplock’s doughy features and the high-set ears that made him look like a worried terrier. Only vaguely aware that internationally things were warming up, he was conscious of trouble in the Balkans, but it didn’t worry him too much because there was always trouble in the Balkans, and the fact that an Austrian archduke had been assassinated with his wife in Serbia didn’t seem of much moment because assassination was one of the occupational hazards of middle-European princelings.

  But then, suddenly, there was talk of war on the Continent and wealthy travellers started rushing homewards and, to everyone’s surprise, the whole of Europe seemed to be aiming for a colossal head-on crash that seemed to involve every country except Britain.

  Having just discovered the twin delights of flying and Annys Toshack, however, it remained way above Dicken’s head. Despite his youth, he began to think of marriage. Notwithstanding the fact that his mother lived in a perfectly normal row of red-brick dwellings, marriage to a girl you loved, he felt, was a blissful existence in a cottage with roses round the door and a garden full of hollyhocks, the two of them sitting by the fire in the evening, one with sewing, the other with a book, with occasional moments of tender love which – all in good time – produced a family. He could think of nothing else and came under severe censure at the office for dreaming when he should have been working.

  “There’s a dance,” Annys told him. “At the village hall. On August Bank Holiday Monday. Mother says I can go.”

  “I’ll take you,” Dicken said. “I’ll come on my bike.” The idea of cycling seven miles home in the dark after a dance wasn’t exactly to his taste, but the thought of holding the adorable Annys in his arms for the evening, with a short session in the bushes by her front gate as he took her home, more than made up for it.

  “Arthur Diplock asked me to go with him,” Annys said.

  “Cecil Arthur,” Zoë said from the settee where she was reading the Daily Mail sports page. “C A Diplock. CAD Cad. I can’t see what you ever saw in him.”

  Bank Holiday Monday seemed a lifetime away. When it finally arrived, Dicken rose early and laid his best suit and tallest stiffest collar on the bed ready for the evening. If he spent the afternoon doing nothing, he felt, he might not find the ride home too exhausting, and he was just established at the breakfast table with the Daily Mail propped up on the marmalade when the doorbell rang. He had just got to the headlines, “Germany Demanding Free Passage Through Belgium,” when his mother appeared, to tell him someone wanted to speak to him.

  It was Taggart, Vickery’s mechanic, and he had an old Model T Ford in the road, the tonneau cut away and replaced with a box-like structure to make a truck.

  “It’s Arnold,” he said. “He wants to know if you’ll come over and be his passenger. He’s going to try long distance. No turns.”

  Dicken’s jaw had dropped. He’d forgotten about Vickery lately and the chance of another flight excited him. “Will he be going higher this time?” he asked.

  “Have to, won’t he?” Taggart said. “Going to try to break his own record. It’s a perfect day for it.”

  Dicken was suddenly almost choking with excitement. “And he wants me?” he said. Was there something special about him? Had he shown a particular skill? Had he a particular instinct for sitting still or leaning the right way?

  Taggart disillusioned him quickly. “The chap he arranged for let him down,” he pointed out. “You’re the only other chap he could think of.”

  It was a knock to Dicken’s self-esteem but he accepted it. After all, a flight, for whatever reason, was worth having.

  “I’d arranged to go out tonight,” he explained. “Can I get back in time?”

  Taggart indicated the Ford. “I can get you home in the old whizz-bang easy. Only half an hour door-to-door.”

  “Can you promise? It’s important. I have this date tonight you see.”

  “That dark girl?” Taggart’s eyebrows rose. “Well, I see the problem. All right, kid, I’ll get you back, I promise.”

  Dicken was tingling with nerves as they drove off. He was so excited, he barely noticed which way they were going. If record-breaking didn’t impress Annys, nothing would. Then he noticed that the sign pointed to Chichester and Southampton and woke up abruptly.

  “Aren’t we going to Shoreham?” he said.

  “Not this time,” Taggart said. “He’s got the machine in a field at Wick near Southampton. We took it over in bits a week ago. He’s going to fly to Shoreham.”

  “From Southampton?”

  “Forty miles, we reckon. Furthe
r than Blériot flew across the Channel.”

  Vickery was waiting impatiently alongside his machine. The engine was warmed up ready and there were two or three other men with stop watches who looked important and official.

  “You?” Vickery said, as if he were surprised to see Dicken. He glanced at Taggart who shrugged, then smiled. “Oh, well, you’re much lighter. Much better for a long distance flight.”

  “We’re going to need machines that will fly long distances,” one of the waiting officials observed grimly. “These things are going to make the cavalry obsolete when it comes to scouting and bringing back information about the enemy.”

  “Why?” Dicken said. “Is there going to be a war?”

  “Where’ve you been, lad? China or somewhere? Austria’s gone into the Balkans, haven’t they? That archduke of theirs who was murdered. They said it was Serbia’s fault. Unfortunately, Russia’s got a pact to protect Serbia and that’s brought in Germany who’s got a pact with Austria. And that’s brought in France who has a pact with Russia. The only country that isn’t involved is Britain.”

  As they climbed to their places, Vickery handed over an ordnance survey map and a notebook and pencil. “I’m going to fly along the Brighton road,” he said. “Your job will be to make sure we don’t lose it by identifying the places we see. Note down anything important.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Rivers. The castle at Arundel. Together with the time we pass over them. If this war they’re talking about comes, two months from now airplanes will be doing that sort of thing all over Europe. That’s why this flight’s important. Forty miles is bound to set the War Office thinking. They’ll buy my machines.”

  Dicken wasn’t so sure they would. There seemed to be too much that was hit or miss about Vickery’s airplanes and he felt the War Office would surely demand more exact details of performance than that the engines could be considered tuned when their note matched that of a G tuning fork.

  “You ready?”

  Dicken nodded, despite his doubts so excited he could barely speak. Vickery leaned over the side and spoke to Taggart.

  “Green’s at Shoreham with the whistle, is he?”

  Taggart nodded. “He’ll be waiting for you to come in.”

  The engine was started. It still sounded like a sewing machine with something wrong inside but it was the most exciting sound Dicken had ever heard.

  The tail of the machine was swung for it to face the wind, Vickery listening with his head cocked to the engine note. As far as Dicken could tell it was G but he didn’t have much of an ear for music. Then Vickery waved his hand and Taggart and one of the other men dragged away the triangular blocks of wood from under the wheels. Lurching slightly, the machine began to move forward over the uneven ground. The sewing machine went faster and the forest of struts and piano wire began to rattle and creak. Dicken was so busy wondering why the tall, uncut grass didn’t halt them he barely noticed that the rumbling had stopped and they were in the air.

  The climb seemed very uncertain and Dicken was reminded once again how much the business of flying seemed to depend on balance. They rose a few inches, then a few more, then Vickery dipped the nose to gain a little extra speed and managed to lift the machine by the skin of his teeth over the trees at the end of the field.

  “All that petrol,” he announced in a shout. “Got a reserve tank on board!”

  He seemed either to have gone mad or suddenly to have discovered an enormous confidence in his machine, because he was climbing rapidly. Perhaps it was the thought of all those contracts he was seeking from the War Office, but for once he seemed more than willing to take chances, and in a dream Dicken realised they were a hundred feet up and he could see the English Channel. As Vickery edged nervously south to pick up the Brighton road, he became aware of the inlets on either side of Portsmouth, the sun burnishing them like sheets of gold. Then he saw the trail of steam from a train moving almost alongside them below as it headed east. It seemed to be going faster than they were, then gradually it began to drop back and he realised the tremendous speed they were making.

  “Must be nearly fifty miles an hour,” Vickery yelled delightedly. “They do at least forty-five on that stretch. Make a note of it.”

  Aware that he’d forgotten his duties, Dicken began to write. The wind flipping the pages of the notebook, his body rigid in his seat in case movement sent the machine crashing to the ground, he set down his impressions of the sea and Chichester Harbour in the distance. Just beyond the entrance, two warships were heading south-east toward Selsey Bill. The spire of Chichester Cathedral came up, a long flèche in the sunshine, then Bognor on his right and Arundel Castle on his left. When Worthing appeared, he realised the flight was almost over and felt he never wanted to go down. Below him he could see cattle in the fields like small white dots, and human beings peering up at them from the groups of houses.

  When Shoreham came in sight, Vickery steadied the machine. They were still flying at what seemed a tremendous speed and height and Vickery lifted the nose. But not too far, in case they stalled. The speed dropped and Vickery lowered the nose, but very gently because wings had been known to fall off in dives. The possibility of danger added spice to the event, but the ground seemed to be coming up to meet them in a normal enough fashion. The green turf changed to individual blades of grass and Dicken could see daisies. But Vickery seemed to be still holding off, his head cocked, and Dicken realised he was listening for the blast of Green’s whistle.

  “Put it down,” he yelled. “It’s all right! We’re only two feet up!”

  Vickery ignored him, giving the engine short bursts to keep it flying, then, beyond the wing, Dicken saw Green running along, waving his arms and pointing downward.

  “He says to land,” he yelled. “He hasn’t got the whistle! Perhaps he’s lost it!”

  There were other men running out now, several of them with their fingers between their teeth blowing whistles that were soundless above the engine. The high bank that contained the River Adur was coming closer and in desperation Vickery closed the throttle. The machine settled and the rumble underneath came almost at once. Vickery looked startled, as though he’d thought they had much further to descend; but they were running out of field now and Dicken was just wondering whether it would be wiser to throw himself from his seat and risk being caught like a butterfly in a net against the multitude of bracing wires, or stay where he was and become the first victim from Willys Green of an airplane crash, when he realised that they were surrounded by soldiers in uniform, scattering in all directions, and that around the edge of the field were tents he’d never seen before.

  The airplane plowed into the nearest. It absorbed its forward motion so that it swung around and came to a stop, and, jumping clear before anything else could happen, Dicken scrambled to his feet, only to be knocked flying again by Green as he galloped up.

  “Didn’t you hear us shouting?” he yelled.

  “Why didn’t you blow the whistle?” Vickery yelled back.

  “I lost it,” Green said. “I had a hole in my pocket. But it doesn’t matter. You’ve done it. You’ve flown further than Blériot. Twice as far. Almost as far as Corbett-Wilson between Wales and Wexford. And he had no passenger.”

  An officer in khaki appeared. He wore a peaked cap like a bus conductor and a khaki collar with a woollen tie and a tiepin.

  “How dare you?” he spluttered. “How dare you? I’m going to hold you responsible for that tent!”

  Someone opened a bottle of champagne and passed him a glass. It calmed him down remarkably quickly. He blustered a little and blew into his moustache but in the end conceded that little damage had been done.

  “Can always indent for another, anyway,” he admitted. “Can always say the rats had been at it. Some of the damn things have been in store since the South African War.”<
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  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Vickery asked.

  “Reservists,” the officer said. “General mobilisation.”

  “Has the war started?”

  “No, but it looks like doing any time now.”

  Another bottle of champagne was opened and, as they sat in the sun on the bank alongside the river to drink it, someone offered a glass to Dicken. It was the first time he’d drunk champagne and it made him feel light-headed. Then a photographer arrived and Vickery posed in front of the machine to have his picture taken. No one seemed to think of Dicken. There was a lot of laughter by this time and the officer had been joined by two of his sergeants.

  By the time Taggart arrived, with the Ford steaming like a train, to join them, it was obvious they were all beginning to enjoy themselves.

  “They said I couldn’t do it,” Vickery crowed. “Have her filled up. I’m going up again to celebrate. A quick flip past my mother’s home on the front at Brighton. I promised her I’d fly over the pier if I did it.”

  They filled the machine up quickly and turned her around.

  “How about you, young ’un?” Vickery suddenly seemed to remember Dicken. “You coming, too?”

  Dicken backed away. He would have given his right arm to go but he was watching the time and it was beginning to hurry past. Flying was flying and he was proud of what they’d done, but dancing with Annys Toshack in his arms was another thing entirely.