Читать книгу Girl with Wings - Jennifer Bradley - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Then another sound caught her ears. It was further away and one Jessica knew even better than the plane engine. ‘Ding-g-g. Ding-g-g.’ “Oh, cripes,” Jessica mouthed as she realised she had two miles still to ride and school was starting. Right now! There was nothing she could do. School could wait until she knew what happened to the plane. Even if it meant that she would be late. There was no way, even if she left now and rode hell for leather, to get to school in time.

Now the students would be lining up outside their classrooms ready to march in. To be checked into the roll. She would get into trouble. But not as much trouble as the pilot of the Moth. That was far more important than detention or whatever else the headmaster thought up as punishment. As the school bell peals faded, again she heard the cough. This time followed by a second, then after a gap, another cough. Within a few seconds the engine began to chug, the gaps between beats decreasing as the notes started to blend together. After a few more hiccoughs the engine caught properly and roared as the pilot tried to lift it again. A few throbs, then a constant hum as the little plane began to circle and then to lift.

Jessica swallowed and began to breathe properly, heart slowing and hands relaxing. She sighed loudly, watching the machine climb higher and higher, the engine sounding exactly as a healthy one should. But she could not leave yet. She had to know that it would continue to fly, that the engine would not again cough and splutter or stop dead. After circling for a few minutes, the plane flew lower and Jessica saw that it was going to land. She waited until it was taxiing down the airstrip, then got on her bike and peddled off to school. She was only fifteen minutes late, but that was as bad as an hour. Or wagging school altogether. She had no excuse — or not one the school would understand — and no note from home.

Jessica stood outside the head’s office for the rest of the morning. Everyone who walked past looked at her and she could see them wondering what she had done. She was very tempted to poke her tongue out, but that would only make matters worse. She knew she would not get the cane — only boys were hit with that. After a while she decided she did not really care what they did to her. Her mother might care, she supposed, and the rest of her family, but she had something far more important to think about.

The headmaster called her in to stand in front of his desk. Jessica kept her eye on the painting on the wall behind his head as he lectured her and she kept her face as straight as she could manage. She really wanted to laugh. Fancy! She had only just realised that she wanted to be a pilot. How daft! Her Dad had taken her to watch the planes since she was a babe in arms. She had a photo of herself in her pram, with Dad beside her and behind them a Vickers Vimy, piloted by Sir Ross Smith that had landed at Narromine in 1920 soon after she was born.

She had no memory of this, but her father talked about it often. He had known Ross Smith in the desert during the war and had followed his career ever since. He had cheered him and his brother on to win the 1919 England to Australia air race. A few months later, she was there in her pram, when Charles Kingsford Smith landed as part of a barnstorming tour.

She did remember later visits to the airstrip, meeting airplanes of various kinds, piloted by men whose names had become household words in Australia. She had yet to see any of the women pilots who were becoming famous in England and America, but she knew that about 15 Australian women now had their pilot’s licence. She even knew the name of the first Australian woman to get her licence, Millicent Bryant.

So, there was no reason why Jessica Mackay, of Argyle Station, Narromine, should not also become a pilot. She kept her delight inside as the headmaster lectured her and then she accepted a detention stoically. She did not care if she had to write lines, 500 of them: “I must not be late for school.” While she wrote, her mind would soar up into the clouds.