Читать книгу High Road to China - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 7

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The three Bristol Fighters took off on time at noon on Tuesday. O’Malley and Weyman had worked till midnight the previous night, then left the servicing of the planes to the six mechanics Weyman had engaged. Extra tanks were fitted into the rear cockpits of two of the planes and an extra gravity-feeding tank was mounted on the upper wings of the three aircraft. Spare parts were split between O’Malley’s and Weyman’s machines to divide the weight: a spare propeller, six magnetos, vulcanizing kit for repairing burst tyres, an extra-strong lifting jack. When the mechanics fitted the Vickers and Lewis guns they asked questions, but George Weyman told them to mind their own business. Just before take-off he turned up with four boxes of ammunition.

‘All we can afford to carry. We’re right on our weight maximum.’

‘Have you filled the tanks?’ O’Malley asked.

‘Right to the brim. Three and eightpence a gallon – I’m glad our lady friend is paying and not us. It’ll be a pleasure to get away from inflation. How did she handle the machine when you took her up this morning?’

O’Malley had taken Eve Tozer up on a test flight to see how she could handle the Bristol. He had warned her that it had its peculiarities: an inadequate rudder, ailerons that were inclined to be heavy, a tendency for the elevators to be spongy at low speeds; and when he had got into the passenger’s cockpit behind her he had wondered if perhaps they might not get further than Purley, just over the ridge at the end of the aerodrome. He had fitted the Gosport tubes into the earpieces in his flying helmet, picked up the speaking tube and wished Eve good luck, then sat back rigidly in his seat and waited for possible disaster. Like so many pilots he was a bad passenger. However …

‘You’d have thought she’d been flying Brisfits all her life. She’s a natural, George.’

‘I don’t think she liked me laying down the law about how much baggage she could take with her. That Chink maid who came down with her must have thought she was going in a Zeppelin. She’d packed four suitcases for her.’

Henty, Sun Nan and Eve came across from the Rolls-Royce, where Anna, the maid, stood with the three suitcases that had been refused by Weyman. Eve and Sun were dressed in brand-new flying suits and both wore helmets; Eve carried the lacquered wooden box, now wrapped in hessian, under her arm and Sun carried his bowler hat under his. Eve looked pale but determined and Sun looked pale and scared.

‘Mr Sun tells me he has never flown before,’ Eve said.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Weyman. ‘We could run into rough weather all the way across France.’

‘Mr Weyman, we had better get one thing straight before we leave. I need both you and Mr O’Malley, but I need Mr Sun much more than either of you. He refuses to tell me who his master is or where he is to be found, for fear that as soon as we take off Mr Henty will cable the authorities in Shanghai and try to have a rescue mission mounted from that end. I shouldn’t want to risk my father’s life by having such a mission look for him, but Mr Sun doesn’t trust me. So I need him to guide us to where my father is being held captive. Don’t forget that – and keep your anti-Chinese feelings to yourself. I’m paying you for your skill as a mechanic and pilot, not for your opinions on the Chinese.’

Weyman flushed and for a moment it looked as if he was going to explode in a fury of abuse and walk away. Eve wondered if she had been too outspoken; if George Weyman did walk away it might be too late to get someone to replace him. But she could not back down; he had to understand there were other considerations that over-rode his stupid prejudices. She stared at him, painfully aware of the tightness of her jaw; her tear ducts were ready to burst, but she kept them dammed. She was determined there would be only one boss on this journey and it would be she. It was her father they were setting out to rescue and nothing was going to stop her.

‘Righto,’ Weyman at last said, ungraciously. ‘But don’t ask me to let him ride in the cockpit behind me. I’ll never trust the blighters.’

Then he did turn and walk away, but Eve knew she had established who was boss. Eager to be gone before more complications arose, she went across and said goodbye to Anna, who wept, then sat down on the suitcases, like a refugee stranded with nowhere to flee to. Eve left her and went back to Henty.

‘Goodbye, Mr Henty. I’ll cable you whenever possible to let you know how we’re progressing.’

‘I have your route,’ said Henty. ‘If there is any word from your father in the meantime, I’ll send a wireless message to the British embassies. Good luck.’

He ignored Sun Nan, passing him to shake hands with O’Malley. Then he walked back to the Rolls-Royce and stood beside it, now and again jabbing his stick into the ground, still frustrated by his helplessness. He knew China better than any of those who were about to take off, with the exception of Sun Nan, but he knew his leg would not have stood up to the journey that lay ahead. Sick at heart, envious, he watched the three planes taxi down to the end of the field.

In the lead Bristol, O’Malley checked his instruments, looked to either side of him at the other two planes, then raised his hand. He pushed the throttle forward, set the rudder to neutral, let the plane pick up speed as it began to roll. He had always flown by the seat of his pants, knowing the exact moment when whatever had to be done should be done; but this Bristol was carrying a bigger weight load than he had ever taken into the air before and he kept an eye on the airspeed indicator. He saw it go past the 45 miles an hour when one could usually lift the machine off the ground; he let it build, 50, 55, then he gently pulled the stick back and felt, or rather sensed, the ground slip away from beneath him. As soon as he was airborne, knew he had enough power to keep climbing, he looked back. But there was no need for him to be anxious. Eve Tozer and George Weyman were climbing behind him, coming up smoothly and banking to follow him as he set the course down through the valley to Redhill, then to follow the railway line to Ashford in Kent and on to the coast. They were flying in wartime V-formation with O’Malley as leader. Three armed warplanes flying in war formation, heading for some sort of showdown on the other side of the world: I’m dreaming, thought O’Malley. Then he looked up at the clouds closing down on him, heard the sirens of the wind singing as they brushed by him, felt their fingers against his face, knew the dream was the heart of reality and rejoiced.

That day the world was having its usual convulsions. Bolshevist troops were advancing on Warsaw and falling back before Baron Wrangel’s White Army in the Crimea; Parer and McIntosh landed in their DH9 in Darwin, having taken exactly eight months to fly the 10,000 miles from London; there was heavy selling on the New York Stock Exchange; Landru, the French Bluebeard, was swapping jokes with newspapermen while police sifted the ashes in his villa for the bones of his victims. News was being made that might become history or just another tick in the continuing tremor of time passing.

But O’Malley, Eve and Weyman knew none of that and would not have cared if they had known. Sun Nan, heart in mouth, bowler hat pressed to his stomach like a poultice, had never had any interest in the world outside China anyway. He peered ahead through his goggles, looking for the Middle Kingdom beyond the grey horizon.

They crossed the coast at Folkestone, O’Malley watching the thunderheads building up in the Channel to the south of them. Twenty-five minutes later they were over the mouth of the Somme, the thunderstorms behind them.

A few more minutes’ flying, then familiar territory to O’Malley and Weyman lay below. O’Malley looked back and across, pointed down at the ground. Weyman nodded, then O’Malley saw him thump his gloved hand on the cockpit rim in an angry gesture. O’Malley understood, but gestures now were futile and too late. He looked down at the flat landscape, searched for the hill he had walked up that July morning four years ago; but at this height there were no hills. He saw the trenches zigzagging across the earth, the scar tissue of war; weeds and bushes and wild flowers were growing in them now, but in his mind they were only proud flesh on the wounds. He flew over the shattered towns and villages, saw the rebuilding going on; people stopped in the squares and looked up, but nobody waved. A cleared patch of ground stood in the loop of a winding road; crosses, like white asterisks, stood in ranks, the dead drawn up for inspection. They died in ranks like that, O’Malley thought. Oh Christ! he yelled aloud into the wind and behind his goggles his eyes streamed.

Eve saw the wings of the plane ahead of her wobble; she moved up closer, wondering what message O’Malley wanted to convey to her. But he didn’t look towards her; instead she saw him push his goggles up and wipe his eyes with a handkerchief. Then she looked down at the ground, saw the trenches and the ruined farmhouses and the church with the shattered steeple like a broken tooth, and remembered Arthur Henty telling her that more men had died that first morning of the battle on the ground below her than on any other day in the entire history of war. And for what? Henty had said; but she had known he had not been asking the question of her. Then she saw O’Malley looking across at her and she lifted her hand and waved. It was meant to be a gesture of sympathy, but there was no way of knowing that he understood it.

They landed at Le Bourget to refuel. The French aerodrome official checked them in, looked at their planes, went away and came back with two gendarmes. He gestured at the rear cockpits of O’Malley’s and Weyman’s planes. The Lewis guns were locked in position and covered by canvas sleeves, but there was no mistaking what they were.

‘It is not permitted, m’sieu, for private aeroplanes with machine-guns to fly across France.’

‘These are not private machines.’ O’Malley’s French was adequate if not fluent. A six months’ affair with a girl in Auxi had improved his schoolboy French in every possible way. ‘We are delivering them to the Greek government in Athens.’

‘Have you papers?’

‘We were told the Greek embassy in Paris would arrange for our transit. Everything was done in a hurry. The machines were only ordered yesterday. Things are very bad in Thrace, as you know.’

The official didn’t know, didn’t even know where Thrace was, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He said doggedly, ‘You need papers.’

‘M’sieu, I admit we should have papers, but there wasn’t time. It was a holiday in England yesterday – the French embassy was closed – and everything is so urgent. As you know, the Turks are attacking and winning.’

The official once again didn’t know, which was just as well, since the Turks were losing badly. But the sergeant of the two gendarmes opened his eyes wide, then nodded. ‘Damned Turks. I fought against them in Syria. We were supposed to have beaten them.’

‘The Greeks will beat them with these machines,’ said O’Malley. ‘Your government is also supplying them with some of your wonderful aeroplanes. With your Spads and Nieuports and these machines of ours, the Turks will be beaten in a matter of weeks.’

It was the official’s turn to nod, but he wasn’t going to give up so easily. ‘Who is the lady?’

Eve, whose French, learned at Boston’s Winsor School, was good enough to allow her to follow the conversation, was about to introduce herself when O’Malley, with a bow to her, said, ‘She is the daughter of the Greek Foreign Minister. She is hurrying back to be with him.’

‘Does she speak French?’

Before Eve could answer for herself O’Malley said, ‘Unfortunately, no.’

‘Does she have a passport?’

‘As you know, the Greek government, since the war, has not got around to printing passports.’

The official once more didn’t know; as O’Malley hoped he wouldn’t, since he didn’t know himself what was the Greek situation on passports. ‘Who is the Chinese gentleman?’

‘The Foreign Minister’s butler. The Minister used to be the Greek ambassador in Peking.’

‘Let them go,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’re holding up giving those damned Turks a hiding.’

The official sighed, shrugged. ‘Just don’t fire your machine-guns at anything before you cross out of France, m’sieu.’ He bowed to Eve, shook hands with George Weyman, then followed O’Malley across to his plane. As the latter climbed into his cockpit the Frenchman said, ‘I always admire a good liar, m’sieu, and the English are so good at it.’

‘And the French, too,’ said O’Malley, taking a risk. ‘Let’s give credit where credit is due.’

The Frenchman acknowledged the compliment. He was a thin man with sad, bagged eyes in a bony, mournful face. He was still weary from the war, too old to be hopeful about the peace. ‘Just where are you going, m’sieu?’

‘China.’

The Frenchman smiled. ‘A good lie, m’sieu. Keep it up. Bon voyage.’

They took off again, heading almost due east. They ran into rain squalls south of Strasbourg and O’Malley gestured to the others to widen the gap between them; they flew blind for ten minutes, then came out into bright, almost horizontal sunlight. They flew on yellow rails, through brilliantly white clouds, and at last slid down towards the sun-shot blue of Lake Constance, the Bodensee. They landed at Friederichshafen, going in past the huge Zeppelin sheds. They parked their planes at the end of the field and at once saw the big Mercedes staff car speeding down towards them. It skidded to a halt on the grass and two men jumped out.

‘Sprechen sie deutsch?’ He was a plump, blond man, hair cut en brosse, a personification of the cartoon German.

‘Unfortunately, no,’ said O’Malley. ‘Sprechen sie englisch?’

‘Yes,’ said the plump man and twisted his little finger in his ear as if getting ready for the foreign language. ‘I was a prisoner of war for two years.’

The other German, a younger man with dark hair and eyes that would never admit surrender or defeat, only half-hid his sneer. ‘Herr Bultmann is proud of his English and where he learned it.’

‘At least I survived,’ said Bultmann, as if that had been the purpose of war. He explained to the ex-enemy, ‘I flew in Zeppelins. Unfortunately we were brought down. Herr Pommer was ground crew. He learned his English from a book.’ He looked at O’Malley and Weyman, as if he knew they would understand that ground crew could never be shot down. Then for the first time he saw the guns on two of the planes. ‘You are armed? Why?’

‘We are on our way to Turkey,’ said O’Malley. ‘As you know, things are going badly for your ex-allies there. These machines have been bought by the Nationalists.’

‘British aeroplanes?’

O’Malley shrugged. ‘You know what governments are like, even our own. They will sell anything to anyone, if there is a profit in it. Herr Weyman and I are just paid civil servants.’

‘But the Treaty of – where was it? Sèvres? – I thought the Turks were not allowed to have any military equipment. Like us.’

‘Ah, what are treaties? They’ll be turning a blind eye to you, too, in a year or two.’

‘If they do, the wrong people will get the equipment. Who is the lady?’

‘Daughter of the ex-Foreign Minister of Turkey. She speaks neither English nor German, unfortunately. The Chinese is her father’s butler.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Bultmann, still smiling and friendly, his prisoner-of-war English impeccable. ‘I do not believe a word of it. You will have to come with us, please.’

Then another car came speeding down the field. This was another Mercedes, but this one had never been a wartime staff car; it was a private one, badly needing a coat of paint but still looking huge and powerful and opulent. The man who got out of it, though not huge and powerful, also had a suggestion of opulence about him. He wore a homburg, a winged collar with a grey silk cravat, black jacket, grey waistcoat, striped trousers and grey spats. He could have been a diplomat, a successful lawyer or a gigolo. Only when he got closer did Eve, who had an eye for such things, see that everything he wore was like the car, pre-war and frayed at the edges.

‘What is the trouble, Herr Bultmann?’ He spoke in German in a soft voice that didn’t quite disguise the harsh Prussian accent.

‘No trouble, sir. The English party just have to explain why they are flying armed aeroplanes over German territory.’

The newcomer turned to face O’Malley and the others. He was a very tall, lean man with a bony, handsome face that gave no close hint of his age: he could have been an old twenty or a young forty. He had cool, insolent eyes, a sensual mouth and an air of contempt for the world and everyone in it. Eve thought him one of the handsomest men she had seen in a long time.

He took off his hat, exposing sleek blond hair, clicked his heels and bowed to Eve. ‘I am Baron Conrad von Kern,’ he said in English. ‘I live just along the lake. I saw your aeroplanes come in and I was curious. The last time I saw a Bristol Fighter was two years ago. I shot it down in flames.’

‘Bully for you,’ said O’Malley.

‘It was pointless,’ said Kern, not looking at O’Malley but at Eve. ‘We had lost the war by then. Where are you taking these machines now?’

‘To China,’ said Eve, and introduced herself, O’Malley and Weyman. She did not include Sun Nan in the introductions, but Kern had already dismissed the Chinese as baggage that could be ignored. ‘It is imperative, Baron, that we are not delayed.’

‘There is something fishy here, sir,’ said Bultmann, showing off his colloquial English. ‘A moment ago the lady was supposed to be Turkish and unable to speak English.’

‘You said you didn’t believe us,’ said O’Malley, as if that disposed of his lie.

‘How soon do you wish to leave?’ Kern was still giving all his attention to Eve.

‘Tomorrow morning.’ Eve recognized the Baron for what he was, a lady-killer, and she accepted the opportunity to take advantage of it. After all, there was little risk of his attempting to emulate the unfortunate Mexican. ‘All we want is an hotel where we can spend the night, to refuel our machines in the morning and to be off first thing.’

‘One has to be careful, sir,’ said Bultmann. ‘You have read what the Bolshevists have done in Saxony, they have taken over some of the towns, declared Soviets.’

‘Do we look like Bolshevists?’ said Eve indignantly.

‘If I take them as my guests and leave their aeroplanes in your charge overnight, will that satisfy you, Herr Bultmann?’ Kern put it as a request, but he made it sound like an order.

O’Malley looked at Bultmann and Pommer. He hated Prussian militarism, had fought against it, had rejoiced that it had been defeated. But it had not been, not entirely; and now he was glad of it. Bultmann stiffened to attention, clicked his heels.

‘Yes, Herr Baron. First thing in the morning I shall telephone my superiors for instructions.’

‘Do that, Herr Bultmann. In the meantime, Fräulein Tozer – ’ He gestured towards his massive car.

‘Thank you,’ said Eve. ‘What about Mr O’Malley, Mr Weyman and Mr Sun Nan?’

Kern looked at the three men as if surprised he should be asked to play host to them. Then he looked at Bultmann. ‘Can’t you accommodate them, Herr Bultmann?’

Bultmann was prepared to go just so far in interpreting a request as an order. He allowed himself a touch of Bolshevism: ‘It will be enough for me to look after the aeroplanes, Herr Baron. They are your responsibility, sir.’

Kern lifted his chin and his mouth tightened. But he didn’t threaten to have Bultmann court-martialled: he knew better than any of those present that the old days were over. He stalked to his car. ‘You will ride in front with me, Fräulein Tozer.’

George Weyman spoke for the first time. ‘I’m not leaving these machines here with these Huns.’

‘It is some time, Herr Weyman, since Attila and his Huns were through here,’ said Kern. ‘Herr Bultmann and Herr Pommer are good Germans, nothing more, nothing less.’

Weyman looked as if he was about to deny there were any good Germans, but O’Malley cut in: ‘George, we don’t have any choice. These aren’t our machines, they’re Miss Tozer’s.’

‘And I say we leave them with Herr Bultmann,’ said Eve. ‘Get into the car, Mr Weyman.’

Weyman flushed, looked at O’Malley as if accusing him of being a traitor. But the latter was already pushing Sun Nan ahead of him into the back seat of the car. He pushed Sun Nan across the seat, sat himself in the middle. ‘Come on, George. You’re next to me.’

Reluctantly, still awkward with rage, Weyman got into the car, left the door open and sat staring straight ahead. Kern drew himself up; then he closed the rear door with a slam. He went round and got in behind the wheel. He nodded to Bultmann and Pommer as they clicked their heels and stood to attention, then he swung the car round.

‘Wait!’ Eve suddenly cried. As Kern jerked the car to a halt she jumped out and ran across to her plane. She came back with the hessian-wrapped box and a small overnight bag. ‘Thank you, Baron. Flying is no good for a girl’s complexion. I’ll need my creams for repairs.’

‘I have never seen a complexion less in need of repairs.’

In the back seat the two Englishmen and the Chinese glanced at each other, joined for a moment in their contempt for such flattery. The United Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom knew how much encouragement was proper for women.

They drove out of the airfield, past the vast hangars where two airships were moored, their noses sticking out of the sheds like those of giant porpoises. The Zeppelins looked harmless enough, but once on leave in London O’Malley had seen one caught in a web of searchlights over the city and he could never remember seeing anything so eerie and menacing. He looked at George Weyman, who had lost his parents in a Zeppelin raid.

‘And they’re worried about a couple of guns on our machines,’ said Weyman bitterly. ‘All of those should have been burnt.’

‘It’s all over, George,’ O’Malley said, and tried not to sound too weary of Weyman’s hatred; after all, his own parents were safe in Tanganyika, profiting from what the Germans had lost. ‘Try to forget it.’

‘Not bloody likely.’

The road ran along the edge of the lake. Sail-boats were coming in, the sun behind them turning them into huge translucent moths. The water shone like a burnished shield and summer was a great green bloom of trees. If the war had been through here there was no evidence left of it.

‘I was on my way to a tea dance over in Constance,’ said Kern, gesturing at his clothes. In the back seat the three men glanced at each other again: going dancing in the afternoon? ‘I was driving to catch the ferry when I saw your aeroplanes fly over. I turned round at once. I am still fascinated by war machines.’

‘What did you fly?’ O’Malley could not resist the professional question.

‘Albatros D’s and Fokker Triplanes. I was with von Richthofen.’

‘How many kills did you have?’ said Eve.

If Kern noticed the slightly sarcastic edge to her voice he gave no sign. ‘I shot down thirty-two machines. But I never looked upon them as kills.’

‘The same number as Mr O’Malley. It’s a pity we aren’t staying longer. You would have a lot to compare and talk about.’

‘We might have had, at the time,’ said O’Malley. ‘You forget, Miss Tozer, I told you I was glad the war was over. That part of it, anyway.’

Eve didn’t look back, but at Kern. ‘And you, Baron?’

But Kern didn’t answer. He turned the car off the main road and it began to climb a hill. On the crest, on the edge of a sheer drop that fell down towards the lake, stood a small castle. Spired and turreted, light as a pencil drawing, it looked unreal as it perched against the salmon sky.

‘It’s like something from a fairy tale!’ Eve exclaimed. ‘Is it yours?’

‘It is now,’ said Kern, taking the car across a drawbridge and under a portcullis into a small courtyard. ‘It belonged to my uncle, but he and my two cousins were killed in the war. Then my aunt died of a broken heart. Women do,’ he added, not defensively but challengingly, as if the others doubted him.

‘So do men, occasionally,’ said Eve gently.

Servants came out, two men and a woman, all elderly: museum pieces, O’Malley thought, prewar waxworks figures wound up and put back into service. They bowed to the Baron and his guests, but not to Sun Nan; obviously they thought he was just an Oriental mirror of themselves. But their faces showed no surprise when Kern told them to show Sun Nan to a room of his own with the other guests.

‘You have had a long flight,’ said Kern as he led them into the high-ceilinged entrance hall of the castle. The walls were darkly ornate with carved timber, but the floor was flagstones and their heels echoed hollowly. Skeletons walking, thought O’Malley; and shivered. And wondered how many ghosts Kern entertained here in his moments alone.

‘Take a bath and rest for a while,’ said Kern, speaking all the time to Eve; the others could do what they liked. ‘We shall dine at eight.’

An hour later Eve walked out of her bedroom on to a terrace. Refreshed, wearing a clean blouse and skirt that had been in her overnight bag, she felt pleased at the day’s progress. She still had a long way to go to save her father, but the trip had started well. She took the gold watch from the pocket of her skirt, opened it and watched the moving second hand: again the bomb image sprang to her mind and her hand jerked of its own accord as if to throw the watch over the wall of the terrace. Instead she snapped the lid shut and shoved the watch back in her pocket.

She stood beside the stone wall and looked down at the lake turning blue-grey in the soft twilight. Pigeons murmured in the trees below her; out on the lake a last sail-boat drew a silver line behind it towards home. It was all so peaceful, and on the other side of the world her father might already be dead. She put her hand to her throat, feeling the sudden thickening pain inside it.

‘It all looks untouched,’ said O’Malley behind her. ‘It’s hard to realize they lost the war.’

‘Those in the cities know they lost it.’ She took her hand away from her throat, recovering quickly. ‘That’s what I read. Millions of unemployed, money not worth the paper it’s printed on.’

‘You sound sorry for them.’

‘I might be, if I thought about them. I was a long way from the war, Mr O’Malley, and I didn’t lose anyone in it. No fathers or brothers or even a cousin. I might feel differently if I had. Did you lose anyone?’

‘No relatives. Just friends.’ He turned back to looking out at the lake, closing a door on the war. ‘We may be in trouble tomorrow morning if Herr Bultmann gets officialdom on his side. German officialdom is the worst kind.’

‘We can’t afford to lose even a day, not so soon. What do you suggest?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve run out of invention. And Bultmann thinks I’m a liar anyway.’

‘You are a liar, Mr O’Malley, but I’m not sure yet how serious a one. You are also not averse to swindling a lady out of some money, making a quick profit if you can. Am I right?’

O’Malley smiled, unabashed. ‘Anyone who makes a profit out of you, Miss Tozer, deserves a medal. I talked to Arthur Henty yesterday before you went back to London. I wanted to know a bit more about you before I started following you to the ends of the earth. I gather your grandfather wasn’t above a bit of swindling if he could make a profit.’

‘Did Mr Henty say that?’

‘No. But I put two and two together. I don’t think any white man would make a fortune in China if he was entirely honest and stuck to his scruples. I must ask Mr Sun about it some time.’

‘My father is honest.’

‘Arthur Henty didn’t say he wasn’t. And I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Until you ask Mr Sun, is that what you mean?’

Eve realized she was looking at O’Malley carefully for the first time. She had always had a lively interest in men and she had had two serious affairs, one of which had petered out and the other had been broken off sharply when she had discovered the man in question had been as interested in getting into her bank account as getting into her bed. But there had been no disillusionment; as she had told Arthur Henty in London (only yesterday?) she was mad about good-looking men. Quite apart from the worry and distraction of what had happened to her father, perhaps she had not been interested in O’Malley purely as a man because he was not good-looking. He was just above medium height, well-built, clear-skinned and healthy-looking; but he was not handsome. He had brown curly hair that was in need of a cut, a broad blunt face with a long upper lip only relieved by the well-shaped nose above it, and eyes that were too mocking ever to offer an invitation to a girl who believed in romance.

‘I don’t think Mr Sun would be the man to ask. He’d be too influenced by his master, as he calls him.’

‘Just who are you, Mr O’Malley, besides being an ex-ace?’ She cupped one elbow in her hand, put the other hand under her chin.

‘An ex-infantry officer. No kills that I can claim, if that’s your next question.’

‘Who were you before the war?’

‘Nobody.’ He grinned. ‘I’m an only child, like you. My father is in the Colonial Service. He and my mother are out in Tanganyika now, trying to educate the natives that the British Empire will be better for them than the German one was.’

‘Do you think it will be?’

‘I don’t know. If ever I meet a native, I’ll ask him. My father won’t. He believes the British Empire is the closest thing on earth to a well-run Heaven. It may well be. I’m just not interested in propagating the idea.’

‘You sound like a radical. Were you one before the war?’

‘No. I was at Oxford playing cricket and rugger and drinking beer. One term I tried drinking sherry, but I discovered I’m no aesthete. Not as a drinker, anyway.’

‘Was that all you did – played cricket and rugger, whatever that is, and drank beer?’

‘No. Occasionally I read History, but it was considered bad form to swot. I was very much against bad form in those days.’

‘But not now?’

He shook his head and grinned again. ‘I saw too much of what was good form during the war. It killed more men than bad form ever did.’

‘You don’t believe in duty?’

Kern had come along the terrace. He was still dressed as he had been earlier, still the lady-killer; and Eve wondered if he went to the tea dances over in Constance and actually was a gigolo. But despite his foppish image there was something about the Baron that said he would never sell himself to anyone. Least of all to fat matrons at Constance. Though Eve wondered who, in these days of incredible inflation, had money to buy a partner even for a dance. But perhaps, she thought, absorbing some of O’Malley’s cynicism, not all Germans had lost the war.

‘You sound like our government in Berlin,’ said Kern. ‘Schneidemann and Erzberger sneer at the sense of honour we had in our army.’

‘I don’t sneer at a sense of honour,’ said O’Malley. ‘I just don’t admire stupid generals who expect too much of it.’

Kern bit his lip, then nodded stiffly and reluctantly. He was an honest man, too uncomplicated for dialectics; he was a past pupil of an old school that was now just ruins. He turned his attention to Eve. A sense of honour was not so necessary with women: he knew that most of them privately had too much common sense to expect it.

He offered his arm, a courtier from the old school. ‘Shall we go in to dinner, Fräulein Tozer?’

Over dinner Kern held the chair. ‘I am from Koenigsberg. The Poles have our city now. You English and Americans don’t know what it is like to have your home city given away to another country.’

‘You asked for it,’ said George Weyman round a mouthful of potatoes. His dislike of Germans did not extend to their food. He had had two helpings of soup and the meat course and was on his third glass of wine. But he sounded only amiably argumentative. ‘You had to give up something. You can’t lose a war and get off scot-free.’

‘Perhaps Mr Sun has something to say about that,’ said Eve. ‘They have had wars in China for far longer than we’ve had them.’

Sun Nan was seated beside Weyman at the table. O’Malley and Eve were opposite, with Kern at the head. He had said nothing since they had arrived at the castle, but his eyes and ears had been open, absorbing everything that surrounded him. He had been impressed by the castle; he wished his master were here to take an example from the circumstances. The yamen at Szeping had begun to look like nothing more than a grandiose tenement.

‘Losers in our wars lose everything,’ he said. ‘We are not so foolish as to expect mercy.’

‘You sound as if you have never been on the losing side,’ said O’Malley.

Sun smiled, and seemed annoyingly smug to the others. ‘My master is a very able general. Not stupid.’

‘He is a swine.’ Weyman abruptly looked less amiable.

Kern, sitting very still, looked in turn at each of his guests. He still did not understand the presence of the Chinese, but it was against his code of manners to ask. The atmosphere had changed; but he was curious rather than annoyed. He had been bored ever since coming here to the Bodensee six months ago and he welcomed anything that would spark a little electricity in his dull existence. Any war was welcome, even one at the dinner table.

‘For wanting to be master in his own province?’ said Sun Nan, looking sidelong at Weyman as if doing him a favour by answering him at all. ‘You foreigners have no right to be in China.’

‘We have the rights of trade.’ Weyman was flushed; it went against his grain even to argue with a Chink. ‘There are treaties.’

‘They mean nothing. You Europeans invented them to cover up your lies and greed.’ Sun Nan waved a hand of dismissal; then turned to Kern. ‘I am sorry to be in an argument in your house, Baron. But the bad manners are not mine. Forgive me, I shall retire.’

He bowed his head and stood up. But as he pushed back his chair, Weyman grabbed his arm. Ordinarily, despite his low boiling point and his consuming prejudices, he might have contained his temper at a stranger’s table: he was not without social graces. It was ironic that it was German wine that made him lose control of himself.

‘I’m not taking that from any damned Chink!’

‘Getyourhandsoffme!’ The hiss in Sun’s voice ran all the words together; his mouth ached with the awkwardness of his teeth. He said something in Chinese, glaring down at Weyman.

‘Who the hell do you think you are!’

His hand still grabbing Sun’s arm, Weyman pushed back his own chair and stood up. O’Malley, sitting on the other side of the table, saw Sun’s left hand go to his pocket, guessed at once what was going to happen but was too slow to act. The knife came out of Sun’s pocket and slashed at Weyman’s hand; the latter cursed, let go Sun’s arm and swung his other fist. But the knife flashed again and Weyman flopped back in his chair, holding the inside of his right elbow with his bloodied left hand. He drew his hand away and looked in amazement at the blood pumping out of the rip in the sleeve of his jacket. He tried to move his arm, failed, then suddenly fell off the chair in a dead faint.

Kern and O’Malley were already on their feet. Sun Nan, still holding the knife out in front of him, backed off. He was working his jaw and his mouth, still battling with his dental plate, but he looked neither afraid nor apologetic for what he had done.

O’Malley knelt down beside Weyman, wrenched off the bloodstained jacket and wrapped a napkin round the punctured artery. ‘Get a doctor!’

‘I shall get the police, too.’ Kern made for the door.

‘No!’ Eve stopped him. Her mind was a confusion of shock and anger, but at once she saw the danger of further delay if the police were called in. ‘Not the police – please! I’ll explain later. Just get a doctor. Please!’

Kern looked at them all again, then he went out of the room.

Sun Nan moved round to the other side of the table, picked up a napkin and wiped his knife. He put it back in his pocket, did up the buttons of the jacket, bowed his head to Eve. ‘I am not used to being treated like that, Miss Tozer.’

‘Not even by your master?’ She was rigid with anger at him.

‘No white man is my master. Or mistress. You had better remember that, Miss Tozer.’

He left the room, turning his back on them and moving unhurriedly as if he knew neither Eve nor O’Malley would dare to touch him.

‘The bastard!’ said O’Malley.

Weyman stirred, opened his eyes and tried to sit up. But O’Malley pushed him back, while Eve found a cushion and put it under his head. She wrapped another napkin round his wounded left hand. Weyman looked at his right arm, propped up on O’Malley’s knee, and shook his head, as if he still couldn’t believe what had happened to him.

‘I could kill him.’

‘I’d stop you first,’ said O’Malley. ‘You heard what Miss Tozer said this morning. She needs him more than us. And he knows it.’

Weyman looked at both of them, then at his arm. ‘How bad is it?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not good, that’s about all I can say.’

Kern came back. ‘The doctor will be here in ten minutes. Where is Herr Sun?’

‘Gone up to his room,’ said Eve. ‘He won’t run away.’

‘Perhaps you would do me the favour of explaining all this?’ Kern was coldly polite.

Eve hesitated, then told Kern everything. He listened without any expression on his face. When she had finished he looked down at Weyman. ‘Herr Weyman is not going to be able to fly tomorrow.’

George Weyman was stubborn, but not stupid: at least not about practical matters. ‘I couldn’t handle a machine, not the way my arm feels now.’

‘We’ll have to fly on tomorrow,’ Eve said. ‘We can’t be delayed. Can we leave Mr Weyman and his machine here with you?’

‘There is no alternative,’ said Kern. ‘But you still have to have your other aeroplanes released by Herr Bultmann.’

‘Can’t you help us there?’ Eve pleaded. ‘You can see how much even a day’s delay may mean to us.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime we should get Herr Weyman up to his room.’

‘What do we tell the doctor?’ O’Malley asked.

‘That it was an accident,’ said Kern. ‘This man was my uncle’s doctor for years. He won’t ask awkward questions.’

The doctor didn’t. Old, thin, looking like his own most regular patient, he came, fixed up Weyman’s arm, ordered him to rest. ‘You have damaged the tendon, too. It may be a long time before your arm is perfectly well again.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Weyman, irritated by the doctor’s inability to speak English. Kern told him and he shook his head in angry disappointment. ‘When you get to China, Miss Tozer, throw that swine out of your machine, will you? From a great height.’

Eve smiled, though it was an effort. ‘Just get well, Mr Weyman. Go back to England. You’ll be paid in full.’ Then she turned away, put a hand to her forehead. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them as she felt herself sway. ‘I’m tired. I’ll go to bed, if you’ll excuse me, Baron.’

Kern took her to the door of her room, kissed her hand. ‘We’ll solve your problem, Fräulein Tozer. Just get a good night’s sleep.’

‘My problem isn’t here, Baron. It is in China.’

She closed the bedroom door, undressed, got into the big four-poster bed. She stared out through the open window, saw a star fall across the purple-black sky. She believed in omens, but, exhausted emotionally and mentally, couldn’t remember what a falling star meant. But it reminded her of the flash on Sun Nan’s knife as he had plunged it into George Weyman’s arm. That had been some sort of omen, she knew; and cried for her father, the prisoner in a land of superstitions. She wondered if her father, staring out of his window wherever he was held, had seen the same star fall. Then remembered that it would be already dawn in China, the beginning of another precious day to be marked off by the man who held her father captive.

2

In the morning, at breakfast, Kern said, ‘Would you allow me to take Herr Weyman’s place?’

Eve ed at O’Malley. There were only the three of them at the table Weyman was in his room, still asleep. Sun Nan, careful of his manners, had asked to be excused from eating with them; munching an apple, he was now out on the terrace, admiring the scenery like any unworried, conscience-free visitor. Breakfast made a mockery of the claim that people further north were on the verge of starvation; eggs, bacon, sausages, fruit, three sorts of bread loaded the table like some harvest offering. The fruits of defeat, thought O’Malley, who hadn’t had a breakfast like this in longer than he cared to think about. And looked at Kern and wondered if he could put up with the arrogant ex-enemy.

‘It’s up to you, Miss Tozer.’ He sipped his coffee, tasted the mushy bitterness of it; at least the coffee in England wasn’t made from acorns, as this was. ‘If it won’t offend the Baron to fly a British machine.’

‘You are a flier like me, Herr O’Malley. You know real pilots draw no distinctions between aeroplanes. Your fliers had as much admiration for our Albatroses and Fokkers as we had for your SE’s and Bristols. All one looks for is a machine that gives him pleasure to fly.’

‘At least we have that much in common.’ O’Malley tried not to sound too grudging. ‘If the Baron flew with von Richthofen, he’d be a good pilot. I know – I flew against the Circus.’

‘We may even have flown against each other,’ said Kern.

‘The thought had occurred to me. Were you ever shot down?’

Kern hesitated, but his honesty was equal to his pride. ‘Once. I was flying an Albatros and we ran into an English formation above Rosières. I shot down two machines, two Camels, then a third one got above me, put me on fire. I got back to our own lines, but only just. My mechanics dragged me out, but not before I was burned. Here.’ He ran his right hand down his left side and left arm. ‘It was 22 July 1918.’

O’Malley looked at his coffee cup, pushed it away. ‘I still fly that Camel back home in England.’

Kern showed no surprise: the war in the air had always been a local affair. ‘Did you claim me as a kill?’

‘I’m afraid so. I thought you were a dead duck.’

Kern shook his head, smiled thinly. ‘Your count was wrong, Herr O’Malley. So I am one up on you, thirty-two to thirty-one.’

‘Are you finished, both of you?’ Eve, worn out, had slept soundly; but she had woken depressed. The offer by Kern had given her a momentary lift, but now she was annoyed by these two men and their reminiscences that had nothing to do with what concerned her so much. ‘This is not a lark, Baron – ’

‘The war was no lark, Fräulein.’

Eve ignored that: she knew it had been no lark, but these two talked as if it had been some sort of deadly game in the air. ‘Our arrangement would be a business one. The same terms as I’m paying Mr O’Malley. Five hundred pounds and your return fare. I don’t know what that is in marks.’

Kern smiled. ‘Who does know? Yesterday it could have been a billion marks, today a trillion. The money is immaterial, Fräulein Tozer. But I’ll take it.’

He’s as broke as I am, thought O’Malley. The castle, the big Mercedes, the servants, the big meals: it all floated on God knew what depth of credit. The Junkers still survived, though O’Malley wouldn’t bet on how long. Not even a credit bet, if anyone would give him credit.

Eve stood up, suddenly eager to be on their way again. ‘Could we leave in half an hour, Baron? We hope to make Belgrade tonight.’

‘I shall have to telephone Herr Bultmann before he talks to his superiors.’

‘Is he likely to hold us up?’

Kern shook his head. ‘Herr Bultmann is one of the old school.’

What the hell does that mean? O’Malley wondered; but didn’t ask, because he had already guessed. Certain areas of Germany still echoed to the click of boot-heels; the workers’ soviets might be taking over towns in Saxony, but not here around Freiderichshafen. He determined there would be no heel-clicking between here and China.

Kern went away to make his phone call to Bultmann and Eve and O’Malley went up to say goodbye to Weyman. He was more comfortable this morning but far from cheerful. ‘This is a right do, isn’t it? Stabbed by a blasted Chinaman, replaced by a Boche. I did better than that in four years of war.’

‘Stop laughing, chum.’

O’Malley would miss Weyman on the flight. His mercurial temper was a handicap and they would be flying over terrain where his prejudices would have flourished like weeds; but he was an excellent mechanic and O’Malley had little confidence in his own ability to keep the machines going if any of them should break down. But he was becoming more and more aware of Eve Tozer’s concern for her father, could see that the air of cool control she affected was now no more than a veneer, and he did not want to add to her worries by mentioning what, with luck, might not happen.

‘Good luck.’ George Weyman put out his bandaged left hand, made the gesture of a handshake. ‘You’ll get there in time, Miss Tozer. You can put your money on Bede.’

Eve, an affectionate girl, kissed Weyman on the forehead; he blushed as if she had pulled back the sheets to get into bed with him. ‘Good luck to you, too. See Arthur Henty when you get to London. Tell him so far we are keeping to schedule.’

‘Second day out,’ said O’Malley sardonically. ‘I should hope so.’

‘That’s the only way I can bear to think,’ said Eve. ‘Day to day.’

‘Sorry,’ said O’Malley, and bit his tongue to remind it to be more careful in future.

An elderly servant drove Eve, O’Malley, Kern and Sun Nan in to the airfield. Sun Nan sat in the back with Eve and O’Malley, completely indifferent to the change of pilots in the third plane. He made no reference to Weyman, not enquiring about how his victim was this morning; and on the surface he looked equally uninterested in Weyman’s replacement. But he was studying Kern, certain that the German aristocrat, in his own way, had as many prejudices as the English working man. They were all the same here in the West and he would be glad to get back to China, where all the prejudices were honourable ones.

Bultmann and Pommer were waiting for them at the airfield. One of the airships had been brought out of its hangar and floated against the morning sun as it nosed a mooring mast. The Mercedes drove through the shadow of it and went down to the end of the airfield and the parked Bristols. Kern looked up at the huge shape above them.

‘Some day the sky will be full of those. There will be no room for fliers like us, Herr O’Malley.’

‘Let’s take-off, do a circuit and come back and shoot them down.’

For the first time Kern smiled directly at O’Malley. ‘Jolly good idea.’

The car pulled up in front of the three Bristols. O’Malley, certain that Kern was going to get his way with the class-conscious Bultmann, went to his plane and began to dismantle the Lewis gun in the rear cockpit. Then he did the same with the gun in what was now Kern’s plane. He stowed the guns in the cockpits, but left the Scarff rings still mounted. He jumped down from Kern’s plane as the latter and Eve came across to him.

‘We can put the guns back when we get into hostile territory,’ he said.

‘What is the point of them with nobody in the rear cockpit to fire them?’ said Kern.

‘They were Weyman’s idea. If we’re going to have to fight anyone, it’ll be on the ground, not in the air.’

‘A pity, don’t you think?’

‘Stop that sort of thinking, both of you!’ Eve snapped, turned and strode across to her plane. She gestured curtly to Sun Nan to get aboard, then she clambered up and settled into her own cockpit.

Kern looked across at her. ‘She would be a fiery woman in bed.’

The thought had crossed O’Malley’s mind, but he wouldn’t have voiced it. He was glad of an interruption from Bultmann. ‘I had all the tanks filled, Herr Baron. But there is one, er, small point. Who pays?’

Obviously the thought of payment had not occurred to Kern. He looked at Bultmann in surprise; but O’Malley came to his rescue. ‘Fräulein Tozer will pay you.’

‘A woman pays?’ said Bultmann.

‘A new custom,’ said O’Malley. ‘Equal rights.’

Bultmann, shaking his head at the decadence of the English and the Americans, went across to Eve. There was some discussion, then she handed him some English money. Bultmann looked at it as if not sure of its value, then he stepped back and bowed to Eve.

‘Do you want to take your machine up for a test flight before we start?’ O’Malley asked Kern. ‘You haven’t flown one of these before, have you?’

‘Hardly. But you and I are fliers, Herr O’Malley. Would you wish to have a test flight?’

Yes, thought O’Malley; but said no. But told himself it was the last time he was going to swap bravado with the arrogant Baron. ‘Shall we start then? Vienna is our first stop, to refuel.’

They took off into a cloudless sky, with O’Malley once more leading the way. He looked behind him and saw Kern lift his Bristol off the ground too soon: the Baron hadn’t allowed for the extra weight. The plane flew flat for several hundred feet, the nose threatening to point down; but Kern, as he had claimed, was a flier, a pilot who was part of his machine. O’Malley saw the plane wobble and he waited for it to stall; then the nose lifted and he knew Kern had it under control. It climbed steadily, swung round in a steady bank and fell in behind O’Malley. They headed east and soon were skirting the northern flanks of the Bavarian Alps. The flying was easy and O’Malley lay back in his wicker seat, occasionally turning his face up to the sun, listening to the music of his engine, marvelling at his good fortune. He felt sorry for Bradley Tozer, was apprehensive for him, but the American millionaire, involuntarily and through his daughter, had bought him a few weeks of escape. He looked across to his left and wondered if Kern had the same thoughts.

They landed at Vienna after three-and-a-half hours’ uneventful flying. Kern was first out of his plane and moved across at once to help Eve down from hers. Sun Nan, plump and awkward, was left to feel his own way down to earth. O’Malley, finding an English-speaking official, was left to superintend the refuelling of the planes and Kern, taking a small picnic box that his servant had packed, led Eve to the shade of some near-by rees.

Eve called to Sun Nan, gave him some food and asked him to take some across to O’Malley. The Chinese didn’t rebel at being asked to act as servant; he knew he was as much a partner in this foursome as the others, uneasy though the partnership might be. He gave O’Malley his lunch, then sat down under the wing of Eve’s plane and began munching his bread and sausage. The food was awkward in his mouth, dislodging his dental plate, and he longed for some nice smooth noodles.

‘I was here in Vienna before the war.’ Kern lay back on the grass. He had brought a wartime flying suit with him, but was not wearing it; like the others on this hot summer day he wore just street clothes. He was dressed in grey flannel trousers, a wide-collared silk shirt open at the neck and black-and-white shoes; again Eve had the mental picture of him as a gigolo. He looked at her appraisingly and she waited for him to pat the grass beside him and invite her to lie down. ‘My father was at the court of the old Emperor for six months. He was there on loan as a military adviser.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He was killed at Verdun. My two brothers also.’

She changed the subject. ‘I came here when I was a girl, with my mother and father. We did the Grand Tour.’

They were both silent for a while, lost in the contemplation of something that now had the fragile structure of a half-remembered dream. A bee buzzed above the picnic box and Eve lazily brushed it away. In the distance the end of the aerodrome shimmered in the heat like quivering green water. Eve lay back, somnolent, but wide awake enough not to lie too close to Kern. China, and her father, all at once were as remote as the lost empire of the Hapsburgs.

She heard Kern say, ‘I fell in love with the women of Vienna. They were beautiful, always flirting, in love with love. But I was too young for them then, only eighteen. I vowed to come back and enjoy them when I was old enough. But it’s too late now.’

‘Why?’ she asked dreamily.

‘Because romance blossoms best on a full stomach. One does not flirt when one is hungry – I learned that in Berlin last year. The women of Vienna, I’m sure, are thinner now than they used to be.’

Eve sat up, no longer dreamy. ‘I fear you are a ladies’ man, Baron. Don’t expect any opportunities on this flight of ours.’

Kern, still lying back on the grass, hands behind his head, smiled up at her. He is handsome, Eve thought; and chided herself for the admission. But it was a pity she had not met him in other circumstances, when she could have pitted her wits against him in the flirting game that seemed to be his favourite sport. Then was conscience stricken as she thought of her father. She stood up quickly, brushing the grass from her skirt. Pulling on her flying helmet, she walked across to O’Malley, who stood leaning against the wing of his plane, finishing his lunch.

‘The Baron offend you?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Just the way you got up and left him. I’ve had girls walk away from me the same way.’

God, she thought, are both of them going to give me trouble? ‘How do I pay for the gasoline?’

‘What did you bring?’

‘Pounds and dollars. It was all I could get at such short notice.’

‘They’ll take either. Our money is more welcome than we are. They’re a sour lot, these Austrians.’

‘That’s not what the Baron has been telling me.’

But she didn’t elaborate, just turned her back on him and went across to pay the two men who had brought down the drums of petrol in their ramshackle ex-army truck. Then she moved to her plane, pulling up short as Sun Nan suddenly rose up in front of her from beneath the wing. Preoccupied, thoughts building up in her mind like a honeycomb, she hadn’t noticed him seated in the shadow of the wing.

‘Miss Tozer, if either Mr O’Malley or the Baron makes trouble for you, let me know. I shall take care of you.’

‘Make trouble?’ Then she understood what he meant, marvelled that he should have been so observant. She laughed at the irony that he should be her protector, the defender of her honour. ‘I’m sure I have nothing to fear from them, Mr Sun. But thank you.’

‘We have to stick together. Your father is depending on us, not them.’

‘You don’t have to remind me, Mr Sun. But Mr O’Malley and the Baron may still be necessary to us.’

They took off five minutes later. They flew south-east this time, soon crossed into Hungary. The countries lay below them, one merged into another; treaties had broken up the Empire, but the boundaries were only on maps; at 5000 feet nothing appeared to have changed. Harvest-yellow, dotted with green lakes of forest, the lost empire was unmarked: not here the scars of trenches. Then they were over Lake Balaton, sparkling under the afternoon sun like a vast spill of Tokay wine; the sails of fishermen’s boats drifted like tiny moths caught in the web of sunshine. Then Eve, looking up from the bright glare of the lake, saw the clouds ahead.

They hung in the sky like great baskets of evil purple blooms, a hot-house of storm stretching away to the south-west. Lightning flickered, blue-silver against the purple, and she imagined she could hear the crash of thunder above the roar of the engine. She looked back over her shoulder at Sun Nan, saw the fear on his face below the opaque mask of his goggles, wondered what her own face showed. She hated storms, was afraid of thunder and lightning even in the shelter of the safe, weather-impregnable houses she had called home. In America she had never dared fly in the face of a storm, had always looked for a place to land even when she ran into squalls of rain.

Then up ahead she saw O’Malley wiggle his wings, point to his left and then bank away to the east. He was going to try and take them round the storm.

3

Extract from the William Bede O’Malley manuscript:

It was a bitch of a storm, the worst I had experienced up till then. I have never been a religious man, at least not down on the ground; and if one is going to be religious, that’s the place to be it, down among the selfish, the cheats, the murderers who are there to test your Christianity or whatever you profess to believe. No, the only time I’ve been religious is when I’ve been up in the air: marvelling at God’s genius and charity in creating the sky or cursing Him for the storms He could whip up out of nowhere, showing off His wrath. This was one of His most wrathful.

The turbulence hit us long before we were into the clouds. I had turned east, hoping to fly round the edge of the storm, but it was moving too fast for us. The edge of it caught us and in a matter of moments we were bucking the giant waves of air as they hit us. I had looked down just before the clouds enveloped us, but there was nowhere to head for as a landing site. We were over hills that rolled up into mountains; and the thought of the mountains frightened me. I had jerked my hand upwards, hoping Miss Tozer and Kern were watching me, then pulled back the stick and began to climb. If we were lucky we might get above the storm, but in any case we’d be above the top of the mountains. Mountain tops and aeroplanes still have an upsetting magnetism for each other and even today, at 30,000 feet, I can’t fly over a range of mountains without feeling them scraping my bottom.

I lost sight of the other two machines as soon as the cloud, a wild dark sea, rolled in on us. From a distance the clouds had looked purple; now they were black and green. The air had suddenly turned cold, made even colder by the rain that hit me like a barrage of knives. I continued climbing, fighting the stick that shook in my hands and threatened to break my arms at the wrists and elbows. The turbulence was like nothing I had ever known before; the yo-yo hadn’t been invented then, but I should have got the inspiration and patented it. The noise was more than noise: it was a physical assault inside my head. I reeled in my seat with it, punch-drunk, deaf but still able to hear. Lightning had been exploding behind the clouds, throwing them into bright relief, making them look solid and impenetrable. Suddenly it burst all around me, a great flash of blue-white light that blinded me, yet in the moment before blinding me painted everything in frightening detail: I saw things, the dials on the instrument panel, the worn rim of the cockpit, the tear in the back of my right-hand glove: I saw them, yet I was inside them. It was an effect I had once experienced as a child during an attack of petit-mal, the splitting of oneself in a split-second dream: you are inside and outside the objects you are witnessing at the same moment. I felt sure now that I was about to pass out, that I was seeing the final, meaningless revelation before dying.

The lightning went and I looked up. And saw the plane only half a dozen feet above me. I didn’t know whose it was, Miss Tozer’s or Kern’s: all I knew was that the pilot couldn’t see me. We flew almost locked together, the wheels of the plane above only a foot or two from my top wing. Lightning flared again; half-blinded I saw the plane above tremble and dip. I plunged the stick forward, hit turbulence, shuddered, then fell away from beneath the other threatening machine. There was no time to look up to see if it was following me.

Then the Bristol flipped over, flung sideways by the greatest explosion of sound I’ve ever felt: not heard. My head reverberated with it, an echo chamber that threatened to drive me insane. Sanity, fortunately, has nothing to do with the urge to survive. Unbreathing, paralysed, mind and body dead, the unthinking me refused to let the aeroplane go. My hands and arms worked of their own accord; then feeling came back into my legs and feet. I fought with the only two weapons I had, the stick and the rudder bar; yet they were the machine’s weapons, too, for it was fighting me. It was not in a spin; we seemed to be plunging in a series of tight bucking slides. I still couldn’t see; lightning glared around me again, but it was only a lightening of the darkness in my blinded eyes. I worked by feel, fighting the plane by instinct, going with the slide at times, pulling against it at others, praying all the time with the mind that was slowly coming back to life that the wings would not tear off, that the machine would not disintegrate and leave me sitting there for the last moment at the top of the long drop to eternity. I believed in God then and hated Him for wanting me to join Him.

Then I found I was winning. The Bristol slid to starboard, kept sliding and I let it go, feeling I was getting it under control. I eased the rudder to port, pulled the stick back; the plane responded, straightened out. The wind and the rain were still pounding at me, but now the Bristol and I were part of each other again, ready to fight together. I held the stick steady and we drove on through the storm, the wings trembling as if ready to break off but always holding, the engine coughing once but then coming on again with a challenging note that gave me heart. I glanced at the altimeter: I had dropped 3000 feet since I had last looked at it. I had no idea of the height of the mountains I had glimpsed (were they still ahead of me? Below me?); but I dared not try to climb above the storm again. I had to ride it out at this level; the galleries of hell were topsy-turvy, one stood a better chance of survival in the lower depths. I wondered where Miss Tozer and Kern were, if they were still flying or had already crashed, but there was nothing I could do about going looking for them. I shivered when I thought how close I had been to that other Bristol in the clouds.

It took me twenty minutes, forever, to fly out of the storm. Then, as so often happens, I came out abruptly into bright mocking sunlight. I checked the compass; we were miles off course. But there was no hope of correcting just now; over to starboard the storm still stretched away to the south, its darkness lit with explosions of lightning. I looked back and around for the others. Then I saw them come out of the clouds, too close to each other for comfort; Kern swung abruptly to port to widen the distance between them. I throttled back, waited for them to come up to me. Miss Tozer waved to say she was all right; but Kern pointed to his top wing and I saw the tattered fabric and the splintered strut. He was holding the machine steady, but he would have to do that if he was to keep it in the air; any sudden manoeuvre would rip the wing to shreds. I waved to him, then looked down and about for a possible landing site. But there was none: we were over mountains that offered no comfort at all.

There was nothing to do but keep flying, hoping Kern’s wing would hold, till I saw some place where we could set down without his having to put too much strain on his machine. It was just as likely to fall to pieces as he eased the stick back for the gentlest of landings, but that was something we had to risk.

Then at last I saw the long narrow valley ahead, with the straight white road running down the middle of it. I waved to the others to circle over the valley while I went down to inspect the road. I slid down, aware of the workers in the fields on either side stopping to look up at me, at some of them running in terror for the shelter of neighbouring trees; but I kept my attention on the white dirt road, looking for the thin shadows in the afternoon sun that would tell of ruts or holes in the surface. There appeared to’ be none and I banked steeply and climbed back. I made signs that I would go down first, Miss Tozer would follow and Kern would be the last to land.

I went back to the end of the valley, passing over a large mansion standing among trees, then slid in above the road. There were no telegraph poles bordering it to offer a hazard; and it ran without a bend in it for almost a mile. I put the Bristol down, felt the smoothness of the dirt and knew I was safe. I rolled down the road, eased to a stop and swung off into a field. I jumped down and ran back to the road.

Miss Tozer came in, steady as a bird, bounced a little as she touched, corrected and ran down towards me. She swung off into the field, got out and came running back. She stood beside me and watched as Kern, coming round in a wide flat bank so that he didn’t strain the upper wing too much, prepared to land. He came down steadily and I knew how he would be: one eye on the nose, the other on the wing above him. He was ten feet above the road, holding the nose up, when the wing started to shred off. It went back over his head in tatters at first, as if he had run into a flock of starlings; then the big strip tore off and I saw him duck as it flew straight at his head. Miraculously he jerked neither his hands nor his feet; he kept the plane steady while the upper wing disintegrated above him. I felt Miss Tozer clutch my arm, but I didn’t look at her, just kept my eyes on Kern as he brought his plane down to earth in as beautiful a landing as I’ve ever seen. He came rolling down the road and swung in beside us.

He climbed down, looking much less the dandy who had climbed into the cockpit this morning. I had recognized him for what he was, a womanizing loafer on whom time and his testicles hung heavy; but, God Almighty, he could fly a plane and that in my eyes forgave him a lot. Only I wasn’t going to tell him. With his bloody arrogance he’d have just nodded his head and agreed with me.

‘I got a bolt of lightning.’ He unwound the long silk scarf he wore, tied it round his middle like a belt; he was a Fancy Dan all right, and I wanted to throw up. But he was as cool as if he had just come in from ten minutes of uneventful circuits, and even my prejudiced eye could see that it was no act. He had probably got out of his burning plane, the day I had shot him down, with the same cool aplomb. ‘Fortunately, it was a small one.’

‘I’m just glad you’re safe.’ Then Miss Tozer sniffed the air, looked around. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘I thought it was your perfume.’ She had let go my arm, but still stood close to me.

‘Roses,’ said Kern. ‘What a beautiful sight.’

I turned my head to look behind me, following the direction of his gaze. Intent on watching Kern bring his plane down, I had not noticed before that the whole valley was one vast rose garden, split up the middle by the road. There were workers scattered throughout the fields; the closest were four women on the other side of the road. As Kern and I looked at them they flung their skirts up over their heads, hiding their faces; but everything they owned below the waist was exposed. Pubic hair and bare bottoms are common sights nowadays, but in 1920 we didn’t have the broadening education of television and only those with the fare to Paris or Port Said ever saw a blue movie. These women stood modesty on its head, but every woman to her own standards.

‘A charming custom,’ said Kern. ‘Purely local, no doubt.’

I looked at Miss Tozer, but she was staring up the road. In the distance there was a cloud of white dust, quickly coming closer. Then we saw that just ahead of it was a white horse galloping at full speed and a few moments later we recognized the rider of the horse as a woman sitting side-saddle. She came down on us like a Valkyrie, bringing the horse to a rearing halt only yards from us.

‘Good God, we must be in Roumania!’ said Kern. ‘It’s Queen Marie!’

But it wasn’t, though we didn’t know that at once. She quietened the prancing horse, sat elegantly in the saddle and looked us up and down. She said something in a language I didn’t recognize, then she spoke in heavily accented English. ‘You are English, yes? Those are English aeroplanes, are they not?’

‘We are English, American, German,’ said Miss Tozer and introduced us individually.

‘I am the Countess Ileana Malevitza.’ She had to be an aristocrat of some sort, or an eccentric; or both. She was wearing a bright red tunic, braided with silver and with silver epaulettes, over a royal-blue shirt and dark blue trousers tucked into riding boots that came above her knees. She had a black fur shako on her blonde head and a short sword swung in an enamelled sheath at her waist. Despite her coating of fine dust, the effect of her was striking. We’ve flown through that storm into Ruritania, I thought, and waited for the Drury Lane chorus, somewhere out among the rose bushes, to burst into song. I looked across the road again, ready to be bemused again by the bare bottoms and bellies, something I had never seen at Drury Lane, but the women had dropped their skirts now and stood watching us. That somehow made everything real.

‘You are welcome to my valley,’ said the Countess.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and found myself doing a Kern: I clicked my heels and bowed. ‘Where are we?’

‘In the Valley Malevitza. The border between Roumania and Bulgaria runs down the middle of this road, right through my house. You are in Roumania at this moment.’

‘And the young ladies are Bulgarian?’ Kern gestured towards the women standing among the rose bushes on the other side of the road.

‘Young? Your eyesight is not very good, Baron. Only one of them is young.’ The Countess gave them only a cursory glance, as if they were no more than thorns or faded blooms on the bushes.

‘I don’t think the Baron looked too carefully at their faces,’ said Miss Tozer.

The Countess laughed heartily: it came up out of her belly, like a fat man’s. ‘It is the custom among some of the women. They dare not show their faces to a strange man at first. What else they show is not an invitation. Their menfolk would cut the stranger’s throat if he thought it was.’

I saw the men standing further back in the rose fields. They had risen up from among the bushes; more women and children were also appearing. There must have been a hundred of them spread out through the fields on either side of the road, dark, silent figures among the blaze of red, pink and white blooms. Each man’s hand glittered: it was a moment before I realized each of them held a sharp pruning knife.

Sun Nan had got out of Miss Tozer’s plane. He looked pale and sick, but he put on his bowler hat against the fierce sun and stood holding on to the lower wing of the machine, doing a good job of looking dignified. The Countess glanced at him, but made no comment: like Kern she dismissed him as a servant. Nobody, in her book, would have an Oriental with him or her unless he was a servant.

‘Why did you land here in my valley?’

I explained the circumstances and pointed to the remains of Kern’s top wing. ‘I’m afraid the Baron can’t take off again until we repair that. Is there somewhere around here where we can stay, an inn or something?’

‘You will be my guests. Follow me.’ She swung her horse round. I wondered if we were supposed to gallop after her on foot.

‘Countess, I don’t want to leave the machines parked here with no one to look after them.’

I don’t know what I really expected to happen to the planes, unless I thought the rose-gatherers would attack them with their pruning knives. It struck me that none of these peasants, wild-looking and isolated in this mountain valley, had seen an aeroplane before, at least not on the ground and quite possibly not even in the sky. I had vague memories of reading of Balkan superstitions and there was no guarantee that these particular Balkans trusted the strange contraptions that had fallen down out of the clear hot sky into their midst. I had only a hazy idea where we were, but Dracula country couldn’t be too far away.

‘Bring them with you.’ She dug her heels into her horse and went up the road at full gallop, trailing a long thin veil of dust.

I shrugged, turned to the others. ‘She’s the hostess.’

‘I think she’s mad,’ said Miss Tozer. ‘Do you think we should stay with her?’

‘What choice do we have? Even if I can find some canvas and varnish right away, it’s going to take me at least two days to rebuild that wing.’

She hid her dismay, but I knew she had guessed it was not going to be a ten-minute repair job. Kern said, ‘You can go on without me and I’ll try to catch you up.’

I waited for Miss Tozer to give the decision, but she was looking at me. She was the boss, but with George Weyman’s departure I had become what I suppose one would call the technical manager. ‘I think it’s better we stick together, at least for the time being. We still have a few days in hand.’