The Lost Flying Boat Read Online Free Page B

I’m having.’ He called for double whiskies. Such stuff on top of a pint would clog my brain for the afternoon, but I was in no mind to refuse. ‘What sort of wireless were you in?’
    I put the beer aside for a chaser, and lifted the whisky. ‘Mainly direction-finding.’
    â€˜The old huff-duff, eh?’
    â€˜The same.’
    â€˜Do any ops?’
    â€˜I was too late.’ Lots of aircrew ended in the cookhouse, pushing food out to the queues. I was lucky to get on the radio at all.
    â€˜As long as you can handle the gear in a plane.’
    â€˜What sort of plane?’
    â€˜Flying boat. I need somebody for a couple of months. If you want a job.’
    I looked interested. ‘I might.’
    â€˜Did you do a gunnery course?’
    â€˜Only the basics. They didn’t even want gunners. The war ended, remember?’
    â€˜Don’t I know it?’ He kept silent, and left me wondering whether he really had a proposition to make. Then he said: ‘You’ll get five hundred a month, plus expenses. And come out with another thousand in your pocket.’
    I needed a job like I’d soon need a suit to walk about in. ‘Sounds a fair screw.’
    He slid down the other half of his whisky. ‘It’s more than eight-and-six a day!’
    â€˜But is it legal?’
    He nodded.
    Hard to believe, but I was in no state to argue.
    â€˜When can you start?’
    I was off my food. ‘I don’t know. After you’ve told me what it’s all about.’
    â€˜Now?’
    â€˜If you like.’
    â€˜I’m being set up in a charter business, and need a wireless operator to make up the crew. Do you have a civvy ticket?’
    I did.
    â€˜All right. But no questions about legality. I don’t like it.’
    He was the skipper, so I soft-pedalled the interrogatives – and stopped whistling morse from that time on. He said that the original wireless operator, who had been a member of his old crew, had pulled out on hearing his wife was pregnant. He’d only got the phone call that morning, and was at his wits’ end for a replacement.
    â€˜A Super Constellation leaves for Johannesburg in three days.’ We were in his South Kensington flat to settle my travel details and sign articles that, I thought, may not be worth the paper they’re written on.
    8
    On the quayside Bennett introduced me to Nash, his chief gunner. A squall hid the flying boat to which, day after day, a pinnace went out with supplies from Shottermill’s warehouse. I wondered how we could need a gunner, but kept silent. To ask questions was to have curiosity prematurely crushed, and the hope taken out of expectation. In any case I could wait, no matter what risk such a course might put me or others in.
    No landing ground is necessary for a flying boat, and because water covers two-thirds of the earth it has more advantages than any other machine: a combination of Icarus successful and the dolphin tamed. As the huge and handsome boat lifts, its hull bids farewell to the fishes at the same moment that its wings say good day to the birds. The craft meets both and spans two elements, an aerodynamic ark speeding through cloud and clear sky in turn. I had no wish to know what was carried, wanted only to make the flight and collect my bounty.
    A policeman skiddled his stick along the corrugated wall of the shed. Bennett peered intently, as if to bring the flying boat back into clarity. ‘Am I going to take that thing off again? I often wonder how much longer I can do it.’
    Nash’s laugh was the kind that passes between people who have known each other a long time. It was meant only for Bennett. ‘They used to say you could do anything with the old flying boat, Skipper, except make it have a baby.’
    â€˜On this trip I’ll need to make it have two – if we’re to get back.’
    Nash knelt to tie his shoelaces, then said: ‘I