Flight From Honour (17 page)

In the ear-ringing silence, somebody said: “Fucking hellsfire,” and it sounded like a woman’s voice, but that was impossible, so Ranklin put it down to his stunned hearing. Then the room was flooded with Sherring employees and he found himself taking charge. “See if there’s any casualties on the far side of that wall. Where’s a place for Mrs Finn to lie down? And I think some brandy would help. No need to call the police
just
yet. Meanwhile,
thank
you—” He took the weapon from Viner’s trembling hands, uncocked it again, and laid it in the box.

“Thank you, James,” Corinna said, her voice shaky. “No, I don’t need to lie down, but brandy sounds a good idea.” Somebody found a decanter and glasses. “The rest of you can go now, the show’s over.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Viner said, his smile long gone. “Somehow a round must have—” He looked at Ranklin, puzzled.

“Perhaps you’d best stick to percentages.” She took a healthy swig at her glass and shuddered. “Ah, that’s better. Now, where were we? I seem to remember something about us agreeing to underwrite a hundred thousand – at five per cent, wasn’t it? A nice round shilling in the pound. I’m sure you can square that with whoever you find as principal.”

“I say, five per cent seems a bit—”

“But with building repair costs the way they are in this modern world, surely that isn’t too unreasonable?” Her voice had firmed up, though her smile was wide and friendly. “Now perhaps you’d get that thing out of here before it declares war again.”

Ranklin helped Viner pack up the gun and its pieces, then insisted on carrying it downstairs for him. “Quite a change from the usual financial confab,” he puffed cheerfully (it might be lightweight, but was still a machine-gun and the stairs were awkward). “Makes it an afternoon to remember.”

Ahead of him, Viner was shaking his head. “I feel such a fool . . . And now I’ve got to tell another bank that we’ve already committed a third of the issue. It’s really most awkward. Look, when you had the gun, did you—”

Ranklin didn’t want to dwell on that. “Considering that you nearly shot the boss’s daughter, I’d say you didn’t do too badly. Silence, as they say, is also golden. Getting back to Continental interest, would that include Italy?”

Outside on the pavement they found a policeman staring solemnly up at the building. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but somebody reported hearing a gunshot. D’you know anything about that?”

Viner looked at Ranklin, who said: “In a private bank? I hardly think so, Constable. But these old buildings are very sound-proof and my friend was telling me such interesting things about Italy . . .”

A little surprised that the short, tubby man in shirt-sleeves who carried big boxes around seemed to be in charge, the policeman said: “It wasn’t from this building, then, sir?”

“You could wait and see if they wheel out any casualties . . .” Ranklin shrugged as well as he could without dropping the box. “But probably just a motor-car backfiring.”

The policeman nodded gravely. “Thank you, sir.” But he only moved far enough to stare at the next building.

“Now,” Ranklin said. “Were you going to tell me about a certain Italian senator?”

“Was I?” Viner was looking around for his motor-car, and escape.

“I’m pretty sure you were, but . . .” Ranklin glanced pointedly at the policeman a few yards away.

“No deals have been done at all, just . . . Look, can you assure me that this . . . accident isn’t going to get talked about?”

“I feel on the brink of being sure.”

Viner hesitated for one last moment, then muttered: “God knows how he managed it, but we had Lord Curzon asking if we could help out. The Italian ended up with
two
of the things, and we’ve only got half a dozen.”

“Lord Curzon?”

“That’s what I said. Ah, there’s my motor.”

“And ammunition?” But that was a silly question; you could pick up British Army ammunition anywhere. Ranklin watched the motor-car drive off, reflecting that Dagner had enlisted a very big gun to get Falcone his small guns. Strictly, Curzon was now just an ex-Viceroy and out-of-office politician, but he wasn’t somebody a government contractor said No to. He might he Prime Minister of the next Unionist administration.

So it was just part of the ‘deal’ they’d done with Falcone. Should he mention to Dagner that he’d uncovered it? Perhaps not: it might seem that he’d been prying. Ranklin suddenly became aware that he was standing on a London street without his jacket on. Only the financial district, of course, but even so . . . He hurried back indoors.

Up in the partners’ room, Corinna was sitting and quite visibly shaking, her face pale even in the yellow lamplight. “I’m sorry . . . suddenly come on . . .” She gulped more brandy. “He could have
killed
me.”

A dreadful sense of guilt was clouding Ranklin’s judgment, and he almost said: “So could a passing motor-bus” but realised the light touch was wrong. So he put his arms around her and hugged her tightly. It was awkward, with her still sitting, but hardly less awkward than when she was standing, given her height. It was something they did best lying down.

Her shivering vibrated through his own body, then stopped, and he felt her take a deep breath. He said fiercely: “That idiotic bastard. I ought to have him jailed.”

As he’d hoped, she became magnanimous. “No, it was just stupidity. And it ended well enough . . . I’m okay, now. Here, finish this.” She gave him the brandy glass. “He wouldn’t have agreed to split the issue if he wasn’t feeling guilty. The trouble is, I can’t okay anything more than a hundred thousand and I’d like to have taken the lot. But I’ll take five thousand and a bullet-hole.”

“Only five thousand? – isn’t that rather small beer?”

“You’ve been reading the socialist newspapers again. Most of our earnings are from half a per cent here, a quarter there – steady stuff from clients who come back year after year. A big coup is rare, risky – and probably makes enemies, because if you suddenly make a pile, it’s usually because somebody else has suddenly lost it.” She found her purse and took out a small mirror. “Oh Lord, gunfire doesn’t improve one’s looks. Are you going back to your office?”

“Got to, I’m afraid.”

“You’d better get along: this is going to take time. We’re meeting at the Carlton tomorrow, then? And thank you. You’re pretty good under fire.”

Which made Ranklin feel even more guilty . . . Still, he
had
helped her make £5,000.

16

The next morning, the weather had changed its mind about it being autumn. The sun rose into a near-cloudless and windless sky and before the dew had dried, O’Gilroy made his first solo flight.

For brief periods over the last five days he had sat beside an instructor as they floated soggily around the aerodrome in a training machine with the honest but unlovely name of ‘Boxkite’. Set alongside the modern Sopwiths, Avros and Andrew Sherring’s Oriole, it looked like the work of a Chinese scaffolding company, but it flew. And the cage of struts and wires protected the novice from his own mistakes or the ground – which amounted to the same thing. In this, he had notched up just over two hours of flight.

That might not seem much, but others had solo’d with less. And the truth, which O’Gilroy wasn’t entirely ready to face, was that there wasn’t much to learn because aeroplanes couldn’t actually do much. They took off, turned, and landed; the rest was engine handling and navigation. It was only now that men like Pégoud were discovering what aeroplanes might really be made to do.

And now O’Gilroy was teetering on the edge of the nest. He could stop there, quit, walk away. But that thought lasted only long enough to remind him that he was here by choice. Then he checked the oil glass, which showed a proper one-drip-per-second, and eased the air lever forward a fraction, followed by the petrol lever. The engine – behind him in a Boxkite – whirred a little more urgently, the revs climbed past 1,100 and the machine ambled forward. There was no speedometer – ‘airspeed indicator’ they called it on more modern types – so he had to guess, to
feel,
when it wanted to fly. And nothing to tell if he was keeping straight, except an absurd thread of red wool tied to a strut and streaming back in the wind. Did that wind feel fast enough now? It felt quite different from when he had an instructor beside him. Perhaps a second or two more, like . . .
now
. He pulled gently on the wheel and the Boxkite did nothing. And then flew.

It lasted – intentionally – only seconds, just a straight-line “hop” of maybe three hundred yards from start to stop. But it also lasted an age, in which he had time to think that if he left the engine levers as they were he could climb and fly on beyond sight until his petrol ran out. Time to feel utter loneliness because no way in the world could anyone reach out a hand to help if he forgot what to do next. And time for his perverse mind deliberately to forget, to feel a total stranger in a contraption from another world where there was no grass beneath his feet, no scent of pines in the breeze, nothing familiar at all . . .

And still time for his body to remember before his mind did, so that he had pushed the foot-bar to straighten the thread of wool, eased back the petrol, then air, then pressed the “blip” switch to interrupt the ignition, felt and heard the wheels rumble back onto the ground, his ground, his world. He wondered if he would ever experience a flight so long.

Half an hour and three more hops later, he climbed down and lit a cigarette. His hands shook a little, but they hadn’t when it mattered, and that was as important as his instructor saying: “That was pretty good, you’re getting the hang of it. Next time you can do a couple of turns. Just one or two points to bear in mind . . .”

O’Gilroy looked back at the clumsy, unlikely contrivance that had, nevertheless, flown. No – that
he
had made fly. There was grass underfoot and a pine scent in the air, but the sky was part of that world, too. His world, now his sky.

*        *        *

The temperature climbed towards the seventies, promising a bad-tempered day under the attic roof of Whitehall Court. The stenographers went about shaking at the necks of their blouses when they thought nobody was looking, and Lieutenant J turned up late and disguised, he said, as a plumber’s mate. This involved a cool collarless shirt and no jacket. Dagner calmly sent him around the building knocking on doors and asking if they had reported a plumbing problem – then surprised Ranklin by erupting into laughter.

“That’s more like it. I
want
them trying to put one over on us. If they can do that, perhaps they can do it to others.”

“As long as we don’t get one of them coming in saying he’s disguised as an artist’s model.” But the others hadn’t got J’s flair. He came from a very aristocratic background and in him, that was an advantage. Being totally confident of who he was left him more time than most for studying others, and he had got the humble superiority of a skilled artisan exactly right.

*        *        *

Dagner insisted they arrive at the Carlton well ahead of the time Ranklin thought was politely early. But this was typical of Dagner’s manner generally, and – Ranklin recalled – most Indian society. Out there, they clung to the manners and slang of twenty years ago, convinced that England had Gone To The Dogs and was gripped by fads and fashions that Ranklin had noticed, if at all, as mere ripples.

They ordered tea and Dagner insisted that a fresh pot be brought
the moment
Mrs Finn arrived. The tables were spaced for privacy even without the potted-palm jungle waving around them in the blast of fans that countered the unseasonable warmth.

Dagner said abruptly: “Am I right in thinking that the contract for Mr Sherring’s aeroplane has been agreed?”

“I think it gets signed tomorrow. Mrs Finn’s been handling the financial end.”

“I believe she understands money.” But Dagner said it without any implications; perhaps wives running an Indian household were also expected to understand money – though not in freight-car lots, as Corinna herself might have put it.

“And,” Ranklin said sombrely, “I presume the Senator now goes home to start his sabotage strike in Trieste.”

Dagner wore a smile of curiosity. “Are you concerned that he won’t be able to do it – or that he will, and it’ll get out of hand?”

“Getting out of hand.”

“Oh, I think Europe can absorb a little local squabbling.”

“Less than a year ago, I was tramping around the Greek mountains with a brigade of French 75’s.”

“But that
was
only a local war,” Dagner pointed out. “Though I know no war seems local when you’re fighting it. The Great Powers, led by ourselves, kept it so – and imposed a peace.”

“It brewed up again within weeks.”

“And
again
it was stopped from spreading. Perhaps you were too close to see how remarkable that was: after all these centuries, Europe realised it had the power to stop wars as well as start them. The
Pax Britannica
became a
Pax Europa.
I doubt we’ll ever stop local wars any more than we’ll stop crime. But a mature society can contain crime, not be destroyed by it.”

Ranklin was hunched over his teacup, brooding back to the winter roads of Greece. But the memory was useless; the front line taught you nothing about diplomacy and Big Causes. You were too concerned about where the next shell would land.

He sighed. “Perhaps. I still feel there’s a risk . . . Here she comes: we might ask her, she travels more than I do.”

Corinna had felt untypically self-conscious about meeting Ranklin’s new boss – of whom she’d only just heard anyway. She guessed that her suitability was on trial, which gave her the choice of being infuriated by their gall, or meekly going along with it for Ranklin’s sake. So she got privately furious in a speech which almost melted her dressing-table mirror, then put on a demure tea gown of pastel silk (she liked stronger colours) and a stupid little flowerpot hat (with her height, she preferred wide hats). She already had such clothes because she sometimes had to be demure as the daughter of Reynard Sherring. But this wasn’t helping any million-dollar deal, this was being demure as
herself.
Grrr.