Ghosts of Engines Past (36 page)

“I'm sorry to hear it.”

“Thank you. I could leave him, but I can't. Money is involved, a lot of money. My father may be an earl, but he is a very poor earl. My marriage saved him from bankruptcy, but I am stuck out here on the Yorkshire Downs in a loveless marriage with only novels for company. Sometimes I wish I could die.”

“Master Walter seems to hate me as much as you, ladyship.”

“Walter hate me? It's strange, but I don't think so. Lord Raslin wants grandchildren, and Walter blames him for his sweetheart's death. By not bedding me, Walter can hurt his father, so I am just his weapon. Take my advice, girl, don't marry for love
or
money.”

From somewhere outside there came the boom of a shotgun, followed by shrieks of terror. Through the window I could see five women fleeing for the manor house while Walter tore down their easels and jumped up and down on their paintings.

“Oh dear,” sighed Caroline. “One of the ladies of the Parish Auxiliary Landscapers Society must have included Walter's factory in her painting. I did warn them.”

Tommy conducted my lessons in the main factory shed, which allowed me to observe what was happening there. The small steam turbine engine whined like a lost soul when it was running, and was so loud that it hurt my ears. Walter ran it far beyond safe speeds, and it was able to empty four tons of water from a tank in less than a minute. Then there was the liquid oxygen, which was terrifying. The technique for producing it had only recently been invented, so few understood its dangers. In my third week there, a workman pouring liquid oxygen from one large Dewar flask to another must have become careless. Pure oxygen had permeated his clothing, and when he went outside and lit a match for his pipe, he became a human fireball.

Walter liked to frighten me by dipping flowers in liquid oxygen and then dropping them on the floor where they would shatter. It may have just been cruelty, but I think he somehow sensed that I really was a spy. I would scream, Walter would laugh, and Tommy would rush over to comfort me. It was harrowing, but it was better than being shot at.

I had begun flirting with Tommy to do my spying all the better, but as the days passed I found myself really looking forward to our lessons, and feeling distraught when he could not meet with me. He was a type of person who had not previously been in my life: a bright and decent young man. Being the driver of the shunting engine, he traveled the five miles to Doncaster nearly every day, and as my fourth week at Wallsford began he invited me to ride the engine with him. I made some excuse to Lady Caroline about needing to go to Doncaster to buy soap and bank my savings, and was given two hours off after promising I would work late to make up the time. The shunting engine's top speed was scarcely thirty miles per hour, but for me the trip in the open cabin with the wind all around us, the roar of the furnace, and the rattling of the wheels was the most exciting thing imaginable.

Before Tommy took me to the shops
,
he had to sign over the long wagon to the Doncaster factory for a tank to be filled with liquid oxygen. There was more than liquid oxygen being produced in the place, however. Against one wall were two giant airfans, each ten feet across. Next to them was the streamlined shell for the test locomotive. Not far away were metal wings that looked as if they had been cut from a bat the size of a tugboat. I longed to walk over and examine them, but that would not have fitted my guise of a poor, ignorant scrubber girl. I made estimates and mental notes as I pretended to gaze about in wonder. It was clear to me that a huge flying machine was being built.

Tommy was in a serious mood as we wandered the streets, eating the pies we had bought for lunch.

“Word is that Lord Raslin's to come here at week's end,” he announced.

“He's Master Walter's dad, isn't he?” I asked.

“Aye, and the word for the future's not good. Word has it that he's to close the place down. He's lost patience with Master Walter.”

“Does that mean we'll be fired?”

“Oh aye, but not to worry. I'll not have trouble getting a job as a shunter in Leeds or York, and after the work you've done on the manor house, I reckon her ladyship will take you back to London with her.”

I could see where he was leading. We would be separated, and he did not like the idea. After three weeks of being treated kindly and decently, neither did I.

“I don't suppose she'd give me a letter of introduction to some posh house in Leeds or York?” I asked.

At those words he took my hand in his.

“If she doesn't, we could make do on a driver's wages.”

“That we could.”

In a strange way I had just accepted a proposal of marriage.

We finished our pies and continued our walk back to the shunting yards at the Liquid Air Works. The tank on the long wagon was still being filled with liquid oxygen, so we waited by the shunting engine.

“If we're to be married, it's a bit strange for us not to have even kissed,” said Tommy.

Now I felt alarm. I was being swept deeper and deeper into an identity that I could never live. I had been acclaimed as a mathematical genius in Poland, yet Tommy thought I was an ignorant scrubber girl trying to make good. He would be mortified, even humiliated when he found out... but then and there it was easier to just forget the future and kiss him. After all, he was quite handsome and very gallant.

I was beside Tommy when the factory foreman signed the long wagon over to be taken back to Wallsford.

“Overtime all round for week te come,” he commented. “Big test, says young master.”

“Big test of what?” asked Tommy. “We've not got the main turbine.”

“Course we have. It's mounted on long wagon.”

“Not that little one, the big bleeder. The one with ninety thousand horsepower.”

“Young master says it's to be ready. Young master's paying the wages, so why should I say otherwise?”

I was almost bursting with questions, yet I kept my tongue firmly clamped between my teeth.

“Where's the assembly to be done?” asked Tommy.

“Not been told. Damn monster's sixty feet across wi' wings on. Nary a building hereabout can put a roof over that, or open doors te let it out.”

As their conversation wandered onto schedules and loads, I began assembling the huge, steel flying machine in my mind. I estimated the wings, airfans, and streamlined body to weigh about thirty tons, and I had also heard the figure four tons for paraffin and liquid oxygen bandied about. I could not even guess the weight of the big steam turbine, but it was unlikely to be less than ten tons. The total weight was probably in excess of forty-four tons.

I was finally piecing together Walter's vision. It was a forty-four ton aircraft powered by a ninety thousand horsepower steam turbine. It had fifteen miles of absolutely straight railway track to roll along as it gathered speed. Landing might prove to be a problem, but he had probably thought that out.

All the way back to Wallsford I pretended to be dreaming about my future with Tommy, but in fact I was trying hard
not
to think about what lay ahead for us. There would have to be a confession of who I really was, and I was a spy, illegal immigrant, and mathematical genius. Worse, I had used Tommy's well-meant lessons as an excuse to spy on the factory. He would feel betrayed, ill-used and humiliated, and any chance of a future together would be lost. Instead I thought about ninety thousand horses towing forty-four tons of flying machine into the air.

As we neared Wallsford Downs we saw the vicar frantically pedaling his bicycle along the road while Walter rode beside him, beating him with a riding whip.

“Aht, he must have got too close to the factory on his pastoral visit,” explained Tommy.

Now I realised why Lord Raslin's spies had been caught so easily. Practically everyone entering the estate was set upon and beaten or shot at. Walter's lunacy was in part an act, I knew that now. When dealing with his factory workers and engineers I had observed that he was calm, attentive, and even friendly. If the histrionics were an act, then what was his agenda? This was proving harder to deduce than the design of his engine.

For the rest of the afternoon I avoided the future by calculating continually in my head as I swept, scrubbed and dusted. When I finally locked myself in my room for the night I covered the slate with calculations by the light of a tallow candle, and even when I finally got into my bed and closed my eyes the figures and equations continued to waltz through my head.

The equations were the main problem. Too many of the constants in them were still variables, so I could not be sure of anything. How much lift would the wings provide? How much thrust would the airfans deliver? How much did the aircraft really weigh? The puzzle's pieces were laid out before me, but most of them were painted black. Even when assembled, the picture had more gaps than substance.

The week that followed was absolutely frantic. Walter was in such a frenzy to be ready for his father's visit that he ceased to care about whether or not I was a spy. I hauled bagloads of discarded drawings and notes out of the drafting office to be burned in the factory's furnace, but the figures and drawings that I managed to glance at were only refinements on what I already knew. The factory was put on two twelve hour shifts, and the thunder of the steam chamber rolled out every night as it burned liquid oxygen and paraffin in test firings. I saw little of Tommy, because he was making as many as seven trips a day to the Doncaster factory in his engine.

True to his word, Lord Raslin arrived at the end of my fourth week at Wallsford Downs. Naturally he did not so much as glance my way when the household was lined up before him on the day of his arrival. I could not risk writing a
report, so I knew I would have to deliver my findings face to face. For the first two days I was ignored, then on the third I was cleaning Caroline's bedchamber when his lordship simply walked in and stood beside the door with his hands in his pockets.

“My butler is making sure that nobody sees us together,” he said quietly. “What have you to report?”

“Your son is building a steam turbine engine that can deliver ninety thousand horsepower,” I replied as I continued with my dusting. “My calculations show that a machine powered by such a device might well exceed three hundred miles per hour.”

At this news Lord Raslin's composure cracked.

“But—but that would put London and Edinburgh just one hour apart!” he exclaimed. “Wait, no, the existing tracks could not sustain a train traveling at even one hundred miles per hour, let alone three times as much.”

“But were the turbine in a flying machine, you would need no tracks.”

Lord Raslin was genuinely stunned by his son's vision. In the minutes that followed I gave my employer a briefing on what I had learned.

“He has been building his flying machine in two places,” I concluded. “I have never seen the big turbine, so it must be in some third factory. It has never been tested with the steam generator, so I estimate the first flight is at least a month away, if not more.”

Lord Raslin stood staring at the carpet and considered this for perhaps half a minute, then he shook his head and looked up.

“So, Walter has replaced his love of Elizabeth with a grand vision,” he said. “Laudable indeed, but that will not preserve our family name. I want grandsons, not steam engines. What about that?”

“What your son does or does not do with his wife was not to be my concern, sir.”

“Of course not, and you have done well. So, my son wants to fly, does he? Good, I think I have him where I want him. Today I shall draw up papers giving control of his finances to Lady Caroline, and making her my sole heir. If Walter, ah, fulfills his marital obligations with her, I shall burn those papers. If not, he will lose another dream.”

“But you could have done that without spying on him,” I pointed out, not following his logic. “Why bother employing me?”

“Because I had to be sure that Walter had a dream that he was truly passionate about. Now that I know he values this, this steam aircraft, I can threaten to take it away.”

“What of me? I did everything you asked.”

“And you did splendidly. You papers are with my solicitors, and you will be given permission to claim them before I leave tomorrow.”

I should have been overjoyed. Instead I felt as fearful as a woman in a death cell, awaiting the hangman. My life was at the crossroads. I could tell Tommy the truth that very hour, but he would hate me for using him to spy on his master. That meant losing him. I could burn the papers I had worked so hard for, marry Tommy, and live out my life as a housewife who was unusually good at adding up and multiplying. That meant losing my career. Whatever I did, I lost something dear to me. Mathematics could not tell me what to do, but it could help me to run away from horrible decisions for a few more hours.

All day I went about my tasks with numbers pouring through my mind. While scrubbing floors, I worked out the torque that would be produced by a ninety thousand horsepower steam turbine. I concluded that the lightweight gearwheels and axles that I had seen in Walter's diagrams would disintegrate long before full power was achieved, provided the turbine blades did not shatter first. As I boiled water for the laundry I calculated flow rates for liquid oxygen and paraffin, and the volume and temperature of the resulting exhaust gases. I concluded that the metals currently available for the construction of turbines would fail catastrophically under such an onslaught. As I dusted, I pondered the impossibly large weight of Walter's aircraft. While having a cup of tea, I wondered whether the technology of the steam turbine had actually eluded Walter, and that he was keeping his defeat a secret.

At noon there were raised voices upstairs, and I knew that Lord Raslin had delivered his threat. Walter stormed out of the mansion, and through a window I saw him turn and shake his fist at the upstairs balcony.

“Aye, I'll preserve the family name all right!” he shouted to his father. “After tonight the family name will live on long after even the queen herself is forgotten.”