No Highway (17 page)

I said, “That’s right. We’re getting rather concerned about the possibility of fatigue trouble in the tailplane. We’ve got people working on it on the highest priority now, and we’ve sent a member of the staff to Canada to have another look at the prototype Reindeer structure that crashed in Labrador. We’ve come to the conclusion that until this matter is cleared up no Reindeer ought to fly more than 700 hours. It was rather a shock when I heard this morning that one of your machines had done 1,400.”

“Well, it’s very disconcerting having this sprung upon us at a moment’s notice,” he said. “I can’t think what the Ministry are up to. They haven’t said a word to us about it and the A.R.B. don’t know a thing about it, either.”

“It’s not the Ministry,” I said. “It hasn’t got as far as them yet, on an official level, that is to say. Ferguson knows all about it, of course. It’s all come up very recently, very recently indeed.”

He asked, “The firm—Rutlands—do they know anything about it?”

I said, “Not yet.”

“The only people who know anything about it, then, are your department down at Farnborough?” He was becoming hostile.

“That’s right,” I said. “Everything starts down here. As a matter of fact, we thought we had plenty of time to get the whole thing sorted out before any question of grounding your existing machines arose. We were told that none of your Reindeers had done more than 400 hours. Then we sent one of our staff across last night by C.A.T.O., and he seems to have discovered in the air that the machine that he was flying in had done over 1,400, which just about coincides with our theoretical estimate of the time to failure of the tailplane in fatigue.”

He broke in, “Who told you that? Who told you that none of our machines had done more than 400 hours?”

I hesitated. “Ferguson,” I said at last. Obviously everything was going to come out now. “We put the inquiry through him.”

“It didn’t come to me,” he retorted. “I must say I would rather like to know why that was. Who did Ferguson get his information from—the office boy? If you people would only have the courtesy to come to the right person when you want to know anything, you might get the right answer.”

It would not do to tell him at this stage that I had asked Ferguson to get the information without calling too much attention to the inquiry. I said, “Look, Mr. Carnegie, let’s settle on the action now and we can have the inquest and the slanging match later. I understand the Reindeer that our Mr. Honey is travelling in is at or near Gander at this moment. We say it must be grounded right away, wherever it is. You must take my word for it that the machine is in a dangerous condition.”

There was a long silence. I said at last, “Are you there, Carnegie?”

“I was just thinking,” he replied. “I know nothing whatever about this, because you haven’t thought fit to take me into your confidence. But at the same time I am responsible for the technical state of the aircraft of this organisation. What you suggest that I should do is to tell the Traffic side that this Reindeer is no longer airworthy, when I myself know of no technical reason why it shouldn’t go on flying. Is that what you want?”

Put in that way it sounded very awkward. “Yes I suppose so,” I said. “I’m sorry to put you in that position, but we’re all in a difficulty together over this.”

He said evenly, “I’m sorry, too. And what’s more, I won’t do it. If you want that aircraft grounded without giving us more technical reasons than we have had up to date, you’ll have to do it on a higher level.”

“Look, Mr. Carnegie” I said. “I’ll give you all the technical reasons that you want as soon as we can get together, but we can’t do that over the phone. I’ll come to you, or you come to me, and we’ll have a session on it, this evening, if you like. But we’ve got to stop that Reindeer flying now, this minute.”

He said, “All right. Get your Director to ring up my Chairman—Sir David’s in his office. If you’re making
it
a question of confidence because of the time element, then that’s the way to do it.”

I bit my lip. “I can’t do that,” I said. “The Director’s in London, at a meeting of the Aeronautical Research Committee.”

He was on that one like a knife. “Does he know anything about this?”

“He knows of our suspicions about fatigue trouble,” I said. “He doesn’t know that one of the machines has done 1,400 hours.”

“Well, don’t you think you’d better take him into your confidence first of all, even if you don’t take us?”

I became angry. “Look, Mr. Carnegie,” I said. “All that can be settled later. I’m telling you now that in the view of this Establishment that Reindeer is in a grossly unsafe condition and should not fly one moment longer. The time is now eleven-fifteen, when I have told you that. If there’s an accident, that will be my evidence at the court of inquiry. Whether you ground it now is entirely up to you, but you’ll get a letter grounding it in the post tomorrow. That’s all I’ve got to say to you.”

He said evenly, “Well, Dr. Scott, I hear what you say. And I will think it over and discuss it with my Chairman. The only thing I have to say now is that it’s most difficult for us to do our job and keep the airline running if you people are allowed to carry on like this.”

I put down the receiver, breathing rather quickly, and glanced at my watch. We had been talking for ten minutes, and I had told Shirley that I would be with her by that time. I rang for Miss Learoyd again, and when she came I was at the door with my hat on. “Miss Learoyd,” I said, “I’ve got to go out for an hour, but I’m expecting several rather urgent calls. Will you sit in here and take them, and tell everyone that I’ll ring them—oh, say at two o’clock.” I left her, and hurried away down to my car.

I stepped on it on my way to Farnham, because I was anxious to get Shirley settled up and get back to my office and my row. I could not imagine what had happened to Elspeth Honey, and I had an unpleasant feeling that whatever had happened to her was partly my fault, for having sent her father off to the other side of the world at such short notice that he hadn’t had time to make proper arrangements for her.

The door of the house was ajar; I parked the car and went in. I heard Shirley’s voice upstairs, and went up. Elspeth was lying in her bed, which was tumbled and slept in; she was an unpleasant greyish colour with a huge bruise on her forehead close up to the hair; she seemed to be unconscious. Shirley was there with an elderly woman, Mrs. Stevens from next door.

Shirley and I withdrew on to the landing. “What happened?” I asked.

She said, “I really don’t know, but I think she must have fallen downstairs some time in the night. I was just a bit worried, Dennis, because she didn’t turn up at school this morning, and you know I never thought much of this charwoman arrangement. So I came round here at break, but the front door was locked, of course, and I couldn’t get in. Well then I looked through the window in the door, and, darling—there she was, lying in a heap at the foot of the stairs, in her pyjamas. I couldn’t make her hear, or anything, so I went round to the back and broke the kitchen window and got in, and there she was.”

I said, “I’m frightfully sorry. But wasn’t the charwoman here last night?”

“I don’t think she can have been. But I don’t know. I don’t even know who she is.”

“How is she now?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Very much the same. I think she’s warmer than she was—she was terribly cold. Mrs. Stevens helped me to carry her upstairs to bed, and we’ve got three hot bottles in bed with her. I do wish the doctor would come.”

I stood by the door looking in. The little dark-haired girl lay in bed with eyes half open but immobile, like a dead rabbit; she looked very like her father. My wife said softly, “Poor little brat. It
is
a shame.”

There was nothing more that we could do, for the moment, till Dr. Martin turned up. I stood there with them in silence. Back in my office the telephone, I knew, would be ringing almost continuously as various infuriated people tried to find me; the storm would, be mounting as frustrations multiplied because I was not at the office. Too bad; they would have to multiply. I had to tackle each of my responsibilities in turn; one thing at a time.

The doctor came at last; I knew him slightly. We told him all we knew; then he went in to her with Shirley. He came out after ten minutes, and we went down to the sitting-room, so called, that was Honey’s drawing office.

“Well,” he said, “she’s got concussion, of course. I can’t find any fracture. You think she fell downstairs; the bruising supports that. She was alone in the house … I think that’s very wrong, if I may say so.” He stared at us severely. “A child of that age is much too young to be left alone at night.”

“I quite agree with you,” I said. “Unfortunately, her father is abroad and the arrangements that he made for her seem to have broken down.”

He nodded. “Well, she needs care now. She’ll probably wake up before long, and when she does there may be a good deal of vomiting. She must stay in bed for at least a week. I’ll look in again this afternoon. Who is in charge of her?”

There was an awkward pause. “I don’t think anybody is,” said Shirley. “There’s only us.”

I explained. “I’m the head of his department at the R.A.E.”

“Well, who is going to look after her?”

I said doubtfully, “Couldn’t she go into a hospital?”

“Not here,” the doctor said. “I haven’t got a bed. We might be able to get her into Guildford or Woking.”

Shirley said, “Dennis, we can take her. I mean, we
are
mixed up in it, in a sort of way. And if it’s only being sick and that sort of thing—well, I can cope with that. I think we ought to take her. I’d hate to think of her waking up in hospital amongst strangers.”

I said, “Yes, old thing—but where? You couldn’t keep her here?”

She turned to the doctor. “Could we take her to our flat? Can she be moved?”

In the end we telephoned for the ambulance and put her on the stretcher unconscious as she was, and took her to the flat and put her in bed. We both skated over the implications of that, because Shirley and I only had one bed between us and we put Elspeth in that one, and there was no other bed in the flat. We shelved the problem of where we were going to sleep ourselves till bedtime got a little nearer, and that was the quiet evening on which I had planned to sit down and run over my lecture on the “Performance Analysis of Aircraft Flying at High Mach Numbers.”

By the time all that was done and sorted out it was ten minutes past two; I had had no lunch and had to get into my car and dash back to the office to catch up with my blazing row.

Miss Learoyd had a whole list of people who had left their numbers asking or demanding that I should ring them. There was Ferguson and Seabright in the Ministry, and Carter in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, and Sir David Moon of C.A.T.O., and Drinkwater in the Air Registration Board and—my heart sank—Mr. Prendergast of the Rutland Aircraft Company, the designer of the Reindeer.

I asked Miss Learoyd to see if she could locate the Director. She asked his secretary, who told her that after his committee meeting he had intended to come back by Kew Gardens, to look at the flowers.

I sighed, and put in a call first of all to Ferguson. But before it came through, the exchange asked me if I would take an incoming call. It was from Sir David Moon, the Chairman of C.A.T.O.

He said, “Is that Dr. Scott?”

“This is Scott speaking,” I replied.

“Is a Mr. Honey a member of your department, Dr. Scott?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s not here at the moment. He’s in Canada.”

“I am very well aware of that,” he said. “I have been trying to make contact with your Director, but he seems to be away. Are you aware of what your Mr. Honey has been doing, Dr. Scott?”

“No—I haven’t heard from him yet. There’s hardly been time.” I wondered what on earth the trouble was.

“Then you don’t know that he has been responsible for destroying one of our aircraft?”

I had a sudden sickening feeling in my stomach. “Destroying one of your aircraft? Whatever do you mean, sir?”

“I understand that he deliberately raised the undercarriage while the machine was standing on the ground at Gander. I need hardly say that the damage is very extensive indeed.”

I was staggered. “But—but how could he have done that? There must be some mistake, sir. Our people don’t make errors of that sort.”

“I tell you, this wasn’t an error,” he said forcibly. “It was done deliberately and maliciously, according to the report we have received.”

“I’m afraid I just can’t believe that,” I said. “I know Mr. Honey very well. He’s not a fool. You say this happened at Gander?” I was beginning to recover from the shock and think.

“That is correct.”

“What sort of aircraft was it?” I inquired.

“A Reindeer.”

“The Reindeer that he had flown over in last night? The one that was on loan to A.B.A.S. and had flown 1,400 hours?”

“I don’t know how many hours it had flown. Thanks to the antics of your officer, it will be a long time before it flies again.”

I said, “If that’s the machine, Sir David, this may possibly be true. Have you seen Mr. Carnegie since I spoke to him this morning, insisting that that aircraft should be grounded?”

He said, “Yes, I have. And I may tell you here and now, Dr. Scott, that this organisation will not tolerate technical secrecy where our aircraft are concerned. If you suspect at any time that there are latent defects in the aircraft that we operate, it is your duty to come forward and tell us immediately. I understand from Mr. Carnegie that you have been considering a defect in the tailplane of the Reindeer for some weeks behind closed doors, till suddenly you came forward this morning and demanded that a certain aircraft should be grounded and put out of service at ten minutes’ notice, without disclosing any technical reason for your action. Now, is that correct or not?”

“Broadly speaking,” I said slowly, “that is quite correct. It came as a complete surprise to us this morning to learn that a Reindeer had done 1,400 hours. When we got that news quick action became necessary, and we decided that it must be grounded right away. Tell me, this machine that had the undercarriage accident at Gander—was that the same machine?”