No Highway (32 page)

When I got into his office, he said, “Sit down, Scott. I want to have a talk with you about this morning’s meeting. How well do you know Mr. Honey?”

“Not very well,” I said. “This matter of fatigue is the first job of his that I’ve investigated. He was working on it when I took over the department.”

“Is he a friend of yours? Do you know him personally?”

“No,” I said. “He’s been to my house a couple of times, and I’ve had his daughter staying with me for the last two days.” I told him about Elspeth.

“I take it that you’re friendly with him, then?”

“Not specially,” I said. “I think he has rather a hard time, living alone after the death of his wife and all that, sir. And I think he’s an able little man. As regards his daughter, I hope we’d do that much for any of my staff who got into a jam.”

“You think he’s able?”

“I do, sir.”

He drummed on the table for a moment, staring out of the window. “Well, I hope you’re right,” he said at last. He raised his head and looked at me kindly. “There’s going to be a row about this Reindeer, either way,” he said. “If it proves that there is real trouble in the tailplane, that you
and Honey are right, then there’s going to be Parliamentary trouble over the suspension of the North Atlantic service. People will start saying that this country can’t build aircraft so we’d better give up trying.”

“We can plough through that one, sir,” I said.

He nodded. “Of course we can. But if it goes the other way, and it turns out to be a mare’s nest—that there’s nothing wrong with the tailplane at all, then there’ll be trouble of a different sort. Then the Treasury will come in over the payment for the aircraft Honey wrecked at Gander. I rather wish you hadn’t thrown your weight on his side quite so definitely this morning, Scott.”

“There’ll be a row about that, will there, sir?”

“I’m rather afraid there will. I had the Treasury man with me for half an hour after lunch. He’s very much concerned about the action that Honey saw fit to take.”

“Too bad,” I said wearily. “But I can’t help that. Honey knew my views and what he did was certainly influenced by what he knew my attitude to be. You can’t go through life sitting on the fence. You’ve got to make decisions, and sometimes you’re pretty sure to make them wrong. If you’re going to chuck Honey to the lions, sir, you’ll have to chuck me too.”

He said doubtfully, “Oh, I don’t think it will come to that.” He stared out of the window for a minute; it was hot in his office and I was sweating a little. “You must have thought about this for a long time,” he said. “What makes you so positive that he is right?”

I could not relate the sum of tiny things that had built up my judgment, the strong hiking boots, the rocket thesis, the quality of his discourse upon automatic writing, his spartan mode of life, the beauty and intelligence of the women who had loved him. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve just got a hunch that he’s right.”

“From your experience?”

I knew he understood. “That’s right, sir,” I said eagerly. “I just kind of smell trouble here. Honestly, I think there’s something the matter with the Reindeer tail.”

“I believe I agree with you,” he said slowly. He smiled. “Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope you bring something definite back with you from Canada.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Good luck. You’ve got everything you want for the journey—money and tickets and all that?”

“Everything,” I said. “I’ll come back with the evidence all right, sir”—I smiled—“for or against.”

I went back to Ferguson’s office. “What did he want?” he asked casually.

“He wanted to break it to me that if the Reindeer hasn’t got fatigue trouble I could start looking for another job,” I said. “But he didn’t get around to putting it in so many words.”

I left the office and walked slowly across the Green Park towards the club. I was tired and dispirited; everything was massing up on me as if for a disaster, I had backed Mr. Honey in his fatigue theory because one has to take a positive line. I had thought it out and come to the conclusion that he was probably right, and I had plumped for that, but I could not overlook the other side of the question. What if he were wrong? He had never seen a washing-up mop or an electric hot-water heater; he had walked in a provocative procession and had been taken up by the police and charged with creating a breach of the peace. Lucky that Prendergast did not bring out that one at the meeting! Suppose, in fact, he was a stupid, trivial man; suppose, in fact, I found nothing wrong at all with the wreckage in Labrador? My name would then be mud; it would take a long time to live down the stink that this would make in official circles. Probably it would mean that there would be no more promotion for me at the R.A.E. In that case I would do better to get out of the country, go down to the bottom and start again, perhaps in Australia or New Zealand.

I sat for a long time on a bench in the park tired and trying to rest, wondering miserably if my life in my own country was coming to an end.

Presently I got up and went back to the club. Shirley was waiting for me there, and I ordered tea. “We got Elspeth moved all right,” she said. “She’s back in her own room now, with Miss Corder looking after her. She’s a nice girl that, Dennis.”

“She is,” I said. “Where’s she sleeping?”

She looked at me reproachfully. “In the little spare room, of course. All in among the suitcases. You didn’t think she’d sleep in Mr. Honey’s bed?”

“Not yet,” I said. She aimed a kick at my ankle under the table. “Is Elspeth happy to be back in her own place?”

“Oh yes. Marjorie was going to wash the stairs and the hall this afternoon, and she can talk to Elspeth while she’s doing that. After tea they were going to make toffee.”

“Where’s she going to get the sugar from?”

“Mr. Honey’s got about thirty pounds of it in the larder.
It’s their jam sugar ration for about four years. He doesn’t know how to make jam.”

“She’d better make him some.”

“She’s going to do that tomorrow. There are strawberries in the shops now, and they’re reasonably cheap.”

She turned to me. “How did the meeting go, Dennis?”

“Not too well,” I said. “There’s going to be the hell of a row if these machines have got fatigue and a worse one if they haven’t.”

“Oh, darling, I
am
sorry.”

Presently we left the club and walked across the park to the lecture hall; my lecture was at half-past six, but I had to go through the slides with the lantern operator first. Then came a period of waiting and nervous, distracted talk with various people in the industry while the hall filled up, till there was an audience; of six or seven hundred people. Finally I went through with the President on to the platform, with the Secretary behind me, and sat nervously trying to control my twiddling fingers while the President introduced me as the lecturer on the “Performance Analysis of Aircraft Flying at High Mach Numbers.”

When I got on my feet, all my nervousness vanished after the first few words. I was very tired and stale, but I knew my subject, and the familiar graphs and diagrams followed each other on the screen without a hitch. I spoke for about fifty minutes; at the end I was a little hoarse, and was glad to sit down and take a drink of water, happy that the damn thing was over. There was applause, of course; there always is. It seemed a terribly long time before it stopped; the next fence was the discussion, and then it would be over. To my dismay I saw Prendergast get heavily to his feet in the second row. I waited with sick anticipation for what he was going to say.

He said, “Mr. President and gentlemen. I have worked in this industry for nearly forty years, and during that time I have attended most of the meetings of this Society. I have several points on which I wish to cross swords with the lecturer, but at the outset I wish to pay my tribute to his clarity. I have very seldom listened to a lecture that explained so difficult a subject in such simple language. I am left with the feeling that the most inexperienced student in this hall must have learned as much as I have this evening, and I have learned a great deal which will be of value to me.”

I sat blinking as I listened to this incredible man. He
changed like a chamelion, but I sat back sick with relief that he was not going to go for me in public as he had that morning at the meeting. The fact that he then proceeded to tear to pieces my analysis of the critical area of the pressure plate based upon the harmonic surges that occur when passing through the compressibility zone did not worry me a bit; it was done constructively and in one instance at least suggested a line well worth further investigation. Morgan was there and I could see that he was pleased. Other speakers took their tone from Prendergast, and the discussion went on for another three-quarters of an hour. I replied to the various points as best I could, and then it was all over.

Shirley met me in the lobby. “Dennis, it was marvellous,” she said. “Everybody said it was awfully good. Was that Mr. Prendergast who spoke first?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“What a nice man he must be. I can’t think why people say such horrid things about him.”

I could, but I did not want to spoil her pleasure in the good reception that my talk had had, and so I marched her off back to the club and there we had dinner with a bottle of red Algerian wine to celebrate our success, and to put me to sleep on the plane, and a glass of port to follow. Then it was time to get a taxi and take my suitcase to the Airways terminal. On the steps I kissed Shirley good-bye.

“Back in about a fortnight,” I said. “Look after yourself.”

“You look after yourself,” she said a little tremulously. “Don’t go and get eaten by a moose in Labrador, or anything, Dennis.”

I said I wouldn’t, and we parted, and I went into the hall and showed my passport and my tickets. And as I turned away, a woman in a great fur came up behind me with a swirl, and it was Monica Teasdale.

“Evening, Miss Teasdale,” I said. “Are you crossing over tonight?”

She stretched out a hand in her most dazzling, professional gesture, that made me feel that everybody in the hall was taking note of us. “Say, Dr. Scott, isn’t this nice? Are you going over too?” And then she said, “Did you give your lecture? How did it go?”

“All right,” I said. “They didn’t throw any eggs.”

There were several sleek young men with shiny black hair and flashing eyes with her to see her off, and one portly old
gentleman with a very hooked nose; I drifted away and left her to her other life. We travelled down in different seats of the bus; at the airport I did not speak to her. I was amused to note that we were to travel in a Reindeer; I decided to ask no questions about that one and to refuse any invitation from the captain that I should go to the flight deck. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.

We took off, and as we climbed up on our way to the Atlantic I relaxed for the first time that day. The Algerian wine was doing its work; as I leaned back in the reclining chair fatigue came soaking out of me in great waves. Three rows ahead of me I could see Miss Teasdale’s auburn hair; as on Honey’s trip, the aircraft was only half full. After half an hour or so, when I was beginning to doze, she got up and went aft down the cabin; on her return she stopped beside me.

“Say, Dr. Scott,” she asked, “is this a Reindeer, too?”

I sat up. “I’m afraid it is,” I said. “But I don’t think you need be afraid of anything going wrong this time.”

She smiled, “Will we be landing at Gander again?”

“I imagine so,” I said.

She laughed. “You’ll be interested to meet your Mr. Honey there,” she said. “Mind if I sit down a little while and visit with you?”

“Do—please.” I picked my papers off the seat, and she sat down beside me. “I hope Honey will be on his way home by this time. The Lincoln that was to pick him up was due through Gander today.”

“He won’t be at Gander when we land?”

“I hope not. I hope he’ll be at home.”

She was silent. I glanced at her after a moment, and was surprised to see the hard lines of age and suffering on her face as she stared up the cabin. People had told me that she was over fifty, but I had never really believed it till then.

I said, “Are you going back to the west coast?”

She nodded. “I’ll go from Montreal to Chicago, and pick up with the airline there. I kind of like this way of travelling, unless there’s business in New York.”

“When will you be over here again?” I asked. “Do let us know, so that Honey can bring Elspeth up to see you.” It’s extraordinary how cruel one can be, quite unintentionally, when one is too tired to be careful any more.

She turned to me, and she was every day of fifty. “I don’t just know when that will be,” she said. “Maybe
not for some years. I guess a person ought to stay in her own place.”

I was more awake now to the situation. “Don’t think like that,” I said. “We’ve loved having you, and it’s been terribly kind of you to spend so much time with Elspeth. It’s taken a lot off Shirley.”

She said quietly, “It’s been real nice getting out of Wardour Street and Claridge’s a little while, and getting to know you folks in your homes. I never knew that British people lived so much like folks in the U.S. But I guess if you’ve been born American you’re better off in your own country. Maybe you British think the same way.”

“I think that’s true, after a certain age,” I said. “If you’re going to make your life in a new country you should go before you’re twenty-five. After that you start to get associations, little grooves and anchors, that make it difficult to change.”

She nodded. “I know it. Not only living places, either—that goes for what you do. Take pictures, now. You get set in pictures when you’re young and maybe you think you can give up and get right out of it any time you say, like marrying and bringing up a family like any other woman. But then when you come down to hard brass tacks, you find you can’t. So many little grooves and anchors, like you said.”

I said thoughtfully, “You mean you’ve got to make the pattern of your life before you’re twenty-five. I never thought of that, but I dare say it’s true.”