The Call of the Thunder Dragon (60 page)

Then the engine behind them
simply stopped.

“What in Thunder?” Falstaff
called out in sheer terror, there was no time to do anything.
“We’re going down!”

He throttled down to a minimum,
turned the Caproni into the wind and dipped the nose. With two
engines gone, the third could do little to help the big biplane
remain in the air.

The floodplain extended flat
beyond a thick belt of trees along the banks. There were no houses
nearby or boats on the shallow river. Falstaff’s eyes suddenly
filled with icy tears. He swallowed. This is it he thought, where
it ends. His instinct kept them flying. His eyes flickered reading
the instruments. His hands carried on their work mechanically.

“Fifty feet!” Falstaff croaked.
‘This was it’. The river was shallow, the stream of water rippling
over rocks and pebbles. ‘We are going to be smashed to bits’ he
anticipated.

He gritted his teeth suddenly
remembering the letter to Hong Kong. He’d never get there to fulfil
that promise now! He’d wanted to fly over the Great Wall. He’d
never see England again or hear what happened in the war. He wanted
to feel the hot burning sand on his back, - down on the beach at
Bora Bora, drinking coconut milk and rum. He looked at Zam, he
thought of rabbits and Zam naked in a warm bed of furs.

“Fly with me again?” He shouted
and steered the Caproni to follow the river, the westerly wind
changed from a headwind to a fierce crosswind. They twisted
crabbing forward as Falstaff fought the rudder, hands on the
throttle for the remaining single engine. Nothing was holding them
up now it was a slow forward fall.

“I hope I was a good man for you
Zam?”

“No, you are a very bad man!” She
answered.

Falstaff’s head jerked round to
look at Zam in surprise.

The nose of the plane dipped.
Inevitably the floats hit the water. The front toes of the floats
dug in, twisting the Caproni towards the bank. Falstaff pulled back
gently on the yoke and put on reverse rudder. The Caproni slipped
under the canopy of the trees. The port wing ripping and cracking,
smashed to pieces by a tree on the bank. The Caproni paused then
went on trundling into a sandy bank. The port undercarriage
buckled. The floats popped free, twisting like a pair of discarded
and broken skates thrown into the trees.

Falstaff awoke to the sound of
the Starboard engine purring gently. It was still running, the
propeller just clear of the mud and trees.

“Well, if only they could all run
like that?” He said aloud. He wondered to himself, the irony, the
only engine he never bothered much with, was it a sign?

He flexed his knees. Stretched
his legs, his joints popped painfully. He stopped the engine.
Abruptly he could hear the river and swish of the wind in the
trees. There was something missing, then he remembered.

“Bunny baby, where are you?” He
shouted as he turned to look for Zam. There was no sign of her. He
looked around and found her lying asleep in the nacelle, surrounded
by the empty and dented cans of gasoline and oil.

“Zam?” He felt her pulse and
shook her gently. She murmured softly.

He took a deep breath and noted
the smell of gasoline in the air and looked at Zam’s position
again.

“Damn, it’s always something!
These fumes will kill you if I can’t get you out soon!”

Zam remained unmoved.

Dragging her to the cockpit he
managed to drag her feet first and then lifted her to lie over the
bow.

He shivered and thought about
resting, then he remembered his Highland training.

“Got to make a fire!” He
said.

Falstaff made two fires, one
against a fallen log, with brushwood and small branches stacked
against it. Around the smaller second fire, he dumped the remains
of the cooking apparatus. In the trees overhead he managed to throw
the soaked furs and blankets.

Zam lay on the ground close to
the fire covered with the driest of the blankets.

The smaller fire crackled away,
the can of gasoline used to start it lay discarded nearby. Dotted
around the fire, almost in it, Falstaff propped up two tin water
bottles. The water inside was already beginning to steam and
bubble. There was nothing else on hand to use, so he poured rice
directly into the water and left them steaming. He sat down to
fatigued to move. His muscles cramping, he strained to keep up
right.

Then abruptly he lay down and
closed his eyes.

Zam awoke feeling cold and wet,
but she could feel the heat on the face. She could smell and taste
the gasoline and oil that soaked her clothes, although she couldn’t
remember how they got so spoiled with the sinking liquid. Was this
Naraka
⁶⁶
, her own ghastly
hell? Was she now in purgatory for all the lies she’d told to
Falstaff? She sniffed again and pulled a face.

She sat up, firstly looking at
the fire behind her. The massive log was burnt and scorched A pile
of messy unburnt brushwood encircled the scorched area that
emanated heat over the whole clearing.

Zam thought the fire must have
been left unattended a long time. She sniffed, smelling the
gasoline on her coat again. Looking up, she pulled down a dry
blanket from the trees and removed her soaked coat, which she left
on a branch.

Wrapped in the warm, dry blanket,
she turned and found Falstaff lying in the wet mud, beside the
smaller fire that had now burned down to nothing. Zam sniffed
again.

“Ah! Rice!” She called out, just
as the unmissable aroma of burned rice called to her, waking her
brain from its long stupor. The smell of nourishing rice not the
gasoline. She had been scolded by her sisters too often for her to
ignore the smell.

She bent, removing the flask from
the fire, holding it with her blanket. She sniffed at it as if the
smell of burnt rice was perfection. She turned her nose up. The
bitter, acrid smell made her cast aside the ruined rice. She found
another flask further from the fire, its lid still sealed. It
opened with a pop, releasing the steam from within.

Zam sniffed, the clean, earthy
smell of the rice filled her nose. Squatting down, she rummaged
around by the fire. Finding a knife, hungrily she scrapped the rice
from the tin into her mouth.

Suddenly she remembered Falstaff.
She put her hand on his face it was icy cold. The veins in his neck
showing blue through his deathly white skin. Quickly she gathered
the furs and blankets put to dry. Looking at the hard earth she
remembered the bedding rolls, she climbed into the ruin of the
cockpit and emerged with the thick canvas wrapped rolls used to pad
the floor of the nacelle.

Spreading them by the fire, she
rolled Falstaff onto them and covered him with blankets. Next she
gathered all the wood she could find and piled the fires high
again. Gathering more stones to lift the flasks out of the fire.
She paused to try and induce Falstaff to drink some warm water. She
remembered the hot water bottles, then abandoned the idea. Better
to get the fires going. She carefully sloshed a few capfuls of
gasoline onto the small fire and then using Falstaff’s lighter lit
a twig to throw on. The dry brushwood and twigs flashed into orange
flames the subsided to a gentle warm glow.

Her strength failing she
carelessly poured the gasoline on the larger fire, then hastily
threw the can at the smouldering log. She staggered back towards
the makeshift bed to collect the lighter when the fuel ignited with
a thump behind her. Soon the bonfire was warming the whole
clearing.

Diving for cover under the
blankets she held onto Falstaff’s body. Lying next to his cold hard
body, she felt a judder of regret. What was it Falstaff said about
Garcia, dying far from home in the China? What had this journey
cost Falstaff? She felt alone and empty it did not feel like home
anymore.

She brought her fist down hard in
anger and frustration. Falstaff’s chest thudded hollowly. She
stopped, regretting the angry outburst, then she noticed a bubble
appear, expanding on Falstaff’s lips.

The hair stood on up on the back
of her neck. Was this his soul escaping; the last breath exhaled
unused, returning to the air from his lungs?

She wiped his mouth clean with
the blanket, then in anger punched him again.

“You wicked man!” She shouted,
striking his chest again. “Look what you did to me! I love you! Seh
lang! How many women did you have before me? You bastard! Why did I
have to fall in love with you?!”

She stopped hitting him and then
burst into tears, her face against his cold still chest.

Falstaff’s mouth opened taking a
slow rasping breath. “Stopping hitting me Mrs Fitzsimmons! Of
course, I love your daughter!” He muttered subconsciously. His
breathing slowed again until Zam could barely detect it.

The roaring fires soon began to
warm her through. Zam pushed and poked at Falstaff until he turned
over with a big sigh and started rambling again.

“Zam, yes, of course, Hong Kong’s
great, you’ll get on lovely with her. But you’ll have to buy
another ticket for Milly-Mollie-Mandy?” His mouth fell as sighed,
his chest sinking to a halt.

“John you are a fool!” She
said.

He lay there, his mouth open,
hardly breathing.

Zam took the opportunity to
dribble hot water into his mouth. He swallowed licking his lips but
remained incoherent.

“Father, father! What do you mean
they’ve changed her name! Damn cheek! How am I ever to find
her?”

Zam smiled, she couldn’t
understand any of it. Whatever it was Falstaff had done in the past
it seemed to trouble him.

She stood and took the
opportunity to restock the fires and get some more rice to cook,
careful not to place it too near the fire.

Soon steam was rising from the
furs and Falstaff’s clothes. Zam looked at the sky. It was pitch
black, she guessed it was gone midnight. She stripped off her wet
clothes and laid them out over the bushes near the fire. She
smiled, she could feel the fire against the cheeks of her bare
backside, it was a pleasant sensation. She spun naked in front of
the fire, she felt warm and more alive than she’d ever felt
before.

Hurrying to the Caproni, she
searched the cockpit for her own bag full of dry clothes, then
found half a Jaggery cake, dry and uneaten stuffed inside the bag.
She forgot the bag and the clothes and ran to Falstaff’s side with
the Jaggery. After a moment, he opened his mouth to bite then
slumped back into a deep sleep.

Zam put the cake to one side and
with a giggle started to undress Falstaff, stripping away the wet
clothes. Rolling him off the wet blanket and spreading another dry
one. Naked and mumbling Falstaff stretched and rolled over.

With all the bedding and blankets
beneath and piled on top and fires roaring away already warming the
air around them. She decided there was already enough wood to last
the night out, so she wriggled under the covers. Hanging onto the
Jaggery, she snuggled up against the cold pilot. She slid her leg
up his cold body, sliding it up to his stomach while she leaned on
one elbow, breaking the sugary cake up sharing it with Falstaff who
ate mumbling incoherently.

With the cake gone, she laid her
head on Falstaff’s chest and held him tightly, hoping the warmth of
her body would revive him.

Falstaff knew he was dreaming.
Why he couldn’t wake up or why he kept having dreams he couldn’t
make out. He dreamt of walking naked through the waist deep snow
into his father’s dining room to announce, in the style of a
Theravada chant, his intention to grow wings and fly on a cloud, on
a journey to the west, to deliver the scriptures of Cranwell up the
Dragon’s bottom.

It all seemed to make sense to
him in the dream. In any case, his father appeared to take it well
and offered him a cigar on the condition that he never flew
again.

Then the snow had melted and he
felt warm again. He could smell wood smoke and he dreamt again of
the time he had borrowed a car and taken it for a drive with a
particular young lady on the pretext of doing some grouse shooting.
Only the shooting and the game bird he had in mind was entirely
different. Her father and the gamekeeper discovered them, of
course, just in time from her father.

“Never mind I’ll climb the drain
pipe!” Falstaff suddenly hollered out loud, before falling back
into apparent slumber again. Then he dreamt he was in bed in the
arms of the girl he had been devoted to, adored right through
school and thought the absolute world of.

He rolled the girl over and
warmed by her embrace, he nuzzled at her soft neck and spread her
legs. Pulling her as close to him as any girl he’d ever had.

“Oh! John-di-di! Gan-chai
lie-huo!
⁶⁷

Falstaff’s eyes snapped open, his
dream dissolving away.

“Oh, John-di-di! Please don’t
stop!”

The only thing going through
Falstaff’s mind was that young Miss Fitzsimons hardly ever spoke
Chinese, let alone played games with Chinese idiom during
intercourse? And in any case, didn’t she marry someone else; some
other chap who’d got himself a promotion while he’d been in
Afghanistan?

“John, John! Don’t stop you’re
teasing me! Please… More, John-di-di, more!”

He couldn’t be caught in the
young lady’s house? What about the scandal? His dream was
dissolving, the false reality full of too many puzzles. Hadn’t they
packed up and gone to be in Hong Kong? So who was he…

“John- di-di! Don’t stop!” Zam
purred in his ear.

Zam’s flushed face and the little
crease in her forehead, emphasising her pleasure and frustration,
came into focus as he awoke from his dream.