High Road to China. Jon Cleary
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greatest explosion of sound I’ve ever felt: not heard. My head reverberated with it, an echo chamber that threatened to drive me insane. Sanity, fortunately, has nothing to do with the urge to survive. Unbreathing, paralysed, mind and body dead, the unthinking me refused to let the aeroplane go. My hands and arms worked of their own accord; then feeling came back into my legs and feet. I fought with the only two weapons I had, the stick and the rudder bar; yet they were the machine’s weapons, too, for it was fighting me. It was not in a spin; we seemed to be plunging in a series of tight bucking slides. I still couldn’t see; lightning glared around me again, but it was only a lightening of the darkness in my blinded eyes. I worked by feel, fighting the plane by instinct, going with the slide at times, pulling against it at others, praying all the time with the mind that was slowly coming back to life that the wings would not tear off, that the machine would not disintegrate and leave me sitting there for the last moment at the top of the long drop to eternity. I believed in God then and hated Him for wanting me to join Him.
Then I found I was winning. The Bristol slid to starboard, kept sliding and I let it go, feeling I was getting it under control. I eased the rudder to port, pulled the stick back; the plane responded, straightened out. The wind and the rain were still pounding at me, but now the Bristol and I were part of each other again, ready to fight together. I held the stick steady and we drove on through the storm, the wings trembling as if ready to break off but always holding, the engine coughing once but then coming on again with a challenging note that gave me heart. I glanced at the altimeter: I had dropped 3000 feet since I had last looked at it. I had no idea of the height of the mountains I had glimpsed (were they still ahead of me? Below me?); but I dared not try to climb above the storm again. I had to ride it out at this level; the galleries of hell were topsy-turvy, one stood a better chance of survival in the lower depths. I wondered where Miss Tozer and Kern were, if they were still flying or had already crashed, but there was nothing I could do about going looking for them. I shivered when I thought how close I had been to that other Bristol in the clouds.
It took me twenty minutes, forever, to fly out of the storm. Then, as so often happens, I came out abruptly into bright mocking sunlight. I checked the compass; we were miles off course. But there was no hope of correcting just now; over to starboard the storm still stretched away to the south, its darkness lit with explosions of lightning. I looked back and around for the others. Then I saw them come out of the clouds, too close to each other for comfort; Kern swung abruptly to port to widen the distance between them. I throttled back, waited for them to come up to me. Miss Tozer waved to say she was all right; but Kern pointed to his top wing and I saw the tattered fabric and the splintered strut. He was holding the machine steady, but he would have to do that if he was to keep it in the air; any sudden manoeuvre would rip the wing to shreds. I waved to him, then looked down and about for a possible landing site. But there was none: we were over mountains that offered no comfort at all.
There was nothing to do but keep flying, hoping Kern’s wing would hold, till I saw some place where we could set down without his having to put too much strain on his machine. It was just as likely to fall to pieces as he eased the stick back for the gentlest of landings, but that was something we had to risk.
Then at last I saw the long narrow valley ahead, with the straight white road running down the middle of it. I waved to the others to circle over the valley while I went down to inspect the road. I slid down, aware of the workers in the fields on either side stopping to look up at me, at some of them running in terror for the shelter of neighbouring trees; but I kept my attention on the white dirt road, looking for the thin shadows in the afternoon sun that would tell of ruts or holes in the surface. There appeared to’ be none and I banked steeply and climbed back. I made signs that I would go down first, Miss Tozer would follow and Kern would be the last to land.
I went back to the end of the valley, passing over a large mansion standing among trees, then slid in above the road. There were no telegraph poles bordering it to offer a hazard; and it ran without a bend in it for almost a mile. I put the Bristol down, felt the smoothness of the dirt and knew I was safe. I rolled down the road, eased to a stop and swung off into a field. I jumped down and ran back to the road.
Miss Tozer came in, steady as a bird, bounced a little as she touched, corrected and ran down towards me. She swung off into the field, got out and came running back. She stood beside me and watched as Kern, coming round in a wide flat bank so that he didn’t strain the upper wing too much, prepared to land. He came down steadily and I knew how he would be: one eye on the nose, the other on the wing above him. He was ten feet above the road, holding the nose up, when the wing started to shred off. It went back over his head in tatters at first, as if he had run into a flock of starlings; then the big strip tore off and I saw him duck as it flew straight at his head. Miraculously he jerked neither his hands nor his feet; he kept the plane steady while the upper wing disintegrated above him. I felt Miss Tozer clutch my arm, but I didn’t look at her, just kept my eyes on Kern as he brought his plane down to earth in as beautiful a landing as I’ve ever seen. He came rolling down the road and swung in beside us.
He climbed down, looking much less the dandy who had climbed into the cockpit this morning. I had recognized him for what he was, a womanizing loafer on whom time and his testicles hung heavy; but, God Almighty, he could fly a plane and that in my eyes forgave him a lot. Only I wasn’t going to tell him. With his bloody arrogance he’d have just nodded his head and agreed with me.
‘I got a bolt of lightning.’ He unwound the long silk scarf he wore, tied it round his middle like a belt; he was a Fancy Dan all right, and I wanted to throw up. But he was as cool as if he had just come in from ten minutes of uneventful circuits, and even my prejudiced eye could see that it was no act. He had probably got out of his burning plane, the day I had shot him down, with the same cool aplomb. ‘Fortunately, it was a small one.’
‘I’m just glad you’re safe.’ Then Miss Tozer sniffed the air, looked around. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘I thought it was your perfume.’ She had let go my arm, but still stood close to me.
‘Roses,’ said Kern. ‘What a beautiful sight.’
I turned my head to look behind me, following the direction of his gaze. Intent on watching Kern bring his plane down, I had not noticed before that the whole valley was one vast rose garden, split up the middle by the road. There were workers scattered throughout the fields; the closest were four women on the other side of the road. As Kern and I looked at them they flung their skirts up over their heads, hiding their faces; but everything they owned below the waist was exposed. Pubic hair and bare bottoms are common sights nowadays, but in 1920 we didn’t have the broadening education of television and only those with the fare to Paris or Port Said ever saw a blue movie. These women stood modesty on its head, but every woman to her own standards.
‘A charming custom,’ said Kern. ‘Purely local, no doubt.’
I looked at Miss Tozer, but she was staring up the road. In the distance there was a cloud of white dust, quickly coming closer. Then we saw that just ahead of it was a white horse galloping at full speed and a few moments later we recognized the rider of the horse as a woman sitting side-saddle. She came down on us like a Valkyrie, bringing the horse to a rearing halt only yards from us.
‘Good God, we must be in Roumania!’ said Kern. ‘It’s Queen Marie!’
But it wasn’t, though we didn’t know that at once. She quietened the prancing horse, sat elegantly in the saddle and looked us up and down. She said something in a language I didn’t recognize, then she spoke in heavily accented English. ‘You are English, yes? Those are English aeroplanes, are they not?’
‘We are English, American, German,’ said Miss Tozer and introduced us individually.
‘I am the Countess Ileana Malevitza.’ She had to be an aristocrat of some sort, or an eccentric; or both. She was wearing a bright red tunic, braided with silver and with silver epaulettes, over a royal-blue shirt and dark blue trousers tucked into riding boots that came above her knees. She had a black fur shako on her blonde head and a short sword swung in an enamelled sheath at her waist. Despite her coating of fine dust, the effect of her was striking. We’ve flown through that