Chapter Ten

Fire can’t burn without air. Deprived of an oxygen supply in a sealed space, it goes out. There existed a state of affairs like a smouldering room which had been shuttered and left to cool down in safety. Nothing much would have happened if I hadn’t been trying to find Simon: but when I finally came on a trace of him, it was like throwing wide the door. Fresh air poured in and the whole thing banged into flames.

The fine Cheltenham weather was still in operation on the Friday, the day after the Gold Cup. The met reports in the charter company’s office showed clear skies right across Europe, with an extended high pressure area almost stationary over France. No break up of the system was expected for at least twenty-four hours. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I half turned to find Patrick reading over my shoulder.

‘Trouble free trip,’ he commented with satisfaction. ‘Piece of cake.’

‘We’ve got that old D.C.4 again, I see,’ I said, looking out of the window across to where it stood on the tarmac.

‘Nice reliable old bus.’

‘Bloody uncomfortable old bus.’

Patrick grinned. ‘You’ll be joining a union next.’

‘Workers unite,’ I agreed.

He looked me up and down. ‘Some worker. You remind me of Fanny Cradock.’

‘Of who?’I said.

‘That woman on television who cooks in a ball gown without marking it.’

‘Oh.’ I looked down at my neat charcoal worsted, my black tie, and the fraction of white showing at the cuffs. Beside me, in the small overnight bag I now carried everywhere, was the high necked black jersey I worked in, and a hanger for my jacket. Tidiness was addictive: one couldn’t kick it, even when it was inappropriate.

‘You’re no slouch yourself,’ I pointed out defensively. He wore his navy gold-braided uniform with the air of authority, his handsome good-natured face radiating confidence. A wonderful bedside manner for nervous passengers, I thought. An inborn conviction that one only had to keep to the rules for everything to be all right. Fatal.

‘Eight each way, today?’ he said.

‘Eight out, four back. All brood mares.’

‘Ready to drop?’

‘Let’s hope not too ready.’

‘Let’s indeed.’ He grinned and turned away to check over his flight plan with one of the office staff. ‘I suppose,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘you’d like me to organise an overnight delay at Milan?’

‘You suppose correctly.’

‘You could do it yourself.’

‘How?’

‘Load up all the horses and then “lose” the papers for a front one. Like John Kyle said, by the time they’d unloaded and reloaded, it was too late to take off.’

I laughed. ‘An absolutely brilliant idea. I shall act on it immediately.’

‘That’ll be the day.’ He smiled over his papers, checking the lists.

The door opened briskly and Yardman came in, letting a blast of cold six-thirty air slip past him.

‘All set?’ he said, impressing on us his early hour alertness.

‘The horses haven’t arrived yet,’ I said mildly. ‘They’re late again.’

‘Oh.’ He shut the door behind him and came in, putting down his briefcase and rubbing his thin hands together for warmth. ‘They were due at six.’ He frowned and looked at Patrick. ‘Are you the pilot?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What sort of trip are we going to have?’

‘Easy,’ said Patrick. ‘The weather’s perfect.’

Yardman nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good, good.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down, lifting and opening his brief case. He had brought all the brood mares’ papers with him, and as he seemed content to check them with the airline people himself I leaned lazily against the office wall and thought about Gabriella. The office work went steadily on, regardless of the hour. No nine-to-five about an airline. As usual, some of the flying staff were lying there fast asleep, one on a canvas bed under the counter Patrick was leaning on, another underneath the big table where Yardman sat, and a third on my right, stretched along the top of a row of cupboards. They were all wrapped in blankets, heads and all, and were so motionless that one didn’t notice them at first. They managed to sleep solidly through the comings and goings and telephoning and typing, and even when Yardman inadvertently kicked the one under the table he didn’t stir.

The first of the horseboxes rolled past the window and drove across to the waiting plane. I peeled myself off the wall, temporarily banished Gabriella, and touched Yardman’s arm.

‘They’re here,’ I said.

He looked round and glanced through the window. ‘Ah, yes. Well here you are, my dear boy, here’s the list. You can load the first six, they are all checked. There’s just one more to do… it seems there’s some query of insurance on this one.’ He bent back to his work, rifling through his briefcase for more papers.

I took the list and walked across to the plane. I had expected Timmie and Conker to arrive in a horsebox as they lived near the stud one lot of horses had come from, but when I got over there I found it was to be Billy and Alf again. They had come with Yardman, and were already sitting on the stacked box sides in the plane, eating sandwiches. With them sat a third man in jodhpurs and a grubby tweed jacket a size too small. He was wearing an old greenish cap and he didn’t bother to look up.

‘The horses are here,’ I said.

Billy turned his wide insolent glare full on and didn’t answer. I bent down and touched Alf’s knee, and pointed out of the oval window. He saw the horseboxes, nodded philosophically, and began to wrap up his remaining sandwiches. I left them and went down the ramp again, knowing very well that Billy would never obey an instruction of mine if I waited over him to see he did it.

The horsebox drivers said they’d had to make a detour because of roadworks. A detour into a transport café, more like.

Two grooms who had travelled with the mares gave a hand with the loading, which made it easy. The man who had come with Billy and Alf, whose name was John, was more abstracted than skilful, but with six of us it was the quickest job I had done when Billy was along. I imagined that it was because he knew Yardman was within complaining distance that he left me alone.

Yardman came across with the all clear for the other two mares, and we stowed them on board. Then as always we trooped along to the Immigration Office in the main passenger building where a bored official collected our dog-eared passports, flipped through them, and handed them back. Mine still had Mr on it, because Id’ originally applied for it that way, and I intended to put off changing it as long as possible.

‘Four grooms and you,’ he said to Yardman. ‘That’s the lot?’

‘That’s the lot.’ Yardman stifled a yawn. Early starts disagreed with him.

A party of bleary-eyed passengers from a cut-rate night flight shufled past in an untidy crocodile.

‘O.K. then.’ The passport man flicked the tourists a supercilious glance and retired into his office. Not everyone was at his best before breakfast. Yardman walked back to the plane beside me.

‘I’ve arranged to meet our opposite numbers for lunch,’ he said. ‘You know what business lunches are, my dear boy. I’m afraid it may drag on a little, and that you’ll be kicking your heels about the airport for a few hours. Don’t let any of them get… er… the worse for wear.’

‘No,’ I agreed insincerely. The longer his lunch, the better I’d be pleased. Billy drunk couldn’t be worse than Billy sober, and I didn’t intend to waste my hours at Malpensa supervising his intake.

Patrick and his crew were ready out by the plane, and had done their checks. The mobile battery truck stood by the nose cone with its power lead plugged into the aircraft: Patrick liked always to start his engines from the truck, so that he took off with the plane’s own batteries fully charged.

Yardman and I followed Billy, Alf and John up the ramp at the rear, and Patrick with his copilot Bob, and the engineer, Mike, climbed the forward stairs into the nose. The airport staff wheeled away the stairs and unfastened and removed the two long sections of ramp. The inner port propeller began to grind slowly round as I swung shut the double doors, then sparked into life with a roar, and the plane came alive with vibration. The moment of the first engine firing gave me its usual lift of the spirits and I went along the cabin checking the horses with a smile in my mind.

Patrick moved down the taxy track and turned on to the apron set aside for power checks, the airframe quivering against the brakes as he pushed the throttles open. Holding two of the horses by their head collars I automatically followed him in imagination through the last series of checks before he closed the throttles, released the brakes and rolled round on to Gatwick’s large single runway. The engine’s note deepened and the plane began to move, horses and men leaning against the thrust as the speed built up to a hundred over the tarmac. We unstuck as per schedule and climbed away in a great wheeling turn, heading towards the Channel on course to the radio beacon at Dieppe. The heavy mares took the whole thing philosophically, and having checked round the lot of them I went forward into the galley, bending under the luggage racks and stepping over the guy chains as always in the cramped D.C.4.

Mike, the engineer, was already writing names on disposable cups with a red felt pen.

‘All O.K.?’ he asked, the eyebrow going up and down like a yo-yo.

‘All fine,’ I said.

He wrote ‘Patrick’ and ‘Bob’ and ‘Henry’ and asked me the names of the others. ‘Mr Y’, ‘Billy’, ‘Alf’ and ‘John’ joined the roll. He filled the crew’s cups and mine, and I took Patrick’s and Bob’s forward while he went back to ask the others if they were thirsty. The rising sun blazed into the cockpit, dazzling after the comparative gloom of the cabin. Both pilots were wearing dark glasses, and Patrick already had his jacket off, and had started on the first of his attendant bunch of bananas. The chart lay handy, the usual unlikely mass of half-inch circles denoting radio stations connected by broad pale blue areas of authorised airlines, with the normal shape of the land beneath only faintly drawn in and difficult to distinguish. Bob pulled a tuft of cotton wool off a shaving cut, made it bleed again, and swore, his exact words inaudible against the racket of the engines. Both of them were wearing head-sets, earphones combined with a microphone mounted on a metal band which curved round in front of the mouth. They spoke to each other by means of a transmitting switch set into the wheel on the control column, since normal speech in that noise was impossible. Giving me a grin and a thumbs-up sign for the coffee, they went on with their endless attention to the job in hand. I watched for a bit, then strolled back through the galley, picking up ‘Henry’ en route, and relaxed on a hay bale to drink, looking down out of the oval window and seeing the coast of France tilt underneath as we passed the Dieppe beacon and set course for Paris.

A day like any other day, a flight like any other flight. And Gabriella waiting at the other end of it. Every half hour or so I checked round the mares, but they were a docile lot and travelled like veterans. Mostly horses didn’t eat much in the air, but one or two were picking at their haynets, and a chestnut in the rearmost box was fairly guzzling. I began to untie her depleted net to fill it again for her from one of the bales when a voice said in my ear, ‘I’ll do that.’

I looked round sharply and found Billy’s face two feet from my own.

‘You?’ The surprise and sarcasm got drowned by the engine noise.

He nodded, elbowed me out of the way, and finished untying the haynet. I watched with astonishment as he carried it away into the narrow starboard gangway and began to stuff it full again. He came back pulling the drawstring tight round the neck, slung it over to hang inside the box, and re-tied its rope on to the cleat. Wordlessly he treated me to a wide sneering glare from the searchlight eyes, pushed past, and flung himself with what suddenly looked like pent-up fury into one of the seats at the back.

In the pair of seats immediately behind him Yardman and John sat side by side. Yardman was frowning crossly at Billy, though to my mind he should have been giving him a pat on the head and a medal for self-control.

Yardman turned his head from Billy to me and gave me his graveyard smile. ‘What time do we arrive?’ he shouted.

‘About half an hour.’

He nodded and looked away through the window. I glanced at John and saw that he was dozing, with his grubby cap pushed back on his head and his hands lying limp on his lap. He opened his eyes while I was looking at him, and his relaxed facial muscles sharply contracted so that suddenly he seemed familiar to me, though I was certain I hadn’t met him before. It puzzled me for only a second because Billy, getting up again, managed to kick my ankle just out of Yardman’s sight. I turned away from him, lashed backwards with my heel, and felt a satisfactory clunking jar as it landed full on his shin. One day, I thought, smiling to myself as I squeezed forward along the plane, one day he’ll get tired of it.

We joined the circuit at Malpensa four hours from Gatwick; a smooth, easy trip. Holding the mares’ heads I saw the familiar red and white chequered huts near the edge of the airfield grow bigger and bigger as we descended, then they were suddenly behind us at eye level as Patrick levelled out twenty feet from the ground at about a hundred and ten miles an hour. The bump from the tricycle undercarriage as we touched down with full flaps at a fraction above stalling speed wasn’t enough to rock the mares on their feet. Top of the class, I thought.

The customs man with his two helpers came on board, and Yardman produced the mares’ papers from his briefcase. The checking went on without a hitch, brisk but thorough. The customs man handed the papers back to Yardman with a small bow and signed that the unloading could begin.

Yardman ducked out of any danger of giving a hand with that by saying that hed’ better see if the opposite numbers were waiting for him inside the airport. As it was barely half past eleven, it seemed doubtful, but all the same he marched purposefully down the ramp and away across the tarmac, a gaunt black figure with sunshine flashing on his glasses.

The crew got off at the sharp end and followed him, a navy blue trio in peaked caps. A large yellow Shell tanker pulled up in front of the aircraft, and three men in white overalls began the job of refuelling.

We unloaded into the waiting horseboxes in record time, Billy seemingly being as anxious as me to get it done quickly, and within half an hour of landing I had changed my jersey for my jacket and was pushing open the glass doors of the airport. I stood just inside, watching Gabriella. She was selling a native doll, fluffing up the rich dark skirt to show the petticoats underneath, her face solemn and absorbed. The heavy dark club-cut hair swung forward as she leaned across the counter, and her eyes were cool and quiet as she shook her head gently at her customer, the engineer Mike. My chest constricted at the sight of her, and I wondered how I was possibly going to bear leaving again in three hours time. She looked up suddenly as if she felt my gaze, and she saw me and smiled, her soft mouth curving sweet and wide.

Mike looked quite startled at the transformation and turned to see the reason.

‘Henry,’ said Gabriella, with welcome and gaiety shimmering in her voice. ‘Hullo, darling.’

‘Darling?’ exclaimed Mike, the eyebrow doing its stuff.

Gabriella said in French, ‘I’ve doubled my English vocabulary, as you see. I know two words now.’

‘Essential ones, I’m glad to say.’

‘Hey,’ said Mike. ‘If you can talk to her, Henry, ask her about this doll. It’s my elder girl’s birthday tomorrow, and she’s started collecting these things, but I’m damned if I know whether she’ll like this one.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Twelve.’

I explained the situation to Gabriella, who promptly produced a different doll, much prettier and more colourful, which she wrapped up for him while he sorted out some lire. Like Patrick’s his wallet was stuffed with several different currencies, and he scattered a day’s pay in deutsch-marks over the merchandise before finding what he wanted. Collecting his cash in an untidy handful he thanked her cheerfully in basic French, picked up his parcel and walked off upstairs into the restaurant. There were always lunches provided for us on the planes, tourist class lunches packed in boxes, but both Mike and Bob preferred eating on the ground, copiously and in comfort.

I turned back to Gabriella and tried to satisfy my own sort of hunger by looking at her and touching her hand. And I could see in her face that to her too this was like a bowl of rice to the famine of India.

‘When do you go?’ she said.

‘The horses arrive at two-thirty. I have to go then to load them. I might get back for a few minutes afterwards, if my boss dallies over his coffee.’

She sighed, looking at the clock. It was ten past noon. ‘I have an hour off in twenty minutes. I’ll make it two hours.’ She turned away into swift chatter with the girl along on the duty free shop, and came back smiling. ‘I’m doing her last hour today, and she’ll do the gift shop in her lunch hour.’

I bowed my thanks to the girl and she laughed back with a flash of teeth, very white against the gloom of her bottle shop.

‘Do you want to have lunch up there?’ I suggested to Gabriella pointing where Mike and Bob had gone.

She shook her head. ‘Too public. Everyone knows me so well. We’ve time to go in to Milan, if you can do that?’

‘If the horses get here early, they can wait.’

‘Serve them right.’ She nodded approvingly, her lips twitching.

A crowd of outgoing passengers erupted into the hall and swarmed round the gift counter. I retired to the snack bar at the far end to wait out the twenty minutes, and found Yardman sitting alone at one of the small tables. He waved me to join him, which I would just as soon not have done, and told me to order myself a double gin and tonic, like his.

‘I’d really rather have coffee.’

He waved a limp hand permissively. ‘Have whatever you like, my dear boy.’

I looked casually round the big airy place, at the glass, the polished wood, the terrazza. Along one side, next to a stall of sweets and chocolates, stretched the serving counter with coffee and beer rubbing shoulders with milk and gin. And down at the far end, close-grouped round another little table and clutching pint glasses, sat Alf and Billy, and with his back to us, John. Two and a half hours of that, I thought wryly, and we’d have a riotous trip home.

‘Haven’t your people turned up?’ I asked Yardman.

‘Delayed,’ he said resignedly. ‘They’ll be here about one, though.’

‘Good,’ I said, but not for his sake. ‘You won’t forget to ask them about Simon?’

‘Simon?’

‘Searle.’

‘Searle… oh yes. Yes, all right, I’ll remember.’

Patrick walked through the hall from the office department, exchanged a greeting with Gabriella over the heads of her customers and came on to join us.

‘Drink?’ suggested Yardman, indicating his glass. He only meant to be hospitable, but Patrick was shocked.

‘Of course not.’

‘Eh?’

‘Well… I thought you’d know. One isn’t allowed to fly within eight hours of drinking alcohol.’

‘Eight hours,’ repeated Yardman in astonishment.

‘That’s right. Twenty-four hours after a heavy party, and better not for forty-eight if you get paralytic.’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Yardman weakly.

‘Air Ministry regulations,’ Patrick explained. ‘I’d like some coffee, though.’ A waitress brought him some, and he unwrapped four sugars and stirred them in. ‘I enjoyed yesterday,’ he said, smiling at me with his yellow eyes. ‘I’ll go again. When do you race next?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘That’s out for a start. When else?’

I glanced at Yardman. ‘It depends on the schedules.’

Patrick turned to him in his usual friendly way. ‘I went to Cheltenham yesterday and saw our Henry here come fourth in the Gold Cup. Very interesting.’

‘You know each other well, then?’ Yardman asked. His deep set eyes were invisible behind the glasses, and the slanting sunlight showed up every blemish in his sallow skin. I still had no feeling for him either way, not liking, not disliking. He was easy to work for. He was friendly enough. He was still an enigma.

‘We know each other,’ Patrick agreed. ‘We’ve been on trips together before.’

‘I see.’

Gabriella came down towards us, wearing a supple brown suede coat over her black working dress. She had flat black round-toed patent leather shoes and swung a handbag with the same shine. A neat, composed, self-reliant, nearly beautiful girl who took work for granted and a lover for fun.

I stood up as she came near, trying to stifle a ridiculous feeling of pride, and introduced her to Yardman. He smiled politely and spoke to her in slow Italian, which surprised me a little, and Patrick translated for me into one ear.

‘He’s telling her he was in Italy during the war. Rather tactless of him, considering her grandfather was killed fighting off the invasion of Sicily.’

‘Before she was born,’ I protested.

‘True.’ He grinned. ‘She’s pro-British enough now, anyway.’

‘Miss Barzini tells me you are taking her to lunch in Milan,’ Yardman said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘If that’s all right with you? I’ll be back by two-thirty when the return mares come.’

‘I can’t see any objection,’ he said mildly. ‘Where do you have in mind?’

‘Trattoria Romana,’ I said promptly. It was where Gabriella, Patrick and I had eaten on our first evening together.

Gabriella put her hand in mine. ‘Good. I’m very hungry.’ She shook hands with Yardman and waggled her fingers at Patrick. ‘Arrivederci.’

We walked away up the hall, the voltage tingling gently through our joined palms. I looked back once, briefly, and saw Yardman and Patrick watching us go. They were both smiling.