Glory Boys. Harry Bingham

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СКАЧАТЬ no time for pilots who couldn’t strip, clean and reassemble an engine. The reason why Abe’s squadron had the best serviced airplanes in the American Army was that Abe made his pilots responsible for the airworthiness of their equipment. It was an attitude he regarded as sacred. And by those standards, Pen Hamilton’s ignorance was shocking, an insult to aviation.

      And yet… Pen Hamilton was a woman. She had handled her machine with a rare combination of courage, force and delicacy. She had made a horrendous landing look almost easy – and was now handling herself not with bravado but with modesty. Abe let his irritation pass.

      ‘The problem sounded to me like your magnetos. If so, you could have gone on to wherever you were going. I’ll take a look, if you want. And please, Miss Hamilton, there’s no need to –’

      ‘Oh no, call me Pen, please.’

      ‘Then I’m Abe. No Captains around here, if you don’t mind.’

      They grinned at each other, suddenly comfortable.

      ‘You’ll want to come in and get cleaned up. And something to eat or drink? I was about to have something myself.’

      They went in.

      Abe could see Pen noticing Abe’s camp bed in the corner of the hangar, his makeshift kitchen, and his barren wardrobe, the logo on Poll’s fuselage: a mailbag in the very approximate shape of a shield with the words ‘US Mail’ stencilled across it. She noticed something else too. Above Abe’s crowded workbench ran a shelf at head height. The shelf was crowded with metal castings, polished, clean and free of dust. Pen looked at the collection with curiosity. The castings were models of aircraft, but not necessarily complete ones. Only four of the castings had nose cone, fuselage, tail, and a full set of wings, upper and lower on both sides. The rest were simply airplane pieces. A fuselage without wings. A wing without a body. A nose cone. A lot of nose cones. She picked up a few of the castings, ran her hands over them and put them down.

      ‘You make these?’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      ‘They’re beautiful.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And unusual. Beautiful and unusual.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      Since Abe didn’t exactly seem full of chatter on the subject, Pen turned to a different topic. She indicated the mailbag stencilled on Poll’s side.

      ‘You’re flying the mails?’

      Abe nodded

      ‘I didn’t know there was a route… To Cuba, I guess?’

      Abe nodded.

      ‘Havana?’

      Abe nodded.

      ‘Every day? Over water?’ She took in the information like a professional pilot, calculating the hazards, the safety margin, the rewards. ‘You must hit quite some weather at times.’

      Abe gestured at Poll. ‘She’s a strong girl. We get through.’

      ‘Still…’

      Pen washed her face and hands. Abe offered to walk out of the hangar so she could take a proper wash, but, since the washing facilities consisted of a cold tap and a tin water-scoop, Pen managed to resist. By the time she was done, Abe had laid out the only meal he could provide: bread, cold meat, some tomatoes, water. She came over to his little table. First she said she didn’t want anything, then, when Abe pressed her, she ate hungrily.

      A moment’s awkward silence was covered by eating.

      Abe wasn’t shy of girls. True, he didn’t see much of them. True, he’d never had a relationship that had lasted longer than a couple of months. But he wasn’t shy, nor even inexperienced. He’d dated girls, petted girls, slept with girls. The reason why his relationships had quickly fallen apart was that he’d never really wanted them. Abe knew his priorities and they had never included women. So, aged thirty-six, he wasn’t shy of girls, but he didn’t spend much time with them either.

      Pen bit into a tomato. It was overripe. The skin split and spurted juice across the table and down her chin.

      ‘Sorry.’

      ‘Don’t worry.’ Abe gestured at his linenless table, his bare accommodation. ‘Sorry I haven’t got anywhere better.’

      ‘You …?’ Pen began to ask the obvious question, then dropped it, embarrassed.

      ‘Yeah, I’m living here for now. While I get the business started up. In time, I’d like to build a little. Extend the place at the back.’

      Abe gestured at the cement block wall at the rear of the hangar. He knew enough about construction to be able to fix something up. It wasn’t something he’d thought about before, but now that Pen had put him in mind of the idea, he liked it.

      ‘You just carry mail?’

      ‘Passengers too. If I can find any. Also cargo.’

      ‘You get many passengers?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Cargo?’

      ‘I don’t advertise much. I guess I ought to do a little more.’

      He wasn’t being candid. He had only ever placed one advertisement for business. Next door to the hangar, Abe had tacked on a tiny wooden lean-to which he had designated his office. The office held one chair, one table and – pinned to the door in sun and rain – a notice saying ‘Passengers and cargo carried. All enquiries welcome’. Nobody had ever come to the office. Nobody had ever seen the advertisement.

      ‘What d’you call yourself?’

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘The business. It’s got a name, right?’

      For a half-second, Abe struggled to remember what he’d written on the notice. Then he got it. ‘Florida International Air Travel. Fancy, huh?’

      ‘You’ve got an office in town or …?’ Pen trailed off. She was getting the picture. ‘People need to apply here, right? I’ve got friends down here. They’re always running up the coast, or down to Key West and the islands. I’ll have a word. Maybe I can send some clients your way.’

      Her glance slid out of the empty hangar to the dusty grass. Aside from her own beautiful machine, there was only Poll: clumsy, old-fashioned, graceless. Abe could see Pen wondering how Abe thought he could recruit passengers without advertising and with only Poll to fly them.

      Something in Abe hardened. He changed subject.

      ‘That your plane?’

      Pen’s eyes were still focused out of the hangar door. At Abe’s words she swept her gaze across to her own machine, her eyes softened, then she brought her gaze in, her pupils dilating as she took in Abe’s face. She took a moment to answer and Abe ended up looking longer into her eyes than he’d expected. It was a curious sensation. The eyes were СКАЧАТЬ