LITMIR.BIZ

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were no other Thrusters. Not round here, anyway. In any case, the man had said as much. ‘Looked like the one we’d seen round here.’

      I stared, slightly deranged, at the hangar in the yellow evening sunlight, the dangling windsock, the club Cessnas, the warm green of the landing field, all so friendly and charming a moment before. Now, I noticed them again. They looked different, dangerous, threatening… as if they were the final image of flying I was to take away with me as my memory singled out this moment for saving and filing with a burnt-in time code. Not because it was contented like the one before, but because this was when I heard that Richard had been killed.

      Had he? That was the question. Was his body, even at that moment, slumped in the smashed wreckage of the Thruster?

      ‘Was…was the pilot okay?’

      ‘Couldn’t see. Looked as if the machine had nosed over.’

      This wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

      Thoughts flooded through my head. What could have happened? Had the Thruster broken up in mid-air? Christ, how horrifying was that? I had been in it only an hour before: it might have been me. Had everyone been right after all? Were these machines just death traps? Why had we trusted them? Were we out of our minds? Placing our lives in the hands of a company who could not even spell their name right on the cover of the handbook?

      And, round and round, again and again: Richard. Could he really be dead? No more Richard. What would I do without him? Who would be my best mate? What about our flying plans? What about our holiday? Who would I share the flat with? What would I say to his parents?

      Of course, if he really were dead…it did give our hobby quite an exotic, boulevardier ring…and it certainly highlighted the risks we were facing—and consequently our extraordinary courage to have taken up such an activity—not to mention providing an eminently good reason to give up…tchaaargh…how could I think such things? About Richard…my best mate. At a time when he may be dead.

       DEAD.

      I felt ashamed I had pinched his bacon at breakfast without telling him. What a childish and odious thing to have done. The maddening impotence of my situation took hold. All I could do was hang about, waiting for further information. If he weren’t dead, what shape was he likely to be in? What was the most likely injury from a flying accident? Spine presumably. Jesus. And the ambulance had not even been called yet. There wasn’t even anyone I could talk to. I did not know what to do. I certainly couldn’t continue reading the Thruster Handbook. It no longer seemed an amusing example of the quirky charms of amateurism. It had become a chilling testament to the idiocy of not doing things properly.

      For fifteen minutes I paced about in an agony of lonely imaginings, until one of the white-shirted Cessna instructors came out of the Portakabin. I had seen him around but had never spoken to him before. ‘You Tony?’ His face and voice were kind and reassuring. ‘Sean’s been on the radio. It’s OK. Your mate’s had an accident but he’s fine.’ He paused, then gave a sniff. ‘Doesn’t have much luck, does he?’

      It would be wrong to say that the news of Richard’s survival came as a blow. But it would be equally wrong to say that it was not in some way anti-climactic. Perhaps preparing myself for the worst, as a defence mechanism, I had decided that Richard was definitely dead, or—at the very least—badly injured. Now, as I sat down on the ground again, the planes, the hangar, the summer evening all came up for emotional re-evaluation in the light of this information update. Relief flooded over me, and I felt exhausted. But, now that his survival was not in doubt, I also felt annoyed at having been put through the trauma. Now that the drama was over, all that remained was tedious information gathering and—no doubt—clearing up. There was a sense of let-down; and, with it, of irritation. Richard was okay, I told myself. That was the main thing. He was fine. But our plane? Was that fine? A flood of less charitable thoughts entered my head. Was the machine damaged? If so, how badly? Did it mean we would miss any flying tomorrow? At that moment, Sean arrived back.

      ‘Ugh!’ he groaned, shaking his head mournfully. ‘Why did he have to choose standing corn? There are lovely fields all round here, and he chose one of standing corn. Phwah! She was running lovely as well. Come on.’ He slung a battered metal tool box into the back of his van. ‘I dunno. You boys.’

      It took some time to locate Richard from the deep lanes running between high hedges that divided the fields to the south-east of Barsham Green village. At length Sean spotted a yellow combine through the hedge which he remembered was working nearby and we parked in a gateway.

      When Sean had flown over, Richard had been standing beside the plane, waving. It had been impossible to see how much damage had been done to the plane. Now I could just see the tail of the stricken Thruster sticking up over the standing corn, with Richard, expressionless, alongside. Sean grabbed his tool box and I followed his clanking progress round the edge of the field, brushing flies and insects from my face and arms.

      The Thruster was a sorry sight. Her propeller was broken, splintered at both ends. Several spars were bent. The pod was torn and gashed on one side. Dust, straw and heads of corn littered the cockpit. With the arrival of the combine from the adjoining field—the farmer obligingly cut a swathe up to and around the Thruster—clouds more dust and chaff were blown into every nook they had not already reached. ‘She lost all power,’ began Richard. ‘I went as far as I could but I couldn’t maintain height.’

      ‘They’re so reliable, these engines. So reliable,’ said Sean, shaking his head and making what point I’m not sure as he set to with a spanner. ‘Are you sure you weren’t hearing things?’

      I do not know whether I was expecting some kind of apology or, at least, some word of regret from Richard. If I was, I didn’t get it.

      ‘So it didn’t exactly fail,’ I said, realizing, as I said it, that it was perhaps not the most helpful comment to have made. Irritated by Richard’s bland lack of remorse or—I suppose—injury, I wanted to prompt some reaction out of him. He said nothing. ‘Well, so long as you’re all right. That’s the main thing,’ I said, viciously.

      It was nine thirty and getting dark before we dropped our sad freight—de-rigged, on the farmer’s trailer—back at the hangar. She looked very forlorn as, in the darkening gloom, we laid the wings on the dusty cement of the hangar floor, then manhandled the pod and fuselage into a corner. I wanted Sean to reassure me that the Thruster could be mended tomorrow and we could be flying again by tomorrow afternoon, that I could still get my licence by the end of next week. He saw my face. ‘Look, this is flying. It happens. At least no one got hurt.’

      As Richard and I drove home neither of us spoke. Partly it was tiredness. But there was an unresolved heaviness between us, something more than tiredness and disappointment. Nor was anything said next morning, when we watched Sean, notebook in hand, pick carefully over the Thruster to order up the necessary parts. In fact, neither of us ever mentioned the incident again.

      We were now at a loose end. We had booked two weeks holiday and it was only Thursday of the first week. It was going to take a couple of days at least for the replacement parts to arrive, a couple more after that for Sean to find time to fit them (this was his busiest time of year). I was bitterly disappointed. We debated reading by the pool at Salsingham. But on Friday morning we were discovered by Mr Watson and, after assisting him to clear a land drain, it became clear that lasting peace was not to be found there.

      Over the next few days we drove up to the north Norfolk coast near Holkham, drank in pubs and walked on the beach. We joined the queues of cars that threaded their way around the Broads. We visited Houghton Hall. We went to see films in Norwich. It was fine; if only it was what we had wanted to be doing. As if to taunt us, the heat wave continued: each morning dawned insolently cloudless, windless and perfect. By the following Tuesday night, Sean had the Thruster back in one piece. The pod was still cracked like an eggshell in two places, with splints of glass fibre poking out of the tear. Straw and stray seeds of corn were still lodged in corners

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