High Road to China

‘The Baron offend you?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Just the way you got up and left him. I’ve had girls walk away from me the same way.’

God, she thought, are both of them going to give me trouble? ‘How do I pay for the gasoline?’

‘What did you bring?’

‘Pounds and dollars. It was all I could get at such short notice.’

‘They’ll take either. Our money is more welcome than we are. They’re a sour lot, these Austrians.’

‘That’s not what the Baron has been telling me.’

But she didn’t elaborate, just turned her back on him and went across to pay the two men who had brought down the drums of petrol in their ramshackle ex-army truck. Then she moved to her plane, pulling up short as Sun Nan suddenly rose up in front of her from beneath the wing. Preoccupied, thoughts building up in her mind like a honeycomb, she hadn’t noticed him seated in the shadow of the wing.

‘Miss Tozer, if either Mr O’Malley or the Baron makes trouble for you, let me know. I shall take care of you.’

‘Make trouble?’ Then she understood what he meant, marvelled that he should have been so observant. She laughed at the irony that he should be her protector, the defender of her honour. ‘I’m sure I have nothing to fear from them, Mr Sun. But thank you.’

‘We have to stick together. Your father is depending on us, not them.’

‘You don’t have to remind me, Mr Sun. But Mr O’Malley and the Baron may still be necessary to us.’

They took off five minutes later. They flew south-east this time, soon crossed into Hungary. The countries lay below them, one merged into another; treaties had broken up the Empire, but the boundaries were only on maps; at 5000 feet nothing appeared to have changed. Harvest-yellow, dotted with green lakes of forest, the lost empire was unmarked: not here the scars of trenches. Then they were over Lake Balaton, sparkling under the afternoon sun like a vast spill of Tokay wine; the sails of fishermen’s boats drifted like tiny moths caught in the web of sunshine. Then Eve, looking up from the bright glare of the lake, saw the clouds ahead.

They hung in the sky like great baskets of evil purple blooms, a hot-house of storm stretching away to the south-west. Lightning flickered, blue-silver against the purple, and she imagined she could hear the crash of thunder above the roar of the engine. She looked back over her shoulder at Sun Nan, saw the fear on his face below the opaque mask of his goggles, wondered what her own face showed. She hated storms, was afraid of thunder and lightning even in the shelter of the safe, weather-impregnable houses she had called home. In America she had never dared fly in the face of a storm, had always looked for a place to land even when she ran into squalls of rain.

Then up ahead she saw O’Malley wiggle his wings, point to his left and then bank away to the east. He was going to try and take them round the storm.

3

Extract from the William Bede O’Malley manuscript:

It was a bitch of a storm, the worst I had experienced up till then. I have never been a religious man, at least not down on the ground; and if one is going to be religious, that’s the place to be it, down among the selfish, the cheats, the murderers who are there to test your Christianity or whatever you profess to believe. No, the only time I’ve been religious is when I’ve been up in the air: marvelling at God’s genius and charity in creating the sky or cursing Him for the storms He could whip up out of nowhere, showing off His wrath. This was one of His most wrathful.

The turbulence hit us long before we were into the clouds. I had turned east, hoping to fly round the edge of the storm, but it was moving too fast for us. The edge of it caught us and in a matter of moments we were bucking the giant waves of air as they hit us. I had looked down just before the clouds enveloped us, but there was nowhere to head for as a landing site. We were over hills that rolled up into mountains; and the thought of the mountains frightened me. I had jerked my hand upwards, hoping Miss Tozer and Kern were watching me, then pulled back the stick and began to climb. If we were lucky we might get above the storm, but in any case we’d be above the top of the mountains. Mountain tops and aeroplanes still have an upsetting magnetism for each other and even today, at 30,000 feet, I can’t fly over a range of mountains without feeling them scraping my bottom.

I lost sight of the other two machines as soon as the cloud, a wild dark sea, rolled in on us. From a distance the clouds had looked purple; now they were black and green. The air had suddenly turned cold, made even colder by the rain that hit me like a barrage of knives. I continued climbing, fighting the stick that shook in my hands and threatened to break my arms at the wrists and elbows. The turbulence was like nothing I had ever known before; the yo-yo hadn’t been invented then, but I should have got the inspiration and patented it. The noise was more than noise: it was a physical assault inside my head. I reeled in my seat with it, punch-drunk, deaf but still able to hear. Lightning had been exploding behind the clouds, throwing them into bright relief, making them look solid and impenetrable. Suddenly it burst all around me, a great flash of blue-white light that blinded me, yet in the moment before blinding me painted everything in frightening detail: I saw things, the dials on the instrument panel, the worn rim of the cockpit, the tear in the back of my right-hand glove: I saw them, yet I was inside them. It was an effect I had once experienced as a child during an attack of petit-mal, the splitting of oneself in a split-second dream: you are inside and outside the objects you are witnessing at the same moment. I felt sure now that I was about to pass out, that I was seeing the final, meaningless revelation before dying.

The lightning went and I looked up. And saw the plane only half a dozen feet above me. I didn’t know whose it was, Miss Tozer’s or Kern’s: all I knew was that the pilot couldn’t see me. We flew almost locked together, the wheels of the plane above only a foot or two from my top wing. Lightning flared again; half-blinded I saw the plane above tremble and dip. I plunged the stick forward, hit turbulence, shuddered, then fell away from beneath the other threatening machine. There was no time to look up to see if it was following me.

Then the Bristol flipped over, flung sideways by the 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 storm into Ruritania, I thought, and waited for the Drury Lane chorus, somewhere out among the rose bushes, to burst into song. I looked across the road again, ready to be bemused again by the bare bottoms and bellies, something I had never seen at Drury Lane, but the women had dropped their skirts now and stood watching us. That somehow made everything real.

‘You are welcome to my valley,’ said the Countess.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and found myself doing a Kern: I clicked my heels and bowed. ‘Where are we?’

‘In the Valley Malevitza. The border between Roumania and Bulgaria runs down the middle of this road, right through my house. You are in Roumania at this moment.’

‘And the young ladies are Bulgarian?’ Kern gestured towards the women standing among the rose bushes on the other side of the road.

‘Young? Your eyesight is not very good, Baron. Only one of them is young.’ The Countess gave them only a cursory glance, as if they were no more than thorns or faded blooms on the bushes.

‘I don’t think the Baron looked too carefully at their faces,’ said Miss Tozer.

The Countess laughed heartily: it came up out of her belly, like a fat man’s. ‘It is the custom among some of the women. They dare not show their faces to a strange man at first. What else they show is not an invitation. Their menfolk would cut the stranger’s throat if he thought it was.’

I saw the men standing further back in the rose fields. They had risen up from among the bushes; more women and children were also appearing. There must have been a hundred of them spread out through the fields on either side of the road, dark, silent figures among the blaze of red, pink and white blooms. Each man’s hand glittered: it was a moment before I realized each of them held a sharp pruning knife.

Sun Nan had got out of Miss Tozer’s plane. He looked pale and sick, but he put on his bowler hat against the fierce sun and stood holding on to the lower wing of the machine, doing a good job of looking dignified. The Countess glanced at him, but made no comment: like Kern she dismissed him as a servant. Nobody, in her book, would have an Oriental with him or her unless he was a servant.

‘Why did you land here in my valley?’

I explained the circumstances and pointed to the remains of Kern’s top wing. ‘I’m afraid the Baron can’t take off again until we repair that. Is there somewhere around here where we can stay, an inn or something?’

‘You will be my guests. Follow me.’ She swung her horse round. I wondered if we were supposed to gallop after her on foot.

‘Countess, I don’t want to leave the machines parked here with no one to look after them.’

I don’t know what I really expected to happen to the planes, unless I thought the rose-gatherers would attack them with their pruning knives. It struck me that none of these peasants, wild-looking and isolated in this mountain valley, had seen an aeroplane before, at least not on the ground and quite possibly not even in the sky. I had vague memories of reading of Balkan superstitions and there was no guarantee that these particular Balkans trusted the strange contraptions that had fallen down out of the clear hot sky into their midst. I had only a hazy idea where we were, but Dracula country couldn’t be too far away.

‘Bring them with you.’ She dug her heels into her horse and went up the road at full gallop, trailing a long thin veil of dust.

I shrugged, turned to the others. ‘She’s the hostess.’

‘I think she’s mad,’ said Miss Tozer. ‘Do you think we should stay with her?’

‘What choice do we have? Even if I can find some canvas and varnish right away, it’s going to take me at least two days to rebuild that wing.’

She hid her dismay, but I knew she had guessed it was not going to be a ten-minute repair job. Kern said, ‘You can go on without me and I’ll try to catch you up.’

I waited for Miss Tozer to give the decision, but she was looking at me. She was the boss, but with George Weyman’s departure I had become what I suppose one would call the technical manager. ‘I think it’s better we stick together, at least for the time being. We still have a few days in hand.’

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