He fell into silence once more and Kate thought he had changed his mind, had decided the memory was best left undisturbed. He looked at her as if asking her trust and, by lying close beside him, head resting against his shoulder, she gave it.
'I had a full load,' he finally went on. Twenty-six passengers - engineers, riggers, a relief medical team -
and everyone seemed cheered by the fine weather. I remember the sun dazzling off the water as if it were no more than a huge placid lake. We took off and flew at a height of fifteen hundred feet towards our designated oil rig. We were soon over it and flying past, gradually descending to our inbound level...'
Kate raised her head and looked at him in puzzlement.
'Sorry,' he said. 'Standard procedure for rig landing is to fly five miles beyond, descend to two hundred feet and head back, preferably with the wind behind. The rig shows on radar, although the blip disappears from the scanner when it's within a mile's range; after that you rely on sight.
'Everything was normal, no problems at all. I was still on the outbound course, levelling off, when we ran smack into a thick sea mist.'
He shivered, his body becoming tense, and Kate held him tight.
'It was sudden, but no cause for alarm. I turned the machine and headed back in the direction of the rig, flying even lower to keep visual contact with the sea. I should have risen above the fog bank, but I figured we were close to the rig and would soon be clear of the mist.
But you see, the fog was shifting and moving in the same direction - that's why it had come up on us so swiftly when we were outbound. Then, without any warning, I had nothing at all to focus on.
'I should have switched to instrument flying, but I was confident I could rely on my own instincts to take us clear; all I had to do was maintain a constant altitude. The Civil Aviation Authority has a term for it:
"Pilot disorientation", an overwhelming compulsion for a pilot to believe in his own senses rather than what his instruments tell him. They say it's a common phenomenon, even among the most experienced aircrew; all I know is that my stupidity cost the lives of those men.'
'Steve, you can't blame yourself.' She tugged at his collar as if to shake sense into him.
'I can, and I do,' he said quietly. 'Every pilot who has lost his aircraft and killed his passengers and who has himself survived feels the same way, even when no fingers are pointed at him. It's something there's just no refuge from.'
She saw it was pointless to argue at that moment. Tell me what happened,' she said, and this time there was no reluctance on his part to continue.
We hit the sea and bounced off. We hit again and the floor was ripped out. One of the flotation tanks must have been damaged, too, because next time we hit, the copter flipped over and sank.
'I found myself outside, lungs full of freezing water. Don't ask me how I got out, I don't remember; maybe through an escape hatch, or maybe I just floated through the ripped floor. I was semi-conscious, but I could see the helicopter below, sinking fast, disappearing into that deep, never-ending gloom. I broke surface, coughing water, half-drowned, that
murky vision already working its own special torture. I tried to get rid of my lifejacket, tried to tear it off so I could go back down, help those still trapped inside the helicopter, anything to relieve me of my guilt there and then, even if it meant my own death; but other hands grabbed me, held me there. My junior captain had escaped, too, and was clinging to me, one of the surviving riggers helping him. They stopped me diving and sometimes I curse them for it.
'Only eight of us made it. Other bodies were recovered later, but most went down with the Sikorsky.
We were lucky that another helicopter was preparing for take-off on another rig close to the one we were headed for; when we lost radio contact and disappeared from the radar scanner, it was sent out to search for us. By the time it reached our last point of contact, the fog bank had drifted on and we were visible. They winched us aboard just in time; any longer and the cold would have finished us, even though the weather itself was mild.'
Culver sighed deep and long, as though some of the pain had been released with the telling. His voice became flat, unemotional. The wreckage was never recovered, so the investigators couldn't be sure if instrument failure had been involved; but from my own account and my co-pilot's, "pilot disorientation"
was assumed. The CAA rarely classes it as a sign of incompetence or negligence, so no action was taken against me. It was my fault, of course, but not officially, and no one voiced any accusations.'
'And yet you blamed yourself,' said Kate.
'If I'd followed the book, those people would still be alive.'
'I can't answer that, Steve. It seems trite to say that accidents will always happen, even to the most careful. The fact that you weren't accused, not even in private, surely absolves you from any responsibility.'
The company didn't ask me to complete my contract'
'Do you really wonder at that? My God, they wouldn't be so heartless.'
'It may have been the best thing for me, to fly that same route, to try to carry on as normal.'
'How could your employers know that? It could have been the worst thing to have done. I can't believe you've been so foolish as to allow guilt to shadow your life for so long.'
'It hasn't, Kate. Oh, it was bad for a long, long time, but gradually the thoughts found their own little hideaway at the back of my mind. I wasn't too well received at other companies after the crash, despite the inquiry's findings, and I was desperate to get back in the air. I needed to find my own peace.'
The perspiration that trickled from his forehead was due to something more than humidity. Thank God an old friend came along just at the right time. Harry McKay and I learned to fly together and we'd kept in loose contact over the years. He suggested our own charter company; he'd handle the business side, I'd do the flying. Harry had a little money of his own and knew where he could find more. We'd be up to our ears in debt for a few years, but it would be our own company and eventually all the profits would be ours. Debt or no debt, profit or no profit, I jumped at the chance. From that moment on we were so busy that I was able to keep those bad memories suppressed, even though I was always aware they were lurking on that shelf, ready to slip down—'
'Or be taken down and dusted off? Is that what you do from time to time?'
He twisted his head to see her face. 'You're harder than you look,' he said.
'No, I just hate to see someone indulge themselves in self-torment. You were cleared by the inquiry and by your own
company, even though everybody loves a scapegoat. It seems to me you've been punishing yourself because the authorities didn't. Maybe you'll take this world destruction on your shoulders, too. Sure, you can take my part of the burden as well. I don't need it.'
"You're being bloody—'
'Silly? Am I really? Isn't guilt supposed to be a primary condition of the human psyche?'
He smiled. 'Is this meant to shake me out of my self-pitying stupor?'
Kate tried to turn away, her anger flaring, but he held her. Tm sorry,' he said. 'I know what you're trying to do and I'm not mocking. I'd even go as far as to say I'm grateful. But just telling you about it has already helped. It's as if I've let something go, set those memories free. Maybe I was the gaoler of my own memories all this time, when all they wanted was to be set loose. And what you said about this world destruction is partly true: it doesn't minimize what happened on that day, but it kind of overshadows it.'
She relaxed against him. 'Haven't you spoken about the accident to anyone else before?'