‘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 I’d 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 shuffled 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 co-pilot 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.