In the cockpit nothing had changed. The plane roared steadily on its three ten heading and all the instruments were like rocks. I touched the back of the co-pilot, awake again to his presence. The silence in him was eternaclass="underline" he wouldn’t feel my sympathy, but he had it.
Turning back a pace or two, I knelt down beside Mike. He too had been shot in the head, and about him too there was no question. The agile eyebrow was finished. I straightened him out from his crumpled position and laid him flat on his back. It wouldn’t help any, but it seemed to give him more dignity. That was all you could give the dead, it seemed; and all you could take away.
The four packing cases in the luggage bay were heavy and had been thrust in with more force than finesse, pushing aside and crushing most of the things already there. Shifting the first case a few inches I stretched a long arm past it and tugged out a blanket, which I laid over Mike. Armed with a second one I went back into the galley. Sometime in the past I’d seen the first-aid box in one of the cupboards under the counter, and to my relief it was still in the same place.
Lying on top of it was a gay parcel wrapped in the striped paper of Malpensa Airport. The doll for Mike’s daughter. I felt the jolt physically. Nothing could soften the facts. I was taking her a dead father for her birthday.
And Gabriella... anxiety for her still hovered in my mind like a low cloud ceiling, thick, threatening and unchanged. I picked up the parcel she had wrapped and put it on the counter beside the plastic cups and the bag of sugar. People often did recover from bullets in the lungs: I knew they did. But the precise Italian doctor had only offered hope, and hope had tearing claws. I was flying home to nothing if she didn’t live.
Taking the blanket and the first aid kit I went back to Patrick. In the lavatory compartment I washed my filthy hands and afterwards soaked a chunk of cotton wool with clean water to wipe his blood-streaked face. Dabbing dry with more cotton wool I found a large hard lump on his forehead where it had hit the floor: two heavy concussing shocks within seconds, his brain had received. His eyelids hadn’t flickered while I cleaned him, and with a new burst of worry I reached for his pulse: but it was still there, faint but persevering.
Sighing with relief I broke open the wrapping of a large sterile wound dressing, laid it gently over the deep gash in his scalp, and tied it on with the tape. Under his head I slid the second blanket, folded flat, to shield him a little from the vibration in the aircraft’s metal skin. I loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt and also the waistband of his trousers: and beyond that there was no help I could give him. I stood up slowly with the first aid kit and turned to go.
With anxiety bordering on hysteria Rous-Wheeler shouted, ‘You aren’t going to leave me like this again, are you?’
I looked back at him. He was half sitting, half kneeling, with his hands still fastened to the floor in front of him. He’d been there for nearly three hours, and his flabby muscles must have been cracking. It was probably too cruel to leave him like that for the rest of the trip. I put the first aid kit down on the flattened box, pulled a bale of hay along on the starboard side and lodged it against the untra-sonic packing case. Then with Alf’s cutter I clipped through the wire round his wrists and pointed to the bale.
‘Sit there.’
He got up slowly and stiffly, crying out. Shuffling, half-falling, he sat where I said. I picked up another piece of wire and in spite of his protests bound his wrists together again and fastened them to one of the chains anchoring the crate. I didn’t want him bumbling all over the plane and breathing down my neck.
‘Where are we going?’ he said, the pomposity reawakening now that he’d got something from me.
I didn’t answer.
‘And who is flying the plane?’
‘George,’ I said, finishing his wrists with a twirl he’d never undo. ‘Naturally.’
‘George who?’
‘A good question,’ I said, nodding casually.
He was beautifully disconcerted. I left him to stew in it, picked up the first aid kit, checked again that Patrick’s pulse was plodding quietly along, and made my way back to the galley.
There were a number of dressings in the first aid box, including several especially for burns, and I wasn’t keen on my shirt sticking and tearing away again. Gingerly I pulled my jersey up under my arms and tucked the side of the shirt away under it. No one except Billy would have found the view entertaining, and the air at once started everything going again at full blast. I opened one of the largest of the burn dressings and laid it in place with that exquisite kind of gentleness you only give to yourself. Even so, it was quite enough. After a moment I fastened it on and pulled my shirt and jersey down on top. It felt so bad for a bit that I really wished I hadn’t bothered.
I drank another cup of water, which failed to put out the fire. The first aid kit, on further inspection, offered a three-way choice in pain killers: a bottle each of aspirin and codeine tablets, and six ampoules of morphine. I shook out two of the codeines, and swallowed these. Then I packed everything back into the box, shut the lid, and left it on the counter.
Slowly I went up to the cockpit and stood looking at the instruments. All working fine. I fetched a third blanket from the luggage bay and tucked it over and round the body of Bob. He became immediately less of a harsh reality, and I wondered if that was why people always covered the faces of the dead.
I checked the time. An hour from Marseilles. Only a hundred and fifty miles, and a daunting way still to go. I leaned against the metal wall and shut my eyes. It was no good feeling the way I did with so much still to do. Parts of Air Ministry regulations drifted ironically into my mind... ‘Many flying accidents have occurred as a result of pilots flying while medically unfit... and the more exacting the flying task the more likely are minor indispositions to be serious... so don’t go up at all if you are ill enough to need drugs... and if coffee isn’t enough to keep you awake you are not fit to fly.’
Good old Air Ministry I thought: they’d hit the nail on the head. Where they would have me be was down on the solid earth, and I wholeheartedly agreed.
The radio, I thought inconsequentially. Out of order. I opened my eyes, pushed myself off the wall, and set about finding out why. I hadn’t far to look. Yardman had removed all the circuit breakers, and the result was like an electric light system with no fuses in the fuse box. Every plane carried spares, however. I located the place where the spares should have been, and there weren’t any. The whole lot in Yardman’s pockets, no doubt.
Fetching a fresh cup of water, I climbed again into Patrick’s seat and put on the headset to reduce the noise. I leaned back in the comfortable leather upholstery and rested my elbows on the stubby arms, and after a while the codeine and the bandage turned in a reasonable job.
Outside the sky was still black and dotted with brilliant stars, and the revolving anti-collision beacon still skimmed pinkly over the great wide span of the wings, but there was also a new misty greyish quality in the light. Not dawn. The moon coming up. Very helpful of it, I thought appreciatively. Although it was well on the wane I would probably be able to see what I was doing the next time I flew out over the coastline. I began to work out what time I would get there. More guesses. North-west across France coast to coast had to be all of five hundred miles. It had been one-forty when I left Marseilles; was three-ten now. E.T.A. English Channel, somewhere about five.