He looked over the side, shielding his mouth from the wind. The countryside stretched below them, grey striations of lanes and roads, the glitter of a pond, great golden swathes of laburnum, a line of hedgerow white with blossom, blue smoke from a bonfire drifting across a field of green wheat.
A movement from Dundas brought him back to the task in hand. Dundas was making a spinning movement with his hand. The comforting roar of the engine faltered, then became an infuriated mosquito whine as the plane started to spin. Dundas’s eyes were fixed on his instruments. Rivers watched the sun revolve in a great spiral round the falling plane. Abruptly, the sun vanished, and the green fields rushed up to meet them. Dundas pulled on the stick, but something was wrong. The horizon was tilted. Rivers leant forward and tilted his hand to the left. Slowly the horizon straightened.
Dundas had lost his sense of the horizontal. Already.
‘HOW WAS IT?’ Rivers yelled.
Dundas waved his hand in an incomprehensible gesture, then put one hand on top of his head and pressed repeatedly, indicating he’d felt his head being squashed into his body. He made the spinning movement again. Rivers shook his head and made a looping movement. After a moment’s hesitation, Dundas’s thumb went up.
The plane banked steeply as Dundas turned and made for the city. He was not meant to do this, and Rivers guessed he was trying to make the flight last as long as possible. In a short time he saw beneath him the sulphurous haze of London. This was the view seen by the German pilots as they came in on moonlit bombing raids, following the silver thread of the Thames, counting bridges, watching for the bulge of the Isle of Dogs.
Rivers tapped Dundas on the shoulder. Dundas turned round and nodded. So much of his face was hidden by the goggles it was impossible to read his expression. Rivers sat back and again concentrated on his own sensations. After the fifth loop he began to feel he was loose in his seat, a reaction he remembered from other flights and knew to be a frequent, though not universal, reaction of healthy fliers. They again came out with one wing down. Dundas leant over the side and retched, but didn’t vomit. Rivers jerked his thumb at the ground, but Dundas ignored him.
With no idea at all now which manoeuvre to expect, Rivers sat back and tried to relax as the plane climbed. The vast blue haze of London fell away beneath the left wing-tip. Higher and colder. Wisps of cloud hid the sun; columns of shadows flitted rapidly across the city. Rivers felt calm, suddenly. There were worse ways to die, and he’d seen most of them.
Again the engine faltered, giving way to the mosquito whine as the plane began to fall. Dundas came out of the spin, white, giddy, confused and clearly finding it difficult to focus on his instruments. Rivers could see him peering at them. He yelled, ‘DOWN!’ and jerked his finger at the ground. Dundas leant out of the plane and was sick.
They had a bumpy landing, though not worse than many others Rivers had experienced. After the plane had taxied to a halt, Dundas stayed in his seat for a few moments before jumping down. He staggered slightly and held on to the wing. Rivers climbed down and immediately went up to him.
‘I’m all right,’ Dundas said, letting go of the wing.
Two mechanics were walking towards the plane. Dundas turned to them and made some comment on the flight. The three went into a huddle, and Rivers walked to one side. Dundas was smiling and talking cheerfully, but then Dundas was a very good actor.
When he came across to join Rivers, he said, ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Shall we go and sit down?’
Dundas looked towards the canteen, but shook his head. ‘I think I’d just as soon get back, if you don’t mind.’
Rivers’s legs were trembling as they walked back to the car. He was angry with himself for getting into such a state — angry, ashamed and inclined to pretend he’d been less frightened than he knew he had been. He observed this reaction, thinking he was in the state of fatigue and illness that favours the development of an anxiety neurosis, and behaving in the way most likely to bring it about. He was doing exactly what he told his patients not to do: repressing the awareness of fear.
In the car going back to the hospital, Dundas examined his reactions minutely. During the first spin, in addition to the squashed head feeling, he’d felt sick. ‘Not so much sick. More a sort of bulge in my throat. And then during the loop I felt really sick. And faint. The sky went dark.’
‘And in the last spin?’
‘That was terrible. I felt really confused.’
After leaving Dundas in the hospital entrance hall, Rivers went into his room and threw his cap and cane on to the chair. Henry Head came in a moment later. ‘How was he?’
‘Bad.’
‘Sick?’
‘And faint.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘No, I seem to be suffering from terminal stiff upper lip. You know the way I go on about not repressing fear? What did I do?’ He spread his hands.
‘It’s the Public School Factor, Will. We’re all too well trained.’
‘It’s the Silly Old Fool Factor. Too many young men around.’
Head smiled. ‘No, well, I know what you mean. One doesn’t want to seem totally decrepit.’
‘I had this sudden sense that Dundas was hiding something. And that didn’t —’
‘He is.’
Rivers looked surprised.
‘He’s got a bottle of Bumstead’s Gleet Cure in his locker.’
‘Has he?’
‘Sister Mitchell noticed it. Syphilis wouldn’t make him go faint, mind.’
‘Lying awake worrying about it might.’ Rivers sat in silence for a moment. ‘Well. Redirects the investigation a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Makes it a helluva lot simpler.’ Head dropped into a sergeant-major’s baritone. ‘“Show us yer knob, lad.” Are you coming to dinner?’
‘Yes, and then I must dash. I’m supposed to be seeing somebody at eight.’
Rivers had the top floor of a large house near Hampstead Heath. The house was within a hundred yards of the great gun, and there were times when its proximity showed in every line of his face.
Prior arrived exactly on time, and was about to ring the bell when he saw Rivers walking rapidly up the hill.
‘Have you rung?’ Rivers asked, getting out his key.
‘No, I saw you coming.’
Rivers opened the door and stood aside to let Prior in. Mrs Irving, Rivers’s landlady, was hovering in the hall, wanting to complain about the Belgian refugees on the second floor whose failure to understand the extent of the food shortages was making her life a misery. When that subject was exhausted, there were the raids to be discussed. Wasn’t it scandalous they’d been kept awake all night and not a word about it in The Times? Then there was her daughter, who’d been summoned back from France, ostensibly because her mother was ill, in fact because she was incapable of sorting out her servant problems. Girls kept leaving her employ on the flimsy excuse that they could earn five times as much in the munition factories. There was no accounting for modern girls, she said. And Frances was so moody.
At last Mrs Irving was called away, by Frances presumably, at any rate by a young woman with braided hair who gave Rivers a cool, amused, sympathetic smile before she closed the door of the drawing-room.
‘I hope she’s letting you live rent free,’ Prior said.
They walked up the stairs together. Rivers paused on the second floor to look down into the garden. The laburnum, he said, was particularly fine. Prior didn’t believe in this sudden interest in horticulture. The pause was to give him time to get his breath back. His chest was tighter than it had been on his last visit, and Rivers would have noticed that. Damn Rivers, he thought, knowing the response was utterly unfair. Whenever he needed Rivers he became angry with him, often to the point where he couldn’t talk about what was worrying him. He mustn’t let that happen tonight.