‘So now it’s your turn for the torture chamber, dear boy?’
The first person Paul Harker met when he pushed open the glass swing doors of the training complex three weeks later had a fruity voice and walked with a slight swagger. His right hand was in the pocket of his double-breasted grey suit which matched his grey face, his grey hair and his grey eyes.
Harker’s spirits sank. He didn’t feel like Archie Truscott and his twenty-seven ghosts. Not today. He didn’t really want Archie to be in that glass-sided cabin at all, watching the red snail’s track across the glass-covered map marking the ‘progress’ of the flight, while inside the Duty Training Captain would be giving him ‘emergencies’ and watching his reactions and his movements on the controls.
He tried to pump as much enthusiasm as he could into his voice. ‘Hello, Archie. How’s business?’
‘If you mean how many heads have been chopped off today, the answer is nil, old chap. The bloody simulator’s on the blink.’
‘Oh, well,’ Harker turned to go back out again, feeling relieved. ‘I’ll come back another day.’
Anyway, he didn’t feel too good. That heavy sort of tiredness was still hanging over him. Probably the weather of course – terribly high humidity – plus jet lag. When you were shuttling to and fro between two countries with a five-hour time difference, your body never really had a chance to settle down. Crew fatigue wasn’t something you shrugged off with two days stand-off. It mounted up like an overdraft. Cumulative fatigue, some joker had called it. He’d done another double crossing last week. Belinda Chafford wasn’t on the crew and the trip had gone smoothly. And they had landed back three days ago.
A plump grey hand was laid on the lapel of his jacket. ‘ Not so fast, dear boy. The technicians have promised it serviceable in ten minutes. And you are to be Number One.’
They walked side by side down the elephant-grey rubber-floored corridor to the simulator section. Archie went on gesticulating. Few would guess that he had been a pilot. Indeed few would guess the occupation of most pilots, Harker thought – they can’t be classified. It rarely showed, like it did with lawyers and civil servants and the clergy and armed services officers. All sorts of unexpected people for some reason or other wound up as pilots.
During a lull in Archie’s monologue, Harker asked, ‘ Who’s the Duty Training Captain?’
‘George Osborne.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
An ambitious man nine years younger than he was whom he cordially hated. Harriet had a theory that all feelings were mutual, so probably Osborne hated him too. Quite why he had no idea – but then you never did.
‘I understand how you feel, old chum. You know, I never realised how my life was ruled by medicals and Checks, until I didn’t have to have them.’ Archie paused. ‘And now I’m a free man, I can live at last!’
The words rang out so much like a hollow bell that all Harker could think of to say was, ‘Things have changed a bit.’
By which he meant that at first Training Captains went drunk on all the unpleasant things they could do to pilots they were testing in a simulator. Runaway stabilisers, instrument failures, tyre bursts, explosive decompressions, engine failures, fuselage fires, total electrical failures – you name it, they gave it, one after the other or even together in a cornucopia of failures until the poor pilot was reduced to a sweating rag. Now sense had prevailed, and you got a couple of failures at the most. But they could be anything, that was the trouble, and you had to be alert for the lot. And Clever Dicks like Osborne had a habit of sending a failure in with a twist.
‘Since my accident?’ That hollow bell again. ‘Yes, of course, and so have I. But I still would not relish being cooped up for four hours with chum Osborne in that phosphorescent tomb. And what do they clean the things with? I’ve never been able to discover. Formaldehyde? Pure alcohol? Whatever it is, it smells like a hospital. You have my sympathies, dear boy.’
As they went into the high-ceilinged room and the simulator reared up its truncated body and little fins of wings like a beached white whale, Harker saw who his First Officer was and swore under his breath.
‘Good afternoon, sir.’
‘Afternoon, Mr Adams.’
Terry Adams had once been a boyfriend of Jane’s. Several times he’d been over to Elmtrees. He’d been a nuisance. There was a row. Harker had more or less thrown him out of the house. Jane was upset, which hadn’t exactly helped the family situation.
Behind Adams stood his Engineer Officer.
‘Hello, Mr Griffiths, haven’t seen you around lately.’
‘Been on the double Bermuda shuttle, Captain Harker.’
‘Lucky boy.’
As he took off his coat, Harker heard the sound of the door swinging open and the rubber-soled footsteps creeping closer. He turned his head round.
‘Hello, George.’
‘Hello, Paul.’ George Osborne nodded his egg-shaped head towards the others, ‘… gentlemen. Well, simulator’s serviceable. So shall we get started while we have some of the afternoon left?’
Archie Truscott disappeared into his glass shell from where he would take on the role of Air Traffic Controller, giving instructions and at the same time watching the red ink line of the ‘ aircraft’ track on the map of the particular exercise being carried out – which way the Captain turned, how long he stayed on course, his descent, his blind landing, his height and speed jotted in crayon – what he’d been doing was all here on the glass for him to see when he emerged, always in his shirtsleeves, often red-faced and sweating from his four-hour ordeal. Checks used to be done in the old days in the aeroplane. But now with the cost of an airborne Astrojet running at three thousand pounds an hour, all of them were done on the far cheaper simulator.
The session started all right. Harker let off the parking brakes. Outside, the simulated lights of the simulated airport pricked out the darkness as they ‘ moved’ down the blue taxi lights.
They got to the end of the runway. Terry Adams read out the Before Take Off Check List. Harker and Engineer Officer Griffiths called each item back when it was done and checked.
‘Keep the Engine Failure and the Engine Fire Check Lists ready on the throttle box, Mr Adams.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Harker could hear Archie, in a very Heathrow-Air-Traffic- Controller voice, giving them take off clearance. It was one of Archie’s specialities that he simulated the personalities and accents of traffic controllers all over the world – American, Greek, Arab, Indian, Japanese, Australian depending on which part of the world the simulator was supposed to be at the time.
Adams repeated the clearance back. Harker opened the throttles. The engine roared. Sluggishly at first, then faster, the needle on the airspeed indicator began to creep round the dial.
Seconds later, all hell broke loose – red flashing lights, bells clanging, Griffiths’ voice shouting, ‘ Fire in Number One!’
‘Engine Fire Check List!’ Harker roared to Adams as he slammed all throttles closed.
‘Warning light?’
‘Cancelled.’
‘Thrust lever?’
‘Closed.’
‘Start lever?’
‘Cut off.’
‘Essential power?’
‘Reselected.’
‘Fire shut off?’
There was a pause.
‘Fire shut off!’ Harker yelled. ‘Fuel’s still on! Griffiths, you’re feeding the fire!’
‘Fire shut off?’
‘Lever down.’
The Check List continued till the first extinguisher bottle was pulled and the bell stopped.
‘Reverse thrust!’
There was another, deeper-throated roar. The ‘aircraft’ slowed and came to a stop.
‘Bit slow on the fire shut off,’ Osborne said. ‘Otherwise no complaints. Shall we go back to the ramp and start again?’
It was on this second sortie that the trouble started. Harker taxied out all right, and got to the end of the runway. The Before Take Off Check was completed with the selection of twenty per cent take off flap. Adams had begun to ask for take off clearance when – presumably on previous instructions from Osborne – up on the R/ T came Archie’s voice, this time suitably altered to a different accent for ground control, telling them that the starboard trailing edge flaps appeared to be damaged, probably from a stone thrown up from the taxiway, and they were to return to the ramp for inspection.
‘Flaps up!’
Adams moved the lever. ‘Flaps in, sir!’
Harker continued to taxi back. Seconds later, when they were in the process of turning off the runway, no doubt again on Osborne’s instructions, up came Archie’s voice, back in its Heathrow-Air-Traffic-Control accent to assure them everything was all right now and could they take off immediately as there was a 747 on final.
Harker turned back onto the runway and pushed the thrust levers hard against the stops. Of course he should have been aware, Harker realised afterwards. Knowing Osborne, knowing him for the shyster he was, he should have been prepared. But he was wanting to get the Check over with. He’d started off well. He wanted to continue well.
Down the ‘runway’ they pounded – on and on and on. They were three-quarters of the way down now, nosewheel off the ground, past VI and V2. Harker pulled back on the stick.
But there was no flying feel in it. And here came the red boundary lights! He heaved back with all his might. But all that happened was a God-Almighty crash. Lights came flickering on again. Bells rang.
Harker shouted ‘Crash Action Check List!’ Adams and Griffiths began shutting down the engines, closing the fuel valves, turning off all hydraulics and engine electrics and unstrapping themselves.
‘Bloody thing’s gone US again!’ Harker said to Osborne, when everything had subsided to a stop and silence. ‘What the hell’s the matter now?’
‘Nothing,’ Osborne said smoothly. ‘ Nothing’s the matter with the simulator.’
‘There must be!’
‘No.’
‘But—’
‘Why don’t you ask … ‘‘what’s the matter with me’’?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘You tried to do the impossible. You tried to take off without flap.’
‘Without flap?’ Then he remembered. ‘That was a trick to see if I’d forget.’
Osborne stroked his cheek. ‘Not a trick at all.’
‘You interrupted me so I’d forget!’
‘I was simply checking to see if you’d go back to the beginning of the Check List again before you took off. In fact, you simply put your head down and charged!’
Harker turned to Adams. ‘ It’s your job to do the Check List. Why didn’t you?’
‘Sir, I tried to bring your attention to it, but I thought you knew what you were doing.’
Osborne shook his head sadly. ‘You should have checked, Adams. You both should have checked.’ And then, after a full half-minute’s pause to let that sink in, he added, ‘Well, let’s try again, shall we?’
The rest of the Check passed uneventfully. The usual take off, cross country, a runway stabiliser emergency and a let-down into Paris in foggy conditions. Archie signed them off in a very French accent, and Harker called ‘Finished with the engines!’
But they had not finished with Osborne. As usual, he talked to each of the three operating crew. Separately. Harker was last.
‘Well, Paul,’ George Osborne said. ‘ This is really rather embarrassing.’
Harker looked at him stonily.
‘I should fail you. I’ve already failed Adams.’
Harker still said nothing.
‘You crashed well and truly, did you not?’
‘That was an underhand trick of yours.’
‘They all say that. But you know as well as I do, that could have happened on Service. You should have done the Before Take Off Check again from the beginning. Shouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Harker said shortly.
‘‘Then why didn’t you?’ Osborne paused. He had eyes of the very palest, watery green. ‘If you manage to figure that one out, this Check will have been worthwhile.’
There was a silence.
‘No,’ Osborne said at last, ‘I’m not going to fail you. Of course I couldn’t. We’ve known each other for years. You’re the Flight Captain. It would be bad for company morale.’ He stopped. He appeared to be waiting for Harker to say something.
He’s actually expecting me to thank him, Harker thought. For a dirty trick like that! He raised his hand. ‘See you, George,’ he said briefly as he collected his coat. Then he was off through the doors while Osborne turned his attention to writing his reports.
Harker joined Adams and Griffiths. They were halfway along the corridor when, from the other side of the Training Complex, came a bevy of stewardesses, one of whom was Belinda.
Griffiths greeted her warmly. Adams grunted a greeting. Ignoring them both, Belinda said, ‘Captain Harker … I haven’t seen you in weeks!’
‘I haven’t seen you either, Miss Chafford.’
‘I spend all my time on the route.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’
‘Oh just emergency drill. What about you, Captain Harker?’
‘Oh, just a flying Check.’ He felt cheered to see her smiling face. ‘Come and have a coffee with us.’ He turned to Adams and Griffiths. ‘We need it after our ordeal, don’t, we?’ They didn’t contradict him. Belinda accepted prettily. In the cafeteria, she chattered unselfconsciously. It was the conversation between the three men that was stilted.
Harker left as soon as he decently could. At the glass entrance doors to the Training Complex, he ran into Osborne, all his reports completed and now going home.
‘Going off, too, Paul?’
‘Yes.’
‘Been a hard day, eh?’
Harker just nodded.
As they went out into the car park, it started to rain. Ahead of them, they saw a tubby grey figure dashing through the downpour towards an ancient car.
‘Poor old Archie … caught without his mackintosh,’ Osborne said. And when Harker didn’t answer, he added, ‘There but for the grace of God go you!’