Tulbach Browne was engaged in some ferocious bargaining, which he always enjoyed. But this time there was a difference. He had to get what he wanted; and that was liable to come a bit expensive.
What he wanted was to get out of Port Victoria, and reach somewhere, anywhere, on the mainland of Africa. He had had a lot of luck getting in to Pharamaul, in the first place; starting one day ahead of David Bracken, he had just caught the last plane from Windhoek to Port Victoria – a plane which was promptly taken out of service and grounded ‘for the duration of the national emergency’.
That might mean a delay of weeks; and in the meantime, he was sitting on his marvellous story, which no one else could possibly match.
It began: ‘Colonel Mboku, one of the few African military murderers not educated at Sandhurst’, and it told the whole story of the massacre, which Tulbach Browne had viewed from the cab of a police van bringing prisoners to the aboura.
But now he was fatally stuck. The new emergency laws forbade all cables, and all overseas telephone calls; and there seemed to be no possible method of getting away from the island, and putting his story on the wire.
He was stuck, like a stork with a juicy toad in its beak, but with both legs trapped in the mud. No planes were allowed in or out; the airport was under heavy police guard; the one small ship which plied to and fro between Pharamaul and Cape Town was not due till the following week. A fishing boat would take days, perhaps weeks, to make the five hundred miles to the opposite coast, even if the weather held.
In fact, the only man who could help him was the man he was now talking to, in a very secluded corner of the Prince Albert Hotel: Jeff Gibson, the secretary, flying instructor, principal shareholder, and general big noise of the Port Victoria Flying Club.
‘It simply can’t be done, old boy,’ had been the first reaction from Gibson, a fiftyish ex-RAF pilot who seemed to be authentic to the very last degree, from handlebar moustache to wartime slang, from boozy red face to flamboyant yellow scarf. ‘Our club licence could go for a burton, in the first place. Not to speak of grounding me, maybe confiscating the kite. I tell you, these lads get really cheesed off if someone breaks their ruddy rules!’
‘But are you breaking the rules? Has all flying been banned?’
‘All commercial flying, yes.’
‘So what? That doesn’t cover a private flying club, does it? You could just be taking a practice spin.’
‘I could just be taking a practice jump in the oggie, but I’m not!’ Gibson twirled his huge moustache, and then his empty glass. ‘How about another noggin?’
‘No – this is on me,’ Tulbach Browne chipped in. He signalled to a waiter, and gave him the international finger-wave which meant ‘same again’. Then he turned back to Jeff Gibson. ‘I don’t see why you can’t fly anywhere you like. It’s not breaking the law.’
‘It’s certainly bending it a bit, old boy. The inference of the new regs is that all flights to and from the mainland are banned. Right? So that includes Pharamaul Airways, the daily plane from Windhoek, you, me, and old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh. If in doubt, bale out! I don’t want to be the first flying type they make an example of.’ He brooded, though briefly. ‘I’ve heard that song before … I tell you, in a country like this they’ve got you by the short and curlies.’
‘But even if that’s true, who’s to know about it?’
‘They’ll know damn soon when they see me coming back!’ Tulbach Browne was ready for that, too. ‘Not if you landed up north somewhere, and then flew in here on a short hop.’ He raised his glass: ‘Cheers! Don’t forget, I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘Bung ho!’ the pilot answered. ‘You’ll certainly have to.’
It was the first breakthrough. But Jeff Gibson had not finished with the list of obstacles standing in the way.
‘The trouble is, old boy, I’ve only got three kites. One was pranged by some clot last week, and we can’t get the spares for it. This country’s run like a closing-down sale – “Positively your last chance.” The second one is locked up at the airport, with a great big brute of a fuzzy-wuzzy standing guard over it. He’d rather shoot than shit, any old day! The third is out at the club airfield.’ Gibson gulped at his drink again. ‘Fair enough – no pain. But it’s only a string-bag job. It’s a Gipsy Moth trainer, older than God – we call it the BC10.’ He guffawed so loudly that heads were turned from all over the Prince Albert lounge. ‘We only use it for teaching bumps and turns. If some stupid erk prangs it, we’d be better off with the insurance, anyway. But I wouldn’t try to fly it across five hundred miles of the cruel sea, for a thousand quid.’
Tulbach Browne decided to move in. ‘We can’t pay you a thousand,’ he said. The ‘We’ stood for the Daily Thresh, which he had early established as the party most concerned. ‘But if you’re interested in two hundred …’
The pilot, a poor man beginning to smell blood, batted this one back forcibly.
‘You must be joking!’
‘Two hundred pounds is a lot of money.’
‘Who to? Pull your finger out! I told you, we could lose our ruddy licence, and the kite. We could come down in the drink. Quite apart from me being shot at dawn for breaking the law. I wouldn’t even give it a prayer – not under five hundred quid.’
‘Two fifty,’ Tulbach Browne countered. We’re not made of money.’
‘And I’m not made of Pilot-Officer Prune-juice! I told you – de-digitate!’
Tulbach Browne, searching his memory, came up with some matching slang. ‘Dieu et mon doigt, eh?’
‘Bang on!’
They bargained briskly for some time, over successive drinks; the trip was already on, Tulbach Browne knew, but there was a limit to what the Daily Thresh would stand for, even for a story like this, and Jeff Gibson already had more than a suspicion of how important it was. Finally they struck a bargain, at £350 – Port Victoria to Windhoek, starting at dawn next morning, with no guarantee, and absolutely no reference, in print or otherwise, as to how Tulbach Browne had made his escape.
‘Righty-ho!’ Gibson said at last. ‘They laughed when I sat down to play …’ Their eighth drink had just been served, and strict concentration had ebbed. ‘I’ll be up half the night as it is, buttoning on a spare tank. You’re getting one hell of a bargain!’
‘After you with the handkerchief.’ But Tulbach Browne still had something else to tell him, and he broached it very carefully. ‘Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts. What time do you want us to be there?’
‘Cock-screech, old boy!’ Gibson answered cheerfully, with an appetite which must have been rooted, and constantly renewed, in the stirring past. ‘Sparrow-fart, in fact – call it what you like. Let’s say four ack emma. Then I can–’ he broke off, alerted at last. ‘What do you mean, we? Is there going to be someone else?’
‘I promised to give someone a lift, as a matter of fact. A girl.’
‘But hell, be your age! BC10 is a two-seater! There won’t be any room for a spare bod.’
‘She can sit on my knee.’ The third passenger was an important part of Tulbach Browne’s total story, and he was determined to clinch the expensive deal on his own terms. ‘What difference does it make, anyway?’
‘Just the difference between getting to Windhoek, and running out of air halfway. All same Berlin to Biggin Hill. Dicing with death, like the man said.’ But Gibson was not really opposed. ‘For a start, you won’t be able to bring any luggage with you.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘Christ, you must really want her on your knee! What girl is this?’
‘She’s called Lucy Help.’
Jeff Gibson, with a drink poised between his lips, jumped so violently that most of it splashed over his knotted silk scarf. He did not even bother to wipe it off. ‘Absolutely no dice!’ he declared, with the utmost determination. ‘Lucy Help! Christ, you’ll get us all shot!’
‘She only wants to get to Johannesburg.’
‘And I only want to live! Have you gone stark staring bonkers, old man? She’s the President’s prime bit of crumpet! If he even heard about this, he’d chop us up for rissoles!’
‘I’ll make it five hundred,’ said Tulbach Browne. ‘That’s all the money I’ve got, and it’s a damn sight more than the trip’s worth.’ He produced his last idea. ‘You can always say I pulled a gun on you.’
‘You might as well do that, right now! Jesus H Christ! Why did I ever volunteer?’
As BC10, groaning and creaking like a wicker laundry basket, began to taxi across the bumpy field, and Lucy Help snuggled her delicious bottom well down into Tulbach Browne’s lap, she shouted in his ear: ‘Have you ever done it like this?’
Tulbach Browne, who had had several sessions with Lucy already, was not at all surprised. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he shouted back, ‘yes, I have.’
‘What, in the air?’
‘No – I meant, in a car.’
‘Oh, that … Getting kind of bumpy, isn’t it?’
‘That’s the plane.’ Browne had Lucy Help’s bulging flight bag, bearing the proud crest of Pharamaul World Airways, between his feet, and he asked, against the rising windstream: ‘What’s in the bag?’
‘Money.’
Tulbach Browne laughed. ‘That should keep you warm. Just like this, eh?’
‘Better.’
‘Well’ – the single engine was now revving up to a veritable scream – ‘don’t forget, we’re giving you a lot more for your story.’
Her reply was lost as BC10 began its take-off.
The heavy-laden Gipsy-Moth, with its extra fuel tank, needed a long run, and the long run took them across a field which, though dignified by the label of the Port Victoria Flying Club’s landing strip, was corrugated like some exotic shirt front. In the half-light of dawn, they might have been careering across an endless nightmare desert, with a pack of spectral wolves snapping at their heels, striving to bring them down.
It seemed ages before the boneshaking take-off run came to an end, and the plane rose in peaceful flight. But when they were airborne at last, and climbing steadily, Jeff Gibson turned and gave them the thumbs-up sign, grinning cheerfully.
‘Piece of cake!’ he shouted above the engine noise and the tearing wind. ‘Windhoek, here we come!’ He directed a practised leer at Lucy Help. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘But try not to rock the kite.’
Then he settled himself in the pilot’s seat, and started a slow banking turn eastwards, to take them over the coast.
They had hardly crossed the sharp creamy line, just visible in first light, which was the division between sea and land, before the engine began to splutter.
They all listened to it as it laboured – the rise and fall of revolutions, the hacking internal cough, the sudden surge of power as it picked up again – with an acute alarm which could not be put into words. I’m too old for this sort of thing, Tulbach Browne thought, as Lucy Help’s shapely body suddenly lost its charm, and fear took over. I ought to have waited for a proper flight, I ought to be home in bed, I ought to have retired last year.
Fancy putting one’s trust in this string-and-glue contraption which should have been sold for firelighters twenty years ago.
Soon, far too soon, there was a final splutter, and the engine died; and BC10 began a peaceful glide back to earth.
Jeff Gibson had turned their nose westwards again, as soon as he became aware of real danger; and before long he saw the line of surf coming up, and the black shadowy mass which was the eastern coast of Pharamaul. In the strange silence, broken only by the sighing wind of their passage, he called over his shoulder: ‘Sorry, chaps! Slight technical hitch! I’ll have to put her down somewhere.’ Then he forgot his passengers, and concentrated on a private quest for life.
They had not gained sufficient height for a glide back to the airfield; there was nothing ahead except bare rock country, with here and there the tiny glimmering of village fires.
Gibson peered this way and that, weighing the odds, searching for their best chance, with the beginning of desperation taking hold of him; the pale light from the east was not strong enough to show him anything except shadow piled on shadow, and dark patches which might have been fields but which, when he dropped lower, turned out to be outcrops of rock, or trees lurking under the lee of barren hills.
They were still orphans in this wilderness, and their time was about to run out.
Then, just within their grasp, he saw a small black rectangle on a hillside; and he brushed the streaming sweat from his forehead, and said aloud: ‘That’s got to be it, Jeff me lad,’ and he put the plane’s nose down – at the last second before they stalled – and made straight for it.
It still looked like a ploughed field, or a big mealie-patch, as he came within two hundred feet of it; and he called out over his shoulder: ‘Hang on! We’re going in!’ and levelled out for the slowest descent which heaven would allow.
The band of net-men held their breath as the bird approached, hardly able to believe that the longed-for capture was to be theirs at last. They could see that this was not the big bird, which had not flown for many days; but it was a bird of the same breed, a smaller silent bird with one gleaming eye, and it was falling straight into their trap.
They spoke to each other in fierce, triumphant whispers: ‘It comes! It comes!’ and then their leader called out: ‘All lie down!’ and each man dropped where he had been standing, and lay in faithful guard at the edge of the net.
The bird plunged earthwards; they could hear the wind whistling and sighing in its exhausted wings.
Then suddenly it was upon them. It hit the corner of their net, and was trapped by its claws, just as they had planned. The net tore asunder with a rending sound; and then, with a screech, the bird plunged its gleaming beak into a shoulder of jagged rock, and crumpled, and arched over on its broken back, the sparks flying wildly as it fluttered to a stop.
Fantastic silence fell; all was forest-still. They had caught their bird!
Presently, without speaking to each other, they crept forward, pushing aside the strands of the ruined net, and looked at their prey, and touched it. Their knives were ready, but there was no need for any finishing strokes. The bird was clearly dead, and strange torn things were spilling out of it: soft entrails, unexpected shapes.
The leader touched the mangled ribs of the bird, and smoothed his hand over the hard surfaces, and made his judgement.
It was a moment of such triumph that the next step was vital to all their lives. All power could be theirs, if they kept faith with their oath, if they reached out their hands and fastened on the bird’s magic with all their might, with all their appetite, and made it their own.
‘You remember what we swore to do,’ he told the net-men. He raised his knife, and they all followed him. ‘We cannot eat the body of this bird. But for strength we can taste its eggs.’