Flight From Honour (18 page)

At least the Carlton itself was familiar ground since she dropped in once or twice a week to see what other Americans were in town. The war scares of that summer had brought quite a turnover, sending some rushing home, bringing others rushing across to sniff the air for themselves. So she didn’t feel out of place, only out of sorts. But having gone so far, she warned herself, for God’s sake remember to behave as well. And as Ranklin and what must be Dagner rose to meet her, she switched on her smile.

The new man was tall – few men were much taller than herself – dark-eyed and with the hawk profile the English liked in their public men and heroes. His manner was somehow both shy and self-assured, as old-fashioned as his suit was brand new.

“Delighted to meet you, Major Dagner.” And hastening to reassure him: “Matt’s told me so
little
about you.” She realised that was wrong, got flustered, and made it worse with: “And of course he hasn’t told me what you
do
.”

She looked longingly at her cup of tea but daren’t touch it. It would rattle like dice.

Dagner’s polite smile was undisturbed. “Just potter about the War Office shuffling papers, along with Captain Ranklin. He’s been showing me the ropes.”

“Oh, yes. You’re, ah—” Was she even supposed to know he’d come from India? “—new to London. Are you settling down okay? I’m sorry – I don’t even know if you’re married?”

Damn, Ranklin thought, I should have warned her that his wife’s dead. But Dagner said calmly. “Yes, but my wife’s still on her way home. My posting was rather sudden: they shot me off on the first boat and left her to pack up our kit. The Army’s a very primitive society: we still let the women do all the work.”

Corinna laughed rather too loudly; Ranklin sat expressionless, but nobody seemed to notice. Then he thought: Of course, he must have married again, seven years is quite long enough. So he smiled too late, but luckily nobody noticed that, either. Corinna picked up her cup with a steady hand, sipped, and said: “So you’ve been with the Army in India. I remember now that Matt said.”

“I hope he didn’t say quite that. I belong to the Indian Army, the army raised there. The Army in India is just regular British units posted out there for a few years at a time. I believe Captain Ranklin – Matt – himself had a posting there.”

“All those Indian soldiers look terribly grand in the pictures.” She knew she was babbling, but now had to go on. “Was that what attracted you? – when you were younger, of course.”

“I just joined
my
Army, Mrs Finn – as Captain Ranklin did his. My family’s been in India for four generations. My great-grandfather fought at Mysore. But he reckoned Wellesley wouldn’t need his help tackling Napoleon so stayed out there. And as for it being grand, I’m afraid the British Army looks on us as poor relations. We’re even expected to live on our pay – the ultimate insult. So we don’t get the young sprigs of aristocracy, not in garrisons six weeks’ voyage from Piccadilly.”

“Do you miss them that much?”

“Somehow,” Dagner smiled, “we stumble on without. They’re prepared to accept our hospitality on attachment when some-thing’s happening, as it usually is in India, but they aren’t too keen on us cropping up in London to renew the acquaintance.”

Feeling quite at home now, Corinna frowned at Ranklin. “Did
you
behave like that?”

Before he could answer, Dagner said: “No, I absolve Gunners: they despise everybody quite indiscriminately. They see themselves as an oblique aristocracy quite on their own.”

“Not aristocracy,” Ranklin said. “Gods.”

She laughed freely, then said: “Yet for all that, you still talk of ‘coming home’. Which
do
you think of as home? – England or India?”

Dagner sat back to think, throwing one long leg over the other. He still wears boots, she noted, well made and beautifully polished, but not shoes. And although he was nowhere near old enough, she placed him in her father’s generation with its solid, dated manners and values. Of course, her father was really a buccaneer – but surely Dagner must also be one, in his own world.

He was saying: “D’you know? – it isn’t easy to say. Perhaps it should be the same thing, but it isn’t. When I’m here, I’m always startled at how seldom people think of India, compared with how much India thinks of England. And I confess that makes me feel a bit of a stranger. And, as it were, as one stranger to another, may I ask a question? Captain Ranklin and I were talking about war, a European war—”

“D’you ever talk about anything else?”

“Ah, that was almost the question. I understand that you travel widely: is it the same throughout Europe?”

“War talk? Yes.”

“But do people really believe it could happen?”

“Sure they do.”

Dagner shook his head in genuine puzzlement. “But with all the changes, new inventions—”

“Like the new battleships and submarines and Matt’s guns
and
putting machine-guns on airplanes?”

“Quite, although I was thinking more of things like the telephone, faster travel, that are bringing the nations closer together. And must help trade. Europe’s grown so rich. Yes, you still see poverty – but nothing like what you see in India. A Continental war – it seems almost a luxury, an absurd extravagance . . . if that doesn’t sound too ridiculous.”

She smiled sympathetically. “No, you may have hit on something there. Maybe these people think they can afford a war along with everything else. They could even feel they’ve already paid for it, with the new battleships and all, so now they’re owed the glory. I don’t know about that. But one thing’s for sure, they don’t think a war’s going to be long and costly, so economic arguments just don’t work a damn.”

“But those can’t be the opinions of political and industrial leaders.”

“I don’t talk to people on street corners,” she said crisply.

“Of course not, I do apologise . . . but it seemed as if you were suggesting that some people might actually
want
such a war.”

She glanced at Ranklin, who was no help, and then felt: he asked
me,
and this matters too much for tact. “Yes, I think some people do: they think it’ll ‘clear the air’ somehow.”

He clearly didn’t believe her so, being Corinna, she doggedly went ahead and made it worse: “Europeans think we Americans don’t know anything about war. But we did have one – before my time, but there’re still survivors of it stumping around on one leg. D’you know how big the US Army – North and South together – was when it started? Just about fifteen thousand men. Four years later our war had killed six hundred thousand of them. So we think it’s a little funny the Europeans think we don’t know about war.”

The figures startled Ranklin, but Corinna didn’t get figures wrong. And his startlement proved her point: European armies
did
dismiss that war as “merely civil” and got on with studying the campaigns of the properly international Franco-Prussian one.

Dagner showed no reaction at all. An oyster doesn’t slam shut. But although he was still smiling politely, it was clear to both of them that he was back in his shell, not at home to any more opinions.

“Alas, I hear the call of unshuffled papers – so will you forgive me if . . . ?” He stood up.

In perfect control, Corinna flashed her widest smile and extended her hand. “Delighted to have met you, Major.”

When Dagner had gone, she let out her breath like – rather too much like – a surfacing whale, and said: “How’d I do? I felt so stupidly
nervous
. . .”

“That was my fault.” He wasn’t sure what was, but it seemed a safe thing to say.

“He didn’t believe us, though.” She mused. “Was that because I was a woman – or an American?”

“You did rather ram that in.”

She grinned wickedly, then turned serious. “But in his job, he should be a better listener. And people living under a volcano ought to know it’s there. You could have trouble with that man.”

So Ranklin found himself defending Dagner out of loyalty. “He’s been a long time out in India. It gives you a great impression that Britain, and Europe, are wonderfully efficient and sensible. Out there, believe me, you feel you’re floating in a great river, no point in swimming against it and nothing you can do to speed it up or change anything. Give him time, he’ll learn.”

“If you’ve got time. Maybe his wife’ll help, when she gets here. He needs someone to talk to. D’you know anything about her?”

“Er . . . no. Except she must be his second wife. His first died in India. So an old friend of his said.”

“Was he doing the same sort of work in India?” Now Dagner was no longer a State Secret, Corinna wasn’t holding back.

Ranklin tried a diversionary answer. “Out there, he’s quite a hero – I mean an overt one. He was on Younghusband’s expedition to Tibet and picked up a DSO.”

“Whatever all that means.”

“In 1904, they routed the whole Tibetan Army, fought their way through to Lhasa, the first white men to reach the Forbidden City.”

“Yes? And what did that achieve?”

He tried to think back. According to Army gossip, policy had changed so that London’s politicians censured Younghusband, disowned the expedition and ultimately forced Curzon to resign as Viceroy (Curzon again: had they refought the Younghusband campaign over dinner at the Tower?). You quickly learnt not to expect rewards – except medals, which cost nobody anything – and also that if you were to go on believing in Britain, you had to stop believing its politicians. And some, already with experience of the secret world, might conclude it was best to decide for yourself what was right for your country.

Was that, for one man, what Younghusband’s expedition had achieved?

“Difficult to say,” he mumbled.

17

On Thursday morning Corinna picked up Ranklin outside Whitehall hall Court and they headed for Brooklands. They had planned on getting there in good time for lunch. But so had thousands of others, and nearly three hours before Pégoud was due to fly, the Sherring Daimler was in an ambling stream of motor-cars, pedestrians and cyclists wending up to the aerodrome gates. Hundreds more, reasoning that an aerial display could hardly be kept private so why pay the shilling entrance fee, had roosted on the high ground just outside the track with picnics seasoned by the dust from the road.

Corinna had had much the same idea, on her own scale. She ignored the overflowing Blue Bird restaurant and had the chauffeur lug a bulging picnic hamper over to Andrew’s shed. A work-bench had been cleared and even laid with a tablecloth, albeit by somebody with oily hands. Andrew, Falcone and O’Gilroy had already started on bottled beer.

At Corinna’s orders, the work-bench sprouted wine-bottles, cutlery, pies, potted meats, bread, cheeses and fruit. Corinna, Falcone and Andrew loaded their plates and began a contractual discussion. Ranklin took the chance for a word with O’Gilroy, whom he still had to treat as a casual acquaintance in front of Falcone.

“How goes the flying?”

“Ah, it’s . . .” For once, O’Gilroy couldn’t find the words and his eyes were focused on some unimaginable vision. Unimaginable to me, anyway, Ranklin thought enviously. Is there any human endeavour that could still move me, that I could believe in, like this?

“Mind,” O’Gilroy came down to earth, “there’s a deal to be understood, with the engineering and physics of it. I wisht I had yer education.”

Ranklin was damned if he was going to feel guilty about that, too, but changed the subject slightly. “Did you gather that Andrew’s selling his machine to Senator Falcone? – if he can get it to Italy for a demonstration flight.”

“Mr Sherring said things was going that way.” There was no familiar “Andrew” for O’Gilroy. Mr Sherring was a proper pilot and aeroplane designer, resident of Valhalla. “Didn’t know ’twas cut ’n’ dried.”

“Mrs Finn’s been handling the financial side and the Senator should be giving her a bank draft today. Tell me, what’s so special about this aeroplane?”

O’Gilroy took being consulted seriously. After a lot of thought, he said: “The seating, side by side. Ye don’t get it on most aeroplanes with covered fuselages. Makes it a bit wider and slower but Mr Sherring says he’d rather lose a few miles an hour and have the two fellers able to talk – shout – to each other.”

Ranklin saw that logic immediately. Most military débâcles were traceable to breakdowns in communication. “You remember telling me Falcone was also interested in the lightweight Lewis guns? – well, he’s got hold of a couple.
Could
he be thinking of armed aeroplanes?’

O’Gilroy gave this proper thought, as well. “I’d think not this aeroplane. ‘T would be easier with seats one behind ’tother, so the feller at the back had the gun and a good field of fire. But I suppose ye can do anything, put yer mind to it.”

Ranklin nodded absently. It was a perfectly reasonable, patriotic thing for a rich senator to be finding arms for his country (and buying the manufacturing rights to them, presumably with an eye to becoming richer). But there was neither law nor reason that said the senator had to be any good at judging those arms. God knew the British Army had been landed with some civilian-picked horrors in its time.

At the back of the shed, Falcone and Andrew were bending over a work-bench signing documents. They straightened up, grinned at each other, and shook hands. Corinna took Andrew’s share of the paperwork and tucked it into her hand bag.

“One thing, mind,” O’Gilroy added thoughtfully. “When I met Falcone in Brussels, he was looking at a Blériot that a Belgian feller had altered some ways by himself. I’m thinking why not go to France for a proper Blériot? Or Farman or Deperdussin? Then he comes here and still don’t go to Sopwith or Avro or Bristol, the big boys, he comes to Mr Sherring. Now he’s good,” he said loyally, “but nobody’s heard of him.”

“Perhaps,” Ranklin said, “Falcone’s looking for a dark horse to back. Or perhaps he can get the aeroplane and rights at cut price compared with the big boys . . . The trouble is, we’re just out of our depth in these matters.”

O’Gilroy smiled lopsidedly. “But we’re good at being suspicious.”