‘If there’s anything to talk about.’ He gazes at the Voisin sceptically.
‘You have a photographer?’ asks Harry, looking past him.
‘No, mate. He’s busy taking portraits of visiting yachtsmen.’
‘Yachtsmen?’ Harry is perplexed. ‘I see. Still, I’m delighted you’ve come. You can all be official witnesses … But how did you come to be here?’
‘Mr Rickards arranged it with the reporter and a driver he knows,’ Vickery says. ‘Oh – Mr Rickards himself sends his apologies. Detained, he was.’
‘Sanderson!’ Jordan says, recognising his fellow driver, who is inspecting the wheels of his Ford. Jordan wanders away to speak with him as Brassac re-emerges from behind the Voisin.
‘Nuts loose,’ he says. ‘I have fixed rudder.’
‘So I can have a crack?’ Harry asks. Brassac pockets his spanner.
This time Harry farewells everyone. He shakes hands again with Banks and Kukol and Vickery and gives a cheery wave to the two drivers, who are discussing the fragility of tyres. Brassac has already taken up his position by the propeller, having directed the others to coax the Voisin around. Bess waits. Her husband places his hands on both her shoulders. She raises her face so he can kiss her. His lips brush hers. She steps away.
This time he fastens the flaps of his cap under his chin and pulls the goggles over his eyes once he is seated at the controls. Again the flaps wobble as he fiddles with levers. Words pass between her husband and his mechanic, but she cannot make them out. But she does hear Brassac, holding one end of the propeller, as he counts down.
‘Un. Deux. Trois …’
Then he swings the blade and the engine noise is a wave crashing over her.
Banks has instructed Kukol and Vickery to help him hold down the rear of the machine. But as the engine noise rises and the force increases they can restrain it no longer. Banks takes a few stumbling steps as the Voisin rolls forward, then falls and has to let go. He barely bothers to dust himself down as they watch the machine move away from them.
It lurches. It sways. It bounces. It cannot stay straight.
And then it rises.
It happens much quicker than Bess expects. The machine has travelled only a hundred yards or so away from them when her husband changes the angle of the elevator flaps and the whole clumsy construction leaves the ground, the rear section trailing down as if reluctant to let go.
Squashed between the controls and the thundering propeller, his bottom teeth pressing hard into his top lip, Harry senses the sudden smoothness. The jiggling and rattling have been replaced by an unsteady floating sensation. He glances down for a moment, just to confirm he is aloft, and when he looks ahead once more he sees the top of a tree, one of the very few in the paddock, directly ahead. He is heading for its uppermost boughs. The spectators see this too.
‘Attention!’ Brassac calls out, though he cannot possibly be heard.
Every one of Harry’s muscles feel taut. But there is no fear. His mind is perfectly clear and he knows exactly what he must do. Applying steady force, he works the controls. He wills the shuddering nose of the Voisin to rise, watching the elevator flaps turn down. The tree top is looming. Harry can see white birds stirring in alarm in the branches.
And then his machine rises up, clattering over the canopy of leaves. The wheels under the rippling fabric of the wings are like an eagle’s talons poised for prey. Brassac releases his breath and Banks whoops.
All the tension has left Harry. He sits back, relaxed despite the rhythmic thudding of the engine and the breeze buffeting his face. When the Voisin cleared the tree, a restraining bond was severed. He is free of the uncertainty and dread that has held him down. Now he is in control.
He would like to stay aloft longer, but has promised Brassac that this will be just a test run. The mechanic wants to ensure that everything is holding together under the strain of flight. Besides, they have used a minimum amount of fuel to keep the weight down. So Harry gently turns the wheel, feeling the tension in the cable as the rudder is engaged. On the ground he had feared that a dragging wingtip could be scraped and damaged when turning. Now there is nothing but air to embrace it.
The machine completes a sweeping half-circle and heads around to where it began its brief journey. Harry squeezes back on the controls and feels the Voisin dip. He braces for the thud, trying to hold it steady. He is down. A cracking, grinding noise as the wheels spin on the ground. Everything vibrates: he is strapped within a cocktail-shaker. Then he cuts the engine. At first the absence of noise and vibration is disorienting. He hears voices.
‘You did it!’ Banks.
‘Congratulations, boss.’ Kukol.
Brassac is past him, swiftly completing a circuit of the Voisin, searching for cracks in the struts or splits in the fabric, and only when he is satisfied that his machine has not been broken does he look at Harry.
‘Bon,’ is all he says. Then tips his hat.
Harry extricates himself, his arms and feet and buttocks still slightly numb from the vibrations, takes off his goggles and cap and strides to Bess, who is standing beside the stool.
‘I saw you, Houdini,’ she says, noticing that his hair and forehead are streaming with sweat. He moves closer, reaching out, unsure how to respond to her at such a significant moment. But then McCracken is upon him. McCracken with a pencil and his notebook out of his jacket pocket.
‘How long would you say you were up?’ he asks. Harry realises he has no idea at all. It has been like one of his escape routines in which time and space lose all significance. But Kukol can help.
‘Close to one minute,’ he says. ‘I had my watch on it.’
‘And how would you describe the sensation?’ Having licked the tip of his pencil, McCracken is waiting. But Harry struggles to find the right words.
‘Freedom and exhilaration, that’s what it is,’ he says at last. ‘Oh, she’s great. She’s like a swan. She’s dandy.’
Brassac is beside him, an emptied tin of motor fuel in his left hand. ‘Encore,’ he says. Harry nods.
‘I must take her up again while conditions are calm,’ he tells McCracken, wiping the back of one hand over his forehead. The reporter folds his pencil within the notebook.
Harry catches his wife’s gaze and smiles, but he is already striding back towards the Voisin. Bess, who hopes that Mayer Samuel has been able to see everything from Jordan’s car, ponders how strange it must be for her husband to repeat the same trick so soon. But he is confident now, letting the Voisin rise even quicker than before and keeping well clear of the tree.
‘Almost one hundred feet up!’ Banks calls out.
Brassac has his fingers draped over his moustache. He is watching intently, concerned that the tail section of the Voisin is still drooping.
Harry wants to try a complete circuit of the paddock. Glancing down, he uses a line of fencing, the narrow road, and trees in one corner as his guide. The noise is incredible: the engine; the propeller; a humming from the taut cables. He locks his hands on the wheel, bringing the machine around in a smooth circle. And this time, as something extra for the spectators, he brings the Voisin down directly in front of them, keeping his approach lined up on the motor cars belonging to Jordan and Sanderson.
Too fast. The main wheels skip and skid and fail to grip when they strike the ground. Trying to correct the swaying, Harry pulls back on the controls. The elevators yaw. The front section of the machine drops.
