Rickards glows, taking this as a compliment.
‘I can take some credit for that. With a nod to Williamson, who has the Theatre Royal in Sydney. Recall him telling me about “clackers” – people paid to applaud in European opera houses. You could say I’ve adapted the idea.’
‘You’ve offered these people money to come?’
‘Inducements, I’d call it. From your takings. Some folk need a little encouragement to undertake a Sunday outing, that’s all. But they’ll help convince our Mr Taylor that a significant event has taken place. Get your crate off the ground, Double. All you have to do. Leave the rest to me.’
He turns around. Another vehicle is approaching. Rickards drums his fingers on his chest, hoping for another significant arrival. When he realises it is only Horace Audran, emerging from a Ford, he turns away and heads off in pursuit of George Taylor. So he does not witness Sanderson’s other passenger unfolding himself from the back seat. A tall man, wearing a hat, with a jacket collar pulled up level with a dark moustache, he stretches as soon as he is out of the car. He breathes deeply, savouring the air. After looking around, he takes a few steps, limping just a little. Then, and this would puzzle Rickards had he been watching, he walks away from the main attraction. Away from the flying machine and the celebrated aviator and all the inquisitive people. Away to a quiet spot in the paddock where he can light a cigarette and enjoy the sound of birds singing.
52
BY the time Harry has kissed Bess on the cheek several times for the benefit of the Pathé cinematographer and clambered up into the seat of the Voisin, causing the machine to wobble, there are over one hundred people in the paddock – more than have ever watched him fly. As he adjusts his goggles he is conscious of all those eyes upon him. But he is used to this. The attention makes him feel strangely calm and in command. He is ready.
Shortly before 7am, Brassac swings the propeller and the Voisin’s engine ignites, to the delight of children present who shriek and cover their ears. Brassac has again counselled Harry not to fly. Too much breeze. But Harry ignores him, directing his mechanic’s attention to all the onlookers with a peremptory gesture that signifies it would be unthinkable not to perform for them. Brassac has been in the paddock too long to argue with conviction. As the Voisin lurches away from him, causing him to clutch at his hat, the mechanic removes a comb from his hip pocket and runs it through his moustache. He would like to look his best in any newsreel footage.
The noise of the Voisin’s engine draws attention to the flying machine like iron filings to a magnet. Almost all of the spectators have congregated in the area where the Voisin has been. It is moving away from them. Only a few late arrivals have a perfect view of the rickety construction approaching, swaying from side to side and then rising up clumsily from the ground. But although all these people are in much the same place on the same morning, they will each see and remember different things.
LESTRANGE, the Pathé cinematographer, witnesses what unfolds through a viewfinder. As he winds the camera’s handle with his right hand he sees the escape artist kiss his wife on the cheek and shake hands with Rickards in front of his flying machine. Then the escaper climbs inside and wiggles the elevators for the camera, as requested. He sees a cloud of smoke and dust and gravel when the engine starts up. The camera sways; he worries that grit will get inside the mechanism. The Voisin rolls off; he wishes he had stood fifty yards distant to get a better shot of it leaving the ground. Then Lestrange stops his camera. He has limited film and must keep some in case things go awry and there’s a crash. That would be worth recording.
McCRACKEN, the Argus man, licks his pencil and watches the Voisin rattle away. A breeze riffles a page from his notebook as he scans the few words he has jotted down: ‘Clouds, then clear … H cocky … spectators.’ They must be short of things to do to get here so early. He’s seen it all before himself. Still, Rickards has insisted he stick around for a presentation, promising it will be worth his while. He wonders if he should try for a quote from the fly-boy’s wife – maybe something about the weird doll she carries around with her.
BESS steps back after smiling for the Pathé man and lifts the hem of her dress so it doesn’t drag in the dirt. With all these people standing around gawping, it is almost like she’s on stage again. All these people, while she is only looking for one. Amidst all these onlookers she also feels like a spectator, powerless to influence events. She has told herself to concentrate, so she can later tell Mayer Samuel – whom she has left in the car, away from the noise and pushing – about everything that unfolds. But the smoke from the engine and all the grit and dust have made her sneezy. She reaches in her handbag for a handkerchief. Only when she has dabbed at her nose does she see that it is a gentleman’s handkerchief. White, smudged with black hair-dye.
PUCCINI finds it pleasant to be out in the open following so many days indoors, although the smells here and harsh light are very different to his beloved villa by the lake. He raises his face and closes his eyes, savouring the rare sensation of sun on his skin. He understands that Signora Beatrice must occupy herself with her husband and his strange cap with the hound’s ears. Seated on a log on a slight rise away from the crowd, he sees them kiss. Then her husband is inside the machine and it is on fire, or perhaps it is only smoke. She stands still while it moves away very awkwardly. And now he knows for certain this is how his opera must end. Nobody will die tragically in the final Act. He will let them all go free. Free and far away …
AUDRAN is with him. But he is standing some distance away, sensing that the Maestro wants some time for himself. Besides, they will be back in Sanderson’s noisy motor car before long. The manager regrets he was not able to organise more impressive transport: like Jordan, he has become aware too late of the visiting yachtsmen. But the Maestro has not complained. Audran looks around: the paddock; the crowd; the dust; the flies. So much he has organised has been about this place. Where Jordan has been driving, where Mr H has been coming and going, where those unfortunate men have been staying in tents – caring for their machines better than their patrons or employers have cared for them. The manager much prefers the facilities in his hotel. Indeed, he would rather be in his room enjoying the sounds of the Boesendorfer instead of enduring the noise of the Voisin. Audran shifts uncomfortably in his place, close to a gum-tree where he has sought some shade. He needs to relieve himself. Must do so before the return drive. But he is painfully aware that this will involve another tree.
RICKARDS sees all the people and regrets he didn’t charge for admittance to the paddock. Never mind. Can make up for this lapse later. He’ll ensure that news of this crowd spreads to Sydney. He is trying to stick close to Taylor, his honoured guest, as if the man were reviewing one of his Opera House shows. Come on Double, you cunning conjurer, he thinks to himself as Houdini’s machine roars to life. Turn your clumsy ugly duckling into a soaring swan.
TAYLOR feels the ends of his bow-tie flicker and remembers the sand-dunes at Narrabeen. Into the wind: that’s the best way to achieve elevation. The Voisin rises and Taylor feels a throb of vindication. For years he has made speeches, written letters, even composed poetry about a new era for all Australians – ‘The aeroplane makes free for all the highway of the air!’ And there is no doubting it now: the highway begins in Diggers Rest. This is everything his Aerial League hoped for. There are spectators, chaps to take pictures and write stories, and an aviator with a name known around the world. It is much more compelling, more tangible, than the uncorroborated incident in Adelaide. Taylor sees the Voisin’s wings dip and wonders if some extempore verse would be appropriate for the ceremony later on.
ADAMSON notices the Voisin shuddering. All may not be lost. His man Defries could yet get another chance. How wonderful it would be if the bumptious American, a foreigner, came unstuck with everyone looking on. That would put an end to his arrogance. The headmaster has his timepiece out. Less than a minute after take-off, the Voisin veers to one side and makes a rough landing. The magician is on the ground again, rolling back to where he began. It takes all of the headmaster’s self-restraint not to call out in triumph, as he might have done watching a Wesley College lad hitting the winning runs in a cricket match on the front turf.
53
HARRY is exasperated. All these people, and he has made a false start. But he knows what the problem is: the breeze has loosened some of the wires in the wings. Once they are tightened he can get going again. He will not even leave the machine while adjustments are made. A crowd surrounds him: too many sticky hands prodding and poking. Where is Brassac? Haste is imperative but the mechanic is missing. And what has become of Banks? He feels helpless and frustrated – a birdman ensnared on the ground.
At last. He sees the mechanic’s hat bobbing through the onlookers and his arms pushing people back. Then he is close by, breathing heavily as if he has rushed from some distance away. He tightens some nuts securing wires. But even as he does so, he is shaking his head and saying it again:
‘Beaucoup de vent.’
He is right. Harry knows this. It is windy. The Voisin has been tossed around like a scrap of paper. Yet he won’t be stopped. In Aberdeen the grey waves were flecked with foam and authorities wouldn’t let him jump off the pier. Too dangerous. But Harry couldn’t disappoint the spectators: he hired a dinghy and knocked his head going over. So he will ignore Brassac. All these people have come to see him fly – if he stays down, they’ll call him yellow. He must go. The voice is telling him to fly: his mother’s voice this time. Cecilia urging little Ehrich to be a Prince of the Air again.
Now Banks is there. Banks with Brassac, still talking with his hands. Banks looks at Harry, staring straight ahead while his hands clasp the controls, and sees himself on the morning of his own flight: a skier halfway down a slope; committed; unwilling and unable to stop. So it is Banks who warns people to stand clear; Banks who swings the propeller after catching Adamson’s gaze just long enough to show where his allegiance now lies.
As soon as Harry hears the engine ignite and feels his body shaking he opens the throttle hard. After just fifty yards, sensing the tug on the wing tips, he leans into the elevator control.
‘She’s up!’ Banks calls out. Then, as he sees it swerve: ‘No – down! Up – yes, she’s really off this time!’
Adamson waits for the American to fall.
Harry holds the control tight, urging the machine to rise. But at forty feet, or so he guesses, the tail dips down. The paddock and dam, fence and track and trees all vanish beneath him. He can only see up. Sulky grey sky.
‘Ah – cabre, cabre!’ Brassac sighs. ‘The rearing horse. Danger!’
Adamson checks his watch. Only thirty-seven seconds have elapsed.
Harry hears the engine sputter. Gently, gently he pulls back on the control. The elevator shifts and the paddock reappears. He has righted his machine. Then a breeze buffets him, pushing him to one side. He turns the wheel, trying to force the rudder round. It won’t move.
His mother is beside him. The bicycle, Ehrich, remember your bicycle.
He is a boy with bloodied knees and elbows in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA, trying to balance on the bicycle with the solid rubber tyres passed down from his older brother William. He wobbles and falls, wobbles and falls. Then he stops fighting. When the bicycle swerves and the handlebars twist to one side, he pedals. He turns instead of falling and then pedals some more. He progresses in a series of Ss but doesn’t skin his elbows again.
So when the breeze catches the Voisin, he allows it to be swung around. All the tension in his arms and the controls and the cables eases. Instead of pushing the machine in an arc following the line of the paddock boundary, he lets it keep going over walls and fences and buildings and horses and roads, further from his starting point than he has ever ventured before, and only when the breeze allows him to turn does he head back towards the paddock, high now, very high, twice the height of some of the trees. Well over one hundred feet, it must be. He has another figure in his head: five minutes twenty-five seconds, the reported duration of the Custance flight. He’s out to beat that, but can only guess how long he’s been up. In an ice-bath, in a packing case, in a flying machine, he lets others do the timing.
Harry looks down as his course takes him back over the spectators, some of whom appear to be waving their hats. He is invisible to them, merely an indistinct shape amidst the struts and cables between the wings. And because of his goggles, which were grimy to start with and are now slightly foggy as well, his own view is imperfect. He thinks he spots Brassac.
It must be Brassac. A small solitary figure waving a red flag, the flag for danger, urging him to come down. He will say he didn’t see him.
He sees his wife, his darling Bess, looking up, her hands clasped. He sees Banks standing in the wreckage of his Wright machine. Sees his beloved mother, in an overcoat for the New York winter, smiling up at him. Sees Mayer Samuel, his little boy, chasing the Voisin’s shadow. Sees the young swimmer in his bathing trunks, dripping wet. He cannot beat him this time.
He sees Audran in his black jacket, the clouds reflected in the lenses of his rimless spectacles, and all around him, arrayed like waiters, are Little Tich and the Australian Dartos; Fred Bluett (holding his sheep’s head on a silver tray); the Harmonious Huxhams; Frank Curran; the Brothers Martine; and Vasco the Insane Musician. Their mouths are open but Harry cannot tell if they are cheering or calling out a warning. He sees Kukol and Vickery: Kukol with his fireman’s axe; Vickery burdened by a huge coil of chains. Sees the fellow from the morgue cradling the dead woman he called Lily: she cannot wave because her arms have been cruelly broken. And there’s Rickards, balancing on a high-wire, saluting his biggest attraction, the star of several continents and now the greatest aviator in the Antipodes.
Harry sees them all. But still he doesn’t come down. He passes overhead, much lower now, so they can hear the engine and almost feel for themselves how every part of the machine vibrates and admire one last time the painted ‘HOUDINI’ signs in capital letters.
