Round the Bend (50 page)

So we go on as we did before. Sheikh Fahad is very anxious to do everything he can to help the pilgrims, and after one or two talks he asked me if I could find and operate some very economical machines equipped solely for the job. I borrowed from him, as I had borrowed from his father, the capital to order two new Tramps, short-range machines with rather longer fuselages equipped solely for the pilgrim traffic, and I hope to get these out to the Persian Gulf next month. I think at some time in the future I shall move my main base to Baraka.

These technical alterations have meant that the delivery time of the two Tramps has been extended to three months. I have taken that time in England as a holiday, leaving Gujar Singh in charge, because it was nearly three years since I had been home, and I was stale, and tired, and nervy. Before I left, Sheikh Fahad told me of his new project, the Six Books.

I think the Six Books are a very good idea. Already people are beginning to say that Connie was divine, and legends are already growing up about him. They are inventing quite fictitious miracles which he is supposed to have performed, although he never did anything of the sort. Sheikh Fahad’s idea is that the people who had most to do with Connie should write down what they know about him in a book, now, while the memory is still fresh and before these stupid legends have had time to grow. In that way proper evidence of what he was and what he did will be set down by people who knew him at first hand. Sheikh Fahad has engaged three scribes who between them speak English and Arabic and Burmese and Siamese and Balinese, to help those who aren’t
very handy at writing to get their evidence down on paper in a coherent form, and to edit all Six Books. When they are all done, the Sheikh is going to have them translated into several Asiatic languages, and possibly into English also, so that men who maintain aircraft and believe in Connie may know exactly what he said and did.

So first there is to be the Book of the Sister, which will tell us about Connie’s early life and about his private life in Bahrein, and about his last months at Damrey Phong.

Next, there is the Book of Myin, which will tell about his first period at Damrey Phong under Dwight Schafter, when his ministry began.

The third book is the Book of Tarik, which is a very detailed record of his sayings in the hangar at Bahrein. There is good material for this, because Tarik was in the habit of writing down everything he could in penny exercise books, in Arabic, and there are about thirty of these books for the scribes to consult.

The fourth book is the Book of Phinit, which is an account of Connie’s life in Bali, and of Madé Jasmi and her love for him.

The fifth book is the Book of Arjan, which deals with everything that happened on the six months’ tour they made together in the Proctor, in which they visited so many aerodromes while Connie gradually grew weaker.

The sixth and last book is this one, the Book of Cutter. It’s obviously right that anybody who can put down on paper any first-hand knowledge of Connie’s life should do so, but Fahad asked me to go further than that, and put down anything about my own life that I thought would make the picture complete, and explain to future generations why I did the things I did which ultimately reacted upon Connie. So I have put down everything that I could think of that would make the story a complete one, and if Fahad’s editors find any part of it unnecessary they can cut it out.

I have been glad to have this three months at home in England, in our little house in Southampton between the gasworks and the docks. Dad goes out to work each day, of course, and Mum is busy about the house and in the kitchen, and I have been able to write quietly all day in the back bedroom that we all slept in
as boys. It’s a good thing to get out of the East for a job like this, because you can look back and see what happened in perspective, and that helps.

Mum and Dad want me to stay in England now and find a job here. They don’t think the East has done me any good, and that’s rather sad, because I think it’s done me all the good in the world. I know that I don’t think about things now in quite the same way as I used to, and that in England people think me a bit queer. I know that in the aircraft industry there’s a good deal of talk about my operations based upon the garbled tales that have got through to England. People are saying that I’ve been out in the East too long, and I’ve gone round the bend. Maybe I have, but then, I think that being round the bend is the best place to be. So I shall go back to Bahrein as soon as these two Tramps are ready for delivery.

And now, at the conclusion of this book, I still don’t know what to think about Connie. To me he was always an ordinary person, a good friend from my youth, a very fine engineer, a very good man. He’s still that to me—I think. But as I have sat here for the last three months in our back bedroom, writing down everything that I can remember about him, and meditating, I am beginning to wonder if I have been right. So many men, of so many races, are now turning to the memory of him, moulding their lives upon his example, praying that they may be made as he was. Could any human man exert such influence after his death? What makes a man divine?

I can’t answer my own questions. I still think Connie was a human man, a very, very good one—but a man. I have been wrong in my judgments many times before; if now I am ignorant and blind, I’m sorry, but it’s no new thing. If that should be the case though, it means that I have had great privileges in my life, perhaps more so than any man alive today. Because it means that on the fields and farms of England, on the airstrips of the desert and the jungle, in the hangars of the Persian Gulf and on the tarmacs of the southern islands, I have walked and talked with God.