Spitfire Girl (24 page)

I felt myself blushing and turned hurriedly to the window to examine intently the dusty bodies of dead flies trapped between the wire mesh and glass panes. Dustmalchi left innocently to attend to our luggage.

‘He thinks we are married,’ said Gordon, and continued neutrally: ‘There is no alternative accommodation.’

I nodded in reply, too tired to select a thought from the kaleidoscope of my mind.

‘Get unpacked and washed. I’ll go and see the police. Let me have your passport and health certificates.’

I gave them to him and he left. Wearily I pulled off my socks and stretched out on the bed. Gradually the objects in the room focused. Two bedside tables, a wardrobe. On the wall a garish pin-up revealed the Eastern taste for buxom women. Two lizards waited motionless on the ceiling for their prey. Outside I heard the ugly croak of Dustmalchi’s pet parrot. Pervading all was the gentle, yet inexorable pressure of the heat.

I dozed in perspiration and dust for what seemed only a moment but awoke suddenly to see Gordon looking down at me.

‘Hello, lazybones,’ he said gently. ‘Everything’s under control. The army are guarding the Spitfires. The police have our passports. Dustmalchi has arranged for your Spit to be refuelled tomorrow, and the local works engineer is going to help out with mine.’

He unpacked.

Early the following day we were awakened suddenly by
the roar of a Spitfire circling overhead. Startled, we jumped out of our beds in a flurry of mild panic. Looking out of the window, we saw Leo circling very low, waggling his wings violently and blipping his engine.

‘Good God,’ said Gordon, ‘he’s not going to land! Quickly, get the Very pistol and a red cartridge,’ and he rushed out to the balcony, frantically waving a towel. More inhibited than Gordon, who stood revealed to Bandar Abbas in his pyjamas, I snatched a precious second to don a dressing-gown.

‘Hurry, hurry,’ he shouted from the balcony. I found the pistol, loaded it with a red signal cartridge and passed it through the window to Gordon. With a deafening report the cartridge soared steeply into the air leaving a trail of brick-red smoke and sparks.

‘He’s seen it,’ I said as Leo dived towards us, his propeller cutting and scattering the arc of smoke into cavorting eddies. ‘He must want us to go out to the airport and talk to him over the R/T.’

Dustmalchi arrived on the balcony at this moment.

‘Have you got a jeep or something to take us to the airport?’ I asked.

‘Quickly,’ interpolated Gordon as Dustmalchi nodded and disappeared, ‘he hasn’t got much petrol.’

Gordon and I dressed hurriedly and stood by the roadside waving to Leo with towels and trying to indicate that we were awaiting transport. The ant-like file of masked women water carriers had stopped and gazed entranced, wondering what on earth we were going to do next.

Anxious minutes passed until Bandar Abbas’s only doctor and his wife arrived in a jeep. We drove at a snail’s pace until Gordon, in a nail-biting frenzy of impatience urged him to go faster. An hour later we arrived at the aerodrome. Gordon jumped out before we had stopped, ran to my Spitfire, switched on the radio and squeezing on my helmet, spoke to Leo, now circling overhead.

‘Hello, hello, Leo. Do you read...?’

Gordon lifted up one side of the helmet and motioned me to listen. I heard Leo’s voice: ‘How’s Jackie?’

‘She’s fine,’ answered Gordon. ‘Watch your language. She’s listening in.’

‘Hiya kid... Sonny and I are staying at Sharja until your new prop is laid on. I’ve cabled London but no reply yet. Are you absolutely sure there’s no other damage?’

‘Nothing,’ assured Gordon. ‘I was only doing about two knots when she went over. The mud took most of the shock.’

‘Fine. When do you think Jackie can take off?’

‘A week at least. We had more rain last night and there’s no drainage.’

‘Any communications?’ asked Leo.

‘Nothing. The floods have washed away the lines. We are cut off completely.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘With Iranian Oil. We are married.’

‘Who’s married?’ queried Leo, startled.

‘Jackie and I.’

‘Churched?’

‘No, but there’s only one room and our host has assumed...’

‘You dog. You have all the luck!’ commented Leo with exaggerated envy.

‘Huh, you know Jackie,’ commented Gordon sourly.

‘We only just made it at Sharja,’ said Leo.

‘What happened?’

‘Bogged. Only 700 yards available for landing. Just dried earlier. An hour sooner and we would have had it,’ replied Leo. ‘The sheik’s on holiday,’ he added.

‘Snafu.’

‘Negative. Fubar,’ laughed Leo. ‘Look, here’s what to do,’ he continued. ‘Sonny or I will fly over from Sharja every morning after tomorrow at ten o’clock your time, and give you what news there is. There may be a Rapide aircraft laid on to fly in a prop from Abadan, any day after Wednesday. Stand by all day at the field from Wednesday onwards and give him a red if it’s still unsafe to land. Can you do that?’

‘O.K.,’ answered Gordon. ‘I’ll lay out a ‘‘T’’ at the beginning of the best landing run.’

‘Good idea... Got enough money and cigarettes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m off.’

‘Good-bye,’ I shouted into the microphone. ‘Give my love to Sonny.’

‘What about me?’ answered Leo.

‘You, too,’ I laughed.

Gordon glanced at me quizzically as I switched off the radio.

As Leo disappeared into the haze Gordon and I walked over to his Spitfire still perched drunkenly on its nose with the pathos of a bird with a broken wing.

‘Perhaps we can rig up sheer-legs,’ he commented.

‘Yes,’ I answered dutifully. What are sheer-legs, I wondered silently.

The doctor and his wife joined us.

‘Would you like me to show your wife the cockpit?’ I offered.

‘Please,’ he answered.

I sat in the cockpit and pointed out the instruments and controls.

‘Where does your husband sit?’ asked the doctor, translating his wife’s question.

‘In the other aircraft,’ I said.

‘But how does he drive both aeroplanes?’

‘He doesn’t. We fly one each.’

This was too much for her and she subsided into bewildered silence.

We returned to Bandar Abbas.

T
he following morning Gordon borrowed the doctor’s
jeep and we drove alone to the landing field. The solitary guard eyed us suspiciously but intimidated by Gordon’s supercilious nonchalance, he let us pass and followed warily as we walked across the field to the Spitfires.

‘There’s the engineer,’ nodded Gordon. ‘I wish they wouldn’t drive on the landing path. Damn it. Look at them.’

With a flourish a small truck, followed by a larger lorry, slid to a halt, their wheels scoring the mud. Chattering happily Indian labourers climbed out of the lorry and, the sun glinting on their thin, hardened bodies, stared curiously at the aeroplanes.

A tall, wiry man detached himself and held out his hand to me. ‘Hello,’ he said, his thin hand firm, his swarthy classic features showing centuries of wind, sand and stars. He turned to Gordon. ‘I couldn’t get any poles for a sheer-leg but I have a better idea.’

‘What?’I asked.

‘Sand,’ he answered.

‘Sand?’ queried Gordon.

‘Sand,’ he answered with a smile.

‘All right,’ grinned Gordon, ‘I’ll buy it. How?’

‘Quite simple. My boys will build a pile of sand under the tail, leaving a gap of a yard or so. Two boys will then climb on to the tail so that their weight will force the tail down on to the sand, whilst the remainder will slowly shovel away the mound of sand, so lowering the aeroplane.’

‘Now why didn’t I think of that? How long will it take?’ said Gordon.

‘Half a day,’ answered the engineer.

Within the stipulated half a day the Spitfire was lowered without incident except that Gordon tore his trousers whilst climbing perilously on to the tail to add his spindly weight to the two labourers. We checked the oil, glycol and hydraulic fluid levels. To our relief they were normal despite the unusual angle of the aircraft for the last two days. We drove cheerfully back to Bandar Abbas, applauding without reserve as the engineer, who had decided to return with us, sang a mixture of Italian lullabies and incomprehensible Turkish love songs.

Our gaiety was short-lived for Dustmalchi was waiting for us when we returned, his habitually solemn expression even more lugubrious than usual. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ he apologized. ‘The auditors are arriving from Abadan by boat and I need your room.’

‘Where else can we stay?’ I asked, thinking sadly of the bathroom.

‘At Point Four. I have arranged accommodation.’

‘What’s Point Four?’ asked Gordon, morosely.

‘A guest-house run by the American Point Four programme,’ he answered. ‘It’s not bad,’ he added encouragingly.

‘When do we move?’

‘Not until tomorrow. You can use my truck... See you at dinner,’ and he returned to his office.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ muttered Gordon.

An hour or two later, after a delicious hot bath, we lay on our beds listening to the sounds of twilight. The raucous honking of mules retreated to the monotonous distant yapping of pariah dogs. The lizard’s appealing mating call served as an antidote to the petulant whine of the mosquitoes. I turned on my side and glanced at Gordon as he lit a cigarette. He smokes too much, I thought. The match silhouetted his sharp features against the window and the purple-hued mountains beyond. We lay silently as the day died with his cigarette. It should have been a moment of peace, but there was tension in the room.

Dustmalchi knocked with embarrassing discreetness on the door. ‘Dinner,’ he called. A little regretfully I switched on the light and mopped the moisture from my nose.

Dinner was excellent, though indescribable. Mrs Dustmalchi, emancipated and with the plump prettiness of a milkmaid, continued to eye us shrewdly. She was uncommonly fair and contrasted strikingly with her olive-skinned husband and two children.

After dinner, Gordon and I borrowed Wellington boots and walked to the tiny harbour. Sitting on the creaking jetty that thrust feebly on spindly legs into the Persian Gulf we spoke of ourselves.

Overhead, the niggardly moon threw weak shadows. Beneath, the sea nibbled patiently against the rusted supports. Timidly, as we talked of the years and circumstance that had contrived to bring us both to this backwater, a sweet compatibility was born. His voice relaxed from the patronizing irascible tone he normally adopted towards me. My mind was purged of dislike and hovered tensely, like a wild deer ready to flee at the slightest false move, over the quicksands of regard.

We walked home in comradeship. As usual I went to bed first whilst he waited in the lounge. Later, I heard his ‘good-nights’ to our hosts and his footsteps approaching the bedroom. He switched on the light as I covered myself in a flurry of bedclothes. The pause before his second shoe dropped heavily and carelessly to the floor was filled with the flapping of moths in their universal imbecility against the light. He switched off the light and creaked into his bed.

‘Good-night.’

‘Good-night,’ I answered, trying to impose finality in the wish.

We lay in our beds aware of each other’s breathing. I thought longingly of Reg and Jill. It was still early evening in their world. Of Reg’s patient courting and his determination that I would marry him. Of the bliss of our early married life. Of the fight to protect that bliss from the relentless drip, drip, drop of patriarchal taste and plebeian income that seems so much a part of life today in England.

The next day, after an extended farewell to the
bathroom we moved sadly to ‘Point Four’. Our new host, an Iranian youth whose favourite word was rascal, clucked proudly as he showed us his establishment. Walls crumbling and windows broken it protruded from the surrounding desert like the last defiant tooth in an expanse of empty gums. Decay had reduced this former British Consulate to a haunted Bleak House sinking in the sands of memory.

Cobwebs clung lovingly to peeling walls adorned only with the shadowed memory of picture frames. Cupboards echoed hollowly. Sand rasped protestingly and foretold eventual victory by the encroaching desert as we walked on the bare stone floor. Gordon was silent as we walked from room to room. I smiled wanly at our host as he told tales of its former glory. On the bathroom door was a neatly typed notice informing us of the cost of board and lodging. At the bottom of the page flourished the signature of an American official.

A bath! I rushed to it and turned both taps. Rusty water gurgled and spat as though resentful of release. I felt my feet getting wet and glanced at the other end of the bath. At its lowest extremity a jagged hole leered at us with the malignancy of Cyclop’s solitary eye. The toilet, a hole in the ground, crowned this dismal inspection and nearly brought me to tears as our host dismissed these limitations as another amoral example of those rascals in Teheran.

The bedroom was gloomy and musty; the Valhalla of deceased ants, moths, mosquitoes and a baby lizard, and the happy hunting ground of persistent flies. Through the uncurtained French windows we could see sand dunes footing the distant mountains, with Bedouin style lean-to tents offering stepping-stones to Bandar Abbas, shimmering distantly on the horizon.

Too depressed to unpack we drove immediately to the landing field with our host. His jeep, with its unyielding springs and unupholstered seats, added further to my woes. Sitting on numbness I day-dreamed nostalgically of beauty parlours and glossy women’s magazines. Images of elegant models langorously reclining against sleek cars brought a snap of disloyalty, like a trusted dog turning on its master, towards my chosen profession. Gordon to my disgust looked infuriatingly cool and immaculate.

Punctually at ten o’clock Sonny arrived from Sharja, roared low over us and pulled up sharply into a steep climbing turn that silhouetted his Spitfire’s graceful lines against the cloudless sky, before settling down to a sedate circling of the aerodrome.