Tom Wells was out on the apron when I arrived, giving his planes a personal check. He had assigned me, as I had learned on the telephone the previous morning, to fly three men to Glasgow for a round of golf. I was to take them in an Aztec and do exactly what they wanted. They were good customers. Tom didnt want to lose them.
Good-morning, Harry, he said as I reached him. Ive given you Quebec Bravo. You planned your route?
I nodded.
Ive put scotch and champagne on board, in case they forget to bring any, he said. Youre fetching them from Coventry you know that and taking them back there. They may keep you late at Gleneagles until after dinner.
Im sorry about that.
Expensive game of golf, I commented.
Hm, he said shortly. Thats an alibi. They are three tycoons who like to compare notes in private[148]. They stipulate a pilot who wont repeat what he hears, and I reckon you fit that bill, Harry my lad because youve been coming here for four years and if a word of gossip has passed your lips in that time Im a second class gas fitters mate[149].
Which you arent.
Which Im not. He smiled, a pleasant solid sturdy man of forty plus, a pilot himself who knew chartering backwards and ran his own little firm with the minimum of fuss. Ex-R.A.F., of course, as most flyers of his age were: trained on bombers, given a love for the air, and let down with a bang when the service chucked them out as redundant[150]. There were too many pilots chasing too few jobs in the post-war years, but Tom Wells had been good, persistent and lucky, and had converted a toe-hole copilots job in a minor private airline into a seat on the board, and finally, backed by a firm of light aircraft manufacturers, had started his present company on his own.
Give me a ring when youre leaving Gleneagles, he said, Ill be up in the Tower myself when you come back.
Ill try not to keep you too late.
You wont be the last. He shook his head. Joe Wilkins is fetching three couples from a weekend in Le Touquet. A dawn job[151], thatll be, I shouldnt wonder
I picked up the three impressive business men as scheduled and conveyed them to Scotland. On the way up they drank Tom Wells Black and White and talked about dividend equalisation reserves, unappropriated profits, and contingent liabilities: none of which I found in the least bit interesting. They moved on to exports and the opportunities available in the European market. There was some discussion about whether the one and threequarters was any positive inducement, which was the only point of their conversation I really understood.
The one and three quarters, as I had learned at Anglia Bloodstock, was a percentage one could claim from the Government on anything one sold for export. The three tycoons were talking about machine tools and soft drinks, as far as I could gather, but the mechanism worked for bloodstock also. If a stud sold a horse abroad for say twenty thousand pounds, it received not only that sum from the buyer, but also one and three quarters per cent of it three hundred and fifty pounds from the Government. A carrot before the export donkey. A bonus. A pat on the head for helping the countrys economy. In effect, it did influence some studs to prefer foreign buyers. But racehorses were simple to export: they needed no after sales service, follow-up campaign or multi-lingual advertising, which the tycoons variously argued were or were not worth the trouble. Then they moved on to taxation and I lost them again[152], the more so as there were some lowish clouds ahead over the Cheviots and at their request I was flying them below three thousand feet so that they could see the countryside.
I went up above the cloud into the quadrantal system operating above three thousand feet, where to avoid collision one had to fly on a steady regulated level according to the direction one was heading: in our case, going northwest, four thousand five hundred or six thousand five hundred or eight thousand five hundred, and so on up.
One of the passengers commented on the climb and asked the reason for it, and wanted to know my name.
Grey.
Well, Grey, where are we off to? Mars?
I smiled. High hills, low clouds.
My God, said the weightiest and oldest tycoon, patting me heavily on the shoulder. What wouldnt I give for such succinctness in my boardroom.
They were in good form, enjoying their day as well as making serious use of it. The smell of whisky in the warm luxurious little cabin overcame even that of hot oil, and the expensive cigar smoke swirled huskily in my throat. I enjoyed the journey, and for Toms sake as well as my own pride, knowing my passengers were connoisseurs of private air travel, put them down on the Gleneagles strip like a whisper on a lake[153].
They played golf and drank and ate; and repeated the programme in the afternoon. I walked on the hills in the morning, had lunch, and in the late afternoon booked a room in the hotel, and went to sleep. I guess it was a satisfactory day all round.
It was half past ten when the reception desk woke me by telephone and said my passengers were ready to leave, and eleven before we got away. I flew back on a double dogleg[154], making for the St. Abbs radio beacon on the Northumberland coast and setting a course of one sixty degrees south-south-east from there on a one five two nautical mile straight course to Ottringham, and then south-west across country to Coventry, coming in finally on their 122.70 homer signal.
The tycoons, replete, talked in mellow, rumbling, satisfied voices, no longer about business but about their own lives. The heaviest was having trouble over currency regulations with regard to a villa he had bought on the Costa del Sol: the government had slapped a two thousand pound ceiling on pleasure spending abroad[155], and two thousand would hardly buy the bath taps.
The man sitting directly behind me asked about decent yachts available for charter in the Aegean, and the other two told him. The third said it was really time his wife came back from Gstaad, she had been there for two months, and they were due to go to Nassau for Easter. They made me feel poverty-stricken[156], listening to them.
We landed safely at Coventry, where they shook my hand, yawning, thanked me for a smooth trip, and ambled off to a waiting Rolls, shivering in the chilly air. I made the last small hop back to Fenland and found Tom, as good as his word, on duty in the control tower to help me down. He yelled out of the window to join him, and we drank coffee out of a thermos jug while he waited for his Le Touquet plane to come back. It was due in an hour: earlier than expected. Apparently the client had struck a losing streak[157] and the party had fizzled out.
Everything go all right with your lot? Tom said.
They seemed happy, I nodded, filling in the flight details on his record chart and copying them into my own log book.
I suppose you want your fee in flying hours, as usual?
I grinned. How did you guess?
I wish youd change your mind and work for me permanently.
I put down the pen and stretched, lolling back on the wooden chair with my hands laced behind my head. Not yet. Give it three or four years; perhaps then.