§ 8
Joan was already driving a car for the Ministry of Munitions before Peter got himself transferred from the ranks of the infantry to the Royal Flying Corps. Peter’s career as an infantryman never took him nearer to the western front than Liss Forest. Then he perceived the error of his ways and decided to get a commission in the Royal Flying Corps. In those days the Flying Corps was still a limited and inaccessible force with a huge waiting list, and it needed a considerable exertion of influence to secure a footing in that select band.... But at last a day came when Peter, rather self-conscious in his new leather coat and cap, walked out from the mess past a group of chatting young pilots towards the aeroplane in which he was to have his first experience of flight.
He had a sense of being scrutinized, but indeed hardly any one upon the aerodrome noted him. This sense of an audience made him deliberately casual in his bearing. He saluted his pilot in a manner decidedly offhand. He clambered up through struts and wire to the front seat as if he was a clerk ascending the morning omnibus, and strapped himself in as if it hardly mattered whether he was strapped in or not.
“Contact, sir,” said the mechanic. “Contact,” came the pilot’s voice from behind. The engine roared, a gale swept backwards, and Peter vibrated like an aspen leaf.
The wheels were cleared, the mechanics jumped aside, and Peter was careering across the grass in a series of light leaps, and then his progress became smoother. He did not perceive at first the reason for this sudden steadying of the machine. He found himself tilting upward. He was off the ground. He had been off the ground for some seconds. He looked over the side and saw the grass fifty feet below, and the black shadow of the aeroplane, as if it fled before them, rushing at a hedge, doubling up at the hedge, and starting again in the next field. And up he went.
Peter stared at fields, hedges, trees, sheds and roadways growing small below him. He noted cows in plan and an automobile in plan, in a lane, going it seemed very slowly indeed. It was a stagnant world below in comparison with his own forward sweep. His initial nervousness and self-consciousness had passed away. He was enormously interested and delighted. He was trying to remember when it was that Nobby had said: “I doubt if we’ll see that in my lifetime—or yours.” It was somewhen long ago at Limpsfield. Quite early....
And then abruptly Peter was clutching the side with his thick-gloved hand; the aeroplane was coming round in a close curve and banking steeply, very steeply. For a moment it seemed as though there was nothing at all between him and England below. If he fell out——!
He looked over his shoulder and met the hard regard of a pair of steel-blue eyes.
He remembered that after all he was under observation. This was no mere civilian’s joy ride. He affected a concentration upon the scenery. The aeroplane swung slowly back again to the level, and his hand left the side....
They were going up very rapidly now. The world seemed to be rolling in at the edges of a great circle that grew constantly larger. Away to the left were broad spaces of brown sand, and grey rippled and smooth shining water channels, and beyond, the sapphire sea; beneath and to the right were fields, houses, villages, woods, and a distant range of hills that seemed to be coming nearer. The scale was changing and everything was becoming maplike. Cows were little dots now and men scarcely visible.... And then suddenly all the scenery seemed to be rushing upward before Peter’s eyes and he had a feeling like the feeling one has in a lift when it starts—a down-borne feeling. He affected indifference, and gave the pilot his whistling profile. Down they swept, faster than a luge on the swiftest ice run, until one could see the ditches in the shadows beneath the hedges and cows were plainly cows again, and then once more they were heeling over and curving round. But Peter had been ready for that this time; he had been telling himself over and over again that he was strapped in. He betrayed no surprise. He was getting more and more exhilarated.
And then they were climbing again and soaring straight out towards the sea. Up went this roaring dragonfly in which Peter was sitting, at a hundred and twenty miles or so per hour, leaving the dwindling land behind.
Up they went and up, until the world seemed nearly all sea and the coast was far away; they mounted at last above a little white cloud puff and then above a haze of clouds, and when Peter looked down he saw at a vast distance below, through a clear gap in that filmy cloud fabric, three ships smaller than any toys. Of the men he could distinguish nothing. How sweet the cold clear air had become!
And high above the world, in the lonely sky above the cloud fleece, the pilot saw fit to spring a surprise upon Peter.
He was not of the genial and considerate order of teachers; he believed in weeding out duds as swiftly as possible. He had an open mind as to whether this rather over-intelligent-looking beginner might not, under certain circumstances, squeal. So he just tried him and, without a note of preparation, looped the loop with him.
The propeller that span before the eyes of Peter dipped. Peter bowed in accord with it. It dipped more and more steeply, until the machine was almost nose down, until Peter was looking at the sea and the land as one sits and looks at a wall. He was tilted down and down until he was face downward. And then as abruptly he was tilted up; it was like being in a swing; the note of the engine altered as if a hand swept up a scale of notes; the sea and the land seemed to fall away below him as though he left them for ever, and the blue sky swept down across his field of vision like a curtain: he was, so to speak, on his back now with his legs in the air, looking straight at the sky, at nothing but sky, and expecting to recover. For a vast second he waited for the swing to end. This was surely the end of the swing....
Only—most amazingly—he didn’t recover! He wanted to say, “Ouch!” He was immensely surprised—too surprised to be frightened. He went over backwards—in an instant—and the sea and the land reappeared above the sky and also came down like curtains, too, and then behold! the aeroplane was driving down and the world was in its place again far below.
“The Loop!” whispered Peter, a little dazed, and glanced back at his pilot and smiled. This was no perambulator excursion. “The Loop—first trip!”
The blue eyes seemed a little less hard, the weather-red face was smiling faintly.
Then gripped by an irresistible power, Peter found himself going down, down, down almost vertically. The pilot had apparently stopped the engine....
Peter watched the majestic expansion of the landscape as they fell. They had come back over the land. Far away he could see the aerodrome like a scattered collection of little toy huts, and growing bigger and bigger every instant. He sat quite still, for it was all right—it must be all right. But now they were getting very near the ground, and it was still rushing up to meet them, and pouring outwardly as it rose. A cat now would be visible....
It was all right. The engine picked up with a roar like a score of lions, and the pilot levelled out a hundred feet above the trees....
Then presently they were dropping to the aerodrome again; down until the hedges were plain and the grazing cattle close and distinct; and then, with a sense of infinite regret, Peter perceived that they were back on the turf again and that the flight was over. They danced lightly over the turf. Their rush slowed down. They taxied gently up to the hangar and the engine shuddered and, with a pathetic drop to silence, stopped....
A little stiffly, Peter unbuckled himself and stretched and set himself to clamber to the ground.
His weather-bitten senior nodded to him and smiled faintly....
Peter walked towards the mess. It was wonderful—and intensely disappointing in that it was so soon over. There were still great pieces of the afternoon left....