The Phoenix

Book 35: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

It is 1931 and the world is still reeling from the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash. Polly Morland has returned to Morland Place, saving it from financial ruin. Her plans to change things are met with resistance, however, and she must prove her mettle in a man's world. Jack, war hero and family man, knows that he must make a change for the sake of those he holds dear so when an opportunity arises that would take him back to York, he seizes it with both hands. In London, Robert is bored with his office job and seeks something grander. Fatherless and dealing with the repercussions of his family's bankruptcy, he must make his own way now that he has been left to the mercy of the world. His sister Charlotte, also frustrated with her life and sure that she will never receive an offer of marriage, longs for something different as well. As the years roll by, the threat of another war hangs in the air and when King Edward VIII takes to the throne, things seem to be on the brink of change once more. But like a phoenix rising up from the ashes, the Morlands prove yet again that they will emerge from whatever they must face stronger than ever before.

Release date: September 26, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 592

Sample

It was a soft autumn day, the golden air luminous with floating silken seeds and spider threads. The harvest fields were every shade of tawny from amber to flaxen; the flaming woods burned without being consumed, like Moses’ bush, as if it would be autumn now for ever.

In the hedges, swollen with hips and scarlet haws, the birds stuffed themselves, too frantic with greed to fly up as the ridden horse passed. Solly sneezed in the dust raised by his rhythmic tread. A golden horse in a golden land: the chestnut’s name was Roi Soleil, but the grooms could not get their tongues round it, and Polly had bowed to the inevitable. She was golden too: hatless, with the sun bright on her gilt hair, slim and flexible in the saddle, at one with her steed.

It was dinner-time when she rode into the yard at Huntsham Farm. She had not long been the owner of the Morland Place estate, but she had grown up here, so she knew it was the best time to find the farmer at home. She also knew she would be invited to ‘tek a bit o’ dinner’, and that Yorkshire folk did not like to be refused. They did not like to be hurried, either, so she had come prepared to eat and to wait.

Over the normal farmyard odours of manure and straw she caught a sweeter whiff of boiling ham from the open kitchen door. Solly pricked his ears and let out a ripping whinny, as was his way. He was only a youngster, in the process of finding out about life. The whinny announced her arrival and Mrs Walton appeared at the kitchen door, a cloth in her hands, frowning at the interruption. Seeing who it was, she called over her shoulder, ‘It’s the mistress,’ and ducked back in, to be replaced a moment later by her husband, an enormous, bony man, who filled the doorway and had to lower his head under the lintel.

‘Now then, Miss Polly,’ he hailed her. ‘Fine day.’ The greeting was cordial, though his face, brown and rigid as wood from long exposure to brutal weathers, could not smile. It was frosted with grey stubble: like most of his kind, he shaved only on a Saturday night.

‘It is indeed, Mr Walton. Good drying weather,’ Polly offered.

‘Aye,’ he nodded. ‘We’ve been turnin’ this morning, and we s’l cart tomorrow. An’ they’re cuttin’ oats over to Thickpenny.’

He made to come forward to take her rein, but she forestalled him. ‘I see you’re in your stockinged feet. Don’t come out.’

‘Ah’d nobbut just tekken me boots off for dinner. You’ll coom in and tek a bit wi’ us?’

‘I’d be glad to,’ Polly said. She slipped down from the saddle, and had run up the stirrups and loosened the girth by the time the younger Walton boy, Tom, had got his boots back on and come running out to take him.

He gave her a shy smile. ‘I’ll put him in the old stable for you and give him a bit o’ hay.’

Inside the farmhouse kitchen – the big room that ran the width of the house, in which almost all of the Waltons’ living took place – the wooden table took up the central space, flanked by wooden benches, with a high-backed chair at either end. The range under the chimney provided the hot water to the house as well as the cooking, and was never let go out. But despite the warm day outside, it was not unbearably hot in the kitchen: the stone walls were two feet thick, and the wide stone flags on the floor were laid directly on earth.

Mrs Walton – Ruth – hurried over as Polly came in. She was little and thin – farmer’s wives rarely ran to fat – but gave the impression of wiry strength; her grey hair was secured out of the way in a tight bun behind and her sleeves were rolled up for action at all times, except at church on Sunday.

‘Now then, Miss Polly, what a grand surprise. Sit in, won’t you? Dinner’s ready.’

Polly took the end place on the nearest bench. The men, who had stood for her in native politeness, sat again. Ernie and Ted, the two labourers, kept their eyes modestly to themselves. This was not just ‘Miss Polly from up the Big House’, which would have been overpowering enough, but the new owner, who held all their fates in her hands. And she was young and beautiful to boot – inexplicably, frighteningly beautiful. They couldn’t begin to think how to address her.

Ancient Walter, the cowman, didn’t hold with females, and looked away on general principle.

As Farmer Walton – Isaac – took his place in the big chair at the foot of the table, the only one to meet Polly’s eye was his elder son Joe, who gave her a nod and a smile. He had lost an eye and half a leg in France in 1918, but despite his disability, he was a cheerful soul. He nipped about on his tin leg and threw himself into his work with gusto. He counted himself lucky, not only for having survived – the eldest Walton boy, Matt, had been killed at Passchendaele – but for having found a girl, May Gatson, willing to marry him, missin’ bits an’ all.

May was bringing bowls of steaming potatoes to the table: a red-faced, solid girl whose early beauty had flowered and set, like a wild rose turning to hip. She was the only other female in this overwhelmingly masculine household. The two children she had so far presented to Joe were boys, aged five and three. They were sitting at the end of the table, opposite Polly, where they would be bracketed between their mother and grandmother. The elder boy was too shy to look at her, but the younger gazed in wonder, a crust clutched in his fist ready to do service as a ‘pusher’, his eyes round and brown under his tow-coloured hair.

Tom returned, hauled off his boots, went to his place, and Ruth Walton took the baked ham out of the oven and brought it to the table. The smell of it was glorious, and Polly, who had been up and about since first light, found her mouth running with anticipation. There were potatoes and a great dish of runner beans, which smelt heavenly too. The men’s hands twitched helplessly towards the victuals, and were halted by Ruth’s stern look and the words, ‘Grace, Father!’

Isaac, a little red from the consciousness of who was listening, spoke the words: ‘Bless this food to our use, O Lord, and us to Thy service. An’ fill our hearts with grateful praise, an’ keep us always mindful of others, for Christ Jesus’ sake. Amen.’

And then Ruth started carving and the plates started going round, and the bowls of vegetables were passed, and the jug of gravy, and six men hunched over their plates with the desperate urgency of those who have been up since before dawn doing physical labour. The women minded their manners and made the children mind theirs, but there was no time for talking until the agonising pangs of hunger were assuaged, and Polly knew better than to try to engage anyone in social chit-chat.

Afterwards, May cleared the plates while Ruth went to the oven and brought out an enormous apple pie, baked in a tin two feet square, and fetched it to the table along with a tall enamel jug of custard. After that a vast pot of tea was brewed and brought to the table, along with – in honour of the guest – a plate of oat biscuits. Isaac and Walter filled their pipes and the younger men lit cigarettes.

‘Well, now, Miss Polly,’ Ruth said, signalling that the social part of the meal was to begin, ‘how are you finding it, being back? I reckon it’d seem a bit strange, like, after all them years you were away.’

‘I’m getting used to it slowly,’ Polly said. ‘It’s not the place – I was brought up here.’ She felt it did no harm to remind them. ‘It’s the new responsibilities.’

‘Aye, it’s ower much for a bit of a lass,’ Isaac said.

Walter piped up in his querulous voice, like a creaky gate that always complained and wouldn’t be oiled. ‘If Master’d wanted th’estate to go to a lass, he wouldn’t have left it to Mr James.’

Ruth thought that was plain rude. ‘It’s not for us to question Master’s ways, God rest his soul. And you know right well it were them wicked death duties as changed everything,’ she said sharply.

‘That’s right, Mother,’ Joe said, giving Walter a quelling glare. ‘If Miss Polly hadn’t bought the estate from Mr James, everything’d’ve had to be sold to a stranger, an’ likely we’d’ve all been out on our ears. So think on, Walter, and don’t talk so far back.’

But Walter used the privilege of age to refuse to be quelled. ‘’At’s as may be, but Mr James is the eldest son, and right’s right. There he is, living up at th’Place as ever is, and you’re tellin’ me he’s not Master? Well, Ah don’t understand it, plain an’ simple. If he’s not Master, what’s he doin’ there?’

‘You don’t understand anything, Wally, so keep a still tongue in your head,’ Isaac said. ‘Folks as ’ave nowt to say should say nowt.’

But Polly thought, half humorously, that Walter had a very good question. What was James doing? When she had bought the estate from him, to save it from being broken up to pay the death duties, he had said he wanted to go off and travel round the world; that he loved Morland Place but didn’t want the responsibility of it; that he might come back one day, but only when the gypsy urge had left him and his longing to roam had been quelled.

But since the papers had been signed and Polly had parted with a large chunk of her fortune and shouldered the work and worry, James had seemed able to resist the urge to wander very well. He was apparently quite content to go on living at Morland Place, riding the horses, pottering about on his motor-bicycle, seeing his friends and having them over, just as he had done when Papa was alive and he was heir apparent.

Still, this was not the place to discuss the phenomenon.

‘Morland Place has had a mistress instead of a master before now,’ she said mildly, ‘and flourished all right. And in any case, that’s the way things are, so we must all get on with it as best we can.’

‘True for you, Miss Polly,’ Ruth said firmly. ‘Pay no mind to the awd fool. We’re right glad and grateful that you came home and rescued us all, and that’s the truth, and there’s no-one under this roof ’at won’t give you any help you need to get job done.’

‘Hear hear, Mother,’ said Joe.

‘Ah were on’y sayin’ it were a big task, for a lass on her own,’ Isaac said belatedly.

‘But we’re behind you all right, Miss Polly,’ Joe insisted.

‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ Polly said, taking the opening, ‘because I want to put a plan to you.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Isaac said warily.

‘I’d like to start a bull club,’ said Polly.

It didn’t take much explaining – the men had heard of such things – but there was a deal of persuading needed, of which Polly was aware this visit could mark only the beginning. It had always been the habit of dairy farmers to put any male bovine they could get the use of to their cows, just to get them pregnant. They were not interested in the calves: in the nature of things, half would be useless males; the better of the females might be kept as replacements, the rest sold for what they’d fetch. It was the lactation that mattered, and scrub bulls did the work all right, so why bother with anything fancier? ‘If it’s got ’orns an’ balls it’s good enough for me,’ was the saying.

The bull-club system was one whereby a number of farmers clubbed together to buy a pedigreed bull to serve all their cows, paying a fee per service to cover expenses, with the aim of improving the stock and therefore the quality and quantity of the milk. The Ministry of Agriculture would make a grant of a quarter of the cost of the bull towards this end.

‘Of course,’ Polly explained, ‘I would put up the rest of the initial cost. You know Sir Bertie Parke has a herd of pedigreed shorthorns, and he has agreed to sell me a suitable animal.’

They knew Sir Bertie: he had run tame about Morland Place in his youth, and had married ‘their’ Miss Jessie – Polly’s cousin who had been brought up with her like an older sister. The Parkes now bred horses at Twelvetrees, and Sir Bertie also had a farm at Bishop Winthorpe, where he kept his dairy herd.

‘So the bull would belong to me,’ Polly went on, ‘and the idea would be that all the Morland estate farmers would belong to the club and have the use of it.’

‘Ah don’t doubt there’d be a sharpish charge,’ Isaac said suspiciously. ‘You don’t get owt for nowt in this world.’

‘Yes, there would be a fee – just enough to cover the running expenses. But it would improve the quality of your herd no end. What I want to see is all of you moving towards getting attested, and producing graded milk.’

Isaac scowled. ‘More ministry interference,’ he grunted. ‘Ah don’t hold wi’ it. We’ve farmed on this land since the year dot, wi’out any ministry feller tellin’ us how.’

‘But Grade-A milk sells for at least a penny a gallon more. And your cows will produce more of it, too. They’ll milk better, and for longer, and they’ll be less susceptible to sickness. Wouldn’t you like a herd free of tuberculosis?’

The latest report from the ministry had calculated that the average working life of dairy cows in England was less than half what it should be, because of tuberculosis deaths, and that replacing the losses put an extra threepence a gallon on the cost of milk production. She tried to explain this to Isaac, though it was a tricky concept for a man of no formal education. ‘True enough it costs a bit to get to an attested herd and clean milk, but it pays handsomely in the end,’ she concluded.

Isaac was setting his jaw. ‘Handsomely, is it? Aye, an’ Ah don’t doubt when Ah get this fancy-work herd all set up, you’ll be putting ma rent up.’

‘Yes,’ said Polly, ‘but only by a fair amount. That’s the point – to improve all the Morland land, to get the most possible out of it. I’ll be better off, certainly, but you will too. It’s good for you, good for me, good for the land – good for the whole country.’

‘Aye, well, Ah’ve enough on me hands tekkin’ care of me own family. Ah’ve nowt to do wi’ the rest o’ th’ country. Let it tek care of itself.’

‘By all means,’ Polly agreed. ‘But I’d like to see my estate become a model for estates everywhere. I want to see strong, healthy cows giving rich, grade-A milk. And I’ve other plans.’ She could see she was getting nowhere, but she expected to have to make the argument many times before it was accepted. ‘Milking machines, for one thing.’

Isaac looked startled. ‘Nay, Miss Polly. Them things are unnatural – downright dangerous. I heerd of a feller got his arm pulled right off wi’ one.’ Such stories always circulated when any new machinery was proposed.

Joe spoke up. ‘I seen one once, when I were at training camp down in Devon, on the farm we were billeted at. It were always breaking down. And the cows didn’t like it.’

‘Downright cruel, I heard,’ said Isaac.

‘Those old pre-war machines were crude, but the new ones they’re making now are quite different – worlds better,’ Polly said. ‘I’ve seen them used on Sir Bertie’s farm. The cows don’t mind them at all. And the best thing is, the milk goes straight into a closed container, so there’s less chance of contamination. And they’re so quick, compared with hand-milking.’ She had got carried away with her enthusiasm now. ‘With one machine and six steadings, a man and a boy can handle sixty cows. Just think!’

Walter scowled. ‘Aye, Ah’m thinkin’, and Ah can see where that goes: machines tekkin’ over men’s work. What’ll become of the likes o’ me? Thrown out on’t scrap-heap! Tha s’d be ashamed, Miss Polly, to talk of puttin’ men out o’ work at a time like this.’ He jutted out the wispy white beard that decorated his jaw. ‘An’ pullin’ cows to pieces wi metal fandangoes, wrenchin’ their ewers about – unnatural, Ah call it! Tha’d have ’em down wi’ felon in no time. And all for t’sake of a bit o’ profit! It’s not the way thy father would have gone, God rest his soul – the best Master we ever had, and a true gentleman. Understood the land like it were his own child.’

Polly knew it was no use going on. Like water on a stone, she must work away over time. She knew from Bertie that while good hand-milkers were worth their weight in gold, there were plenty of hard-handed, clumsy milkers (she suspected Walter was one), who wrenched the teats so roughly that mastitis – which local farmers called ‘felon’ – was a common occurrence. Milking machines, Bertie said, had completely eliminated traumatic mastitis from his herd.

When later she rode away again, her mood was slightly less buoyant. Solly, on the contrary, was refreshed by his rest and snack in the stable, and pranced about, shying at birds, falling leaves and sinister gateposts, so she went back a different way, and gave him a good gallop over the stubble to settle him.

The movement and pleasure of it restored her natural optimism. After all, she told herself, she had not expected it to be simple. She had been an innovator before. In New York she had set up a fashion business from scratch, had built it up until at the end she had been a well-known figure in top society, invited everywhere. She had sold gowns to Manhattan’s best families – Whitneys and Vanderbilts, Paynes and Duers, Morgans and Rothschilds. And none of that had been easy.

Of course, New York was a place that valued enterprise, and was accustomed to powerful matriarchs, so being female had been no barrier to success. Yorkshire farmers, on the other hand, didn’t like change, and they liked women to know their place. She had sold her business when she had married Ren Alexander, an immensely rich and well-connected man, and dedicated herself to his political career, becoming an influential hostess. The Crash had brought that world tumbling down like a house of cards; and though Ren had seen it coming, and safeguarded most of his fortune, he had been killed in an aeroplane accident soon afterwards, leaving her a rich widow with a posthumous son to bring up.

Absorbed with her own sorrows, she had not realised that her father back in England was fading away until it was too late. Then Jessie had written in desperation, to say that death duties combined with the terrible cost of borrowing since the Crash meant the estate would have to be sold. James could not cope at all; could Polly help? So she had come home at last, to a Morland Place without Papa.

He had died without the comfort of seeing her one last time, something that still haunted her conscience. She should have come home earlier, to tell him that she loved him, to tell him she was sorry … She missed him every day. She had been his most precious jewel, and he had been her stay and comfort. He had been her home.

Well, she told herself, shaking away weakness, all she could do now was to be the best mistress Morland Place had ever had. From the depth of imminent destruction, the estate should rise like a phoenix to become the pattern of England. And she was not going to let any stubborn, backward-looking farmers stand in her way. She was not Polly Morland, her father’s daughter, for nothing! She was going to—

She found she had stopped, her hand checking Solly at some subconscious signal. He blew vibrato from his velvet nostrils in protest, curving his neck and fidgeting his feet, but she held him, looking about her like one waking from sleep. What? What was it?

She was looking at a dry-stone wall, neatly made, holding up the bank where the field was higher than the track. Memory flooded her, and suddenly her throat was rigid with pain. She saw him there, as he had been all those years ago, bare-headed in the sun, his sleeves rolled up to show the brown, lean strength of his arms, his hands white with stone dust, his hair bleached flaxen at the front, his eyes narrowed against the glare as he looked up at her, smiling …

Erich, her first love, her forbidden love – for he was a German prisoner of war, and it was her duty to hate him. But gentle, erudite, country-bred, he had taken her untried heart, as he worked about her father’s land that long summer, when she was still a girl and the war seemed far away. This wall he had repaired with his skilled, unhurried hands. All around her land there were examples of his work, which had the power to ambush her with memories when she was least expecting them.

He had been taken away to be deported to his own country, and she had been told he had been killed in a riot at the docks. For so very long she had grieved for him, Erich, her lost love, unable even to admit why she was so unhappy, until years later she had met him again in New York and learned that the story had been a lie. But by then she was married to Ren; and Erich was married too, having believed he would never see her again.

She jerked her head away from contemplation of that neat wall, baking in the sun, laid her legs to Solly’s sides and sent him on. She must not think of him; he belonged to someone else, and their lives now lay apart. She had promised herself she would not think of him, though there was a hollow place inside her that could never be filled.

Solly settled into his swinging stride as she berated herself. She had enough to do without mourning over the past: a house full of cousins and orphans whom her father had taken in and who now depended on her; the farms to mould in her own way; the factories in Manchester, the shops and the rest of the estate, properties and little businesses, stocks and shares she hadn’t even had time to get to the end of yet. It was a huge burden for anyone, but for a woman on her own …

Yes, a woman alone: it came to her in that moment that she was lonely, and it seemed an odd thing to say when Morland Place was stuffed full of relatives and servants, and when invitations came from neighbours every day to this or that social gathering. But of all that crowd, the only person who was really hers, and hers alone, was her baby, little Alec up in the nursery; and he depended on her, too. There was no-one to whom she could say, ‘Hold this burden for me, just for a moment, while I take a breath.’

Her mind turned, as it so often had, to Lennie, her dear cousin and friend, whom she had left behind in America. He had always been there, ready to help; he would have shouldered the burden, given her advice, help, warmth and support, and never asked for anything in return. He loved her, not as a cousin, but in that way she could not love him, but he had never let it be a trouble to her. She wished suddenly that he were here, now, so that she could talk to him; talking to Lennie was often all she needed to solve a problem.

‘When I get home, I’ll write to him,’ she said aloud. Solly turned back an ear; and even to Polly it sounded good. Yes, she would write to Lennie … And wouldn’t it be a fine thing if he decided to take a vacation, and make a visit to the old country? Her heart warmed at the idea. She wouldn’t depend on it, of course – he would probably be too busy – but it was a fine thought. Anyway, she would definitely write.

It was just a routine flight – but, then, no pilot enters his cockpit believing it will be anything but routine. Not in peacetime, anyway. And Jack Compton had been flying the Imperial Airways Silver Wing service from Croydon to Paris (and the extended Croydon–Paris–Basel–Zürich route in summer) since its inception.

The Handley Page HP42 was an ungainly-looking craft – an unequal-span biplane, with an enormous three-finned tailplane, and four engines, two mounted close to the centre of the upper wing and one on each side of the fuselage on the lower wing. But despite its odd appearance, it was strong, reliable and comfortable. It was the first commercial aircraft to have the pilot’s compartment enclosed inside the aircraft, for which Jack and his flight crew were grateful. There were two passenger cabins, one in front of the wings and one aft, with substantial space for baggage and mail amidships, where the engine noise was greatest. The passengers had padded armchairs and large windows from which to enjoy the view, and there was a galley for the serving of food and fine wines by a uniformed steward. It was the most modern way to travel.

Jack was not far from Croydon, with sixteen passengers on board and three crew, when the port lower engine failed. He smelt the smoke first, but had barely time to mention it when he heard the splintery crack, and felt the jar as something inside the housing broke away. A piece of debris, spun out at high speed, crossed his line of sight like a hurtling missile, making him flinch instinctively; his body knew about dodging the hazards of Archie – anti-aircraft fire – even though he tried not to remember the war.

He heard Tony, his young navigator, exclaim, ‘Christ, what was that?’ The debris struck the propeller of the port upper engine with a terrible screech of abused metal. At once the engine began to labour and chop, vibrating so violently that he did not even wait to see if it would even out. That sort of vibration could rip the wing in half. He shut it down, feeling sweat break out under his hair line, as the old under-fire tension gripped him.

Two engines down. ‘How far are we from Croydon?’ he shouted over the roar as the remaining engines laboured to keep the heavy craft aloft. With two of them out of action on the same side it was a struggle to keep her level. She pulled like a wounded whale, trying to turn, wanting to dive.

Tony answered. ‘Thirty miles, sir.’

‘Too far,’ Jack said.

‘Can we make it to Biggin Hill?’

Jack glanced at the altimeter. Between them and Biggin Hill was the western end of the North Downs. He shook his head. ‘I can’t get enough height. I’m going to have to put her down somewhere. Better let ’em know at home.’

He heard Guy, his engineer, radio in as he concentrated grimly on staying level, while he and Tony looked out on either side for a suitable piece of clear ground. Kent was not called the Garden of England for nothing: it was heavily cultivated for fruit and vegetables – hop country too. Empty fields were in short supply. Ahead he saw the glitter of the Medway, a silver snake in the afternoon sunshine, to his left the roofs and chimneys of Tonbridge, and beyond them the ground rising towards Sevenoaks, green and wooded hills they could not clear.

The engines laboured; the vibration passing up his arms was making his neck and jaw ache. ‘Anything?’ he asked Tony. ‘Can’t be too fussy. We’re still losing height.’

‘There, sir!’ Tony cried, his young voice high with tension. ‘What about that?’

Jack saw it. A strip of grass-greenness amid the cultivation – a field recently cleared but not yet planted, he guessed. Rough-looking green; a hedge at the end, but no tall trees; a little village beyond; scattered woods beyond that. Not as flat as he’d have liked, but wide enough and long enough. Probably.

‘It’ll have to do,’ he said. The HP42 was known for handling well at low speeds, and with those vast wings she was a good glider, but the imbalance of the redundant engines was an incalculable factor. But the hills were coming closer. They had no choice. ‘I’m going in,’ he said.

The earth speeded up, came up towards them greedily, wanting them back: gravity, which had turned a blind eye to them for the past couple of hours, now glanced again in their direction, wondering what they were doing up there. Wait, he urged it inwardly. Just give me a few more minutes. Lower, lower, the aircraft feeling impossibly heavy in his hands now. They passed over a lane between lines of hedges, sending a cloud of sparrows darting frantically in every direction. For an instant he saw how uneven the ground really was, hummocks and hollows, shallow trenches where some kind of machinery had been dragged along, deep ruts with the distinctive lug marks of tractor wheels. Then it became just a blur. ‘Hold on!’ he shouted.

The wheels touched down, and the HP42 jolted and bounced, leaping like a flea as one wheel or another went over a hump. He throttled back, the engines whined – his arms were being wrenched out of their sockets. Tony said, ‘Christ!’ as they hit a bump and leaped ten feet, and Guy said, ‘Ow!’ They were being flung against the hard surfaces of the cabin.

The vast, long wings that had given her lift were now a handicap. As they hit another bump she tilted violently and the starboard wingtip hit the ground with a horrible splintering sound, leaving a brown gouge in the rough green. Only her weight kept her from flipping right over. But the impact snapped off another propeller – he saw it fly like a child’s rubber-band toy, up and over the wing surface, whirling end over end – and swung her hard round. With a noise like the end of the world, her tail met some unseen object and was ripped away. The craft juddered to a halt, almost flinging them through the windscreen, and from somewhere above Jack’s head a gauge in a metal box tore from its housing and fell, hitting his shoulder a sharp blow.

But in his relief he did not notice the pain. He shut off the engines. For an instant the three men sat motionless, staring ahead in silence, drawing carefully those precious first breaths of life miraculously continuing. The earth had claimed them, but kindly this time. Sounds filtered in from the outside, the relentless chirping of birds, some far-off shouts of men hurrying to see what had happened, a dog barking. Smells o