Air Apparent Read online

  Papers and files covered most of the room, cascading from desk to chair to floor, then rising onto the makeshift shelves, rough wooden boards bracketed onto the wall. There was a single window, set in a wooden peeling white frame, through which one gained an inspiring view of a high brick wall.

  Somewhere from beneath the papers a telephone began to ring.

  He rummaged and finally drew the instrument from the sea of typescript and forms, its umbilical cord snaking out from between a file, marked JDF PERSONAL, and a thick batch of newspaper cuttings stapled together. The top cutting bore the headline Haulage Contractor Denies Unsafe Vehicles Charge.

  “Echo,” he said into the telephone receiver, only, because of his cleft palate, it came out as “Eh-oh.”

  “Little Sir,” said the voice at the other end of the line. It was a male voice, clear and tinged with the gravel of London.

  “Ood mornin’ Itul Hir.”

  “Mornin’ Echo, I think we’re on to the right one. It’s all workin’. They call themselves Air Apparent. Their front man’s an ex-security bloke called Oakes—they’ve arranged a charter for the twentieth with Excelsior.”

  “Hounds right. I hink it’s hime ouee hut Ma-ha Hari on hoo it.”

  “Shall I give you the details then?”

  “Nyes hlease.”

  The man with the cleft palate listened for three minutes, occasionally noting a point in pencil on the back of a telephone directory that he pulled from among the litter on the floor.

  When Little Sir had finished, Echo put down the telephone, delved among the papers and found the main body of the instrument. He pushed down the receiver rests and began to dial carefully.

  *

  Miss Snowflake Brightwater responded to the melodic tone of her telephone with instant happiness. She ran naked from the brass fourposter draped in billowing light blue hangings. The telephone was an original from around 1910: a beautiful stand model in brass and ebony, hence the pleasing tone of the bell.

  Early in her teens, Snowflake Brightwater had decided to fill her life and surroundings only with the most decorative and feminine objects. Femininity, and the woman’s role of serving the male to make him happy, was her calling. In this she was a paradox. She despised the tough striding mini-skirted dollies jackbooting it through offices or exploding with dirty laughter and back slapping on equal terms with men. Yet Snowflake had to work in order to fill her life with femininity. She preferred work out of the normal public domain. Work, she held, was not a thing to be flaunted by a woman. It made her too much a man’s equal: the last thing she wanted. The equality of the sexes being abhorrent to her, Snowflake considered that those foolish young women who fought for the right were ninnies of the highest order. All that was precious to Snowflake lay in the duty of serving her masters: known and unknown.

  “Hallo.” She breathed a small warm zephyr into the telephone’s mouthpiece. From where she stood she could view her body in the long gilt-framed mirror on the opposite wall. The mirror was flanked by large poster portraits: Che Guevara; Francis Albert Sinatra; John Lennon and Edward Heath. Snowflake Brightwater was politically confused.

  The voice at the far end of the telephone caused her to stiffen and cease admiring her reflection. She gave her whole attention to the caller, nodding from time to time and saying “Yes, Mister Frobisher … No, Mister Frobisher … Then there’s no real hurry, Mister Frobisher? … I see, Mr Frobisher … The night of the twentieth or after … I’ll keep in touch, Mister Frobisher. Yes, Mister Frobisher.”

  Slowly she replaced the receiver onto the outstretched arms of the large brass curved rest. She turned and looked into the mirror again.

  Oh brother, Miss Snowflake Brightwater was so gorgeous. From the top of her long auburn hair down the many soft sliding Curves and swirls of her golden shape to the pink toes she was a zinger.

  Oh Miss Brightwater, she thought, you really have all the things men want from a young well-mannered lady of twenty-eight summers and now it is time to climb into those pretty clothes and go out into the world to set men’s blood on fire. You also have work to do. Not the clickity-clack, tring-tring work of the offices, nor the tense restraint of the creative world. For you it is time to begin the secret life: to move on tippy tits through the seductive and luring areas.

  Nobody, lovely Miss Snowflake Brightwater, is more suited to do that. With a jerk of her breasts she was off, running with light steps towards the bedroom.

  While she had listened to the telephone call, Snowflake had doodled on the scratchpad next to the instrument. One particular doodle ran in bold letters across the page. OAKES, it read.

  Far away, from the bathroom with its elegant jars of salts and scents, came Snowflake Brightwater’s voice. She sang of places far across the world, and the beauty of her voice nearly made her swoon.

  *

  Boysie doodled and hummed as he was doodling. “Fly me to the moon,” he hummed. The doodling was being perpetrated on a BOAC timetable. He completed words from the capital letters of BOAC so that it read Boysie Oakes Airline Consortium.

  He held the pamphlet at arm’s length and studied the effect. It looked great.

  In reception and the outer office everything was happening and the girls worked like things demented.

  At first, Boysie had doubted that the small ad in the Standard would do the trick. It simply said:

  YOU WANT, or have, to get to South Africa quickly and cheaply. Luxury flight. Would you believe £69 single fare? Limited offer. Telephone.

  There followed the office telephone number. It began to ring within half an hour of the first edition and continued to ring at regular intervals. Five days later, with the ad appearing each day, they had already booked one hundred and twelve seats, taken the money, and parted with the tickets.

  Boysie had little to do but check the cash and cart it to the bank. Ada, Alma and Aida chirped around in their red dresses, swirling, bending to reveal the little scarlet nylon bottoms, and ministering to most of Boysie’s whims. They were as excited as Boysie to watch the tickets go. More, they were becoming a tiny community. Alma turned out to be a splendid cook. On one evening they had all gone back to her apartment where she had produced a magnificent sweet and sour pork with the speed it takes most girls to open a tin of beans.

  The dark Aida also had hidden talents. On the third morning of the inauguration of Air Apparent she had suddenly produced a pen and ink portrait of Boysie which caught his mood and manner exactly. Without thinking, Boysie had gone straight down the road to Harrods to have it framed. Nobody was surprised to hear that Aida had once been an art student. She was immediately commissioned to do some paintings for the office.

  Ada was not to be left out. On the previous evening she had invited everybody home for a snack. Mummy and Daddy were out for the evening. Home, they discovered, was practically a baronial hall outside Richmond, and the snack (cold turkey, ham, veal and ham pie, chicken, lobster, and a choice of four wines) was served by a doting, if aged, butler called Fisher.

  After the meal Ada asked if anybody ever did any shooting.

  “Game or people?” Boysie responded.

  “Well in this case, target actually. Daddy and my brother Toby have a pistol range in the cellar if anyone wants a go. Good fun actually.”

  The others twittered and said they would at least watch and they were sure Boysie was terribly good.

  Boysie’s stomach went heavy as they tramped down wide stone steps into the cellar. It was a perfect little range, well lit and with four weapons lying on the bench firing position. Boysie flicked his eyes over them with professional interest. Two were .22 target automatics: a Standard Olympic with barrel weights and a High Standard Duramatic. He mentally crossed off both of them. They were purely cardboard target stoppers, cumbersome to carry. At the far end was a chichi, much engraved, .38 Llama VIII. That would do at a pinch but he mistrusted all the swirled engraving. Daddy did not take his pistols seriously. Or did he? Next to the Llama
was a .38 Diamondback revolver. Neat, compact. Automatically Boysie went straight to the revolver and weighed it in his hand. It felt right. A long time since he had held anything like this. Memory flooded back with the feel of the gun as he realised the Diamondback was identical to the Python except that it was built to the Police Positive Special size frame.

  Once, he had used a Python. He could see the man called Madrigal and feel the revolver kick against his glove. Madrigal lifted from his feet by the impact. A girl running and the Python jerking again. Once. The girl pushed against the wall and sliding down. Blood.

  Boysie looked at the gun in his hand and felt disgust.

  “Come on, Oaksie, show us.” Ada stood at his left holding the Duramatic. She was pushing a box of shells towards him. Down range the little cardboard targets waited neat and clean. Boysie grinned and nodded, swung out the cylinder and began to slide the six shells into place.

  “I have first go?” Raised eyebrows towards Ada.

  “Go ahead, Oaksie, I’m not very good at it actually.”

  To be a good pistol man you need daily practice. If you cannot use your weapon live each day you should at least do a dry shoot. In any case there should only be one weapon for one man. The pistol, in the hand of an expert, is nothing more than an extension of the arm: a lethal part of the hand.

  The weight of the revolver felt very near to his old requirements, but Boysie knew it was all old dead stuff. He had not shot live for almost eighteen months.

  Without thought his body took up his natural firing position, the most comfortable for his personal tastes. Feet apart, body well balanced, side on to the target. He gripped the revolver high on the butt, head steady and eyes focused still and unblinking at the target. Then, fast, gun up, right arm rigid, left hand clutching right. Sights on. Squeeze.

  The noise of one shot in the relatively confined space of the cellar was deafening. Squeeze again. The second shot exploded on the ferocious tail of noise trailed by the first. The girls clapped their hands over their ears. He felt his nostrils flare at the old scent. The cordite. Alma’s face registered fear. Boysie remained cold, features set as he squeezed again and again until all six shots had gone. Even then he stood motionless, still squared up with the target, for at least the count of ten, before automatically lowering the gun, swinging the cylinder and emptying the spent cases onto the bench. One rolled off and made a long metallic ringing sound, sharp in contrast to the dull ring in their ears.

  Ada looked at him strangely. “You’ve done it before, haven’t you? You’ve done it a lot?”

  Boysie shook the mood from him. “Used to. It was my hobby at one time.” He tried to grin but his face felt frozen.

  Ada reeled in the target. It was not brilliant by his former standards. A one-and-a-half inch group. Central. Better than most people. For a halved second his mind reacted as it had once been trained: not good enough; getting slack and flabby; an hour a day on the range and fifteen minutes dry shooting at home every day; pulling to the right; bad habit. Then he washed it away.

  Boysie did not shoot again. The girls had a bang with the Duramatic which did not make so much noise, then they all trouped upstairs to watch the wonders of coloured television and finally to be ferried home in the Bentley.

  *

  Boysie sat there still grinning at his doodled joke of Boysie Oakes Airline Consortium. There was a tap on the door and Ada came in. Ada’s entrances were things of great moment. She had a more subtle approach than those who throw open doors to make their entrances in the manner dramatic. Ada’s technique was to open the door about half way and wiggle through. It was like a dance step: feet and legs, twist of the hips, whole body, then a further twist of the hips which brought her onto the inside of the door.

  Boysie enjoyed watching those entrances, especially when she was smiling. She smiled now.

  “One hundred and fifty,” said Ada.

  “Tickets?” Boysie put down the BOAC schedule.

  Ada nodded confirmation. “If it goes on like this we’ll be home and dried in a couple of days.”

  “Going like free tea at a Civil Servants’ outing. Well done.”

  “Well done indeed. I’ve just checked the figures.” The ubiquitous Mostyn stood in the doorway. He narrowed his eyes as if squinting through sunlight. “Good God, Boysie, a fancy dress ball?”

  Boysie pretended not to notice. He had taken to wearing some of his new gear in the office. The blue velvet flared trousers. Blue silk shirt, puffed sleeves, neckerchief and long bold waistcoat struck him as being exceptionally swinging. It made him look younger as well, what with his hair now trained down in the front of his ears and carefully lacquered. “New image.”

  “New image my untainted arse.” Mostyn turned to Ada. “Scoot.” He nodded in the direction of the door. Ada scooted and Mostyn advanced towards the desk, taking up a sitting position and staring with undisguised revulsion at Boysie’s shoes which were buckled and in a shade of smoked Corsican. “If the Chief could only see you now.”

  “Well, he’s not likely to see me.”

  “Oakes gone bloody poofy. I can hear him. Damn nancy boy, tarted up like a prize nympho.”

  “You want this to be a swinging concern, then you’ll have to accept it.”

  “Don’t be damn silly, Boysie. We’re in the airline business not dress designing. I want you in here clad like a swinging businessman.”

  “My garb is not your concern.”

  “It’s very much my concern. This company pays for your gear. I hope to heaven you’ve got a decent dark suit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to need it, lad. You’ll be out there looking smart and natty in a conventional dark suit on the night of the twentieth.”

  “The night of the twentieth?”

  “Part of your duties include the supervising of passengers to Gatwick and making sure that they all get safely on board Excelsior’s Flight 319, lad. You can’t do that prancing around in teenage playsuits. We leave that sort of thing to the girls.”

  Boysie had not yet assimilated the fact that his physical presence would be required in the boarding operation. “What about you?” he asked coldly.

  Mostyn smirked. “I shall be in black Africa, son, making certain that all goes well at that end.”

  “Well out of the way. All right, what am I supposed to do?”

  Mostyn made himself more comfortable on the corner of the desk and began to talk. Boysie grew increasingly unhappy.

  “The coach driver has his instructions,” Mostyn said towards the end of his monologue. “You have no problems as long as you keep to the schedule.”

  Boysie lifted his melancholy face and mouthed a well-known obscenity.

  4

  On the morning of the twentieth, Boysie Oakes, dressed in conventional clerical grey and sporting a pink floral tie, strolled down to Harrods. He found the right department, selected his purchase, bought it and carefully carried it back to the office, smuggling it in and hiding the parcel in one of his desk drawers, which he locked.

  *

  Early on the evening of the twentieth, Miss Snowflake Brightwater began to prepare for work. After observation and attentive consideration, she had decided that tonight was the night for action. Tonight she had to be a temptress of considerable finesse.

  She bathed in fragrant water, powdered her skin with the tenderness of a skilled nurse treating third degree burns, and treated her face with the care Michelangelo must have lavished upon the Sistine Chapel. She then exercised, as she did each morning and evening, marvelling at the suppleness of her limbs.

  At last, to the accompaniment of Chopin’s Etude in C Minor, Op. 10 No. 12 (she thought the Revolutionary stirring for the blood and painfully romantic), Miss Snowflake Brightwater began to dress.

  *

  At eight thirty that evening the three girls met Boysie at the office. It was the witching hour, the moment of truth when Boysie had to explain the inner workings of the ope
ration and instruct the girls in the fine art of picking up a large number of passengers from central London and spiriting them to Gatwick Airport.

  At first, Boysie regarded this part of the business as a mere incidental. It was only when Mostyn explained the mechanics that he perceived it was as complicated as a game of snakes and ladders: with real snakes and rubber ladders.

  At eleven o’clock that evening almost two hundred men, women and children, plus their baggage, were scheduled to embark on Excelsior’s Flight E 319. But, until they checked in at Excelsior’s counter in the main concourse at Gatwick Airport, they were the sole responsibility of Air Apparent. This fact made Boysie Oakes a proven and committed blunderer of exacting proportions, their sole guide, confessor and friend.

  There was also the problem of gathering together up to two hundred persons and their luggage. Such a group is inclined to take up considerable space, but Mostyn, in his inimitable manner, had thought of a way round this.

  First, when issuing tickets the Air Apparent girls were instructed to enquire whether the passengers would make their own way to Gatwick or travel on the official Air Apparent transport. This analysis showed that almost half of the passengers required the company’s help. Bearing in mind the fact that they had to look like a regular airline company and act efficiently, Mostyn had made the arrangements. It was, however, up to Boysie and the girls to do the trick. To this end Boysie explained the procedure and sheepishly produced the purchase he had made that morning at Harrods.

  The girls applauded with natural glee. Boysie had brought a black, shining-peaked uniform cap.

  It is a strange psychological fact that, in a public place, one male dressed in a perfectly normal suit but wearing a uniform cap can create an aura of authority. Wearing that cap and given the necessary confidence, Boysie could have walked on to the Brighton Belle and persuaded the entire travelling population that they were actually being transported to Bournemouth. A peaked cap among uncertain voyagers is a magic hat.

  Mostyn was a man expertly conversant with the art of producing instant authority. The cap had been his idea. He was also responsible for the venue. If you had to manoeuvre a large crowd of anxious people festooned with grips, suitcases, hatboxes and long parcels which seemed to have a life of their own, you marshalled them among others of their ilk. Mostyn could easily have chosen Waterloo Railway Station. In fact he opted for Victoria Coach Station.