Kittyhawk

The aircraft at Brize Norton was grey, the same type as the Realm’s, with a cabin at the front and a roundel on its side that was red, white and blue in a different order.

His parents’ had gone at nine. He had watched it from the window of the station’s lounge, the way he had watched in Maryland, and at the top of the steps his father had stopped and turned and lifted the stick about two inches, and gone in. An hour ahead. The rule.

At the foot of his own steps, a line of five in the blue of the Royal Air Force. A squadron leader with grey at his temples, Ashby, who saluted and said they would be in Maryland at a quarter to four, local time, and that the weather was clear from Ireland to Gander, which was unusual for November and which he had not arranged. A flight lieutenant. A loadmaster. A flight sergeant with a headset.

And at the end, small, about forty, in blue with a steward’s badge, a woman he had last seen standing very straight under a window on the north side of a nave, two days ago.

“Sir,” said Sergeant Tranter. “I asked.”

He looked at her.

“I’ve flown with your father since 2015, sir,” she said. “Every crossing. I asked to fly this one.” She did not look away. “They let me.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

“Sir,” said Sergeant Tranter, and stood aside for him to go up the steps.

---

The tower said it as they lined up.

He was in the front of the cabin with the blind up and the Hartigans behind him and Castellanos in the seat by the curtain to the flight deck, which was open, and he heard it through the curtain the way he had heard the other one on the way out.

Kittyhawk, Brize Tower, runway two-five, cleared for take-off.

Cleared for take-off, Kittyhawk.

Ordinary. A word on a strip of paper in a room with screens in it. The controller had said it as she would say any word, and the squadron leader had said it back, and the engines rose, and the floor tilted, and England went under the wing, green and small and wet, all its pieces, and was gone.

Theo, behind him, said nothing. Kate, beside Theo, had her camera back, and her phone, and did not take either out of her bag.

---

Sergeant Tranter brought tea at eleven.

A tray, a pot, a cup and saucer with the Royal Air Force’s crest in blue, milk in a small jug. She set it on the table in front of him, poured, and stepped back.

“Your father took it with milk and no sugar, sir. And always said thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“He was a very good passenger, sir.” She folded her hands. “Some of them aren’t. He was.”

She went back through the curtain at the rear of the cabin.

He drank the tea.

---

The sea.

It began after Ireland and went on. Not grey, today. Blue, very dark, almost black under the aircraft and paler towards the edge of the world, with the sun on it so bright that he had to look at it sideways. White here and there, the tops of waves, very small from this height, like salt on a cloth. Nothing on it. Not a ship. Not a cloud.

He watched it for three hours.

He did not take out the plan, or the poppy, or the radio message from over the sea a week ago. He sat with his hands flat on the table and watched the water go under the wing, and Theo behind him did not speak, and Kate did not speak, and Anneliese Hartigan, across the aisle, read the same page of a magazine for an hour and a half.

At half past two, London time, Castellanos got up from the seat by the curtain and went into the flight deck and came back and did not sit down.

“Sir,” he said. “The squadron leader asks whether you’d like to come forward.”

---

The flight deck was white with sun.

Squadron Leader Ashby in the left seat, the flight lieutenant in the right, the flight sergeant behind them at a panel. A fourth seat, folded down, on a rail. He did not sit in it. He stood behind the captain’s chair with his hand on the back of it.

Ashby did not turn round.

“Sir. We’re about two hundred miles east of St John’s. Fifty-one north, forty-eight west, near enough.” He paused. “We’ve the position from the inquiry. We’ll be over it in four minutes.”

Frederick looked out.

The sea. Blue, very dark, the sun on it. White tops. The edge of the world, very sharp, today, with the sky above it pale and empty.

Nothing.

He had known there would be nothing. There was never going to be anything. It had been fourteen months; it was a thousand fathoms; the sea did not keep marks. He had known it in the Realm’s aircraft a week ago, at night, looking at a grey shine under the wing. He knew it now. He looked anyway.

“Two minutes,” said Ashby.

Behind him, he heard the curtain move. He did not turn round. Somebody had come in and was standing at the back of the flight deck, very still.

He knew who it was without looking. A woman of about forty, small, in blue, who had put her head out of the canopy of a raft fourteen months ago and said there are five of us alive and one who died, and the King is hurt, in that order, to a crab boat from Bay Bulls.

“Now, sir,” said Ashby, quietly. “About now.”

He looked down at the sea.

Blue. Black under the wing. The sun on it. White tops, like salt. Nothing.

He did not count. He did not know how long. The aircraft did not slow down, because aircraft do not, and the sea went under it at five hundred miles an hour, the same sea, all of it the same, so that the place was already behind them before he could have said where it was.

He looked anyway, until it was.

Behind him, at the back of the flight deck, Sergeant Tranter did not make a sound.

---

The radio.

Kittyhawk, Gander Centre.

A man’s voice. Canadian, level, very calm. And then it stopped.

It stopped for perhaps two seconds. Not static. Not a fault. A man in a dark room in Newfoundland with screens in it, who had a word on a strip of paper in front of him, and had said it, and had stopped, because he knew what it was, and where they were.

Then the rest.

Good afternoon. Radar contact. Maintain flight level three-seven-zero.

Three-seven-zero, Kittyhawk, said Squadron Leader Ashby. Good afternoon, Gander.

A pause. Then the man’s voice again, not the controller’s voice now, a little different, lower:

Kittyhawk, Gander. I’ve a message for you to pass, if you’ll take it. From the harbourmaster at Bay Bulls.

Ashby looked round, at last, over his shoulder, at the King.

Frederick nodded.

Go ahead, Gander.

Message reads: Kathleen Marie in harbour, all hands. Weather fine. Tell the young fellow to mind how he goes. Kavanagh. A pause. Message ends.

Copied, Gander. Thank you. Ashby’s voice did not change at all. Please pass to Bay Bulls: message received by the addressee.

Will do, Kittyhawk. Safe flight.

---

He went back to his seat. He did not remember going.

He sat by the window with the sea going under the wing, the coast of Newfoundland coming up now on the right, brown and grey and very rugged, with snow on the high ground. Somewhere along it, south of St John’s, too small to see, a harbour, and in it a crab boat named for a skipper’s mother, in harbour, all hands, and five men on a quay or in a kitchen or in a pub who had been told by radio that an aircraft was passing overhead, and had not gone out to look at it, because it was a long way up and you could not see it, and because they were in.

He never saw them. He did not need to. Mind how he goes.

Theo leaned forward between the seats.

“Freddie.”

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

He thought about it.

“Yes,” he said. “I think it landed.”

Theo looked at him. Then he sat back, and after a while, behind him, Frederick heard him start to snore, a long slow rasp in and a long slow whistle out, and was more grateful for it than for anything anybody had done in London.

---

The coast of the Realm at three. Nova Scotia, Maine, the long grey line of it, and the towns, and the roads, and the cars on them, moving.

Kittyhawk, New York Centre. Another voice. American. It said the word the way it would say any word.

Maryland at a quarter to four. The field. The floor tilting. The engines changing.

Kittyhawk, cleared to land.

The wheels.

He felt them touch: a long hard bump, and a second, and the nose coming down, and the roar of the engines going backwards, and the whole aircraft leaning forward and then slowing, and slowing, and turning off the runway onto the taxiway, and rolling, very slowly, on the ground, in his own country, with his parents’ aircraft on the stand ahead of them, empty, its door shut, an hour ahead, as the rule said.

The engines ran down.

The silence.

Sergeant Tranter came forward through the curtain and stood beside his seat, very straight, with her hands folded, and looked out of the window at the concrete, at the field, at the grey November light of Maryland.

Then she said, quite quietly, to the window:

“That’s one.”

He looked up at her.

“Sir,” said Sergeant Tranter, and went to open the door.