Eddie said: “Sure.” He opened the hatch to the starboard wing. The roar of the huge engines immediately sounded much louder, and there was a smell of hot oil. Inside the wing was a low passage with a crawlway like a narrow plank. Behind each of the two engines was a mechanic’s station with room for a man to stand upright, just about. Pan American’s interior decorators had not got into this space, and it was a utilitarian world of struts and rivets, cables and pipes. “That’s what most flight decks are like,” Eddie shouted.
“May I go inside?”
Eddie shook his head and closed the door. “No passengers beyond this point. I’m sorry.”
Jack said: “I’ll show you my observation dome.” He took Percy through the door at the back of the flight deck, and Eddie checked the dials he had been ignoring for the past few minutes. All was well.
The radioman, Ben Thompson, sang out the conditions at Foynes: “Westerly wind, twenty-two knots, choppy sea.”
A moment later, on Eddie’s board, the light over the word CRUISING winked out and the light over LANDING came on. He scanned his temperature dials and reported: “Engines okay for landing.” The check was necessary because the high-compression motors could be damaged by too abrupt throttling back.
Eddie opened the door to the rear of the plane. There was a narrow passage with cargo holds on either side, and a dome, above the passage, reached by a ladder. Percy was standing on the ladder looking through the octant. Beyond the cargo holds was a space that was supposed to be for crew beds, but it had never been furnished: off- duty crew used number 1 compartment. At the back of that area was a hatch leading to the tail space where the control cables ran. Eddie called: “Landing, Jack.”
Jack said: “Time to get back to your seat, young man.”
Eddie had a feeling that Percy was too good to be true. Although the boy did as he was told, there was a mischievous glint in his eye. However, for the moment he was on his best behavior, and he went obediently forward to the staircase and down to the passenger deck.
The engine note changed, and the plane began to lose height. The crew went automatically into the smoothly coordinated landing routine. Eddie wished he could tell the others what was happening to him. He felt desperately lonely. These were his friends and colleagues; they trusted one another; they had flown the Atlantic together; he wanted to explain his plight and ask their advice. But it was too risky.
He stood up for a moment to look out of the window. He could see a small town, which he guessed was Limerick. Outside the town, on the north bank of the Shannon estuary, a large new airport was being constructed, for land planes and seaplanes. Until it was finished the flying boats were coming down on the south side of the estuary, in the lee of a small island, off a village called Foynes.
Their course was northwest, so Captain Baker had to turn the plane through forty-five degrees to land into the westerly wind. A launch from the village would be patrolling the landing zone to check for large floating debris that might damage the aircraft. The refueling boat would be standing by, loaded with fifty-gallon drums, and there would be a crowd of sightseers on the shore, come to watch the miracle of a ship that could fly.
Ben Thompson was talking into his radio microphone. At any distance greater than a few miles he had to use Morse code, but now he was close enough for voice radio. Eddie could not distinguish the words but he could tell from Ben’s calm, relaxed tone of voice that all was well.
They lost height steadily. Eddie watched his dials vigilantly, making occasional adjustments. One of his most important tasks was to synchronize engine speeds, a job that became more demanding when the pilot made frequent throttle changes.
Landing in a calm sea could be almost imperceptible. In ideal conditions the hull of the Clipper went into the water like a spoon into cream. Eddie, concentrating on his instrument panel, often was not aware that the plane had touched down until it had been in the water for several seconds. However, today the sea was choppy—which was as bad as it got in any of the places where the Clipper came down on this route.
The lowest point of the hull, which was called the “step,” touched first, and there was a light thud-thud-thud as it clipped the tops of the waves. That lasted only a second or two, then the huge aircraft eased down another few inches and cleaved the surface. Eddie found it much smoother than coming down in a land plane, when there was always a perceptible bump, and sometimes several. Very little spray reached the windows of the flight deck, which was on the upper level. The pilot throttled right down and the aircraft slowed immediately. The plane was a boat again.
Eddie looked out of the windows again as they taxied to their mooring. On one side was the island, low and bare: he saw a small white house and a few sheep. On the other side was the mainland. He could see a sizable concrete jetty with a large fishing boat tied up to its side, several big oil-storage tanks, and a straggle of gray houses. This was Foynes.
Unlike Southampton, Foynes did not have a purpose-built jetty for flying boats, so the Clipper would moor in the estuary and the people would be landed by launch. Mooring was the engineer’s responsibility.
Eddie went forward, knelt between the two pilots’ seats, and opened the hatch leading to the bow compartment. He descended the ladder into the empty space. Stepping into the nose of the plane, he opened a hatch and stuck his head out. The air was fresh and salty, and he took a deep breath.
A launch came alongside. One of the hands waved to Eddie. The man was holding a rope attached to a buoy. He threw the rope into the water.
There was a collapsible capstan on the nose of the flying boat. Eddie lifted it and locked it into position; then he took a boat hook from inside and used it to pick up the rope that was floating in the water. He attached the rope to the capstan, and the aircraft was moored. Looking up at the windshield behind him, he gave Captain Baker the thumbs-up sign.
Another launch was already coming alongside to take the passengers and crew off the plane.
Eddie closed the hatch and returned to the flight deck. Captain Baker and Ben, the radioman, were still at their stations, but the copilot, Johnny, was leaning on the chart table chatting to Jack. Eddie sat at his station and closed down the engines. When everything was ship-shape he put on his black uniform jacket and white cap. The crew went down the stairs, passed through number 2 passenger compartment, went into the lounge and stepped out onto the sea-wing. From there they boarded the launch. Eddie’s deputy, Mickey Finn, remained behind to supervise the refueling.
The sun was shining but there was a cool, salty breeze. Eddie surveyed the passengers on the launch, wondering yet again which one was Tom Luther. He recognized a woman’s face, and realized with a faint shock that he had seen her making love to a French count in a movie called A Spy in Paris: she was the film star Lulu Bell. She was chatting animatedly to a guy in a blazer. Could he be Tom Luther? With them was a beautiful woman in a dotted dress who looked miserable. There were several other familiar faces, but most of the passengers were anonymous men in suits and hats, and rich women in furs.
If Luther did not make his move soon, Eddie would seek him out, and to hell with discretion, he decided. He could not stand the waiting.
The launch puttered away from the Clipper toward the land. Eddie stared across the water, thinking of his wife. He kept picturing the scene as the men burst into the house. Carol-Ann might have been eating eggs, or making coffee, or getting dressed for work. What if she had been in the bathtub? Eddie loved to look at her in the tub. She would pin up her hair, showing her long neck, and lie in the water, languidly sponging her suntanned limbs. She liked him to sit on the edge and talk to her. Until he met her, he had thought this kind of thing only happened in erotic daydreams. But now the picture was blighted by three coarse men in fedoras who burst in and grabbed her —
The thought of her fear and shock as they seized her maddened Eddie almost beyond endurance. He felt his head spinning and he had to concentrate to stay upright in the launch. It was his utter helplessness that made the predicament so agonizing. She was in desperate trouble and there was nothing he could do, nothing. He realized he was clenching his fists spasmodically, and forced himself to stop.
The launch reached the shore and tied up to a floating pontoon connected by a gangway to the dock. The crew helped the passengers disembark, then followed them up the gangway. They were directed to the customs shed.
The formalities were brief. The passengers drifted into the little village. Across the road from the harbor was a former inn that had been almost entirely taken over by airline personnel, and the crew headed for that.
Eddie was the last to leave, and as he came out of the customs shed, he was approached by a passenger who said: “Are you the engineer?”
