Declarations of War by Deighton Len

Author:Deighton, Len
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Sterling
Published: 2011-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

Lord Nick Flies Again

A smile played around the courtly features of Lord Nick as he pulled his deerstalker hat down upon his be-goggled face.

‘That’s my idea of a binge, gentlemen,’ he called, as he disappeared into the clouds above the Strait of Dover. You could say what you liked about Captain Lord Nicolas Beau-de-Ville, fourteenth Earl of Inverness, who had left Her Majesty’s Foot Guards under a cloud after winning the V.C. in Africa, but by golly he could certainly make his flying-machine cavort through the clouds like an eagle. His years spent building the torpedo-shaped craft in a secret cave on his Highland estates had paid dividends. Using a secret gas to render the population unconscious but unharmed, he had swooped upon the Paris Mint, the German Emperor’s castle and even upon the Home Fleet drawn up in review order in the Solent. Within a few weeks he had amassed plunder beyond compare, and each time he made his escape into the puffy white clouds that the artist invariably used to conceal the more technical aspects of the great mechanical bird. For Lord Nick, nattily clad in well-cut Norfolk jacket and riding-boots, had flown through the pages of British Boys’ Comic long before the Wright brothers had built their less versatile machine.

When, at his prep school, Peter Wright read ‘The Exploits of Lord Nick – Aviator’ he’d never dreamed that before he was old enough to vote he would be in control of a flying-machine and heading across that same sea himself. And, to use Lord Nick’s favourite endorsement, it was a binge; a ripping binge.

From the seat of his Sopwith Camel, Peter Wright could reach almost as far as the lower wing. It vibrated with a steady drumming noise as the air stream hammered on the fabric, stretched tight by the shiny dope. Near Boulogne an acre of glasshouses reflected the sun. The light came right through the wing and drew a crisp pattern of wooden spars, struts and ribs upon the golden fabric. He didn’t need reminding that he was carried through the sky by a bundle of spruce sticks and a few yards of cloth. The sunlight even showed the carefully darned patches where it had been shot up and torn and neatly stitched by deft-fingered riggers. Such a tiny machine would fit easily into his mother’s kitchen at Farm Lane. It dipped and yawed as it encountered the uncertain support of a fast-moving thermal. The bracing wires slackened as the lower wing met the rising air, then all were as taut as a cat’s cradle again. Peter corrected the joystick until the wing-tips rested close upon the horizon. If it were his bus he’d have her rigged tighter than this; far tighter. He moved the rudder to turn the coastline under him and be rid of the glare that edged his aeroplane with haloes of sunlight. Carefully, he centred the stick. On a left-hand turn, the torque of a rotary engine could whip a Camel into a fatal spin unless a pilot handled it with respect.

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