The High Flyer by Elizabeth Darrell

Author:Elizabeth Darrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780102993
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2015-11-04T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Knowing Sir Edwin was going to delay the proving flight – for how long was anyone’s guess now – Ben spent the morning in his room preparing to move his possessions to the coach house after breakfast the next day. Most of them were already boxed and simply had to be packed more tidily. He had so few clothes they could be laid in the van on a rug covering the floor. Socks and underwear could fill the spaces between manuals, logbooks, a number of aviation charts and flight instructions pertaining to every airfield he had used since 1918. Much would have changed over the years, but a freelance pilot’s inclination was to keep such information because it might help in an emergency.

Once he had marked the boxes according to their contents Ben opened his briefcase, his mouth twisting in a wry smile. If it had not been double-locked and alarmed with a device to deter attempts to get at the contents, he would not have left it on the wardrobe shelf. In Alexandria some of the contents had been placed in a safe-deposit box at his bank, but he had not seen the need for that in a quiet Sussex village. All the same, Julia’s search had been unsuccessful due to the security attached to the leather case. How delighted she would have been with the contents.

Along with the usual social and financial documents were a passport in the name of John Benjamin Norton, a birth certificate showing the father as Jeremiah Frederick Norton, farmer, and mother as Mabel Norton, formerly Jakes, housemaid.

The sepia photograph of Mabel Norton was dog-eared and faded. Ben had handled it so much, especially during those first months in the trenches when every man had needed an image of mother, wife or sweetheart to keep him sane. Although Ben barely remembered her, he treasured that early picture of the woman who had brought him into the world. She had surely been the one parent who had loved him.

Other photographs were in the large manila envelope. Jack Norton, sixteen years and five months old and looking at least eighteen due to his physique, dressed in ill-fitting, mud-stained uniform like the others standing glumly with him in a Flanders village. Another of Jack ‘Farmer’ Norton in a different uniform, standing beside a Nieuport biplane and grinning from ear to ear. Another showing him seated in one, still grinning, but wearing Flight Sergeant’s rank and the coveted wings on his tunic. In one of the several squadron pictures George Marshall, his informant in South Africa, was standing next to him. Lieutenant Peterson was seated with the officers in the front row, of course.

Ben’s hand stilled over the next image and left it lying where it was. It had been taken on return from their last early morning raid together, two days before it had happened. He had once considered cutting Chris from the emotive scene, but they stood with arms across each other’s shoulder, laughing and full of elation, making it impossible to separate the two figures with scissors.

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