Any Human Heart by William Boyd

Author:William Boyd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction.Historical, Classics, Fiction.Contemporary, War, Modern
ISBN: 1400031001
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thursday, 9 December

After all the training, the gymnastics, the jumping off the tower in the harness, finally the real thing. About twenty of us filed into an old Stirling bomber specially fitted out. I sat next to one of the Italians, who looked very jittery as we hooked the clips of our ripcords on to the cable that ran the length of the fuselage roof. ‘Buoni auguri,’ I said, and he looked at me with pure panic in his eyes. Perhaps he knows where he’ll be jumping into. Who were we, the odd-bods, the non-aircrew? We seemed the most unlikely sort of secret agents.

The Stirling took off and we made a long slow series of ascending circles before we were at the correct height. As the drop zone approached a hatch was opened in the floor of the aircraft and the sergeant-instructor stood by it. ‘Whatever you do, don’t look down,’ he kept saying. ‘You look at my handsome face and when my hand falls, just step forward.’

Half a dozen dropped out of view before my turn came. I felt nothing: I had managed to shut down all emotions – and I had an absolute trust in the efficacy and strength of the webbing and equipment I was wearing; had no doubt at all that my parachute had been properly packed and that the ripcord, when tugged, would see its easy and flawless release. The sergeant-instructor dropped his hand and said, ‘Go, seven,’ and I stepped through the hatch.

There was a substantial physical blow from the rush of the slipstream and it seemed to me as if my parachute opened almost immediately. I looked up first into its dirty grey canopy and then looked down at the Staffordshire countryside. I saw that the first man to have left the plane was already on the ground, gathering the billowing folds of his parachute into his chest; the others who had preceded me were floating down in a rough line below me. I was savouring the feeling of suspension – not quite weightlessness (whatever that may be like: I didn’t feel like a piece of featherdown), more a sense of being dramatically out of your element, something I’d experienced once before in the Bahamas when I swam out beyond a reef and the ocean floor suddenly deepened beneath me, the water around me abruptly turning blue-black from pale blue – when I was aware of someone shouting at me from the ground: ‘Keep your feet together, number seven!’ I glanced down and saw another instructor called Townsend bellowing instructions at me through a megaphone. Christ, I thought, if I can recognize him as Townsend I must be bloody close to –

Thud. I hit the ground and rolled over, automatically rather than as instructed. It was exactly as we had been told it would be: the same effect as jumping off a twelve-foot wall – quite a height, actually, if you’ve ever tried it. I stood up, a proud grin on my face. ‘Not too bad, Mr Mountstuart,’ Townsend said, jogging up to me.

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