stumps, and then from that on to another and to another, having to jump sometimes, barely
crossing the gap. He suddenly appeared on the same stump as Owen, behind him, his toe kicking at Owen’s backside. He peered over Owen’s shoulder at what he was doing before leaping off
on to the next.
Owen turned back to the task in hand. These were the sorts of things he had liked to draw: cogs and wheels, the workings of a watch, every mechanical piece like a biological organ, pumping life
into the machine. At his board in the Experimental Drawing Office on Canbury Park Road he had drawn the workings of aeroplanes, knowledgeable of their thermodynamics, and detailing everything to
the peak of precision.
We’ll be designing bombers before long
, Harry had said, although Owen had no recollection of that.
On warm days like this on the second floor of the old furniture depository he would often open the sash pane beside him, using a spare shoe as a wedge to keep the window open. The smell of the
rail tracks on the other side would waft in or the fumes from the Experimental workshop, or sometimes, when the wind was right, the smell of Mr Birch’s Fish and Chips.
He had enjoyed the neat orderliness of his craft – the careful angles and finely drawn lines, the precision of his calculations – and also the grace and beauty of his work, as if it
were not just a plane he was creating on the clean crispness of the paper, but a bird of human design. He was the creator: its wings envisaged and crafted by him, the almost feminine nose, the taut
tail at the back, the mechanics of its aviation, so that sometimes if you glanced up at the sky it was hard to distinguish the organic from the mechanical. That, at least, was his aspiration as he
hunched over the drawing board, the window propped open and the high jinks of the factory shop boys drifting in from below.
The sound of a plane over them, its metal skin glinting in the sun, brought him back. He couldn’t be here because he was a draughtsman. He felt the boy’s eyes on him. There must have
been something else.
By late afternoon the deciduous trees had given way to pine, the forest growing airy and the trunks rising over them, naked and tall. Beneath them the ground was carpeted in
spongy moss as if the forest floor had been bubbling, and was covered in needles and a scattering of ferns and gangly saplings. Birds bickered above them and there was a pattering of distant
gunfire and then a boom so deep that it throbbed within the ground.
He watched the boy hurriedly tramping on ahead. He had shown Owen on the map how close he thought they were. Up ahead he bent to pick something from the curling branches of a fern and held it
up, saying something. It was a grey woollen mitten. And twenty minutes later, by chance, he found its pair.
They cut across two railway tracks and continued through the trees, the boy now walking with his hands in the mittens and snapping at midges as if he had lobster claws. As the dying sun burst
through the lofty heads, it threw corridors of light through the forest and turned the trunks metallic: silver, copper and brass. Janek then found a woollen hat in some nettles and hooked it out
with a stick. It made Owen think of a man he’d once seen lying face down in the snow.
It was this increasing light that was the first sign. The edge of the forest, he had thought, or a clearing, or another railway line. Then, through the pines, he spied a
watchtower high on its bandy-legged perch. He dropped down and held still.
‘Janek, get down,’ he hissed.
The watchtower seemed to be empty but it wasn’t that that was making his heart quicken. He edged forward through the trees, his eyes searching for any movement and scanning for guards as
they both crept closer. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was where three days’ journey had taken him; this was the Sagan that had been written and twice circled on a scrap
of paper, the pull that
crossing the gap. He suddenly appeared on the same stump as Owen, behind him, his toe kicking at Owen’s backside. He peered over Owen’s shoulder at what he was doing before leaping off
on to the next.
Owen turned back to the task in hand. These were the sorts of things he had liked to draw: cogs and wheels, the workings of a watch, every mechanical piece like a biological organ, pumping life
into the machine. At his board in the Experimental Drawing Office on Canbury Park Road he had drawn the workings of aeroplanes, knowledgeable of their thermodynamics, and detailing everything to
the peak of precision.
We’ll be designing bombers before long
, Harry had said, although Owen had no recollection of that.
On warm days like this on the second floor of the old furniture depository he would often open the sash pane beside him, using a spare shoe as a wedge to keep the window open. The smell of the
rail tracks on the other side would waft in or the fumes from the Experimental workshop, or sometimes, when the wind was right, the smell of Mr Birch’s Fish and Chips.
He had enjoyed the neat orderliness of his craft – the careful angles and finely drawn lines, the precision of his calculations – and also the grace and beauty of his work, as if it
were not just a plane he was creating on the clean crispness of the paper, but a bird of human design. He was the creator: its wings envisaged and crafted by him, the almost feminine nose, the taut
tail at the back, the mechanics of its aviation, so that sometimes if you glanced up at the sky it was hard to distinguish the organic from the mechanical. That, at least, was his aspiration as he
hunched over the drawing board, the window propped open and the high jinks of the factory shop boys drifting in from below.
The sound of a plane over them, its metal skin glinting in the sun, brought him back. He couldn’t be here because he was a draughtsman. He felt the boy’s eyes on him. There must have
been something else.
By late afternoon the deciduous trees had given way to pine, the forest growing airy and the trunks rising over them, naked and tall. Beneath them the ground was carpeted in
spongy moss as if the forest floor had been bubbling, and was covered in needles and a scattering of ferns and gangly saplings. Birds bickered above them and there was a pattering of distant
gunfire and then a boom so deep that it throbbed within the ground.
He watched the boy hurriedly tramping on ahead. He had shown Owen on the map how close he thought they were. Up ahead he bent to pick something from the curling branches of a fern and held it
up, saying something. It was a grey woollen mitten. And twenty minutes later, by chance, he found its pair.
They cut across two railway tracks and continued through the trees, the boy now walking with his hands in the mittens and snapping at midges as if he had lobster claws. As the dying sun burst
through the lofty heads, it threw corridors of light through the forest and turned the trunks metallic: silver, copper and brass. Janek then found a woollen hat in some nettles and hooked it out
with a stick. It made Owen think of a man he’d once seen lying face down in the snow.
It was this increasing light that was the first sign. The edge of the forest, he had thought, or a clearing, or another railway line. Then, through the pines, he spied a
watchtower high on its bandy-legged perch. He dropped down and held still.
‘Janek, get down,’ he hissed.
The watchtower seemed to be empty but it wasn’t that that was making his heart quicken. He edged forward through the trees, his eyes searching for any movement and scanning for guards as
they both crept closer. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was where three days’ journey had taken him; this was the Sagan that had been written and twice circled on a scrap
of paper, the pull that
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