Read Online The Challenging Heights by Max Hennessy - Free Book Online

Reichschancellor or something. Let’s haf a drink.’
    Like so many flying men who had survived the war, Udet was restless, edgy, itching for excitement in a world that had suddenly become dull. ‘Born in the war; died in the war,’ he said. ‘That’s us flying men.’
    That night he took Dicken on another round of the night clubs, this time without his wife or Janzi Lechner. At one point, Dicken remembered him shooting a cigarette out of the mouth of one of his friends, who seemed quite confident that he wouldn’t get the bullet through his head. Whatever else could be said of him, he wasn’t dull and, as he landed back in England, aware that the two nights spent in Berlin with him had been the most interesting he’d passed in almost a year, Dicken realised he was hankering after the lost community feeling of being in the RAF. Disillusioned with the whole commercial scene, he needed to leave Lord Ruffsedge, yet he knew if he did he was probably cutting himself off from aviation altogether. Then, as he was walking down the Mall, he realised he was approaching a tall moustached figure he recognised. It was Sir Hugh Trenchard, by this time firmly in his seat as Chief of Air Staff. To Dicken’s surprise, he stopped in front of him. ‘Quinney, isn’t it?’ he said.
    ‘Yes, sir, it is.’ It surprised Dicken that the great man even knew of him.
    ‘What are you doing now?’
    ‘Flying for Lord Ruffsedge, sir.’
    Trenchard peered at him searchingly. ‘Bit dull, isn’t it? Chauffeur to a millionaire.’
    Dicken smiled. ‘Yes, sir, it is.’
    Trenchard eyed him from his tremendous height, shaggy somehow despite his immaculate civilian clothes and bowler hat. He looked Dicken up and down.
    ‘I was sorry to lose you,’ he said slowly. ‘The RAF could do with men like you. Why not come back?’

 
     
Five
    ‘You must be mad!’
    Clad in surprisingly short skirts and a smart hat, her dark hair done in kiss curls, Zoë Toshack looked more beautiful than Dicken had ever seen her.
    ‘Fancy wanting to go back to that stuffy lot,’ she said, her contempt enormous. ‘All they’re good for is saluting on parade.’
    ‘They do a lot of flying,’ Dicken pointed out gently. ‘Good flying. Better than some of these people who’re getting flying a bad name going round the country giving exhibitions to make money.’
    She stared at him angrily. She had returned from Canada full of excitement. She had found Casey Harmer, who noticeably had not given her the job she’d hoped for, and for a time she’d belonged to a group of wildcat young men who had flown round the country barnstorming in the ballyhoo atmosphere of a circus. Since returning, footloose and eager for a challenge, she had drifted into the same background in England and, equally inevitably, since she lived in Sussex and Charley Wright operated along the south coast, had thrown in her lot with him. On the table, for Dicken’s perusal, were Canadian posters she’d brought back, billing her as Zoë Toshack, the Zip Girl of the Sky. The praise she had expected from Dicken had not been forthcoming, however, and she was argumentative and defensive.
    ‘There’s nothing wrong with making money out of flying,’ she said.
    ‘There is if it’s dangerous.’
    ‘I’m not afraid.’
    ‘ I am,’ Dicken said quietly. ‘You forget I know Charley Wright and I’ve seen some of his machines. They’re badly serviced and badly maintained because he’s neither the money nor the time for anything else.’
    She didn’t answer and he looked at her under his eyebrows. She had grown more attractive as age had fined off the roundness of her features and he suspected now that, instead of her envying her older sister, Annys, she might well be envied herself.
    ‘How’s Annys?’ he asked, trying to change the subject.
    ‘Finding Arthur Diplock a bit of a bore, I suspect,’ Zoë said shortly. ‘ I would.’
    ‘Annys is different from you. She goes with Parasol