Conquerors of the Sky by Thomas Fleming

imbecility,” Pound said.
    â€œYou’re quite wrong, Ezra. The Huns need to be taught a lesson,” Penelope Foster said.
    The rising power of Germany obsessed almost everyone in England. Their fleet and army were challenging Britain’s supremacy everywhere, in Africa, China, the south Pacific. Their corporations were invading markets such as America, where English goods had once been supreme.
    â€œIf we have a war, do you think your planes will be in it?” Penelope asked.
    â€œAs scouts,” Frank said. “They’ll be the eyes of the army. In fact, their mere presence may make war impossible. How can a general maneuver a great army when a plane can swoop down and discover it miles before he can reach his objective? Planes can produce a stalemate, where neither side can gain an advantage.”
    â€œI think you badly underestimate the brutality of generals,” Pound said. “What about planes as bombers? In the Arabian Nights, Sinbad the Sailor describes how two ships were destroyed by Rocs, giant birds carrying huge stones.”
    â€œWe don’t have motors powerful enough to lift a serious amount of bombs,” Frank said, guiltily omitting his experience bombing Mexicans from Rag Time. He did not want to believe that anyone who experienced the exaltation of flight could use it to rain death on human beings. Even Craig had been dismayed by the effect of their bombs on Los Banyos.
    Frank escorted Penelope Foster home to a nearby flat. The daughter of a colonial office civil servant, she was a poet who tried to create small, exact word portraits of nature and humanity in a style Pound had dubbed imagism. Pound told her she had talent and the samples she showed Frank in her rooms proved it. She called them London Lives. In ten lines or less, each depicted a London type, a burly bus driver, a screeching fishmonger, a banker flourishing his umbrella “like a scepter,” a scrawny messenger on his bike, risking his life in the traffic “like a sparrow in a gale.”
    â€œAll lift, no drag,” Frank said. “I hope I can create planes like these some day.”
    â€œYou will. I can sense it in you. A pulsing thing Ezra calls the gold thread in the pattern. Some people possess it instinctively.”
    â€œHow does it work?” Frank asked.

    â€œI’m not sure. It’s part spirit, part technical mastery. A desire to grasp the essence of things—in art, in machines.”
    A plaintive sadness throbbed in Penelope’s voice. Her lovely head drooped in a kind of mourning. “I sense the gift has passed to you Americans. You’re the guardians of it now. We English nurtured it for a century—”
    â€œCan I—may I—kiss you?” Frank said.
    He wanted to possess this Sibyl, to explore her body as well as her soul. “No,” she said. “It’s much too soon.”
    â€œI want to make you part of my golden thread, my essence,” Frank whispered. “In California, we believe it’s never too soon.”
    The first part of that plea was Frank Buchanan, the second part was Craig. Frank was still an unstable blend of the two personalities. But Penelope proved she was worthy of her classic name when it came to evading suitors.
    â€œThis isn’t California,” she said.
    In love for the first time, Frank became a regular visitor to Pound’s Kensington circle. He listened to the poet read his magical translations from the Provençal and the Chinese and discourse with casual brilliance on Dante, Shakespeare, Homer. Frank took Penelope Foster up for a ride in a de Havilland Scout, the sturdy two-seat reconnaissance plane they were building for the Royal Flying Corps. She adored it but unlike the Baroness Sonnenschein and Muriel Halsey, she still declined Frank’s offer of a similar ascent in her bedroom. Instead, she gave him a poem.

    Crouched on the grass
The plane is a clumsy cicada
Who