The Challenging Heights by Max Hennessy

shillings a time for a single circuit and a pound for a little extra. His pilots seemed to come and go with alarming regularity and he was constantly calling on Zoë to help him out.
    It didn’t help their marriage. On several occasions, when Dicken had hoped she’d be with him at some mess function she disappeared to help out and he had to go alone, aware of the eyes on him of the other officers, all dogged up in bum-freezer jackets and cavalry type overalls. Occasionally, it even led to high words between them and once she threw the coffee pot at him at breakfast.
    She was contrite immediately – ‘After all,’ she said, ‘breakfast isn’t meant to be a social meal’ – but it happened again and the occasions when they were at loggerheads seemed to come with greater regularity, so that Dicken found he was learning to live without her. While he was at Northolt she was flying at Brighton or Winchester or Exeter, and he even began to wonder if there were anything between her and Charley Wright. He couldn’t imagine it somehow, because Zoë, brisk, forthright, modern as the aeroplane itself, somehow didn’t go with Charley Wright, with his red face and booze and dirty stories. Nevertheless, it left him uneasy and uncertain, wishing to God the RAF would post him to Egypt or India so they could disappear from Charley Wright’s reach and start living with all the happy informality of a foreign station that was so distinct from the rigidity of dress and behaviour which was being stamped on the RAF by people like Diplock and Group Captain St Aubyn.
    His duties didn’t vary much but, while he was bored and restless, Zoë was thoroughly enjoying herself. Her father had died and, true to the promise he had made during the war, had left Annys his house and Zoë the garage he owned. It was clear Annys thought she’d got the best of the bargain because the garage consisted of little more than a few wooden sheds and a certain amount of goodwill, but, skilled at business, loving engines and a competent mechanic herself, Zoë had already started to develop it and had even opened a second garage in Brighton.
    ‘It won’t be long,’ she said cheerfully, ‘before I’ll be able to buy the house back from Annys at whatever she chooses to ask for it, and never miss the money. Even if I don’t manage to be famous, Dicky Boy, I’m certainly going to be rich. Why not come into the business and keep an eye on things for me?’
    ‘I’m not the type to keep an eye on things.’
    ‘Oh, stuff! You men are always so manly and tough. Anyway–’ she put her arms round him, wheedling – ‘you will keep an eye on things for me, won’t you, if I happen to be away somewhere.’
    ‘Where might you happen to be?’
    She shrugged and planted a kiss on his cheek, leaving a lipstick imprint on his skin. ‘You never know. I’m thinking of opening a third garage. It might be anywhere.’
    She had her own car now but occasionally Dicken went along to drive her home from wherever Charley Wright was operating. He was always made welcome but there was a vague suggestion of contempt in the friendliness of the civilian pilots.
    ‘The experts welcoming the amateur,’ Wright said with a grin. ‘After all, we fly all day and every day. You fly when the powers that be let you.’
    They had roped off an area round the aeroplanes – ‘To stop the spectators walking into a propeller,’ Zoë said – and flagpoles had been erected with bunting strung between them. There were a few cars but most of the spectators had arrived on foot and, with the last performance of the day about to start, were beginning to trail homewards.
    As one of the Avros started up with a crackling roar the woman who had climbed aboard as a passenger got into an argument with the pilot and whacked him over the head with an umbrella. As he staggered away, the aeroplane began to move and there was a yell of alarm from the crowd as the woman clutched her hat and began to