The Harmonious Shopgirl Part 1

On wings of Song


The following morning I was up bright and early, ransacking the cellar for suitably coloured paint. Mr Whybrow had an assortment of cans lurking in a dark corner, so within half an hour, I’d made my airship’s name official. I was really quite pleased with the results.

It was a glorious morning; chill and crisp, but the snow had melted overnight to return all Southend’s lush colours. I stood there watching the paint dry, wondering what Jasper and his companion would be trying next. One thing I could be sure of was that they wouldn’t try doing anything to the airship for a third time. I was pondering what they might do when a voice behind me almost made me drop the paintbrush.

“Nice name,”  said Mr Whybrow. “And very tasteful, too. White and gold – ladlylike; dignified - taking her up for a spin?”

“Practice makes perfect, sir.” I did not, by so much as a flutter of my eyelashes, hint that I wanted to go back to Llyr and try singing again.

“Mmhm. Quite so. By the way, you don’t happen to know anything about a streaker, do you?” He mentioned it so casually that I knew it was the real reason he wanted to speak with me.

“What’s a streaker, sir?” Looking at my newly-painted insignia, I wondered if it was a sort of painter of inferior quality. I squinted more closely. He couldn’t have meant me. I’d got the words quite straight, I thought.

“It’s – ah, someone who runs about with no clothes on. Like that griefer you got rid of, but without any sexual element involved. We had one here in SouthEnd last night.”  He gave me a look of undisguised suspicion.

I suppressed a guilty gulp. “What a strange thing to do. Why do they do that, sir?”

“Because they can.”  He shrugged. “They find it fun. I presume you heard nothing?”

“Not a thing, sir,”  I lied, shamelessly.

Mr Whybrow grunted. Did that smirk mean that he knew the truth? “Then you must have slept like the dead. Apparently our streaker was making quite a racket; running about, shouting and dancing.”

“So who was this – streaker, sir?”  Oh, Gawd. He couldn’t have missed seeing my blush!

“Nobody knows,”  he told me, a cryptic cast to his eye. “Apparently it was a female, but nobody could recognise her without her clothes on.”

The penny dropped. No, make that a double florin. They were much bigger and heavier. It had been a bad mistake to assume that empty streets meant empty SouthEnd. Every curtain must have had at least one pair of eyes peeping out at me as I ran around the whole district, drunk on my own ecstasy.

It was too late to pretend now. My jaw had, unnoticed, dropped almost to my chest. I wished that Mr Whybrow would vanish, just for a moment, so I could shout something very  rude to the skies. But he did not vanish. It was far worse than that.

“Come on then; hop in. I’ll swing your prop for you.”

As he turned his back to me, a quivering of his shoulders told me that he was almost incontinent with the effort of restraining his laughter. The absolute monster!

At least, nestled in my cute little gondola, nobody could see me flare scarlet with embarrassment. My hands barely knew what they were doing as I jerked levers and valves, but the engine must have been sympathetic; it fired with Mr Whybrow’s first swing. The moment that he stood clear, I advanced the throttle and gave the control column a decisive tug. As I began to ascend, I was sure I could hear him calling after me.

“Let the world see you dressed for a change!”

I feigned deafness.  I began to wonder how many saw me, and whether any had recognised me and had withheld that detail from Mr Whybrow. I knew how gossip spread, after all. But then, I thought – does it really matter? Half Caledon were barking mad anyway. That was one thing I loved about the place.

Many of them had probably been seen in a state of nature at some point, anyway. I gave the mixture a tweak of adjustment and settled back to wallow in my independence. Not of Mr Whybrow, but of gravity and the need to confine my journey to roads and permanent way. I thought back to those Londoners, traipsing about busy streets and trying not to get squashed by carriages, or submitting their souls to that new tuppenny tube, and laughed like a lunatic. Even her Majesty couldn’t do what I was doing!  And that was another thing I loved about Caledon. In England, anyone so unwise as to show initiative by building a new means of conveyance would damn soon find the government controlling, taxing, prohibiting and otherwise regulating it. Why, they’d only recently abolished the need for self-propelled vehicles to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag. [This was true. The requirement for a red flag was only abolished in 1896.  VB]

I landed at Llyr again. The fire waved its arms in invitation to dance, but my last visit had revealed something more important in a personal way; something which I’d never believed I would be able to do.

Sing.

Well, it would have been nice to do both today, but Mr Whybrow would expect me back to do some shopgirling, and I’d yearned to be able to sing ever since I was knee-high to said jeweller. The dancing would have to wait. When Llyr had showed me that this was one place I could let my voice rip without causing a major structural collapse about me, it was like the gates of heaven opening, to present me with my deepest desire.

I clambered to the crest where Mr Whybrow and I had sat and laughed, and with a deep draught of heady air, I let go with the Laughing Song from “Die Fledermaus.”  If that didn’t bring the place crashing about my ears, then nothing would!

It didn’t. I felt that I was flying out over Llyr with every note, while the island only sat there and listened. With Strauss still in mind, I followed it with the Nun’s Chorus. Not so spritely or high in register, but more profoundly moving. I could hardly believe it was my own voice that I was listening to, but it was.

When I’d finished, I stood and lowered my head. It was a bit like one of those ancient Greek fairytales they told us at school. Someone with a gift beyond price, but with restrictions attached. I could sing – but only here. I was slightly saddened as I made my way back to the Silk Sonata. But no, the situation was not hopeless. Mr Whybrow had never heard me sing, but he would be the most acute judge of all, and the most appreciative. I wondered how difficult it would be to persuade him to come to Llyr and hear me.

I checked over the Silk Sonata meticulously this time. But if anybody had followed me, they had left the airship alone. The engine, still hot, fired at my first swing of the propeller. I rose into the air with an almost solemn grace, as if it was part of a ceremony. I’d learned to look this way and that when flying, as Caledon contained many aerial hazards to catch out the unwary. I chanced to look northwards to the Sound, and saw something that definitely hadn’t been there before.

A long, sinuous neck arcing from the water, like a swan but bigger. And greenish in colour. This, I had to investigate. I swung the nose around, and gunned the engine. Yes, my eyes had told me true. A lengthy snakelike neck, blurred and almost colourless in the sea haze, rearing gracefully. A living creature, surely, and a big one. I could not tear my gaze from the – whatever, as it plunged happily into the wavetops.

By now I had sufficient mastery of the Silk Sonata to fly over and drop to what I considered a safe height over the sea. When I crossed over into the Sound, the creature became clearer. I’d never seen anything so big, but what was it? A smoothly tapering body, a tail that looked disproportionately stubby, and flippers like – I had no idea. As for the head –

My hands had been guiding the Silk Sonata automatically. But while they had become expert at handling the airship, they were not smart enough to have appreciated the danger which the creature might pose. That bit was up to my brain, which had been mesmerised by whatever-it-was, wholly engrossed by how fluidly it moved.

I sat hovering while the big reptilian eyes studied me, and inched closer. I felt that this beast was gentle and only curious – had it intended any harm, it could surely have lashed out.

Then some small voice of commonsense told me that it could do lethal damage without meaning to. Gently, so as not to startle it, I powered the engine and climbed up, out of harm’s way.

“Well, well; I wonder what that was?”  A silly question, you might think, but I was still numb from surprise. Deciding that I had had enough surprises for one day, I turned for home. A new wonderment rode me as I realised how little I knew about what lay under  the sea. What else could be down there?

I swooped down in a veritable paragon of a landing, like a bird coming to rest. It would have been nice to have found Mr Whybrow waiting, but I had to accept that the airship worked, we both had things to do, so it was pointless expecting pomp and ceremony every time I landed.

I went down to the shop to find him in the back office. With a customer, whch was very unusual. I presumed that they were discussing a custom job, which he rarely undertook. Then I recalled having met the lady only recently. She was the one who’d caught me playing Mr Whybrow’s phonograph.

Without drawing attention to myself, I looked again. There was more to this than a custom order; her forward lean was too forward, suggesting a more personal type of interest, while he was decidedly uneasy about her. But he was a big boy, and could handle things by himself while I, as shopgirl, knew that in front of customers I should be seen and not heard.  I could not hear, either, as both were keeping their voices below the ability of the partition to transmit. Nevertheless, as I watched discreetly from behind the counter, there was no denying that her gesticulations were definitely aimed at establishing contact with him.

It wasn’t my place to even observe the master’s personal relationships, far less hold any opinions about them, but he and I had built up a certain bond. He’d made it clear that he regarded me as a companion of sorts, so that bond included an immense duty of care. I told myself to ignore the situation and let him handle everything, like he’d done when Jasper had been paying court in his own way.  But then, Mr Whybrow had also told me that if things did get beyond my ability to handle, I was free to tell him so. I think we’d taken for granted that the offer worked both ways, but I knew he’d never take me up on it and reciprocate.

All right. It wasn’t his discomfiture that was angering me. It was my own jealousy. I could only stand there fuming as she leaned closer and closer, while he shifted uneasily, uncertain whether to freeze solid or draw back. And all the time, she was oblivious to his embarrassment. Then she put her hand on his knee. I saw his every muscle bunch, and the wretched lady only seemed to draw confidence from his squirming.

So she was playing with him. That was going too far.

It was time for action. Quietly, I removed bucket and coal shovel from the broom cupboard, and went out into the street. Five minutes later, I marched into the back office smiling innocently, and on his desk between them, dumped a bucket brimming with healthy Caledon horse manure.

“Good morning, sir. Mr Gongfermer lost some of his load, so I’ve brought you some for your roses.”

The lady recoiled as though electrocuted. As did Mr Whybrow, although I could see relief break out on his face in the form of cold sweat.

I turned and smiled at the lady. “Good morning, Madam.”  If I’d had fangs, they’d have been staring her full in the eyes.

All Mr Whybrow’s gears appeared to have leapt from their bearings. The moment seemed to stretch forever before he could shake out an uncertain, “Uh – thank you, Miss. Put it in the yard for now, can you?”

“Certainly, sir. Oops – I’m so sorry, Madam!”  In picking up the bucket, I’d accidentally let it tilt to spill a pound of contents right into her lap. "How very careless of me!”  [Damn! Hahahaha!]  “Don’t move, Miss; I’ll get the shovel.”

The lady appeared to be fighting an apoplectic paralysis as she burrowed backwards into her chair, shrinking away from her own lap.

My mishap gave Mr Whybrow his confidence back. The look he gave me said, “Dearie me, Miss, you are careless,”  but I could see that he was trying not to laugh. Then, with butlerian decorum, he said, “Perhaps you would care to wheel the lady outside before you shovel up, Miss?”

“It’ll be a pleasure, sir.”

Holding her feet well above the floor, the lady offered no resistance as I pushed her chair out like a brickie running a barrowload of mortar up a plank, and left her in the middle of the street to separate her lap from its contents in whichever way she thought best.

I returned to the office, to rid it of the bucket. On the way, I passed Mr Whybrow. He muttered “Thanks”  before running out after his customer. Oooh, I could have kicked him. Some just don’t know when they’re well off, but he had to be a gentleman about it, didn’t he?

I lingered and heard Madam take her leave. She rid herself of her encumbrance by simply standing up and shaking her skirt, with a little half-step backwards. How I’d hoped that she would catch her heel in the railway ballast and fall flat into her own – ah, deposit.  Whatever her business with Mr Whybrow, she obviously considered her loss of composure more important, as she could not get away quickly enough.

“Thank you, Mr Whybrow. I have other calls to make; I’ll see you later.”

I called after her, “It’ll brush off when it’s dry.”

She looked at me as though I’d come for her soul, and stumbled away.

When Mr Whybrow came back in, a cadential resolution had fallen over the shop. We savoured it for a long long moment before Mr Whybrow told me, with a slight shake in his voice, “Thank you. I’m not sure that was entirely wise of you, but I’m grateful nonetheless.”

“Did I hear that she’ll be seeing you later, sir?” I allowed a soupcon of sternness to tinge my question.

“Uh, yes.”  Mr Whybrow ran a hand through his hair, reliving some private horror. “That was Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre; she’s one of our leading lights.” His mumble suggested that she was famous for being famous. “She’s asked me along to her soiree later, and was getting rather insistent.”

“So I could see, sir.”  It wasn’t really fair of me to glower at him; he was hardly likely to have initiated the situation. But I needed to make sure he knew exactly how I felt about Miss Crumbly-wotsername.

“Actually, she asked if you could go along with me.”

That, I had not expected. “She did?”

“She did indeed; that’s what she was saying just as you – ah, entered. It’s unusual to invite someone’s shopgirl, I know, but to be honest, I’m glad she did. I know I can trust you to keep any vultures at barge pole’s length.”

Ordinarily, I’d have considered Mr Whybrow safe from an army of Amazons, if I was with him. The problem was that this hostess might have ascribed my intervention to mere shopgirl clumsiness; either way, she could not have known how protective I was towards him.

“I presume that there’s a reason why you can’t get out of attending, bearing in mind how much you hate dancing, sir?” More to the point, I was even less capable on a dance floor than he was, and that was saying something.

“There won’t be any dancing involved; it’s a soiree. People are there for the music. That won’t stop the vultures trying, though. But to answer your question – no, I can’t very well duck the event. It’s how businessfolk – well, interact and conjure up more business.”

I felt very foolish. Not for the first time, good old Shopgirl had waded in to slay dragons, only to find that they had never even been there. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. I saw her just now, and thought she was – well, I hope I haven’t messed things up for you.”

He read the sudden catastrophe in my head, throwing my thoughts into a whirling mess of regret. “I know what you thought she was trying to do. You did exactly the right thing. And don’t worry about tonight. Let’s just say that you’ve clarified things a lot, so you’ve spared me at least one misunderstanding tonight.”

He must have thought I didn’t believe him. He chucked me gently under the chin.  “Chin up, Valerie. I’ll be proud to be seen with you anywhere.”

His compliment landed with a splat. “Very good, sir,” I told him, somewhat numbly. After all we’d been through, having cultivated our companinship in such cautious, painstaking increments, it would have been nice if he’d asked me along for my company, rather than as a human landmine.

My resentment fizzled out as the day wore on. It could be that Miss Double-Barrelled had merely been enthusing about her event; maybe even trying to encourage him to take me along when he’d rather not have done so. One didn’t normally take one’s shopgirl, after all. But there was no getting away from what I’d actually seen. Then I put myself in his position and realised that it had not been she of whom he was nervous; it was the others he would be meeting. But this time would be different. I’d be with him.

By the time I came to prepare for the event, I was looking forward to it. Although I was more to him than just a shopgirl, it would be naïve of me to expect to be presented as anything other than that. But I could still act with appropriate decorum while savouring the occasion in my own way, in the privacy of my own mind. Nobody could stop me doing that. I began to fantasise about being asked to sing, and delivering a golden rhapsody while holding him with my eyes – he was accompanying, of  course – and as was only proper for a good fantasy, it never occurred to me how difficult it would be for him to concentrate with my gaze nailing him down like a moth to a collector’s card.

He had left my choice of gown and accessories entirely to me. That, I took as a compliment. He trusted me to know. So, I dressed and accessorised so as to represent him in the best light, without upstaging the hostess. Just a few discreet little diamonds, with some sapphires for colour.

I went to the shop to wait. He was already there, in the back office; I could hear vague strains of song filtering through the partition. I peeped around the corner; he was checking over his cravat in a mirror. The words to his song became clearer.

Surely you heard my lady go down the garden singing,
Silencing all the songbirds and setting the alleys ringing.
O saw you not my lady out in the garden there,
Riv’lling the glitt’ring sunshine with a glory of golden hair!

I knew the song well; there was no mistaking Handel’s “Silent Worship.”  Neither was there any mistaking the feeling behind his voice; he was singing it for someone. He couldn’t have possibly had Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre in mind; that just left –

He opened all the valves for the final climax; I stood there entranced. He didn’t have a professional voice, but he knew what he was doing. The notes were accurate, the words well-rounded and flowing. It made my own secret burn eagerly inside me. I had to get him to Llyr and show him what I could do!

Mr Whybrow emerged from the office. I curtseyed smartly. “Will I do, sir?”

He ran his eyes up and down me, with a scrutiny normally seen at a military inspection, but with more warmth.

“Enchantingly, Miss. As ever,”  he added, turning to lead the way out.

Yes, I really felt like a queen making a state progress, floating on a cloud of glory as the Golden Grisset wafted me out of SouthEnd with Mr Whybrow at the wheel. I didn’t pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. That’s a cliché. But the sheer unreal reality of my situation did bring a lump to my throat. You see, in the workhouse, being put on display was something kids tried to avoid. It usually involved being stood on a stool in the corner of the classroom, although that was a mercy on its own, as those benches were murder on sore spanked bottoms. But now – that button upholstery coddled me, shaping itself to me and reassuring me with its leathery tang. And there before me, my jeweller was driving me, apparently impassively, to be displayed as his companion before the great and glittering.

“Are you all right back there, Miss Bluebird?”

I must have pulled a face, or something, which he’d caught in the rear view mirror. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

“Good, you looked nervous. Don’t be. It’s not like having your teeth pulled out.”

That’s for me to decide, I thought. To change the subject, I asked him, “Sir – have you ever heard of any unusual creatures living in the sea at Caledon Sound?”

“How unusual?”

It was a fair question. Most of Caledon was unusual in some respect. I described what I had seen, and in the rear view mirror, I saw him grin. “Never heard of the Loch Ness Monster, Miss?”

Actually, I had, and returned a clueless gape.

“Well, she’s real and she lives here. She’s nothing to be afraid of; she’s actually quite shy, but if you’re nice to her, she’ll let you ride on her.”

Of course. So the Loch Ness Monster was real, and let you ride on her. Right. I forced my gape into a look that was supposed to mean, “Indeed, sir,”  but probably appeared as incipient carsickness.

Miss Crumbleigh-Quandybarre’s residence was meant to impress. Meant to impress shopgirls, at least. It was clearly a focus for luminaries, since Mr Whybrow had to park fifty yards from the house as a lot of other carriages were already there.

“Ten minutes late. Never a good idea to be the first at a function, Miss Bluebird,”  he told me, with a scrunch of handbrake ratchet.

I fought my way through layers of skirt to reach the door handle, but with the dexterity of the Queen’s own coachman, he descended and held the door open for me. It felt wrong, getting out with him as the servant, but I took heart in the gesture. He was showing the world that I was definitely more than a shopgirl. I was His Lady.

That was all the reassurance that I needed. As he took my arm and led me to the house, I took a deep breath for courage. This is your debut as his companion. A celebration, not an ordeal.

Not an easy thing to keep in mind when our hostess was waiting to greet us, with The Bucket foremost in her memory. I sensed other eyes following us. I could almost hear the claws being filed to needle points. Our bubbly hostess took on an altogether different and rather awful aspect.

To be continued……………..

Sonata for Airship and Bluebird: Second Movement.

Piu Lento ma con brio, tempo di valzer

How different Caledon looked from the air! The snow lost much of its eyeball-aching glare, and made the whole community look like a glittery wedding cake that had had unlimited attention lavished on the detail.

The reader who has followed my history from the beginning will not be surprised to learn that I bore north until Tamrannoch, and then leaned into an easy turn west with Llyr just visible as a jagged bump on the horizon, although one might be forgiven for thinking that I was being ambitious for a first test flight. Well, I had to go somewhere! All right, yes, I admit it. I was impatient. I’ve yattered on so much about Llyr that the reader could also be forgiven for thinking, “For God’s sake, girl – drop the other boot!”

I’d forgotten how many Caledonians took advantage of the magical properties of the place to live in the sky. I was careful to keep a respectful distance; after all, those who lived so privately must have their reasons for doing so. But a seasoned Caledonian would have learned that there was little to fear from passing airships, unless the thing happened to buzz round and round one’s house. This was because, as I had already learned, even when flying at a leisurely straight-line cruise, one has so much attention split between instruments, airship, and the sky around lest it throw a sudden obstacle at one, that there is little time available for peeping in on the locals’ activities. Mind, this airship almost flew itself. It seemed to be telling me that if I took my hands and feet off the controls and left it to do what it wanted, it would just keep going in a straight line until it ran out of world.

It did occur to me that I had never seen Mr Whybrow’s house but from the inside; on the one inadvertent attempt I’d made to cross his threshold, he’d called me back before I could open the door. I could not help wondering what lay beyond that door. It could have been a whole new city, some fabulous castle, a cobbled yard full of stinky old dustbins, or perhaps even just a straight drop to a messy death on the ground. But I was resolved never to ask him. We had shared much, but he valued his privacy and I suspected that that was one transgression he would never forgive.

In the meantime, I still had to think of a name for my airship. Mr Whybrow was right. It deserved it! But I didn’t have his imagination for such things, and naming it Dreadnought  seemed somewhat ironic.

Llyr loomed up, across the sea, like a mythical storybook kingdom which had, until now, been held almost out of reach. But my airship was the key to going there whenever I wanted. I felt no fear of the sea below me, or the creatures thrashing and flitting about in it; my dear airship held me safe above all the terrors that awaited the earthbound.

Caledon’s climate was so gentle that I hardly had to compensate at all for the wind as I eased back on the power and drifted in to land. There was the great mechanical man again, grinning at me, but more in welcome this time. How could I ever have thought that he portended anything evil? And there was what I’d really come for. The stone circle, as old as time itself, with the eternal flame billowing at its centre, not having diminished a jot since I was last there.

It was only a few weeks into the new year; the sea had frozen over, but I did not trust the thickness of the ice. The airship’s natural tendency was to float in air, but mine wasn’t. There was a clearing in the woods large enough to take the gasbag; gingerly I descended with a tick of rudder here and there, and even managed to avoid squishing a snowman as I settled into the snow.

I left the engine on a low tickover – I didn’t want to have to do my first solo cold-start in a place so far from home, and I hadn’t planned to stay long anyway, in case Mr Whybrow started to worry. For that reason I resisted the temptation to kick off my shoes, my stockings, my skirts, and really let rip. But I had to have a token swirl around the fire, just as a foretaste of the atmosphere that I could return to any time I felt like it.

My skirts flowed behind me like a banner as I pirouetted around the fire, smiling at the warm brush of the flames on my cheeks. A few sparks spat out me, warning me that there was a practical reason why folks tended to dance around the fire wearing as little as possible. If I strayed too close to it, my clothes would go up like a torch.

Then an idea came to me and I stopped dead. Where that idea came from, I stood for a moment trying to ascertain. Was it just a suggestion that had been lingering at the back of my mind, or had Llyr somehow put it in there? I knew not. I only knew, as a certainty – it was safe to sing here.

But did I dare put that to the test?

I ransacked my mind for something suitable – no London street ditties for Llyr; that would be sacrilege. Ah, yes – that last recital of Dame Nelly Melba at the workhouse had stuck in my mind like a photograph. I’d kept the programme, and looked up the words to her songs; one in particular had entranced me. DuParc’s L’invitation au voyage.

Clearing my throat for confidence, I began cautiously.

Mon enfant, ma soeur,

Songe a la douceur…….

No croaks, wobbles, hiccups – just what, to me, was unbelievable angelic nectar for the ears! Was that really my voice? With mounting confidence, I let rip that climactic high note at the end of the third line.

D’aller la-bas vivre ensemble!

I stopped and looked around me. No mountains crumbled, no trees cascaded down the slopes, even the birds wheeled around overhead as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Be it intuition, or just wishful thinking, but my hunch had been correct. Llyr was safe to sing in.

I clutched my hands together in sheer delight. All the wonderful things that had happened, that day, and on top if it – I could sing!

But wait. Something was not right. Looking back to the airship, patiently clacking and chuffing as it waited for me to return, I spotted a black shape stumbling away from it, a few yards off. A shape I had seen before. That widow, at Caledon on Sea.

I rushed down to my airship, with misgivings tugging at me. Like a fool, I’d come out without my revolver. I checked the cables, the rigging, the nuts and bolts, but all appeared to be in order. The engine was running smoothly, so she couldn’t have tampered with that.

I scanned around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. I could have been imagining it, that dread figure could have been lurking at the back of my mind, waiting to trick my nerves, but I was sure of what I had seen.

Best not to keep Mr Whybrow waiting. Somewhat ungraciously, I hauled myself up and into the gondola.

Third movement

Ancora Allegro - subito agitato 

I was buoyed up by the little taste Llyr had given me of the fulfilment that lay ahead, as I rose up into the sky with a merry snarl of engine. Yes, it had been a glorious day. I knew Mr Whybrow would not plunge me back into the mundane life of the shop, he’d be thrilled to see my airship successful and would be asking all manner of questions about it. I allowed myself a chuckle as I sailed across Tamrannoch for the turnoff south. How could this ever become mundane?

Sadly, Llyr’s magic had not extended to any inspiration for a name. I dimly recalled that there was  something suitable, lurking in the furthermost recesses of my mind. It had something to do with music; one of Mr Whybrow’s explanations was the only element I could pin down, but I couldn’t remember what he had actually said. But I knew that it contained the answer I was looking for. Was it the Flying Caledonian? Flying Shopgirl? Say, from talking about Wagner’s Flying Dutchman? No, that wasn’t it. It was something older, more soloist-oriented.

But as I straightened out to head south, a slow rattle broke out somewhere behind me. My heart stopped. Something had gone wrong.

Getting a grip on myself, I tried to analyse the sound. It was something heavy, and repetitive with a low timbre – like steel on steel, in a hollow chamber. The engine was running normally, and the fuel tank couldn’t have broken loose of its mountings. That would make a much louder, deeper noise, and would surely be trapping the control cables. I wondered if I’d dented the propeller somehow, but even I knew that an out-of-balance propeller would have ripped the engine out instantly.

All right, I told myself. Focus on what you DO know. The airship is behaving fine. Just treat it gently, stay close to the ground, and get straight home. 

The rattle decreased, only appearing at all when the gondola was nudged by those little eddies and air currents one inevitably gets. I remembered that the phenomenon had only started at all after that big turn in Tamrannoch. That certainly ruled out the propeller, at any rate.

The situation puzzled as much as disturbed me, as I eased over the railway bridge at Downs. How could something have suddenly “gone”  without affecting the airship’s handling in any way?

[Flying Fugue? Apposite, but too contrived and repetitive. CONCENTRATE, woman! Your life’s hanging by a thread here!]

I’d already planned my landing run, and had discussed it with Mr Whybrow – at least, in as much detail as one can, when talking about an airship of unknown properties. It would involve a couple of sharp turns. As I crossed over into SouthEnd, I squinted into the distance. Yes, there was Mr Whybrow on the roof. He must have been up there all the time, smoking cigar after cigar as he waited for me.

Bearing in mind when the rattle had started, I eased into the first turn with great care, hoping that my caution on its own would warn Mr Whybrow that something was wrong. And yes, there it was. That slow rolling rumble – like a small cannonball in a dustbin, I thought.

It stopped when I straightened out again. Definitely something loose, but what? I’d kept the whole design simple, there was nothing that could roll around loose without having some effect on the handling. The mystery confirmed my suspicions by rattling again on my second turn, which would take me straight towards the shop. I could see Mr Whybrow leaning forwards, as though that would help him see better – that was good. He suspected that something was wrong, and was as mystified as I was since the airship was behaving as well to his eyes as it was to mine.

I adjusted my speed to be as slow as possible and still allow me to manoevre. The airship obeyed me perfectly as I heaved into that final turn to the landing platform, and the rattling noise appeared again. This time, I believe Mr Whybrow must have heard it, as he gave a little start before stepping back to the edge of the platform to give me room to land. Thank God he had ears like a weasel. If anybody could find the source of the incongruity, he could.

[Flying SouthEnder?No, definitely something musical – Go away, silly thought! SHUT UP AND FOCUS!]

As soon as I was roughly centred over the platform, with one eye kept on the chimney and balloon cable (“Remember, Miss – the chimney and balloon cable are not shock absorbers; hit them and you’ll burst your gasbag. Approach slowly.”)  I slammed back the throttle and cut the magneto switch. The airship settled down comfortably with a minor “bomp”  that didn’t even jar my spine. Before the propeller had windmilled to a stop, Mr Whybrow came running forwards, concern writ large on his face.

“Miss Bluebird? Are you all right?”

I accepted his help gladly as I heaved myself out of the gondola. “It’s developed a funny noise. It was all right until I turned south at Tamrannoch, then it started to make a sort of heavy rattle every time I turned.”

“I heard it. You’ve no idea what it might be?”

“No, sir. The airship’s been perfect throughout.”

He removed his hands from my waist where they had been sitting, unnoticed by us both. “The only thing I can think of is the engine bearers. This is why you always check them after a first flight; you never know what the vibration’s worked loose.”

He grasped the cylinders in his hands, swore loudly and flapped his singed hands about, and then settled for giving them a vengeful kick.

“Nothing wrong there at all. This machine is very soundly-built.”

“It sounded like it might be coming from inside, sir,”  I offered. “But I can’t imagine what – I mean, there’s so little inside – “

Mr Whybrow had already plunged headfirst into the gondola, and returned holding up a steel cylinder with a smaller cylinder attached to its side. He held it up to the light.

“Christ! Geddown!”

In one fluid movement, he’d hurled the cylinder over the roof, looped an arm around me, and flung us both to the deck. My breath almost burst out of my ears as he held me tightly, shielding me with his body. His heartbeat drummed against me, his tobacco-breath curiously enchanting as it washed over me (so he had been working on the cigars while waiting), and with my whole body tensed, I pressed back into him, and -

Nothing happened.

A familiar clopping of hooves and trundling of wheels went past below us; Mr Gongfermer making his rounds with cart, shovel and the loyal Ploppy in attendance. Mr Whybrow raised himself, we gazed curiously into each others’ eyes, and –

FTOOM!

Reflexively, I burrowed into Mr Whybrow’s waistcoat as he clasped me in a death grip. From below, a dull explosion erupted, descanted by a cry of panic and a shrilling of a terrified horse. Great lumps of something soft and heavy splatted over half the district; Mr Whybrow spread his hand over the back of my head until the cascading had subsided with a diminuendo of muffled thuds.

Silence.

Mr Whybrow let me raise my head, to gaze into his eyes which showed concern more for me than anything else in the world.

“Are you all right?”  he murmured.

At first I thought I’d been partly deafened, but he was only speaking quietly so as not to startle me.  “Yes, thank you sir. And – thank you,”  I added, feeling slightly foolish at my clumsiness. “That was a bomb?”

He was about to reply, but a yell came up from the street. Carefully, we both peered over. Mr Gongfermer clearly had a vague idea of what had happened, but not the direction from whence it had come. His rage carried right across SouthEnd as he glanced about to all points of the compass, searching for his mystery assailant while simultaneously trying to calm Ploppy.

“Who be the scaindrel a-playin’ jokes on an honest wurkin’ maan, ‘n’ disarrangin’ all moy lovely tords?”

I don’t know if it was the hilarity of the situation, or nervous aftershock, but I fell into Mr Whybrow’s arms, burying my helpless mirth in his chest. And from the way he shuddered, he was similarly disadvantaged. His murmur carried into my ear.

“Look on the bright side. Think of all the windows that didn’t get broken.”

“Well, this time he can shovel it up himself,” I smirked. Actually, I was glad that Mr Gongfermer had become an unintended victim. It had defused a situation that had become doubly awkward; without his influence, I’d have been raised on one elbow, gazing into Mr Whybrow’s eyes, stuck with indecision as to whether the occasion justified a kiss.

“How did that get there?”  he asked. “I went over that airship from stem to stern before you took off.”

Mr Gongfermer’s cursing, and the scraping of his shovel as he replaced his lovely – ah, items, was a welcome distraction that gave me the courage to answer truthfully about my short stop at Llyr.

Mr Whybrow clambered to his feet and helped me up. “There was a length of twine in there as well; she must have tied it on with a granny knot. Everything’s all right now. Let’s head below.”


Coda – piu tranquillo

He took me down to his office and poured us both a glass of brandy before speaking. The delayed shock started to set in; I sloshed half the first mouthful around my face. If I’d known what I’d been sitting on up there  -

“That was a time fuse,”  Mr Whybrow explained. “You won’t have gone up high enough for the pressure to break it; it must have been a cheap action damaged by the engine’s vibration. The impact with Gongfermer’s cargo jolted the firing pin loose. If they’d used a barometric fuse you wouldn’t be here.”

“Barometric, sir?”

“They work on atmospheric pressure; pre-set to go off at the desired altitude. They’re being adopted by the army to bring down balloons.”  He then looked at me sternly. “You realise that fuse could just as easily have failed and worked? Either way, you’d have been scattered all over Caledon.”

A cold flush rushed up my face. I thought for a moment that I was going to faint. I could do nothing to stop it. I felt the world start to sway, but before I could fall, I found myself buried in Mr Whybrow’s cravat again, held firmly but carefully against the security of his chest.

“They won’t try that again”  he purred softly into my ear. “She must have thought you wouldn’t bother checking the airship again after we found they’d loosened the cables.”

Relaxing, I was able to think once more, but did not pull out of his embrace. It seemed like the one thing I could count on. “But how did they know where I was going?”

“You were followed,”  he told me. “This is one problem with airships. They can see you from the ground, when you can’t see them. Even if someone isn’t trying to hide from you, you’re still blind immediately below. Now, get that inside you.”

He raised my glass to my lips; I swallowed before I was ready and coughed.

“Take your time and help yourself to cigars,” he told me, with a smile that did more to put me at ease than any amount of brandy could have. “I’ll go and re-torque your engine mountings.”

“Sir, wait – I presume you were all right during my absence?”

He hesitated, as if about to begin with, “Apart from worrying about you?”  “I was, but those two are giving me ideas which I don’t like. They’re too determined for it to be mere revenge. They must have another motive.”

“Their smuggling, sir?”

“Aye. I’ve got a feeling that the stash we discovered was only a part of something bigger. Something that they’ve invested too much in, just to abandon. Oh, and next time, don’t go out without your revolver. Left it behind, didn’t you?”

I could only grin sheepishly. “That did occur to me while I was out, sir.”

Postludium – a piacere

I was left alone in the office, coming to terms in my own time with another narrow escape. All right, I couldn’t count on a sympathetic master’s clasp every time something went wrong. And under other circumstances, I’d have been reliving those embraces, were I not too shaken to do so. But the fact was, that I’d got away with it again, and was glad of that. Mr Gongfermer’s excoriations were only faint, through two walls, as I decided how to proceed.

I had to get out in the airship again, sooner rather than later. If you fall off a horse, you get back on, yes? And provided I was diligent, there would be no further bombs or unfortunate accidents. And there was the eminiently practical point that I would be far more useful now, as I’d be able to deliver to every part of Caledon, not just those accessible by road or rail.

I sighed, looking about for means of occupying myself for the rest of the day. It would have been nice to have returned, able to tell Mr Whybrow that my airship now had a name; that was so important. A name didn’t just give a machine character, it gave it  A  character. I’d be working with it as closely as any human assistant; it deserved a name. Oooh, it was driving me potty! Pink Prelude – nahh, that was meaningless! Unless I wanted to imply that I’d be crashing it shortly and building another. Waltzing Welkin – Bleurgh! That’s for the penny dreadfuls. No, it was definitely something musical! Arrgh!

In the corner of my eye, something moved. I spun round, simultaneously trying to analyse the threat and wonder if I could reach my revolver in time. But it was only Harry, clambering onto the top of Mr Whybrow’s desk. And if I wasn’t close to tears before, I was then. He was bearing a little daisy in his fangs. Diffidently, he lumbered across the desktop towards me one step at a time, as though anxious not to scare me.

Seeing that I was too afraid to approach him, he put the flower down and backed away. He dipped his head in a nod, and scuttled off. That damned lump in the throat choked me again as I called after him, “Thank you, Harry.”

He gave no sign to suggest that he’d even heard me, far less understood, but I was certain that he’d done both.

I bit my lip as I tucked Harry’s little gift in the ruffle of my blouse. Nobody had ever given me flowers before.  Mr Whybrow, please take note.

Well, that was a day like absolutely no other. The airship was a part of The Establishment, although it still had no name. As the day’s climaxes were over, I fell into a sort of mental anticlimax with everything swirling around like one of those What-The-Butler-Saw machines cranked by a madman. Thus, the one problem remaining had full opportunity to ride me like a mental incubus. What on earth was I going to call  the wretched contraption?

I was certain that the musical connection was correct. I knew it had its origin in something Mr Whybrow had been saying, recently. Pink Partita?  Don’t be silly, Shopgirl! That sounds like a type of French underwear. Flying Fantasia? That was just corny! It was my conveyance, not bloody pantomime!

I was getting nowhere. However, it was late in the day; I was certain that Mr Whybrow couldn’t possibly expect me to get any work done now, and after all that grunting, straining and general heaving and gritting of teeth, I badly needed a bath. Naturally, I asked his permission to leave, via the Lamson.

“Sir – may I go home now? I need to freshen up before the seagulls drop dead.”

He was probably doing what I had in mind for myself. I had to wait a little for his reply. I believe my prediction to have been correct; the paper was wet about the edges.

“You didn’t go back to work, did you? Lock the safe and go home! Sleep well. P.S. congratulations. I’m very proud of you.”

His post script was, for him, extravagant. I smiled at the tatty sheet of paper and whispered, “Thank you, sir.”

I ran a tub that was generous, but not too hot. I was more in the mood to be invigorated than softened. I sat there dwelling on my quandary. Sky Symphony?  Too pretentious. Definitely something musical, though.

Something else came to mind. A certain ancient Greek gentleman who had solved a long-standing problem of his own in his bathtub by discovering that a table-tennis ball floated in it, whereupon he had run into the street proclaiming his triumph, wearing – well, just his triumph. That’s the version I was taught anyway. Did they actually have table tennis in those days?

Oh Good Gawd. Stone the crows and knock me dahn wiv a fevver.

That was it.

Yes! Of course. Mr Whybrow had been explaining about certain musical forms, and it occurred to me that one in particular fit somewhat loosely the events of the day.

That sudden resolution shot a horse doctor’s bolt of adrenalin into my veins with a .577 calibre needle. The snow lay thick and it was almost midnight. But I didn’t care if all of Caledon was camped outside in a blizzard as I ran into the street yelling at the top of my voice.

“That’s it!  The Silk Sonata!”

Sonata for Airship and Shopgirl

The Flight of the Bluebird

Introduction

Following his windfall from the late Widow Beauregard, Mr Whybrow’s first deed was to ask me if I’d like to go anywhere, that evening. I’d never been to the music hall, but knowing his tastes in music, I was somewhat hesitant in offering that suggestion. I was most surprised when, instead of recoiling from me as if I’d suggested, “Let’s go and catch food poisoning,”  he flashed a beaming smile and told me, “As you will, Miss Bluebird.”

My choice of venue meant not having to dress up like a countess, although I felt no less like one as we floated away from the shop in the Golden Grisset, with Mr Whybrow chauffeuring. He bought us the best seats – in a box, safe from orange peel and chestnuts dropped from “The Gods.”  This was part of the London I should have known. We laughed at the comedy turns, and sang along with Marie Lloyd and Vesta Victoria – well, most of us did, anyway. He did not relax his injunction against my singing, for reasons which I had to respect, so you can probably imagine the trouble I had containing my laughter as he sang along to, “Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow.”

Actually, I was glad of his precaution. Miss Lloyd just had  to sing, “The boy I love is up in the gallery,”  didn’t she? I was caught unawares by a lump in my throat which I did not want him to notice.

When we left, he offered me his arm, which I was delighted to accept. I know that some would look down on me for taking pride in what might appear as being sported as a trophy, but I was proud to be shown off as being good enough to be seen with as an equal. And the gentle crook of his smile told that he was every bit as proud as I was. That on its own gave me a greater self-esteem than any gift that might have been bought with money.

Mr Whybrow asked me what I wanted to do about supper. I still remembered my Paris experience with a heady euphoria, but the occasion demanded something that was intimate, yet still very much “us.”  I think he understood when I said that Mr McKew’s chippy would be more than adequate for me.  After all the recent hustle and bustle, it was heavenly to sit on the quayside surrounded by familiar sights and sounds, bathed in the friendly miasma of rotting timber and seaweed, without having to worry about being blown up, shot, poisoned, or anything. The new year seemed to be telling me that this one was going to be all right.

We ate in near-silence, sharing thoughts without speaking a word. I think we understood each other well enough for our eyes to say all that needed to be said. When I’d finished my fish and chips, I stifled a burp that would have broken windows, and sat wondering what to do with my empty greasy newspaper.

“Give it here,” Mr Whybrow offered. I thought he was going to put it in the Post Office trash can, but instead, he smoothed the papers out and folded them elaborately until he’d made two paper boats.

“Aw, sir. Are you going to leave them for the kids to play with?”

“Certainly not,”  he replied, without reproof. “Let’s keep SouthEnd tidy. Ever seen a Viking funeral?”

I had not.

He gave a chuckle and put a match to first one boat, then the other, and placed them carefully on the water where the gentle night breeze carried them out to sea. We leaned closer to each other as we followed the two little souls, setting out on their life’s course together, flaring brightly as they were fanned in the more open water, the flames intermingling, until they finally expired with a happy grace, leaving a thick cloud of smoke to mark their passing. That must have been the chip grease, I suppose.

We sat for a while, staring at the spot where the boats had been, until Mr Whybrow broke the silence.

“Dancing and coffee would be a perfect end to the evening, but you’ve a big day ahead of you, tomorrow.”

“I have?”  I have?

“Why, yes – isn’t your airship ready to go together, now?”

Thud.

I’d spent so much time thinking of its minutiae, that I’d only considered in the most general terms how I was going to transmute it from an assortment of bits to a finished functioning article. But I need not have worried.

“I’ll give you a hand,”  Mr Whybrow said, staring at the horizon. “I found that it’s best if you anchor the gasbag with guy lines, with the support netting around it, and fill it to half-pressure as a balloon, straightening out the netting as you go. Otherwise it’ll try to take the shape of a sphere, and you’ll never get your netting around that.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. And thank you,” I added, taking advantage of the shadows to hide my embarrassment. That lump dug into my throat again. He knew how important my own airship was to me, to have done something for myself by myself, which I could display to the world as my  achievement.

He offered me his hand to help me up. In the poor light, I was not afraid to look him directly in the eye. “Thank you for everything.”  I stretched up to peck his cheek; I was reassured that he did not try to pull away.

He simply smiled back. “Thank you.  Just for being yourself.”

With that, he turned and left me to make my own way home. Well, it was only just around the corner.

I wished he’d left mentioning the airship until the morning. I could not get to sleep; I almost wished that Harry would scurry across the bed and startle the daylights out of me, just to give my endlessly-churning mind something to break its spiral.

Allegro agitato

The next day, I found Mr Whybrow as I’d expected to find him. In the back office, smelting coffee. His greeting was breezy and unfeigned, but of the previous night’s tenderness, there was no sign. I don’t think he was ashamed of it; rather that he was being his usual practical self and focussing on the labours that lay ahead. Mind, it would have been nice if he could be not-quite-so-practical at times. One likes to see the midnight glow that arises when someone lets their guard down, still there the following day.

“Help yourself to coffee, Miss. Have you given any thought to how we’re going to do this?”

“I thought we’d discussed that last night, sir?”  It was clear that I’d overlooked a lot.

“We mentioned it. That’s not quite the same thing. We’re obviously going to have to assemble it all on the roof. How would you suggest doing that?”

It seemed straightforward enough. “Get the gondola up, carry up the airbag between us – no?”

He was shaking his head. “Get the gasbag up first. That’ll take hours to fill. Guy it down at the ends, and adjust the netting around it as it fills. Once it’s heavy enough to lift its own weight, then  we get the gondola up onto the roof, and push it into its approximate position.”

“But how are we to get the gondola up there?”  I asked. Lord, I hadn’t thought this through at all!

“A lot more easily than I did,” he sourly told me. “I had to hoist it up from the ground, pulling on a big A-frame with the Golden Grisset, while Mrs Boltclyster guided everything from the roof. You’ll have something I didn’t have. Another airship,”  he supplied, to answer my blank look.  “Mine.”

His suggestions made sense, although I remarked that we’d have to anchor the envelope to one side of the roof, to make room for him to lower the gondola. To this, Mr Whybrow agreed, adding that he should have thought of it himself. I did wonder if he already had, but was leaving me an opening to redeem myself with a bit of commonsense.

We soaked up our coffee by sharing the remains of a loaf he fished from the safe, and knuckled down to it. Dear reader, you may recall how heavy and cumbersome all that silk was when it was boxed up in a crate? Well – now imagine it unfurled and stitched, and getting it up stairs without its crate for protection. But silk was surprisingly tough, which was one reason airship builders used it, and it survived the journey without any obvious tears.

We spent a minute recovering our breath; I somewhat hesitantly asked Mr Whybrow if I dared shed my skirts for the next part. We were in public view, after all. I was only a little surprised when he assented, adding that I ought to lose my shoes as well. Airship silk could stand up to gales and hailstones, but not heels with a hundredweight of shopgirl bearing down on them.

When we’d spread the silk out in a big untidy sheet, Mr Whybrow guyed it to the chimney and a telegraph bracket at the other end of the roof. He kept a weather eye on me as I arranged the netting around the gasbag, saying nothing. I found it reassuring that he was on hand as a fallback against any mistakes I might make, yet was staying himself until such a moment.

Finally, I stood back and admired the collapsed tangle, looking it over for any twists or unsound knots. Mr Whybrow spoke for me.

“That’s secure enough, I believe,”  he commented. “Your gas valve is under there somewhere. Have you tested it for leaks?”

I had not. Another super-plunge of heart into stomach. Mr Whybrow pretended not to have noticed my omission. “There’s a way, Miss, which probably won’t have occurred to you. Fish out the valve, can you?”

I retrieved the brass fitting from under a fold while he – lit a cigar, of all things! I gazed on in astonishment as he took in a mouthful of smoke, put the valve nozzle into his mouth, and blew hard. I realised immediately what he was about, but his efforts only produced a hissing noise and a slight reddening of his cheeks.

“That’s a good seal,”  he pronounced, standing. Then he gave me a grin. “Standard procedure for testing flutes, Miss Bluebird. Plumbers do it, too, but they use a sort of firework which I wouldn’t recommend for airships. Now, you can have the honour of plugging in the gas hose and switching on. And then I’d suggest a somewhat heartier breakfast than that which we’ve had so far.”

“You mean, just leave it, sir?”

“Why not? All’s secure, where’s it going to go?”

He took me to his workshop, where he left me for a moment while he nipped home. When he returned, he brought with him bacon and eggs which he fried over his soldering stove. My appetite fairly gurgled at the aroma, although I had to force myself to eat, such was the excitement which was turning my stomach over like a workhouse laundry drying machine  [Yes, they did have those – the Holborn Union workhouse had one capable of spinning at 900 rpm in 1857 – VB]. Mr Whybrow chuckled at my impatience; more than once, he had to remind me that there would be nothing to see for a couple of hours yet, and it would be late into the afternoon before the gasbag was sufficiently inflated to lift itself and the hundredweights of rope wound around it.

It was the first time I’d seen him not rush eating, when at work. When he’d finished, the leisureliness of his pace back to the shop made me want to scream at him. But when we stood out in the street, the envelope was just a series of bumps along the roof, like a whale that had fallen from the sky.

“Ah well, back to work for now,” decided Mr Whybrow and went back inside as though nothing important was happening.

Back to work. Yes. Well, after a fashion. I tried to find things to do, but made a mess of everything. Polishing my lovely new toilet pan – I dropped the tin of polish down it.

Sweeping the front step  – the head came off the broom.

Mopping the floor – I sloshed half a pint of Jeyes’ fluid into the bucket without thinking, and made the shop smell as though we were trying to disguise someone having been sick in there. As for when I tried to displace the Jeyes’ with some scented oil – boy, was that a mistake.

And every half hour, I was running outside to see if the comically flaccid bladder on the roof was ready yet.

It was, as Mr Whybrow had predicted, late in the afternoon before I saw my gasbag hovering above the shop under its own steam. I almost fell over my skirts in my haste to get back inside and send my note up the Lamson.

“IT’S READY, SIR!”

He must have been as keen as I was. He arrived in the cellar only moments after I got there, to help me lash a rope to the gondola’s front axle. Then he departed to fetch the Golden Grisset. With a huge straight-eight to provide all the oomph, my role for the present consisted of guiding the gondola up the ramp, to make sure it didn’t bash against the wall. Especially the propeller; I knew how precisely-balanced that had to be. Of course, with hindsight I’d have taken it off and bolted it on again once in the street, but ……….

Anyway, a gentleman  would have let me drive and done all the guiding and heaving himself. But Mr Whybrow said something about not wanting his clutch burned out, so the sweaty part fell to me.

Once out in the street, I arranged a rope sling around the gondola and waited, trying to pretend that the tumescent obscenity floating above the shop was nothing to do with me. Any passers-by unfamiliar with Caledon must have been wondering what on earth Mr Whybrow got up to in his shop. He had already gone to put the Golden Grisset away, as the next part depended on a vastly different means of power. I began to feel uneasy for another reason; my conspicuousness in the street, next to my own airship gondola, was a public statement to the rest of the world that I was going to see this through – and so I would have to. The thing should work, all right; in theory, there wasn’t much to go wrong in an airship. But this particular one was untried, and its pilot had had little experience. And this time, there would be no guiding soul behind me to help me out of any difficulties.

A distant throb entered my hearing, high above me. The wiggly fingers in my tummy agitated faster. I looked up, and there he was, descending in his own airship with a long cable dangling beneath it.  I was not entirely happy that he’d used such a long rope, but when he slowed his descent to hover, I remembered that he’d need to stay clear of the roof, and the chimney in particular. Gawd, I really hadn’t thought this through, had I? All the time I’d been dreaming of floating through the air in my cute little gondola, I’d forgotten about the thirty-foot overhang to front and rear.

I also realised how little I really knew about knots as I tied Mr Whybrow’s cable to my sling. I wound the end around a few times before slipping the bitter end through, knowing that there had to be a proper knot for this sort of thing. When I’d finished, I stepped back and gave him a wave. His engine’s patient clacking rose to an eager roar, the slack snapped taut, and my gondola began to rise.

Then I hoisted up my skirts to saunter back to the roof. There, I had to wave him up a little before he swung the gondola over to the roof and lowered it, to bump gently onto the platform. I wasted no time in manhandling it into place, anxious not to shove too hard and send it plummetting off the roof. The cables to attach it to the gasbag were dangling about me; I lashed them to their hooks with a similar sort of knot that Mr Whybrow had used on Old Stumpy’s shrouds – he’d put me right if I bungled it, anyway.

I looked up to the gasbag, still floating like a windblown farmer’s smock, and wondered how much gas I should put in.

“Turn off the gas when the ropes are biting into the envelope to the depth of their radius,”  came a voice from behind me. I leapt out of my skin. I’d been so preoccupied with my knots that I hadn’t noticed Mr Whybrow’s arrival; he’d probably been standing there studying my every move for some minutes.

He pretended not to have noticed my fright. “Are you going to christen it?”

“I hadn’t thought of that, sir. Yes, it should have a name. Do you launch an airship with champagne?”

“I wouldn’t recommend breaking a bottle over it, if that’s what you mean.”  He gave a little chuckle. “But I do have a good brandy we can toast it with. Your cables look to be of even length, your knots are sound – there’s nothing more we can do now until the gasbag is full. Come on. I think we’ve earned this.”

I followed him downstairs. It had crossed my mind to snuggle up to him on the roof; after all, we’d been sharing a very important moment. But although I was certain that in his own heart, it would have been safe for me to do so, we had been standing prominently in full view of the whole district. Better to lay off.

It was quite obvious that neither of us were going to get any work done that day. He only poured me half an inch of brandy, warning me of the dangers of alcohol at altitude. But he did share his cigar with me, and we tossed about potential names for my airship. We already had the Dreadnought, the Golden Grisset; what did one call a pink airship?

Then another thought struck me. My face, unbidden, must have warned Mr Whybrow of some private sorrow. He could read me like a book, I was sure of it.

“Is everything all right, Miss Bluebird?”

I gave him a sheepish grin. “I was just thinking – I wish my father could see me now. I don’t even know how long it is since I last saw him, I was that young.”

Mr Whybrow cleared his throat. “I can’t say what he’d be thinking, right now. But he would have had hopes for you. Just be proud that you’ll have surpassed those, even though he won’t know it.”

I took a deep breath to choke off an incipient tearburst. “He might not even be alive.”

“In which case, he will  know. And he’ll be almost as proud of you as I am.”

I had noticed the unsubtle revelation at the end of his sentence. But yes. I had everything my father could have wished for me. All except one thing, and convention alone meant that I would have to decide between going without, and seeking the missing part elsewhere.

Mr Whybrow patted my hand. “Come on. That gasbag should be about ready by now, and you’ll be wanting to take her up while it’s still light.”

Slightly unsteady from the brandy, I followed him up the stairs at a tripping trot. On the roof, we saw the gasbag distended, with the netting starting to cut troughs in the silk. Mr Whybrow scurried across the roof and shut the gas off.  It was time.

“Any more, and it would have been too light,” he said. To prove the point, he pressed a hand under the nose and lifted the gondola on its back wheels with little effort. “All appears to be ready, Miss. Do you wish to proceed?”

This was it. The Moment. Gawd, I was nervous. What I wouldn’t have given for a nice thunderstorm to let me put it off with honour intact. “Yes, sir. Will you swing the propeller for me, or should I – “

I broke off at a little movement towards the airship’s rear. Harry was standing by one of the cables, jumping up and down and pointing. Mr Whybrow followed my gaze.

“Good Lord; what does he want?”

I went to join him, and the object of Harry’s concern was not hard to see, once pointed out. The bolts holding on the rear cables had been loosened until only two or three turns of thread held them in. Mr Whybrow wiggled them easily, even with the gasbag pulling on the cable.

“We know for a fact that that engine’s never been run, so we can rule out vibration.”

Double nod from Shopgirl.

I’d swear that Mr Whybrow shuddered. “Those two never give up, do they? All right; go get me a spanner – an adjustable one will do, while I look over the rest of this.”

“I was hoping we’d seen the last of them, sir.”

“Looks like we’d been hoping in vain, me dear,” Mr Whybrow concluded. “Let’s have that spanner, then.”

I returned with the tool five minutes later, to find Mr Whybrow leaning inside the gondola with Harry sitting on the engine housing, watching him.

“They’d only loosened the rear ones,”  Mr Whybrow told me. “They probably expected you to spot it, if the front ones were loose. Otherwise, the rest of the ship looks fine. Do you still want to go ahead with this?”

I knew he’d have thought no less of me if I’d chickened out, but I was not going to do that at this stage. My reply felt like someone had taken over my mouth and was speaking for me. “Absolutely, sir.”

“I won’t be able to help if you get into trouble,” he warned.

 “I’ll keep it low, and land at the first sign of trouble,”  I promised.

“All right. Any problems, should manifest themselves in the first few minutes. If it’s all right after that, take it out for an hour or so, but no longer. You’ll need to re-torque the engine mountings after a first flight.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do just as you say.”  But there was still one debt outstanding. I leaned over to Harry, as close as my nerves would stand, and blew him a kiss. “Thank you, Harry. We won’t forget this.”  And then I made a fluttering motion with my hands, to warn him to get off.

Mr Whybrow helped me into the gondola, although I could have managed well enough. As Harry climbed off, my jeweller observed, “He seems to have switched sides.”

We both gave a little laugh and a wave as Harry doffed his hat and vanished over the edge of the  landing pad. “He certainly repaid his debt,” I replied.

“I wonder where he’s settled, now?”

“I don’t care as long as it’s nowhere near me. He’s a good heart, but I’m sorry, I can’t stand spiders.”

Mr Whybrow nodded. This was one thing he’d have to let me come to terms with in my own time. “I’ve tested your controls; they’re well-balanced. Your connections are all nice and firm, you’ve just the right amount of slack in your cables – I don’t see why you can’t go right ahead with this. Let me turn her over a few times before you switch anything on; you’ve never had any fuel in the system. Open the tap full but keep the throttle shut and set the mixture to full rich.”

He went to the back and gently rotated the propeller a few times; I could hear the pistons sucking with a hilarious slurpy noise like a laundry plug-hole. Then he called out to me.

“Magneto – “

“Contact,”  I replied, flicking the switch.

He launched himself into a heave that set the propeller windmilling. The engine gurgled and came to rest with a disgusting, slobbering fart. At a second swing, however, he produced an irritated snort and a few puffs of smoke. The engine was trying. Again, the collywobbles tickled my tummy at the power on the point of being unleashed.

A third swing and the engine gave a few chuffs like a steam engine, and then introduced itself with a bellow that reverberated from the platform. I shut the mixture back until it was running at an even tickover.

My nerves made a final effort to take over and send me running. My innards gave a lurch, but I conquered it with a couple of deep, deep breaths. The engine was firing smoothly; I let it sit for a few moments, listening for any noises that might warn me it was about to fall apart, but none came. The cylinders, with only the prop wash to cool them, warmed quickly and I had to keep inching the mixture back to lean as the engine began to slow its beat.

Mr Whybrow appeared standing beside me. He gave my hair a mischievous tousle. “Congratulations. You’re an airship builder. Take her up, gently. And give yourself plenty of room to manoevre until you’ve got the measure of the controls. Remember, they’ll get stiffer but more responsive at speed.” He actually looked proud of the way I was handling my first cold start on my own airship. If only he knew the collywobbles running amok inside me at the prospect of actually using those thirty horsepower to fly! But if he noticed any unease in me, he was keeping that to himself.

“Yes, sir. I have flown before.” I sounded more curt than I’d intended, as I’d had to raise my voice above the engine beat.

He smirked back. Yes. Once.  “Up ye go, then. I’ll stay on hand until you’re back.”

“Very good, sir. And sir?”

“Yes?”

I looped an arm around his neck and pecked his brow. “Thank you.”

He chuckled and stepped back, well out of the way.

I gave the throttle a little nudge, and the engine happily devoured petrol to reward me with a slight push in the spine. Pulling back on the control column, my tummy warned me that it’d do something dreadful as soon as the nose came up. But then a peculiar floating sensation in my bum  bustle told me that my tummy was not to be taken seriously. We had already left the ground. An inch more throttle, and the engine surged eagerly but judiciously, only hinting at the power it had left to give. My tummy subsided instantly – this all felt so utterly natural! A dab of rudder to bring the nose around, and the airship seemed to slot into the air as though a part of it, the rudder flap resisting with just enough force to tell me how it would behave.

Safely clear of any other buildings, I looked back. I could not discern Mr Whybrow’s features, but his posture told me that he was studying me acutely, though without apparent concern.

His previous advice returned to me. I brought the nose around to line up with the road, to avoid any local spots of high gravity above residences, and settled into an easy climb northwards. That great gorge at Downs held no dread for me, as I used to experience when traversing the bridge in anything with wheels on. This vehicle needed neither road, rails or water for support, but could go whithersoever I told it.

Mr Whybrow had advised me not to go too high. But the airship, whatever I should decide to name it, appeared safe and responsive, and it seemed prudent to give the ground a respectful clearance until I had learned how it would manoevre. I thrilled at Caledon laid out below me as on a three-dimensional map, and once I was satisfied that I had enough room to allow for unexpected clumsiness, throttled back to just above an idle - Mr Whybrow had also warned me about running in the engine, and treating it gently until the parts had bedded in together.

I kept things simple, and followed the road northwards. My airship was nosing through the air as confidently as a pillar drill through butter; I spared a look over my shoulder at SouthEnd, receding behind me. Some hundreds of yards behind me and a hundred feet above, the hospital airship was turning around Mr Whybrow’s advertising balloon, which they used as a waypoint. Yes, thought I, smug with triumph. I’m one of you now.

After that, there was nothing to do but to plot my next turn – and I knew where that was going to be – and otherwise settle back to enjoy the view, sheltered from the slipstream in my gondola, with just a gentle breeze to flutter my hair. I knew not what manner of adventures awaited me and my airship, but I did know that a whole new dimension had just been added to my life.