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
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.
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