A/N: This is the chapter in which I pretend I know what a log book is for and how you go about filling it in. For the purposes of the story, I've decided it's a hand-written record of what you had responsibility for on each flight, how many hours you did, what the weather and the wind speed was, any delays and why and various technical details. I also decided it's a CAA requirement to keep it reasonably up to date. Probably both of those are incorrect, but the story wouldn't work otherwise, so I hope you'll just forgive it and read on :)
Chapter Eleven
Douglas hadn't been at all affected by the stony and venomous silence on the flight deck on the way back from Rome. In fact, it had just helped fuel his somewhat spiteful glee at the way his plan had gone. He had, he knew, well and truly got one over on Morris; and while he knew Morris was bound to retaliate, he wasn't particularly worried. Carolyn wouldn't fire him, and her tellings off were water off a duck's back by now. No, Douglas didn't have the slightest regret about what he had done, and although they didn't have a flight on Monday went into the airfield without argument when he was summoned. He found Arthur wandering about a little way from the portacabin that served as their office.
"Good morning, Arthur."
"Hi Douglas." He sounded distinctly uncheery. Arthur's moods were always refreshingly obvious and Douglas probably could have told how much trouble he was in just from the way Arthur had greeted him; but as it was, it wasn't necessary. The sound of Carolyn's voice, raised and furious, was enough to alert anyone to how things were going.
"How long have they been at it?" Douglas asked.
"About half an hour." Arthur said. "He came in and asked mum to call you, so she did, and then they started talking and Morris told me to leave so I did, and not long after that they started shouting."
"Oh dear." Douglas said, completely insincere. "It seems like Captain Montague may be on his way out. What a terrible shame."
Remarkably Morris then appeared, marching out of the office with a large pile of files in his arms. He smiled malevolently at Douglas.
"Good morning, Mr Richardson. Why don't you go through to the office? I believe Carolyn wants a little word."
"Oh really? Well then, do excuse me. Mustn't keep her waiting."
"Perhaps after your meeting you could spend the day doing your log book," Morris said, "As I'll be taking them away this evening to send to the CAA adjudicators. After all, records must be kept properly up to date if we don't want to incur a penalty."
"Oh, well, we wouldn't want that. I'm sorry, Morris, but I'm bored of being passively threatened now, so I'm going to go in and talk to Carolyn. Bye." Douglas went into the office, Arthur following closely behind him.
"I'm not sure you should have said that, Douglas." He said.
"Nonsense, I'm not going to let him bully me just because-"
"You will let him bully you because I say so." Carolyn interrupted. "This is serious, Douglas. He wants me to fire you."
"Oh, what a fuss." Douglas said. "It was just a little joke."
"Little? It made the national newspapers!"
"Yes, I admit, I was rather pleased with that."
"Enough!" Carolyn snapped. "You've had your fun, Douglas, but that's enough now. We may not like him, but we need him."
"We could always ask Martin to come back." Arthur piped up. "I'm sure if we told him about Morris then-"
"No." Carolyn cut him off, curtly.
"But I've thought it all through!" Arthur protested. "He only left because he got sick while he was flying, so all we need to do is tell him it's okay and that we don't mind and he'll come back!"
"I said no, Arthur." Carolyn sniffed. "I'm not going crawling back to him just because Morris is a nuisance. Anyway, I'm not sure he would come back even if we asked. If he did, he would be a fool."
"She's right." Douglas said. "If what you told me is true, Arthur, Martin has a decent job now, or at least decent enough that he can afford his own house, and if he has a girlfriend to think of I doubt he'll want to come back to an unpaid job with irregular hours."
"But you promised he'd come back! Anyway, what is he going to do if he's not flying planes?"
"Oh, the usual things, I suspect." Douglas shrugged. "He'll probably get himself a job as a store manager eventually, marry this girl and have a child before they get too old… you know, the sort of lives people lead when they aren't stuck in the world's worst airline. To be honest, Arthur, I'm not sure we have any right to ask him to give that up, even if he would."
"Oh. Okay."
Douglas turned away from Arthur's disappointed face, feeling slightly guilty. "Anyway." He said, bracingly. "Just because we can't have Martin doesn't mean we have to have Morris, does it? There must be tons of new or unemployed pilots who would just do it for a bit of experience."
"Do you know how many people have replied to my advertisement, Douglas?" Carolyn asked. "I'll tell you- One. I haven't taken it down, it's still there, and yet Morris is the only one who has applied. It seems people don't want to work for the world's worst airline." She was clearly offended. The room fell into silence.
"We could always retire." Douglas said, quietly.
"To what?!" Carolyn threw her arms up in frustration. "I certainly hope you've been paying into a private pension scheme Douglas, because as I told you when I took you on, MJN Air won't be able to provide for me, let alone you."
"I have, as it happens." Douglas said.
"Oh, good. And is it enough for you to live on for the next eight or nine years until you can claim a state pension?"
"Ah." Douglas said. It was all he could say.
"As for me, I don't even have that luxury." Carolyn continued. "We would have to find other jobs. I hate to break it to you, but it's difficult enough at the moment for bright young things with seventeen A-levels, a wealth of relevant experience, a gap year saving orphans in the Congo and a PhD in Nuclear Physics to get jobs. They are not going to take on an aging pilot with a criminal record and the ex-manager of a catastrophically failed air charter firm. We would be lucky to get jobs shelf stacking in Tesco's. With Arthur."
"Oh." Douglas said again.
"Which means," Carolyn said. "We don't have a choice. Even if he is so far up his own backside he thinks he could do a better job of running the business than I could and insists on taking all the records home to 'look them over'."
"Carolyn?" Douglas was surprised. "Is that what he's done now?"
"Yes! And then he said he would contact me afterwards so we could 'Reimagine our business strategy'! The cheek of it!" The rage that had been bubbling underneath Carolyn's skin finally resurfaced. "I should tell him where he can stick his reimaginings."
"You mean you didn't already?"
"No, I didn't! Well I couldn't, could I? Like I told you, until someone else wants to come here and work for free, we need him." She sighed deeply. "I don't like it either, Douglas, I really don't; but if you don't start swallowing your pride and doing as he tells you, he'll leave and then it's shelf-stacking or burger-flipping all round. So please, just this once, for all our sakes, do you think you could see your way to just filling in your log book?"
"Well, Carolyn, I would, but there is a slight problem."
"Which is?"
"As you may be aware, I haven't filled in my log book since before Reg left, and I only did it occasionally then, when the boredom levels were at their most toxic. That means I have quite a large gap to fill, and while my memory for detail is certainly nothing to be ashamed of, it doesn't quite stretch to what the wind speed was on a sunny May morning eight years ago."
"All the weather reports are in the records- ah." Carolyn suddenly realised. "Damn."
"Yes."
"What's the matter?" Arthur asked.
"Douglas can't fill out his log book without the records." Carolyn said.
"Which Morris has just taken away with him, probably deliberately." Douglas finished. "Well, as revenges go, it's certainly a thorough one. If he reports me to the CAA, it'll be hard to convince them not to take my license this time."
"They can't!" Arthur said. "I mean, I know it's not as easy as on paper, but can't you use the ones on the computer and fill it out with that?"
"We don't have any on the computer, Arthur, not really." Carolyn said. "There might be a few booking confirmations, but I do everything on paper, I've always done everything on paper."
"Yeah, I know, but I've been scanning it all in." They stared at him, so he carried on. "Well, you see, last year Skipper- old Skipper- Martin said we should digitise everything so we could keep a copy, and mum, you told him to shut up, so he got me to do it whenever you weren't looking. It took ages, but I think I have everything except Rome." He leant over Carolyn and clicked around a bit on the ancient computer, pulling up a folder in which, neatly labelled and ordered, was the paperwork for each flight in MJN Air's short history.
"You did this, Arthur?" Carolyn had to check. She knew that Arthur had a strangely practical skill when it came to computers and could usually make them do the things he wanted them to, but this must have been a lot of work and neither patience nor methodical working were Arthur's strong points.
"Yeah. Well, Skipper showed me how I should scan them and order them and do the titles and stuff, but I did the rest. I did most of it when we were on standby for Mr Goddard, when I was building the website." Arthur looked anxiously at Douglas. "Will it help?"
"This, Arthur, is exactly what I need. In fact, it's brilliant." Douglas said. Arthur beamed. "There is one more thing you can help me with, though."
"Okay, what?"
"Finding my log book."
oooooooooo
Martin's colleagues were getting worried. It was a good thing Mondays weren't his day to do duty, because he was completely out of it. The display he had been helping Suzanne with in honour of Air History Week (something the museum had invented) was distinctly lack lustre and even his beloved Local History section had only been given a quick straighten up. Gloria approached the problem with her usual direct sympathy.
"Are you alright, love?" She asked. "You're walking round with a face like a wet Wednesday."
"Sorry." Martin answered with a sigh. "I'll be alright, don't worry."
"Oh, come now, you aren't yourself at all. Did something happen?"
"No." Martin said and knew if he was honest that it was true. "Not really. I just… I hoped something would work out and now I know it won't and it's a bit disappointing, that's all."
"Ah, now, you never know what's round the corner." Gloria said, comfortingly. "Look, I'll make a cup of tea and after that we'll see if we can breathe some life into that display, alright?"
"Alright." Martin said. "Thanks, Gloria." While she bustled off, he went and began sorting out the stationary; the little rubbers and pencil sharpeners that always seemed to get mixed into the wrong compartments in the display table. Suddenly, he felt the peculiar sensation that he was looking at his life from the outside, looking at the sad, lonely man in his thirties spending his life pulling errant pencils out of the ruler section. He missed flying, missed it so much it was painful, even MJN Air had been something. He was beginning to wonder if he had made the wrong decision. Perhaps one mistake wasn't enough to have quit over.
One mistake, He reminded himself, That could have killed a dozen people. If you had, would you still think were safe to fly again?
The answer, of course, was no. Which meant this was it. Rubbers and rulers and model planes for the rest of his life, totally grounded. Great.
Before Martin could sink too deep into his self-pity, Gloria called him from the back room.
"Martin, your mobile's ringing! You'd better answer it, it could be important."
Thinking it was unlikely to be that important, Martin nevertheless went to answer it, knowing Gloria would insist. Thankfully she took her tea and went out into the store to give him some privacy, because when Martin saw the caller ID, he didn't think this was going to be a very pleasant conversation. It was Liz, and he hadn't heard from her since Saturday. He felt the smallest hope unfolding in the back of his mind, that maybe, just maybe, something had changed.
"Hello?" He said.
"Hi, Martin, it's Liz."
"Hello. How are you?"
"I'm okay. The kids are out on their lunch break so I thought I'd call, since I didn't yesterday. I wanted to apologise. It was childish of me to think that as long as I called it friendship that's all it would be and I'm really sorry."
"I think we just had different intentions. I suppose you did tell me it was 'as friends'." Martin said. "But you know, I was thinking about it yesterday and Manchester really isn't that far away, so-"
"Martin, no, we can't. It wouldn't be fair on either of us to get into something now. I don't think either of us need the stress."
"I suppose not."
"We'll keep in touch though, won't we? I'd hate it if we couldn't be friends."
"Of course." Martin said, though he didn't really mean it. He assumed it would die off naturally now, in its own time. It was a shame though. "I hope you like Manchester."
They chatted civilly for a while, even the awkwardness starting to fade slightly as they went on, because that was what adults did. Still, the call was brief and when Liz rung off to get back to her class, it seemed to Martin that neither of them had said what they really wanted to.
oooooooooo
An exhaustive search of the MJN Air office had not revealed anything vaguely resembling the First Officer's long-neglected log book, and so the search had moved to Gerti's various lockers and storage compartments. It was probably a good place to check, as it had been Martin's stashing place of choice and perhaps he had put Douglas' with his. Douglas had hoped Martin had left his behind and he could just copy the relevant details, but alas, it wasn't to be. Martin's log book had disappeared entirely, probably gone home with the captain. Douglas' was tucked neatly onto the left hand side of the very top shelf in the locker, looking remarkably unsullied and pristine after years of neglect. Arthur, balancing awkwardly on a stool, found it and handed it down to Douglas. Douglas flipped through.
"This isn't mine." He said. "That's Martin's writing, it must be his." As he said so, he reached the front pages, where the writing abruptly changed to his own hand, and the entries became far less frequent and thorough. Douglas checked the front. It had his name on it. He went back to the later pages. It was an entry for the last flight he had done with Martin, the one where he had fallen asleep on the way home. "Oh."
"What?" Arthur asked.
"It's complete. Martin's been filling it in. He must have done it in mine instead of his by accident. Still, it's convenient for me." Douglas turned to an entry at random and started reading it, and as he did so, the slow realisation came upon him that this was no accident. Each page was completed with Martin's meticulous accuracy, but with Douglas' records, his landings, his take offs, his load sheets. Even the section for additional comments had been completed with remarks about the quality of the flight, things to watch out for or to be noted, and plenty of praise for his esteemed captain who he was so lucky to be flying with. Douglas didn't mind. As far as he was concerned at that moment Martin could have written whatever he liked and it wouldn't have mattered. All Douglas had to do was sign the pages, and his book would be as legally required. "Oh. It appears it wasn't an accident." He wasn't sure what else to say.
"Oh, Douglas." Arthur said in quiet awe. "Skip was really worried, after our last course. He said you were one strike away from losing your pilot's license. He must have…"
"Yes." Douglas said. He put the book carefully into his pocket and turned to leave. "Alright, Arthur, you win. Let's go and get our Captain back."
"Hooray!" Arthur cheered. "Oh, but what about his girlfriend and new house and…?"
"Ask yourself, are any of those things on an aeroplane?"
"No."
"Exactly. Now, Arthur, I suggest we both go and get changed."
"Why? We don't have a flight."
"No." Douglas agreed, taking his hat from where he had left it on the co-pilot's chair. "But some things are best done in uniform."