Chapter Twenty Four
Tales Of The Arabian Nights
It was young Max who saw it first.
"Potez Fünfundzwanzig !" he yelled excitedly, none too gently grabbing Saiorse's arm and jabbing his finger several times towards the carriage window.
"What on earth..." began Saiorse; then stopped what she was about to say as she saw Aunt Edith smile happily at her son, tousle his hair, turn her head towards the window, as Max grinned broadly back at his mother.
"Potez Fünfundzwanzig!" he repeated just as enthusiastically.
Laying aside her book, Edith nodded her head seemingly in agreement. A moment later, outside in the corridor there came the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps followed immediately in turn by a hurried series of equally rapid knocks on their compartment door. Saiorse whirled about as without further ado the door swung open and Danny and Robert burst into the room, trailed in their wake by both Simon and Bobby.
"Have you seen it, sis? Have you seen it?" asked Danny running breathlessly into the compartment.
"Seen what?" asked Saiorse singularly dismissive and not at all pleased that both her brothers and her English cousins had seen fit to barge in and intrude into what she had come to regard, even in the short space of time which they had been on the train, as something akin to her own private domain.
"Out there! Look sis! Look!" Danny now pointed just as eagerly as Max had done out beyond the window of the carriage. Behind him Simon and Bobby were jumping up and down.
"Look, look!" yelled Bobby excitedly before bouncing down on the seat between his sister and his aunt.
"Bobby! For goodness' sake! Be more careful! You know poor Max has a bad leg, so don't you go knocking him" reprimanded Saiorse sharply. Crestfallen, Bobby flushed red while Edith shot a fond glance at her niece.
"Thank you darling" she said softly.
"Potez Fünfundzwanzig " repeated Max and once more pointed his finger in the same direction as before.
This time Saiorse followed the line of both her brother's and Max's fingers to where they were pointing and saw, catching the light from the rays of the setting sun, a buff-coloured aeroplane flying low, skimming over the tops of the passing trees, keeping pace with their train. Sitting, one behind the other, in the two open cockpits, the pilot and his passenger were clearly visible to them all.
"Oh, is that all?" asked Saiorse in the most blasé of tones.
"C'mon sis. It's absolutely ripping!"
"Absolutely ripping" mimicked Saiorse sarcastically. "And just who did you learn that off, Mr. La-di-da himself I suppose?" Saiorse scowled angrily at Robert, who promptly stuck out his tongue at her. Fortunately for both, their Aunt Edith was far too busy ensuring that young Max was all right either to hear or even notice their bad behaviour.
Outside, beyond the magnificent dark blue, gilded carriages of the Rome Express, but moments later the small plane banked heavily south eastwards, away from the speeding train, before climbing steeply, and afterwards was lost to sight in a whirling mass of white clouds. Not of course that at the time any of them knew it, after all how could they, but the small plane they had glimpsed had taken off but a short while ago from the airport at Le Bourget on the north side of Paris, was bound for a remote airstrip in the foothills of the Alps, where a motorcar was already waiting to take the two male occupants of the aeroplane direct to the railway station in Aix-les-Bains to be there in time for an early morning rendezvous with the Rome Express.
Back on board the train, Robert and Danny continued to wax lyrical about what they had just seen.
"Wasn't that absolutely spiffing?" asked Robert excitedly.
"I'd love to learn how to fly" said Danny with his nose pressed hard against the glass of the carriage window and gazing wistfully at the rapidly vanishing vapour trail.
Saiorse raised her eyes to the ceiling.
"It isn't really that difficult, once you've mastered all the controls, but then you see I had a very good teacher. Up there above the clouds, looking down upon the world below, laid out like a map before you, why it's absolutely wonderful".
"You... know how... to fly?" asked Danny incredulously, turning away from the window to stand in awed contemplation of his aunt.
"Really?" asked Robert.
Of course Danny had heard his Da and Ma talk at length about Aunt Edith's archaeological expeditions, and Robert had heard his father and mother hold forth on the same subject at Downton, the latter somewhat derisively, but this was something that neither of the two elder boys, let alone the two younger had either known or indeed suspected. For all that Danny's much-loved Da was Deputy Editor of the Irish Independent, his Ma matron of a women's hospital in far distant Dublin and Robert's father and mother an English earl and his countess all that paled into insignificance compared to this startling new revelation.
The boys were completely enthralled. Danny moved from the window and along with Robert and Simon dropped to the floor, there to sit cross-legged at their aunt's feet, all three gazing up at her in awestruck amazement.
Edith nodded her head enthusiastically.
"Why, yes of course I do boys. Is that really so very surprising?"
"Well, er..." began Robert.
"Well, er, what?" asked Edith her eyes now alight with amusement.
"Well, you're a..." began Simon who like his elder brother before now fell silent.
"I'm a what?" laughed Edith.
"You're a lady" completed Robert shamefaced.
"How very observant of you, Robert Crawley. Yes, I am indeed a lady. And you think ladies can't learn how to fly? Have neither of you ever heard of Miss Amelia Earhart? She was an American... and the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, which she did just under four years ago, in the summer of 1928".
"No, it's not that. It's just that Mama..." began Robert. He blushed, paused. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn't tell Aunt Edith his mother's personal opinion of lady aviators. Instead Robert now looked beseechingly at Danny, seeking his support.
"Ma says girls... I mean ladies..." Danny also blushed red, ducked his head endearingly, which immediately reminded Edith of Tom.
"And just what does Syb... your Ma say?" persisted Edith.
"That girls can do anything that boys can do" piped Bobby enthusiastically.
"That's just what I would have expected your Ma to say!" Edith smiled broadly at the little boy and hugged him to her.
"Really?" Bobby beamed happily. From her tone he thought he could tell that his aunt loved his Ma nearly as much as he did.
"Yes, really!" Edith laughed at her little Irish nephew's open-mouthed incredulity.
"But why... why did you want to learn how to fly, Aunt Edith?" asked Robert now recovering somewhat from his earlier embarrassment.
"Well, some of the digs I work on are in Egypt or Mesopotamia, in very remote places, far out in the desert. It's really the only practical way one can reach them".
"So who was it who taught you how to fly then?" asked Simon.
"Your... your uncle... Friedrich... Max's father. During the war he was a pilot, with the Austro-Hungarian Air Force".
At that, Edith delved deeply into her handbag, drew out, and then searched through the same clutch of photographs which she had shown first to both Mary and Sybil in the salle d'attente back in Calais.
"Here. This... this is Max's father. It was taken, several years before we met, during the war".
Edith handed the photograph, the one showing Friedrich in his pilot's uniform standing by the aeroplane with the large skull painted on its fuselage, over to her nephews for their joint inspection. For several minutes the four boys pored minutely over the grainy sepia-coloured photograph; that done, almost in awe, certainly very reverently, Danny and Robert handed the photograph back to their aunt. They had not suspected any of this either.
"Mein Vater... my father". Max nodded his head. "Albatros D. III" he added pointing to the aeroplane. Max grinned happily at both Danny and Robert. "He was ..." Here the boy paused, looked questioningly across at his mother. Edith shook her head, unsure of what it was Max was trying to impart to her four nephews.
"Ein Jagdflieger" concluded Max proudly.
For a moment Danny, Robert, Simon and young Bobby looked uncomprehendingly at their Austrian cousin.
"Pardon?" asked Robert politely.
"A fighter ace" explained Edith quietly settling back in her seat.
Despite their aunt's explanation, clearly none the wiser, Simon and young Bobby exchanged bemused glances, shrugged their shoulders, hands open, palms upwards.
"An ace? Really? You mean... like... like von Richthofen?" asked Danny with obvious enthusiasm.
"The Red Baron?" asked Robert, his eyes lighting in equal boyish epiphany.
After all, who had not heard of Manfred von Richthofen, the top ace of the Great War, credited with some eighty victories against British and French pilots in the skies over the Western Front? Well, apparently neither Simon nor young Bobby, both of whom, once again, shrugged their shoulders in utter bewilderment.
Not so Max.
"Von Richthofen? Nur so" he said with a broad grin, nodding his head.
Both Danny and Robert were clearly very much impressed, even if Simon and Bobby didn't quite understand what all the fuss was about. Of course, neither did Saiorse who now sought to steer the conversation away from aeroplanes, in which she had no interest whatsoever, the more because Robert undoubtedly did, and in the direction of something in which Saiorse herself did. So, despite her earlier lack of interest in the subject, Saiorse now asked Aunt Edith to tell them all about some of the places she had visited recently in the course of her archaeological excavations.
Not, of course, that Saiorse put it quite like that.
"What's it like... I mean when you're doing your digging?" she asked.
Edith smiled at Saiorse, saw around her the sea of eager, expectant faces and, at the same time, realised that outside it had suddenly begun to grow dark.
"Well darling, if you'd be so good as to switch on the lamps, then I'll do my very best to explain". Saiorse nodded, did as she had been bidden and then sat back down next to her aunt.
Realising, of course, that none of the children would be especially interested in what dearest Mary so disparagingly termed her "old relics" Edith chose instead to tell them of some of the people she had met in the course of her many travels, of their beliefs, their customs, and their dress.
She told of her encounter with Colonel T. E. Lawrence, better known to all the world as Lawrence of Arabia, and of her meeting in Baghdad with King Feisal of Iraq; of ruined temples and of the pyramids; of sudden sandstorms, mirages and treacherous quick sands; of the utter emptiness and vastness of the desert; of lush, well-watered, palm fringed oases and of black tented Bedouin encampments, of the richly carpeted, coloured interiors of the tents and of the creak of the guy ropes and poles at night; of long trains of heavily laden camels and vast herds of goats and sheep, of the camaraderie of camp fires and sleeping out under the stars; of the breath-taking, wonderful treasures discovered in the Valley of the Kings, in the tomb of the boy pharaoh, Tutankhamun.
While Edith continued speaking, all the children sat in silence, spellbound by the images their aunt now conjured up before them here in the cosy, lamp lit splendour of her wood panelled compartment aboard the Rome Express as it sped southwards towards Laroche.
Then, quite suddenly, she sensed that, other than those of the children someone else's eyes were upon her; was hanging on her every word. Immediately, she stopped what she was saying. Glancing up, she saw there was a man standing in the still open doorway to her compartment. How long he had been standing there, Edith never knew, but, upon seeing who it was, she smiled warmly in his direction.
His blue eyes sparking with mirth, jacketless, with his waistcoat unbuttoned, his shirt sleeves rolled up revealing his broad, muscular forearms, Tom was leaning nonchalantly against the door frame.
"Scheherazade" he said softly.
Author's Note:
Designed during the 1920s, the Potez 25, of which there were several variants, was a French, twin-seat, single engine biplane, and used in a variety of roles, including by private operators.
At the time, Le Bourget, on the north side of Paris was the airport of the French capital.
Scheherazade is of course the legendary Persian queen and storyteller of the Arabian Nights and for whom not surprisingly I have a very great deal of admiration!