G-Force

Far below, the sea sparkled back up at the clear blue sky within which she was perched.  Perched like a captive bird in a cacophonous hurtling cage that reeked of oil and stale tobacco.  The fabled white cliffs of Dover were looming ever closer, until she could see the very texture of the rock face, and the abundance of small shrubs.  Gasping aloud, she turned to appraise the intention of the figure beside her.  There was a demented gleam in his eye as the tiny engine screamed in harmony with her, as they all shot straight up and over and back into a barrel roll. Her entire body assumed the weighty fluidity of mercury as it responded for the first time in her life to the forces of gravitation. Her jaw hung ponderously open, her eyelids drooped, her limbs became useless leaden lumps. Her companion whooped and wheezed through the few moments of this seemingly endless ordeal, and then the sea and the sky assumed their normal positions, the engine resumed its guttural purr and they were cruising over the rolling Downs.  But before she could utter a response to the experience, they were rolling and tumbling yet again and then again. She was halfway through her first flying lesson.

She fleetingly recalled old Mr Wren, the shy and wispy character who came around once a year to tune the family piano. Her mother would instal him and his little toolbox in the front room with tea and a cluster of custard creams. For the next hour the small house would endure the monotonous pursuit of harmony, until the welcome silence when he replaced the panels and packed away his tools. That was the cue for the family to huddle in the small hall, whilst for a precise five minutes, a rich medley of Strauss and Vivaldi and Hollywood would adorn their bland suburban home. Presumably flying instructors had a similar urge to embellish their dull livelihoods by flaunting their talents at every opportunity.

Her boyfriend, being thoughtful and generous, had booked her onto a course of flying lessons. He rather hoped it would cheer her up from the weight of anger and humiliation she was currently carrying.  The anger of having had to abandon a promising writing career in a major advertising company on account of recurrent manipulative and humiliating sexual harassment.  So on this bright autumn Sunday, she had signed up in the dingy administrative corner of a cluttered corrugated hut, where the walls were plastered with nicotine glazed photographs of the brave men and machines of the Battle of Britain.  Today’s mechanics and pilots lolled around in a Woodbine haze, talking Biggles talk.  A leggy female amongst the keen cluster of pupils was no distraction in this leathery men's world of grommets and props.

After a group safety session and a squeaky blackboard introduction to the basic principles of flight, the small group of jittery students were allocated instructors.  She was offered up to Wally, a chain-smoking old-school air ace.  Tall and shambly, shy and endearingly grumpy, he led her out across the tarmac to introduce her to the tiny red and white aircraft that was about to transport her to a whole new dimension.  Inside it was blokey and smokey, with two seats, a bewilderment of dials and knobs and, it being a dual control machine, a pair of grubby joysticks.  When the little engine stumbled into life, it had all the cadence of her dad’s new lawnmower.  She was quivering with glee under her Snoopy Flying Ace T-shirt.

It took a while, if ever, to totally trust in the engineering principles that enabled them to stay aloft over the ensuing weekends, but after the shock and awe of that first lesson, she responded well to Wally’s intuitive guidance.  Once accustomed to his gruff clipped manner - perhaps exacerbated by retention of the ever-present dormant roll-up parked on his lip - she was surprised at how quickly she came to trust in both him and the tiny engine.  With time, she mastered the sensitive skill of keeping it straight and level, and thereby avoiding the heart-stopping stalls.  Next she had to overcome the terror of controlled stalls and spinning, learning the subtlety of coaxing the little engine to please re-awake, though she still felt the need to invest in the occasional silent prayer.  Before long, she even began to anticipate and enjoy the thrills and spills of Wally’s acrobatic epilogues.

The most essential skills for any pilot are of course take-off and landing, which are taught and practised multiple times from the very first lesson. She quickly impressed Wally with her mastery of take-offs, but landings were more challenging.  So many calculations and manoeuvres are involved, not least the variability of weather conditions.  And as every air passenger knows, a good landing is sweet, but there are many permutations between acceptable and fatal.  Towards the end of her course, they practised more frequent dually controlled landings.  Finally, at the end of her penultimate lesson, she was due to perform her first solitary landing, to be followed up by three more in her final session to qualify for the coveted prize of a solo flight. 

The penultimate was the best lesson yet, and she could tell that she had pleased the master, as he was less grumpy than usual, and she’d even made him laugh out loud at some silly observation.  She found herself grinning broadly as they approached the cliffs prior to the home run. They rose up and rolled over, while the now familiar g-forces kicked in, but it was at this point that the strangest thing happened.  Wally began to sing a sort of tuneless bass fa-la-la-la-la, whilst (being accustomed to G-forces) he turned towards her, as they tumbled through the skies, his leathery hands outstretched. Then he performed a brief and utterly random grabby manoeuvre across her chest, his hands rasping across the coarse cloth of her baggy flight overall.  Her jaw was already in the customary slack mode, her arms incapable of slap, but she felt her eyes spin with disbelief, and her heart pound with fear and fury, as she snarled a scream, whereupon he briskly returned to the controls, muttering a gruffly perfunctory apology.  Normal flight was seamlessly resumed, and apart from a noticeable increase in his wheeziness, they both sat in silent disbelief all the way back to base, where she firmly declined to take over the landing controls.  She recognised that beneath the mix of betrayal, shock and fury generated by this surreal overture, beyond the scorn and disgust, was a tiny glimmer of profound pity for this pathetic un-evolved wretch of a man.

When she climbed down from the cockpit, her legs suddenly turned to jelly.  As she stumbled, he caught her arm to steady her, and intently studying the ground, he muttered ’’Forgive me, I was just so frightfully proud of you”.

Her father had taught her well to physically defend herself, but by the age of 23, hard experience had taught her - as for most women - that official protestations were not only in vain, but that they invariably backfired when they encountered the impenetrable walls of patronising patriarchal denial. She had to trust that her dignified delivery of cold and dismissive disdain would suffice to be an enduring sentence of shame and retribution.

She never returned, but she so damn near flew solo.

 

This is a twentieth century tale. Throughout history, most women (and some men) have plenty of sordid tales of their own - tales about the shameful abuse of power. At least we talk about it now. Yet in 2021, a World Health Organisation report found that nearly one in three women worldwide is subjected to physical or sexual violence during their lifetime - an issue that ties in with women’s economic opportunities, access to education and reproductive rights. It would seem we still have a long way to go. We must all continue to honour and celebrate International Women’s Day every March 8th.

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