Around the Rowan Tree, Day 54

Early one bright summer morning Henry announced to me: “Today the air is like silk. I think I’ll have a flight”.

There were many qualities in Henry that I liked and admired. His total honesty was one of them and he lacked any sort of pretension. Like me he had never any wish to keep up with the Joneses. If he wanted something it was for its own sake. He also had a sense of adventure which he had never lost. If there was a boring road to take or an exciting one he would always take the exciting one which matched my wishes too.

When we were married, Henry had one great passion that I wasn’t altogether aware of. He liked flying and particularly in a microlite.

For the past few years he had been flying in one belonging to a friend. He had done quite a bit of flying himself.

According to Henry it was the most wonderful sport in the world, a sport for kings. “Isn’t it dangerous?” I asked. “Not at all,” he would say. “Not if you watch what you are doing and choose the right weather to go up in.”

According to Henry every other kind of flying was more dangerous. I wasn’t altogether convinced but when the chance to buy a second hand microlite came up, I encouraged him to get it, despite my foreboding.

At the time there was very little else he wanted out of life. I just loved to see him happy.

Expert “Until I’m really expert at it,” he said, “I’ll only fly over the farm.” I worried about the jets that sometimes came screaming over but Henry assured me he wouldn’t be high enough to get in their way.

I had never seen a microlite before nor had anyone in the district. On his first flight I couldn’t help thinking what a strange and beautiful thing it was.

With its wide triangular wings it looked more like some great prehistoric bird than a modern-day aeroplane. Henry dangled beneath it like some prey caught in its claws.

It was much watched for and remarked upon by everyone around. To begin with I enjoyed watching him and then one day in late summer, a day of blue skies over the Carse but with a bit of an autumnal breeze, Henry took off from the twice shorn hay field that he called the airfield.

A fresh gust of wind caught the microlite before it had gained its usual height. Suddenly it took on a life of its own, twisted round and plummeted back to earth and looked as though it was ploughing up the burned down shaws of the tattie field before it came to a halt.

Brother-in-law John was with me at the time. It was so like something out of a Laurel and Hardy film that he couldn’t help laughing.

He had an infectious laugh and I couldn’t help laughing either, although running towards Henry, I had fear in my heart.

He was perfectly all right. Much more concerned about the broken bits in the microlite than anything that might have happened to himself.

After that I was even more anxious and decided not to watch. When I knew he was flying, I put one of the family on alert.

The boys liked to watch. “You should really come and look now,” Lindsay said to me one day. “Henry’s getting really good at it.” But I preferred not to.

One bright summer morning early Henry said to me: “Today the air is like silk. I think I’ll have a flight.”

Lindsay was around at the time, just about to do some disliked cultivating of the grain.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll get on with my typing for a while.” It didn’t seem 10 minutes since he had gone when I heard a commotion in the kitchen.

I hurried through to find Judith, Lindsay and Henry. I took one look at Henry.

Calm His left arm was at a most peculiar angle and bleeding. “I was coming round the corner in the truck when I saw it come down,” said Judith.

“We’ll need to take him straight to hospital because of the bleeding. I’ve put on a tourniquet so Lindsay can drive. I’ll go with him.”

Henry refused to go in anything but the truck. “I’ll make far too much mess of the car,” he said.

Although you could see he was in considerable pain he was remarkably calm about it all and in no time he was off in the two seater truck.

Judith jumped into the back. “DRI,” she shouted. “You can follow in the car.”

Before I left the farm road they were out of sight flying towards Dundee. I went flying off in the opposite direction.

I thought she had shouted PRI – Perth Royal Infirmary – the hospital we usually went to.

When I got there and rushed into casualty I could hardly believe they hadn’t arrived. “But they must have done,” I said.

“I saw them go, I didn’t pass them on the road. It’s my husband, he’s badly injured.”

“They’re not here,” said the girl at reception. “We haven’t had any casualties through these doors since six o’clock this morning. Are you sure it isn’t the DRI?”

Slowly it began to dawn, the possibility. “I’ll give them a phone,” the nurse said. “Yes, they’ve just had someone in with a badly injured arm. Said he fell off a ladder or something.”

“Fell off a ladder?” I asked, puzzled. Still, I wasn’t totally convinced but got in the car and hot pedalled it for Dundee.

I didn’t see him to begin with. He had been taken immediately into theatre. They were operating on him right away.

“He might have a badly damaged arm but he’ll be okay,” Judith assured me. “What happened?” I asked.

Unexpected She told me that an unexpected wind got up not long after take off. Henry hadn’t enough height when it happened. The microlite got out of control, came back to earth and as misfortune would have it, it hit about the only post left on Inchmichael.

Later I heard the rest. How Lindsay had flown into Dundee at about 100 miles an hour with Judith in the back, hair streaming in the wind.

“Don’t tell them about the microlite,” she said, “if you don’t want to risk headlines in the paper. Who knows? It might be a slow news day. Say you fell off a ladder.”

The doctors looked a bit sceptical at the explanation of such massive arm injuries but like all good doctors didn’t question further and accepted the explanation. “Some fall,” they said.

They took the greatest care of him. He was in the hospital for three weeks but when he came out things looked a lot healthier, although his arm took a long time to heal properly. One mystery remained.

“Whatever happened to my watch?” asked Henry. One day we went down to have a look at the dreaded culprit of a post. There was the watch embedded in the wood.

More tomorrow.