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by the rain like the skin from a white skull. Is my sickness mine, or do we all suffer?
    Once the airfield was a Mecca for children. I and JohnnySpragg used to climb the escarpment towards the edge, our feet bent sideways by the slope as we tacked up to get our breath again. There was a grassy ditch at the top, one of those sprawling relics that are smoothed into the downs at every few miles from coast to coast. The wire ran along the farther lip and we could lie side by side, among the scabious, the yellow cowslips and purple thistles; we could watch all the tiny crawling and flying things in the tall grass and wait for the planes to buzz out over us. Johnny was a great sage in this. He had that capacity which many small boys have—but not I—of absorbing highly technical knowledge through the pores of his skin. He had no access to the appropriate publications but he knew every plane that came within sight. He knew how to fly almost, I think, before he could read properly. He understood how the planes sat in the air, had an instinctive, a loving grasp of the balanced, invisible forces that kept them where they were. He was dark, chunky, active and cheerful. He was absorbed. If the planes were high up, not just circling and landing, he liked us to lie on our backs to watch them. I think that gave him some sort of sense of being up there with them. I guess now, with my adult sympathy, that he felt he was turning his back on the immobile earth and sharing the lucid chasms, free heights of light and air.
    “That’s the old DH. They went all the way to​—somewhere—in one like that.”
    “He’s going into a cloud.”
    “No. Too low. There’s that Moth again.”
    Johnny was an expert. He knew things that still astonish me. We were watching a little plane once that was hanging half a mile over the town in the valley when Johnny shouted.
    “Look, he’s going to spin!”
    I made jeering noises but Johnny hit out sideways with his fist.
    “Watch!”
    The plane flicked over, nose down and spun, flick, flick, flick. It stopped turning, the nose came up, it flew sedately over us, the sequences of engine noises following each manœuvre a second or two later.
    “That’s an Avro Avian. They can’t spin more than three times.”
    “Why?”
    “Couldn’t come out.”
    But for most of the time we watched the planes taking off and landing. If we followed the ditch and turned the corner at the shoulder of the hill we could see them from the side for the prevailing wind blew to the hill across the town. They were an enchantment to Johnny and the figures that climbed out of them, gods. I caught a little of his enthusiasm and became fairly knowledgeable. I knew that a plane should touch down with both wheels and the skid at the same time. This was fun, because very often the gods would err and the plane land twice in fifty yards. These occasions filled me with excitement but they hurt Johnny. He felt, I think, that each time a plane was strained, or a strut in the landing gear buckled, his chances of learning to fly when he was old enough were lessened. So part of our duty was to identify the planes and note when they were out of the hangars, serviced again, and flying. As far as I can remember, there was always at least one of the half a dozen off the air, being mended. I was not very interested but watched obediently; for in some ways I gave Johnny the devotion that Ihad once given Evie. He was very complete. If there was no flying we would be off along the downs, in the rain and wind, Johnny most of the time with his arms held out as wings.
    One day it hardly seemed worth climbing the hill for we could only just see the top. But Johnny said to go and we went. That must have been in some Easter holiday. The early afternoon had not been so bad—windy but clear enough—but now the rain and mist were sweeping right through the valley. The wind pushed us up the hill and the rain searched us out. If we turned for a moment our