Wrapped like something precious, a bundle that might shatter, the feverish child was taken from her bed and driven to the airfield. Not quite seven years old, she thinks. All the details are still there, vividly so. The emphasis in her voice when I question her. 'The back seat was round, like a bucket.' Arms thrown wide - 'so' - as she enfolds an imagined space. No smell of fuel in the cockpit. The leathery closeness of a borrowed coat. The plane lurches into the air, wind pushing against the perspex bubble.
Anna frowns, the sequence of events is vague. It was so long ago. She is careful not to betray her own memories or the memories of those who were with her.
Three children, Anna the eldest. Her brothers, William and Robert. They were born, one after the other, at yearly intervals. And they were all sick: whooping cough. Has it gone out of fashion? Not much in evidence when our own children were young, but making a comeback, I'm sure. The name fits the period: postwar. National Health Service ready with corked medicine-bottles of sweet orange juice, a sticky spoon of Radio Malt, liberty bodices, kaolin poultices for mumps (cooked and hot). Nasty business, whooping cough, acutely contagious. Bouts of paroxysmal coughing followed by the involuntary drag and scrape of breath (the whoop): a feeling of helplessness on the part of parents, listening from another room, or fussing at the bedside.
Mr Geoffrey Hadman, industrial chemist, lateral-thinking businessman, occasional artist, had a theory: on everything. Assembly-line chickens in a shed at the bottom of the garden. Indoor mushroom plantations. Asbestos insulation. A central heating system that, like the footballer Martin Peters, was years ahead of its time. Outboard motors were tested (and failed) on the deeps of Ullswater. Money-making schemes of great ingenuity (and lethal consequence) imported Fenland self-sufficiency into the refined suburbs of Blackpool. A gardener from the works took care of the lawn and tennis court. Works' plumbers installed car radiators throughout the house. Copper pipes, heated from a coal-fired stove, passed through the children's bedrooms.
Anna woke to a 'sweet smell' and had the wit to rouse her father. Who sprung from his bed. 'Robert was nearly dead.' Fumes. Father, faced blackened, was not discouraged: teething faults, nothing wrong with the theory. Pipes were re-routed to an exterior wall. 'The house was still freezing.'
Two of the coughing children, William beside his father, Anna in the green leather seat at the rear, were placed in the Auster. Squire's Gate Aerodrome, Blackpool. Or they might have been taken up one at a time. Mother waiting in the clubhouse. The idea was: altitude. Fly as high over the sea as the small plane would go. Relieve pressure on the lungs. Relieve? Some version of the bends, knowingly induced? A struggle for breath to punish infection? There is a primitive magic to it, energetically homoeopathic. Let the bacteria in the air passages fight for life. The shock, looking down on white-capped waves, would kill or cure.
Austers were most frequently used in aerial surveys, for reconnaissance; skimming telegraph wires, hedge-hopping. I've seen photographs in reference books. I've seen Austers, blue-painted, dressing Miss Marple costume dramas, swooping over Gothic turrets; ex-Battle of Britain chap, goggled, flinging open the door, hopping out in time for the final act. (The slightly blunted young blade fulfilling this function in the TV adaptation of 4.50 from Paddington was David Beames. An actor who played the lead in Chris Petit's first feature, Radio On, and never quite recovered.) I've seen larger planes, assembled from kit, hanging in juvenile bedrooms.
The adventures of childhood seem reasonable at the time. Somebody is in charge, this is how they behave; we lived to tell the tale. An Auster, co-owned in the era of photo albums featuring motorbikes (racing circuits, golf courses, ski slopes, punts, picnics), is itself a statement. Another theory: of private enterprise, freedom to travel, faith in the machine (cavalier disregard for diminishing fossil fuel reserves). Pipes, cigarettes, cigars. Hats, furs, car coats. German cameras to record (and retain) English scenes. Memory is competitive, siblings play back the same events in different ways.