Free Round the Bend by Nevil Shute Page A

staring at me. Then Ford said, “Are these natives?”
    “That’s right,” I said. “The pilot’s a Sikh. The boy’s an Arab.”
    “Oh. Would you propose that this native pilot should fly the Airtruck?”
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “We’d have to think about that one, if you’re going to want credit terms on the sale. We should have an interest in the machine.”
    “Think all you like,” I said, “so long as you do it quick. This Sikh I’ve got is an ex-officer of the Royal Indian Air Force, and he’s done over three hundred hours on Hurricanes without an accident, much of it operational flying. If your Airtruck’s so bloody difficult to fly that he’s not safe on it, I don’t know that we can go any further.”
    Ford laughed. “You know I don’t mean that. Anybody couldfly an Airtruck. The proposal to employ a native pilot is a bit of a novelty, you know.”
    I shrugged my shoulders. “You’ve got to go on the record. If he’s got a record of safe flying and if he’s got a B licence, that’s good enough for me.”
    “I suppose so. If the business grows, would you propose to employ more than one?”
    “I’ll answer that in six months’ time,” I said. “If Gujar Singh is the success I think he will be, he’ll be the chief pilot, under me. In that case, any other pilots I take on may very well be Sikhs. I don’t see that there’d be any place in a set-up like that for British pilots at a thousand a year.”
    Taverner asked, “What about the ground staff? Would you use Asiatic ground engineers for your maintenance?”
    “I don’t know,” I said frankly. “That’s much more difficult than the pilots. I’m fully licensed as a ground engineer myself, A, B, C, and D. I can use Asiatic labour for a time, under my supervision. Then we’ll have to see. But I think by the time. I need them Asiatics will turn up. I had some working under me in Egypt during the war. They were all right.”
    Harry Ford laughed. “You’re planning an air service staffed entirely by Wogs!”
    I was a bit angry at that. “I call them Asiatics,” I replied. “If you want to sell an Airtruck you can quit calling my staff Wogs.”
    “No offence meant, Mr. Cutter,” he said. “One uses these slang phrases.… I take it that the point you’re making is that by the use of native staff you can reduce your overheads to the point when you can bear the hire purchase cost of eighty per cent of an Airtruck spread over a year.”
    I nodded. “That’s right. I can pay off the aircraft in a year, and still make money.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t want you to think that a native staff is solely a question of money,” I said slowly. “If I extend my operations, it will be in the direction of India, not towards Europe. Europe’s crowded out with charter operators already, all going broke together. There’s more scope for charter work as you go east. If I develop eastwards, then by using Asiatic pilots and ground engineers exclusively, I shall beusing the people of the countries that I want to do business with. That’s bound to make things easier.”
    Taverner chipped in then, and we went over my prospective overheads in the light of the payments I would have to make for Asiatic staff, and the sum naturally came out a good bit better. They left me then to go off and have a talk about it by themselves, and when they came back they said, fifteen hundred down and the machine was mine. I stuck my heels in and refused to pay a penny more than twelve hundred, and when I left the works that evening the machine was mine for delivery in about ten days, subject to the completion of all the formalities.
    I went to Southampton that night, and got home at about nine o’clock. There was no telephone at home, of course; I’d sent a telegram from the works to say that I was coming, but it was nearly six o’clock when we telephoned it and after delivery hours, so Ma hadn’t got it. I walked in at the street door and