Butser Hill, 1978
For me, the South Downs have always been a space residing forever between the 1930s and 1950s: a land of flint tracks up long dry valleys where cob-walled farms gently decay into dewponds; a land of jam-jarring knee-deep in ice-clear riverlets of minnows and stream-grass; and of corrugated village garages that smell of engine oil and smithy-work; of steam-fairs, and the smoke of charcoal clamps drifting through woodland.
Beyond everything, the Downs are linked in my mind with the Spitfire. As a kid, I'd watch the last few original planes turn lazy corkscrews under the bright clouds, and even now there's always one to be heard gritting through the clear air over some tumulus-strewn hilltop. And so it seemed, in the heady days of the 1970s, only too reasonable that my father and I, perhaps after reading The Machine Gunners or searching for spent practice shells high on the local hillsides, would sit together and build a model Mk Vc.
This, note, was no quick Airfix model, but something that could easily have come straight from the Supermarine works, shrunk by some Fantastic Voyage technology and placed in our hands. The fuselage was of balsa wood, and of such complexity it must have been a direct copy of the original, while the wings were of tissue-paper, dubbed strong with the kind of toxic fluid only available to hobbyists in the 1970s, probably as some kind of secret government experiment on children. It had a solid wing-span of maybe two foot, and was designed to glide. It took us weeks, and, if the truth be known, I was largely carried along by my father's enthusiasm and skill.
Anyhow, one bright day in June we took the finished plane out to Butser Hill to give it its inaugural flight. The conditions were perfect: a light wind, and a few small cumulonimbus just starting to flower in the late-morning heat. We walked together to the top of the hill, passed the Post Office station with its tower of threatening shell-like dishes, and out to look north over the last of the Weald. As Chief Engineer I gave my dad the first go. He lifted the model to shoulder height, and with a silent nod to me, hefted it out over the slope.
Against all expectations, the thing flew. And not just flew, but soared. We had fully anticipated it would drop from the air in 30 feet at best, but instead it caught the unlikely thermals on the northern scarp of the hill, and lofted up 60 or 70 feet, where, with a clear view between the Downs and forever, it preceded to glide gently away from us, 100 yards, 500 yards, a mile, and off into the dream of England, where members of the Women's Institute solve village murders, badgers have copious stores of hot buttered teacakes, and small boys find magic Spitfire models lodged in apple blossom.
Who knows where that tiny receding dot ended its flight, if indeed it did, but it was hard to be upset. We had created a small miracle, taking up the spirit of the Downs and forging something that was, simultaneously, every Spitfire that had ever flown, as they flew. We had welded the welkin, one more time, to its eternal mythographic moment1,2.
18 June 1978
Notes:
1 We had the solid advantage in my dad being a glider pilot, some of which magic must have rubbed off. He recently, in his 70s, took up gliding once more, to the astonishment of the local glider school, who said his flight card contained the longest gap they'd ever seen.
2 The Downs always remind me of Kate Bush's "Oh England My Lionheart", a song for which I have a lot of affection. I believe Kate is now embarrassed by it, I assume because she maybe finds it unreflective and jingoistic, maybe even exclusionary, but I disagree. The myth of England can be held with delight while still being critical of the current nation, and was as much created by Polish pilots, Chinese Roses, and Scottish playwrights as the Anglo-Saxons, even in her song. It's there for anyone who needs it, like Fiddler's Green or the Land of Cockaigne, only with the added advantage that it sits right astride the geographical boundary between myth and reality. It's not the myth, but what you do with it that counts.