"Robertson-WendyDarling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

Wendy was wildly exhilarated. "Now let me do a takeoff."

"Too risky," Ryan told her, doing his utmost to take advantage of her
exhilaration, though there is only so much advantage to be had in an open field
from an excited female wearing a full-length dress, layers of petticoats, and a
leather flight jacket.

She jerked his hands out of her jacket. "Teach me to take off, or I'll find a
flier who will."

"Gawd, you're the one with no scruples."

"Can't afford 'em."

He let her take off. She saw sunset from the air, a rim of fire sinking into
black cloud banks. Darkness spread over the earth. Wendy imagined she hung alone
under the first evening stars -- with Neverland below. A rattling taxi took her
back to Canterbury.

For more than a week she stole flights. Ryan called her a born pilot, but it was
really all that flying with Peter. She found herself hoping the Good Old Gothas
would return -- before Fifty-sixth Squadron was sent back to the front. Two days
shy of the deadline, she saw the squadron scrambled. Men raced for their planes.
SE5s roared into the air. But the Wong-wongs disappointed everyone, barely
crossing the coast to bomb Felixstowe Naval Air Station, breaking windows in
Harwich and slaughtering a flock of sheep. None of the pilots scrambled in Kent
so much as saw a bomber.

On Ryan's last night she took him to London. The Bloody RFC did not let its
fliers dance in public, but Wendy discovered a club in Kensington that flouted
the law, supplying fliers with drinks, music, and a dance floor. Red-coated old
doormen, smiling hostesses, and a Black jazz band conspired to give airmen on
leave a good time-- couples swayed illegally around the dance floor to
sentimental favorites and ragtime. The club's motto hung above the bar: Work
Like Hellen B. Mary.

She spent half the night drifting with the rhythm, her head on Ryan's shoulder.
Then they took a turn standing on the roof walk, a narrow sooty platform looking
over chimney tops onto the lights of Kensington Gardens, where Peter first ran
off to be with the faeries. For Peter's sake she had tried to avoid growing
pains, but now she was putting childhood behind her. At twenty-two it was not
before time. Feeling a sudden urge to say what she liked, she whispered to Ryan,
"Don't go. Stay here. Keep teaching me to fly."

"Afraid the Huns will shoot me down?"

She nodded.

"They might. But if I don't go, the RFC surely will. Refusin' ta fight is
business for a firing squad. I don't fancy standing with my hands tied and a