‘No,’ I said. ‘What about him?’ Frank had never made any secret of his hope that his son would find a place in the Diplomatic Service. He’d prepared the ground well in advance. So when the boy came down from Cambridge with the declared intention of getting a commercial pilot’s licence, Frank still didn’t take it too seriously. It was only after he’d seen him flying the routes for a few years that Frank reluctantly faced the fact that his son was going to live a life of his own.
‘Failed his medical.’
‘Frank, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes, for an airline pilot that’s a sentence of death. He said that to me on the phone. “It’s a sentence of death, Dad.” Until that very moment I don’t think I understood what that damned flying job meant to him.’ Frank wet his lips nervously; I knew that I was the first person to whom he’d confided his true feelings. ‘Flying. It must be so boring. So repetitious.’ This was of course exactly the superior attitude that his son had so resented, and which had created the unsurmountable barrier between them. ‘Not much of a job for a fellow with a good degree, I would have thought.’ He looked at me quizzically and then realized that I didn’t have a college degree of any kind.
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