"How do you feel now, Sandra?"

"Pretty good." I was surprised how calm I sounded.

"Not frightened?"

I thought about how to answer: "Yes, but I'm too busy looking around to think much about it."

His chuckle came through the earphones: "Good answer. OK, we'll turn around now and fly back over your husband. Give him a wave to let him know you're OK and then we'll head for Kilkenny Ponds."

The turn was indeed frightening, at first, with the wing dipping over and the pod skidding around. Then I forgot about it as we dived back over the Suzuki and Jeff and I exchanged waves. Then another turn, but not so stomach churning now I had some idea of what to expect.

Brett started singing over the intercom.

"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh. . . OK, Sandra, we'll go up higher now and follow the coast for a while. There's something on the other side of the next headland I saw just before I landed that might interest you."

When we went over the headland I looked down the sheer drop of a cliff face to where the sea was continually slapping against the land, and felt only curiosity at the odd feeling of looking down at birds flying, the stiff winged gulls whirling and turning along the cliff as if they were scraps of paper caught inside a willy-willy. Somehow it seemed that the height wasn't bothering me, which was the last thing I'd expected.

"There you are, Sandra, down on the right. That's something you don't see ever day, not even up here."

We were passing over the headland on the other side and where Brett was telling me to look was down in a corner of the sea between the cliffs and the beach. Something was moving in the shallow water, a shimmering cloud continually changing shape and flickering with sudden sparkles. Running in and out of the cloud were dark lean shapes which seemed to cut passages through it by their mere presence, the tiny individual slivers of silver which made up the cloud constantly closing ranks again behind the intruders as they moved on.

"What's happening down there, Brett?"

"It's sharks feeding off a school of sardines. Is school the right word for sardines? Or should it be a can of sardines?"

I laughed and he laughed with me.

"Hey, Sandra, check out that boat ahead."

There was a high topped cabin cruiser anchored off the beach, a kilometre or so ahead. I thought how odd it was that the crew should be so close to a bunch of sharks in a feeding frenzy and not even know about it, while we could see so much more merely by being a couple of hundred metres higher up. As it turned out, I soon saw more than I'd expected, because Brett put us into other turn over the boat, and kept on turning, so the left wingtip seemed to be pointing straight down at the deck while the boat looked as if it were slowly rotating underneath us. It was an expensive looking boat and a couple were lounging on sunchairs at the back. They looked expensive too, in their own ways, he with his big pot belly, her with her blonde hair and good figure. It was easy to see these things because neither of them had a stitch on. Not that it seemed to bother them. The man casually waved his hand to us without moving from his seat.

"I told you there was something interesting here," Brett said. "She's nice but I'll bet she doesn't look as half as good as you would stretched in the raw."

I decided not to respond to that remark. I saw the woman stand up and look up at us, a glass in one hand, the other one also waving.

"Oh, dear, she's drooping a bit now. What about the guy, what do you think about him?" Brett laughed: "A real hunk, hey?"

"He hasn't got anything I haven't seen lots of times before."

The man reached out his hand towards the woman's bottom and began stroking it.

"Yeah," Brett continued: "I think the lady with the natural blonde hair could say the same thing. I suppose we'd better leave them in peace now." The control bar flicked over to one side to bring us out of the turn and the boat was whirled away out of my vision.

"OK, Sandra we'll go along the beach for a couple more kilometres, climb a bit, then turn right. We'll be going along a valley with a lot of cleared land that's used for grazing cattle. I wouldn't want to be low over the forest if the engine suddenly quit for any reason. Even a trike needs a little bit of space to land in."

Trike - he'd used that word before. I supposed it was because of the three wheels underneath the pod. Again I could see more rocks, some of them sticking up out of the sea in streaks of white water, and then a small figure on a blue and white motorbike driving along the beach. The trike's nose twitched up, and when we passed over the motorbike it was dwindling in size as we climbed higher. So many times I'd heard bike riders talking about the wonderful feeling of the wind in their faces as they rode their machines and now I understood what they were talking about, but in a way that no earthbound rider could ever understand. Compared to a sky trike, a Harley-Davidson as a freedom machine was just a very efficient device for turning fuel into noise.

"Sandra, Eddie, says he'll be on his way in about ten minutes."

"What? What did you say, Brett?" I'd been staring down at the coastal highway and a queue of cars held up behind a slow moving semi-trailer.

"Well, to tell the truth, I have my mobile phone with me when I fly, plugged into the radio communications circuit. There was no point in trying it down on the beach, it wouldn't have worked any better than yours did. But we're fifteen kilometres closer to Kilkenny Ponds now and mobiles use line of sight radio waves, so the higher up you are the more range they have. I got through to Eddie first try and told him exactly where your husband is stuck."

"I didn't hear anything," I said. This all sounded pretty suspicious to me.

"No, I thought it would simplify matters if I cut you out of the circuit. Anyway, he said to tell you that he'd phone the hospital and let them know you wouldn't be coming in today - oh, yeah, and he said he'd make sure he set his VCR up to tape 'Red Dwarf' for Jeff in case they were late back."

I turned all this over in my mind. One thing was sure, Brett must indeed have talked to Eddie to know what Jeff's favourite TV comedy programme was. It certainly hadn't been mentioned on the beach. On the other hand: "Why would Eddie tell the hospital that I'm not coming to work today? We're going to Kilkenny Ponds, aren't we?"

"Oh, eventually, yes. In the meanwhile though I've told your friend that I've got an engine problem and I've got to land on the beach again."

I was bewildered: "Have you got a problem?"

"I don't have a problem in the world. I simply thought I'd spend some time feeling your tits. As fair payment for the ride, you might say."

"What!"

"What!" he mimicked me. "Well, what you do first is to put your hands up on the control bar. Then I'll put my right hand around underneath your right arm and grab your right tit."

"No way!"

"OK, Sandra, then I'll have to find another way of amusing myself."

The next second the wing tipped over onto one side and the pod went into a horrifying spiral which convulsed my hands into clutching claws on the seat handles as I screamed in terror. It was far, far worse than being on a roller coaster. Finally, at long last, Brett stopped throwing the plane around.

"Now, Sandra, before I ask you again, I'd like you to look up to where the support bars are attached to the wing. You see that bolt there? That's called the Jesus bolt, because that's what both of us will be screaming if it breaks and we drop off the wing. Now, which would you rather have, some more strain imposed on the Jesus bolt, or my fingers around your nipples?"

It was not a decision I had to spend a lot of time making: "I don't want the bolt to break." I said breathlessly.

"Fine. An excellent career move. Now put your hands on the control bar and sit quietly like a good girl."

I did as he wanted. Immediately his hand slipped around my body and touched the side of my right breast. It seemed to be as far as he could reach and it served him right - let him be as sick as a dog with frustration. I looked down at the pattern of fields and dirt roads below and practiced what I was going to say to the two timing shit once we were safely back on the ground.

"You know, you're the first girl I've had in that front seat who's got boobs so big I can't reach them properly from the back." Brett sounded proud of the fact. "I knew you were something special when I saw you from the air for the first time. I've just got to get my hands on them properly."

"Brett, I'm a married woman," I protested.

"That's OK, I'm not going to steal you from your husband, I'm just going to borrow you for a bit, like a library book. What the hell, you must have acquired a few dirty finger marks on your virginal white pages somewhere along the line by now."

"You're a real bastard, aren't you?"