The Square Windows

A hangar of an aircraft research station in Hampshire in autumn, cool fluorescent light on a grey concrete floor, on wooden trestles a curved panel of airliner fuselage skin two and a half metres long with ragged edges, bare pale aluminium riveted over several frames, the skin plain and unmarked, two nearly square windows with rounded corners in dark frames side by side near its upper edge, fine dark cracks running from the window corners along the rivet lines, a narrow strip of dark blue paint along the lower edge, behind it sorted wreckage on the floor and a wooden scaffold, two hands with a magnifying glass following one crack.