Bluebirds (31 page)

‘It's very nice . . . you must miss them.'

‘You bet. But they write all the time – even Sal. You should see her letters . . . well, they're mostly drawin's. She draws pretty good for her age. How about you? Any brothers or sisters?'

‘No.'

‘Gee, that's too bad. Though maybe you like it better that way.'

She had always longed for a brother or sister – someone to talk to, and to share the burden of Mother – but it was not something she could discuss with a perfect stranger. She said nothing. The woman with the dog had disappeared and the old man had given up his vigil and was moving slowly away. She looked at her watch and stood up.

‘I'm awfully sorry, but I have to be getting back now.'

He got to his feet as well. ‘You haven't finished your root beer.'

‘I don't want any more – really. You have it.' She thrust the bottle into his hand.

‘I'll ride along with you – if that's OK.'

‘I'd sooner you didn't, if you don't mind.'

He shrugged. ‘OK, if that's what you want. Sure you'll be all right?'

‘Of course.'

‘Say, we're havin' a party at the camp Saturday. Will you come? Maybe some of the other Air Force girls, too? We'd pick you up and take you back.'

‘I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. I'll be on watch.'

‘Oh. Well maybe another time?'

She backed away towards her bike. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Maybe we could go out for another bike ride? See some more places round here?'

‘I'm rather busy. I don't often get time off.' She tripped over the edge of the kerb and grabbed hold of the handlebars. ‘I really must go now, or I'll be late. Thank you for the ginger beer. Goodbye.'

She left him standing there, a bottle in each hand, looking baffled and disappointed.

The language reaching Anne's ears over the R/T was incomprehensible – a garbled collection of sounds that it was impossible to unravel. Lofty snorted in disgust.

‘It's them bloody Poles, pardon my French. The ones just arrived. Half of 'em don't speak a word of English. They gabble away to each other in their lingo and keep leavin' their mikes switched on so no-one else can transmit. Blinkin' foreigners!'

Anne listened to a torrent of Polish coming through the air. It was not like any language she had ever heard and after the clipped RAF English it sounded extraordinary. The pilot suddenly broke into singing – a passionate rendering of some Polish song.

‘Bloody madmen!' Lofty said.

Anne laughed, amused. The Polish pilots, she discovered later, all spoke some kind of English, including
plenty of swear words that they used liberally in the air. They swore in French, too, and, presumably, in Polish. And they sang. Sometimes it was hard to understand their English over the R/T, or for them to understand her. She spoke comically slowly and clearly for their benefit but the answer would often come back, strongly accented:

‘Re-peat, plis. Re-peat, plis . . .'

Death no longer shocked in quite the way it had done when the sprog pilot had crashed in flames earlier in the year. Several pilots had been lost defending the convoys and Pearl's Dusty had been among those killed over Dunkirk in May. Pearl had cried a lot for him.

‘He was a bloody good bloke,' she had kept saying, wiping away streaming tears. ‘A bloody good bloke.'

Most of the original WAAFS had re-mustered to new trades and Pearl was now a parachute packer. She took a huge pride in her work. ‘If they have to jump out of the window, I make sure the flipping thing works.'

Anne was sad, but somehow not surprised, to receive a letter from the adjutant of Jimmy's squadron in Kent.

Dear Miss Cunningham, Sergeant Pilot Shaw left instructions that you were to be notified in the event of his death. I am writing, therefore, with great regret to inform you that he was killed in action two days ago . . .

She cried for poor, nice, shy Jimmy who had seemed to know that he would die. He'd been a pretty good bloke too. She went to her locker and found the envelope that he had given her addressed to his mother, with his wings inside. A promise was a promise and must be kept. When she went on leave she would take it to his home in Croydon.

George pricked up his ears. He had been lying quietly beside Felicity's desk while she was working on some papers and he suddenly lurched to his feet and cocked his head towards the door. There was a knock and it was flung wide. Speedy stood there, a piece of sticking plaster across his forehead. George scrabbled excitedly for the doorway.

‘Steady, old boy . . . down!
Down!'
He smiled at Felicity over the dog's head. ‘Well met by daylight, proud Titania.'

‘What! Brave flying officer . . .'

‘Flight lieutenant, actually.' He came into the room with George still capering around his legs like a puppy, and stuck out his arm to show the two rings on his sleeve.

‘Congratulations.'

‘Thanks. Bit of a fluke, really. They were getting short of bods. George, skip hence, for heaven's sake! I played Bottom once, you know – under the direction of old Snodders. Paterson minor was Titania, as I recall, and he was nowhere near as pretty as you.'

He leaned across the desk and kissed her cheek. She smiled up at him.

‘It's good to see you safe and sound, Speedy.'

‘Have you been worrying about me?'

‘Naturally, I've been concerned . . . about all of you. We haven't had much news since you went off to France. Just that phone call when you got back . . .'

‘Been a bit busy since then, that's the trouble. It's pretty hellish in our little corner at the moment. No peace for the wicked. Up and down the whole day long, smacking Jerry's wrist for trying to sink our ships . . . Actually, I've bagged three of the blighters now – two in France and one into the drink here.'

‘Congratulations again.'

He had perched himself on the corner of her desk, in the old way, and was twirling his cap on his finger and looking falsely modest. She thought he also looked exhausted, though his eyes were as bright as they had always been.

‘What have you done to your forehead?'

He touched the plaster. ‘Oh that . . . Collided with the cockpit the other day when I had to put the kite down in a hurry. I'll tell you all about it over the drink I'm about to buy you. Can't stop long, more's the pity. I managed to wangle a Maggie to flip over to see you and collect old George. I can see he's been in clover – lucky chap!'

George had returned to her side and was panting up at her as if anxious to show that he had not abandoned her. She stretched out her hand to pat him and Speedy caught sight of the new ring on her sleeve.

‘I say, what's this? Promotion too?'

‘It's Section Officer now, so mind your manners.'

‘I can't keep remembering all these different names. Titania will have to do. Come and have that drink with me and I'll tell you all my adventures.'

‘I'm actually allowed in the Mess itself now – no more purdah in the Ladies' Room.'

‘Station Master changed his mind?'

‘About
that
, at least. Pressure of numbers, I think. There are nearly two hundred WAAFS here now, you know.'

‘I noticed a fair sprinkling. Haven't I always told you what a jolly good idea they were, Titania? I passed a rather stunning redhead in the corridor just now, on my way in.'

‘That would have been Assistant Section Officer Park. She's engaged.'

‘I never let that worry me . . . George, stay on guard. We're going to drown our sorrows.'

They walked over to the Officers' Mess in the warm early evening sunshine.

‘How's Whitters?' she asked.

‘Cracking form. Got himself some new popsie now. Really smitten. He had to take to his brolly the other day. Bagged this 109 and then the Hun's friends went and clobbered him. Matter of fact they travelled down together and landed in the same field. He said they had
time for a quiet smoke and a bit of a chat before the local bobby arrived. Turned out this Jerry knew Whitters' eldest sister rather well. He'd met her on some special course at Oxford before the war, apparently. Extraordinary coincidence that . . . Whitters said he was a pretty decent sort of type, actually. He promised to pass on his best regards to big sis when he next saw her. She's in the WRNS, or something.'

‘And Dumbo? And Sinbad, and Moses? Are they all right?'

‘Fine and dandy. Getting a trifle weary of going once more unto the breach the whole time. Poor old Moses got a bit singed the other day when his kite caught fire, but he hopped out in time. I suppose things will get worse before they get better. Jerry seems to be giving us all his attention now he's got the Frogs out of the way.'

They went into the Mess. In the ante-room Speedy waved greetings at several of those present and flashed a shamelessly dazzling smile at two WAAF officers sitting quietly in a corner. Over their drinks he entertained Felicity with an account of his time in France. Everything had gone swimmingly to begin with, he told her. Five-star accommodation in some château,
haute cuisine
, wine flowing, the odd spot of flying thrown in . . . Then, when the Huns had suddenly got going and started strafing them they had had to move out pretty smartly. It had been tents and corned beef and not much shut-eye after that.

‘The fur really started flying, by George! In the end we had to pop off back over the Kanal before they finished us off altogether. That stuck in the old craw a bit, I can tell you, but there we are. We lived to fight another day . . . the next day, in fact. They sent us back over Dunkirk and we were dashing about all over the shop, trying to swat Jerries before they got to the brown jobs on the beaches. That's when I got my brace . . .' Speedy took a thoughtful swallow of his beer. ‘Frightful chaos over there, you know . . . lots of fearful black smoke from oil
fires so you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and everyone milling about. Anyway, some blasted Jerry jumped me as I was chasing after a Junkers and winged me. Stopped the engine dead so there was nothing for it but to pancake in Frogland, which is not what I'd planned at all. I picked the nicest-looking field I could find and set her down – rather well, actually, though I say it myself. I missed the cows and stepped out without a scratch, and there was this French girl waiting with a glass of brandy. Jolly thoughtful of her. It went down a treat.'

Felicity laughed. ‘Oh, Speedy . . . honestly! What did you do then?'

‘Well, I couldn't very well leave the Hurry for the Jerries to nab, so I said to Yvette – that was her name, it turned out – in my best accent:
avez-vous des allumettes, s'il vous plaît
? And she very kindly nipped off and got me some. Luckily there was a good bit of fuel leaking about the kite, and fluid, and so on, and up she went in a trice –
woomph
! Rather sad, really. Still, it was better than the Jerries getting their dirty paws on her.'

‘You had to do it, Speedy.'

‘Yes . . . Anyway, what with all the commotion – the Guy Fawkes bonfire and the cows charging about in all directions – I thought I'd better make myself scarce and head for home PDQ. Yvette came up trumps again and lent me an old bike. She pointed in the general direction of
la mer
and off I pedalled. The roads were absolutely chock-a-block with all these French people pushing carts and prams and whatnot . . . had to weave in and out of them like an obstacle course.' Speedy turned his head. ‘Watch out! Enter the Demon King.'

‘What?'

‘Don't look now but your favourite man has just come in with old Robbie. I say, it's
Group Captain
now, by the look of things. Promotion all round. You didn't tell me that.'

‘Go on with the story, Speedy.'

‘Where was I?'

‘Bicycling along towards the sea.'

‘So I was. Well, I finally got to Dunkirk. It was pretty hairy there – fires raging, buildings bombed to rubble, vehicles abandoned all over the place. I found some navy type who told me everyone was heading for the beach, so off I went again. When I got there it was like the rush hour with everyone queueing up to get on the ships in great long lines . . . I tagged on the end of one behind a lot of army chaps. They were jolly unfriendly.'

‘Why?' Felicity asked indignantly.

‘Wanted to know where on earth the RAF had been . . . actually they put it a bit stronger than that. Why hadn't we stopped the Huns dropping bombs on them – that sort of thing. I tried to tell them that we'd been up there, above the smoke, doing our little best – and against sticky odds, I might add . . . Whitters, Dumbo and I took on about fifty of the blighters at one point – but I don't think they believed me. We were just discussing it, as it were, when another lot of Stukas came over and we all dived for cover. Bombs raining down, frightful racket . . . made me jolly glad I'd never joined the army. Absolute sitting ducks.'

‘It must have been awful, Speedy.'

‘It was rather. Anyway, after the dust had settled I happened to see an empty rowing boat bobbing about not far out, so I made a quick dash for it, along with a couple of other chaps. Luckily there were some oars and we took turns in rowing in the general direction of the White Cliffs. The funny thing was that it turned out we were an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman. We told quite a few jokes along those lines to pass the time.'

‘You mean you rowed
all
the way across?'

‘About halfway, I suppose. Then one of those old Thames barges chuntered by and picked us up. Chap steering called out “any more for the
Skylark
?” Standing room only and a Jerry escort part of the way but he was a rotten shot and we made it all right to Dover. I hopped
on a train to London and there I am fast asleep in the first class when along comes a guard who tries to turf me off at the next station – no ticket, see. No money.'