Spitfire Girls (43 page)

‘Why are you all in white?' she gasped, terrified.

‘Don't ask questions,' Sally replied, pushing the chair against the wall and picking up the Ouija board from the
brightly sunlit floor. ‘Mrs Bennell thought you were having hallucinations.'

Angelique looked at her watch and was grateful her seance had put her to sleep and allowed three hours of rest. It was 7.30, and she had promised to drill Jo, Sally and Barbara before they tested at Upavon and before she set off for London.

‘I had a terrible dream – a nightmare.'

‘When I was playing champions like Alice Marble,' said Sally, ‘I had nightmares too. Always the same one: balls flew past me because my racquet kept bending over like a soggy leaf.'

‘There were two girls in white,' murmured Angelique.

‘We were required to wear white.'

‘I meant in my dream.'

‘Especially at Wimbledon.'

‘Are you hearing me, Sally?' Angelique's voice had returned, and she wanted to strike her fellow pilot.

‘I haven't time to chat, Ange,' Sally snapped, moving to the door. ‘Get dressed and be ready to go at eight.'

‘Have you forgotten that I am your superior in rank?'

Sally smirked.

‘You're pregnant,' she said, and with that she was gone.

Angelique heard loud voices. She would have no time for a bath – an aspect of wartime deprivation she had hated since the beginning of the conflict – and now she would have to go to Balfour dirty. She would have loved a day off, hugging Martin and reassuring him that the Scriptures had allowed him this sinful alliance. Nevertheless reality had to take precedence and, as Bill Howes so often said, ‘things were moving.'

Today was crucial for so many flying folk: 1940 had
been a year of month-by-month accelerations and now, after this day's ordeals at Upavon for Barbara, Sally and Jo, seventeen of the girls would likely be eligible for advanced assignments. Jo might soon be able to track down Vera Bukova, and the Tolands would be moving Beauforts for Britain. Poles were being joined in the sky by Czechs, and soon suntanned girls from Australia and New Zealand would be distracting the pale Slavs.

Angelique wanted them all to be happy, but her baby was growing and she had her own mission to perform. The country's youngest female ferry pilot bit her lip as she contemplated Captain Balfour.

Amy had changed her surname back to Johnson by deed poll in 1937, and in every sense had now parted from Jim, but that did not stop him from hounding her at places like White Waltham.

And now Valerie listened as Amy told her of Jim's incessant visits to her home, and of the demands he would make, divorce or no divorce. Valerie's yearning for Friedrich, which had driven her near to madness in these recent days, seemed trivial beside the problems of poor Amy, who could go nowhere without her privacy being shattered.

‘How did you ever work out I ‘d be here?' Valerie asked, glancing at the hands of her carriage clock. They registered two o'clock in the morning. The women saw each other in shadows, the blackout forcing them to sit by the barest of light.

‘It seemed the most logical solution,' Amy replied. ‘Wasn't it Edgar Allen Poe who said people always overlook the obvious? I theorized that, with all the wild speculation about your mysterious disappearance, you would be in familiar surroundings. Perhaps I am a mind-reader. Angelique Florian claims she can predict the future, you know.'

‘She hasn't tracked me down.' Valerie poured preciously rationed coffee into a small, elegant gilt-rimmed cup.

‘The
Sunday Express
claims Jim and I are together again.' Amy's hand trembled as she tried to lift the cup. ‘Valerie, did you know he had remarried?'

‘Good God!'

‘Heaven knows who she is – thank God she isn't a local girl, or I should become violent.'

‘Does that mean you're jealous?'

‘No!'

Valerie was delighted she had provoked Amy, generating the potent cure for depression that was anger.

‘He bores me stiff!' Amy complained, her grip on the heirloom nearly faltering as the cup rattled back on its saucer. ‘What does make me jealous is bloody ATA, Valerie!' She jumped up from the sofa and paced the room, her pasty skin casting a death-like glow in the odd shadows of the enforced darkness.

‘Dear God, Amy, what's been happening while I've been away?'

‘It's nothing you could change, even if you were on top of things. Jim walks in and gets seven hundred pounds a year, and the women get four hundred and fifty for the same work. Most of the men are amateurs. You know damned well there isn't a woman pilot in this country who isn't ten times as professional as these aging boy hobbyists.'

‘That's true,' Valerie said, gleeful at Amy's passion.

‘The men even have a marriage allowance! They're raking in the pennies while a first-class instructress, who would fail him on his first circuit, gets less than half as much.'

‘We can try to change things when I'm out of this mess,' said Valerie.

‘It will also please you to know', continued Amy, ‘that I've my own personal gunner – a man, of course – in an
Anson full of eight female pilots, but the Ministry is still making a fuss about our girls ferrying unarmed Hurricanes on little trips to aerodromes for storage.'

‘We will need to agitate.'

‘Dear God, Val, you know how desperate these girls are to fly more advanced machines! Here are those men – some barely able to handle
one
type – allowed to ferry
anything
, and yet we have learned one hundred different aircraft from back to front, some of us for twenty years as instructors. But we are women, and the Ministry says we may not step inside the things.'

‘I think we will be transporting everything by the year's end.'

Amy sat again, hesitating at the thought of meeting Valerie's earnest gaze. She could feel the Commanding Officer's eyes boring through her blue Second Officer's uniform.

‘I hate ATA, Val.'

‘You hate Jim.'

‘How can I fit into a girls' dormitory and be a cog in a giant operation? How can I cope with catty gossip and stupid regulations?'

Valerie leaned back and closed her eyes, her arms now crossed about her neatly tailored jacket.

‘Because there is war,' she said, measuring her words minutely, ‘women are being allowed to perform a job they have never done before. They were instructors after the Great War, but never before have they been issued uniforms and treated as equals on bases and been granted commissions as Commanding Officers, for Christ's sake.' She was astonished that Amy could be the one to enrage her so.
‘Churchill is talking about fighting from the streets and from the hills and Christ knows from where else, so concentrate on the astonishing reality that is being a woman, flying for her country during the Battle for Britain.'

‘You know I love it when we have a lot of machines to be taken all over the place.'

Valerie leaned forward, her face level with Amy's. ‘You want to bomb and to fight. You want to be the Spitfire pilot who leaves the canteen and at the end of the day is wiped from the blackboard. You want to drop English arms of cast iron made by English housewives, and you want to drop them on Nazi housewives with Nazi arms of flabby flesh lifted heavenwards, their fists raging at your cruelty. You have no pity for their babies, nor they for yours, and you want to be part of death. It's natural, but only for men, because we are told this is so. Content yourself with transporting machines. You're still ferrying death and that's good – that is very good.'

There was a thudding many miles away and the women were staring at each other.

‘Time for a light show,' Amy murmured. ‘I'm so glad to be here, and not at home.' The illuminations danced amid the weird shadows.

‘What about Hamilton?' Valerie asked.

‘He's busy at White Waltham, with Jim and the rest of the men. He feels ill most of the time.'

Valerie smiled broadly. ‘I would love to hear all about him,' she said.

‘He hasn't the energy to make love,' Amy said, her head bowed. She heaved a deep sigh. ‘I miss my parents so much.'

‘What an odd image – your tired man, and you in pyjamas crying for Mummy.'

‘Hana Bukova misses her mother too,' mused Amy.

‘She's a child.' Valerie felt a peculiar urge to weep. ‘Tell me all the news, Amy – please.'

‘Jo Howes and Sally Met are going with Barbara to test at Upavon. Jo loves Cal March. Cal loves aeroplanes and will this week be full RAF. Josef Ratusz is transporting a record number of aircraft and Noel Slater is being beastly because more girls are entering ATA. He flew into a rage when he heard Nora Flint was made CO Hamble and he's hardly recovered yet. Shirley––' She paused.

‘What about Shirley?' Valerie's voice squeaked uncontrollably.

Amy stopped, looking into Valerie's anxious face. ‘She talks of suicide.'

‘When?' Her mind seemed to be teeming and thumping, in rhythm with the bombs falling on the horizon.

‘Frequently – all the time,' Amy babbled. ‘I shouldn't have told you. It just popped out.'

‘She talks of death, and Churchill talks of death, and we are ferrying thousands of vessels of annihilation.' Her voice trailed off.

‘There are different sorts of death, Val.'

‘Tell her where I am!' she shouted, realizing that for this entire evening she had not once thought of Kranz, except when her loins had wanted a sudden burning and she had leaned against wood that had stayed cold.

‘If she came here, she would achieve nothing,' said Amy. ‘She has been tormented ever since, in her eyes, you deserted her for a man.'

‘I did no such thing!' Valerie cried, her stinging tone echoed by a sympathetic ringing of the crystal on the sideboard.

‘She loves you, Valerie.'

‘Like a sister.'

‘Like a woman.'

‘I have never touched her.'

‘Oh, dear God, but you have, Valerie – you have.'

‘Yes, of course – figuratively speaking,' she murmured, ‘but now Shirley must let the flying machines touch her heart as I could never hope to do.'

‘I don't think you understand how deeply you have affected that girl,' said Amy. ‘If only Jim had ever loved me half as much as she adores you, Valerie …'

‘We have never slept together,' Valerie whispered, a tear dropping on her taut thigh.

‘That is a pity, you know.'

‘Why?'

‘Somehow it would seem as gentle as my misery with Jim is not.'

‘Tell Shirley where I am,' murmured Valerie.

Amy rose, and as the clock struck three the light show played a game of patterns on the carpet, and she wondered how many houses were awake this night, contemplating the colourful enchantment of a bombing raid.

‘Edith Allam will be back soon,' Valerie said, walking her to the door. ‘She has a coloured lover.'

‘He will be dead within the year.'

‘For what cause?'

‘My mother used to say black men always perish when they take a white woman's flesh.'

‘Amy! What rubbish!'

‘She'd read it somewhere.'

‘This man is beautiful, and he will fly for us.'

‘How beautiful?' Amy was bemused.

‘An Adonis. Edith is mad about him, and when she brings him here I will keep them together,' said Valerie. ‘I suppose their relationship will have to be kept under lock and key.'

‘Have you any hope of leaving captivity, my dear?' Amy looked around the room – at the neat antimacassars, and at the ashtrays and at the tarnished vessels from which Restoration men had drunk bumpers before their nightly profligate fucks.

‘I'm beginning to enjoy anonymity,' Valerie replied, now standing at the door with the famous aviatrix.

‘I shall see to it you are freed from this mess and are back on base by next week.'

‘Don't be absurd.'

‘You may be the daughter of an M P, but I have the press – and that can change men's minds in time of war.'

‘Take care of Hamilton,' said Valerie, as Amy stepped out to the damp walkway. A cool breeze swept past them, the fringe at the bottom of the sofa tossing in its wake.

‘I have lots of machines to take care of – loads to go to Scotland,' Amy said, as if wanting her deposed CO to believe she loved, not hated, ATA. ‘I seem to spend my life inside Oxfords. They should give me a degree.'

Valerie smiled and they hugged. Amy strode away, her friend knowing she would walk the punishing miles back to the house where Jim might await her, having tired of his new wife. Valerie shut the door and flopped down on the sofa, numbed.

Walking down the path and into the main road, Amy was staggered. Why had Valerie never spoken of Friedrich? She had expected that he would be the main topic of conversation, but Valerie had let her ramble on about Jim's intoxicated perversions, patiently listening to her tales of the humiliations that had often crippled her on the eve of important flights. Valerie had listened to all of this. Inside she was suffering, but with colossal bravery.

Did Valerie really love Kranz?

Perhaps she did love Shirley!

Amy panted as her step accelerated along the moist gravel path that crunched under her strong boots.

What was so astounding was that she had come to tell Valerie the news for which the MP's daughter would surely kill: she had found out where Friedrich Kranz breathed life. Yet through this whole absurd evening, she had never told her!

Should she turn back now?

Amy stopped. In the distance fires were raging, and she agonized. She would tell Valerie next week – after she had delivered the stockpiled Oxfords.

Why did they need so many?

Oxford, Oxford … she hated it all. Her friend should have had the information about her lover: it was the one subject that left Valerie crazed … Could it wait until next week? She turned to go back to Valerie's house. There was a thud some hundred miles away and Amy could almost feel the searing pain of the person who had died at that moment. She walked on, towards home. Next week she would come back, after the Oxfords …