Spitfire Girls Page 18

  Now changed into a crisp white suit, Kay made her way to the dirt courtyard that served as a mainline bus station, trying not to think about her father in his hot office overlooking Townsville City Hall. When she did not think about him visions of her last encounter with a cowboy surged into her brain and triggered an instant throbbing down her torso. Why did other women get on with their lives while all she could ever think about was the sensation her next liaison would create between her thighs?

  Other girls she knew, who had married, talked of love and contentment but the idea of having just one man for life was to Kay a massive waste, like eating porridge for breakfast every morning from cradle to grave. Two nights earlier she had crept away from home at thirty minutes past twelve to meet Buck – appropriately named, with immediate urges like her own – their hands digging into each other and his hardness thrusting so brutally she felt he would rupture her and she would break in two. Those married girls who told her of wedded unions would have struggled and called his sex rape, but if she was the rapist more often than not, how could these lust-crazed men be blamed?

  So far, however, ultimate ecstasy had eluded her. And as she was violently mounted and her rampant victims grunted, she wondered what it was like to come like a total woman.

  ‘Been waiting long?’

  A female voice pulled Kay out of her thoughts and as she looked up from the bench a droplet of perspiration fell from the tip of her nose.

  ‘Oops! What a mess I am!’ Kay exclaimed, reaching for a handkerchief. ‘I don’t honestly remember when I got here.’

  ‘They tell me it could be another hour – roos crossing the roads or something.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Kay responded, as the girl, dressed in a dainty frock and hat, sat down next to her. She smelled of soap and expensive cologne, making Kay feel unwashed.

  ‘Oh, well – I can’t say I’ll miss all this wildlife. You going a long way?’ She looked at Kay with great interest.

  ‘It depends,’ Kay replied cagily. ‘If things work out this trip may take me to Pommyland.’

  ‘Me too,’ the girl murmured.

  ‘No shit!’

  Her eyes widening in awe, the girl seemed to shift a few inches away from Kay to the edge of the bench.

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t I smell as pretty as you, darling?’ There was a silence. ‘What’s your name? Mine’s Kay – Kay Pelham. I’m local.’

  ‘Lillian – Lili for short – Villiers.’

  ‘Christ Almighty! Are you one of that rich Villiers mob?’

  ‘My father is one of the Villiers family, if that’s what you mean. Yes.’

  ‘No wonder I’ve never come across you in my crowd.’

  ‘Did you say your name was Pelham? My Dad has been working with an engineer called Pelham. He’s thinking of building an aircraft factory right here outside Townsville – maybe I shouldn’t be telling you all this, but surely you must already know.’

  ‘It’s news to me. How do you catch on to what goes on in your father’s office, then?’

  ‘I’m a partner.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Wherever it is you’re going, will they let you swear like that?’

  ‘Of course! They’re always swearing in the RAF.’

  ‘RAF?’

  ‘I’m auditioning for ATA.’

  ‘So am I!’

  They looked at each other, and for the first time Kay broke into a grin, her magnificent dimpled smile framing perfect, gleaming teeth. Grunting in the distance like one of Kay’s Bucks, the bus approached the platform.

  ‘We’ll have to stick together then, won’t we, mate?’ Kay asked.

  ‘If you like.’

  Swinging their bags on to the bus, the pair of girls could have been mistaken for lifelong friends, or sisters, from the ease of manner with which they chatted and laughed.

  Settling into their seats for the lengthy journey south, Kay and Lili ignored the elderly couples who seemed to regard them as noisy intruders – the one reeking of perfume and the other dressed like a prostitute.

  ‘How many flying hours have you managed, then?’ Kay asked her companion, reaching into one of her large bags for a banana. An old man seated across the aisle stared as her long fingers stripped the yellow skin down with slow caressing movements. Her mouth enveloped the ripe fruit and as her piercing, taunting brown eyes focused on the old man, he retreated back to his newspaper and pulled the rim of his cap down over his face. She could see feeble veins pumping the blood of his twilight along a scraggy neck, and for several unsuccessful moments she tried to picture him young and virile.

  ‘Are you listening?’ shouted Lili, as the bus pulled away from Townsville.

  Kay grinned at her provocatively, munching the banana.

  ‘You asked me about flying hours.’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘Nineteen hundred and fourteen,’ Lili declared.

  ‘Your year of birth, you mean?’ Kay heaved the banana peel out of the coach window.

  ‘Those are my hours!’

  ‘Two thousand – my God, that’s as many as Valerie Cobb’s flown, and she’s old enough to be our mum.’

  ‘I’ve been taking lessons since I was fourteen, and I qualified to A before my seventeenth birthday. Now I have B and C too. What about you?’

  Kay gazed out of the window. ‘Let’s hope there are some hunky men out there,’ she murmured distantly.

  ‘Who cares?’ Lili hissed. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Hours up there.’ Lili pointed skyward.

  ‘Several hundred. Not quite two thousand.’

  ‘What can you fly?’

  ‘Sopwith Grasshopper. Westland Wigeon. Comper Swift. You name it, I’ve flown it.’

  ‘I’ve never seen any of those in Queensland.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have. They belong to one of my fellahs who’s a collector. I’ve done hundreds of hours in them.’

  ‘Why have we never met at a fly-in?’

  ‘I hate fly-ins. They’re a stupid waste of time, if you ask me.’ Kay shut her eyes and feigned sleep as the bus rattled through Woodstock. As the hours passed, the heat became unbearable and the girls drifted between sleep and nausea. Coolness arrived with dusk, Lili now deep in slumber. Their driver had pulled over at Claredale but Kay did not want to disturb her companion, whose blouse had fallen away to a pink chest and breasts as white as snow. Did this girl never sunbathe? Kay pondered, staring intently. One elderly couple had ended their journey here and now they were the only females remaining on the bus. When the driver returned it was dark and when Kay removed her gaze from the other girl’s large, perfectly formed bosom her neck was stiff and she let out a small cry.

  Lili awoke. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, her hand reaching up to cover herself.

  ‘Nothing. I hope you don’t have to pee because you won’t have another chance until midnight.’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Too late.’

  Lili looked fearful and Kay took her hand.

  ‘You’ll survive. Just think of Amy Johnson.’

  ‘How did she pee, anyway?’ Now Lili was staring at her.

  ‘I’ve never worked it out.’

  ‘Will we meet her over there?’

  ‘Probably, if we get through our auditions.’ She smiled at Lili, still holding her hand. ‘You said pee. I bet you’ve never said that before in your life.’

  ‘I’m learning some bad habits from you already.’

  In the darkness overtaking the coastal glory of North Queensland, desert mice and bearded dragons watched as the ugly bus trundled from Gumlu to Guthalungra, its female passengers tense in anticipation of their approaching ordeal and terrified of the loneliness they might inherit from the future.

  32

  No young man of good family and education could have resisted the attraction of the excitement in Spain, and when Zack and Paul Florian had turned down their sister’s offer
of flying lessons in favour of a trip to the Civil War she had burst into tears. Angelique had never understood their propensity for causes at a time when the world was at peace and England could be enjoyed.

  Their parents had been the cream of Armenian aristo -cracy but were still struggling to be accepted into British high society. Angelique had voiced great protestation when they had threatened to make her a debutante, giving as her excuse the obligations of a RADA production. Her real motive had been to protect her father and mother from the ultimate humiliation of being scorned by the old moneyed set. Ironically, many of the girls with whom she had shared air instruction had made their debuts and had taken up flying as a kind of rebellion against the female roles foisted upon them by tradition-bound families. Angelique, the youngest of the Florian children, had excelled as an aviatrix and had shown genius in her comprehension of aircraft engineering. Her brothers, dark and well built, had studied in the humanities and were drawn to the anti-Franco expedition despite serious love affairs with well connected ladies. Angelique had flown the boys to their folly in a rickety Airspeed Courier, and had managed to leave the Spanish airfield in one piece despite flak from a freshly arrived loyalist unit. That had been in 1936, when she had found it all a great adventure.

  In order to forget excruciating pain Zack and Paul focused their thoughts on their sister. This morning’s torture session had been exceptionally harsh because a group of French freedom-fighters had tried to escape from the prison in which the two British scholars had been held for eight months. Early the night before, a rumour had got around that Germany had invaded Poland.

  ‘Wimbledon will surely be cancelled next year,’ Zack muttered, his mouth swollen and bruised. Virtually all his teeth were missing, his gums a pale reflection of the handsome smile in the Oxford graduation photograph at which someone in England might still be gazing. His thick black hair had begun to fall away, leaving weird patches across a head that had not yet reached its twenty-fifth year.

  ‘Who was the last men’s champion?’ Paul asked, his battered body clothed only in ragged, soiled shorts.

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  Zack shut his eyes and folded his legs, grimacing at the bite of the manacles that tore into his bony wrists. He noticed that his brother, whose beard was still ginger, had gone grey on top – and he speculated on the reception their scalps would attract should the pair ever again dine at the Florian table, or make love in secret with Annabel Cobb and Sarah Truman.

  Every morning at seven, both boys were taken into an interrogation room that stank unbearably of sweat, the smell emanating from the captors as well as from the victims. From what they could interpret when the guards chattered in dialect, sex was in generous supply at the moment, provided by terrified female detainees who had arrived in Spain with ideals and virginity intact. Now, as the reeking interrogators compared notes, Zack and Paul exchanged sickened looks while a cascade of dialect described chained shadows of women near suffocation as queues of penises filled their ulcer-ridden mouths and bleeding caverns that had once been vaginas. Cramped with diarrhoea the Anglo-Saxon females were rewarded for their efforts with a finale of torture performed by one or two men still energetic enough to wield blunt sticks.

  After every session one girl always died, and when Zack and Paul heard about the men’s daily depravities they felt relieved only to be men on the receiving end of simple, uncomplicated brutal beatings. In the back of their minds they assumed that when all the women had died off the Spaniards would discover buggery. One night Paul had dreamed that all nine of his torturers had turned up at Ascot, dressed impeccably and welcomed into the Royal Enclosure on Derby Day, their English perfect and their political views being praised by all around them. On awakening, Paul felt as if his brain had committed a form of high treason, and for some days afterwards he had been plagued by the depression of guilt. Zack had cheered him up by reminding him that neither Chamberlain nor Churchill had acted to achieve the unfastening of their Spanish manacles.

  ‘Florian – Stupid,’ intoned Virgilio, chief torturer for the fascists.

  Paul stepped forward mechanically, having by now become accustomed to his new Christian name. One of the guards pulled his shorts down, and he stumbled out of them.

  ‘Florian – Ugly.’

  Zack was already naked, his hairless genitals clotted with diseased sores. As on every morning, he tried to hide them with his hands.

  ‘No woman would ever want you, so why do you care what happens to your puny marbles?’ Virgilio’s speech never departed from this pattern. ‘At least you are not an imbecile like your brother, so please dig into your memory and give us some names. It is nearly Christmas and you will be rewarded.’ As usual, silence prevailed, but Zack could sense an urgency about the fascists that made him uneasy.

  Neither Oxford graduate had ever been given much opportunity to speak on any of these monotonous mornings – the ferocity of their reeking attackers never ceased to amaze them. Spanish spunk had soiled their female counterparts for hours the night previous to this nervous morning, eventually having driven the scarred and breastless girls insane, and yet these men had reserves of energy for further violence after little sleep. Once again, blows rained down and Paul hoped his hearing would not disappear completely, his left ear already permanently deafened by one of Virgilio’s cruel techniques.

  Taking a breather, the torturer lit a cigarette and smiled. ‘You are interested in the reward?’ he asked, lifting a prostrate Paul’s chin with his boot.

  ‘Not really,’ Zack replied for his nearly deaf brother.

  ‘I didn’t ask you, shit,’ Virgilio snapped, moving over to crouch next to him. Cigarette dangling from his mouth, he reached out and took Zack’s lifeless manhood in his palm and caressed the pathetic testicles with his other hand. For the first time in fourteen months the Briton was overcome by terror because his torturer had never before touched his organ – but now Virgilio was grasping his penis.

  ‘We will give you some nourishment and this will come to life. Then you will be given some women who need finishing off.’ He stroked Zack’s pale appendage. ‘We have three remaining who have survived longer than we had expected.’

  ‘British?’ Zack gasped, wanting desperately to push him away.

  ‘Who knows?’

  Virgilio stubbed out his cigarette, the Briton’s screams causing even Paul to hear as small puffs of smoke rose from Zack’s penile flesh.

  One of the guards was cringing but Virgilio had not seen. Paul had been thinking deeply of Angelique and as he watched his writhing brother’s tears stream over the surface of boils that had once been his face, the deaf man spoke.

  ‘Vera Bukova,’ he mumbled, hoping Zack would not hear.

  At once the Spaniards scrambled around him, lifting him like a crouching chimpanzee on to the table. Virgilio motioned for his deputy to write, and Zack moaned.

  ‘Give him water,’ one of the guards barked, pointing towards the moaning.

  ‘Kranz – Friedrich Kranz – he helped finance the airlifts,’ Paul continued, his voice a tiny whisper. ‘Polish women pilots – they go from Romania to England.’ He paused, and because Zack had fainted he provided his torturers with what he thought could be a final gift. ‘Our cell was based in Zumaya.’

  An assortment of guards removed the deaf man from the room, and for a moment Paul reached out to touch his brother but he was dragged down a corridor into a cellar where his chains were undone. Here, in a clean room that to Paul was a palace, a clean bed and immaculate furniture were arranged on a spotless floor, where his bony torso now sat. One of the guards lifted him on to the bed with a gentleness he would not have believed possible. Out of nowhere, food appeared, the aroma of fresh fish and sweet potato making Paul’s head reel, his fingers probing the offerings like those of an infant before its first solid meal. His chest constricted as he downed a morsel of fish, guilt that he had forgotten his brother, and for a moment he wanted to regurgitate this gloriou
s banquet, for which he had just betrayed that multitude of terrified comrades of Zumaya.

  But now Paul wolfed the food, and a guard presented him with good wine, which he sipped in a stupor of remorse and ecstasy. When he looked up again another gift had been presented to him, in a wrapping of white sheets. Lifting his hand to push away its mangled grey hair that was matted with knots, he felt only bone under his fingertips, the creature crawling on its knees to the bed and banging, banging, banging its body against the frame, grunting in a voice so ugly as to chill the soul, but which Paul could not hear. Cries that would never reach his ears were echoing down the corridor and permeating his new palace, their agony making the creature curl into a little ball whose head rested against the spotless mattress.

  As Paul sipped the exquisite liquid, he thought he might inspire the female torture victim to look up for the first time, but she had died. This made him panic. He jumped up, and realizing he was alone with the corpse paced the room but accepted the fact that he had been left for an indeterminate time. When would he next see Zack? He shouted in Spanish but no-one came.

  He languished with the decomposing body and was now being attacked by vermin himself. His misery was so acute he had stopped wondering who the girl had been, only hating her for stinking so badly and for becoming so grotesque. At the end of that day his captors returned.