Spitfire Girls Page 22

  ‘You two should be spending tonight together – it’s almost sacrilegious not to in these times.’

  ‘Never mind, Mrs B – Alec will be back soon.’

  Both women were close to tears and Alec knew this was his cue.

  ‘Make sure you lock her bedroom door tomorrow morning so she doesn’t give her virtue away to the milkman,’ he teased, letting his hand slip down to Mrs Bryce’s bottom.

  She squealed.

  They had reached the door and Marion felt a sudden terror, her fear of tomorrow’s ATA test amalgamated in her shaky psyche with the burden of Alec’s true occupation, and the seed growing inside her still-smouldering womb. Could she be so base as to desire him right at this moment? Was it fear that brought her to these primitive states?

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Alec said sharply, for the first time his mirth gone and his twinkling grin evaporated into a worried, faraway frown.

  Mrs Bryce went into the house and outside Alec held Marion to him so firmly she thought his hands might become embedded in her flesh, and when he had released her she prayed the sensation they had left behind might linger until his return. He wanted a long lovers’ kiss but Marion could only brush his lips with a tearful smile. He went to the car and as she struggled for breath the motor coughed – if only it would stall! she thought – but then her majestic lover was gone and there was nothing left for her to do but to go inside.

  36

  The ‘phoney war’ was over, but while everyone had been keyed up for massive bombing the only operational flying for the RAF had been the dropping of leaflets over Germany.

  Valerie was burdened with the fact that the girls she had taken on would have to be satisfied in the interim with ferrying the Tiger Moths from Hatfield for storage at Kinloss and Lossiemouth and returning in those Godforsaken trainers. Her first task had been to flight-test these women at Whitchurch. Many of the pilots were close personal friends of long standing. The Director-General for Civil Aviation had been adamant that only eight British women pilots could be included for the initial pool at Hatfield, though Valerie had lists a yard long of females, including Amy Johnson, qualified far beyond the requirements of male ferry-pilot criteria. Now, however, events were taking place across the Channel that made quotas look absurd. Much anger had been aroused when news of American pilot recruitment had reached the frustrated ranks of immensely qualified home talent, but secretly Valerie hoped Edith’s crop might bring an infusion of excitement into ATA.

  Christmas had come and gone, the first festive season to have been overshadowed by the imminence of death since the days of Sopwith Camels and airborne chivalry. Valerie knew this conflict would be different, and from what Friedrich had told her – so many months ago as to seem an eternity – chivalry was the last thing on the minds of Hitler’s warriors.

  She was bitterly disappointed that the Ministry would not allow her to recruit the entire abundant crop of British women pilots, augmented by the foreign support. However, having been kicked so often she elected to take her orders with aplomb. Shortly before Christmas she had attracted yet more publicity by managing to gather together all in one place twelve girls who were at the top of her list. She had taken them all out to lunch before they were tested, and whether or not they had failed each had been presented with a signed copy of her first published volume of ‘aviation poetry’, as she called the book. Later her father had said this was an unspeakably vulgar thing to do, and that obviously she had been spending too much time around Americans and Lord Beaverbrook.

  D’Erlanger was now known as the Commodore. He had some forty good men, and in a short time the ferry-pilot pool at White Waltham had rapidly acquired the lively atmosphere of a flying club. In its first three weeks of operation over two dozen aircraft had been shifted and by spring 1940 its men were in great demand. Meetings at British Overseas Airways were held with great urgency, and soon White Waltham had been split, pilots and Ansons going to Whitchurch to service the West Country factories, and more pilots and Ansons to Hawarden near Chester to deal with the northern plants. In the space of a few months Air Transport Auxiliary had metamorphosed from a tiny collection of civilian ferry pilots to a major undertaking consisting of four ferry-pilot pools.

  Within the all-women’s unit at Hatfield the minute male presence remaining would consist of Sean Vine, Hamilton Slade, and Alec Harborne, along with an assortment of air cadets soon to be moved to White Waltham. Hatfield’s Commanding Officer was a woman, Valerie Cobb.

  On this summer’s day in 1940, the Germans were busy invading Holland and Belgium, Marion Wickham was marrying Alec, and Valerie was watching Nora Flint come in to land an Airspeed Courier at Hatfield in deteriorating weather conditions. She knew Nora’s brief had been to collect from far off Perth two male ferry pilots who were destined for White Waltham. She was astonished to see Nora in this aircraft which was forbidden to women’s ATA .

  ‘Are you mad?’ Valerie demanded as Nora stepped from the cockpit.

  ‘Look inside,’ she said grimly.

  Valerie peered into the rear seats where two heavily bandaged men were bundled, half-conscious, with their kit bags.

  ‘What’s happened to you, or are you corpses?’

  One opened a swollen eye for a split second, then closed it tightly, letting out a brief groan.

  ‘They had a nasty mishap,’ Nora explained. ‘Can you guess who very nearly made them our first fatalities?’

  ‘Noel Slater,’ Valerie said, smiling.

  ‘I was coming in to Perth in a Moth, as you know, and I could see these two being chased by Slater, who was showing off. They had appalling landings, badly damaging two brand-new Lizzies. They were meant to report back immediately to White Waltham, with me as a passenger in this thing, but that rather wet CO at Perth gave me a special clearance to take them. I was the only reliable pilot available before the real weather set in.’

  Valerie knew it was folly for the Ministry to suppose her girls were incapable of flying things other than Moths and she burned inside at the thought of Slater being ATA and free to fly anything. Were he a woman, he would have been banned. What infuriated her even more was the inefficiency of Perth in not taking these men to a local infirmary, and keeping them up there to await the Accidents Committee inquiry.

  ‘Who are they?’ she demanded, her aggressive tone startling Nora.

  ‘I’m told they are a pair of American brothers. Parsons, I believe someone said.’

  ‘Parsons! Well I never!’ Valerie laughed, putting her arm around Nora. ‘Let’s see if we can’t save them.’

  Oscar and Martin Toland, ordained Baptist preachers of Lynchburg, Virginia, were carried from the Courier by air cadets. Valerie chortled when the rescuers looked Nora up and down in disbelief, as if a physical miracle had been wrought in the ferrying of this forbidden craft, which had neared the end of its useful life and was unserviceable.

  In the main building, the Americans were brought in and Angelique Florian, just returned from a hair-raising ferry trip to a near-snowbound Kinloss, rushed over to help. Nora busied herself with paperwork and, to her immense glee, so much commotion ensued over the arrival of the brothers that Nora’s exceptional assignment was overlooked.

  ‘Who the devil mangled this lot?’ demanded Angelique, tampering with the bandages.

  ‘Your favourite person,’ frowned Nora, as the small population of Hatfield ferry pool gathered around her cargo.

  Angelique had gone quiet, her sensitive hands revealing the appalling wounds of the two men.

  ‘They need hospitalization. What did you say caused the damage?’

  ‘Noel Slater,’ Nora replied, still gripping her goggles and kit. ‘He harassed them on their approach to Perth and they nearly lost everything.’

  An ambulance had arrived and as the men were loaded into the rickety vehicle Angelique turned to Valerie:

  ‘I think we’re all finished for the day – may I go with them?’

  ‘Whatever for?’ Valer
ie frowned.

  ‘Someone from ATA should be there when they are admitted to hospital.’

  Nora and Valerie exchanged looks.

  ‘In the CO’s opinion, who are we to stop you?’ Valerie remarked, and as the ambulance men shut all doors Angelique made for the van, turning the metal handle and swinging her shapely form into the rear compartment where the two pilots lay. As the siren screamed its way through the torrential downpour, the skeleton staff that manned Hatfield packed bags for an early night. Weather fronts had stopped everything.

  ‘We are going to need a full-time weather spotter, Valerie,’ Nora said as they walked through mud to the First Officer’s car.

  ‘It will happen,’ she said. ‘Nora, what would you say if I told you the Ministry might consider appointing a woman like you Commanding Officer of another small pool, working alongside the RAF?’

  Nora climbed into the car and waited for Valerie to sit down at the wheel before she replied.

  ‘This sounds like a Beaverbrook stunt,’ she said, grinning.

  ‘Sometimes stunts are worth performing, if they further our cause.’ Valerie started the motor.

  ‘So it is Beaverbrook?’

  ‘No, it’s Cobb. Copyright 1940.’ Valerie’s mouth was grimly set, her mind shooting fleetingly to the task she most dreaded.

  ‘It is tomorrow, is it not, Val?’ Nora’s voice was soft with caution.

  ‘Yes. I wish it could be you testing them.’

  Shirley, Amy and newlywed Marion arrived for their day of judgment. Fleetingly Valerie wished they had taken up factory work. Amy was the least of her worries – she would attract the press, but her kind, calm warmth was a huge compensation for the aggravation. Marion would be mad to join Alec’s pool. But Shirley? Their eight years of closeness and the ground engineer’s obsessive devotion to her made the routine administration of a test some form of torture. She would cover her uncomfortable feelings with harshness, and if Shirley failed it might stifle her obsession once and for all. Since Friedrich, ironically foisted upon Valerie by her partner, she could no longer compassionately concern herself with another woman’s imperfection.

  With Nora, Valerie drove out of Hatfield.

  A young girl pilot-hopeful saluted.

  Valerie stopped, and rolled down her window.

  ‘I’m not RAF, you know,’ she said, recognizing Jo Howes.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I saw you land that Courier – my pa says it’s a collector’s item!’ she shouted above the din of the motor and the pouring rain.

  ‘That wasn’t a Courier, Jo,’ Nora yelled back, smiling weakly.

  ‘It sure was.’ She was staring at Valerie. ‘Have you seen this? You’re famous, miss!’ she gushed.

  ‘Since when?’ the Commanding Officer snapped.

  Jo held up an evening newspaper, one of the London editions.

  On its front page was a picture of Friedrich Kranz, and a larger one of Valerie and her father in the country on a hunt outing.

  ‘Let me see that.’ Valerie grasped at the damp paper.

  All over Britain a story had broken about an alien calling himself Pavel Wojtek who had committed crime after crime and was now in custody, his only plea that he might see Sir Henry Cobb’s daughter before the English locked him away. Friedrich in prison? Valerie handed the newspaper back to the American and shut the window, her hair now soaked and the steering wheel dripping.

  ‘So he’s alive,’ Nora murmured, touching Valerie’s cold, shivering hand.

  They sat in a state of frozen quiet.

  ‘Dear God,’ gasped Valerie, starting up the motor once more. ‘More ferry pools, more women, Amy and Shirley on the verge of joining, more promotions, and now it will all end with me in disgrace.’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased he’s alive?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ she said, biting her lip and handling the steering wheel so tensely that the car swerved alarmingly along the slippery road. Terror had overtaken Valerie, and Nora’s offers of comfort seemed to come as murmurings from a distance as she drove mechanically and tried to grasp the enormity of the crisis her lover had engendered.

  37

  Marion had excused herself when Mrs Bryce had begun to chatter. Carrying her own luggage up the narrow flight of stairs, her first task on her wedding day was to empty her head of the guilt she had accumulated on the journey up from Kent. In her mind’s eye was her father’s sour expression. If only she could expel the image! There was a washbasin in the corner of the bedroom and she splashed cold water on her wrists and on her forehead, moving to look out of the old, dirt-encrusted window.

  How could Alec have accepted such an assignment?

  ATA could easily have used men fresh from BOAC. Here, in the spare room Shirley always kept for visiting flying chums, Marion would lie down and try to think of a way in which she could disentangle her energetic lover from his unnecessary diversion to France. Hopefully Hitler would overrun the whole bloody place, and they would just have to forget the Hurricanes.

  Smells of food were drifting up from Mrs Bryce’s magic kitchen, but Marion was dizzy. She closed the door and lay down on the sagging, musty bed. Closing her eyes, she could taste and smell Alec, the dank chill of the room and the mattress depressing her as she contemplated the next twenty-four hours. It was crucial that each member of Valerie Cobb’s hand-picked shortlist passed her test with merit, not only for the image of women pilots but also for Churchill: now it was said that he had a staunch ally in Lord Truman, who raged against the Nazi threat in the House of Lords.

  Poor Valerie – she had a lot on her plate at the moment, Marion reflected, letting her shoes drop to the floor and curling up under the woollen blanket. No-one dared mention Kranz in her presence – it would have been bad taste – but everyone knew he had used her name to steal a valuable Fulmar earmarked for d’Erlanger and that the registration letters on the wrecked fuselage had been confirmed as matching those of the doomed aircraft. Could Valerie face being CO and testing a bunch of chattering girls, as well as handling Beaverbrook, the Air Ministry, and that prat of a father?

  Not that my dad is much better, thought Marion, snuggling down to escape the creeping damp. What folly … to think that the Germans had amassed a giant air force, and that in Poland before the occupation women had long been employed as combat pilots, but that here at home the Air Marshal had only succeeded so far in supplying ATA with a precious handful of Ansons, Airspeed Couriers and Stinsons. Pushing her face into the pillow, Marion imagined Alec’s warmth insulating her against the damp and the fears but all she could think of when she opened her eyes was poor Valerie, the Fulmar wreckage and that dear Austrian Jew their tomboyish CO had loved so passionately.

  ‘Making love to that teddy bear you carry around?’

  Shirley stood over Marion, her wedding day now well into the darkness of a London twilight.

  ‘You should be congratulating me!’ She sat up and Shirley reached for the small bedside light, its faded lampshade casting variegated shadows on to the ceiling.

  ‘Let me see.’ Marion held out her hand, her gleaming wedding band tight against the engagement ring for which Alec had sold the bulk of his supply of Harborne’s Original Forfar Malt Brew.

  ‘Tomorrow’s the big day, mate,’ Shirley said, dropping Marion’s hand and moving to the window where she drew the curtains with a force bordering on disgust.

  ‘Today was mine.’

  ‘I know, Marion. My mother hasn’t stopped going on about it.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to be just a little bit happy for me?’

  Shirley jumped on to the small bed and hugged Marion. ‘Congratulations, and I wish you well, but right now we should be closing ranks to support Valerie, so don’t start telling me long stories about Alec.’

  Marion pushed her away, but gripped her arms. ‘That’s a bit hard, and hurtful, Shirl,’ she said, looking into the other woman’s troubled face.

  ‘Have you ever tried to take your own life?’
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br />   Marion abandoned her hold on Shirley. ‘What are you asking me?’

  ‘Certain things upset me, and this business with Valerie and Friedrich has nearly driven me mad.’

  Rising from the bed, Marion felt even more chilled than before, and she hugged her arms to herself, wanting the dizzy feeling to recede. Food smells were getting stronger in the house, and she fought sickness. What solace could she offer this fiercely independent creature, who, like her soul-mate Valerie, did not need a man to help her greet each new day? Still sitting on the bed, Shirley looked up earnestly but the cold and the smells had left the newlywed speechless.

  ‘I am sorry to depress you on your wedding day, Mrs Harborne, but there is no-one else to whom I can talk. Angelique is now ATA premiere ace and never spends more than two minutes on the ground. Stella is so wrapped up with Selfridge that it sickens me.’

  Marion went to the window, releasing the catch to allow a reviving breeze to enter the dreary bedroom.

  ‘Has marriage made thee so meek thy tongue now hath another master?’

  ‘Shirley, I’m not too well myself.’ She turned and faced the bed, where the ground engineer had retreated into a corner against a pillow. ‘It may be exhaustion but I have these spells. In answer to your question, I have never contemplated topping myself.’

  ‘I have,’ Shirley said quietly. ‘My mother doesn’t know, but I nearly cut my wrists that day you all came over for lunch. For one thing, all I have to do is look at Amy and I am depressed, but then Jim behaved badly, and Valerie went off with her Kraut Yiddle and it all just overwhelmed me.’

  ‘Obviously you are almost still alive!’ quipped Marion, moving to the side of the bed and leaning against its sagging innards.

  ‘Aren’t you concerned? Haven’t I shocked you?’

  ‘One could say I am bewildered by the idea of your best friend’s happiness making you want to slit your wrists. Are you fond of Valerie?’

  ‘Of course I’m fond of Valerie – what is this conversation all about?’ Shirley leaped off the bed angrily, her strong stocky frame filling the flying suit amply.