Spitfire Girls Page 7

  ‘It occurred to me, Val, that Angelique Florian might know. You lady pilots have this sort of network of gossip.’

  ‘We keep in touch, like men, if that is what you mean.’ She knew he was thinking of her sister. ‘Annabel could be there, too, and all we can do is hope that mad bunch are safe.’

  Sir Henry’s forehead had developed a film of perspiration and he had paled considerably since the beginning of their conversation.

  ‘Please do what you can, my dear,’ he said, smiling dimly. ‘Truman is a good chap, and he backs your cause. He has the right ear of Churchill. Besides, it’s good shooting his way.’

  Valerie looked at him with pity and left, aching to see Friedrich Kranz with a physical urgency that cut her off from her father’s ghostly presence.

  Sir Henry Cobb MP watched her go, and marvelled at how ravishing a woman she was, and how little he could blame the other huntsmen for lusting after this child of his own flesh and blood.

  11

  Edith Allam had not been Errol Carnaby’s first woman. She had, however, been his first pilot. Living in a dream for days after their lovemaking, he had agonized over her mission. It was absurd: could a girl of her minute size fly across the Atlantic at a moment’s notice? Had he imagined the visitation by the German madwoman?

  Once he had accepted the reality of Edith’s tight, begging thighs piercing his last resources of control and making him explode over and over again on that poor suffering bed all through that night, he fought terror at the thought of her parents.

  Earlier this day he had met the crowd, and Kelvin and Molly had shown him the newspaper clippings about Edith’s successful crossing. Mr and Mrs Allam would come back today, Molly had enthused, and Errol was plagued by images of German Shepherds sniffing him out. Ever since that night he had slept at the airfield, sneaking into the old hangar and bedding down on a giant storage silo. Perhaps, he had theorized, his metallic surroundings could not retain his scent … Kelvin had boasted about Edith to the soda jerk at Fidler’s and her picture, goggles and all, was destined for the automat’s bulletin board. What would destiny bring the rest of them? Errol tormented himself. He would greet the Allams upon their return.

  Walking the interminable blocks to Florence Avenue, Errol had brief imaginings of Edith running out of her house and greeting him, and then the pair strolling to the corner for a soda at Weinberg’s Drugstore. Now he hovered at the corner of 53rd Street and debated whether he should proceed or march the extra sixteen and take a trolley to nowhere at 69th Street Terminal.

  ‘You lost, sonny?’ A gargantuan policeman stood over him. He must be a freak, reflected Errol, whose own considerable size ordinarily intimidated most mortals.

  ‘I was just about to get going, officer,’ he replied, terrified for the ten thousandth time in his life. Might this cop have a dog in tow?

  ‘You sure look like you’re up to something.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Errol murmured. He wanted to recite his favourite Blake but could think only of loathsome spunk and of his penis being gripped in Alsatian gums.

  ‘Where you headed, then?’ The giant cop was perspiring, and Errol could smell him. Had he not washed since his last fuck? This acrid odor offended the black man’s nostrils, but his sensibilities did not count, not even in Pennsylvania.

  Dare he recite Edith’s address, instead of Blake?

  ‘5337 Florence.’

  ‘Making a delivery or something?’

  ‘My mother is their cleaning lady, and I take her home every night about this time.’

  ‘I ain’t seen you before, and this is my beat.’

  You haven’t seen me because you’ve been having a floozy from the taproom, thought Errol, noticing, on the policeman’s badge, the name ‘Malone’.

  ‘We’ve got a car, sir, but tonight it’s out of order,’ he offered, wondering how many different flavours of Malone there are in the City of Brotherly Love. ‘I work as a chauffeur and the boss lets me borrow it to pick Momma up.’ Errol had kept calm until now, but as he saw the Allams arriving in the distance his heart raced.

  ‘What’s the matter, boy – seen a ghost?’ Wiping his greasy brow with his shirtsleeve, the Philadelphia policeman grasped Errol’s shoulder and with his other hand frisked the well dressed Negro. Did white men get some sort of obscene pleasure from touching a black erection?

  ‘Funny place to keep a gun, boy,’ the officer guffawed. ‘You people are animals – always ready.’

  ‘I assure you I’m going to that house over there. Walk with me.’

  ‘Don’t you fucking tell me what to do,’ the still-sweating cop snarled. Errol could have predicted the reaction. For a moment they stared at each other, and the bursting urge inside his trousers subsided as Errol noticed the policeman glancing at his watch. It was time for his own erection, and to the black man’s immense relief the giant cop turned tail and headed for the taproom.

  Julius and Kitty Allam were carrying luggage from their car when a large black hand offered help.

  ‘Errol!’ Kitty smiled broadly. He returned her warmth, taking a suitcase in each hand. ‘Have you heard about Edith?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I have.’

  ‘We’ve saved all the newspapers,’ Julius remarked, straightening his portly self and shutting the hood of the muddied automobile.

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking, weren’t you shocked about what she did?’ intoned Errol.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Julius, facing him. ‘Whoever heard of a girl who takes pictures and flies aeroplanes? It was our luck to be blessed with a freak.’

  ‘She was always a little bit crazy, and now all I can do is pray she gets back safely,’ Kitty said, moving towards the front door.

  Errol felt a certain terror overtaking him as Mrs Allam turned the key, and for a moment he hallucinated thousands of tiny brown babies crawling along the floor and disintegrating into lifeless skeletons. A dog barked, and he jumped.

  ‘That’ll be Manon,’ Julius shouted. ‘One of the German Shepherds next-door. Her brother is called Lescaut.’

  Lights were being switched on and Errol stood in the middle of the room, staring at the piano.

  ‘How was your trip, ma’am?’ he asked, taking in Mrs Allam’s splendidly full figure.

  Julius had already made his way to the kitchen, the warm air of an Indian summer filtering through the screen door as it squealed open and snapped shut. On the back porch, the man of the house breathed deeply. Should he have left Kitty alone with a coloured man? Their voices were muffled by the heavy atmosphere.

  ‘Our trip?’ murmured Kitty, aware of the young man’s energy. ‘We argued.’ She was tall, and her chestnut hair seemed a bottomless cradle for male yearnings. Errol let out a small cry, feeling Edith rippling through him in one split second. Their ecstasy still hung in the air, but here, now, was her mother …

  ‘Let’s have some lemonade,’ Kitty said, removing her short jacket to reveal amply proportioned shoulders and a smooth, cool bosom seemingly unperturbed by the oppressive Philadelphia humidity.

  Errol could feel perspiration dripping down his own chest. Oh, how he hated his inheritance. What a woman. With her freckled whiteness would come coolness and breasts that glowed in the night, their nipples God’s one concession to nigger tint … again he was hallucinating.

  ‘May I talk to you, Mrs Allam?’ he asked, still standing in the middle of the floor. Nipples had replaced skeletons in his hallucination and now as the vision receded, they became the motionless fleurs-de-lys on the carpet.

  ‘Have some lemonade, and we’ll talk,’ she replied, striding in the direction of the kitchen. He could hear the screen door creaking open once more and the voices of the Allams mixed with a chorus of crickets. Moving to join them, Errol reached the kitchen and the dogs went into a rage. He was afraid to venture any further, retreating back into the living room. Surveying the tasteful art and the dainty nicknacks on dustless shelves, he decided to leave. Now he was at the door, and co
olness brushed him.

  ‘Don’t go,’ said Kitty. Her superb hands offered lemonade.

  ‘You and Mr Allam must be very tired after your long journey.’

  ‘Yes, well – we got tired, as I said, from arguing.’ She motioned to him, and he sat.

  ‘One would never know it. You seem a happy couple,’ he commented.

  ‘Didn’t you have something to say to me? It was in your eyes – they call it a pregnant look, if I’m not mistaken.’ Kitty took a seat opposite him.

  In the distance dogs continued to bay.

  ‘They sound like hyenas!’ Errol exclaimed, smiling. His drink sweated on a small table and the moisture formed a pool around the bottom of the glass.

  Kitty Allam leaned over, her cool chest hovering for an instant as she wiped the pool away.

  ‘That crystal belonged to my grandmother. She smuggled it out after the pogroms.’ Kitty looked carefully at the handsome coloured boy who was not listening, or perhaps did not understand. ‘But why am I talking about pogroms? At a time like this! Let me tell you about our vacation – ‘ She stopped dead, seeing Errol glaring at her.

  ‘Mrs Allam, your daughter and I got awfully close before she went away.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Errol was perspiring again, and this time he could barely see through a veil of confusion and the onslaught of tears.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded, tensing.

  ‘Edith and I – we had a date, a real date, Mrs Allam.’

  Her face had taken on the completeness of terror, circles of white discolouring her splendid cheeks.

  Errol was transfixed, and wanted her to lash him. His hard manhood throbbed and he wanted to cry out again, but he could only weep.

  ‘What have you done?’ Julius asked in a monotone.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ sobbed Errol.

  ‘Did he steal something?’

  Kitty could not help laughing at the absurdity: the idea of some petty theft, when in her eyes her daughter’s cleanliness, like the Sabbath candlelight, had been stolen forever.

  ‘He’s been spending time with Edith,’ she said, calmly.

  ‘What kind of time?’

  ‘We’re nuts about each other.’ Errol moved to the door, and when he turned around the two white parents were staring at him – as if an ancient Pharaoh had come to life out of a museum sarcophagus to enslave the Israelites once more.

  ‘Wait,’ said Kitty. ‘Do you really care about Edith?’ she asked Errol, moving towards him..

  ‘I’ve died every day she’s been gone.’ He smiled. ‘After all, to whom else can I recite my beloved Blake?’

  ‘Let her stay in England, please God,’ Julius muttered to himself.

  ‘I could have predicted you’d say that. She’ll be back.’ Errol grinned as he spoke and his gleaming, perfect teeth glowed. ‘When she does return, none of us – not you, nor I, not the kids downtown – will know her.’ He opened the door and, as if his scent had travelled instantly, the dogs awoke and their noise shook the air.

  Errol Carnaby slithered down the front steps and into the night.

  Kitty watched him strut away and leaned against the bricks of the New World they had made their home. Where would a boy like that live? she thought. Why did we know so little about him? If he were a white kid we’d have met his family, and known what his father did for a living. What kind of food did his mother feed him? Did Negroes sit down to a table like Jews, and gentiles, and Orientals?

  ‘Imagine him coming here to announce such a thing – what chutzpah,’ mumbled Julius, standing inside the doorway.

  ‘Their men have different needs, you know,’ she said, still staring straight ahead.

  Dogs bayed as if on cue.

  Kitty moved inside, pushing past her husband as if he were an unsavoury obstacle.

  ‘That boy is refined.’

  ‘You can’t refine brown sugar.’

  ‘Why not? Julius, our people are being troubled in Europe. Some people say a war is coming. And if Edith wants to change with the world, we can’t stop her.’

  Kitty gathered up her jacket and mounted the stairs. Fingering the light dust that had settled on the banister, she stood at the top landing and gazed into Edith’s room. Somehow she knew the unthinkable had happened in there, because the room no longer spoke to her in a child’s voice.

  Young couples strolling down the corner of 53rd Street noticed the din of the dogs drowned out by a disturbance. A coloured boy was being throttled by a drunken cop. When a paddywagon came, just in time, it took the choking Negro youth away, leaving the giant Irish drunkard laughing in the street by the garish taproom light.

  12

  No sooner had Edith departed Philadelphia Airport than her mishandling of the unfamiliar German equipment began to take its toll on the aircraft. Unnerved by the presence of a glowering radio operator with the unlikely name of Zuki, and another male who looked like a throwback to the Niebelungen, she half-hoped the entire exercise would have to be cancelled: Raine sent back to Germany, with Gotterdämmerung restored to the pilot’s seat where he belonged, and Edith on trial in her father’s spiritual courtroom.

  ‘Twilight of the Gods,’ she murmured to herself as the engine spluttered and the three Germans showed not one ounce of concern. Inside she was panicking but the last thing she wanted was to reveal her terror. Heading due north, she decided to come down in Newfoundland. Knowing the trip was scheduled for a speed of 135 miles per hour, she could not allow her nerves to take over, pressing for a greater velocity. A faster flight would consume more gasoline per hour and could be dangerous. Humming along, and trying to keep to every regulation in the manual she had studied so feverishly before taking off, Edith wanted to reach her emergency destination as soon as the elements would allow.

  ‘Twilight of the Gods,’ she repeated.

  Raine smiled at her pilot. Their voices were muffled and the air rushing past made conversation tedious, but German craftsmanship had reduced engine noise to a minimum. Edith was impressed, worrying that the Reich might have tricked her into this publicity stunt. She knew Zuki doubled as a secret service agent, a kind of protector for Raine, the film canister and the Reich. On arrival in the Fatherland, she would likely be taken into custody – so when would she ever get home?

  Indeed, the whole exercise now seemed an absurd pantomime orchestrated by a regime as insular as the woman who now sat beside her. Fate’s map of the world might even have the two men now breathing down her back then raping and killing their American aviatrix for fun, once back in Heimat.

  Edith noticed the radio operator behind the pilot’s cabin now deeply absorbed in his work. Did German technology extend so far as to allow Zuki to talk to some other country? Inconceivable!

  ‘Scheiss!’ Gotterdämmerung had spoken, and the lights had gone out.

  ‘It looks like the main fuse,’ Edith shouted in German. To her astonishment Raine calmly removed a replacement from the tool box and set to work with the men to remove the faulty one. Did the film-maker know more about flying than she had cared to admit? Edith turned to the small, misted window to her left and gasped at the sight. Heaven looked in at them and the American forced her fears to one side, allowing her soul to experience the exultation she always felt when in command of a flying machine surging through God’s domain.

  Silence descended on the tiny cabin as they ploughed through a cloud formation. Commerce would not have begun on the ground underneath, and Edith’s mind drifted to her empty house and the imminent return of her parents and the resumption of the milkman’s visits.

  Meanwhile:

  ‘In America, it is the female sex that is loud about its rights, yet nowhere did Anke and I see women so well dressed, or so skilled at showing themselves off in the most flattering way.’ Raine was enjoying having a captive audience.

  ‘Where did you and Anke go?’

  ‘Chicago, Washington – those American women were a delight. The men
were chivalrous and gorgeous, Edith. I tell you, Anke and I thought the relationships between the sexes in America was one of the most important characteristics of the country.’

  Edith could not believe this was the same women talking, who a day previously had held court in Press-Shots and made Malone feel a pig. Her arrogance had disappeared, and the young aviatrix wondered if it was because the air made all souls equals.

  For her part, Raine breathed deeply and had to acknowledge the joy she felt sitting next to the mongrel girl who was possessed of more spirit than a dining room full of Viennese charmers.

  Hartmut had come to life. His thick, fair hair curled out from underneath his jaunty cap and his eyes, a deep violet, reached out in want of her friendship. In turn, the aviatrix no longer saw him as a god in twilight. He spoke animatedly to Raine, who twisted her torso around to take it all in, grinning at his chatter. Edith loved the lilt of his German, the soft accent placing him on the Belgian border. She thought of her ancestors, who had been entranced by Crefeld, then stripped of their worldly goods in Antwerp. And of her grandmother, whose candlesticks had miraculously survived the journey to the New World, hidden inside a giant ragdoll.

  ‘When we were at the Cleveland races, one of our top men was thrown off a commercial flight for slapping a stewardess,’ Hartmut recalled.

  ‘That will teach you never to slap a woman,’ Edith said, her German flowing easily.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he continued.

  ‘Anke Reitsch was sitting next to this man – we were already airborne, and they turned the plane around,’ Raine said. ‘When we landed his bags were on the tarmac and the pilot threw him off personally.’

  There was an ugly jolt, and Edith knew she would have to bring them down quickly. All conversation stopped, and the radio man had an odd, almost leering expression on his face.

  ‘What are you smirking at?’ the pilot demanded. ‘Can’t he speak?’ she asked Raine.

  ‘On the ground they are ready to greet America’s Amy Johnson,’ he said sheepishly.

  ‘God damn! What are you talking about?’